The Book of Athyra (56 page)

“Go on,” he said, frowning.

“Corruption doesn’t enter into it. Oh, maybe Shortisle, or someone on his staff, is lining his pocket. But that’s trivial. What’s happening here is everyone involved in the mechanism of the Empire is working together to do his job just the way he’s supposed to.”

“Come again?”

“The Empire is nothing more than a great big, overgrown, understaffed, and horribly inefficient system for keeping things working.”

“Thank you,” he said, “for the lesson in government. But—”

“Bear with me, please.”

He sighed. “All right.”

“By things,” I said, “I mean, mostly, trade.”

“I thought putting down rebellions was the big thing.”

“Sure,” I said. “Because it’s hard to trade if there’s a rebellion in progress.” He smiled, and I shook my head. “No, I’m really not kidding. Whether a certain piece of ground is ruled by Baron Wasteland or Count Backward doesn’t make a difference to much of anyone, except maybe our hypothetical aristocrats. But if the trees from that piece of ground don’t reach the shipwrights here in Northport, then, eventually, we’re going to run out of that particular lime they have in Elde, which we use as an agent mixed with our lime to make mortar to keep our buildings from falling down.”

“Reminds me of the couple who didn’t know the difference between—”

“Hush. I’m being grandiloquent.”

“Sorry.”

“And we’d also, by the way, run out of that lovely Phoenix Stone from Greenaere that I think you know something about. That’s one of the simplest examples. Do you want to hear about how a dearth of wheat from
the Northwest shuts down all the coal mines in the Kanefthali Mountains? I didn’t think so.

“The point,” I continued, “is trade. If it weren’t for the Empire, which controls it, everyone would make up his own rules, and change them as occasion warrants, and create tariffs that would send prices through the overcast, and everyone would suffer. If you need proof, look to your homeland, and consider how they live, and think about why.”

“Life span has something to do with that,” he said. “As does the tendency of the Empire to invade whenever it doesn’t have anything better to do.”

“Trade has more to do with it.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I suppose. But how does all of this relate to corruption among the great and wonderful leaders of our great and wonderful—”

“That’s what I’m saying, Vlad. It isn’t corruption. It’s worse—it’s incompetence. And, worse than that, it’s inevitable incompetence.”

“I’m listening, Kiera.”

“Why does a banker go into business?”

“I thought we were talking about the Empire?”

“Trust me.”

“All right. A banker goes into business because he’s an Orca and he doesn’t like the sea.”

“Stop being difficult.”

“What do you want?”

“Obvious answers to stupid questions. Why does a banker go into business?”

“To make money.”

“How does he make money.”

“He steals it.”

“Vlad.”

“All right. The same way a Jhereg moneylender does, only he doesn’t make as much because his interest rate is lower and he has to pay taxes—though he does save some in bribes.”

“Spell it out for me, Vlad. How does a banker make money?”

He sighed. “He makes loans to people and charges them for it, so they pay him more than he loaned them. In the Jhereg, interest is calculated so that—”

“Right. Okay. Here’s another easy one: what determines how much profit a banker makes?”

“How much money he loans, and at what interest rate. What do I win?”

“So what keeps him from running up the interest rates?”

“All the other bankers.”

“And what keeps them from getting together and agreeing to raise the rates?”

“Competition from the Jhereg.”

“Wrong.”

“Really? Damn. And I was doing so well. Why is that wrong?”

“I’ll put it another way: what keeps them from getting together,
including
the Jhereg, and fixing interest rates that way?”

“Uh . . . hmm. The Empire?”

“Congratulations. The Empire sets limits on the rates, because the Empire has to take loans out, too, and if the Empire got rates that were
too
much better than everyone else’s, the Great Houses would object, and the Empire has to always play the Houses off against each other, because, really, the Empire is just the sum of the Great Houses, and if they all combined against the Empire . . .”

“Got it. No more Empire.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, so the Empire fixes the maximum loan rate.”

“Rates. There are several, having to do with, well, all sorts of complicated things. That’s Shortisle’s job.”

