“Are you afraid of knives?” said Vlad.
Savn didn’t seem to hear him. He said, “You should always clean it when you’re done—wash it and dry it. You have to dry it, especially. It won’t rust—the good ones are made so they don’t rust. But if you leave something on it, it can corrode, and that ruins it, and good knives are expensive. Good knives stay sharp. They get sharper and sharper the more they’re used, until they get so sharp they can cut you right in half just by looking at you.”
“Knives don’t get sharper on their own,” said Vlad.
“And they can stab you, too. If the point is sharp, it can stab all the way through you, and all the way through everybody, and stab the sky until it falls, and stab all the way through everything.”
Then he fell silent once more. After a couple of minutes, Vlad turned around and said, “He isn’t responding to what I say, Mother.”
“No,” she said. “But you got him started. That means, on some level, he is responding to you.”
Vlad turned back and looked at him some more. I tried to read the expression on Vlad’s face, then decided I didn’t want to.
He got up and came over to where Hwdf’rjaanci and I stood watching. He whispered to her, “Should I try again, or let him rest?”
She frowned. “Let him rest, I think. If he starts up again on his own, we’ll take it from there.”
“Doing what?” I said.
“I don’t know. I’m encouraged, but I don’t know.”
“All right,” said Vlad. “I’m going to make some klava.”
By the time it was done, Savn had gone to sleep—perhaps talking for the first time after a year’s silence had tired him out. We drank our klava standing on the far side of the room, near the stove and the oven. Hwdf’rjaanci eventually went over and sat down next to the boy, watching him while he slept. Vlad took a deep breath and said, “All right, let’s hear it.”
“Huh? Hear what?”
He laughed. “What you came in with an hour ago, and were so excited about that you had to take some time before you could talk about it. Remember?”
“Oh.” I felt myself smiling. “Oh, that.”
“Yeah. Let’s hear it.”
I nodded and gave him the short version, which took about ten minutes. He said, “Let’s have it all.”
“Do you really need it?”
“I won’t know until I hear it.”
I was going to argue, but then I realized that if he’d given me the short version of his sortie, I wouldn’t have made the connection to Lord Khaavren, and my talk with Loftis would have gone rather differently. So I filled in most of the details, helped now and then by Vlad’s questions. He seemed especially interested in exactly when everything had happened and in precisely how I’d fooled Loftis—that, in particular, he wanted me to go over several times, until I felt like I was being questioned under the Orb. I pleaded poor memory for the parts of it I didn’t want to talk about and eventually he relented, but when I was done, he looked at me oddly.
“What is it?” I said.
“Eh? Oh, nothing, Kiera. I’m just impressed—I didn’t know you had that in you.”
“The deception or remembering the details?”
“Both, actually.”
I shrugged. “And how was your day?”
“Much shorter, much simpler, much easier to report, and probably more mystifying.”
“Oh?”
“In a word: they’re closed.”
“Huh?”
“Gone. Finished. Doors locked, signs gone.”
“Who is?”
“All of them: Northport Securities, Brugan Exchange, Westman—all of them.”
“The whole building?”
“About three-quarters of the building, near as I can tell—but all of the companies that were part of Fyres’s little empire are gone.”
“Verra! What did you do?”
“I went to City Hall—remember, you saw me there?”
“Yes, but for what?”
“Well, the building was still open; I thought I’d find out who owned it.”
“Good thinking. And who owns the building?”
“A company called Dion and Sons Management.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “And they’re located right in the same building, and they’re out of business, too.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So much for bright ideas.”
“Well, what now, Vlad?”
“I don’t know. How can they sell the land if the company that claims ownership doesn’t exist? If they can’t, we could just forget the whole thing right now; all we’re really trying to accomplish is to keep the old woman on her land. But I’m afraid that, if we do that, someone will show up—”
“Is that it?”
“What do you mean and why are you smiling?”
“I just have a feeling that you’re hooked on this thing now—you have to find out what’s going on for its own sake.”
He smiled. “You think so? Well, you may be right, I am curious, but you show me some proof that our hostess here is going to be able to keep her lovely blue cottage and I’ll be gone so fast you’ll only feel the breeze.”
“Heh.”
He shrugged. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Aren’t you curious?”
“Oh, heavens yes. That’s a big part of why I signed onto this. But I’m willing to admit it, and you—”
“Yeah, well, ask me again tomorrow and I might give you a different answer. Meanwhile—”
“Yes. Meanwhile, what next?”
“Well, any interest in starting at the top and trying to find out who in the Empire is behind all this?”
“No.”
“Me, neither.” He thought for a minute. “Well, I’m not sure if I’ve gotten anywhere with the daughters, so we can’t count on that for anything, but we’ve got one foot in the door with our dear friend from the Tasks Group—thanks to you. And we’ve got another foot in the door with the Jhereg—thanks to you. So how about if we try for a third foot—anatomically interesting, if nothing else—and triangulate?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Finding this bank that closed down.”
