Orca (8 page)

“And ... ?”

“Okay, they’re coming.”

“Hooray. Where are they now?”

“Just around the corner.”

I said, “Laache and Tip will be here soon.”

They looked at me, and one of them said, “How d’you—” and cut himself off. I smiled enigmatically, noticing the looks of respect and fear. Sort of the way my employees used to look at me, way back when. I wondered if I’d come down in the world. If I handled things just right, I could maybe take the gang over from Laache. Vlad Taltos—toughest little kid on the block. I was the youngest, too.

They appeared then—Laache with a young man who seemed to be about the same age as her, and who I’d have guessed to be an Orca—a bit squat for a Dragaeran, with a pale complexion, light brown hair, and blue eyes. Old memories of being harassed by Orca just about his age came up to annoy me, but I ignored them—what was I going to do, beat him up?

He was looking a bit leery and keeping his distance. Before he could say anything, I flipped him an imperial. He made it vanish.

“What do you want?” he said.

“You’re Tip?”

“What if I am?”

“Let us walk together and talk together, one with the other, out of range of the eager ears of those who would thwart our intentions.”

“Huh?”

“Come here a minute, I want to ask you something.”

“Ask me what?”

“I’d rather not say out here where everyone can hear me.”

Someone whispered something, and someone else giggled. Tip scowled and said, “All right.”

I walked up to him and we walked down the alley about twenty yards, and I said, “I’ll give you another imperial if you’ll take me to the man who prints Rutter’s Rag,” and he was off down the alley as fast as his feet could carry him. He turned the corner and was gone.

“You know what to do, Loiosh.”

“Yeah, yeah. On my way, boss.”

I turned back and the kids were all looking at me—and looking at Loiosh flying off into the city.

“Thanks for your help,” I called to them. “See you again, maybe.”

I strolled on down the alley. It was, of course, possible that Laache had told Tip about Loiosh, but, as we followed him, he didn’t seem to be watching above him. He stayed with the alleys and finally, after looking around him carefully, stepped into a little door. Loiosh returned to me and guided me along the same path he’d taken, and to the door. It wasn’t locked.

It seemed to be a storeroom of some sort; a quick check revealed that what was stored included a great deal of paper and drums of what had to be ink, judging by the smell coming off them and filling up the room.

“Ah ha,” I told Loiosh.

“Lucky,” he said.

“Clever,” I suggested.

“Lucky.”

“Shut up.”

I heard voices coming from my right, where there was a narrow, dark stairway. I took the stairs either silently or carefully—they tend to be the same thing. But you know that, Kiera. When I reached the bottom, I saw them, illuminated by a small lamp. One was Tip, the other was an old man who seemed to be a Tsalmoth, to judge from the ruddiness of his complexion and his build. I couldn’t see what colors he wore. He didn’t see me at all. The man was seated in front of a desk that was filled with desk things. Tip was standing next to him, saying, “I’m sure he was an Easterner. I know an Easterner when I see one,” which was too good an entrance line for me to ignore.

I said, “Judge for yourself,” and had the satisfaction of seeing them both jump. I gave them my warmest smile, and the Tsalmoth scrabbled around in a drawer in his desk and came out with a narrow rod that, no doubt, had been prepared with some terrible, nasty killing thing. I said, “Don’t be stupid,” and took my own advice by allowing Spellbreaker to fall into my hand.

He pointed the rod at me and said, “What do you want?”

“Don’t blame the boy,” I said. “I’m very hard to lose when I want to follow someone.”

“What do you want?” he said again. His dialogue seemed pretty limited.

“Actually,” I said, “not very much. It won’t even be inconvenient, and I’ll pay you for it. But if you don’t put that thing down, I’m likely to become frightened, and then I’m likely to hurt you.”

He looked at me, then looked at Spellbreaker, which to all appearances is just a length of gold-colored chain, and said, “I think I’ll keep it in hand, if you don’t mind.”

“I mind,” I said.

He looked at me some more. I waited. He put the rod down. I wrapped Spellbreaker back around my left wrist.

“What is it, then?”

“Perhaps the boy should take a walk.”

