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"A…" Emmis had started to say, "A spy?" but caught himself in time. "An informant?"
"You could call him that. An observer. The common term would be a spy."
So much for tact, Emmis thought. "And he's staying at the Crooked Candle in case the foreigners come back?"
"Or in case anyone else comes looking for them, yes."
Emmis nodded. "I'm surprised to see you taking such an interest in all this, my lord."
"Oh?"
"I wouldn't have thought a single attack would attract the attention of someone as highly placed as yourself."
"Ah, but this is more than a single attack. It is a political matter, and one that may be of great interest to my nephew and the other triumvirs."
Emmis blinked. "Why?" he asked. "It's just another squabble among the Small Kingdoms."
"No, it is not," Lord Ildirin said, raising his hands and touching the tips of his index fingers together to form a point. "In two regards, it is not. Firstly, it involves the Empire of Vond, which is a new thing in the land we call the Small Kingdoms. For more than two hundred years, the number of nations there increased – at the end of the Great War there were perhaps eighty of the so-called kingdoms, though in fact several did not actually have kings, and five years ago, when my brother died and my nephew became overlord of this city, there were two hundred and four. Two hundred and four, Emmis, in an area perhaps a third the size of the Hegemony. That's a totally absurd number. There was no point in trying to maintain diplomatic relations with all of them, or to regulate trade with them all – there were just too many to keep straight, and their alliances and feuds and rivalries shifted so quickly that there was no possibility of maintaining any coherent policies toward most of them. We dealt with them as necessary, particularly those on our own border, or with operating ports, but for most the best we could do was to simply ignore them. We had treaties and agreements with Morria and Lamum and the like, but Azdara or Thuth might as well have not existed at all. If we did try to develop a policy, borders would shift, civil wars erupt, and we might well find ourselves facing two or three kingdoms where there had been one before. It was hopelessly unmanageable. We had despaired of it."
He leaned forward, and stared Emmis straight in the eye, as he said, "And then Vond the Warlock came along, and conquered Semma and Ophkar and Ksinallion, and the next thing we knew seventeen of the Small Kingdoms were combined into the Empire of Vond, and we had gone from two hundred and four to one hundred and eighty-eight. For the first time in recorded history, the number of governments in the Small Kingdoms, in Old Ethshar, had decreased. For the first time."
"Oh," Emmis said.
Ildirin sat upright again. "We want to encourage this trend. Oh, we don't necessarily want all of Old Ethshar reunited; that might pose a challenge of an entirely different sort. But reducing the number from hundreds to dozens – that we would welcome. So we are very interested indeed in seeing what's to become of the Empire of Vond, on that count alone – and that's without even mentioning that it is ruled by an Ethsharite, and that the official language of the new government is Ethsharitic. We have hopes of dealing with Lord Sterren and his Imperial Council on a rational basis, untroubled by ancient feuds, byzantine family ties, absurd border disputes, irrational traditions, and the general barbarity of the region." He turned up an empty palm. "We may, of course, be wildly over-optimistic about this – but we certainly don't want to see the first Vondish ambassador to our city assassinated before we have even met him."
The carriage jerked and bumped just then as they rounded a corner; Emmis glanced out the window and saw that they had turned onto West Warehouse Street. It would never have occurred to him to take this route, but the coachman presumably knew what he was doing. Perhaps the horses didn't like the slope up to High Street.
Then he turned back to Lord Ildirin. "You said there were two things?"
"Yes." Ildirin nodded. "The other one is much simpler. The attack took place here, in Ethshar of the Spices. We don't allow that. That's been one way we handled all the two hundred-some Small Kingdoms, by imposing a very firm set of rules. One of those rules is that the Hegemony is neutral, that they shall not bring any of their thousands of petty squabbles here. We don't care whether the Imryllirionese think the Korosans are all demons in human guise, or the Korosans think Imryllirion is the Northern Empire reborn – here, in Ethshar, they will all treat each other as human beings, equal in rights and virtues, or we will either expel or hang them all, Korosan and Imryllirionese alike. They don't need to like one another, but by all the gods they will respect one another while they are within our walls, and they will obey our laws, or they will pay for it. If this Ashthasan, or these Lumethans, had hired an assassin in Hend or Ghelua or wherever he took ship to kill the Vondish ambassador, we would not be pleased, but we would do nothing. If they had hired a demonologist to sink his ship somewhere in the Gulf of the East, we would make no real protest. But once he set his foot on our docks, he was under our protection, and they either knew that, or should have known it. And for them to attack you, as well – an Ethsharite, in his home city – well, that privilege we reserve to our native-born scoundrels, and forbid to these imported troublemakers."
"All right," Emmis said. "So you're serious about finding out what happened and punishing those responsible."
"Yes."
"But then why are we here? Why are you, personally, my lord, questioning people in Shiphaven and Allston? Why not hire magicians to tell you where you can find the Lumethans and the people who attacked me? I know the magistrates call in magicians sometimes – why didn't you?"
Ildirin smiled, and ran the fingers of his left hand through his long white beard. "Once again, there are two reasons," he said. "I did not choose to involve any magicians because this is a political matter, and I do not care to attract the attention of the Wizards' Guild or the Council of Warlocks to it. I do not want either of them, nor any of the other magicians' guilds, meddling in this. The possibility that the Wizards' Guild will decide that the existence of the Empire of Vond violates the prohibition on magicians in government, due to the way it was created, and that the Empire must therefore be destroyed and its seventeen provinces restored to their former independence, is not as unlikely as I would like. I do not want the Council of Warlocks to decide that they are Vond's rightful heirs and therefore should rule the Empire, under the terms of their own rules on Called warlocks. Most particularly, I don't want both of these to happen simultaneously, as the resulting conflict between the two orders of magic might well destroy the World. Magicians do talk to one another, and so I prefer not to involve any magicians in this investigation." He grimaced. "At least, not yet. I may resort to magic, should the matter prove intractable by other means."
"That's one reason," Emmis acknowledged. "What's the other?"
The old man's smile returned.
"I was bored," he said. "I thought that investigating this would be entertaining."
"You like asking all these questions?" Gita asked, startling the men. Neither of them had noticed that she was listening, but she had indeed turned her attention from the window to her host.
Ildirin turned to her. "Why, yes, my dear, I do."
She shook her head in amazement. "I don't like answering them!"
"Well, answering them is rather different," Ildirin replied.
"I don't know anything about warlocks or treaties or the Small Kingdoms."
"But you know what happened in your uncle's i