Tal was not altogether certain that Ardis would be happy about the course he was pursuing today, but he had decided to take advantage of his status as a Special Inquisitor to pry into a number of records he probably should not see under ordinary circumstances. He'd tell Ardis when he made his report; it was always easier to apologize for overstepping one's bounds than to get permission aforehand, though careers and friendships would always suffer from that policy's overuse.
He'd had Kayne get him copies of the Abbey records of Priests, all of whom had been associated with the Kingsford Abbeys, who'd been dismissed or resigned from the Church over the past twenty years. He wasn't confining himself to Priests who were also mages; although he had never seen or heard of such a killer working with someone else, it had occurred to him that the stakes were too high for him to ignore the possibility. The murderer could be a Priest in league with a mage, and they didn't even have to have identical obsessions for the partnership to work. If the Priest in such a partnering, for instance, had been expelled from the Church for misappropriation of funds, well then, there might certainly be substantial enough money to just hire a mage. Alternately, a mage might be in conspiracy just for the side benefits. It was easy enough to guess what the mage would get out of such an association; everyone knew that there was power to be had from death, and the more violent the death, the more power could be obtained. For someone with no morals and a great deal of ambition, this would be a situation too tempting to refuse. Often magical prowess was directly linked to the power available to be used, in much the way that a glass-blower could only become adept at creating huge ceremonial bowls by having enough raw glass and fuel for his furnace to practice with.
So, against the occasional grumblings of his old, walk-the-streets-and-listen constable reflexes, he spent more time in papers and tablets. There were six Priest-Mages who fulfilled those qualifications, and another nine Priests. Written at the end of the records of four of the Priest-Mages was the disappointing word, "Deceased," followed by a date, but at the end of two were the more cryptic words, "Missing, presumed dead." Since the dates on these records were clearly the time of the Great Fire, he could only assume that the two Priest-Mages had somehow gotten misplaced in the confusion. Where they were missing from, the records gave no clue, although he suspected very strongly that there were other records associated with these that only Ardis had access to.
The causes for dismissal were enlightening, but not particularly surprising. Tal had been a street-constable for too long not to know that Priests could be as fallible as ordinary folk, and as weak. It often appeared to him that the real sin was in getting caught sinning rather than the act itself.
Fraud, embezzlement, fornication, abuse of privilege—those were the most common, though there were one or two other references that might have puzzled someone with less experience than Tal. "Inappropriate behavior with children," for instance, followed by a very heavy punishment, made him very glad that this was a file on a Priest who was demonstrably dead, or Tal might have been tempted to pay an extra-legal visit to the man.
In the end, he had only five names out of the possible fifteen who might still be living in Kingsford. To track them down quickly, he would need help. It was time for a visit to Captain Fenris.
He'd already made one visit, as formal as one ever got with that energetic man, presenting himself and his credentials to Fenris during one of his instructional rounds for new constables. Fenris had been skeptical of Tal's abilities—not that he'd been so ill-mannered as to show that he was, but Tal could read volumes into his little pauses and silences. But as it happened, an altercation over a game of chance had broken out not far from where he met up with the Captain, and Tal had gotten caught up in quelling the small riot and sorting out the claims and counterclaims afterwards. After that, Fenris treated him with the respect his own superiors never had, leaving word with his own men that Tal was to get full cooperation, no questions asked.
Tal tucked his list of names and descriptions into his belt-pouch, bundled himself against the cold, and headed for the stable. His old nag of a horse was patient and easy to handle; it was a matter of a few moments to get him saddled and bridled, and he was through the Abbey gate and heading across the bridge into Kingsford.
Captain Fenris worked out of a common-looking, three-storied building just outside the walls of the Ducal Palace; though it had no stable of its own, a servant took Tal's horse and led it through a postern-gate to the Duke's stables. As Tal dusted the snow from his shoulders and approached the front door, he had to chuckle a little at the thought of his stocky, common-as-dirt gelding being housed side-by-side with the Duke's matched carriage-horses and fine saddle-breds.
As soon as he entered the front door, he was greeted by a Desk-Sergeant stationed just inside. He presented his identification, and the man's attitude changed from civil to positively submissive.
"Sir!" the man said, all but rising to salute. "The Captain is not in, but I can send a runner after him, or send a runner with you to guide you—"
"I don't precisely need to see Captain Fenris in person," Tal replied, interrupting the man, but as politely as he could. "What I need is access to city records. I have the names of five men who were once associated with the Abbey who might still be living in Kingsford, that I would like to track down. If that's possible."
The Sergeant nodded, his lips thinning a little. "I'm sure I don't have to point out that these men might have changed their names—" he began.
Tal didn't quite chuckle. "And I'm sure I don't have to point out that if they've been up to any more—mischief—the constabulary records will have noted those name changes."
The Desk-Sergeant smirked. "Third floor, fourth door on the right. Show the guard your credentials; the Captain has already left standing orders about you."
As Tal climbed the stairs, he wondered just what those "standing orders" were, since he had stressed that Ardis did not want it known that he was a Special Inquisitor. Evidently the Captain had his own way of establishing someone's authorization without resorting to the actual titles.
A guard on a records-room, though—that's interesting. I suspect there's a great deal of delicate information in there. Dear God—Fenris must trust me more than I thought! Or he trusts Ardis to know that I'm trustworthy, which amounts to the same thing. With a sensation of unsettled emotion, he wasn't quite sure how he should react to that revelation. Should he feel flattered? Perhaps a little, but he suspected that situation was due more to Ardis's competence than his own. He was embarrassed, certainly; it was embarrassing to be accorded so much respect when he didn't really feel he'd earned it.
