“See you,” I said, and made tracks, aware of the weight of Loiosh clinging to my cloak, and to the increasing wetness against my side.
It was a long, long way to the main road, Kiera, but nothing untoward happened before I reached it. I headed back toward Northport, ducking into the woods as soon as there was enough woods to duck into.
“I think we might make it, Loiosh,” I said.
Then, “Loiosh?”
I stopped where I was, and if every assassin in the Empire had shown up just then, I don’t think I would have noticed. He was gripping the inside of my cloak, and the first thing I noticed was that his chest was still rising and falling, and there was still blood seeping from the two wounds. I took the cloak off and spread it on the ground, then I gently spread his wings so I could look at the injuries. They didn’t seem very deep, but the one near his wing was jagged and ugly. I spent a great deal of time looking for slivers of glass, but I didn’t find any, which was good.
I didn’t know what to do, so I cut the Jhereg cloak into strips and bandaged him up as best I could, binding his left wing tight to his body. Then I looked at the other wound and scowled mightily. I’d made jokes before, especially with Kragar and Melestev, about how they should be prepared to put a tourniquet around my throat if anyone cut it, but now that I was faced with the absurd problem of trying to put a bandage around Loiosh’s snakelike neck, there wasn’t anything funny about it. In the end, I just used a great deal of cloth and kept the wrapping loose enough so it wouldn’t stop his breathing, and then I pressed my hand against it and held it there.
“Loiosh?”
No response.
I picked him up and made my way through the woods, doing my best to keep track of where I was, but I’ve never been a good woodsman.
Some animals, I’m told, will fall into a deep sleep in order to heal themselves. I didn’t know if jhereg did that. Isn’t that funny? Loiosh and I had been together since I was a kid, and there were so many things I didn’t know about him. I wondered what that said about me, and whether it was something I wanted to hear. No doubt Savn—the old Savn, before he went away—would have had a great deal to say about it. He was a sharp kid, was Savn. I hoped that Savn wasn’t gone forever. I hoped Loiosh wasn’t gone forever. Cawti, the old Cawti, the woman I’d married, was probably gone forever. How much of all of this was my fault?
These were my thoughts, Kiera, as I tried to make my way to Northport, moving as fast as I could with the bundle of my familiar in front of me and thicket all around me. Good thing it was still daylight or I’d have killed myself; too bad it was daylight, because the Jhereg would have an easier time finding me. Where were they now? Had they arrived in force, and were they combing the woods, or had they not yet learned that I had escaped? They must, by now, have realized that Stony was dead, and at least they’d be sending someone to investigate.
There was a flapping above me, and I looked up, and there was Rocza. She landed on my shoulder and looked at me. Okay. I can take a hint.
I stopped, spread out the cloak, and removed the bandages from Loiosh’s wounds. Rocza waited patiently while I did so, then gave me a look of stern disapproval and began methodically licking the wounds clean. I don’t know if there’s something about jhereg saliva, or if she was using her poison and there’s something about that, but the bleeding had stopped by the time she was done. I reached out to pick up Loiosh, but Rocza hissed at me and I stopped. She picked him up in her talons, flapped once, and took to the air, though it seemed with a bit of trouble.
“Okay,” I said. “Have it your way.”
She flew in a careful circle, just over my head.
“I hope,” I said aloud, “that you can lead me back home. And that you want to, for that matter.”
I don’t know if she understood me, or if she thought of it on her own, but she began flying, and she did such a good job of letting me stay in sight that it can’t have been accidental. From time to time she would carefully lay Loiosh down in a tree limb, rest for a moment, and then fly around as if to scope out the area—maybe that’s what she was doing, in which case Loiosh had certainly taught her well, because we didn’t run into anyone. Once, when she had deposited Loiosh, another jhereg came and sat near him. Rocza returned and spread her wings and hissed with great enthusiasm, and the other jhereg flew off. I applauded silently.
Eventually the woods gave way to grassland, and I felt rather naked and exposed walking through it, except that by then it was growing dark, so I delayed a little while to give the darkness more time to settle in and get comfortable. Rocza didn’t like that, and hissed at me, but then she probably decided she needed the rest, too, so she set Loiosh down in the grass and licked him some more, and when the light had faded enough we started off again.
It took a long time, but eventually we found the road through the woods, and then we found the hideous blue cottage, and we were home. Buddy came out, looked at us, barked once, then followed us in. Rocza flew into the house, went straight to the table, and gently laid Loiosh on it. It was only when I noticed how pleasantly warm the place was that I realized I’d been cold.
The old woman stood up.
