“Just a couple of names, along with where I can find them.”
He gave them without hesitation. I wrote them down.
“Okay,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.” I gave him three imperials because I like to leave people happy in case I need them again, and because I could afford it. There had been a time when I would have done all manner of things for those imperials I was now throwing around. There was a time when I had.
“With this,” I said as I opened the door, “you’re liable to turn a profit.”
He looked a bit embarrassed, as if I’d discovered a secret. Which I had, but not that one, and it was one I had expected to discover. I headed back out onto the street.
I was only a little worried, and that was because I always get nervous when I go to collect information and learn exactly what I expect to learn.
Yeah, he’d gone right down the line with what I’d been looking for. No surprise; I’d been pretty sure from when Vincent had first given me the information.
You see, Vincent was right.
When I was young, sometime before Loiosh, some people had run an operation like the one Vincent had described, and had tried to muscle in on various local merchants, “shredding the carrion,” as the saying is. I knew about it even then because one of the merchants they’d gone after was my grandfather, who, while not exactly a merchant, made a good enough income to attract their attention.
Things got a little complicated, but they had eventually learned not to mess around with an old witch and a young punk. So, yeah, I was familiar with that sort of operation. My grandfather, in a futile effort to keep me from being involved, had told me that this sort of thing happened from time to time in South Adrilankha, when the greedy had no one to prey on but the desperate.
But Vincent was right; the Jhereg didn’t operate that way. Putting pressure for a few coins on a few merchants was small-time, and involved more risk of attention by the Empire than the payoff could ever be worth. Sure, once in a while some independent operator might do something like that, and the Jhereg would either absorb him or crush him, as the case may be. When I was running an area, I wouldn’t have put up with anything like that for more than about five minutes. No one else I’d heard of would have either; it’s just bad for business.
So, the fact that it was happening now was either a hell of a coincidence, or it meant something else entirely, and you can guess which way I’d bet.
I made two more calls, and spent another eight imperials, and didn’t learn anything new, but confirmed what Goodman Donover had told me, and got a name, description, and address for at least one of the Easterners who were putting the squeeze on the merchants in Ristall Market. His name was Josef; a good, Eastern name.
I had never put a shine on an Easterner; I hoped I wouldn’t have to this time. Chances are I wouldn’t. But I might have to mess him up a bit.
“Well, Loiosh. We now know everything we have to know in order to go out and get killed.”
“Oh, good, Boss. That’s just what I was hoping for.”
“Okay, almost all. I need to reach a couple of the Irregulars for another piece, but it ought to be easy enough!’
It was. It took being patient for a few hours, but I got it.
I got back late that night after picking up a celebratory bottle of a wine I’d never encountered before. Lying on the bed I found a brief note from Kiera saying she would look for me tomorrow. I was pleased that my friends were watching out for me, and sorry that I’d missed her; especially as I’d have had the chance to brag a bit about having solved the puzzle, or at least a big chunk of it.
What would I have told her if she’d been here? Maybe something obscure and epigrammatical, like, at some point, every complex situation will resolve itself into something simple and straightforward. The trouble is, by then it’s usually too late.
Maybe this time it wasn’t.
“You sure, Boss?”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I’m just thinking, if the Demon Goddess has been messing around in your head—”
“Loiosh, are you trying to be funny?”
“No, Boss. I mean it. I’m just a little worried. You have a plan, you’ve figured out what’s going on, only what if—”
“This is just what I need right now. I desperately need to have my confidence shattered by—”
“Boss, I’m just—”
“Yeah, okay.”
Well, he’s my familiar. That means that it’s his job to worry about stuff like that. It also means that, if I have something niggling around in the back of my head, sometimes it’s his job to bring it to the front. But I didn’t like it much. I didn’t like thinking about it, and I particularly didn’t like it that he might be right. If you can’t trust your own thoughts, what do you have?
“Uh, did that help, Boss?”
“No, but it didn’t hurt. It was lousy wine anyway.”
I went downstairs to borrow a broom and cleaned up the broken glass. The wine-stain on the wall I left there, figuring it would make a good reminder, though of what I wasn’t exactly sure.
What if Loiosh were right? What if everything in my head was planted there by the Demon Goddess for her own reasons—reasons which I no longer trusted, if I ever had? Or what if it was just the product of illusory logic and warped perceptions?
And what if I spent all my time so worried about that I couldn’t do anything?
Well, okay then. Sometime, there was a reckoning due between me and the Demon Goddess. But for now
“You’re right, Boss. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Don’t worry about it, Loiosh. You’re just bouncing back what’s in my own head. We move on. It’s time to make it bloody. And if some of the blood is mine, so be it.”
I took out my daggers and sharpened them up.
Tomorrow was liable to be an interesting day. 12. Chicken With Shallots
Mihi cleared away the salad plates, and topped off our wine. I only knew in general what was coming next—it would be some sort of fowl. In the past, there had been the old standard capon in Eastern red pepper sauce, duck with plum sauce, pheasant stuffed with truffles, skirda in wine sauce, and what Valabar’s modestly called—
“Chicken with shallots,” said Mihi, holding a platter and those wonderful spoons he wielded so deftly.
“What are shallots?” said Telnan.
“Something like scallions,” said Mihi, before I could say the same thing.
As Mihi served us, steam rolled up like a beckoning hand.
I can’t tell you everything about how they build it, but I know that it involves de-boned and skinned chicken (which is unusual—Valabar’s generally prefers its fowls with bone and skin) and then sliced up, and pan-fried in butter, along with minced garlic, shallots, and the delicious (in spite of its name) Imperial fungus. There is salt, of course, and I’m pretty sure there’s white pepper. They pour a sauce over it, and I’m afraid I can tell you little about the sauce, except that it’s built with the chicken, and so has a lot of the same flavors, along with a bit of tomato, the ubiquitous Eastern red pepper, and wine.
Along with the chicken, they served us baby steamed carrots and miniature red tubers with clarified butter.
I had to just sample things; there was no way to eat it all if I were planning to even taste the next course. But that’s the sort of decision you have to make—less of one thing to have some of another. I wish all of my decisions were as painless.