Orca Page 14

  There were four guards out in the open, and after a few minutes I found another four concealed—one of them close enough to make me uncomfortable, even though I was doing nothing illegal. I continued watching, noticing the glass on the windows, just like Fyres’s place, and the inlay work on the stones around the front door, the carriage posts for guests’ conveyances, and the glint that came off the door clapper. Yes. She, too, had her ostentatious side, although it was nothing like Vlad had described Endra’s house.

  Come to that, though, I hadn’t seen what the inside looked like. Still, all this time, I was only barely aware that my subconscious was putting together a layout of the house. It wasn’t that I expected to need one, it’s just how my mind works. I am, quite frankly, very good at it, and maybe that’s where the real pleasure comes in—just the joy of doing something you do well. There are worse reasons for doing things; maybe there aren’t any better ones.

  I was doing something I was good at now, too: I was wearing makeup, to which I was unaccustomed, but I was being a good enough Orca to fool an Orca. Or so I hoped.

  I walked up to the front door and pulled the clapper. You know it’s a well-built house when you pull the clapper and you don’t even hear the faintest echoes of it from outside—that is, either it’s a well-built house or else the clapper’s broken.

  Evidently the clapper was working. The man who opened the door was at once recognizable as an Issola, and a fine specimen he was—old, perhaps a shade tall, well groomed, graceful in movements, plainly delighted to see me even though he had no idea who I was or what I was doing there. He said, “Welcome to the home of my lady Side-Captain Vonnith, Countess of Licotta and Baroness of T’rae. My name is Hub. What may we do to please you?”

  I said, “Good morning, Hub. I am Third-Chart-Master Areik, from Adrilankha, with a message for the Side-Captain. If you wish, Sir Hub, I will wait outside; please tell her I’m from her friend in the Ministry of the Treasury and there may be some small difficulty with the arrangements.”

  He said, “There is no need for you to wait outside, Third-Chart-Master; please follow me.” I did so, and he left me in a parlor while he went to deliver the message.

  Vonnith had gone for the big, roomy look: I had the impression, even in the entryway, of lots of space. I was prepared for it because I’d been able to see the dimensions and the height of the ceilings from the outside, but it was different actually feeling it. It occurred to me for the first time that there was something strange about an Orca wanting to live in a big, spacious, airy house—and a house, looking around, that had no hint or pieces of shipboard life anywhere. One explanation was that, if they’re used to life on a ship, that’s the last thing they want to be reminded of when they’re ashore. But I suspect the real explanation is that, just as most Jhereg have nothing to do with criminal activity, most Orca live out their whole lives on land, channeling their mercantile instincts into other pursuits—running banks, for example.

  Hub returned. “The Side-Captain awaits you in West Room.”

  There were no hallways on this floor—it just flowed from one room to another, which meant all of them were big and open. From the parlor, where I’d been waiting, we passed into a dining room with a very long lacquered table, and from there we entered a spacious room with dark paneling and traces of something tangy-sweet—maybe incense, maybe something else. The chairs in this room were all stuffed and comfortable-looking, and set in clumps of three or four, as if to turn the one large room into several smaller ones without the benefit of walls. There was very little that seemed worth stealing, except some of the contents of the buffet, and I dislike stealing things that break easily.

  I bowed to the woman before me and said, “Side-Captain Vonnith?”

  She nodded and pointed to a chair. I sat. She looked at Hub and nodded, and he poured me a glass of wine. She already had one. I said, “Thank you.” We both drank some. It was the sort of wine that Vlad calls brandy, and it was quite good. She nodded to Hub again. He bowed and left the room.

  She said, “I wasn’t aware that I had a friend in the Ministry of the Treasury. In fact, I don’t believe I know anyone at all who works there.”

  I drank some more wine to give me time to think. She had invited me in, and she had given me wine, and now she was denying knowing what I was talking about. So, okay, she was playing a game, but was I supposed to play along with it, or convince her it was unnecessary?

