Father Boris cheerfully accepted Rose's written report. "Yes, I will send it with my own," he said. "This attack last night, it has been the talk of the town all morning. It is a disaster for the Yurkashev! I thank you for coming - of course this is what I want to talk about.
"I do not know if this relates to your mission, if this man you seek has anything to do with it" -- for Father Boris had not yet been told of the sudden deaths, or how so many others had died without a mark on them, including the real "acrobats" and their escorts -- "But I think it would be strange for him to attack you for the sake of it while you were surrounded by all these Yurkashev warriors. That makes sure you will live! Why not attack you in the street? So I think the Yurkashev were the real target. Cunning to attack them by attacking you. The loss of face is huge! And it may be more.
"If you do not know - trade with Veracia and other countries, it is complicated here. You think a merchant simply goes to whichever place he likes - but it is not simple. The clans with most prestige, they can set the prices, and determine who comes to see a delegation. If you have to sell your goods through another clan, the other takes a premium, you see? Yurkashev does not have mines but they are second clan in prestige, from their old blood and their strength. This brings them more wealth than their goats! If they fall and they stay fallen they will be much poorer."
Indeed, one part of Boris' job as ambassador was making sure that trade delegations knew which clans were up and down - and which "representatives" from Duravsky were truly what they said. Well he knew that baksheesh got paid - but that was simply how business was done here. Who could not stomach it should not come here. At least this way his countrymen got value for their money.
Boris asked a little about the assassins themselves. Argus gave a good description of the hairy, unwashed, ill-equipped fanatics and their entrance. Boris was impressed -- at the men's bold desperation, and at the power of whoever could force a group of Gorielian men not only to go to their deaths, but to walk like girls while doing it. "This tells me what I thought before. These must be outlaw men.
"If you do not know, sometimes a man is expelled from his clan - or his clan is wiped out and he has survived - or he does not come from here and he is not accepted. Well, a girl like that, she might end up in a, a naughty house under protection, yes? An ugly man like that - he can't live in the city. He'd be robbed and killed too fast! So they live out of town. They hide. They poach. They hunt. They steal sheep. It is very dangerous out of the city. I did not think there was any band large enough to supply that many assassins. But it makes sense the larger clans have spies out there and know something about them. Whoever could bring them in and equip them and murder the girls and their escorts and the guards and do that switch - it was someone with power, in the city and out of it, as the larger clans have."
Argus asked whether Boris had any idea who might've been responsible.
"I do not know who did it. But I think the Zukalin are the most likely. There is also word last night the Gibazov mining museum, it was robbed. Have you heard this? Valuable things taken, guards killed. So the two big enemies of the Zukalin, both on the same night, have big blows to their prestige? That is a strong coincidence! And the Zukalin have the least to lose. They are desperate to survive and hungry for revenge. A few people think it was the Gibazov, to supplant the Yurkashev and increase their wealth, but the favorites are the Zukalin.
"But what I think will happen is this. The Yurkashev will not long stand to leave this unavenged. So this is what they will do. They will find someone, probably a Zukalin, and - how would you put it? Squeeze him. Put him to the question. Torture him until he confesses. And then use that to make all out war. Maybe the Gibazov join in, maybe they do not - but the Yurkashev need their revenge on someone and that is the obvious target. And is it really true? It probably is but it does not matter to them. There has been an offense, and there has been revenge, so their honor is restored.
"So my point is, if it is in your mind to find out who it was and do something about that, you do not want to wait a day if you can help it!"
Neither of the listeners wanted to wait a day in Goriel for any reason whatsoever if they could help it. Whether Boris knew that was hard to read behind his bearded face. An Orthodox priest as well as a diplomat, he would not have understood Rose's distaste for bits of opulence in his surroundings. As she and Desiree had seen in the dining halls of the chief clans, wealth here was meant for display - to show power and prestige. Too spartan an office would make him, as ambassador, seem weak and poor, as if his own masters did not value him so highly.
This also fit the Orthodox preference for ostentation in their chapels and rituals. The gaudiness, the incense, the candles, the colored glass - these were not for Luminosita. What did he need them for? They were for the worshippers, to show them they were in a holy place, and to turn their minds to the divine. For his own little congregation, used to hard work and wrestling drill, a religious ceremony in the beautiful chapel was a welcome thing indeed - often their favorite part of the day. (And how many priests could say that?) Although in Boris' mind, there was also an element of showing respect to the god, just as you'd wear your best clothes when visiting a strong man here, or not ask an honored guest to meet you by the dunghill.
Rose asked whether there was anyplace they could go to learn about the different outlaw bands, to find that angle on the assassins. Boris did not think so. "There is no hospitality there. In the villages, they don't talk. If you meet the outlaws themselves - they kill first and ask questions never, you see? And they are scattered all around. But if you do meet them, and you kill them, there is no revenge or punishment - they are really 'out-law' - you can do what you like to them."
Finding the assassins directly, then, didn't sound like a job for Rose's kind of Special Operations - it better fit the ophidiophagi. (How much cleaner it seemed, right now, to be one of them! "Soothing the barbarians" - an ugly task in this ugly country.) But if Boris was right and one of the richer clans had arranged it, there might be a "weak link" somewhere in this town. Someone who knew and would let slip that he knew. Or some other kind of evidence.