Still it was helping him get his job done, and for that alone he was grateful. When he presented his papers to the guard at the end of the corridor (who was evidently guarding all of the rooms at that end, not just the single records-room) he got another smart salute, and was able to return it with grave equanimity.
The room in question was small, but lit quite adequately by means of a clearly often-patched skylight. Folios of papers filled all four walls, and if it had ever boasted a window, the window had long since been boarded up. Tal would have been at a complete loss as to where to start had there not been an indexing-book on the table in the center of the room.
It still took hours before he found three of his five men. He resolved to take what he had and come back later; as it was, he would only be able to investigate one before he was due back at the Abbey.
He picked the easiest of the lot, a former Priest who had resigned with no reason given. That, to his mind, was the most mysterious of them all; there had been no disciplinary actions taken, no marks against him, yet out of nowhere, he resigned and left the Church altogether. There was nothing about him in the constabulary records either, except his name and address.
Tal saluted both the guard and the Desk-Sergeant on his way out; both seemed gratified by his courtesy, which reawoke that faint sense of embarrassment. He could only chase it away by telling himself that it was not himself they were reacting to, but to the fact that he served Ardis. She was the one they really respected, not him. He was a walking Title, rather than a respected person, and the humility of the realization was an odd but real comfort.
Snow fell steadily now, and it had accumulated to ankle-depth since he'd entered the building. He waved away an offer to get his horse; the address he was in search of was not in that far away, and he would be less conspicuous on foot.
He pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head; the Church Guards were assigned plain black wool cloaks to cover their resplendent uniforms, wonderfully inconspicuous garments unless you happened to be going through a neighborhood in which garments without patches and holes were oddities. The place he sought now was not that shabby an area, although it could best be described as "modest" rather than "prosperous."
This was a street of small shops and tradesmen, many of whom were now lighting lanterns and candles against the sudden gloom of the late afternoon snowstorm. As snowflakes fell thickly all about him, Tal paused to check his address against the shop to his left.
This is the place, he decided, a little surprised to find that it was a shop and not the address of a place that had rooms to let. "Bertram—Chandler" said the sign above the door, with a picture of a lighted candle to make the meaning clear to the illiterate. I hope this isn't just an address where letters are left to be picked up. If that happened to be the case, the shopkeeper could in all honesty claim that he didn't know Dasel Torney, and had no notion where the letters left there in that name were going.
Tal brushed snow from his shoulders, shook it off his hood, and opened the door. A bell jingled cheerfully as he did so, and he entered a shop that was no wider across than his outstretched arms, but was a warm and cheerful place nonetheless, brilliantly lit, and softly fragrant.
On shelves to the right and left were displayed bottles of lamp-oil. On the bottom-most shelf were common pottery jugs that contained equally common rendered animal oil; in the middle were large casks of distilled ground-oil, which the customer would use to fill his own container; on the top, delicate glass flagons of clear, scented oils distilled with rare gums and berries. A solid wooden counter stretched across the middle of the room; on shelves behind it were barrels of tallow-dips bundled in dozens and wrapped in paper, cakes of raw waxes, and candles. There were hundreds of candles, from simple tapers to elaborately colored, carved, and molded sculptural pieces. The warm air was gently scented with barberry, presumably from the candles burning in glass-and-brass lanterns in the four corners of the room.
Behind the counter stood a woman neither old nor young—a woman with such a cheerful, vital countenance that Tal could not for the life of him put an age to her. Cheeks of a flushed pink, no sign of wrinkles around the smiling lips or blue eyes—her hair was hidden beneath a sensible scarf, so he couldn't see if there was any gray in it. She could not possibly be as youthful as he thought, yet he had never before seen a middle-aged woman who was so entirely happy. Her dress was modest, blue-and-white linen, impeccably clean but nothing like luxurious; she was clearly not a wealthy person, yet he had the impression that she was completely content with her life in every way.
"Can I help you, sir?" she asked, beaming at him, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight.
"I don't know," he said, hesitantly. "I really—I'm looking for a man named Torney?" Her very cheer and confidence rattled him; he would almost have preferred some surly old man to this charming woman, and he dreaded seeing her face fall when he mentioned the name of his quarry.
But if anything, she glowed at the mention of the name, as if one of her own candles had suddenly come alight within her. "That would be my husband," she said immediately, her face softening at the final word.
If I had a wife like this one—is she why he left the Church?
"But the sign says Bertram—"
"Is my father," she replied promptly. "Dasel is my husband. I never had a knack for the chandlery and he does, oh, most certainly does! My father could never have made lovely things such as this," she gestured at one of the carved candles, "and he'll be the first to tell you that. He's mostly retired, but he comes in now and again to help me or Dasel." Now she tilted her head to one side; her eyes grew keener, though no less friendly, and a look of recognition came over her, though she lost none of the glow. "You're with the Church, I take it?"
He didn't start, but he was surprised. "How did you know?"
"The cloak. I saw a few of those before Dasel's troubles were over." She did not lose a flicker of her cheer or her composure, but her next words startled him all over again. "You've come about the girls, haven't you? The poor things that were stabbed. I don't know that Dasel can help you, but he'll tell you anything he knows."
He didn't say anything, but his face must have given him away, for she raised her eyebrows and continued. "How do I know what you've come about? Oh, the wife of a former Priest-Mage is going to know what it means that there are women dead and a three-sided blade has done the deed. We knew, we both did, and we've been expecting someone like you to come. The High Bishop ordered everything taken out of Dasel's record when he was allowed to leave—which only makes it look the more suspicious when something out of the common happens, I know."