“Got it. Okay, go on. So, in effect, the maximum profit a banker can get is set by law.”

“Nope.”

“Uh . . . okay, why not?”

“Because there’s another way to maximize profits.”

“Oh, right. Loan more money. But you can’t make loans if people don’t need the money.”

“Sure you can. You can create the need.”

“You mean the land swindle?”

“No. That’s trivial. Oh, I’m sure that’s why it’s being done, but it isn’t happening on anywhere near the scale that would pull the Empire into it.”

“All right. Go on, then. How?”

“Undercut the Jhereg.”

He shrugged. “They always do that. But the Jhereg moneylenders stay in business, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because we aren’t as fussy about making sure the customer can pay us back, because we have our own ways of making sure we get paid back.”

It was interesting that Vlad still thought of the Organization as “we,” but I didn’t choose to comment on that. I said, “Exactly. And so . . . ?”

He frowned. “You mean they start making it easier to get loans?”

“Precisely.”

“But then, what if the loans aren’t paid back?”

“Vlad, I’m not talking about small stuff, like someone wanting to buy a house. I’m talking about big finance, like someone wanting to start a major shipping firm.”

He smiled. “Just to pick an example by random? Well, all right. So then what happens?” He answered his own question. “Then the banks go under. That’s stupid business.”

“Maybe. But what if you don’t have any choice?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you had a pile of cash—”

He smiled. I’d forgotten how much money he had.

“Let me rephrase. If you had a pile of cash that you wanted to put into a bank—”

“Ah!”

“Which bank would you choose?”

“I wouldn’t. I’d give it to an Organization moneylender.”

“Work with me, Vlad.”

“All right. I don’t know. I guess the one that had the best rates.”

“What if they were all the same?”

“Then the one that seemed the most reliable.”

“Right. What makes a bank reliable? Or, more precisely, what would make you
think
a bank was reliable?”

“I don’t know. How long it’s been around, I suppose, and its reputation, how much money it has.”

“How do you know how much money it has?”

“The Empire publishes lists of that sort of thing, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Another of Shortisle’s jobs.”

“You mean he’s been lying?”

“Not exactly. Don’t get ahead of me. What determines how much money the bank has, or, rather, how much money the Empire reports the bank as having? I mean, do you think they go in and count it?”

“Well, sort of. Don’t they do audits?”

“Yes. And do you know how the audits work?”

“Not exactly.”

“They look at how much gold they claim to have on hand and compare it with what they find in the vaults, and then—here’s the fun part—they look at their paperwork and add the amount they have, as we’d put it, on the street. And the more money they have on the street, the richer they are. Or, rather, the richer they
look.
”

He frowned. “So, you mean, if they start making risky loans, it looks like they’re doing really well, when in fact they may be—”

“Tottering on the edge of ruin. Yes.”

He didn’t speak for a moment. Savn was snoring in a corner, Buddy curled up on one side of him, Rocza on the other, with Loiosh next to her. There were occasional sounds from the predators outside, but nothing else. I gave Vlad some time to think over what I’d told him.

Eventually he said, “The Empire—”

“Yes, Vlad. Exactly. The Empire.”

“Aren’t they supposed to check on things like that?”

“They do their best, sure. But how many banks are there making how many loans? Do you really think Shortisle has the means to inspect every loan from every bank to make sure it isn’t too risky? And, even if it is, it has to be pretty extreme before the Empire has the right to step in.”

“But—”

“Yes, but. But if several banks fail all at once, then what happens to trade?”

“It falls apart. And they can’t allow that.”

“So what do they do?”

“You tell me,” said Vlad.

“All right. First of all, they curse themselves soundly for having allowed things to get into that sort of mess in the first place.”

“Good move. Then what?”

“Then they try to cover for the banks as much as they can.”

“Ah ha.”

“Right. If word get out that Fyres was murdered, then they’ll have to find out why, and then—”

“Right,” said Vlad. “Then word will get out that lots of big banks, starting with the Verra-be-damned bank of the Verra-be-damned Empire, are very rich on paper and, in fact, are on the edge of taking that big tumble into oblivion. And if that happens—”

“Panic, bank runs, and—”

“Trade goes overboard in a big way.”

