"All right," Emmis said. "So you're serious about finding out what happened and punishing those responsible."
"Yes."
"But then why are we here? Why are you, personally, my lord, questioning people in Shiphaven and Allston? Why not hire magicians to tell you where you can find the Lumethans and the people who attacked me? I know the magistrates call in magicians sometimes – why didn't you?"
Ildirin smiled, and ran the fingers of his left hand through his long white beard. "Once again, there are two reasons," he said. "I did not choose to involve any magicians because this is a political matter, and I do not care to attract the attention of the Wizards' Guild or the Council of Warlocks to it. I do not want either of them, nor any of the other magicians' guilds, meddling in this. The possibility that the Wizards' Guild will decide that the existence of the Empire of Vond violates the prohibition on magicians in government, due to the way it was created, and that the Empire must therefore be destroyed and its seventeen provinces restored to their former independence, is not as unlikely as I would like. I do not want the Council of Warlocks to decide that they are Vond's rightful heirs and therefore should rule the Empire, under the terms of their own rules on Called warlocks. Most particularly, I don't want both of these to happen simultaneously, as the resulting conflict between the two orders of magic might well destroy the World. Magicians do talk to one another, and so I prefer not to involve any magicians in this investigation." He grimaced. "At least, not yet. I may resort to magic, should the matter prove intractable by other means."
"That's one reason," Emmis acknowledged. "What's the other?"
The old man's smile returned.
"I was bored," he said. "I thought that investigating this would be entertaining."
"You like asking all these questions?" Gita asked, startling the men. Neither of them had noticed that she was listening, but she had indeed turned her attention from the window to her host.
Ildirin turned to her. "Why, yes, my dear, I do."
She shook her head in amazement. "I don't like answering them!"
"Well, answering them is rather different," Ildirin replied.
"I don't know anything about warlocks or treaties or the Small Kingdoms."
"But you know what happened in your uncle's inn," Ildirin pointed out. "I already know about warlocks and treaties and the Small Kingdoms, so I don't need anyone to tell me any of that, but I do not know what's happened in the Crooked Candle these last few days, so I want you to tell me."
"I've told you, though!"
"Indeed, you have been very cooperative, but I suspect there are details that could be of use to me that you have not yet revealed, details that you know but do not realize could be of use. You may not even know you know them. So I ask questions, in hopes of stumbling upon these things that seem to you to be the most utterly mundane, boring, trivial, and irrelevant facts, but which might reveal to me entire vistas of possibility I had not considered – or that may instead close off doors that I had thought were open, and save my men hours of wasted effort in their pursuit of these criminals."
Gita stared at the old man, baffled, then threw Emmis a quick look.
Emmis turned up an empty palm. Ildirin's manner of speaking was a little hard to follow sometimes, but this last speech had been clear enough, and Emmis could not see how to make it much plainer.
"He thinks you might not realize some little detail is important," Emmis said, when Gita appeared unsatisfied with the gesture. "Something that will tell him where the guards can find the assassins. Some name they mentioned, some little thing they were carrying, something."
"I don't know anything like that!" Gita insisted.
"Perhaps you don't," Ildirin said soothingly, "but perhaps you do, and careful questioning may discover it."
"But I don't."
Ildirin sighed. "Then think of this as your chance to ride in a fine carriage, and perhaps visit a house in Allston, and spend more time in this pleasant young man's company, and be paid a round for your trouble."
"A round?"
"Eight bits. Yes."
"In copper? Not iron?"
Ildirin snorted. "Girl, I am the overlord's uncle. I haven't even seen an iron coin in the last twenty years!"
"Foreign sailors try to use them sometimes," Gita said. "My uncle gets furious if I accept them."
"As well he should," Ildirin said. "They haven't been legal currency in the city for more than two hundred years."
"We use them on the docks sometimes," Emmis said. "For gambling, when we don't want to risk real money, since we do get them from foreigners sometimes and they aren't accepted anywhere."
"Interesting," Ildirin said. "I hadn't known that." Then he focused on Gita. "Did any of the Lumethans try to pay with iron?"
"No," Gita said, and the questioning that had gone so long at the inn was begun anew in the carriage.
The nobleman switched back and forth between Gita and Emmis, trying to ferret out new details. Emmis did his best to answer Lord Ildirin's questions, but also looked out the windows every so often, trying to identify the route they were taking.
They rolled along Warehouse Street, almost into Spicetown, and then turned onto Moat Street, before turning again onto North Street, which brought them out onto the plaza in front of the Palace. It would never have occurred to Emmis to take so northerly a path, but it did avoid any sort of upgrade, and of course Lord Ildirin would be accustomed to routes that led to and from the Palace.
They did not stop in the plaza, though, but rolled across it at a stately pace as people hurried out of the path of the horses, and out the southeast corner, up onto Arena Street.
Here at last was an upgrade they could not avoid, but it did not seem to trouble the horses or the coachman; the carriage rolled on, unhindered, up Arena Street.
Lord Ildirin's questions were finally slowing, to Emmis's relief; he really could not see any significance in whether or not he had noticed the length of Hagai's fingernails – which he hadn't – or in some of the other details Ildirin was now asking about. He was relieved that Ildirin's questions had never approached too closely anything Lar had told him not to repeat; the old man seemed to be focused entirely on what had taken place at the Crooked Candle, or on his encounter with the two assassins, and not interested in why Lar had come to Ethshar.
And then, rather than asking another question, Lord Ildirin gestured toward the guardsman sitting beside Emmis and said, "This is Ahan, by the way. He will be accompanying you on your errands."