Now she picked up a section of the counter and let it fall, then opened a door in the partition beneath it. "Please come into the shop, sir—your name, or shall I call you Master Church Constable?"
Her cheerful smile was irresistible, and he didn't try to evade her charm. "Tal Rufen, dear lady. Would you care to be more specific about why you were expecting someone like me to call on you?"
"Because," she dimpled as he entered the area behind the counter and waited for her to open the door into the shop, "we knew that the records you would be allowed to see wouldn't disclose the reason why Dasel resigned, as I said. The High Bishop is the only one who has those, and she would keep them under her own lock and key. With those girls done to death by ecclesiastical dagger, the first suspect has to be a Priest or a Priest-Mage, and you would be trying to find every Priest that had left the Church that you could. You'd rather it was someone that wasn't in the Brotherhood anymore, and the Church would, too, so that's the first place you'd look. We've already talked about it, Dasel and I. Dasel—" she called through the open door "—Tal Rufen from the Justiciars for you." She turned back to him, still smiling. "I have to mind the shop, so go on through."
He did so, and she shut the door behind him. He had never been in a chandlery before, and looked about him with interest, as a muffled voice said from the rear of the room, "Just a moment, I'm in the middle of a muddle. I'll be with you as soon as I get myself out of it. Don't fret, there's no back entrance to this place, it butts up against the rear wall of the building on the next street over."
The workroom was considerably wider than the shop; Tal guessed that it extended behind the shops on either side of this one. To his left was an ingenious clockwork contraption that dipped rows of cheap tallow candles in a vat, one after the other, so that as soon as a layer had hardened enough that it could be dipped again, it had reached the vat for another go. There was another such contraption doing the same with more expensive colored beeswax, and another with a scented wax. There were rows of metal molds to his right filled with hardening candles, an entire section full of things that he simply couldn't identify, and a workbench in the middle of it all with several candles being carved that were in various stages of completion. At the rear of the workshop was another door, leading to a storeroom, by the boxes he saw through the open door.
Again the air was scented with barberry, and Tal surmised that this room was the source of the scent, which was probably coming from the warm wax in the dipping area. As he concluded that, the man he had heard speaking from the rear emerged from the storeroom with a box in his hands. He was considerably older than the woman in the front of the shop; gray haired, with a thick, gray mustache and a face just beginning to wrinkle. He was, however, a vigorous and healthy man, and one who appeared to be just as content with his life as his wife was.
"Well, there is one thing that a bit of magic is good for, and that is as an aid to someone too scatter-brained to remember to label his boxes," said Dasel Torney as he set the box down. "Fortunately for one such as myself, there is the Law of Identity, which allows me to take a chip of Kaerlyvale beeswax and locate and remove a box of identical wax. Unfortunately, if that box happens to be in the middle of a stack, I can find myself with an incipient avalanche on my hands!"
Dasel Torney would not look to the ordinary lay-person like a man who could kill dozens of women in cold blood—but looks could be deceiving. Such men, as Tal knew, could be very charming if they chose.
But they were seldom happy, not as completely, innocently happy as Dasel was. Once again, except for the gray hair, Tal could not have put an accurate age on Torney if he had not already known what it was from the records. His sheer joy in living made him look twenty years less than his actual age, which was sixty-two.
"Well!" Torney said, dusting his hands off. "Welcome, Tal Rufen! You'll find a stool over there, somewhere, please take it and sit down."
Looking around near the workbench, Tal did find a tall stool, and took a seat while Dasel Torney did the same on his side of the bench. "Your wife is a very remarkable woman, sir," he ventured.
For the first time since he entered the shop, Tal saw an expression that was not completely cheerful. There was a faint shadow there, followed by a softer emotion that Tal could not identify. "My wife is the reason I was dismissed from the Church, Sirra Rufen," Torney told him candidly. "Or rather—I was permitted to resign. The permission did not come without a struggle."
Tal felt very awkward, but the questions still had to be asked. "I know that you may find this painful, but your wife did say you'd discussed the fact that someone like me would be coming to talk to you—"
Torney shrugged. "And I know it will be my job to convince you that I had nothing to do with the murders—which, by the way, I think were done with the help of magic, speaking as a mage. Mages—Priest-Mages, at least—are expected to study the darker uses of magic so that they will recognize such things and know how to counteract them. I doubt I have to tell you that, though; I can't imagine that as learned and intelligent as High Bishop Ardis is, she hasn't already come to that conclusion."
Tal hesitated, then said what he'd been thinking. "There was only one murder in Kingsford, sir—"
"That you know of. There's stories in the street of another two beggar-girls with triangular stab-wounds here, and I know of a dozen or more down the river," Torney interrupted him. "I'm in trade, sir Rufen; I deal with people who sell me scents, oils, and waxes from all over the Human Kingdoms and beyond. The one thing that tradesmen do is talk—and there hasn't been anything more sensational to talk about in the last six months than murder—especially the murder of that poor Gypsy girl by the jeweler. Stabbed with a file, indeed! I knew then it was an ecclesiastical dagger, and when another girl was killed in the same way here, I knew it was only a matter of time before Ardis sent a Hound of God out on trail."
Tal sighed. "And you, of course, never leave the city."
Torney nodded. "I could bring witnesses to that, obviously, and it is just as obvious that they could be lying for me. Take it as given that I have the witnesses; what can I do that will convince you I could not have anything to do with these horrible crimes?"