I nodded. “That’s what I didn’t see right away. This isn’t a few slime-bags in the Empire lining their pockets, this is the Empire doing what it’s supposed to do—protecting trade.”

He shook his head. “And all of this starting off just because somebody knocked a big-time scam artist in the head.”

“A big-time, extremely wealthy scam artist.”

“Yes. Only one thing.”

“Yes, Vlad?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Well, this sort of mess isn’t good for anyone, right?”

“Right.”

“So if all this was set off by Fyres’s death, why was he killed?”

I stared off into space for a moment, then I said, “You know, Vlad, that is a very, very good question.”

“Yeah, I thought so. So what’s the answer?”

“I don’t know.”

“And here’s another question: with Stony dead, is the Jhereg still onto me? I mean, are they still breathing down my neck, or do I have a little time to find the answer to the first question?”

I nodded. “That one I think I can find the answer to.”

“I’d appreciate it. What about the other one?”

“We’ll see,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

“I’ll wait here,” he said.

I
LEFT THE COTTAGE
and was instantly in Northport; a quicker teleport than was my custom, but I realized after I performed it that there was a feeling of urgency within me that was still growing.

So I deliberately teleported to a place more than a mile away and made myself walk the rest of the distance so I could calm down. I strolled casually—at least, I did my best to stroll casually—through the narrow, winding streets, where the second-floor balconies almost touched each other and the roofs all but hid the sky, until I arrived at a place I knew. This time Dor was in.

He looked up when I came in, and he seemed afraid. That made me sad. The last thing I want is to inspire fear. I said, “What’s wrong, Dor?”

His brow furrowed, and he said, “You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t, unless it’s about Stony’s death. But I had nothing to do with that.”

“That Easterner did.”

“Perhaps.”

“No perhaps about it. We were able to revivify Raafla, and he told us.”

“I imagine Stony hasn’t been saying much.”

He glared at me. “That isn’t funny. I liked him.”

Liked.

Past tense.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Hasn’t he been revivified?”

“You know damned well—”

“Dor, I know very little ‘damned well’; even less than I’d thought. What are you telling me?”

“He wasn’t revivifiable.”

“He wasn’t? What happened?”

He stared. “You really don’t know?”

“Please tell me, Dor. What happened?”

“The kind of spells assassins always use, that’s what.”

If Vlad had ever used those sorts of spells, I sure didn’t know about it. And he hadn’t said anything. . . .

“You’d better tell me all about it,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m curious, and because I need to know.”

“If you’re looking for your friend,” he said bitterly, “he’ll be long gone by now.”

“Tell me, please,” I said.

He did so.

His story shook me up enough that I had trouble believing it, so after leaving him there, I used some of my other contacts in Northport to verify it. The details aren’t important, but the story stayed the same. I was convinced, and also confused, but I’d at least answered Vlad’s second question, about whether the Jhereg thought he was still in town.

About Vlad’s first question, why was Fyres killed, I still had no clue, but I returned at once to tell Vlad what I’d learned. When I arrived at the blue cottage, and had said hello to Buddy, I found Vlad sitting near the hearth having a one-sided conversation with Savn.

Vlad looked at me, blinked, and stood up. We moved over to the table in the kitchen and I sat down. Vlad brought me some klava. “The honey is almost gone,” he said. “And we haven’t been stung too badly.”

“Yet,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

I said, “Well, Vlad, it goes like this.”

He poured himself a cup, sweetened it, and said, “Not here.”

“All right,” I said.

Vlad and I stepped outside. Loiosh rode on his shoulder and seemed better, but I hadn’t seen him flying yet. Vlad leaned against a tree and said, “Uh-huh?”

“The first item is that, while everyone knows you shined Stony, no one
has any idea of the circumstances. They figure he somehow found you and wanted to be there personally for the kill, and you were too quick, or too tough, or too nasty for him. Which means, I suppose, that next time they’ll be even more careful.”