He nodded to Tip, who seemed a little nervous about walking past me, so I stepped to the side. He almost ran to the stairs, stopping just long enough to take the imperial I threw to him. “Don’t squander it,” I said as he raced past me.

There was another chair near the desk, so I sat down in-it, crossed my legs, and said, “My name is Padraic.” Quit laughing, Kiera; it’s a perfectly reasonable Eastern name, and no Dragaeran in the world is going to look at me and decide I don’t look right. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I said,

“My name is Padraic.”

He grunted and said, “My name is Tollar, but you might as well call me Rutter; there’s no point in my denying it, I suppose.”

He was a frightened man trying to be brave; I’ve always had a certain amount of sympathy for that type. From this close, he didn’t seem as old as I’d first thought him, but he didn’t seem especially healthy, either, and his hair was thin and sort of wispy—you could see his scalp in places, like an Easterner who is just beginning to go bald.

He said, “You have me at a disadvantage.”

“Sure,” I said. “But there’s no need to worry about it. I just need to find out a couple of things, and I took the easiest method I could think of.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I ask you a couple of questions that you have no reason not to answer, and then I’m going to give you a couple of imperials for your trouble, and then I’m going to go away. And that’s it.”

“Yeah?” He seemed skeptical. “What sort of questions, and why are you asking me?”

“Because you have that rag of yours. That means you hear things. You pick up gossip. You have ways of finding out things.”

He started to relax a little. “Well, yeah. Some things. Where should I start?”

I shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. What’s the good gossip since the last rag came out?”

“Local?”

“Or Imperial.”

“The Empress is missing.”

“Again?”

“Yeah. Rumor is she’s off with her lover.”

“That’s four times in three years, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“But she always comes back.”

“First time it was for three days, second time for nine days, the third time for six days.”

“What else?”

“Imperial?”

“Yeah.”

“Someone high up in the Empire dipped his hand into the war chest during the Elde Island war. No one knows who, and probably not for very much, but the Empress is a bit steamed about it.”

“I can imagine.”

“More?”

“Please.”

“I’m better on local things.”

“Know anything that’s both local and Imperial?”

“Well, the whole Fyres thing.”

“What do you know about that?”

“Not much, really. There’s confirmation that his death was accidental.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“That’s what I hear.”

“I hear the Empire is investigating his death.”

He snorted. “Who doesn’t know that?”

“Right. Who’s doing the investigating?”

He looked at me, and I could see him going, “Ah ha!” just like me. He said, “You mean, their names?”

“Yeah.”

“I have no idea.”

I looked at him. He didn’t seem to be lying. I said, “Where are they working out of?”

“You mean, where do they meet?”

“Right.”

“City Hall.”

“Where in City Hall?”

“Third floor.”

“The whole floor?”

“No, no. The third floor is where the officers of the Phoenix Guard are stationed. There are a couple of rooms set aside for any senior officials who might show up. They’re using those.”

“Which rooms?”

“Two rooms at the east end of the building, one on each side of the hall.”

“And they haven’t gone back to Adrilankha yet?”

“No, no. They’re still hard at it.”

“How could they still be hard at it if they already know what the answer is?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I imagine they’re just tying up loose ends and doing their final checking. But that’s just a guess.”

“Which wouldn’t stop you from printing it as a fact.”

He shrugged.

I said, “Heard anything about their schedule?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean when they expect to be finished.”

“Oh. No, I haven’t.”

“Okay.” I dug out three imperials and handed them to him. “See?” I said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He wasn’t worried anymore. He said, “Why is it you want to know all of this?”

I shook my head. “That’s a dangerous question.”

“Oh?”

“If you ask it, I might answer it. And if I answered it, the answer might appear as gossip in your lovely little sheet. And if that happened, I would have to kill you.”

He looked at me and seemed like a frightened old man again. I stood up and walked out without a backward glance.

