A powerful Orca businessman named Fyres dies while on a pleasure cruise aboard his private yacht.
The repercussions from this event were subtle and far-reaching, and involved three interrelated conspiracies.
The Murder[]
The conspiracy by finance minister Shortisle and Jhereg boss Stony to murder Fyres was motivated by Shortisle's anger at learning how deeply exposed the banks of the Empire were to Fyre's companies' debts. This led to a meeting between Fyres and Shortisle, where they presumably exchanged heated words, and threats were made.
Shortisle's reaction to this consisted of contacting Stony, who helped him in enlisting Fyres' daughter Reega to bring a Jhereg assassin aboard Fyres' yacht to arrange the "accident" that killed Fyres.
The Land Swindle[]
The payoff to Reega in exchange for help in killing her father was the arrangement for Reega and local bank-owner Vonnith to profit by assuming tenative ownership of numerous of Fyres' leaseholdings, threatening the tenants with eviction to drive up the property values, then selling the land quickly at inflated prices.
This may have also involved Fyres' other daughter Endra, but her participation appears to have been minimal, if at all.
The Cover-Up[]
Shortisle's precipitous action of killing Fyres caused his entire business structure to crumble. This seriously jeopardized the health of the entire Imperial economy. It therefore became vital to cover up the Jhereg's involvement in Fyres' death--otherwise social revolt and massive depression could cripple the entire Empire.
The effort to suppress this information was first entrusted to Domm, a Lieutenant in the Imperial Surveillance Corps by Indus, the Minister of the Houses.
Unfortunately, Domm bungled the task by declaring the death to be an accident only a week into the investigation. This forced Shortisle and Indus to enlist the help of Loftis and Timmer from the Special Tasks Group. (This was done without the knowledge of that group's commander, Lord Khaavren.)
The Results[]
After the interference of Vlad Taltos and Kiera in the investigation, some of the conspirators (notably Reega, Vonnith, and Domm) got nervous, and arranged to murder both Loftis and Stony.
When Timmer learned of this, she arranged with Vlad to murder Domm, and then allowed Vlad to "escape" arrest by Imperial guards.
The land swindle was apparently allowed to proceed, and the cover-up was apparently successful, given that the Empire seemed to still be in good financial shape more than a year later, at the time of Issola.