The Book of Athyra

by Steven Brust

  The same argument applied to “Third Floor Relic,” which was named for the room where they supposedly met with Her Majesty. There were only about twenty or thirty of them at any one time, and, while they were very good at what they did, it took the Empress’s orders to get them to do it. Also, it seemed unlikely that they’d be involved in something this widespread—narrow and specific objectives were more their style.

  The other two units I knew about were both part of the military. One of them, the one that was publicly acknowledged to exist, was Division Six of the Imperial Army General Staff Consultants. They did most of their work on foreign soil, but could certainly be used in the Empire if the situation warranted. They were big, unwieldy, often confused, sometimes brilliant, and responsible to the Warlord. The Warlord wouldn’t allow them to be used this way if the Empress didn’t approve, but they were big enough that it just might be possible for someone in the hierarchy to have been corrupted. If it was Division Six, though, they’d be unlikely to be able to keep it secret very long—at least, not secret from those who knew where to look.

  And then there was the Special Tasks Group, which was small, very well trained, easily capable of covering up mistakes by the other groups (and was often used for exactly that), and, in fact, perfect for jobs like this. But they reported to Lord Khaavren—he would never allow them to be used this way without orders from the Empress, and if the Empress did give such an order, he’d have another one of his temper tantrums and resign again.

  I chewed it over as I put the contents of Loftis’s pouch back together. Then I sat on the bed (the only piece of furniture in the room) and continued thinking it over. There were good reasons why it couldn’t be any of those groups, but it seemed very unlikely that there was another team involved that I hadn’t heard of—I keep very well abreast of what’s happening around the Palace, on both sides of the walls, as they say.

  I tried to remember everything Vlad had told me about his dealings with the group, including every nuance of expression he’d picked up. Of course, it isn’t easy when you’re twice removed from the conversation. And I didn’t have long to figure it out, either. I checked the time. No, I didn’t have long at all.

  I went over all the information again and shook my head. If I had to guess, I’d say Surveillance, just because it involved the Empire and the House of the Orca and, above all, because under normal circumstances they’re the ones who would conduct such an investigation—being checked up on, no doubt, by the Third Floor group. But it still didn’t make sense. Could it be Division Six? While they were the most likely in that they’d think they could get away with it, they just didn’t have the reputation for switching so easily from pulling cover-up jobs to rough stuff—they were mostly a bunch of clerks with a big budget, some half-competent thieves, and a lot of people who knew how to spread money around. No, Surveillance was more likely, only I had trouble squaring that with what I knew about Lady Indus—if a request like that fell into her lap, she’d—

  Now, what did that remind me of?

  Or we could just dump the whole thing on Papa-cat’s lap.

  That had been a threat. A threat to tell the man in charge what they were doing—which meant, first, that, although they were acting under orders, they weren’t acting under orders of their own chief. And, second, that the man in charge was, in fact, a man, which neatly eliminated Indus.

  Papa-cat.

  Cat.

  Tiassa.

  Lord Khaavren.

  As Vlad would say, “Ah ha.”

  There was the sound of heavy boots outside the room, and the door went crashing down. I was looking at a man and a woman, both of whom had swords drawn and pointed at me. I tossed the purse to the man and said, “In the first place, Loftis, tell Timmer to go back to City Hall, it’s you I want to talk to. And in the second place, you’ll be paying for that door out of your own pocket; I don’t think Papa-cat will authorize it when he hears what it’s for—if he hears what it’s for.”

  They stared at me.

  I said, “Well? What are you waiting for? Lose your associate, come in here, and sit down. Oh, Ensign, on your way out, set up a sound field around this room—I assume you’re equipped for that, aren’t you? And take care of anyone who might be coming up to look into the noise of the door breaking. Tell the host it’s all right and your friend will pay for the damages. Which he will,” I added.

  She looked at Loftis. He gave her a bit of a half-smile, as if to say, “Whatever this is, it’s bound to be good,” then nodded. She gave me one quick glance, and I could see her committing me to memory, then she was gone. Loftis came in and leaned against the far wall, still holding his sword.

  I said, “Put that thing away.”

  He said, “Sure. As soon as you explain why I shouldn’t arrest you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You think I’m a thief?”

  He shook his head. “I know you’re a thief—and quite an accomplished one, since you got this off me just passing in the street. But I don’t know what else you are.”

  I shrugged. “I’m a thief, Lieutenant. I’m a thief who happens to know your name, your rank, your associate’s name and rank, and that you work for Lord Khaavren’s Special Tasks Group; and I’m so stupid that I took your purse but didn’t bother with a spell to prevent you from tracing the Signets, didn’t ditch the Signets, but instead just sat here waiting for you to arrive so I could hand the purse back to you. That’s right, Lieutenant, I’m a thief.”

  He shrugged. “When someone starts reeling off what he knows like that, it always makes me wonder if I’m supposed to be so impressed that I’ll start reeling things off, too. What do you say?”

  He wasn’t stupid. “That you’re not stupid. But you’re still pointing a sword at me, and I find that irritating.”

