But sorry, I’ve wandered away from the point. Reega’s place was nestled in among a lot of trees and stuff, and looked completely untended—there were a good number of other houses in the area, so I had to ask directions a few times to figure out which it was. It was nice, Kiera. I mean it was smaller than Fyres’s or Endra’s, though still quite a bit bigger than this place, but it seemed to want to be a house, instead of a mansion that wanted to be a castle.
Looking at it, I figured that when I clapped she’d answer the door herself, and, as a matter of fact, that’s just what happened.
She was a bit shorter and a bit heavier than her sister, and her hair was longer and curled quite a bit, but they had pretty much the same face. She looked at me the way someone who lived in a house like that ought to look at you, as if she was a bit curious about why someone would want to talk to her—by which I mean, not like the daughter of someone as rich as Fyres ought to look at you. I wondered if I was at the wrong place. I said, “Baroness Reega?”
“That’s right,” she said. “And you are—?”
“Kaldor. May I speak to you for a moment?”
“Concerning what?” she asked. She still seemed polite and friendly, but she hadn’t invited me in.
“Your father.”
“My father?”
“You are the daughter of Lord Fyres, aren’t you?”
“Why, yes I am.”
“Well, then, what I have to say concerns you.”
She gave me a contemplative look and said, “What is it, then?”
It seemed odd to be discussing this standing outside of her house, but it was her choice. I said, “I have reason to believe that the Empire is not looking into his death as thoroughly as they ought to be.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she studied me, and I was suddenly not at all sure of my disguise. She said, “Oh you do, do you?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And what business is that of yours?”
Ah ha. If you’ve been counting, Kiera, that was the third “ah ha” of the day.
“My lady?”
“Why do you care?”
“Well, I was hoping, you know, that ... uh ...”
“That there would be a reward in it for you?”
“Well—”
She gestured with her hand toward the road behind me. “You may leave now.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I bowed and left. It had been a long walk for a short conversation, but no walk is wasted if there’s an “Ah ha” at the end of it. I shared this thought with Loiosh, who suggested that he could supply me with as many “ah ha’s” as I wanted. I didn’t have an answer handy, so I just headed back to town.
My next stop was the Riversend, because I figured that would give my story some verisimilitude with my shadows, and because it had a back door in case I wanted to use it, and because I had my clothes and my weapons stashed there. If I needed to visit the son and the widow, I figured it would wait, because evening was coming on and my feet were hurting like blazes, and I wanted a good meal and a drink, which was another reason to stop at the Riversend.
But first things first. I asked Loiosh what my shadows were up to. He said, “One’s going around to the back, boss.”
“Is the other one coming in?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
I walked through the tavern, opened up the back door, moved a few empty crates, recovered the bundle that I’d made of my possessions, recovered my sword from behind the garbage pile, and slipped back inside before Timmer or Domm or whoever it was got there. The inn wasn’t very crowded, but no one particularly noticed me, anyway.
I sat down at a table and caused the host (whose name really is Trim, by the way) to bring me some wine, a bowl of fish soup, and whatever fowl they had roasting away over the spit and producing those amazing smells. They were apparently basting it with some sort of honey and lemon mixture that made the fire dance very prettily and made my stomach growl like a dzur.
Trim’s service was very fast, and his food was very good; I hoped that they wouldn’t question the poor bastard, or if they did, that they were nice about it.
I ate, drank, rested, and tried to figure out my next step. The last was the hard part, the others come pretty easy if you practice long enough. Loiosh was getting hungry, too, which I felt bad about, but I needed him to keep watching, so my meal was accompanied by his running complaints. I didn’t allow this to detract from the food, however.
Then Loiosh said, “Boss, the guy’s coming inside.”
“Okay,” I said, and I placed the sword against the wall behind me, resting it against a support beam where it would be, if not hidden, at least not horribly obvious. I made sure I had a dagger near to hand, then I finished sopping up the meal with the remains of the bread—a good black bread made with seeds of some kind.
In fact, they both came in—the man and the woman—and planted themselves in front of me; no doubt they’d received instructions from headquarters. I looked up at them with an expression of profound innocence, to which I tried to mix in a certain amount of alarm.
“Lord Kaldor?” said the man.
I nodded.
“May we speak with you for a moment?”
I nodded again.
“I’m Lieutenant Domm, this is Ensign Timmer, of Her Imperial Majesty’s Guard.”
I nodded for the third time. I was getting good at it.
They sat down, even though I hadn’t invited them to; I think they felt that standing while I sat would make it harder for them to intimidate me. Meanwhile, I tried to act like I was intimidated but trying to act like I wasn’t. I don’t think I did very well—it’s a lot easier to pretend to be tough when you’re scared than to pretend to be scared when you’re tough. Or, at least, it is for me.
“Needany help, boss?”
“Not yet, Loiosh.”
“We’d just like to ask you some questions. We understand that you’ve been telling people that we’re not conducting a thorough investigation into a certain matter. We’d like to know why you think so.”
I was betting on Reega over Endra, so I said, “My lord, I went over to the city hall today, where they’re—you’re—talking to everyone, and I told them what I knew, and they didn’t care, so I figured that must mean—”
“Bullshit,” said Timmer, opening her mouth for the first time. “What’s the real reason?”
“That’s the only—”
She turned to Domm and said, “Let’s take him back and work on him for a while. We don’t have time for this.”
“Be patient,” said Domm. “I think he’ll talk to us.”
“Why bother? We can peel him like an onion.”
Domm shook his head. “Not unless we have to. The big guy doesn’t like us destroying people’s brains unless there’s no other choice.”
“So who’s going to tell him?”
“Let’s try it my way first.”
“Okay. You’re the boss.”
He nodded and turned back to me. It was becoming harder and harder to try to look frightened. People all around us in the inn had now moved away and Trim was giving us uneasy glances. A reassuring wave, I thought, would probably not be a good idea. Domra leaned over the table to bring his face right up to mine.
“Who are you, what do you know, how do you know it, and what are you after?”
I sank back into the chair and made my eyes get wide, which is as good as I can do at pretending to be afraid. I tried to figure out if there was any way to talk my way out of this without giving them anything. Nothing came instantly to mind. Domm said, “Am I going to have to let Timmer here work on you? It isn’t how I like to do things, but if you don’t give me any choice, I’m going to have to give you to her.”
It suddenly occurred to me that, if they believed I was a professional, they wouldn’t be trying to pull stuff like that on me—I was in a better position than I’d thought I was.