Orca (25 page)

“Then—”

“He was a military historian, Vlad. Remember how he kept making references to obscure—”

“Got it.”

I shrugged. “Maybe it meant something else, but ...”

“Well, that’s all very interesting.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and I could practically hear the tides of his thoughts break against the shore of facts as he put things together in new ways; I waited and wondered. “Hmmm. Yes, Kiera, it’s all very interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think I have the rest of it. And then some.”

“And then some?”

“Yeah, I got more than I wanted. But never mind that, it doesn’t matter. Can you put it together?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Well, let’s see what we have. We have Fyres murdered, and someone desperate to hide that fact. We have companies he was into falling like Teckla at the Wall of Baritt’s Tomb. We have someone, or someones, in the Empire desperate to hide the fact that Fyres was murdered. Am I doing all right so far?”

“Yep. Keep going.”

“Okay. We have Jhereg involvement with Fyres, and Imperial involvement with the banks, and—wait a minute.”

“Yes?”

“Fyres owed the Jhereg. Fyres owed the banks. The banks and the Jhereg were depending on Fyres. The Empire was protecting the banks, and the banks were supporting the Empire. Have I got it?”

“Right. Conclusion?”

“The Empire is working with the Jhereg.”

“Exactly,” said Vlad. “Supporting the Jhereg, borrowing from the Jhereg, and, probably, using the Jhereg.”

“Just as you were saying.”

“Yeah, I guess it all seemed to be heading that way. But push it a little further, Kiera: what would the empire do if word of the Jhereg’s influence in the Empire was about to emerge into the public?”

I shrugged. “Everything it could to hide that fact.”

“Everything?”

I nodded. “Yes. Or, if it’s what you want, everything including covering up the Fyres murder, and even—yes, and even murdering their own investigator if they thought he was no longer reliable.”

“Yep. That’s what ‘he didn’t break the stick’ meant. It bothered me that someone like Loftis would be that careless. It either meant we were wrong about him or there was something we didn’t know, and now we’ve figured it out.”

“Yes,” I said. “He was set up by his own side.”

Vlad nodded. “He wasn’t given the warning he was supposed to get if there was any danger. They’d probably picked that spot out, and there was supposed to be some indication either that it was all right or that it wasn’t. And so he thought he was safe, and that’s why they could take him out so easily.”

“Right. Domm?”

“His name popped into my head,” said Vlad.

I nodded. “Domm would be a safe guess. Reega set it up, and Domm made sure Loftis wouldn’t be ready to defend himself, and they used you—”

I stopped, and looked at Vlad. He said, “What?” Then, “Oh.”

“They were too ready, and you were too convenient.”

“I didn’t give the game away,” said Vlad. “I didn’t slip up. They already knew about me when I walked in, which means they already knew about you.”

I nodded. “And that explains something else: namely, why it’s been so easy to fool these people. We haven’t fooled anyone, except maybe Vonnith. They’ve been playing with us, and letting us think we were playing with them.”

“Not Vonnith, either,” said Vlad. “She was onto me from the moment I first showed up.”

“Stony?”

“Yes. I figured that it was just bad timing, him being there right then. But she must have gotten hold of him when I got there, and then all she had to do was delay me until he was ready to move.”

I nodded.

He said, “Well, aren’t we a couple of idiots?”

I nodded again. “Stony,” I said. “That son of a bitch.”

“What now, then?”

“Now, Vlad? What is there to do? We’ve solved Hwdf rjaanci’s problem, which was all we intended, and we’ve figured out what’s going on, and we’ve also figured out that they had our number from the beginning. We’re done.”

He stared at me. “You mean, let them get away with it?”

I grinned. “I will if you will.”

“For a minute there,” he said, “you had me worried.” Then he frowned. “When do you think they caught onto us?”

“Early,” I said. “Remember Stony asking if I’d seen you?”

“Sure. I just figured it was a sign of how bad they want me, and they know we know each other.”

“That’s what I thought, too. And, right then, that’s probably all it was. But then they put it together. Fyres’s place is broken into, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. You didn’t tell me why you wanted me to do that. If you had, maybe I’d have been messier, or done something atypical, but, as it was, it was a usual Kiera job, and anyone who knows my work, which certainly includes Stony, would—” I held up my hand as he started to speak. “No, I’m not blaming you: you had no reason to think I’d be involved after doing what you wanted; neither did I, really, I just got interested. But think about it. What’s the next thing that happens after I break into Fyres’s old place and steal his private papers?”