  “Learn to live with it. Who are you and what do you want? If you really went through all of that just to get me here, you’re either very foolish or you have some explanation that—”

  “Do you remember a certain affair three or four years ago, that started out with Division Six looking into the activities of a wizard working for, uh, a foreign kingdom, and ending up with a Jenoine at Dzur Mountain.”

  He stared at me, licked his lips, and said, “I’ve heard about it.”

  “Do you remember what you—your group—was assigned to do after Division Six had bungled it?”

  He watched me very closely. “Yes,” he said.

  “That’s what I’m here to do, only this time it’s you who are making a mess of things.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Possible,” he said.

  “Then let’s talk. I’m not armed—”

  He laughed. “Sure you’re not. And Temping had no reserves at the Battle of Plowman’s Bridge.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. He said, “Eighth Cycle, two hundred and fifth year of the Tiassa Reign, the Whetstone Rising. The Warlord was—”

  “I am not, in fact, armed,” I cut him off. “At least, not with a conventional weapon.”

  He raised his eyebrows back at me.

  I said, “What I’ve got for armament is a letter, being held quite safely, that is ready to go to Her Majesty if I fail to appear. The object, in fact, doesn’t have anything to do with you, it’s to make sure certain influential parties are disassociated from this affair, and appear clean when it blows up. What it will do to your career is, in fact, just a side effect, but that won’t change how it hits you when Lord Khaavren learns what you’ve been up to. You know him better than I do, my dear lieutenant—what will he do? And it won’t help to try to keep the letter from reaching the Imperial Palace the way you, or your people, did in the Berdoign business, because the letter is already in the Palace. I think that’s better than a conventional weapon, under the circumstances, don’t you?”

  “You are very well informed,” he said. I could see him wondering if I was lying, then deciding he couldn’t take the chance. He smiled, bowed his head slightly, and sheathed hi
s sword. “Let’s talk, then,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  “Good. We’ll start with the basics. You’ve been given an assignment that you dislike—”

  He snorted. “‘Dislike’ would cover it,” he said, “if stretched very thin.”

  “Nevertheless,” I continued, “you’re doing what you were instructed to do. Whatever else you are, you’re a soldier.”

  He shrugged.

  I said, “I represent, as I said, certain interests very close to, but not quite the same as, those who required you to carry out this mission. I would prefer that our efforts were combined, to a limited extent, because my job, to put it simply, is to clean up after your efforts to clean up. I have a certain hold on you, but not, I know, a strong one—”

  “You got that right,” he said, smiling.

  “—in that you’d prefer Lord Khaavren didn’t learn what you’re up to.”

  “Don’t think you can push that too far, lady,” he said.

  “I know how far I can push it.”

  “Maybe. And what do I call you, by the way?”

  “Margaret,” I said. “I fancy Eastern names.”

  “Heh. You and Her Majesty.”

  He’d thrown that out, I assumed, to see if I was up on current gossip; I gave him a slight smile to show that I was. He said, “Very well, then, Margaret. For whom do you work?”

  “For whom do you work?”

  “But you know that—or, at least, you laid out a theory which I haven’t disputed.”

  “No, I’ve told you that I know the organization you work for, not where the orders came from to slide through the Fyres’s investigation.”

  “So do you know who gave those orders?”

  “Why don’t you tell me, Loftis?”

  He smiled. “So we’ve found a piece of information you lack.”

  “Maybe,” I said, returning his smile. “And maybe I’m just trying to find out if you’re planning to be straight with me.”

  “Trade?” he suggested.

  “No,” I said. “You’d lie. I’d lie. Besides, in point of fact, I know, anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s only one possibility.”

  He looked inscrutable. “If you say so.”

  I shrugged.

  He said, “All right, then. What do you want?”

  “As I told you before, cooperation.”

  “What sort of cooperation? Be specific. You don’t want to share information, because we’d both lie, and because you don’t seem to need any, and because there’s really nothing I need to know. So what do you want, exactly?”

  “Wrong on several counts,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “As I told you, I’m here to keep this business from getting out of hand. I’ll blow the whistle on you if I have to, but I, and those who’ve given me this job, would prefer I didn’t. Now, what we have—”

  “What cleanup are you talking about, Margaret?”

  “Oh, come on, Loftis. Your security’s been broken all over town. Didn’t you just have someone show up out of nowhere, interrogate your interrogators, lead your shadows all over the region, pump them some more, and then almost kill them in a public inn? Is that your idea of secrecy?”

  He studied me carefully, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. He grunted and said, “My compliments on your sources, Margaret.”

  “Well?”

  “Okay, you’ve made your point. What do you want?”

  “Let’s start with the basics,” I said. “I have to know what I’m working with.”

  “Heh,” he said. “There’s something you don’t know?”

  I smiled. “How many on your team?”

  “Six, with another three on standby.”

  “How many know what you’re up to?”

  “Domm and I.”

  “And Timmer,” I added, “as of last night.”

  He frowned. “Are you sure?”

  I shrugged. “She may not know precisely, but she knows something’s up, and, if she thinks about it, she’ll probably figure out most of it. She isn’t stupid.”

  He nodded. “Okay. What else do you want to know?”

  “What actually happened to Fyres.”

