Read Yendi for Free Online Page B

amusing.
    By the way, for those of you with an interest in history, the Orcas finally arrived, in time. They proved utterly useless as fighters on land, but Kieron won the battle anyway, thus securing the foundations of an Empire of Dragaerans.
    Shame about that.
    The path he walked is still known as Kieron Road, and leads from the new Imperial Palace down through the heart of the city, past the docks, and finally peters out with no ceremony somewhere in the foothills west of town. At some unspecified point, Kieron Road becomes Lower Kieron Road, and passes through a few not-very-nice neighborhoods. Along one of these stretches is the restaurant my father used to own, where he'd built up the small fortune that he later squandered buying a title in the Jhereg. The result of this is that I'm a citizen of the Empire, so now I can find out what time it is.
    When I reached the age of deciding to get paid for what I was doing anyway (beating up Dragaerans), my first boss, Nielar, worked out of a small store on Lower Kieron Road. Supposedly, the store sold narcotics, hallucinogens, and other sorcery supplies. His real business was an almost continuous game of shareba, which he somehow kept forgetting to notify the Empire's tax collectors of. Nielar taught me the system of payoffs to the Phoenix Guards (since most of them are actually Dragons, you can't bribe one about anything important, but they like to gamble as much as anyone, and don't like taxes any more than most), how to make arrangements with the organization, how to hide your income from the Imperial tax collectors, and a hundred other little details. When I took this area over from Tagichatn, Nielar was suddenly working for me. He was the only one who showed up to pay me the first week I was running the area. Later, he tore out the narcotics business and expanded to running s'yang stones. Then he put in a brothel upstairs. All in all, the place was my biggest single earner. So far as I know, the idea of holding out part of my cut never even occurred to him. I stood next to Kragar in the burnt-out ruins of the building. Nielar's body lay before me. The fire hadn't killed him; his skull was caved in. Loiosh nuzzled my left ear. After a long time, I said, "Arrange for ten thousand gold for his widow."
    "Should I send someone over to tell her?" Kragar asked.
    "No," I sighed, "I'll do it myself."
    Some time later, at my office, Kragar said, "Both of his enforcers were in there, too. One may be revivifiable."
    "Do it," I said. "And find the other one's family. See that they're well paid."
    "Okay. What now?"
    "Shit. What now? That cash just about exhausted me. My biggest source of income is gone. If someone delivered Laris's head to me right now, I couldn't pay him. If the revivification fails, and we have to pay that guy's family, that'll do it."
    "We'll have more in a couple of days."
    "Great. How long will that last?"
    He shrugged. I spun my chair and threw a dagger into the target on the wall. "Laris is too Verra-be-damned good, Kragar. He took one shot, before I could move, and crippled me with it. And you know how he could do it? I'll bet he knows every copper I make, where I make it, and how I spend it. I'll bet he has a list of everyone who works for me, strengths and weaknesses. If we get out of this thing, I'm going to build me the best spy network this organization has ever seen. I don't care if I have to keep myself a Verra-be-damned pauper to do it."
    Kragar shrugged. "That's if we get out of this."
    "Yeah."
    "Do you think you could get to him yourself, boss?"
    "Maybe," I admitted. "Given time. For that, though, I'd have to wait until some of the reports came back. And it'd take me at least a week, more like three, to set it up." Kragar nodded. "We need to be earning in the meantime." I thought over a few things. "Well, okay. There's one thing that might work to get some cash. I wanted to hold it in reserve, but it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to."
    "What is