I told you they were getting tired of seeing me at City Hall, which was another problem, so I tried out a disguise. The first problem was my mustache, so it went. It took a lot of time, too, because even after you shave it off, you have to scrape quite a bit at the whiskers to make sure they don’t show at all. The next problem was my height. I found a cobbler who sold me some boots which he then put about eight extra inches on, leaving me about Aliera’s height, which I hoped would be good enough. Then I had to practice walking in them and taking long strides. Have you ever tried walking in boots with eight extra inches of sole? Don’t. Then I broke into a theater to steal a wig with a noble’s point and get some powder to hide the traces of whiskers, then I bought some new clothes, including trousers long enough to hide the shoes but not long enough to trip on. I practiced swaggering just a bit. Kiera, this was not easy—I had to keep my balance, take strides long enough so it wouldn’t look funny with my height, and swagger, for the love of Verra. I felt like a complete idiot. On the other hand, I didn’t draw any funny looks while I was walking around, so I figured I had a chance of pulling it off. I hid my clothes and my blade behind a handy public house half a mile or so from City Hall. So I did all that, dressing myself up like a Chreotha so people would feel free to push me around. You can learn a lot letting people push you around, and it’s always nice knowing that you can push back whenever you want.

I told Loiosh to wait for me outside, which he didn’t like but was unavoidable. Then I walked into the place like I knew my business, went up a flight of stairs to take me past the nice Lyorn who’d been helping me so far, found another flight of stairs, turned right, and looked down to the end of the hall. There were three or four people sitting on plain wooden chairs in the hall. Three men, one woman, all of them Orca except for one poor fellow who seemed to be a Teckla. I leaned against a wall and watched for a while, until the right-hand door opened and a middle-aged Orca walked out. A moment later, as she was walking past me, one of those waiting went in. I walked past and entered the door to the left.

There was a sharp-looking young Dragonlord sitting at a desk. He said, “Good day, my lord.”

How long was I a Jhereg, Kiera? Hard to say, I suppose; it depends when you start counting and when you stop. But a long time, anyway, and that’s a long time spent getting so you can smell authority—so you know you’re looking at an officer of the Guard before you really know how you know. Well, I walked through that door, and I knew.

He was, as I said, a Dragonlord, and one who worked for the Phoenix Guards, or for the Empire; yet he was dressed in plain black pants and shirt with only the least bit of silver; his hair was very short, his complexion just a bit dark, his nose just a bit aquiline; he rather looked like Morrolan, now that I think of it. But I’ve never seen Morrolan’s eyes look quite that cold and that calculating; I’ve never seen anyone look like that except for an assassin named Ishtvan, who I used a couple of times and killed not long ago. It took me about a quarter of a second to decide that I didn’t want to go up against this guy if I could avoid it. I said, “My lord, you are looking into the death of Lord Fyres?”

“That’s right. Who called you in?”

“No one, my lord,” I said, trying to sound humble.

“No one?”

“I came on my own, when I heard about it.”

“Heard about what?”

“The investigation.”

“How did you hear?”

I had no idea how to answer that one, so I shrugged helplessly. He was starting to look very hard at me. “What’s your name?” he said. I was no longer his lord.

“Kaldor,” I said.

“Where do you live, Kaldor?”

“Number six Coattail Bend, my lord.”

“That’s here in Northport?”

“Yes, my lord, in the city.”

He wrote something down on a piece of paper and said, “My name is Loftis. Wait in the hall; we’ll call you.”

“Yes, my lord.”

I gave him a very humble bow and stepped back into the hall, feeling nervous. I’m a good actor, and I’m okay with disguises, but that guy scared me. I guess I’d been working on the assumption that the Imperial investigators were on the take, and I’d gone from there to the assumption that they must be pretty lousy investigators. Actually, that was stupid; I know from my own dealings with the Guard that just because one of them is on the take doesn’t mean he can’t do his job, but I hadn’t thought it through, and now I was worried; Loftis didn’t seem to be someone I could put much over on, at least not without a lot more work than I’d put in. So, of course, I listened. I assumed that they’d be able to detect sorcery, but I doubted they’d be looking for witchcraft, so I took the black Phoenix Stone off and slipped it into my pouch—hoping, of course, that the Jhereg wouldn’t pick that moment to attempt a psychic location spell. I leaned my head back against the wall, closed my eyes, and concentrated on sending my hearing through the wall. It took some work, and it took some time, but soon I could hear voices, and after a bit I could distinguish words.