Orca by Steven Brust Read Free Book Online Page A

clearly.”
    “My part isn’t big, and what I need isn’t big, but it’s part of something big. I didn’t want to ask you to meet me somewhere because I’m asking for a favor, and you don’t get anything from it, so I didn’t want to put you out. But it isn’t a favor for me, it’s for someone else.”
    He nodded. “That makes everything completely clear, then.”
    “What do you know of Fyres?”
    That startled him a little. “The Orca?”
    “Yes.”
    “He’s dead.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “He owned a whole lot of stuff.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Most of it will end up in surrender of debts.”
    “That’s what I like about you, Stony. The way you have of reeling out information no one else knows.”
    He made a loose fist with his right hand and drummed his fingernails on the desk while looking at me. “What exactly do you want to know?”
    “The Organization’s interest in him and his businesses.”
    “What’s your interest?”
    “I told you, a favor for a friend.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Is it some big secret, Stony?”
    “Yes,” he said. “It is.”
    “It goes up pretty high?”
    “Yeah, and there’s a lot of money involved.”
    “And you’re trying to decide how much to tell me just as a favor.”
    “Right.”
    I waited. Nothing I could say would help make up his mind for him.
    “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll tell you this much. A lot of people had paper on the guy. Shards. Everybody had paper on the guy. There are going to be some big banks going down, and there are going to be some Organization people taking sudden vacations. It isn’t just me, but we’re in it.”
    “How about you?”
    “I’m not directly involved, so I may be all right.”
    “If you need anything—”
    “Yeah. Thanks.”
    “How did he die?”
    Stony spread his hands. “He was out on his Verra-be-damned boat and he slipped and hit his head on a railing.”
    I raised an eyebrow at him.
    He shook his head. “No one wanted him dead, Kiera. I mean, the only chance most of us had to ever see our investment back was if his stuff earned out, and with him dead there’s no way of it ever earning out.”
    “You sure?”
    “Who can be sure of anything? I didn’t want him dead. I don’t know anyone who wanted him dead. The Empire sent their best investigators, and they think it was an accident.”
    “All right,” I said. “What was he like?”
    “You think I knew him?”
    “You lent him money, or at least thought about it; you knew him.”
    He smiled, then the smile went away and he looked thoughtful—an expression I doubt most people would ever have seen. “He was all surface, you know?”
    “No.”
    “It was like he made himself act the way he thought he should—you could never get past it.”
    “That sounds familiar.”
    He ignored that. “He tried to be polished, professional, calculating—he wanted you to believe he was the perfect bourgeois. And he wanted to impress you—he always wanted to impress you.”
    “With how rich he was?”
    Stony nodded. “Yeah, that. And with all the people he knew, and with how good he was at what he did. I think that part of it—being impressive—was more important to him than the money.”
    I nodded encouragingly. He smiled. “You want more?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Then I’d better know why.”
    “It’s a little embarrassing,” I said.
    “Embarrassing?” He looked at me the way I must have been looking at Vlad when I realized that he was embarrassed.
    “I have this friend—”
    “Right.”
    I laughed. “Okay, skip it. I owe someone a favor,” I amended untruthfully. “She’s an old woman who is about to be kicked off her land because everybody is selling off everything to stave off surrender of debts because of this mess with Fyres.”
    “An old woman being foreclosed on? Are you kidding?”
    “No.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “Would I make up something like that?”
    He shook his head, chuckling to himself. “No, I suppose not. So what do you plan to