"Tell me why you left the Church," Tal replied instantly.
Dasel Torney nodded as if he had expected that very answer. "I will give you the shortest possible version—I was a Priest-Mage, trained by the Justiciars, but not of the Order myself. I was out of the Teaching Order of Saint Basyl, and at forty years of age, I was given the assignment of acting as tutor to the daughter of a wealthy and extremely influential merchant of Kingsford—the head of the Chandler's Guild, in fact. I had the bad judgment, although the exquisite taste, to fall in love with her, and she had the poor taste to fall equally in love with me. The inevitable occurred, and we were discovered together. At that point, neither of us would give the other up, not even after ten years of separations and penances, nor under the threat of far worse punishments than we had already undergone."
"Worse?" Tal asked, curiously.
Torney chuckled. "There were those who thought I ought to pay for my sin by having the organ in question removed—and I don't mean my heart!"
Tal blanched; he couldn't imagine how Torney could joke about it.
"Fortunately," Dasel continued, "cooler heads prevailed, and both my fellow teachers and the Justiciars prevailed upon both the High Bishop and my darling's father to soften their wrath. In the case of the former, they prevailed upon him to simply allow me to resign provided I never used magic directly to make a profit—and in the case of the latter, they prevailed upon the Guildmaster to accept me as a son-in-law." He quirked a smile. "It did help that I have a talent with wax and scent, and that my ability as a mage was never better than minimal. It was very uncomfortable for all of us, however; he acted to both of us as if we were strangers. I thought he would never really forgive us. We never spoke outside of the shop until the Great Fire."
Tal could well imagine what the Fire must have done to a candle and oil shop. "Was there anything left?"
Torney shook his head. "Not a thing. Nothing but ashes, and by the time we got back to where the shop had been, scavengers even had sifted those and carried away any bits of metal they'd found."
All this had the ring of truth about it—furthermore, it would probably be very easy to verify all these facts. "What happened then?" Tal asked.
"Well, the Great Fire destroyed Loren Bertram's fortune and business—but—" He smiled. "I suppose it's my training as a Priest that makes me value things of the spirit and heart more than of the material world. My minimal ability in magic saved our lives, and when Bertram was deepest in despair, I was ready to fight. He gave up, but I was just beginning, and determined to prove that I could be his friend and restore what he'd lost. Between Loyse and myself, we scraped together enough for a tiny slice of a shop. The good will we had built among the traders got us raw goods on credit. My considerable talent in the business has brought us back to where we are now. We have a level of comfort, if not luxury. It's been a difficult time, but the results of our efforts have been well worth it. But best of all, Bertram saw how I stood by him as well as Loyse, and now he is my friend, not my enemy."
A very short version of what must have been a difficult twenty years, but all of it was verifiable now that Tal knew the facts behind the simple resignation. And if Torney had been trying to rebuild a business out of the ashes of the Fire, there was no way he could have been out of Kingsford to commit the earlier murders.
And there must be a world of things that had been left out of that simple story—Tal could only wonder at a love that was powerful enough to defy Church and parent, and still emerge radiating joy.
"I knew when I saw her that your wife was a remarkable woman," Tal said. "She must be far more than that—"
"I wish I were a poet or a musician," Torney replied softly, turning a half-carved candle in his hands. "I cannot begin to tell you what she means to me. I would have given up everything simply to be in her presence—and if they had locked me away in a solitary cell for a lifetime of penance, I would never have repented a moment of the time I spent with her. And she feels exactly the same towards me." He looked up. "I suppose that's remarkable. To us, though, it is as natural as breathing, and as necessary."
If a man's soul could be said to shine from his eyes, Tal saw Torney's at that moment—and felt a little in awe.
Of all of the things that he could have uncovered in the course of this investigation, this was the most unexpected.
"Have you any idea who this might be?" he asked after a moment. "Is there anyone among the Priests or the Priest-Mages that you knew who could be doing these things?"
"That's what has me troubled and puzzled," Torney replied, picking up a knife and gently carving petals of wax out of the side of the candle in his hands. "I'm older than Ardis—she wasn't the High Bishop at the time I was dismissed, she was nothing more than the most promising of the young Justiciar-Mages. There is one man who could very easily be doing these things, but the last time I saw him, he wasn't a man anymore."
Well that certainly made Tal sit up straight. Torney didn't chuckle, but it was clear that he was amused—he'd obviously intended that his statement would startle Tal, perhaps as a gentle sort of revenge. Without any prompting, he told Tal the tale of Priest-Mage Revaner, Guild Bard Beltren, and the Gypsy Free Bard called Robin.
"I've heard something like this before—" Tal said, uncertainly, when Torney was through.
"Likely enough; the Free Bards made a ballad out of it, though they changed the names to protect their own hides," Torney replied. "Now, the part that didn't make it into the ballad was that Ardis doesn't know how to reverse that particular effect, since it was all tangled up with Revaner's original dark sorcery, the Bards' magics, and her own. As far as any Priest-Mage I ever spoke to knew, Revaner was going to be a bird for the rest of his life. And the part that no more than a handful of people know is that during the Great Fire, the Black Bird disappeared."
"Could he have changed back, somehow?" Tal asked eagerly. "I've heard that there was a lot of magic going on during the Fire—could he have gotten caught in some of it and changed back?"
