“What I am proposing, is that I can get you somewhere on Wiclov. And I would do this out of the godly goodness of my own heart … provided you also bury that fat bastard.”
Shara sips her wine, but does nothing more. She sees there is a suitcase sitting beside Vohannes, as white and velvet and ridiculous as his gloves. By the seas. Have I honestly enlisted a clown as an operative? But, she notes, there’s a second suitcase on his opposite side. Were the contents of the safety deposit box that extensive?
“How would you get us somewhere on Wiclov?”
“Well, that’s the tricky bit. … I’m not the sort for sneaky, underhanded political machinations, despite what is happening, ah, right now. My style is much more”—he twirls a slender finger, thinking—“grand idealist. I win support specifically because I don’t dirty myself.”
“But now you are willing to do so.”
“If that fly-ridden turd of a human being is genuinely, really connected to the people who attacked us, who killed Pangyui, it would not grieve my heart excessively to see him removed from the political theater, no. But while I can’t plant the dagger in his back, perhaps I could pass the dagger along to someone more talented in its use.”
The waiter pounces back out of the reeking mist with a large, flat stone covered in small holes. The stone swims with butter, and the holes appear to be stuffed with tiny beige buttons.
“What are you saying, Vo?” she asks again.
Vohannes sniffs and picks up a fork the size of a needle. “I have a friend in Wiclov’s trading house. That’s how he made himself, you know—Wiclov is one of the few old-guard icons to actually dabble in trade. Made his living with potatoes. Seems appropriate for him, somehow. Something that grows in the mud, away from the sun. …” He spears a snail, pops it in his mouth, grunts, and says around it, “Haat. Mm.” He maneuvers the little ball of flesh onto his teeth, breathes, and swallows. “Very hot. Anyways. I have convinced this contact within Wiclov’s trading house to pass along all investments and purchases Wiclov has made in the past year.” He smiles triumphantly and taps the second suitcase beside his chair. “I am sure there is something very rotten going on under his robes, let’s say. Probably nothing smutty, unfortunately—once a Kolkashtani, always a Kolkashtani, and Wiclov is about as Kolkashtani as they get—but something. And I would love for you to find out.”
Shara cuts to the point: “Is he funding the Restorationists?”
“I’ve taken a glance at the pages, and I admit that I haven’t seen that, unfortunately. Though there is some oddness that stands out.”
“Like what?”
“Like the loomworks.”
“Like … Wait, the what?”
“Loomworks,” says Vohannes again. “Wiclov has bought, outright bought, three loomworks around the city. You know, the big weaving factories they use to make rugs?”
“I understand the general idea. …”
“Yes. He’s bought them. Not cheap, either—and he hasn’t changed the names.”
“So you think he doesn’t want anyone to know,” says Shara.
“Yes. But there must be something else in all his history. I just can’t see it. But then, I don’t have a massive intelligence agency behind me.”
She considers it. “Did he buy these loomworks after the month of Tuva?”
“Ah … Well, I can’t recall off the top of my head with complete accuracy, but I suppose so.”
Interesting, she thinks. “How good is your source?”
“Quite good.”
“Yes, but how good?”
Vohannes hesitates. “I know him very personally,” he says slowly. “That should be enough for you.”
Shara almost asks further, but then she understands. She coughs uncomfortably and says, “I see.” She watches him take another sip of wine. He is sweating, and pale; suddenly he seems wrinkled and soft, as delicate as finely made linen. “Listen, Vo. I … I am going to do something I don’t often do for willing sources.”
“What’s what?”
“I am going to give you the chance to reconsider.”
“You what?”
“I am going to give you the opportunity to rethink what you’re doing here,” says Shara. “Because if you offer me those papers again, I will use them. It would be unprofessional of me not to. And when someone asks where I got them from—and they will ask—then I will have to tell them. I can’t predict what will happen, but once this is all played out, there is a chance that, in the future, in some very public, very accessible forum in Saypur, someone will testify that Vohannes Votrov, City Father of Bulikov, provided valuable material to the government of Saypur with the full understanding that another City Father would be damned by it. And a thing like that … It has repercussions.”