“It’s a long story,” I said, “and I don’t think you want to hear it. But Loiosh has been hurt, and—wait a minute.”
Rocza flew over to where Savn was staring off into space, landed on his shoulder, and hissed at him. Savn very slowly turned to face her. The old woman and I looked at each other, then turned back to them.
Rocza hissed again, then flew over to the table. Savn followed her with his eyes. She flew back to his shoulder, hissed, then flew back to Loiosh.
Savn rose unsteadily to his feet and walked over to the table, and looked down at Loiosh.
“I’ll need some water,” he said to no one in particular. “And a small needle, as sharp as you can find, and some stout thread, a candle, and clean cloth.”
He worked on Loiosh far into the night.
Interlude
“You’re looking puzzled again, Cawti.”
“Yes. Your conversation with Loftis.”
“What about it?”
“How did you convince him that you were involved with the Empire?”
“Just what I said. I fed him a few details about things his group had been involved in.”
“But what details? What activities of theirs did you know about?”
“You and Vlad.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, he wanted to know that, too. He positively interrogated me about it.”
“And you said?”
“That I didn’t care to discuss it.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry.”
“I understand. How is Loiosh?”
“You want me to get ahead of the story?”
“Yes.”
“Loiosh is fine, as far as I know.”
“Okay.”
“Should I go on?”
“Please do.”
“All right.”
Chapter Thirteen
I sat for a long time after Vlad had finished speaking, digesting his words slowly and carefully, the way one might digest a seventeen-course Lyorn High Feast on Kieron’s Eve—a day I’ve never celebrated for personal reasons, though I’ve had the feast. I kept looking back and forth between Loiosh and Savn, who had perhaps gone a long way toward healing each other, although Loiosh showed no signs of injury save that he wasn’t moving much, and Savn showed no signs of healing save that he’d moved a little bit.
“Well?” said Vlad when he’d judged I’d been silent long enough.
“Well what?”
“Have you put it together?”
“Oh. Sorry, I was thinking about”—I gestured toward Savn—”other things.”
He nodded. “Do you want to try, or should I explain it?”
“Some of it, at least, is pretty obvious.”
“You mean, the land deal?”
“Yes. It was just a subtheme to the
concerto: a few of them need to come up with a lot of cash in a hurry, so they buy out Fyres’s companies cheap, since they’re going under, anyway, then threaten people like our good Hwdfrjaanci with eviction to make them worried, then vanish so they don’t know what’s happening so they’ll panic, and then, in a day or two, our heroes will come back with offers to sell them the land at outrageous prices, in cash.”
He nodded. “With nice offers of loans at Jhereg-style interest rates to go with them.”
“So our hostess isn’t really in danger of losing her cottage, and, if she’s careful, she can probably avoid being overcharged too much. In fact, if we can come up with some cash for her, she can even avoid the interest rates.”
“I think we can do that,” said Vlad.
“Between us,” I said, “I have no doubt that we can.”
“What about the rest of it?” he said. “Can you put it together?”
“Maybe. Do you know it all?”
“Almost,” he said. “There’s still a piece or two missing, but I have some theories; and there’s also a lot of background stuff that you can probably explain.”
“What’s missing?”
“Loftis.”
“You mean, why did Reega have him killed?”
“Yes. If it was Reega.”
“You think Vonnith was lying?”
“Not lying. But we don’t know yet if it was Reega’s choice, or if she just arranged it.”
“Why would she arrange it?”
“Because she was in a position to. She had a lot to gain, and she was in touch with Loftis.”
“How do you know that?” I said.
“Because of the way she reacted when I told her the Empire was covering up something.”
“Oh, right. I’d forgotten. Yeah, she might have just arranged it. But, if so, who did she arrange it for? And why?”
“Good questions. That’s what I’m still missing.” He shook his head. “I wish I knew what ‘he didn’t break the stick’ means.”
“I think I know,” I said.
“Huh?”
“It goes back to the Fifth and Sixth Cycles, and even into the Seventh, before flashstones.”
“Yes?”
“Some elite corps were given sorcery. Nothing fancy, just a couple of location spells, and usually one or two offensive weapons to be used over a distance. They weren’t all that effective, by the way.”
“Go on.”
“Whoever was the brigade’s sorcerer would bind the spells into a stick so that any idiot could release the spell. They used wood because binding them into stone took longer and was more difficult, although also more reliable.” I shrugged. “You point the stick at someone, and you release the spell, which doesn’t take a lot of skill, and you get a nasty scrape on your palm, and whoever you pointed the stick at has a much nastier burn. You can kill with it, and at a pretty good distance, if your hand is steady and your eye is good and, mostly, if the spell was put on right in the first place. Which it usually wasn’t,” I added, “according to the histories.”