  “I understand,” I said. “But if you did ...”

  “Yes? If I did?”

  Okay, sometimes luck will out.

  “You would probably be interested in knowing that the fire is getting hotter.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Questions are being asked.”

  “And are the answers forthcoming?”

  “No.” And I added, “Not yet.”

  Her lips tightened. “Some,” she said, “might interpret that as a threat.”

  “No, no,” I said. “Not a threat. But you know Lord Shortisle.”

  “Do I?” she said. “What makes you think so?”

  “I mean, you know how he works.”

  “I thought I did,” she said. “But now you say he’s not threatening me, and yet—”

  Well, well. All the way to the top. I said, “He’s not. What I mean is, he’s getting pressure from, well, you can guess where the pressure’s coming from.”

  She frowned. “Actually, I can’t. The Phoenix is off cavorting with her lover, as I understand it, so it can’t be her, and there isn’t anyone else who is in a position to threaten us, or has the desire to.”

  Now, that was extremely interesting. I said, “Because Her Majesty is gone doesn’t mean she’s out of touch.”

  For the first time, she looked worried. “It is her? Something has slipped?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know; I’m just a messenger.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Not bad—yet. It’s just a whisper. But Lord Sh—That is, certain parties thought you should be informed.”

  “Yes, yes. What does he say I should do?”

  “Do you know Lord Loftis, who is running the—”

  “Of course I do.”

  “That’s where the pressure is coming down.”

  “Has he slipped?”

  “Not badly, but enough so there’s some danger. You should be prepared to move.”

  “Huh? What do you mean, move?”

  “I mean run.”

  “Oh. Do you think it might come to that?”

  “We hope not.”

  She nodded. “All right. Why didn’t—uh—why wasn’t I reached directly? Why send you?”

  Hmmm. Good question. “Why do you think?”

  For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to be able to come up with anything, but her eyes got big. “The Empress? Using the Orb? She wouldn’t! She’s a Phoenixl”

  I shrugged. “She hasn’t yet, and she may not, but it would be the obvious next step, wouldn’t it?”

  “Impossible. Shortisle is getting paranoid.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Probably.”

  “Certainly. No one has done that since the seventh Jhereg Reign, and you know what happened then!”

  “So is there any harm in being careful?”

  “No, I suppose not.” She shook her head. “We should have been more careful from the beginning—we should have arranged for methods of making contact, and signals.” That’s right, you should have. “But then, no one planned anything—it just happened, one thing led to another.”

  “Yes,” I said. She looked like she was about to start asking questions, so I finished the wine and stood up. “There’s a great deal to do, but nothing that should be impossible.” That was general enough that I didn’t think I could get into trouble with it.

  “Of course,” she said. “Tell him I’ll await his word, but that I’ll be ready to, as you put it, move.”

&nbs
p; “Very good. I—or someone—will be in touch. For the future, whoever it is will say he’s from the Adrilankha Eleemosynary Society.”

  “Adrilankha Eleemosynary Society,” she said. “All right. Good luck.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And you be careful.”

  I didn’t realize how tense I was until I walked out the door. And even then I couldn’t completely relax, because they might be watching me. I didn’t think I gave myself away, but I couldn’t be sure; Vonnith was the sort who could play the game on me that I thought I was playing on her.

  I got up to the road and teleported to the Imperial Palace’s Orca Wing just in case they decided to trace the teleport. It crossed my mind to visit the Ministry of the Treasury while I was there, but on reflection there was too much chance of my being recognized by the Jhereg who have business there from time to time, so I just waited for about ten or fifteen minutes, then teleported back to the cottage.

  Vlad was talking to Hwdf rjaanci, probably about Savn’s condition, while Savn slept. When I came in, Vlad said, “Well?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “I think it went well, but—”

  “What did you learn?”

