The Book of Athyra (42 page)

“Yes,” I said. “It’s the fashion, you know.”

“My dear sir—” said the proprietor.

“A moment,” I said, and I pulled the curtain aside just a hair, just enough to see the end of Timmer’s teleport. “Never mind,” I said. “I think I like the pattern it’s making. Good day.”

I went back into the alley, and then to another one, and did my best not to leave a trail of blood. With any luck at all I had a good couple of minutes before Timmer realized that she’d followed the wrong man, and, I hoped, Domm was too far out of it to be a problem.

“
Well, Loiosh?
”

“
You’re in the clear for the moment, boss.
”

“
Okay. Hang on for another minute, then join me.
”

I found a little nook I’d noticed before, and spent a minute and a half becoming a bleeding Easterner instead of a bleeding Chreotha. I put the remains of the Chreotha disguise in the bag, took off the gold Phoenix Stone, and teleported the bag to a spot I knew well just off the coast of Adrilankha, where it went to join a couple of bodies who wouldn’t mind the intrusion. Loiosh arrived on my shoulder with a few choice words about how clever I thought I was compared to what a fool I’d been acting like. I thanked him for sharing his opinion with me.

Since I’d taken the chain off, anyway, there was no reason not to teleport back here, so I arrived at a point I’d memorized a little ways away into the wood, and here I am, Kiera, happy to see you as always, and has anyone ever told you that you’re lovely when you’re disgusted?

“
I
’
VE NEVER HEARD OF
that Stony you talked to. If he’s just sort of midlevel in Northport, what made you think he’d know anything about Fyres?”

“That’s one of the things I can’t tell you.”

“Oh. There are a lot of things like that, aren’t there?”

“I told you there would be, Cawti.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve never known Vlad to use disguises before.”

“Neither had I. It was probably something he picked up while traveling.”

“What about the old woman? How was she taking all of this?”

“I suspect it bothered her a great deal, but she never let on. In fact, the whole time she had an attitude like none of it had anything to do with her.”

“I can’t blame her, I guess. It would be strange.”

“Yes.”

“It’s funny, you’re summarizing for me Vlad’s report to you about his conversations with others, which is three steps removed from the actual conversations, but I can still almost hear him talking.”

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“I—”

“He misses you, Cawti.”

“Let’s not start on that, all right?”

“If you wish.”

“It’s complicated, Kiera. It’s difficult. I don’t know any of the answers. Yes, I miss him. But we couldn’t live together.”

“He’s changed, you know.”

“Are you trying to get us back together, Kiera?”

“I don’t know. I think at least he should know about—”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“All right. Maybe I should summarize even more.”

“No, you’re doing fine.”

“I have to say, though, that I don’t have a very good memory for conversations, so a lot of this I’m reconstructing and making up. But you get the gist of it.”

“I do indeed. You must have had a few words for him when he got back to the house. I know I would have.”

“Oh, yes.”

“W
ELL
,” I
SAID SLOWLY
. “Congratulations, Vlad.”

He looked at me and waited for the punch line.

I said, “You’ve now not only got the Jhereg after you but also the Empire, and, as soon as they tie you to the documents we stole, the House of the Orca will want you, too—and me, by the way. That leaves only fourteen more Houses to go and you’ll have the set. Then you can start on the Easterners and the Serioli. Good work.”

“It’s a talent,” he said. “I can’t take credit for it.”

I studied him while considering his story. He was looking—I don’t know,
smug
wasn’t quite right, but maybe something like,
amused with a veneer of self-satisfaction.
Sometimes I forget just how devious he is, and how good he is at improvising, and his skill at calculating odds and pulling off improbable gambits. Sometimes he thinks he’s better at these things than he actually is, and it is likely to get him killed one of these days—especially now, when, between the gold and the black Phoenix Sx he wears, he is entirely cut off from those who would be most willing and able to help him.

“All right,” I said. “Either Fyres was murdered or the Empire is afraid Fyres was murdered, and, in either case, the Empire doesn’t want it known.”

“Someone in the Empire,” Vlad amended.

“No,” I said. “The Empire.”

