“How?”
“The Jhereg.”
Vlad frowned. “How would the Jhereg be involved?”
“I don’t know that we are. But if what Fyres was doing was illegal, and it was making a lot of money, there’s a good chance for a Jhereg connection somewhere along the line.”
“Good point,” said Vlad.
Loiosh was still staring at the woman and the boy. Vlad was silent for a moment; I wondered what Vlad and Loiosh were saying to each other. I wondered if they spoke in words, or if it was some sort of communication that didn’t translate. I’ve never had a familiar, but then, I’m not a witch. Vlad said, “You have local connections?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” he said. “Do it. I’ll keep trying to put this thing together.”
The woman said, “Cold. So cold. Cold.”
Vlad and I looked at her. She wasn’t shivering or anything, and the cottage was quite warm. Her hands were still on Savn’s shoulders and she was staring at him.
“Can’t keep it away,” she said. “Can’t keep it away. Find the cold spot. Can’t keep it away.” After that she fell silent.
I looked at Vlad and turned my palms up. “I might as well go now,” I said.
He nodded, and went back to his paperwork. I headed out the door. The dog gave its tail a half-wag and put its head down between its paws again.
It was over two or three miles to Northport, but I had been there often enough to learn a couple of teleport points, so I went ahead and put myself into an alley that ran past the back of a pawnbroker’s shop, startling a couple of local urchins when I appeared. They stared at me for a second, then went back to urchining, or whatever it is they do. I walked around the corner and into the dark little shop. The middle-aged man behind the counter looked up at me, but before he could say a word I said, “Sorry to disappoint you, Dor.”
“What, you don’t have anything for me?”
“Nope. I just want to see the upstairs man.”
“For a minute there—”
“Next time.”
He shrugged. “You know the way.”
Poor Dor. Usually when I come into his place it’s because I have something that’s too hot to unload in Adri-lankha, which means he’s going to get something good for a great price. But not today. I walked past him into the rear of the shop, up the stairs, and into a nice, plain room where a couple of toughs waited. One, a very dark fellow with a pointy head, like someone had tried to fit him through a funnel, was sitting in front of the room’s other door; the other one had arms that hung out like a mockman and he looked about as intelligent, although looks can be deceiving; he was leaning against a wall. They didn’t seem to recognize me.
I said, “Is Stony in?”
“Who wants to know?” said Funnel-head.
I smiled brightly. “Why, I do.”
He scowled.
I said, “Tell him it’s Kiera.”
Their eyes grew just a little bit wider. That always happens. It is very satisfying. The one stood up, moved his chair, opened the door, and stuck his head into the other room. I heard him speaking softly, then I heard Stony say, “Really? Well, send her in.” There was a little more conversation, followed by, “I said send her in.”
The tough turned back to me and stood aside. I dipped him a curtsy as I stepped in past him—a curtsy looks silly when you’re wearing trousers, but I couldn’t resist. He stayed well back from me, as if he were afraid I’d steal his purse as I walked by. Why are people who will walk into potentially lethal situations without breaking a sweat so often frightened around someone who just steals things? Is it the humiliation? Is it just that they don’t know how I do it? I’ve never figured that out. Many people have that reaction. It makes me want to steal their purses.
Stony’s office was deceptively small. I say deceptive because he was a lot bigger in the Organization than most people thought—even his own employees didn’t know; he felt safer that way. I’d only found out by accident and guesswork, starting when someone had hired me to lighten one of Stony’s button men and I’d come across pieces of his security system. Stony himself was pretty deceptive, too. He looked, and acted, like the sort of big, mean, stupid, and brutal thug that the Left Hand thinks we all are. In fact, I’d never known him to do anything that wasn’t calculated—even his famous rages always seemed to result in just the right people disappearing, and no more. Over the years, I’d tried to puzzle him out, and my opinion at the moment was that he wasn’t in this for the power, or for the pleasure of putting things over on the Guard, or anything else—he wanted to acquire a great deal of money, and a great deal of security, and then he planned to retire. I couldn’t prove it, I reflected, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someday he just packed up and vanished, and spent the rest of his life collecting seashells or something on some tiny island he owned.
Over the years, I had gradually let him know that I knew where he stood in the Organization, and he had gradually stopped pretending otherwise when we were alone. It was possible that he liked having someone with whom he could drop the game a little, but I doubt it.
All of this flashed through my mind as I sat in the only other chair in the room—the room just big enough to contain my chair, his chair, and the desk. He said, “Must be something big, for you to come here.” His voice was rough and harsh, and fitted the personality he pretended to; I assumed it was contrived, but I’ve never heard him break out of it.
“Yes and no,” I said.
“There a problem?”
“In a way.”
“You need help?”
“Something like that.”
He shook his head. “That’s what I like about you, Kiera. Your way of explaining everything so clearly.”
“My part isn’t big, and what I need isn’t big, but it’s part of something big. I didn’t want to ask you to meet me somewhere because I’m asking for a favor, and you don’t get anything from it, so I didn’t want to put you out. But it isn’t a favor for me, it’s for someone else.”
He nodded. “That makes everything completely clear, then.”
“What do you know of Fyres?”
That startled him a little. “The Orca?”
“Yes.”
“He’s dead.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He owned a whole lot of stuff.”
“Yeah.”
“Most of it will end up in surrender of debts.”
“That’s what I like about you, Stony. The way you have of reeling out information no one else knows.”
He made a loose fist with his right hand and drummed his fingernails on the desk while looking at me. “What exactly do you want to know?”
“The Organization’s interest in him and his businesses.”
“What’s your interest?”
“I told you, a favor for a friend.”
“Yeah.”
“Is it some big secret, Stony?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
“It goes up pretty high?”
“Yeah, and there’s a lot of money involved.”
“And you’re trying to decide how much to tell me just as a favor.”
“Right.”
I waited. Nothing I could say would help make up his mind for him.
“Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll tell you this much. A lot of people had paper on the guy. Shards. Everybody had paper on the guy. There are going to be some big banks going down, and there are going to be some Organization people taking sudden vacations. It isn’t just me, but we’re in it.”
“How about you?”
“I’m not directly involved, so I may be all right.”
“If you need anything—”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“How did he die?”
Stony spread his hands. “He was out on his Verra-be-damned boat and he slipped and hit his head on a railing.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
He shook his head. “No one wanted him dead, Kiera. I mean, the only chance most of us had to ever see our investment back was if his stuff earned out, and with him dead there’s no way of it ever earning out.”