“You sure?”
“Who can be sure of anything? I didn’t want him dead. I don’t know anyone who wanted him dead. The Empire sent their best investigators, and they think it was an accident.”
“All right,” I said. “What was he like?”
“You think I knew him?”
“You lent him money, or at least thought about it; you knew him.”
He smiled, then the smile went away and he looked thoughtful—an expression I doubt most people would ever have seen. “He was all surface, you know?”
“No.”
“It was like he made himself act the way he thought he should—you could never get past it.”
“That sounds familiar.”
He ignored that. “He tried to be polished, professional, calculating—he wanted you to believe he was the perfect bourgeois. And he wanted to impress you—he always wanted to impress you.”
“With how rich he was?”
Stony nodded. “Yeah, that. And with all the people he knew, and with how good he was at what he did. I think that part of it—being impressive—was more important to him than the money.”
I nodded encouragingly. He smiled. “You want more?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’d better know why.”
“It’s a little embarrassing,” I said.
“Embarrassing?” He looked at me the way I must have been looking at Vlad when I realized that he was embarrassed.
“I have this friend—”
“Right.”
I laughed. “Okay, skip it. I owe someone a favor,” I amended untruthfully. “She’s an old woman who is about to be kicked off her land because everybody is selling off everything to stave off surrender of debts because of this mess with Fyres.”
“An old woman being foreclosed on? Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Would I make up something like that?”
He shook his head, chuckling to himself. “No, I suppose not. So what do you plan to do about it?”
“I don’t know yet. Just find out what I can and then think about it.” Or, at any rate, if Vlad had had any other plan, he hadn’t mentioned it to me. “What else can you tell me?”
“Well, he was about fourteen hundred years old. No one heard of him before the Interregnum, but he rose pretty quickly after it ended.”
“How quickly?”
“He was a very wealthy man by the end of the first century.”
“That is quick.”
“Yeah. And then he lost it all forty or fifty years later.”
“Lost it all?”
“Yep.”
“And came back?”
“Twice more. Each time bigger, each time the collapse was worse.”
“Same problem? Same sort of paper castles?”
“Yep.”
“Shipping?”
“Yep. And shipbuilding. Those have been his foundations all along.”
“You’d think people would learn.”
“Is there an implied criticism there, Kiera?” His look got just the least bit hard.
“No. Curiosity. I know you aren’t stupid. Most of the people he’d be borrowing from aren’t, either. How did he do it?”
Stony relaxed. “You’d have to have seen him work.”
“What do you mean? Good salesman?”
“That, and more. Even when he was down, you’d never know it. Of course, when someone that rich goes down, it doesn’t have much effect on how he lives—he’ll still have his mansion, and he’ll still be at all the clubs, and he’ll still have his private boat and his big carriages.”
“Sure.”
“So he’d trade on those things. You get to talking with him for five minutes, and you forget that he’d just taken a fall. And then his secretaries would keep running in with papers for him to sign, or with questions about some big deal or another, and it looked like he was on top of the world.” Stony shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve wondered if he didn’t have those secretaries pull that sort of thing just to look good; but it worked. You’d always end up convinced that he was in some sort of great position and you might as well jump on the horse and ride it yourself before someone else did.”
“And there were a lot of us on the horse.”
“A lot of Jhereg? Yeah.”
“And in deep.”
“Yeah.”
“That isn’t good for my investigation.”
“You worried you might bump into the Organization? Is that it?”
“That’s part of it.”
“It might happen,” he said.
“All right.”
“What if it does?”
“I don’t know.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to see you get hurt, Kiera.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “How far beyond Northport does this thing go?”
“Hard to say. It’s all centered here, but he’d begun spreading out. He has offices other places, of course—you have to if you’re in shipping. But I can’t say how much else.”
“What was going on before he died?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have the impression things were getting shaky for him.”
“Very. He was scrabbling. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but there were rumors that he’d stepped too far out and it was all going to crumble.”
“Hmmm.”
“Still wondering if someone put a shine on him?”
“Seems like quite a coincidence.”
“I know. But I don’t think so. As I said, I never heard any whispers, and the Empire investigated; they’re awfully good at this sort of thing.”
I nodded. That much was certainly true. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. If there’s anything else, let me know.”
“I will.” I stood up.
“Oh, by the way.”
“Yes?”
He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “Seen anything of that Easterner you used to hang around with?”
“You mean Vlad Taltos? The guy who screwed up the Organization representative to the Empire? The guy everyone wants to put over the Falls? The guy with so much gold on his head that his hair is sparkling? The guy the Organization wants so bad that anyone seen with him is likely to disappear for a long session of question and answer with the best information-extraction specialists the Organization can find? Him?”
“Yep.”
“Nope.”
“I hadn’t thought so. See you around, Kiera.”
“See you around, Stony.”
My first step was to fill Vlad in on what I’d learned; but I took a long, circuitous route back just in case I was being followed, so it took me almost until evening to get back to the cottage. When I turned the last corner of the path, Vlad was waiting for me, on the path, about fifty meters from the cottage. That startled me just a bit, as I’m not used to being seen so quickly even when I’m not trying to sneak, until I realized that Loiosh must have spotted me. I must remember to be careful if I ever have to sneak up on that Easterner.
He stood clothed only in pants and boots, his upper body naked and full of curly hairs, and he was sweating heavily, although he didn’t seem to be breathing hard.
“Nice evening,” I told him.
He nodded.
I said, “What have you been doing?”
“Practicing,” he said, pointing at a tree some distance away. I noticed several knives sticking out of it. Then he touched his rapier, sheathed at his side, and said, “I’ve also punctured my shadow several times.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Only when I missed.”
“Did it get any cuts in?”
“No. But almost.”
“Good to see you’re keeping your hand in.”
“Actually, I haven’t been lately, but I thought it might be time to again.”
“Hranun.”
“Besides, I needed to get out.”
“Oh?”
“It’s ugly in there,” he said, gesturing toward the cottage.
“Oh?” I said again.
“The old woman is doing what she promised.”
“And?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me,” I said.