“You mean the Empress—”

“I wouldn’t say the Empress knows, but it doesn’t matter either way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If it isn’t the Empress, it’s someone almost as important, and it’s with the cooperation of the highest level of government.”

“What makes you so sure? An hour ago you didn’t even believe—”

“Your story was very convincing,” I said. “And you told me things you probably didn’t know you were telling me.” I frowned. “The way Loftis talked to Domm, and the way Domm and Timmer talked to each other, tell me—”

“That Timmer doesn’t—or, perhaps,
didn’t
—know about it.”

“That’s not the point, Vlad. They were acting under orders, and they have support that not only goes high, it goes broad—widespread. At the Imperial level, too many people are involved for there to be just one person pulling the strings from behind a closet.”

“Hmmm. I see your point. But with that many involved, how can it stay secret?”

“There’s secret, and then there’s secret, Vlad. If, in a year or two, the Empress starts to hear whispers about so-and-so having pulled a scam in the Fyres’s investigation, there won’t be much she can do about it, depending on who so-and-so is.”

“In other words, it can leak, as long as it doesn’t break.”

“Something like that.” I shrugged. “I’m just speculating, based on what I know about the Court, but it’s a pretty good guess. You know,” I added, “you’re in over your head, Vlad. I’d call for help.”

Vlad laughed without humor. “Call for help? From whom? Sethra Lavode? She’s taken on the whole Empire before. You think she’d do it now? Without knowing why, or what’s involved? And just what exactly are Iceflame and the power of Dzur Mountain going to do against a snotty little intrigue? Or maybe you mean Morrolan. He could solve the whole thing by inviting our hostess to move into Castle Black, but I don’t think she’ll go for it, and he doesn’t have any connections in the House of the Orca. Aliera would love to go charging into this, Kiera, but subtlety isn’t her strong suit—she’d just kill everyone who was acting dirty, and we’d have the same mess with a bunch of bodies to complicate things. Norathar would be the one who could solve it—if this was the Dragon Reign. But, last I heard, Zerika is still on the throne—at least technically.”

I didn’t quite know how to answer that, so I didn’t. He said, “And
remember, I don’t really care what the Empire is doing or to whom, as long I can do what I promised Hid—Hwid—the old woman I’d do and she can help Savn. Do you care?”

That was tough. I
did
care—but . . . “No,” I said. “You’re right. But it may be that we have to deal with the whole thing in order to solve our little problem. I don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” said Vlad.

“What do we know, then?”

“We know the Empire is covering up something—very possibly murder. We know that not all of the investigators know about it, and we know that not all of the ones who do are happy about it, but that the orders include killing anyone who knows what’s going on. We know that there is a big tangle about who owns what parts of Fyres’s property, and that finding out who owns this blue cottage and its environs is not going to be easy. And we know that something, somewhere, is very wrong.”

“Wrong how?” I said.

“The timing—it’s funny and I’m not laughing.”

“Go on,” I said, though I was starting to realize that I knew—that I’d been subconsciously aware of something being strange about how things had been happening.

“What’s the hurry? When someone as rich as Fyres dies, it’s sort of expected to take fifty or a hundred or two hundred years to sort out who owns what. But they’re not only putting a coat of paint over this investigation, they’re doing it in an awful hurry. And not just the Empire—everyone associated with it.”

“What do you mean by everyone?”

“I mean,” he said carefully, “that Fyres had been dead for maybe a week when our hostess was told to vacate, and she was given six months in which to do it. Now, that doesn’t make any sense at all, unless there are two things going on: one, the land is valuable somehow; and, two, someone, somewhere, is panicking.”

I nodded. Yeah, that was it. I said, “Almost. I agree about the panic, but the land doesn’t have to be particularly valuable.”

“Oh? Then why—”

“Someone wants to take it, get as much cash as he can for it, and be gone before it comes out that it wasn’t his land to sell in the first place.”

“Ah,” said Vlad. “Yes, that makes sense.” He thought for a moment. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t help—it doesn’t point to anyone in particular, and it doesn’t even eliminate anyone.”

“True,” I said.

“Which still leaves us with the problem of finding out, which, in turn, brings up the next question: What now?”

