“Early,” I said. “Remember Stony asking if I’d seen you?”
“Sure. I just figured it was a sign of how bad they want me, and they know we know each other.”
“That’s what I thought, too. And, right then, that’s probably all it was. But then they put it together. Fyres’s place is broken into, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. You didn’t tell me why you wanted me to do that. If you had, maybe I’d have been messier, or done something atypical, but, as it was, it was a usual Kiera job, and anyone who knows my work, which certainly includes Stony, would—” I held up my hand as he started to speak. “No, I’m not blaming you: you had no reason to think I’d be involved after doing what you wanted; neither did I, really, I just got interested. But think about it. What’s the next thing that happens after I break into Fyres’s old place and steal his private papers?”
“You start asking Stony questions about him.”
“Right.”
“And we didn’t know that Stony was involved enough to be hearing everything that happened regarding Fyres, the banks, the investigations, and everything else.”
“That’s it,” I said. “Stony knows, right then and there, that I’m looking into Fyres’s death, though he probably doesn’t know why. But he knows Kiera the Thief is sniffing around the death of this rich guy who’s made so much trouble.”
“And then what does he do?”
I said, “He starts asking himself where the next logical place to look is, if someone is interested in Fyres’s death. And it is?”
“The Imperial investigation.”
“Exactly. So there he is, alerting Loftis and his merry band that Kiera the Thief might appear out of nowhere, or maybe someone working for Kiera. And who shows up there, right on schedule, but to everyone’s amazement?”
Vlad nodded. “I do,” he said, with more than a touch of bitterness in his voice. “In my great disguise that fooled them so completely.”
“Yes. Loftis is looking for people to show up asking questions, and he’s looking carefully for anyone in disguise, and there you are. We had no way of knowing that Loftis and Stony were in touch—and maybe they weren’t, directly. But, one way or another, Stony hears that Loftis had a visit from an Easterner trying to disguise himself as a Chreotha. ‘Tell me about this Easterner,’ he probably says. “And what kind of questions did he ask?’ “
Vlad nodded. “Yes. And, all of a sudden, you and I are tied together, looking into Fyres’s death.”
“Right. Now the Jhereg is hot for you. Somehow or other, Reega learns of it.”
“Not somehow or other,” said Vlad. “Because they went to her, the same way they went to Vonnith, and probably Endra as well. After all, they followed me. I let them. I thought I was being clever. Vonnith is so far into the Jhereg that she had no choice, and they probably offered her a good piece of change to help them. But Reega had her own ideas.”
“You’re right,” I said. “That’s probably how it worked. If we’d gone back to Reega, rather than to Vonnith, the same thing would have happened, most likely. But first, Reega either decided or, more likely, was told to get rid of Loftis.”
“Yes. And Loftis was told to try to pump me. So Loftis tries to pump me, and he brings me to this place where the arrest is planned, and then, bang, no more Loftis. All without the Jhereg’s knowledge, because the Jhereg wouldn’t have let me out of there alive. Do I have it?”
“That’s how I read it,” I said.
“Kiera, we have been thoroughly taken.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t like it any more than I do, do you?”
“Rather less, in fact, I would imagine.”
“So, what are we going to do about it?”
“At the moment,” I said, “I cannot say. But, no doubt, something will occur. Let us consider the matter.”
“Right,” said Vlad, who was looking at me a little funny.
I said, “What about the information from Vonnith? Can we trust it, if she knew you weren’t who you claimed to be?”
“I think so,” said Vlad. “She knew her job; she was supposed to keep me there long enough for them to kill me. Why bother to think up lies when the guy who’s hearing the truth is about to become deceased?”
“Good point.”
“So, what now?”
I said, “Lieutenant Domm?”
“Eh?” said Vlad. And, “Oh. You think he’s the one who wanted Loftis out of the way? There was no love lost between them, but they were in the same corps.”
“Were they?” I said.
“Eh?”
“Think back to that conversation you overheard—”
“You don’t mean that was staged, do you? I don’t believe—”
“Neither do I. No, at that point they didn’t know who you were, and they weren’t looking for witchcraft. I mean after that.”
“My talk with Domm at the Riversend?”
“Yes. They probably hadn’t had time to figure out who you were yet, so you might have even had them fooled. But maybe not. Think over that conversation. You made Domm slip and let what’s-her-name, Timmer, know that something wasn’t right.”
“What about it?”
“I think that was legit. But what evidence is there that Domm was in the same corps as Loftis?”
“Then who—”
“Who would normally conduct such an investigation?”
“Uh ... I don’t remember. That group that reports to Indus?”
“Right. The Surveillance group. And there almost had to be someone from that group involved, just because it would look funny if there weren’t.”
“But now we’re implicating Indus.”
“So? As far as I can tell, Vlad, we’re implicating everyone in the Empire with the possible exception of Her Majesty and Lord Khaavren.”
“I don’t think you realize what we’re dealing with here, Vlad.”
“You mean it’s that big?”
“No, I mean it’s that—I don’t know the word—pervasive. We’ve been looking for corrupt officials, and checking them off our list when we decided they weren’t corruptible. But that isn’t the point at all.”
“Go on,” he said, frowning.
“Corruption doesn’t enter into it. Oh, maybe Shortisle, or someone on his staff, is lining his pocket. But that’s trivial. What’s happening here is everyone involved in the mechanism of the Empire is working together to do his job just the way he’s supposed to.”
“Come again?”
“The Empire is nothing more than a great big, overgrown, understaffed, and horribly inefficient system for keeping things working.”
“Thank you,” he said, “for the lesson in government. But—”
“Bear with me, please.”
He sighed. “All right.”
“By things,” I said, “I mean, mostly, trade.”
“I thought putting down rebellions was the big thing.”
“Sure,” I said. “Because it’s hard to trade if there’s a rebellion in progress.” He smiled, and I shook my head. “No, I’m really not kidding. Whether a certain piece of ground is ruled by Baron Wasteland or Count Backward doesn’t make a difference to much of anyone, except maybe our hypothetical aristocrats. But if the trees from that piece of ground don’t reach the shipwrights here in Northport, then, eventually, we’re going to run out of that particular lime they have in Elde, which we use as an agent mixed with our lime to make mortar to keep our buildings from falling down.”
“Reminds me of the couple who didn’t know the difference between—”
“Hush. I’m being grandiloquent.”
“Sorry.”
“And we’d also, by the way, run out of that lovely Phoenix Stone from Greenaere that I think you know something about. That’s one of the simplest examples. Do you want to hear about how a dearth of wheat from the Northwest shuts down all the coal mines in the Kanefthali Mountains? I didn’t think so.
“The point,” I continued, “is trade. If it weren’t for the Empire, which controls it, everyone would make up his own rules, and change them as occasion warrants, and create tariffs that would send prices through the overcast, and everyone would suffer. If you need proof, look to your homeland, and consider how they live, and think about why.”