“Me?”
“Yeah. Aren’t you curious?”
“Oh, heavens yes. That’s a big part of why I signed onto this. But I’m willing to admit it, and you—”
“Yeah, well, ask me again tomorrow and I might give you a different answer. Meanwhile—”
“Yes. Meanwhile, what next?”
“Well, any interest in starting at the top and trying to find out who in the Empire is behind all this?”
“No.”
“Me, neither.” He thought for a minute. “Well, I’m not sure if I’ve gotten anywhere with the daughters, so we can’t count on that for anything, but we’ve got one foot in the door with our dear friend from the Tasks Group—thanks to you. And we’ve got another foot in the door with the Jhereg—thanks to you. So how about if we try for a third foot—anatomically interesting, if nothing else—and triangulate?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Finding this bank that closed down.”
I thought it over. “Not bad. Just keep worrying away at different sides of the problem and see what gives?”
He spread his hands. “That’s all I can think of.”
“It makes sense. Do you want me to do it?”
He nodded. “I think you’ll be more effective dealing with bankers than I will. I’m going to hang tight right here, and see if I can do Savn any good.”
He said it conversationally, but I could tell there was a lot of tension behind the words. I spoke lightly, saying, “Yes, that makes sense. I’ll see what I can find.”
“After lunch,” he suggested.
Lunch, on this occasion, involved a loaf of bread which was hollowed out and filled with some kind of reddish sauce that had large chunks of this and that in it, featuring pieces of chicken with the skin but without the bones. Savn sat at the table with us, eating mechanically and appearing, once more, oblivious to everything around him. This dampened the conversation a bit. It seemed odd that Savn happily used the knife in front of him to eat with and didn’t seem at all put out or unduly fascinated by it, but the ways of the mind are strange, I guess.
I suggested to Vlad that if the Jhereg really wanted to find him, all they had to do was keep track of garlic consumption throughout the Empire. He suggested that I not spread the idea around, because he’d as soon let them find him as quit eating garlic.
Then we got onto business. I said, “Mother, you said the bank closed?”
She nodded.
“Which bank?”
She glanced at me, then at Vlad, opened her mouth, closed it, shrugged, and said, “Northport Private Services Bank. Are you going to rob it?”
“If it’s closed,” I said, “I doubt there’s any money in it—or anything else for that matter.”
“Probably,” said Vlad. Then he frowned. “Unless ...”
“Unless what?”
“I’m remembering something.”
I waited.
He said, “That gossip sheet, Rutter’s Rag, said something about the banks.”
“Yes?”
“It made a point of how quickly everyone got out of there.” He turned to Hwdf rjaanci. “Do you know anything about that, Mother?”
She said, “I know it closed down fast. My friend Hen-brook—it was her bank, too, and I don’t know what she’s going to do—anyway, she was in town that day, and she said they were open just like usual at thirteen o’clock, and at fourteen there were these wagons there—the big wagons, with armed guards and everything—and by noon it was shut up tight.”
Vlad nodded. “Two hours. They took two hours to clear the place out.”
Hwdf’rjaanci agreed. “They had a hundred men, and wagons lined up all down the street. And the other banks, too, went the same way, at the same time, near as I can tell.”
“In which case,” said Vlad, “they can’t have done a very good job of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean clearing things out. They were in a hurry to be gone before their customers got to them, and—”
“Then why not seal things inside?”
He shrugged. “Too much sorcery floating around. Get people mad enough, and at least one of them will be able to tear down the building.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll buy that. But do you really think it likely that there’s anything still in there?”
“Oh, I doubt there’s any money in it, but you never know what might be left behind.”
“You mean, papers and things?”
He nodded.
“If they went under, wouldn’t they be careful to clean up anything worth looking at?”
“How much time would it take to clean up every last scrap of paper, Kiera? Could they do it in two hours?”
“Probably not. But all the important ones—”
“Maybe. But maybe not. I don’t know how banks operate, but they’re bound to generate immense amounts of paperwork, and—”
“And you’re willing to wade through immense amounts of paper, just to see if there might be something useful?”
“Right now, any edge we can get amounts to a lot. Yeah, I don’t mind taking an evening to go through their wastebas-kets—or, rather, papers that missed the wastebaskets—and see if there’s something that points us anywhere interesting.”
I thought it over for a minute. “You’re right,” I said. “I’ll look around and get what I can; it should be easy enough.” I turned to Hwdf rjaanci. “Where is it?”
“In town,” she said. “Stonework Road, near the Potter’s Field Road.” She gave me more precise directions.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll look around it today. Since you’re so used to going to City Hall, can you—”
“Find out who owns it? Sure.”
“But just get the name and address.”
“Right. I should have cooked some vegetables to go with this.”
“I wouldn’t have had room for them,” I said.
“That’s true. You don’t eat much, do you?”
“I’m trying to keep my slender girlish figure.”
“Ah. That’s what it is.”
We finished, and, since I was doing the dangerous work, I allowed him to volunteer to clean up. Not that there was that much to clean up after Loiosh, Rocza, and Buddy got through with the plates.
“All right,” I said, “ ‘Once more upon the path, and may the wind cry our tale.’”
“Villsni?”
“Kliburr.” I headed out the door.
Vlad said, “I don’t know how you do it, Kiera.”
“Eh? You’re the one with all the quotations. I was just imitating you.”
“No, not that—teleporting right after a meal. I just don’t know how you manage.”
I managed fine, bringing myself, first, home to Adri-lankha to acquire some tools, and then to the same teleport spot I’d used before, it being one of very few I knew in Northport. Then I set out to find the bank, which was easy from the directions I’d been given. I was looking forward to this. I’d never broken into a bank before, and certainly never in the middle of the day; the fact that the bank was now out of business only took a little of the fun away.
And it was, indeed, out of business—there was a large sign on it that spelled out “Permanently Closed,” along with the water and hand symbol for those who couldn’t read, and there were large boards over all the windows, and bars across the doors. I walked around it once. It was an attractive building, two stories high with a set of six pillars in front, and all done in very fine stonework. It took up about a hundred and forty meters across the front and went back about a hundred and ninety meters, and there were no alleys behind it—just a big cleared area that had become an impromptu produce market since it closed. The cleared area was, no doubt, to make sure that the guards had a good view.
On the other hand, now that it was closed, there seemed to be no security worth mentioning—certainly no one on duty there, and only the most basic and easily defeated alarm spells, proving that there was no money left in it. Anyone could have broken into the bank at this stage, and anyone would have done so just the way I was going to—which showed that no one thought there was anything at all of interest there. I shrugged. I’d know soon enough.