He nodded. “With nice offers of loans at Jhereg-style interest rates to go with them.”
“So our hostess isn’t really in danger of losing her cottage, and, if she’s careful, she can probably avoid being overcharged too much. In fact, if we can come up with some cash for her, she can even avoid the interest rates.”
“I think we can do that,” said Vlad.
“Between us,” I said, “I have no doubt that we can.”
“What about the rest of it?” he said. “Can you put it together?”
“Maybe. Do you know it all?”
“Almost,” he said. “There’s still a piece or two missing, but I have some theories; and there’s also a lot of background stuff that you can probably explain.”
“What’s missing?”
“Loftis.”
“You mean, why did Reega have him killed?”
“Yes. If it was Reega.”
“You think Vonnith was lying?”
“Not lying. But we don’t know yet if it was Reega’s choice, or if she just arranged it.”
“Why would she arrange it?”
“Because she was in a position to. She had a lot to gain, and she was in touch with Loftis.”
“How do you know that?” I said.
“Because of the way she reacted when I told her the Empire was covering up something.”
“Oh, right. I’d forgotten. Yeah, she might have just arranged it. But, if so, who did she arrange it for? And why?”
“Good questions. That’s what I’m still missing.” He shook his head. “I wish I knew what ‘he didn’t break the stick’ means.”
“I think I know,” I said.
“Huh?”
“It goes back to the Fifth and Sixth Cycles, and even into the Seventh, before flashstones.”
“Yes?”
“Some elite corps were given sorcery. Nothing fancy, just a couple of location spells, and usually one or two offensive weapons to be used over a distance. They weren’t all that effective, by the way.”
“Go on.”
“Whoever was the brigade’s sorcerer would bind the spells into a stick so that any idiot could release the spell. They used wood because binding them into stone took longer and was more difficult, although also more reliable.” I shrugged. “You point the stick at someone, and you release the spell, which doesn’t take a lot of skill, and you get a nasty scrape on your palm, and whoever you pointed the stick at has a much nastier burn. You can kill with it, and at a pretty good distance, if your hand is steady and your eye is good and, mostly, if the spell was put on right in the first place. Which it usually wasn’t,” I added, “according to the histories.”
“But what does—”
“Right. The thing is, the sticks were smoothed a bit to take the spell, but otherwise they were just sticks. Once you got into battle, you might be looking around and see one on the ground, but you’d have no way of knowing if it was discharged or not—that is, unless you were fairly skilled, the only way to find out if it had been used already was to discharge it. You can imagine that it might be embarrassing to pick one up on the field and assume it had a charge when it didn’t, or even the reverse.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“So the custom was to break it in half as soon as you’d discharged it.”
“And you think that’s what he was talking about?”
“ ‘Breaking the stick’ became a handy way of referring to leaving a signal, especially a warning.”
“How long since it’s been used?”
“A long time.”
“Then—”
“He was a military historian, Vlad. Remember how he kept making references to obscure—”
“Got it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it meant something else, but ...”
“Well, that’s all very interesting.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and I could practically hear the tides of his thoughts break against the shore of facts as he put things together in new ways; I waited and wondered. “Hmmm. Yes, Kiera, it’s all very interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think I have the rest of it. And then some.”
“And then some?”
“Yeah, I got more than I wanted. But never mind that, it doesn’t matter. Can you put it together?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Well, let’s see what we have. We have Fyres murdered, and someone desperate to hide that fact. We have companies he was into falling like Teckla at the Wall of Baritt’s Tomb. We have someone, or someones, in the Empire desperate to hide the fact that Fyres was murdered. Am I doing all right so far?”
“Yep. Keep going.”
“Okay. We have Jhereg involvement with Fyres, and Imperial involvement with the banks, and—wait a minute.”
“Yes?”
“Fyres owed the Jhereg. Fyres owed the banks. The banks and the Jhereg were depending on Fyres. The Empire was protecting the banks, and the banks were supporting the Empire. Have I got it?”
“Right. Conclusion?”
“The Empire is working with the Jhereg.”
“Exactly,” said Vlad. “Supporting the Jhereg, borrowing from the Jhereg, and, probably, using the Jhereg.”
“Just as you were saying.”
“Yeah, I guess it all seemed to be heading that way. But push it a little further, Kiera: what would the empire do if word of the Jhereg’s influence in the Empire was about to emerge into the public?”
I shrugged. “Everything it could to hide that fact.”
“Everything?”
I nodded. “Yes. Or, if it’s what you want, everything including covering up the Fyres murder, and even—yes, and even murdering their own investigator if they thought he was no longer reliable.”
“Yep. That’s what ‘he didn’t break the stick’ meant. It bothered me that someone like Loftis would be that careless. It either meant we were wrong about him or there was something we didn’t know, and now we’ve figured it out.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was set up by his own side.”
Vlad nodded. “He wasn’t given the warning he was supposed to get if there was any danger. They’d probably picked that spot out, and there was supposed to be some indication either that it was all right or that it wasn’t. And so he thought he was safe, and that’s why they could take him out so easily.”
“Right. Domm?”
“His name popped into my head,” said Vlad.
I nodded. “Domm would be a safe guess. Reega set it up, and Domm made sure Loftis wouldn’t be ready to defend himself, and they used you—”
I stopped, and looked at Vlad. He said, “What?” Then, “Oh.”
“They were too ready, and you were too convenient.”
“I didn’t give the game away,” said Vlad. “I didn’t slip up. They already knew about me when I walked in, which means they already knew about you.”
I nodded. “And that explains something else: namely, why it’s been so easy to fool these people. We haven’t fooled anyone, except maybe Vonnith. They’ve been playing with us, and letting us think we were playing with them.”
“Not Vonnith, either,” said Vlad. “She was onto me from the moment I first showed up.”
“Stony?”
“Yes. I figured that it was just bad timing, him being there right then. But she must have gotten hold of him when I got there, and then all she had to do was delay me until he was ready to move.”
I nodded.
He said, “Well, aren’t we a couple of idiots?”
I nodded again. “Stony,” I said. “That son of a bitch.”
“What now, then?”
“Now, Vlad? What is there to do? We’ve solved Hwdf rjaanci’s problem, which was all we intended, and we’ve figured out what’s going on, and we’ve also figured out that they had our number from the beginning. We’re done.”
He stared at me. “You mean, let them get away with it?”
I grinned. “I will if you will.”
“For a minute there,” he said, “you had me worried.” Then he frowned. “When do you think they caught onto us?”