Reading too long—especially letters with terrible penmanship—always made Ardis's eyes ache, and the Justiciar-Priest closed and rubbed them with the back of her thumb. Rank did have its privileges, though, and no one asked the Priests of her Order to sacrifice comfort in return for devoting their lives to Justice and God. Though plain almost to the point of austerity, Ardis's quarters were warmed by a fine, draft-free stove, her reading-chair comfortably cushioned, and the light falling on her papers was as clear as fine oil, a carefully-trimmed wick, and a squeaky-clean lamp could provide.
But I'm tired, overworked, and getting no younger. Briefly, she wondered what her life would be like if she had wedded according to her stature, as her family had expected her to. At this hour, she would probably be receiving callers in a luxuriously-appointed reception room, giving final orders for a sumptuous formal dinner, and thinking about which dress she would wear to the evening's ball or party.
I'd be bored, which would be worse than overworked; my mind would have gone to mush, and I would probably have joined some stupid group devoted to mystical rubbish out of sheer desperation for something different in my life. Or I'd be having affair after frantic affair, like so many of my female relations are doing, because they are shackled in loveless, lifeless marriages with nothing to occupy their minds.
"I could read those and give you a summary," said her secretary Kayne Davenkent, a clever and steady young novice that Ardis had plucked from the ranks of the scribes just last summer.
Ardis didn't immediately reply, but she smiled to herself as she recalled the occasion that the novice had been brought to her attention. Like most novices in the Order of the Justiciars, she had been assigned to the copying of legal documents from all over the Twenty Kingdoms; these copies were sent out to Church libraries everywhere, in order to keep everyone current on legal precedent in all of the Kingdoms. There were only two forces common to all of human life on Alanda, the Church and the High King; and of the two, only the Church substantially affected the life of the common man. Kayne had persisted in questioning the authenticity of a recently acquired document she was supposed to be copying, which had irritated her superior. Ordinarily, he would have taken care of the problem himself, but he was of the faction that had not been in favor of Ardis when she asserted her control over the Abbey of the Order of the Justiciars at Kingsford, and he delighted in taking the smallest of discipline problems directly to Ardis rather than dealing with them himself. He probably hoped to overwhelm her with petty details, so that he and his faction could proceed to intrigue her right out of her position while she was drowning in nit-picking nonsense.
Unfortunately for his plans, she was already aware of his intentions, and in particular this attempt to irritate his superior had backfired. Intrigued by the notion of a novice who stood her ground against a Priest's judgment, Ardis demanded the particulars, and discovered that Kayne was right and Father Leod was wrong. Further, she discovered that in disputes of a similar nature, Kayne was usually right and Father Leod wrong.
Intelligence, acute observation, courage, wit, and persistence, and the ability to think for herself rather than parroting the opinions of her superior—those were qualities all too often lacking in novices, and qualities that Ardis appreciated. Knowing the young woman was wasted in her position, she had snatched Kayne up for her own staff before Father Leod knew what was happening.
"I know you could give me a summary, and a good one too, but you know why I won't let you," Ardis replied, putting her head back against the padded leather of her chair, her eyes still closed. "I told you why a week ago when you made the same offer—which is appreciated, by the way, even if I don't accept it."
"Because a summary won't give you the sense of things they aren't putting down," Kayne repeated, with a little well-bred irritation of her own. "That sounds rather too much like mind-reading, and I can't see where it's all that important in personal correspondence." Her irritation showed a little more. "It also sounds, frankly, as if you simply didn't want me to see the letter, and if that's the real reason, I wish you'd just tell me instead of making something up."
Ardis laughed at that, and opened her eyes. Kayne was very young to be a novice, but her clever tongue, acidic wit, sharp features and sharper temper were unlikely to win her many friends, much less suitors, so perhaps that was why she never attracted a marriage proposal. Ardis appreciated her sharp tongue, but she was going to have to teach Kayne how to curb it. Kayne was really too intelligent to ever remain a mere secretary, but if it hadn't been for Ardis, she probably would have been kept in a subordinate position all her life, and she would remain subordinate if she made too many enemies to advance.
She might have done well enough in secular society, but she had told Ardis in her initial interview that there really hadn't had any choice but to go into the Church. She was too poor to become a merchant, and there were not too many Masters in the more interesting Guilds and Crafts who would take on an Apprentice without the Apprenticing Fee.
Not much like myself at her age—but I think she's going to go far, if the Church will let her. And it will, if I have any say in the matter and she can learn when it is better to keep your observations behind your teeth.