“But what does—”
“Right. The thing is, the sticks were smoothed a bit to take the spell, but otherwise they were just sticks. Once you got into battle, you might be looking around and see one on the ground, but you’d have no way of knowing if it was discharged or not—that is, unless you were fairly skilled, the only way to find out if it had been used already was to discharge it. You can imagine that it might be embarrassing to pick one up on the field and assume it had a charge when it didn’t, or even the reverse.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“So the custom was to break it in half as soon as you’d discharged it.”
“And you think that’s what he was talking about?”
“ ‘Breaking the stick’ became a handy way of referring to leaving a signal, especially a warning.”
“How long since it’s been used?”
“A long time.”
“Then—”
“He was a military historian, Vlad. Remember how he kept making references to obscure—”
“Got it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it meant something else, but ...”
“Well, that’s all very interesting.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and I could practically hear the tides of his thoughts break against the shore of facts as he put things together in new ways; I waited and wondered. “Hmmm. Yes, Kiera, it’s all very interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think I have the rest of it. And then some.”
“And then some?”
“Yeah, I got more than I wanted. But never mind that, it doesn’t matter. Can you put it together?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Well, let’s see what we have. We have Fyres murdered, and someone desperate to hide that fact. We have companies he was into falling like Teckla at the Wall of Baritt’s Tomb. We have someone, or someones, in the Empire desperate to hide the fact that Fyres was murdered. Am I doing all right so far?”
“Yep. Keep going.”
“Okay. We have Jhereg involvement with Fyres, and Imperial involvement with the banks, and—wait a minute.”
“Yes?”
“Fyres owed the Jhereg. Fyres owed the banks. The banks and the Jhereg were depending on Fyres. The Empire was protecting the banks, and the banks were supporting the Empire. Have I got it?”
“Right. Conclusion?”
“The Empire is working with the Jhereg.”
“Exactly,” said Vlad. “Supporting the Jhereg, borrowing from the Jhereg, and, probably, using the Jhereg.”
“Just as you were saying.”
“Yeah, I guess it all seemed to be heading that way. But push it a little further, Kiera: what would the empire do if word of the Jhereg’s influence in the Empire was about to emerge into the public?”
I shrugged. “Everything it could to hide that fact.”
“Everything?”
I nodded. “Yes. Or, if it’s what you want, everything including covering up the Fyres murder, and even—yes, and even murdering their own investigator if they thought he was no longer reliable.”
“Yep. That’s what ‘he didn’t break the stick’ meant. It bothered me that someone like Loftis would be that careless. It either meant we were wrong about him or there was something we didn’t know, and now we’ve figured it out.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was set up by his own side.”
Vlad nodded. “He wasn’t given the warning he was supposed to get if there was any danger. They’d probably picked that spot out, and there was supposed to be some indication either that it was all right or that it wasn’t. And so he thought he was safe, and that’s why they could take him out so easily.”
“Right. Domm?”
“His name popped into my head,” said Vlad.
I nodded. “Domm would be a safe guess. Reega set it up, and Domm made sure Loftis wouldn’t be ready to defend himself, and they used you—”
I stopped, and looked at Vlad. He said, “What?” Then, “Oh.”
“They were too ready, and you were too convenient.”
“I didn’t give the game away,” said Vlad. “I didn’t slip up. They already knew about me when I walked in, which means they already knew about you.”
I nodded. “And that explains something else: namely, why it’s been so easy to fool these people. We haven’t fooled anyone, except maybe Vonnith. They’ve been playing with us, and letting us think we were playing with them.”
“Not Vonnith, either,” said Vlad. “She was onto me from the moment I first showed up.”
“Stony?”
“Yes. I figured that it was just bad timing, him being there right then. But she must have gotten hold of him when I got there, and then all she had to do was delay me until he was ready to move.”
I nodded.
He said, “Well, aren’t we a couple of idiots?”
I nodded again. “Stony,” I said. “That son of a bitch.??
?
“What now, then?”
“Now, Vlad? What is there to do? We’ve solved Hwdf rjaanci’s problem, which was all we intended, and we’ve figured out what’s going on, and we’ve also figured out that they had our number from the beginning. We’re done.”
He stared at me. “You mean, let them get away with it?”
I grinned. “I will if you will.”
“For a minute there,” he said, “you had me worried.” Then he frowned. “When do you think they caught onto us?”
“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?”