I thought it over. “Not bad. Just keep worrying away at different sides of the problem and see what gives?”
He spread his hands. “That’s all I can think of.”
“It makes sense. Do you want me to do it?”
He nodded. “I think you’ll be more effective dealing with bankers than I will. I’m going to hang tight right here, and see if I can do Savn any good.”
He said it conversationally, but I could tell there was a lot of tension behind the words. I spoke lightly, saying, “Yes, that makes sense. I’ll see what I can find.”
“After lunch,” he suggested.
Lunch, on this occasion, involved a loaf of bread which was hollowed out and filled with some kind of reddish sauce that had large chunks of this and that in it, featuring pieces of chicken with the skin but without the bones. Savn sat at the table with us, eating mechanically and appearing, once more, oblivious to everything around him. This dampened the conversation a bit. It seemed odd that Savn happily used the knife in front of him to eat with and didn’t seem at all put out or unduly fascinated by it, but the ways of the mind are strange, I guess.
I suggested to Vlad that if the Jhereg really wanted to find him, all they had to do was keep track of garlic consumption throughout the Empire. He suggested that I not spread the idea around, because he’d as soon let them find him as quit eating garlic.
Then we got onto business. I said, “Mother, you said the bank closed?”
She nodded.
“Which bank?”
She glanced at me, then at Vlad, opened her mouth, closed it, shrugged, and said, “Northport Private Services Bank. Are you going to rob it?”
“If it’s closed,” I said, “I doubt there’s any mon
ey in it—or anything else for that matter.”
“Probably,” said Vlad. Then he frowned. “Unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
“I’m remembering something.”
I waited.
He said, “That gossip sheet, Rutter’s Rag, said something about the banks.”
“Yes?”
“It made a point of how quickly everyone got out of there.” He turned to Hwdf’rjaanci. “Do you know anything about that, Mother?”
She said, “I know it closed down fast. My friend Henbrook—it was her bank, too, and I don’t know what she’s going to do—anyway, she was in town that day, and she said they were open just like usual at thirteen o’clock, and at fourteen there were these wagons there—the big wagons, with armed guards and everything—and by noon it was shut up tight.”
Vlad nodded. “Two hours. They took two hours to clear the place out.”
Hwdf’rjaanci agreed. “They had a hundred men, and wagons lined up all down the street. And the other banks, too, went the same way, at the same time, near as I can tell.”
“In which case,” said Vlad, “they can’t have done a very good job of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean clearing things out. They were in a hurry to be gone before their customers got to them, and—”
“Then why not seal things inside?”
He shrugged. “Too much sorcery floating around. Get people mad enough, and at least one of them will be able to tear down the building.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll buy that. But do you really think it likely that there’s anything still in there?”
“Oh, I doubt there’s any money in it, but you never know what might be left behind.”
“You mean, papers and things?”
He nodded.
“If they went under, wouldn’t they be careful to clean up anything worth looking at?”
“How much time would it take to clean up every last scrap of paper, Kiera? Could they do it in two hours?”
“Probably not. But all the important ones—”
“Maybe. But maybe not. I don’t know how banks operate, but they’re bound to generate immense amounts of paperwork, and—”
“And you’re willing to wade through immense amounts of paper, just to see if there might be something useful?”
“Right now, any edge we can get amounts to a lot. Yeah, I don’t mind taking an evening to go through their wastebaskets—or, rather, papers that missed the wastebaskets—and see if there’s something that points us anywhere interesting.”
I thought it over for a minute. “You’re right,” I said. “I’ll look around and get what I can; it should be easy enough.” I turned to Hwdf’rjaanci. “Where is it?”
“In town,” she said. “Stonework Road, near the Potter’s Field Road.” She gave me more precise directions.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll look around it today. Since you’re so used to going to City Hall, can you—”
“Find out who owns it? Sure.”
“But just get the name and address.”
“Right. I should have cooked some vegetables to go with this.”
“I wouldn’t have had room for them,” I said.
“That’s true. You don’t eat much, do you?”
“I’m trying to keep my slender girlish figure.”
“Ah. That’s what it is.”
We finished, and, since I was doing the dangerous work, I allowed him to volunteer to clean up. Not that there was that much to clean up after Loiosh, Rocza, and Buddy got through with the plates.
“All right,” I said, “‘Once more upon the path, and may the wind cry our tale.’”
“Villsni?”
“Kliburr.” I headed out the door.
Vlad said, “I don’t know how you do it, Kiera.”
“Eh? You’re the one with all the quotations. I was just imitating you.”
“No, not that—teleporting right after a meal. I just don’t know how you manage.”
* * *
I MANAGED FINE, BRINGING myself, first, home to Adrilankha to acquire some tools, and then to the same teleport spot I’d used before, it being one of very few I knew in Northport. Then I set out to find the bank, which was easy from the directions I’d been given. I was looking forward to this. I’d never broken into a bank before, and certainly never in the middle of the day; the fact that the bank was now out of business only took a little of the fun away.