“You start asking Stony questions about him.”

“Right.”

“And we didn’t know that Stony was involved enough to be hearing everything that happened regarding Fyres, the banks, the investigations, and everything else.”

“That’s it,” I said. “Stony knows, right then and there, that I’m looking into Fyres’s death, though he probably doesn’t know why. But he knows Kiera the Thief is sniffing around the death of this rich guy who’s made so much trouble.”

“And then what does he do?”

I said, “He starts asking himself where the next logical place to look is, if someone is interested in Fyres’s death. And it is?”

“The Imperial investigation.”

“Exactly. So there he is, alerting Loftis and his merry band that Kiera the Thief might appear out of nowhere, or maybe someone working for Kiera. And who shows up there, right on schedule, but to everyone’s amazement?”

Vlad nodded. “I do,” he said, with more than a touch of bitterness in his voice. “In my great disguise that fooled them so completely.”

“Yes. Loftis is looking for people to show up asking questions, and he’s looking carefully for anyone in disguise, and there you are. We had no way of knowing that Loftis and Stony were in touch—and maybe they weren’t, directly. But, one way or another, Stony hears that Loftis had a visit from an Easterner trying to disguise himself as a Chreotha. ‘Tell me about this Easterner,’

he probably says. “And what kind of questions did he ask?’ “

Vlad nodded. “Yes. And, all of a sudden, you and I are tied together, looking into Fyres’s death.”

“Right. Now the Jhereg is hot for you. Somehow or other, Reega learns of it.”

“Not somehow or other,” said Vlad. “Because they went to her, the same way they went to Vonnith, and probably Endra as well. After all, they followed me. I let them. I thought I was being clever. Vonnith is so far into the Jhereg that she had no choice, and they probably offered her a good piece of change to help them. But Reega had her own ideas.”

“You’re right,” I said. “That’s probably how it worked. If we’d gone back to Reega, rather than to Vonnith, the same thing would have happened, most likely. But first, Reega either decided or, more likely, was told to get rid of Loftis.”

“Yes. And Loftis was told to try to pump me. So Loftis tries to pump me, and he brings me to this place where the arrest is planned, and then, bang, no more Loftis. All without the Jhereg’s knowledge, because the Jhereg wouldn’t have let me out of there alive. Do I have it?”

“That’s how I read it,” I said.

“Kiera, we have been thoroughly taken.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t like it any more than I do, do you?”

“Rather less, in fact, I would imagine.”

“So, what are we going to do about it?”

“At the moment,” I said, “I cannot say. But, no doubt, something will occur. Let us consider the matter.”

“Right,” said Vlad, who was looking at me a little funny.

I said, “What about the information from Vonnith? Can we trust it, if she knew you weren’t who you claimed to be?”

“I think so,” said Vlad. “She knew her job; she was supposed to keep me there long enough for them to kill me. Why bother to think up lies when the guy who’s hearing the truth is about to become deceased?”

“Good point.”

“So, what now?”

I said, “Lieutenant Domm?”

“Eh?” said Vlad. And, “Oh. You think he’s the one who wanted Loftis out of the way? There was no love lost between them, but they were in the same corps.”

“Were they?” I said.

“Eh?”

“Think back to that conversation you overheard—”

“You don’t mean that was staged, do you? I don’t believe—”

“Neither do I. No, at that point they didn’t know who you were, and they weren’t looking for witchcraft. I mean after that.”

“My talk with Domm at the Riversend?”

“Yes. They probably hadn’t had time to figure out who you were yet, so you might have even had them fooled. But maybe not. Think over that conversation. You made Domm slip and let what’s-her-name, Timmer, know that something wasn’t right.”

“What about it?”

“I think that was legit. But what evidence is there that Domm was in the same corps as Loftis?”

“Then who—”

“Who would normally conduct such an investigation?”

“Uh ... I don’t remember. That group that reports to Indus?”

“Right. The Surveillance group. And there almost had to be someone from that group involved, just because it would look funny if there weren’t.”

“But now we’re implicating Indus.”

“So? As far as I can tell, Vlad, we’re implicating everyone in the Empire with the possible exception of Her Majesty and Lord Khaavren.”

“I don’t think you realize what we’re dealing with here, Vlad.”

“You mean it’s that big?”

“No, I mean it’s that—I don’t know the word—pervasive. We’ve been looking for corrupt officials, and checking them off our list when we decided they weren’t corruptible. But that isn’t the point at all.”

“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.”

“AH 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 ...”