We struck out for the cottage, walking. I like walking; I don’t do enough of it. It was about four miles, deep in the woods, and the cottage really was painted bright blue so that it showed against the greens of the woods to a truly horrifying effect.
As we approached, a reddish dog ran out the door and stood in front of us, wagging its tail and letting its tongue hang out. It sniffed me, backed away with its head cocked, barked twice, and sniffed me again. After consulting with its canine sensibilities, it decided I was provisionally all right and asked us if we wanted to play. When we took too long to decide, it ran back toward the house. The door opened again, and a matron came out.
Vlad said, “This is my friend, Kiera. I’m not going to try to pronounce your name.”
She looked at me, then nodded. “Hwdf rjaanci,” she said.
“Hwdf rjaanci,” I repeated.
“Kiera,” she said. “You look like a Jhereg.”
I could feel Vlad not looking at me and not grinning. I shrugged.
She said, “Call me Mother; everyone around here does.”
“All right, Mother.”
She asked Vlad, “Did you learn anything?”
“Not yet.” He held up the parcel I’d given him. “We’re just going to look things over now.”
“Come in, then.”
We did, the dog following behind. The inside was even worse than Vlad had described it. I didn’t comment. Savn was sitting on a stool with his back to the fire, staring straight ahead. It was creepy. It was sad. “Battle shock,” I murmured under my breath.
“What?” said the old woman.
I shook my head. Savn wasn’t a bad-looking young man, for a Teckla—thin, maybe a bit wan, but good bones. Hwdf rjaanci was sitting next to him, stroking the back of his neck while watching his face.
Hwdf rjaanci said, “Will you be staying here?”
“I have a place in town.”
“All right.”
Vlad went over to the table, took out the papers, and began studying them. I knelt down in front of the boy and looked into his eyes; saw my own reflection and nothing else. His pupils were a bit large, but the room was dark, and they were the same size. A bit of spell-casting tempted me, but I stayed away from it. Thinking along those lines, I realized that there wasn’t much of an air of sorcery in the room; a few simple spells to keep the dust and insects away, and the dog had a ward against vermin, but that was about it.
I felt the woman watching. I kept looking into the boy’s eyes, though I couldn’t say what I was looking for. The woman said, “So you’re a thief, are you?”
“That’s what they say.”
“I was robbed twice. The first time was years ago. During the Interregnum. You look too young to remember the Interregnum.”
“Thank you.”
She gave a little laugh. “The second time was more recent. I didn’t enjoy being robbed,” she added.
“I should think not.”
“They beat my husband—almost killed him.”
“I don’t beat people, Mother.”
“You just break into their homes?”
I said, “When you’re working with the mentally sick, do you ever worry about being caught in the disease?”
“Always,” she said. “That’s why I have to be careful. I can’t do anyone any good if I tangle my own mind instead of untangling my patient’s.”
“That makes sense. I take it you’ve done a great deal of this?”
“Some.”
“How much?”
“Some.”
“You have to go into his mind, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
I looked at her. “You’re frightened, aren’t you?”
She looked away.
“I would be, too,” I told her. “Breaking into homes is much less frightening than breaking into minds.
“More profitable, too,” I added after a moment.
I felt Vlad looking at me, and looked back. He’d overheard the conversation and seemed to be trying to decide if he wanted to get angry. After a moment, he returned to looking at the papers.
I stood up, went over to the dog, and got acquainted. It still seemed a bit suspicious of me, but was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Presently Hwdf rjaanci said, “All right. I’ll start tomorrow.”
By the time I got there the next morning, Vlad had covered the table with a large piece of paper—I’m not sure where he got it—which was covered with scrawls and arrows. I stood over him for a moment, then said, “Where’s the boy?”
“He and the woman went out for a walk. They took Rocza and the dog with them.”
“Loiosh?”
“Flying around outside trying to remember if he knows how to hunt.”
He got that look on his face that told me he’d communicated that remark to Loiosh, too, and was pleased with himself.
I said, “Any progress?”
He shrugged. “Fyres didn’t like to tell his people much.”
“So you said.”
“Even less than I’d thought.”
“Catch me up.”
“Fyres and Company is a shipping company that employs about two hundred people. That’s all, as far as I can tell. Most of the rest of what he owned isn’t related to the shipping company at all, but he owned it through relatives—his wife, his son, his daughters, his sister, and a few friends. And most of those are in surrender of debts and have never really been solvent—it’s all been a big fraud from the beginning, when he conned banks into letting him take out loans, and used the loans to make his companies look big so that he could take out more loans. That’s how he operated.”
“You know this?”
“Yeah.”
“You aren’t even an accountant.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have to prove it—I’ve learned it because I’ve found out what companies he was keeping track of and looked at the ownership and read his notes. There’s nothing incriminating about it, but it gives the picture pretty clearly if you’re looking for it.”
“How big?”
“I can’t tell. Big enough, I suppose.”
“What’s the legal status?”
“I have no idea. I’m sure the Empire will try to sort it all out, but that’ll take years.”
“And in the meantime?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to have to do something, but I don’t know what.”
Savn and Hwdfrjaanci returned then and sat down on the floor near the fire. The woman’s look discouraged questions as she took Savn’s hands in hers and began rubbing them. Vlad watched; I could feel his tension.
I said, “You have to do something soon, don’t you?”
He gave me a half-smile. “It would be nice. But this isn’t the sort of thing I can stumble into. I should know what I’m doing first. That makes it trickier.” Then he said, “Why are you helping me, anyway?”
I said, “I assume you’ve been making a list of all the companies you know about and who their owners are.”
“Yeah. They’ve gotten to know my face real well at City Hall.”
“That may be a problem later on.”
“Maybe. I hope not to be around here long enough for it to matter.”
“Good idea.”
“Yes.”
“No help for it, I suppose. Do you think it might be wise to pick one of these players and pay a visit?”
“Sure, if I knew what to ask. I need to figure out who really owns this land and—”
Loiosh and I reacted at once to the presence of sorcery in the room, Vlad just an instant later. Our heads turned toward Hwdf rjaanci, who was holding Savn’s shoulders and speaking under her breath. We watched for maybe a minute, but there was no point in talking about it. I cleared my throat. “What were you saying?”
Vlad turned back to me, looking blank. Then he said, “I don’t remember.”
“Something about needing to find out who really owns this land.”
“Oh, right.” I could see him mentally shaking himself. “Yeah. What I really want is to get the picture of this thing as it’s going to emerge when the Empire finishes its investigations, say two hundred years from now. But I can’t wait that long.”
“I might be able to learn something.”