Wait for it, Kiera; wait for it. I’ve done this before. I know how to tell a Verra-be-damned story, okay?
So I kept walking, getting closer to Northport. I’d come to Northport because Northport is the biggest city in the world—okay, in the Empire—that doesn’t have any sort of university. No, I have nothing against universities, but you must know how they work—they act like magnets to pull in the best brains in an area, as well as the richest and most pretentious. They are seats of great learning and all that. Now I had a problem that required someone of great, or maybe not-so-great learning, but walking into a university, well, I didn’t like the idea. I don’t know how to go about it, and that means I don’t know how to go about it without getting caught. For example, what happens if I go to, say, Candletown, and inquire at Lady Brindlegate’s University, and someone is rude to me, and I have to drop him? Then what? It makes a big stink, and the wrong people hear about it, and there I am running again.
But I figured, what if I find a place with a lot of people but no institution to suck up the talented ones? It means it’s going to be a place with a lot of hedge-wizards, and wise old men, and greatwives. And that’s just what I was looking for—what I had been looking for for most of a year, and not finding, until I hit on this idea.
I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it. Trust me.
I got a little closer to town, stopped at an inn, and—look, you don’t need to hear all this. I stayed out of a fight, listened to gossip, pumped a few people, went to another inn, did the same, repeat, repeat, and finally found myself at a little blue cottage in the woods. Yes, blue—a blue lump of house standing out from all the greens of the woods surrounding Northport. It was one of the ugliest objects I’ve ever seen.
The first thing that happened was a dog came running out toward us. I was stepping in front of Savn and reaching for a knife before Loiosh said, “His tail is wagging, boss.”
“Right. I knew that.”
It was some indeterminate breed with a bit of hound in it—the sleek build of a lyorn with the sort of long, curly, reddish hair that needed cleaning and combing, a long nose, and floppy ears. It didn’t come up to my waist, and it generally seemed pretty nonthreatening. It stopped in front of me and started sniffing. I held out my left hand, which it approved, then it gave a half-jump up toward Loiosh, then one toward Rocza, went down on its front legs, barked twice, and stood in front of me waiting and wagging. Rocza hissed; Loiosh refused to dignify it by responding.
The door opened, and a woman called, “Buddy!” The dog looked back at her, turned in a circle, and ran up to her, then rose on its hind legs and stayed there for a moment. The woman was old and a foot and a half taller than me. She had grey hair and an expression that would sour your favorite dairy product. She said, “You’re an Easterner,” in a surprisingly flutelike voice.
“Yes,” I said. “And your house is painted blue.”
She let that go. “Who’s the boy?”
“The reason I’m here.”
“He’s human.”
“And to think I hadn’t noticed.”
Loiosh chuckled in my head; the woman didn’t. “Don’t be saucy,” she said. “No doubt you’ve come for help with something; you ought to be polite.” The dog sat down next to her and watched us, his tongue out.
I tried to figure out what House she was and decided it was most likely Tsalmoth, to judge by her complexion and the shape of her nose—her green shawl, dirty white blouse, and green skirt were too generic to tell me anything.
“Why do you care?” said Loiosh.
“Good question.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be polite. You’re a—do you find the term ‘hedge-wizard’ objectionable?”
“Yes,” she said, biting out the word.
“What do you prefer?”
“Sorcerer.”
She was a sorcerer the way I was a flip-dancer. “All right. I’ve heard you are a sorcerer, and that you are skilled in problems of the mind.”
“I can sometimes help, yes.”
“The boy has brain fever.”
She made a harrumphing sound. “There is no such thing.”
I shrugged.
She looked at him, but still didn’t step out of her door, nor ask us to approach. I expected her to ask more questions about his condition, but instead she said, “What do you have to offer me?”
“Gold.”
“Not interested.”
That caught me by surprise. “You’re not interested in gold?”
“I have enough to get by.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Offer her her life, boss.”
“Grow up, Loiosh.”
She said, “There isn’t anything I want that you could give me.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
She studied me as if measuring me for a bier and said, “I haven’t known many Easterners.”
The dog scratched its ear, stood, walked around in a circle, sat down in the same place it had been, and scratched itself again.
“If you’re asking if you can trust me,” I said, “there’s no good answer I can give you.”
“That isn’t the question.”
“Then—”
“Come in.”
I did, Savn following along dutifully, the dog last. The inside was worse than the outside. I don’t mean it was dirty—on the contrary, everything was neat, clean, and polished, and there wasn’t a speck of dust; no mean trick in a wood cottage. But it was filled with all sorts of magnificently polished wood carvings—magnificent and tasteless. Oil lamps, chairs, cupboards, and buffets were all of dark hardwood, all gleaming with polish, and all of them horribly overdone, like someone wanted to put extra decorations on them just to show that it could be done. It almost made it worse that the wood nearly matched the color of the dog, who turned around in place three times before curling up in front of the door.
I studied the overdone mantelpiece, the tasteless candelabra, and the rest. I said, “Your own work?”
“No. My husband was a wood-carver.”
“A quite skillful one,” I said truthfully.
She nodded. “This place means a lot to me,” she said. “I don’t want to leave.”
I waited.
“I’m being asked to leave—I’ve been given six months.”
Rocza shifted uneasily on my right shoulder. Loiosh, on my left, said, “I don’t believe this, boss. The widow being kicked out of her house? Come on.”
“By whom?”
“The owner of the land.”
“Who owns the land?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why does he want you to leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you been offered compensation?”
“Eh?”
“Did he say he’d pay you?”
“Oh. Yes.” She sniffed. “A pittance.”
“I see. How is it you don’t know who owns the land?”
“It belongs to some, I don’t know, organization, or something.”
I instantly thought, the Jhereg, and felt a little queasy. “What organization?”
“A business of some kind. A big one.”
“What House?”
“Orca.”
I relaxed. “Who told you you have to move?”
“A young woman I’d never seen before, who worked for it. She was an Orca, too, I think.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you don’t know the name of the organization she works for?”
“No.”
“How do you know she really worked for them?”
The old woman sniffed. “She was very convincing.”
“Do you have an advocate?”
She sniffed again, which seemed to pass for a “no.”
“Then finding a good one is probably where we should start.”