Torney spread his hands wide. "If you're asking could more tangled and confused magic undo what tangled and confused magic did to him in the first place?—well, I can't tell you. I was never that good, and the theory up at that level of things just goes clean over my head. But if there was ever a man likely to want revenge on the Church, it was Revaner. And if there was ever a man convinced that the world should run to his pleasure, it was Revaner. Could he have escaped? Could he have survived on his own? Does that make him a man evil enough to do these horrible deeds?" He looked helpless. "I don't know. I couldn't judge my own heart, how can I presume to judge my fellow man's?"
"You're a charitable fellow, Dasel Torney," Tal said at last.
But Torney shook his head. "Not as charitable as I should be. It's easy enough for me to say that I can't judge Revaner, or the man who's done these things—but I haven't suffered harm from either one of them, either. If it had been Loyse who'd been seduced and left by Revaner—or slain, like that poor girl—" He dropped his eyes, and put the candle and the knife carefully down. "Let me just say that I might repent what I did to the man, but I wouldn't hesitate to do it."
"If you had seen what I have," Tal said softly, "you wouldn't repent of it, either."
Torney looked up sharply; their eyes met, and the wordless exchange that followed left both of them with deep understanding and respect.
"The fact remains, though, that the last time anyone saw Revaner, he wasn't capable of doing anything more than any other bird could do—rather less, as a matter of fact, since he was too heavy to fly. That's the problem with that particular suspect." Torney shrugged. "How he could get from here to down-river without being seen, I couldn't tell you—unless someone netted him to use in a menagerie and he escaped his cage later."
"Well," Tal said, tucking that thought away for consideration. "I have a little more to go on; I'll see about tracking down some of the others on my list."
"You'll find Gebbast Hardysty somewhere along the docks," Torney told him. "If he's not cadging drinks, he's in one of the doss-houses sleeping off a drunk. I doubt he could muster up enough moments of sobriety to work a simple spell, but you had better be the judge of that. Ofram Kellam has changed his name to Oskar Koob, and he's set himself up as a fortune-teller—the constables probably have an address for him under that name, though I doubt they know who he really is. The only reason I know is that I ran into him on the street and called him by his right name—and he blurted out that I was mistaken, he was Oskar Koob, not the other fellow. I know what he could do when he was dismissed—for embezzling Church funds, if you don't already know—and I don't think he has the ability to work magic this powerful."
"Do you keep track of your fellow sinners?" Tal asked lightly.
Torney raised his eyebrow. "Actually, yes, I do," he admitted. "When I can. A little self-prescribed penance, but there are only three here in the city that I know of. I heard that Petor Lambert was still in Kingsford, but I haven't been able to find him, so he may be on the far side of the city. If he is, I suspect he's up to some old tricks of using magic to create 'miracles' to fleece the credulous. If I find him first, I'll get word to you, but you have more chance of tracking him down than I do."
"And I will leave you to enjoy the evening with your charming wife, as I hope you will," Tal told him, rising. "I can promise you that there won't be any more calls like this one."
Torney came around the bench to shake his hand. "I am just pleased that Ardis has found worthy men to help her," he said warmly as he opened the door for Tal. "She is a fine Priest, a hard worker, and an estimable woman. Not—" he added mischievously "—as estimable as my Loyse, but estimable nevertheless."
"Oh—as if I ever had a hope of being as wise or as intelligent as High Bishop Ardis!" Loyse said playfully as she held the counter-door open for Tal. "Here," she continued, holding out a package wrapped in brown paper to him, "take these with you. They're something new in the way of strikers that Dasel is trying. They might come in useful, and if you like them, perhaps you can get Captain Fenris and the constables to try them."
Torney looked proud but sheepish. "Kindling-sticks with chemicals on the tip, dipped in wax," he explained. "Watch—"
He took out a small bit of wood with a blob of odd bluish stuff on the end, and scraped it against the countertop. Tal started as a flame flared up on the end of the stick with an odd hissing sound.
"People are afraid of them," Torney explained. "They either think it's bad magic, or they think the things might suddenly go off in their pockets. But if the Church Guards and the constables started carrying and using them—"
"Obviously. I'll give them a try—though I warn you, if they do suddenly go off in my pocket, I'll be very annoyed!" Tal grinned a little.
Torney chuckled. "No fear of that—unless you're being dragged by a horse and the pocket you've got them in gets ripped open. It needs a hard, rough surface—preferably stone—and you have to scrape with some force to get through the wax coating. But the wax makes them waterproof, which is why I use it."
Tal put the packet in his breeches-pocket, and thanked them both, then went out into the evening shadows and the thickly falling snow.
Two of the three men that Dasel Torney had mentioned were the ones missing from his list, and he decided to track down the easiest one first. With the help of a fat purse of coppers to buy beer and the cheap, strong liquor served in the dockside taverns, Tal went in search of Gebbast Hardysty. He hoped he wouldn't have to drink any of the rot-gut himself, but he was resigned to the fact that he would probably pay for this excursion with a throbbing skull and a queasy stomach in the morning.
At first, given that Hardysty haunted the dockside area, he thought he might have found his murderer. After all, a man who haunted the docks might be getting jobs as day-labor on barges, and that could put him in any city up and down the river with relative ease. As a casual laborer, no one would pay much attention to him. Hardysty was another of the mages on the list. Altogether, things seemed to add up properly—but after tracing him to a particularly noisome cellar-hole of a sailor's bar, Tal was having second thoughts.
By now it was fully dark, and Tal made sure of his long knife as he paused for a moment outside the tavern entrance—if that wasn't too grand a name to put on a gap in the cellar-wall of a warehouse, framed by three rough-hewn beams, with the only "door" being a square of patched sail. There wasn't even a sign outside the door, just a board with a battered tankard nailed to it. They couldn't even afford a lantern at the door; the only illumination came from the street-lamp two doors down, and a dim, yellowish light that seeped around the curtain at the door.
