The Book of Athyra (44 page)

“Learn to live with it. Who are you and what do you want? If you really went through all of that just to get me here, you’re either very foolish or you have some explanation that—”

“Do you remember a certain affair three or four years ago, that started out with Division Six looking into the activities of a wizard working for, uh, a foreign kingdom, and ending up with a Jenoine at Dzur Mountain.”

He stared at me, licked his lips, and said, “I’ve heard about it.”

“Do you remember what you—your group—was assigned to do after Division Six had bungled it?”

He watched me very closely. “Yes,” he said.

“That’s what I’m here to do, only this time it’s you who are making a mess of things.”

He was silent for a moment. “Possible,” he said.

“Then let’s talk. I’m not armed—”

He laughed. “Sure you’re not. And Temping had no reserves at the Battle of Plowman’s Bridge.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. He said, “Eighth Cycle, two hundred and fifth year of the Tiassa Reign, the Whetstone Rising. The Warlord was—”

“I am not, in fact, armed,” I cut him off. “At least, not with a conventional weapon.”

He raised his eyebrows back at me.

I said, “What I’ve got for armament is a letter, being held quite safely, that is ready to go to Her Majesty if I fail to appear. The object, in fact, doesn’t have anything to do with you, it’s to make sure certain influential parties are disassociated from this affair, and appear clean when it blows up. What it will do to your career is, in fact, just a side effect, but that won’t change how it hits you when Lord Khaavren learns what you’ve been up to. You know him better than I do, my dear lieutenant—what
will he do? And it won’t help to try to keep the letter from reaching the Imperial Palace the way you, or your people, did in the Berdoign business, because the letter is already in the Palace. I think that’s better than a conventional weapon, under the circumstances, don’t you?”

“You are very well informed,” he said. I could see him wondering if I was lying, then deciding he couldn’t take the chance. He smiled, bowed his head slightly, and sheathed his sword. “Let’s talk, then,” he said. “I’m listening.”

“Good. We’ll start with the basics. You’ve been given an assignment that you dislike—”

He snorted. “‘Dislike’ would cover it,” he said, “if stretched very thin.”

“Nevertheless,” I continued, “you’re doing what you were instructed to do. Whatever else you are, you’re a soldier.”

He shrugged.

I said, “I represent, as I said, certain interests very close to, but not quite the same as, those who required you to carry out this mission. I would prefer that our efforts were combined, to a limited extent, because my job, to put it simply, is to clean up after your efforts to clean up. I have a certain hold on you, but not, I know, a strong one—”

“You got that right,” he said, smiling.

“—in that you’d prefer Lord Khaavren didn’t learn what you’re up to.”

“Don’t think you can push that too far, lady,” he said.

“I know how far I can push it.”

“Maybe. And what do I call you, by the way?”

“Margaret,” I said. “I fancy Eastern names.”

“Heh. You and Her Majesty.”

He’d thrown that out, I assumed, to see if I was up on current gossip; I gave him a slight smile to show that I was. He said, “Very well, then, Margaret. For whom do you work?”

“For whom do
you
work?”

“But you know that—or, at least, you laid out a theory which I haven’t disputed.”

“No, I’ve told you that I know the organization you work for, not where the orders came from to slide through the Fyres’s investigation.”

“So do you know who gave those orders?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Loftis?”

He smiled. “So we’ve found a piece of information you lack.”

“Maybe,” I said, returning his smile. “And maybe I’m just trying to find out if you’re planning to be straight with me.”

“Trade?” he suggested.

“No,” I said. “You’d lie. I’d lie. Besides, in point of fact, I know, anyway.”

“Oh?”

“There’s only one possibility.”

He looked inscrutable. “If you say so.”

I shrugged.

He said, “All right, then. What do you want?”

“As I told you before, cooperation.”

“What sort of cooperation? Be specific. You don’t want to share information, because we’d both lie, and because you don’t seem to need any, and because there’s really nothing I need to know. So what
do
you want, exactly?”

“Wrong on several counts,” I said.

“Oh?”

“As I told you, I’m here to keep this business from getting out of hand. I’ll blow the whistle on you if I have to, but I, and those who’ve given me this job, would prefer I didn’t. Now, what we have—”

“What cleanup are you talking about, Margaret?”