  Buddy insinuated his nose into my person. I petted him and pushed him away. Loiosh, who was on Vlad’s left shoulder, twitched his head in what was probably laughter. “It goes all the way to the top,” I said.

  “You mean Big Shot Treasury is Shortisle himself?”

  “Not necessarily, but Shortisle is involved somewhere along the line.”

  Vlad whistled softly. “Let’s have the details,” he said.

  I gave him the conversation as well as I could remember it, and a few notes on architecture as well, after which he said, “Yeah, Shortisle’s in it, all right. I suspect the Empress is not going to be happy about this, and I suspect that, if any of a number of people find out what we’re doing, we could be in some very serious trouble.”

  “Right on both counts,” I told him.

  “Could Shortisle have enough pull to enlist the Tasks Group?”

  “No chance,” I said. “There has to be someone else.”

  “Okay.” I could see him accept that. “The Tiassa? Lord Khaavren?”

  “I know about him. I don’t believe it. And you’re the one who heard the way Loftis talked about him, and I threatened Loftis with telling him.”

  “The Empress?”

  “Even less likely. I’d even risk ‘impossible.’”

  “Then who, dammit? Who else can order the Tasks Group to do something like this?”

  “No one.”

  “Oh, good. Well, that’s helpful.” He frowned. “I remember I was at Dzur Mountain once—have you ever been there?”

  I shrugged.

  “Yeah. Well, I was there once, talking to Sethra Lavode, the Enchantress—”

  “I know who she is.”

  “Right. She was telling me about the Dragon-Jhereg war.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was pretty ugly as I understand it. Were you involved in that?”

  “Sure,” I said. “On the side of the Dragons.”

  He gave me a polite smile. “The Dragons had the real power, but the Jhereg had one advantage—they always went for the top. While the Dragonlords were busily killing every Jhereg they came across—whether he worked for the Organization or not—the Jhereg were carefully wiping out all the military leaders in the House of the Dragon. It was a nasty little war, and, by the end, Sethra Lavode had to get involved. Do you know about that?”

  “Go on.”

  “All she did was announce that she was in charge, and then, as she told me, she did nothing—she just sat in Dzur Mountain and waited for the Jhereg to try to assassinate her, and wiped them out as they did, which was pretty stupid on the part of the Jhereg, really. No one is going to assassinate the Enchantress of Dzur Mountain, unless maybe Mario reappears. But that’s not the point. She also mentioned a time in Eighth Cycle when she was Warlord, and she had six hundred troops to defend this little hill against—”

  “What’s your point, Vlad?”

  “That they’re occupying the strong position—they don’t have to do anything. We’ve been nipping at them here, and scouting them there, and we’ve learned a lot, but mostly what we’ve learned is that they’re way tougher than we are, and they’re in a secured position. All they have to do is dig in, and we can’t touch them. If we tell the Empire what’s going on, they’ll go to ground and it’ll take a hundred years to sort everything out. If we keep nibbling away at them, it’ll take even longer.”

  “I see your point. So what do we do?”

  “We need to get Sethra Lavode to leave Dzur Mountain—figuratively speaking.”

  I nodded slowly. “Yes, I see what you’re getting at. How do you propose to do it?”

  “They’re scared as it is,” he said. “That is, Loftis has been given the job of covering over Fyres’s murder, and Vonnith is obviously up to something, and so is Shortisle. So I propose we give them something to chase—like me. Then we turn the chase around and nail them.”

  “Uh-huh. And, if they do chase you, how are you going to stay alive long enough to, as you put it, turn the chase around?”

  He rubbed the spot above his lip where his facial hair was just starting to grow back. “I haven’t worked that part out yet,” he said.

  “Yeah. Well, be sure and let me know when you do.”

  “Well, so what’s your bright idea?”

  “Let’s go back to the beginning, Vlad. What do we know about Fyres?”

  Vlad shrugged. “Not much. We have something to start with, but—”

  “Yeah. I’d like to find out more.”