I was able to answer that one, anyway. “Now,” I said, “we sleep on it. It’s late, and my brain is tired. We’ll talk again in the morning.”

“Okay. Meet here?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll cook breakfast.”

“I’ll bring something to cook.”

“It’s a pleasure working with you, Kiera.”

*  *  *

I
SPENT THE NIGHT
trying to make sense of everything I’d learned; I’d have bet Juinan’s Pearl against a pound of tea that Vlad did the same. And I’d have won, judging by the look on his face when I got there the next morning.

“Not much sleep?” I suggested sweetly.

He scowled and went back to making klava. I put the groceries on the counter next to him and said, “Goose eggs, sneershrimp, endive, cynth, orange and black fungus, and various sweet and hot peppers. Also a pound of flatbread. Make breakfast.”

“Onions?”

“She has them growing in back.”

“Garlic?”

“Hanging in a basket about six centimeters from your right hand. Observant, aren’t we?”

“You can talk to Loiosh,” he said.

Loiosh, curled up with Rocza near the cold hearth, twitched and probably said something to Vlad. Hwdf’rjaanci emerged from the back, toweling her hair dry. “You’ve made the klava,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Vlad. “I hope it isn’t too strong.”

“Don’t make jokes,” she said.

Savn was still wrapped up in his furs, but he was awake and staring at the ceiling. I noticed that Vlad was looking at him, too. The old woman said, “I’m going to go in today.”

I heard Vlad’s sharp intake of breath—or maybe it was mine. “Dreamwalk?” I said.

“No, I’m just going to heal the physical damage. There isn’t much of it, and I’ve looked carefully—it won’t hurt him, and it might start the healing process.”

Vlad nodded, turned back to the kitchen, and began to prepare breakfast. Hwdf’rjaanci sat on the floor near Savn’s head. I chopped things and sampled them. He didn’t make any comments about my doing so, which meant either he was unique in my experience with cooks, or he was distracted, or he was uncomfortable because no one had done that since he and Cawti had broken up. I felt a little bad for him, but not bad enough to stop sampling things. The peppers were exquisite.

He said, “There are few sounds more beautiful than that made by a mess of onions landing on a cast-iron skillet with a layer of hot oil. The trick is getting them to just the right degree of done before you start adding other things, and then to not let them go too much further before you add the eggs—the eggs have to be last because they don’t take as long—”

“What’s on your mind, Vlad?”

He shrugged. “The same thing that’s on yours, of course—are we going to be able to solve our hostess’s problem without taking on, in effect, the whole Empire? And, if we do have to take on the Empire, how can we win? It’s bound to be tricky.”

“Tricky,” I said. I shook my head. “You’re nothing if not confident.”

He shrugged. “It shouldn’t be any problem. I’ll just work my way through these special Guardsmen, find out who their boss is, kill him, take his position, use that to get close to the Empress, kill her, take the Orb, and rule Dragaera myself, exploiting the Empire ruthlessly in order to enrich myself and punish those who have offended me throughout my life, in preparation for conquering the East and eventually making myself ruler of the entire world.” He paused from whipping the eggs, looked at me, and nodded somberly. “
Then
I’d meet some girls, I’ll bet.” He covered the pan. “Want to set the table for four?”

“Three,” said our hostess, who was still seated next to the boy but was now staring down at him while holding both of his shoulders. “Savn will be needing his rest.”

I looked at her, then at Savn, then at Vlad, who was looking at me. I opened my mouth to speak and then felt the casting of a spell. Vlad apparently felt it, too, or more accurately Loiosh did; in any case we both turned to watch, then looked again at each other. Vlad’s eyes were a bit wide, but he shrugged.

“Don’t let the food burn,” I said.

“I shan’t,” said Vlad, and turned his attention back to the skillet. I set the table. The feeling of sorcery went away about two minutes after it had started, and then the old woman joined us at the table and we ate.
She didn’t seem quite comfortable with Loiosh and Rocza joining us and eating scraps from Vlad’s plate, even though she should have been used to it by now. But she didn’t say anything. Buddy sat next to the table and spoke most eloquently with his eyes but got nothing for his trouble, poor beast. The food was good and there was no conversation for quite some time, until I noticed that Vlad was watching me.