บท 18: First Meeting VI

"Alright," he said. "Tell me about this new use you have for my skills."

Lyvia leaned forward on the desk, her fingers laced before her.

"The task is one of extraction, or perhaps more accurately, a rescue. One of my agents has been compromised and is being held by a criminal crew leader of some small reputation by the name of Anders. He doesn't know that she works for me—she doesn't even know that she works for me—but has deduced that her handler is merely a middle rung on the ladder. He has demanded to speak to 'the boss' in order to negotiate her release."

The Grim nodded. "Agent… you mean spy?"

Lyvia shrugged. "Spy, informant, snitch… whatever it pleases you to call her role, she has been paid to keep her eyes and ears open for certain information that is in my interest, not specifically regarding Anders but just that portion of Luthadel society generally, and report it back to me via her handlers."

The Grim almost seemed to be suppressing a chuckle.

"You sent a noble in undercover to try and spy on the underworld?"

"She's not a noble. The agent's name is Jesserine, and as it happens she is a skaa."

That seemed to give The Grim pause. It was understandable that he would assume the agent was a noble. You could buy skaa for less than he'd been paid just for coming tonight, let alone what he would end up getting paid for participating in the rescue.

But that wasn't the point. Jesserine was one of Lyvia's people, even if she didn't know it, and she was in this mess because of the surveillance she had been doing on Lyvia's behalf. It didn't matter if Jess was a skaa or a noble, Lyvia looked after her own. She had found that the loyalty that came from protecting her agents was more than worth the price, not to mention helping her sleep at night.

"We don't leave our people behind. Is that a problem?" she asked.

The Grim was as unreadable as ever, and gave a shrug that was barely perceivable beneath his cloak.

"Do you know where this Jess is being held?"

"Held currently, no, but we have required her to be present at the negotiation, so we know where she will be. She may be there already, but we can't be certain. The handover is set to take place in an abandoned workshop in the Sootwarrens, tomorrow evening."

"So you want me to find where in the building she's being held and break her out?"

"On the contrary, we want you there as backup when we go in to negotiate."

"That… seems like an unnecessary risk."

So he's not always blunt, thought Lyvia. Obviously what he'd like to say is that it's a stupid plan.

"While I have no doubt you could make short work of the crew and extract Jess yourself, we would prefer to avoid violence if possible. Furthermore, we believe that Anders has information that would be valuable to us, and negotiation is more likely to make him disclose what we want to know."

"If you want answers from the man, I have easier ways of getting them."

"Easier for you perhaps. I expect Anders will prefer my approach, and it would be beneficial to remain on good terms with him going forward."

"Oh, so you want to win him over? Get another crew on your payroll? Expand your criminal empire?"

"He has potential to be a valuable asset, but for intelligence only. Make no mistake, it pays to have your ear to the ground in all quarters of society. Some of my agents may be criminals, but I pay them for their information, I do not pay them to commit crimes. I am a businesswoman, not a crime boss. Some of my rivals, on the other hand, are crime bosses, and worse, and I need to be aware of their schemes."

The Grim mulled this over. At least, Lyvia assumed that was what he was doing as he lapsed into silence again… He seemed reluctant when he spoke again, as though debating with himself if he even wanted to say the words.

"If you insist on following through with this idea, then you want swords on hips, not knives in the dark. If you want to avoid violence, you need your weapons to be seen. A hidden blade is no deterrent."

A somewhat poetic way of putting things, and Lyvia understood the conventional wisdom it espoused. Hidden forces could be the key to winning a conflict, but if you sought to avoid conflict altogether, you needed overt power to act as a deterrent.

The trouble was the kind of manpower needed to convince Anders not to try picking a fight would likely make him flee before they could begin their negotiations. The other trouble was that kind of manpower was beyond what Lydia could afford with the funds available to her. Not that she wanted to admit to that…

"A hidden blade may not be a deterrent, but an unexpected blade suddenly revealed does far more to instill fear into your opponent!" chimed Deserea.

Lyvia allowed herself to smile. This was an interjection she approved of. Trust a Rioter to think of things from the psychological angle. You could only strengthen emotions that already existed, and so half the skill of rioting was being able to read the emotions of your target, or to elicit those emotions in your target yourself.

The Grim didn't look convinced, inasmuch as his expression could be read at all. In theory, he could be just as powerful at rioting as Deserea was, but emotional manipulation wasn't just about raw power, it was about finesse and insight and needed practice to become a true expert.

Lyvia hadn't had the opportunity to question any mistborns first hand, but from what she had read, it wasn't unusual for mistborn to be so enamored with the combat potential of their other powers that they neglected their mental abilities. The advantage of specialization was the opportunity to realize your maximum potential with that ability.

"So you're hoping if I jump out and say 'boo' that Anders and his men will all fall over in fright?"

"Not at all, I'm hoping that you don't need to jump out at all," said Lyvia. "If things take a turn for the worse, then you would reveal yourself, and while I doubt anyone will be falling over themselves, there is good reason to hope that your introduction to the situation would cause Anders to reassess whatever actions he has planned."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then the opportunity for negotiation will have irrevocably broken down and there will be nothing stopping us from adopting your original plan."

