I nodded. “Who has been running things, Jakoub?”
“My lord?”
I gave him Patented Jhereg Look Number Six. He melted, more or less. “You mean, who collects for the game here?”
I smiled at him. “That is exactly what I mean, Jakoub. Well?”
“I deliver it to a nice young gentleman of your House. His name is Fayavik.”
“And who does he deliver it to?”
“My lord? I wouldn’t know—”
He cut off as I leaned toward him just a little.
Before I’d shown up to run things, Jakoub had had a piece of everything that happened around Six Corners, and had ears that extended even farther. His piece might be smaller now, but it was still there. And his ears would still be in place. I knew it, and he knew I knew it.
He nodded a little. “All right,” he said. “A few weeks ago, everything changed. More of you—that is, more Jhereg showed up, and—”
“Men or women?”
He frowned. “Men, m’lord.”
“All right.”
“And they started, well, just being around more. It made all of my friends nervous, so I started asking questions.”
“Uh huh.”
“It seems there was someone else in charge. Someone from the City.”
I nodded. “The City” was how people in South Adrilankha referred to the part of Adrilankha north of the river. Or, well, west of the river.
“I’ve heard,” he said, “that there is some group called the Strangers Group that gets the money.”
“Named for Stranger’s Road, or some other reason?”
“Stranger’s Road. They work out of a private house there.”
“Whose house?”
“I don’t know.”
I gave him the narrowed-eyed quick glance, and he said, “I really don’t. It used to belong to an old lady named Coletti, but she died last year, and I don’t know who bought it.”
“Okay,” I said.
It’s funny how my mind works: it at once jumped to who I could get to bribe the appropriate clerk to check ownership records, forgetting that, well, I didn’t have any “who”s anymore. After being gone for years, I was only back for one day and I was thinking like a Jhereg again.
This could be good or bad.
All right, now I knew the place. What next? Check it out? Sure, why not? What could possibly happen?
“You’re starting to second-guess yourself, Boss. Careful.”
“Yeah. I’m not used to this sort of thing anymore. Crime requires constant practice.”
“Write that down to pass on to your successors. In the meantime—”
“Yeah.” Point taken.
“What about collections?”
“My lord?”
“Do runners go to them, or do they send a bagman?”
“Oh. Runners go to the house. That’s what I do.”
“Are runners going there every day, or just once a week?”
“Every day, m’lord.”
I nodded and considered a bit more. They certainly weren’t making a secret of what they were up to. Did they want someone coming after them, or was it just that they felt so secure that they didn’t care? Or were they doing it in order to be seen to be doing it?
That way lieth the headache.
“Okay,” I said. “Oh. About those boots ....”
“Yes, m’lord. Warm in the cold, but let the air in. Soft, comfortable above all, good support. I can put in enchantments to ward against blisters as well. That will help when you break them in.”
I nodded.
“Day after tomorrow, my lord.”
I touched the hilt of Lady Teldra and gave him as warm a smile as I could manage, which probably wasn’t very. Hey, I get credit for trying, don’t I?
Jakoub held the curtain aside for me. Loiosh flew out and scanned the area quickly, let me know it was safe, then returned to my shoulder as I stepped outside. The curtain closed behind me, taking away the smells of leather and oils and returning the smells of South Adrilankha, about which the less said the better.
The walk to Stranger’s Road was short. I stopped in front of a dirty gray pawnshop forty or fifty yards shy of the place, and looked it over. The house was a three-story old red stonework thing, with a wraparound wooden porch that seemed to have been an after-thought. It had a pair of glass windows on each of the first two floors, and a single one on the top story.
I leaned against the pawnshop and practiced patience. It was evening, just shy of darkness. Over at Six Corners, things would be just starting to get busy with the usual nighttime activity; here there were few pedestrians, just an old man walking a short, ugly dog and a few children kneeling on the street intent on some game or another.
“Loiosh?”
“We’re on our way.”
They left my shoulders and flew up, making a spiral above the house, then slowly circling around it, lower, then lower again, then returned.
“No activity, Boss. And all the windows are curtained.” He sounded mildly offended.
“I’ll speak to them about that.”
The “no activity” part changed abruptly. The door opened, and someone in Jhereg gray—someone Dragaeran and female—stepped onto the porch. She stood there, with something like a rod in her right hand, and looked about the street. I pulled myself in close to the pawnshop, so I could no longer see the house, which meant she couldn’t see me. Loiosh peeked his head out from around the corner.
“What’s she doing, Loiosh?”
“Just looking around. Oh, and now she’s making gestures with that stick.”
“What sort of gestures?”
“Small ones. She makes a little circle, changes direction a bit, then—she’s moving around the side of the porch now. She’s out of sight.”
“Well, I think we’ve established two things, at any rate. The Left Hand is, indeed, controlling this area, and they can tell when I’m nearby. Unless you want to chalk it up to coincidence that she came out right now.”
“How could they tell, Boss? They shouldn’t be able—”
“Lady Teldra,” I said.
“Oh.”
Even I am aware whenever a Morganti weapon is nearby, unless it is in a sheath that dampens the psychic effect of the thing. With a weapon as powerful as Lady Teldra, yeah, any skilled sorcerer would be sensitive enough to at least be aware that there was something in the area.
“You know, Boss, this is going to mess with your general sneakiness.”
“Yep. I’ll have to see about an improved scabbard for her, or something.”
“Another one just came out. Time to make an exit?”
“Or an entrance.”
“Boss?”
“Don’t worry. It’s tempting, but not yet. I need to know more.”
“Good. I was going to start worshiping Crow.”
“Crow?”
“His dominion is things that fall?”
“Where did you pick up that bit of information?”
“A few minutes ago, passing by a shrine. I heard some people talking.”
“I never knew?”
“You’re pretty distracted.”
“I prefer to call it ‘concentrating.’”
“Whatever you say, Boss.”
“Okay, let’s move.”
We didn’t speak during the long walk across the river. I suppose the visit had been productive; I’d at least confirmed that the Left Hand was, indeed, running things. And I’d ordered boots and a new scabbard for my rapier.
I walked along the right-hand side of the Chain Bridge while the water swirled under me. I glanced upriver, speculating on who and what might live there; all of those people being born, living, and dying along its banks. Maybe, if I lived through this, that’s where I’d go next; just follow the river and see where it brought me. The East Bank, of course.