And it was, indeed, out of business—there was a large sign on it that spelled out “Permanently Closed,” along with the water and hand symbol for those who couldn’t read, and there were large boards over all the windows, and bars across the doors. I walked around it once. It was an attractive building, two stories high with a set of six pillars in front, and all done in very fine stonework. It took up about a hundred and forty meters across the front and went back about a hundred and ninety meters, and there were no alleys behind it—just a big cleared area that had become an impromptu produce market since it closed. The cleared area was, no doubt, to make sure that the guards had a good view.
On the other hand, now that it was closed, there seemed to be no security worth mentioning—certainly no one on duty there, and only the most basic and easily defeated alarm spells, proving that there was no money left in it. Anyone could have broken into the bank at this stage, and anyone would have done so just the way I was going to—which showed that no one thought there was anything at all of interest there. I shrugged. I’d know soon enough.
One of the devices I’d gotten from home was in the form of a tube that fit snugly into my hand. I palmed it and leaned against the building. I placed the tube against the wall, and in a few seconds I was seeing the inside of the building, and in a few more seconds I was seeing it clearly enough to teleport; no one was looking at me, so I did.
There was a minor spell inside to detect sorcery, so I disabled it before doing a light spell, then I started looking around.
There really isn’t any point in going into the details. It was big, and it was empty, and there was a lot of small offices, two vaults, and a basement, and I looked at them all, and it took me about four and a half hours, and at the end of it I had a bag full of scraps of paper. The good news, or the bad news, was that I’d found right away a very large bin full of papers that they’d never gotten around to throwing into the stove—good news because it meant there was a lot of material, bad news because if any of it was important it would have been taken or destroyed. But I wasn’t the one who had to go through them all.
I kept them sorted just a bit, in case Vlad would want to know which ones were found where. I knew that most of them, probably all of them, would be worthless, but Vlad would be stuck with going over them, so I had no problem doing the collecting. When I was done, I teleported directly back to the cottage. Buddy, who was outside, started barking when I appeared, but settled down quickly.
“Hey,” I told him. “Don’t worry. I got the goods.”
He wagged his tail.
Vlad came to the door, probably in response to Buddy, and held it open for me. He said, “Well?”
I held up the sack full of papers. “Enjoy.”
“No problems?”
“None. How about the boy?”
“He started talking about knives again—this time without any prompting at all. I can’t decide if that’s good or bad. Maybe it’s both. And he’s sleeping an awful lot.”
I sat down. The boy was asleep. Hwdf’rjaanci was sitting by him, quietly singing what sounded like a lullaby. Vlad accepted the papers. He seemed a bit startled by how heavy the bag was; he weighed it in his hands and whistled appreciatively.
“What did you find out?” I asked him.
“The banker was—or is—Lady Vonnith, House of the Orca, naturally. She owned the bank completely, according to the paperwork at City Hall, which may or may not be reliable. She’s also the ‘pointer’—whatever that means—for three other
banks, one of which has gone under and the other two of which are still solvent, but both of which have issued a ‘Hold of Purchase’; again, whatever that is. She lives not too far from Endra.” He gave me the address.
“Okay.”
“What’s a pointer?”
“I don’t know where the term came from,” I said. “But it means she’s in charge of the business, she runs it, even if she doesn’t own it. At a guess, she gets a whomping big cut of the profits, or she’s a part owner, or, most likely, she’s the full owner under a different name.”
“Why do that?”
I smiled. “Because if one of her banks files surrender of debts, which just happened, she can keep running the others without the debts of one being assessed against the income of the others, which the Empire is supposed to do.”
“Oh. Is that legal?”
“If she isn’t caught.”
“I see. What is a Hold of Purchase?”
“It means the bank has the right to keep your money.”
“Huh?”
“It was a law passed in the twelfth Teckla Reign. It prevents everyone from pulling his money out all at once and driving the bank under. There are all sorts of laws about when it can be invoked, and for how long, and what percentage of their cash they have to release, and to whom, and I don’t really understand it myself. But it may mean they’re in trouble, or, more likely, it means that with banks going under they’re afraid of a general panic and they’re taking steps to prevent one.”
“They,” he repeated. “The owners of the bank, or the Empire?”
“The owners request it, the Empire grants it—or doesn’t.”
“I see. That’s interesting. Who in the Empire would they go to to get such an order?”
“The Minister of the Treasury’s office.”
“Who’s the Minister of the Treasury?”
“His name is Shortisle.”
“Shortisle,” said Vlad. “Hmmm.”
“What?”
“That name came up in Fyres’s notes, somewhere. Something about it struck me as odd, but I didn’t pay much attention, and now I can’t remember what it was. I guess they met for dinner or something.”
“Hardly surprising,” I said. “The Minister of the Treasury and a major entrepreneur? Sure.”