“Speaking of which—”
“Right. To business. I take it you want something stolen.”
I nodded. “Do you know of a certain Lord Mellar, House Jhereg? I think he’s officially a count, or a duke, or some such.”
Her eyes widened, slightly. “Going after big game, aren’t you, Vlad? You certainly are in over your head. I know him, all right. I’ve helped him out a couple of times.”
“Not recently!” I said, with a sudden sinking feeling.
She looked at me quizzically, but didn’t ask what I meant. “No, not in the last few months. It wasn’t anything big, any of the times. Just sort of an exchange of favors; you know how it goes.”
I nodded, quite relieved. “He isn’t a friend, or anything, is he?”
She shook her head. “No. We just did a few things for each other. I don’t owe him.”
“Good. And speaking of owing, by the way . . . ” I placed a purse on my desk in front of her. It held five hundred gold Imperials. She didn’t touch it yet, of course. “How would you like to have me owe you still another favor?”
“I’m always happy to have you in my debt,” she said lightly. “What does he have that you want?”
“Any of a number of things. A piece of clothing would be good. Hair would be excellent. Anything that has a long association with him.”
She shook her head once more, in mock sadness. “More of your Eastern witchcraft, Vlad?”
“I’m afraid so,” I admitted. “You know how we are, always like to keep our hand in, and all.”
“I’ll bet.” She took the purse and stood up. “Okay, you’re on. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”
“No hurry,” I lied politely. I stood as she left, and bowed her out.
“How long do you think it will actually take her?” asked Kragar.
“How long have you been sitting there?”
“Not too long.”
I shook my head in disgust. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we had it tomorrow.”
“Not bad,” he said. “Did you talk to Daymar?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
I explained the outcome of our conversation. He shrugged over the technical details of the witchcraft, but caught the gist of it. He laughed a bit when I explained that Daymar had managed to include himself in the spell.
“Well, do you think it will work?” he asked.
“Daymar thinks it will work; I think it will work.”
He seemed satisfied with this answer. “So nothing happens until we hear from Kiera, right?”
“Right.”
“Good. I think I’ll go catch up on my sleep.”
“Wrong.”
“What now, Oh Master?”
“You’re getting as bad as Loiosh.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, boss?”
“Shut up, Loiosh.”
“Right, boss.”
I picked up the notes on Mellar that I’d been reading and handed them to Kragar. “Read,” I said. “Let me know what you think.”
He ruffled through them briefly. “There’s a lot here.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, Vlad, my eyes are sore. How about tomorrow?”
“Read.”
He sighed and started reading.
“You know what strikes me, Vlad?” he asked a bit later.
“What?”
“There’s been something funny about this guy since he first showed up in the organization.”
“What do you mean?”
He paged through the notes quickly and continued. “He moved too fast. He made it from nowhere to the top in just over ten years. That’s damned quick. I’ve never heard of anyone except you moving that quickly, and you have the excuse of being an Easterner.
“I mean, look,” he went on. “He starts out protecting a little brothel, right? A muscle. A year later he’s running the place; a year after that he has ten more. In eight years he’s got a territory bigger than you have now. A year after that, he wipes out Terion and takes his place on the council. And a year after that, he grabs up the council funds and vanishes. It’s almost as if he had the whole thing figured out when he started.”
“Hmmm. I see what you’re saying, but isn’t ten years a long time to set up one job?”
“You’re thinking like an Easterner again, Vlad. It isn’t a long time if you expect to have a two-thousand- or three-thousand-year lifetime.”
I nodded and thought over what he’d suggested.
“I can’t see it, Kragar,” I said finally. “How much gold was it that he got?”
“Nine million,” he said, almost reverently.
“Right. Now, that’s a lot. That’s one hell of a lot. If I ever have a tenth of that in one place at one time I’ll retire. But would you throw away a position on the council for it?”
Kragar started to speak, stopped.
I continued, “And that isn’t the only way to get nine million gold either. It isn’t the best, the fastest, or the easiest. He could have gone freelance and done a lot better than that over those same ten years. He could have held up the Dragon Treasury, and doubled it at least, and not be taking any more risk than he is with this thing.”
Kragar nodded. “That’s true. Are you saying that he wasn’t after the gold?”
“Not at all. I’m suggesting that he may have developed a sudden need to have a few million and this was the only way to get it in a hurry.”
“I don’t know, Vlad. Just looking at his whole history, it sure seems like he had this planned out from the start.”
“But why, Kragar? No one works his way up to a seat on the council for money. You have to be after power to do something like that—”
“You should know,” said Kragar, smirking.
“—and you don’t throw away that kind of power unless you have to.”
“Maybe he lost interest in it,” he said. “Maybe he was just after the thrill of getting to the top, and after he made it, he went after a new thrill.”
“If that’s true,” I remarked, “he’s going to get his thrills, and then some. But doesn’t that go against your He-Planned-It-All-From-the-Start theory?”
“I suppose it does. I’m beginning to get the feeling that we don’t have enough information; all we’re doing is guessing.”
“True enough. So how about if you start collecting the information, eh?”
“Me? Look, Vlad, my boots are in the shop this week getting new soles. Why don’t we hire a flunky and get him to do the legwork for us, okay?”
I told him where he could hire the flunky and what he could have him do.
He sighed. “All right, I’m going. What are you going to be working on?”
I thought for a minute. “A couple of things,” I said. “For one, I’m going to try to think up a good reason for someone to suddenly decide to leave the council in such a way as to get the whole Jhereg down on his ass. Also I’m going to check in with Morrolan’s spy ring and contact some of our own people. I want to dig up as much information as I can, and it wouldn’t hurt to have both of us working on it. After that—I think I’ll visit the Lady Aliera.”
Kragar was about halfway out the door, but as I finished speaking, he stopped and turned around. “Who?” he asked, incredulous.
“Aliera e’Kieron, House of the Dragon, Morrolan’s cous—”
“I know who she is, I just couldn’t believe I heard you straight. Why not ask the Empress, while you’re at it?”
“I have a few questions about this guy that I want to check out, and they’re just the kind of thing she’s good at. Why not? We’ve been friends for quite a while.”
“Boss, she’s a Dragon. They don’t believe in assassination. They consider it a crime. If you go up to her and—”
“Kragar,” I interrupted, “I never said that I was going to go up to her and say, ‘Aliera, I’m trying to assassinate this guy, how would you like to help set him up?’ Give me credit for a little finesse, all right? All we have to do is find some reasonable excuse for her to be interested in Mellar, and she’ll be happy to help out.”