  “Kiera, that could take years. We have some of his private notes, okay. But between empty companies, and fake ships, and loans without backing, and reams of paper—most of which we don’t have—we’re never going to be able to track down what was really going on.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But remember Stony?”

  “Your Jhereg friend? Sure.”

  “I’m thinking that if the Jhereg has been involved in this, then someone, somewhere, knows what’s going on.”

  “And why would you think that?”

  “Sheer number of Jhereg, Vlad. There are so many of us involved in financing this kind that at least one of them was bound to have been smart enough not to jump in, but to investigate the guy. All we have to do is find out who that is and get the information already collected.”

  He looked skeptical. “Do you think you can do that? That is, find just the right guy and get the information without giving the game away?”

  “I can do it,” I told him.

  He shrugged. “Okay. Go to it.”

  “It may take a few days.”

  “All right.”

  “And there’s something else I want to do, but we’re going to have to think about whether it’s a good idea.”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

  “You’re wise, Vlad. I’m not sure it’s something we ought to do, but I’m thinking about it.”

  “Let’s hear it, Kiera.”

  “You like honey in your klava, don’t you?”

  “Ah. So that’s how it is?”

  “You’re very quick.”

  “Only because I’ve been stung. Let’s hear what you have in mind.”

  I gave him the general outline, omitting details he didn’t need and wouldn’t have been happy knowing. He listened very intently, then he said, “Yes, indeed. And we don’t even have gloves, much less whatever you’re supposed to use to protect your face. The question is, how big is the swarm, and how nasty do they get when they’re roused?”

  “Yeah, that’s the question. And can you think of a better way to find out?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Unfortunately, Kiera, I can’t.”

  “So I should go ahead?”

  He nodded briefly, like he didn’t enjoy the prospect. Well, neither did I, com
e to that. I said, “What are you going to do while I’m off gathering sweets?”

  A peculiar sort of smile came to his lips. “I’ll think of something,” he said.

  All we had to do was keep our heads down and keep learning things, and eventually, maybe, we’d start to get an idea about what was going on; then, just maybe, we’d be able to figure out what to do about it. That, at least, was what I was thinking as I stepped out of the little cottage and repaired home to make myself annoying in a couple of different ways to several different people.

  The next two days were no more fun than I’d thought they would be—most of those I spoke to I didn’t like, and they didn’t like me, and they couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me anything useful, anyway—but in the end I came up with some hard information. I noted it down carefully, and, psychic communication being impossible while Vlad wore the Phoenix Stones, I had to hold on to what I’d learned until I would see him next: tomorrow or the day after, depending on how things went tonight. When I was done asking irritating questions of irritating people, which was in the afternoon of the second day, I picked up the tools I was going to need and prepared to do what I was good at.

  Vlad and I, back in the old days, used to compare our respective crafts, and one of the things common to both was the need for preparation, and, in conjunction, how dangerous it was to try to do anything in a hurry. The trouble was, things were happening too fast, and I had the feeling they were going to happen even faster.

  Well, I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. After getting what I needed from home, I spent the rest of the afternoon going from place to place in Adri-lankha, trying to get the information I needed to have a chance to pull this off.

  I wished I had a familiar to grumble at while I did so. Vlad’s told me about several times Loiosh has saved his life, or suggested the solution to a problem, or provided the necessary help to complete a witchcraft spell, but I have the feeling that the most important thing Loiosh does for Vlad is give him someone to grumble at. You feel stupid grumbling to yourself, so I didn’t.

  The day was waning when I had finally acquired everything I needed. I took about four hours to study the situation, curse about everything I didn’t know, and come up with a tentative way in, a provisional agenda, and a possible way out, with maybe a couple of alternatives for the last, all of which I knew would likely be rendered useless if something went wrong. For the first time in more years than I could remember I actually thought about how humiliating it would be to get caught, because for the first time in more years than I could remember it seemed like a real possibility.