“Oh, come on, Loftis. Your security’s been broken all over town. Didn’t you just have someone show up out of nowhere, interrogate your interrogators, lead your shadows all over the region, pump them some more, and then almost kill them in a public inn? Is that your idea of secrecy?”

He studied me carefully, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. He grunted and said, “My compliments on your sources, Margaret.”

“Well?”

“Okay, you’ve made your point. What do you want?”

“Let’s start with the basics,” I said. “I have to know what I’m working with.”

“Heh,” he said. “There’s something you don’t know?”

I smiled. “How many on your team?”

“Six, with another three on standby.”

“How many know what you’re up to?”

“Domm and I.”

“And Timmer,” I added, “as of last night.”

He frowned. “Are you sure?”

I shrugged. “She may not know precisely, but she knows something’s up, and, if she thinks about it, she’ll probably figure out most of it. She isn’t stupid.”

He nodded. “Okay. What else do you want to know?”

“What actually happened to Fyres.”

Loftis shrugged. “He was murdered.”

I shook my head. “I know that. But who killed him?”

“An assassin. A good one. Hundred to one it was a Jhereg, and another hundred to one that we wouldn’t catch him even if we were trying to.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Who had it done?”

“I don’t know,” said Loftis. “That isn’t what we were trying to find out.”

“Sure, but you probably have an idea.”

“An idea? Hell, yeah. His wife hated him, his son loathed him, one daughter wants to be rich and the other one wants to be left alone. Is that good enough for a start?”

“No,” I said.

He looked at me, then turned away. “Yeah, it wasn’t them. Or, at least, it wasn’t just them.”

“Well, then?”

“The House of the Orca, I think. And the Jhereg. And someone, somewhere, high up in the Empire—like, maybe, whoever it was who hired you?” He’d slipped his right hand down behind his leg, where he was, no doubt, concealing something, and I hadn’t even seen him do it.

“No,” I said. “But good guess.”

He shrugged. “What else do you want to know?”

I wanted to know how Loftis had been conned, or pressured, into doing this in the first place, but this was the wrong time to ask. I said, “That’ll do for now. I’ll be in touch.”

“Okay. Pleasure meeting you, Margaret.”

“And you, Lieutenant.”

I got up and walked out of the room, my back itching as I passed him, but he made no move. On the way out of the inn, I flipped the host a couple of imperials and apologized about the door. I walked around some corners to make sure I wasn’t being followed, then I teleported back to the blue cottage and went in.

Vlad was waiting for me. He said, “Well?”

One disadvantage of teleports is that they sometimes get you there too quickly—I hadn’t had time to sort out my thoughts yet. I said, “Is there anything to eat?”

“No. I could cook something.”

I nodded. “That would be good. I’m a bit tired.”

“Oh?” said Vlad.

“I’ll get to it.”

He shrugged. Savn was near the hearth, sitting up and looking at nothing. Hwdf’rjaanci sat hear him, with Buddy at her feet. Buddy watched me as he always did, but wasn’t unfriendly. Loiosh sat on Vlad’s shoulder. I felt like I’d been through a pitched battle, and it was somehow amazing that no one in the house shared my exhaustion.

Vlad said, “Do you want to hear my news first, or after yours?”

I said, “Let’s look at your arm.”

Vlad shrugged, started to speak, and then apparently realized that I wasn’t ready to think about anything quite yet. He wordlessly took off his shirt. I undid the bandage and inspected the wound, which seemed about the same as it had four hours earlier.

Only four hours!

I washed it and walked over to the linen chest to find something clean to wrap it in.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“I suppose so,” said Vlad.

“You’ve been stabbed,” said Savn.

E
VEN
B
UDDY—TAIL THUMPING
and floppy ears vainly trying to prick forward—was staring at him. He, in turn, was staring at Vlad’s arm—an intense stare, a creepy stare; he was standing up, his whole body rigid. Savn’s voice had the uneven rasp of long disuse, or of young adulthood, take your pick. He said, “You were stabbed with a knife.”

“That’s right, Savn,” said Vlad, and I could hear him working to keep his voice even. He didn’t move a muscle. Hwdf’rjaanci wasn’t moving, either; for that matter, neither was I.

“Was it really cold when it went in? Did it hurt? How deep did it go?”