"Find the girl, break her out and kill anyone who tries to stop us?"

"Your words, not mine. I would have said 'subdue' or 'incapacitate.'"

"A lot of people who try to hire me, they either want no witnesses or they want to send a message. Even pay extra to make sure everyone ends up dead."

"If killing warrants an additional fee in your contracts, does that mean you'd offer a lower price for a contract mandating no killing?" Lyvia asked playfully.

The Grim took the question utterly seriously. "I don't like to kill if I don't have to, but if someone is trying to kill me, I don't like to fight with my hands tied. I never saw a contract worth getting killed over."

"You prefer to be given leeway regarding the lethality of your approach?"

"I prefer to keep my options open, yes."

"So you would charge less for a contract with fewer restrictions on your actions generally?"

"You pay for everything you want me to do. You pay for everything you want me to not do. You pay for everything I have to do to get the job done. The more complicated you make it, the more I charge. And Lady, you certainly aren't taking the simple path."

"I admire the direct approach," countered Lyvia, "but one should never let short term simplification be a hindrance to one's longer term goals. Additional complication is justified to simplify matters down the road."

"Oh by the Lord Ruler's chattering teeth, enough already!" cried Deserea. "Neither one of you wants to kill anyone, that's great, now can we stop talking circles around each other and make an actual plan?" She slumped back into her chair and readjusted her fur stole.

…Lyvia wondered if the cold was eroding Desereas' already limited patience more than she had anticipated.

Perhaps the risk of having the fireplace lit would have been worth Deserea being comfortable enough to hold her tongue for five minutes. More demonstration of her being impulsive and immature I suppose, Lyvia thought. It wasn't doing too much harm right now, but there would potentially be occasions in the future where such an outburst could be extremely harmful. She made a mental note.

"Before we go into more detail regarding our plan, I should like to discuss the matter of payment," said Lyvia.

"I already told you," said The Grim. "How much this costs you depends on how complicated you want to make it. I still recommend you forget all about talking to this guy and let me do things my way."

"Firstly, I didn't say the amount of payment. I was referring to the manner of payment. And secondly, the nature of the payment is inexorably involved in my negotiation with Anders. You see, it was my intention to pay for your services with information."

The Grim straightened and again, for a moment, Lyvia thought he was going to just leap out of the window.

"Not interested!" he said. "I do contracts that pay in gold. You can't eat information, you can't drink it!"

"Nor can you eat or drink gold, and yet it can buy both food and drink, just as secrets can. The right secret is worth its weight in gold."

Fortunately, in Lyvia's experience the most profitable secrets turned a lot of gold into even more gold. Investment opportunities, financial trends, trade deals… if you knew something no-one else did, then you could make your money work harder than anyone else.

Which was a problem when you didn't have access to the capital needed to capitalize on those secrets.

Lyvia had two fortunes she should have had access to, one under her husband's thumb, the other too far away to utilize effectively. It was hard to find buyers for secrets. The easiest kind of secrets to turn into gold required theft or blackmail, and Lyvia was loath to indulge in either. But a boxing saved was a boxing earned, so if she could buy this Grim Mistborn's services with secrets, they would have served their purpose.

The Grim was still unconvinced. "A secret is only worth something if you care to know, and what could you know that I would care about?"

This was the moment.

Not a muscle on Lyvia's face betrayed her emotion, but inside, she was grinning in anticipation. After so much work and preparation, this was the moment that would tell if her suspicions were correct.

"Not even if I knew where to find Ives?" she asked quietly.

She could tell that her bolt had found it's mark. The Grim had been still before, but the mention of that name froze him in place, he didn't even seem to be breathing.

"Where… did you hear that name?" he asked at last. Feigned casual, trying far too hard, Lyvia could tell.

"I take it then that my understanding is correct, that you have an interest in locating this individual?"

"Who told you that?" Still The Grim was trying to play ignorant, but his question had too much of an edge. He wasn't curious about who had been making up false stories about him, he wanted to know who had betrayed his trust.

"No one person. You've obviously done an admirable job of covering your tracks as you've been seeking for Ives. Admirable, but not perfect. It's impossible to ask around for someone without it being known that someone is looking for them. I doubt anyone else even has all the clues I have collected, let alone put them together to show you were the one behind the search."

In truth, even Lyvia had needed to make an educated guess. It wasn't so much that there had been evidence that the person searching was The Grim so much as a hole in the evidence that The Grim fitted neatly into. Privately, Lyvia had given herself one-to-four odds that her suspicions were correct, and that was a gamble worth taking.

The Grim considered. "Do you know where he is?" he asked.

"If I did, would you accept that as payment for our contract?"

The Grim wordlessly stalked across the room and leaned forward over Lyvia's desk, looming above her. Well that removes any doubt, she thought. She was afraid he might react like this.

She held her ground, but couldn't deny that he made for an intimidating sight, especially knowing what he was capable of.

"Tell me where he is!" The Grim growled.

'Ah, there's the voice I expected him to have.'