  Loftis shrugged. “He was murdered.”

  I shook my head. “I know that. But who killed him?”

  “An assassin. A good one. Hundred to one it was a Jhereg, and another hundred to one that we wouldn’t catch him even if we were trying to.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Who had it done?”

  “I don’t know,” said Loftis. “That isn’t what we were trying to find out.”

  “Sure, but you probably have an idea.”

  “An idea? Hell, yeah. His wife hated him, his son loathed him, one daughter wants to be rich and the other one wants to be left alone. Is that good enough for a start?”

  “No,” I said.

  He looked at me, then turned away. “Yeah, it wasn’t them. Or, at least, it wasn’t just them.”

  “Well, then?”

  “The House of the Orca, I think. And the Jhereg. And someone, somewhere, high up in the Empire—like, maybe, whoever it was who hired you?” He’d slipped his right hand down behind his leg, where he was, no doubt, concealing something, and I hadn’t even seen him do it.

  “No,” I said. “But good guess.”

  He shrugged. “What else do you want to know?”

  I wanted to know how Loftis had been conned, or pressured, into doing this in the first place, but this was the wrong time to ask. I said, “That’ll do for now. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Okay. Pleasure meeting you, Margaret.”

  “And you, Lieutenant.”

  I got up and walked out of the room, my back itching as I passed him, but he made no move. On the way out of the inn, I flipped the host a couple of imperials and apologized about the door. I walked around some corners to make sure I wasn’t being followed, then I teleported back to the blue cottage and went in.

  Vlad was waiting for me. He said, “Well?”

  One disadvantage of teleports is that they sometimes get you there too quickly—I hadn’t had time to sort out my thoughts yet. I said, “Is there anything to eat?”

  “No. I could cook something.”

  I nodded. “That would be good. I’m a bit tired.”

  “Oh?” said Vlad.

  “I’ll get to it.”

  He shrugged. Savn was near the hearth, sitting up and looking at nothing. Hwdf’rjaanci sat hear him, with Buddy at her feet. Buddy watched me as he always did, but wasn’t unfriendly. Loiosh sat on Vlad’s shoulder. I felt like I’d been through a pitched battle, and it was somehow amazing that no one in the house shared my exhaustion.

  Vlad said, “Do you want to hear my news first, or after yours?”

  I said, “Let’s look at your arm.”

  Vlad shrugged, started to speak, and then apparently realized that I wasn’t ready to think about anything quite yet. He wordlessly took off his shirt. I undid the bandage and inspected the wound, which seemed about the same as it had four hours earlier.

  Only four hours!

  I washed it and walked over to the linen chest to find something clean to wrap it in.

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “I suppose so,” said Vlad.

  “You’ve been stabbed,” said Savn.

  8

  EVEN BUDDY—TAIL THUMPING and floppy ears vainly trying to prick forward—was staring at him. He, in turn, was staring at Vlad’s arm—an intense stare, a creepy stare; he was standing up, his whole body rigid. Savn’s voice had the uneven rasp of long disuse, or of young adulthood, take your pick. He said, “You were stabbed with a knife.”

  “That’s right, Savn,” said Vlad, and I could hear him working to keep his voice even. He didn’t move a muscle. Hwdf’rjaanci wasn’t moving, either; for that matter, neither was I.

  “Was it really cold when it went in? Did it hurt? How deep did it go?”

 
Vlad made some odd sort of sound from his throat. Savn’s questions came slowly, as if there was a great deal of consideration behind them; but the tone was of casual curiosity, which in turn was at odds with his posture—it was very unsettling for me, and I could see that it was even more so for Vlad.

  “Not all knives have points, you know,” said Savn. “Some of them you can’t stab with, only cut.” As he said that word, he made a quick cutting gesture with his right hand; and that was creepy, too, because while he did it the rest of his body didn’t move, and his face didn’t change expression; it was only the arm movement and the emphasis in his voice.

  “Only cut,” he said again.

  Then he didn’t say anything else. We waited, not moving, for several minutes, but he’d said what he had to say. Vlad said, “Savn?” and got no response. Savn sat down again, but that also showed something—he hadn’t been told to. Vlad came over and knelt down facing him. “Savn? Are you . . . are you all right?”

  The boy just sat the way he’d been sitting all along. Vlad turned and said, “What happened, Mother?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think it’s a good sign. I know it’s a good sign. I don’t know how good, but we’re getting somewhere.”

  “You think that came from healing the injury?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it was time. Or the right stimulus. Or some combination. Have you been cut in the last year?”

  “Not even threatened,” said Vlad.

  “Then that may be it.”

  “What do we do now? Should I cut myself some more?” I wasn’t certain he was joking.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Talk about knives, maybe.”

  I was watching Savn the whole time, and at the word “knives” there was a perceptible twitch around the left side of his mouth. Vlad saw it, too. He said, “Savn, do you want to talk about knives?”

  The boy’s expression didn’t change, but he said, “You have to take care of the good ones. A good knife is expensive. The good ones stay sharp longer, too. Sometimes you have to cut people to heal them, and you should use a really good one, and a really sharp one for that. You can hurt someone more with a dull knife than with a sharp knife.”