Tal had been in and out of many similar places in his career as a constable, and he wasn't afraid, merely cautious. In the winter there wasn't as much traffic on the river, which meant that sailors and river-men had less money to spend. It wasn't a festival night, the weather wasn't very cooperative, and most men would chose to stay where they bunked if they had a bed or a room. On a night like tonight, the men in this place wouldn't be looking for trouble—but they wouldn't try to avoid it, either. As long as he watched his step, he should be all right.
He trudged down the five steps made of uncut rock, and pulled the curtain aside to enter.
The reek of unwashed bodies, stale beer, cheap tallow-lights, and other scents best left unnamed hit him in the face like a blow. He almost turned around and walked back out, but his sense of duty prevailed and he stalked across the dirt floor to the bar, avoiding the tables, chairs, and a staggering drunk more by instinct than by sight. What light there was didn't help much in navigating the room. There were only four thick tallow-dips to light the entire room, and two of them were over the bar. They gave off a murky, smokeladen light that didn't cross much distance.
Then again, I'm probably better off not being able to see. The closer he got to the bar, the more his eyes stung from the smoke. If I knew how much filth was caked on the tables and the floor, I'd probably be sick.
Behind the bar was a huge man, running to fat, with the last two fingers of his right hand missing, and a scar across the top of his bald head. The man grunted as Tal approached, which Tal took as an inquiry. "Beer," he said shortly, slapping down a couple of copper pieces on the unpolished slab of wood that passed for a bar-top.
The bartender poured flat beer out of a pitcher into a cheap earthenware mug. The stuff looked like horse-piss, and probably tasted the same. Tal took it, but didn't drink. "Hardysty here?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer, shoved a handful of coppers across the bar. "This's for him. Split on a bet. Said I could leave it here."
With that, he turned and took his beer off to a corner table, where he sat and pretended to drink. In reality, he poured the beer onto the floor, where it soaked in without adding measurably to the stink or the filth.
His eyes were adjusting to the gloom; now he could make out the rest of the room, the scattering of tables made of scavenged lumber, the few men who sat at them, slumped over the table or drinking steadily, with a stony disregard for the wretched quality of the stuff they were pouring down their throats.
The bartender scooped up the money, pocketed part of it, then poured another beer and took it over to a man half-lying on another table nearby, as if he had passed out. He grabbed the man's shoulder and shook it until the fellow showed some signs of life, batting his hand away and blinking at him blearily.
"Wha?" he slurred. The bartender slapped both the beer and the remainder of the money down on the rough wooden table in front of him.
"Yours," he grunted. "Ya made a bet. Part paid off the tab, this's what's left."
Hardysty stared at him a moment, as Tal pretended to nurse his beer. "Ah," he slurred. "Bet. Yah." Clearly he didn't expect to remember the apocryphal "bet" that had been made on his behalf. All he knew was that money had somehow appeared that supposedly belonged to him, and he wasn't about to question the source.
He drank the beer down to the dregs in a single swallow—Tal winced inside at the mere idea of actually drinking the stuff. He knew what it was; the dregs out of the barrels of beer emptied at more prosperous taverns, and the dregs of brewing, mixed together and sold so cheaply that it often went as pig-slop. There was not a viler beverage on the face of the earth. A man that drank the stuff on a regular basis cared only for the fact that it would get him drunk for pennies.
Whatever Hardysty had been, the fact was that he was too far gone in drink to have had any connection to the murders. If he remembered who he was and where he was supposed to go from one day to the next, he would be doing well.
When Torney said he was cadging drinks, he meant it. He's probably a street-beggar for just long enough to get the money to drink.
Whatever had gotten him dismissed from the Church? Tal thought he remembered something about theft of Church property. Had the disgrace broken him, or had the drinking started first? Perhaps the thefts had gone to pay for drink.
This was one vice gone to excess that Tal never could understand; intellectually, he could sympathize with a man who had lost his head over a woman, and he could understand how the thrill of risk could make a man gamble away all he had in the heat of a moment—but he never could understand this rush to oblivion, be it by drink or by a drug. Why do something that made you feel less alive, rather than more? Why would anyone willfully seek to remove ability?
Hardysty dropped the mug down onto the table, stared at the pile of coppers for a moment, then shoved them back across the table to the bartender. "More," he said—which was probably what the bartender had expected him to say. Before Tal could blink, the coppers were gone.
Tal pretended to drink two more mugs of the awful stuff before staggering out into the darkness. At no time did the bartender ask him about his connection to Hardysty; at no time did Hardysty make any attempt to find out where the money had come from. That was typical behavior in a place like this one. No one asked questions, and information was seldom volunteered, though it could be bought.
At this point it was too late to look for any of the other former Priests, but he felt he had made enough progress for one night. He could definitely scratch Torney and Hardysty off his list. The practice of magic—especially magic as powerful and tricky as this one must be—required a sharp mind. Even sober, Hardysty wouldn't be capable of that much concentration. Dreg-beer came contaminated with all sorts of unpleasant things, and the people who sold it often adulterated it further. There was no telling how badly Hardysty was poisoned; the only thing that was certain was that he had no more than half the mind he'd started out this slide to oblivion with. He might just as well have taken two rocks and hammered his own head with them on a daily basis for the last few years.