Vlad made some odd sort of sound from his throat. Savn’s questions came slowly, as if there was a great deal of consideration behind them; but the tone was of casual curiosity, which in turn was at odds with his posture—it was very unsettling for me, and I could see that it was even more so for Vlad.

“Not all knives have points, you know,” said Savn. “Some of them you can’t stab with, only
cut.
” As he said that word, he made a quick cutting gesture with his right hand; and that was creepy, too, because while he did it the rest of his body didn’t move, and his face didn’t change expression; it was only the arm movement and the emphasis in his voice.

“Only cut,” he said again.

Then he didn’t say anything else. We waited, not moving, for several
minutes, but he’d said what he had to say. Vlad said, “Savn?” and got no response. Savn sat down again, but that also showed something—he hadn’t been told to. Vlad came over and knelt down facing him. “Savn? Are you . . . are you all right?”

The boy just sat the way he’d been sitting all along. Vlad turned and said, “What happened, Mother?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I think it’s a good sign. I know it’s a good sign. I don’t know how good, but we’re getting somewhere.”

“You think that came from healing the injury?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was time. Or the right stimulus. Or some combination. Have you been cut in the last year?”

“Not even threatened,” said Vlad.

“Then that may be it.”

“What do we do now? Should I cut myself some more?” I wasn’t certain he was joking.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Talk about knives, maybe.”

I was watching Savn the whole time, and at the word “knives” there was a perceptible twitch around the left side of his mouth. Vlad saw it, too. He said, “Savn, do you want to talk about knives?”

The boy’s expression didn’t change, but he said, “You have to take care of the good ones. A good knife is expensive. The good ones stay sharp longer, too. Sometimes you have to cut people to heal them, and you should use a really good one, and a really sharp one for that. You can hurt someone more with a dull knife than with a sharp knife.”

“Are you afraid of knives?” said Vlad.

Savn didn’t seem to hear him. He said, “You should always clean it when you’re done—wash it and dry it. You have to dry it, especially. It won’t rust—the good ones are made so they don’t rust. But if you leave something on it, it can corrode, and that ruins it, and good knives are expensive. Good knives stay sharp. They get sharper and sharper the more they’re used, until they get so sharp they can cut you right in half just by looking at you.”

“Knives don’t get sharper on their own,” said Vlad.

“And they can stab you, too. If the point is sharp, it can stab all the way through you, and all the way through everybody, and stab the sky until it falls, and stab all the way through everything.”

Then he fell silent once more. After a couple of minutes, Vlad turned around and said, “He isn’t responding to what I say, Mother.”

“No,” she said. “But you got him started. That means, on some level, he is responding to you.”

Vlad turned back and looked at him some more. I tried to read the expression on Vlad’s face, then decided I didn’t want to.

He got up and came over to where Hwdf’rjaanci and I stood watching. He whispered to her, “Should I try again, or let him rest?”

She frowned. “Let him rest, I think. If he starts up again on his own, we’ll take it from there.”

“Doing what?” I said.

“I don’t know. I’m encouraged, but I don’t know.”

“All right,” said Vlad. “I’m going to make some klava.”

By the time it was done, Savn had gone to sleep—perhaps talking for the first time after a year’s silence had tired him out. We drank our klava standing on the far side of the room, near the stove and the oven. Hwdf’rjaanci eventually went over and sat down next to the boy, watching him while he slept. Vlad took a deep breath and said, “All right, let’s hear it.”

“Huh? Hear what?”

He laughed. “What you came in with an hour ago, and were so excited about that you had to take some time before you could talk about it. Remember?”

“Oh.” I felt myself smiling. “Oh, that.”

“Yeah. Let’s hear it.”

I nodded and gave him the short version, which took about ten minutes. He said, “Let’s have it all.”

“Do you really need it?”

“I won’t know until I hear it.”

I was going to argue, but then I realized that if he’d given me the short version of his sortie, I wouldn’t have made the connection to Lord Khaavren, and my talk with Loftis would have gone rather differently. So I filled in most of the details, helped now and then by Vlad’s questions. He seemed especially interested in exactly when everything had happened and in precisely how I’d fooled Loftis—that, in particular, he wanted me to go over several times, until I felt like I was being questioned under the Orb. I pleaded poor memory for the parts of it I didn’t want to talk about and eventually he relented, but when I was done, he looked at me oddly.