"It's not mind-reading, and it's not intuition either," Ardis told her. "It's all based on patterns that I have observed after many years of dealing with these same people. I know what they say, how they say it, and how they conceal things they don't want me to know by the way they choose their words. It's knowledge you can't describe briefly to someone else, but it's knowledge all the same. And it's all the more important in personal correspondence, when the people who are writing to me are the movers and shakers of their areas—like my cousin Talaysen."
Kayne's brow wrinkled as she took that in. "I don't suppose you could give me an example, could you?" she asked.
"As a matter of fact, I can, from this letter." Ardis tapped the sheet of thick, cream-colored vellum on the desk, just above the seal of Free Bard Master Talaysen, currently the advisor to the King of Birnam. "My cousin mentions that his King has had three visitors from Rayden—from our part of the kingdom, in fact—but goes into detail on only two of them. He knows all three of them from his life at Court, before he gave up his position as a Master of the Bardic Guild, although it seems that none of them recognized him as he is now. I know from things we have written and spoken about in the past that he believes that the third man, who appears to be an ordinary enough fop, is actually playing a much deeper game involving both secular politics and the Church; he's warned me about this fellow before. I also know from other sources that this fellow has said things about me in the past that are less than complimentary. My cousin doesn't like to worry me, and if he believes there is something going on that threatens me, he will take whatever steps he can to thwart it himself without involving me. Hence, this third visitor has said or done something that makes Talaysen think he is gathering information for possible use against me, and Talaysen is trying to spike his wheels—probably by feeding him misinformation." She raised an eyebrow at her crestfallen secretary. "Now, assume you've read this letter. Would you have made those deductions from it?"
"No," Kayne replied, properly humbled. "I probably wouldn't even have mentioned the visitors at all, thinking they came under the heading of social chit-chat."
"Nothing comes under the heading of social chit-chat when people have managed to make a High Bishop out of you," Ardis corrected sourly. "May God help me." That last came out with the fervor of the prayer it actually was. Ardis would have been much happier if no one had ever come up with that particular notion.
"I thought you wanted to become a High Bishop," Kayne said in surprise. "How could you not?"
"What, how could I not want to become a bigger target for slander, libel, and intrigue than I already was?" she responded tartly. "If I were only the Abbess and the Chief Justiciar, I would have been much safer; as a woman, they would always underestimate me so long as I didn't intrigue for a high position. If I had the power, but not the title, I would not be nearly the threat to other power-holders inside and outside the Church as I am since I wear the miter. I am not so fond of fancy hats that I was pleased to put up with all that just so I could wear one."
Kayne snickered at Ardis's designation of the High Bishop's miter as a "fancy hat." Ardis leaned over her desk and fixed her young secretary with a stern look.
"If you are going to prosper in the Church, you'd better keep in mind that a woman is always in a more precarious position than a man," she said carefully. "It is much better to hold power quietly, without trappings, than it is to make a show of it. The men will resent you a great deal less, listen to you a great deal more, and might even come to respect you in time."
Kayne nodded, slowly. "So that's why—" She spread her hands, indicating the office.
"Correct. The appearance of austerity and modesty, the reality of a certain level of comfort." Ardis smiled. "You should have seen this office when my predecessor sat here. It looked like a cross between a Cathedral and a throne room. I cleared most of that out, sold the expensive trash to pay for this, and donated the rest to one of the orphanages Arden established after the Fire." She chuckled reminiscently. "Somewhere in Kingsford there are orphans bouncing on his overstuffed, plush-covered sofa and grinding muddy little feet into his appalling carpet, and I do hope he finds out about it."
Kayne snickered again. "Well, is there anything you'd like to dictate to me before I retire to my office and catch up on the last of the work from yesterday?"
Ardis considered the stack of correspondence before her. "How are things coming across the river?"
By "across the river," Ardis meant in the city of Kingsford, which had been half burned down by a disastrous fire a little more than two years ago. The fire itself was not natural; it had been set by conspirators hoping to murder Duke Arden who had joined forces (or so Ardis suspected) with members of Ardis's own Order in an attempt to usurp control of the Cloister and Cathedral of the Justiciars, and then take full control of all of the Church holdings in Kingsford and put the lot in the hands of a group of closed-minded fanatics.