Tal was grateful for the heavy snowfall; it kept footpads off the street. This was not a neighborhood he wanted to have to visit again by night. He was immeasurably glad when he got into a better area without an incident, and even happier when he reached the constabulary headquarters and was able to get his horse from the Ducal stables. The ride across town and over the bridge to the Abbey was quite some distance, but in contrast to his walk away from the docks, it seemed to take no time at all.
A person could draw quite a parable from those two, Torney and Hardysty, if he knew everything that brought them to where they are now. Torney was driven by love to give up everything in order to have it, but what drove Hardysty to oblivion? Greed? Fear?
That was the end of the puzzle for every really good constable that Tal had ever met. Once you knew who'd done the crime, you'd caught him, and you had him safely disposed of, you always wondered why he'd done what he'd done. Even things that seemed obvious were sometimes only obvious on the surface. Why did some people, born into poverty, go out and try to make their lives better honestly instead of turning to crime? Why did one child, beaten and abused, grow up to vow never to inflict that kind of treatment on his own children, while others treated their offspring as they'd been treated?
Tal didn't know, and neither did anyone else, but he sometimes had the feeling that the answer was there, if only he knew where to look for it, and was brave enough to search.
The next day, in absence of any other orders, he crossed the bridge again to resume his hunt for former Priests. Following Torney's information that one of them had changed his name to "Oskar Koob" and had set himself up as a fortune-teller, Tal went to the office in charge of collecting taxes on small businesses. "Koob" would not call himself a "fortune-teller," of course—fortune-telling was illegal, and possibly heretical. No, he would call himself a "Counselor" or "Advisor," and that was the listing where Tal found his name and address.
He had come prepared this time, dressed in civilian clothing, with a pouch full of letters and a few business papers that referred to him as a trader in semiprecious gemstones. There was nothing about him to reveal his true identity, although the papers all called him by his real name. There were so few people in Kingsford who knew what Tal Rufen really was that he felt perfectly safe in using a name he knew he would respond automatically to. In taking an assumed name, there was always the chance that you would forget who you were supposed to be for a moment, and give yourself away.
I just hope that this man hasn't got the ability to read thoughts.
Yesterday's snow had been shoveled off the streets and packed in piles against the walls of the shops and houses; today, although the sky was overcast, it didn't feel to him as if it was going to snow again. So odd, to think that a few weeks ago I was wishing I lived somewhere where it snowed in the winter instead of raining, and now here I am. I think this is an improvement. Somehow he'd gotten the impression that snow just didn't bring the numbing cold that winter rains did, because rain brought dampness that penetrated even the thickest clothing. Too bad that impression was wrong! And the thought that his feet wouldn't get soaking wet was wrong, too; it just took snow a little longer to melt and soak into your boots, but it happened all the same.
So much for theory. But then again, he wasn't out walking a patrol anymore; he was in and out of buildings most of the time, not in the street. It could be the contrast that made him feel the cold more.
As he walked, he began mentally constructing the way he would think and react by the time he reached the right address. In his persona as a small merchant, it was natural for him to consult a fortune-teller; anyone making a precarious livelihood could be forgiven for being superstitious. I operate on a very small margin, and anything I can find out to help me is going to make a big difference. I want to know the way that fashion is going to run—like that fashion for gem-cut steel baubles a while back. If I can anticipate a fashion, I can make a fortune. I want to know where I can buy stones cheaply, and I want to know if someone's going to make a strike so rich it will run the prices down and make my stock worthless. I want to know if there are going to be bandits, and which Faires are going to prosper this year.
All these things would make a difference to a small merchant operating in a risky venture. When Tal had them all firmly in mind, he cultivated just the right amount of nervousness mixed with eagerness. When he arrived at the door of "Oskar Koob" he was ready.
There was nothing in the plain house-front to suggest what Koob really was; the man was clever enough to run a very discreet service.
Too bad it isn't an honest one.
This was just one in a row of identical middle-class homes, all thrown up shortly after the Fire to accommodate people who still had money and the means to continue to make a living. Each was tall, narrow, with a set of stairs leading up to a front door, a window on either side of the door, and three windows in each of the remaining two stories. The buildings ended in attics that had a single window just beneath the gabled roof, and had identical tall wooden fences around the sides and back, dividing the yard from the neighbors' yards. This one was painted beige, and had a very modest little sign beside the door that read, "Oskar Koob, Counselor."
Tal lifted the polished brass knocker and knocked at the door; it was opened by an attractive young dark-haired woman dressed in a slightly exotic robe of brown embroidered with intricate geometric designs. She regarded Tal with a vacant gaze that suggested she'd been hired for her looks and not her intelligence. "I'd like to see Oskar Koob, please," Tal told her.
"You got an appointment?" she asked, without opening the door enough for him to see past her to the room inside.
"No," he replied doubtfully, wringing his hands for emphasis. "Do I need one? My friend didn't tell me I needed an appointment."
The girl assessed him and his clothing for a moment. "I'll see if the Master is free," she said, and shut the door, leaving him standing on the front step.
But not for long—the "Master" had probably been lurking nearby, perhaps at a window so that he could make his own assessment of the prospective client. Tal had made certain to dress as if he could afford Koob's fees.
The girl opened the door—completely, this time, so that Tal could enter. The foyer was nothing impressive, just four plain walls with doors in them. The girl disappeared through the left-hand one, and reappeared before he had time to have second thoughts and take his money elsewhere. "The Master's powers have told him that his usual morning client is ill," the girl announced grandly. "As soon as the Master has sent a messenger with the medicines he will concoct, the Master will be with you."
The Master never had a client to begin with, Tal mentally chuckled to himself, as he followed the girl into the right-hand room. The Master was wondering how long the current goose could be induced to lay magic eggs. The Master is thanking God or his own powers for bringing in a fresh goose to cultivate.
The room was precisely what he had expected—dark brown draperies concealed all four walls and covered the window; light came from an oil lamp hanging over the table in the center of the room. Draperies were fairly standard for "Consultants" like Oskar Koob—it was easy to hide confederates and props behind draped fabric. The floor was covered with a worn and faded carpet—and again, this was standard, for it was easier to hide trapdoors under carpet than in a plain wooden floor. There was a small table in the middle of the room, with a globe of smoky crystal in the center of it. There was a chair on the far side, and a slightly shorter chair on Tal's side. Without prompting, he took the smaller chair, and waited.
After an interval calculated to impress the person waiting with the importance of the one he was waiting for, Oskar Koob made his Entrance, sweeping aside the draperies which concealed a shabby door behind his chair.
Oskar Koob was ill-equipped for the part of a mysterious and powerful fortune-teller. He looked like nothing so much as a peasant straight out of the farm—complete with the innocent and boyish face that makes people want to trust such an individual.
Well, his face is his fortune, I can see that.
As for the rest, he was dressed in a sober black tunic and breeches, with a most impressive gold medallion around his neck. The fabric was excellent, the tailoring superb. Evidently the "Consultation" business was going well for Oskar Koob.
Tal rose immediately, and held out his hand. "Sir! I'm—" he began, but Koob hushed him with an imperiously raised hand.
"Silence," he commanded. "Take your seat again, my brother. I will consult with the spirits and they will tell me who you are and what your business with me is."
Tal did as he was told, and Koob seated himself behind the crystal sphere. He made several elaborate hand-movements above the sphere, muttering things under his breath as he did so, while Tal simply watched and waited.
"Your name is Tal Rufen," Koob announced, squinting into the ball. "You are a gem-merchant, and you wish to consult me concerning the best investments in stock for you to make."
Tal contrived to look and act astonished—never mind that the way Koob had probably learned all this so far was by means of a scrying-spell to read the papers in Tal's pocket. Koob continued to give him details about his supposed life, all of them lifted from the letters and other articles he had with him. It was an interesting variation on the same game Tal had seen run elsewhere—the difference being that there was no pickpocket accomplice to lift a pouch, learn who the client was by opening it and examining it, and replacing it without the client ever being aware that it was gone in the first place.
"Now," Koob said, deepening his voice, "I must call upon other spirits in the matter of your business. These are very powerful spirits, powerful, and sometimes dangerous. The spirits who know the future are far more risky to call upon than those who know the past and the present."
The light in the lantern dimmed, and an eerie glow came up from the crystal sphere in the middle of the table. As the lantern-light dimmed to next to nothing, strange sounds filled the room, the sounds of people whispering, the distant rattle of a tamborine, a few notes on a flute, a drumbeat echoing his heart. Then, as Tal looked away from the crystal globe, he saw things floating in midair—the face of a young woman, disembodied hands, the very tamborine he'd just heard.
So just what is it about the tamborine that makes it so attractive to spirits? Tal had never been to one of these little "Consultations" without "the spirits" floating a tamborine around the room and beating an occasional solo on it.
You'd think that, since they're in the afterlife, they'd have enough talent to play more than just a tamborine! If they're Blessed Spirits, shouldn't they have at least the talent of a minstrel? If they've been dead a while, wouldn't they have the time to practice, oh, a gittern at least, or a floor-harp, if not a pipe-organ of the sort from a Cathedral?
Furthermore, as a constable, Tal had trained himself to remember faces. He was not particularly surprised to see that the young woman levitating above the floor was the same one who'd met him at the door. Now she had unusual lighting and some fresh powder makeup and quickly-painted brows, but it was the same woman.
The young woman proceeded to give him advice about his various plans and investments—the ones mentioned in the papers in his pouch, that is. When he asked for further advice—should he undertake new projects?—she was curiously silent. And when she spoke, her lips didn't move.
This was the first time Tal had gone to a fortune-teller who was also a real mage, but he had a good idea which effect was produced by fakery, and which by applied magic. The girl's face and veil glowing—that's foxfire, I've seen that before. The levitation is either magic or a platform lowered down from the room above us. Probably the platform, it's easier. He's reading the documents I have with me by magic; he probably sees them in that crystal ball of his. Then he's the one speaking in a female voice, not the girl; that's ordinary voice-throwing, pitched high. Once in a while his lips twitch.
Just as he came to those conclusions, the Master "collapsed," the "spirit" vanished, and Tal, professing concern, went to the Master's side. This, of course, gave the girl time to shed her veils, foxfire and makeup; he kept careful track, and she appeared in about the time it should take for her to get rid of the costume, wipe off powder and greasepaint, and come down from the second floor. She assisted the Master out, and returned a moment later.
"The Master must rest; it has been a difficult morning," she said stiffly, as if making a rehearsed speech. "The usual fee is five ducal florins for each consultation."
Five florins! That was steep, even by the standards of the best! Then again, Oskar Koob's show was a bit more impressive, so perhaps he was worth it. Tal paid without protesting, and left, after he made an appointment for a second consultation—one which, of course, he would not attend.
Of course by that time, Oskar Koob would no longer be in residence here; he would be taking up space in either the Ducal Gaol or the Church Gaol, depending on which authority got to him first.
Unless, of course, Tal thought with some amusement, as he made his way back towards the bridge, the spirits warn him first!