Ardis only suspected that the two groups had been in league with each other, even though there was nothing but rumor to link them—the fires had certainly been started magically, in the rafters of the Duke's Theater while the Duke was attending a performance. So far as Ardis knew, the only humans in Kingsford and the surrounding area who could use magic were Priests of the Order of Justiciars. There had been any number of the fanatical faction preaching and stirring up trouble before the Fire, and there were a few witnesses among the actors and musicians who had seen a figure in the robes of a Priest loitering about the theater in a suspicious manner just before the fire. And the uprising within the Cloister walls had occurred so simultaneously with the fires in the theater that even the most skeptical were convinced that it could not be a coincidence. But a hot, high wind combined with the driest summer on record had contributed to spreading the fire out of control, while the uprising within the Cloister walls had ensured that there were no mages to spare to fight those fires, and when it was all over, the greater part of Kingsford lay in ruins. It was only the personal effort of Arden himself that kept the disaster from being worse than it was. The Duke had led the battle against the fire himself, working side by side with the lowest citizens of the city. His actions had earned him the undying loyalty of all of Kingsford, and the title "Good Duke Arden."
Two years later, the city was still partly in ruins, and Ardis felt very sorry for the Grand Duke. He had beggared himself to help pay for the rebuilding, with the intentions of creating an ideal city out of the ashes, a city with no slums, a city that was planned from the beginning, a city where residential districts would not sit cheek-by-jowl with tanneries, and sewers would not dump their noisome contents upstream from places where people drew out their water.
But the best-laid plans of men and Grand Dukes were subject to the whims of fate, and fate had decreed otherwise. Unwilling or unable to wait on the Duke's plans to rebuild their homes and businesses, those who had money of their own proceeded to put those homes and businesses wherever they pleased—usually building on what was left of their old property.
The result was that half of the rebuilt city was laid out along Duke Arden's plans, and the other half was laid out the same way it had been—in as haphazard a fashion as could be expected. The only real change was that he had been able to decree that streets would be laid out on a grid, so there were no more dead ends and cul-de-sacs, or meandering alleys that went nowhere.
"Arden finally got the fireboats he ordered," Kayne reported. "They arrived today. Whether they work or not—" She shrugged.
"If they don't, I'll make a point of assigning someone to get those pumps working by magic, providing Arden doesn't browbeat a Deliambren to come up with something better," Ardis replied. She still suffered from twitches of mingled guilt and anger when she thought of how easy it would have been for Church mages to halt the fire before it had spread more than a block or two. Not that she was responsible for the fact that they hadn't, but still—
I am a mage and a Justiciar, and what happened to the people of Kingsford was a gross miscarriage of Justice.
"He probably will; he already has them working on a system to pump water to every part of the city," Kayne observed. "What's a little thing like fixing the pumps on a fireboat, compared to that?"
Ardis nodded absently. If the idiots that started those fires didn't perish in the conflagration, they had better be so far from Kingsford that humans are an oddity. Because if I ever get hold of them, they'll pray to be handed over to the Duke for punishment. He'll only hang them. She had already taken care of those she had been able to catch. Recalling a magic transformation discovered and abused by another renegade Priest-Mage, she had put his discovery to better use. The miscreants were serving out life sentences, toiling under baskets of rubble and ashes, and wearing the forms of donkeys. Titularly the property of the Abbey, they were under long-term loan to the city. And when all the rubble was cleared away, they would be hitched to the carts that carried away the dead. They were well cared for, housed in their own stable in the city, where a special Priest of one of the Service Orders—a close, personal friend of both Ardis and the Duke—who knew what they were had been assigned to their physical and spiritual needs. They were awakened every morning at dawn with prayer, put to bed in their stalls with prayer, and prayed over while they worked. They would have ample opportunity for repentance, redemption, and contemplation.
They were also performing the hardest physical labor they ever had in their lives, seven days a week, from dawn to dusk, in pouring rain, burning sun, or blinding blizzard. They would never be human again, for Ardis had locked the spell on them herself. No one knew of their fate except Ardis, the Grand Duke, and the young Priest assigned to their care, who was far more concerned with the state of their souls than the discomfort of their bodies. Even Duke Arden agreed that the punishment was sufficient. Ardis had similar fates planned for any more miscreants that turned up.
"As for the rest, Arden has given up on the Carpenters, and now he's trying with the Weavers and Dyers." Kayne looked thoughtful. "I think he'll have a bit more luck with them; they need water for their work more than the Carpenters do."
Arden was trying to persuade those who had built according to their own plans to tear down what they had put up, and rebuild according to his. He was having mixed success, and often it depended on the season and whether or not he had alternatives available while those who were displaced waited for the new construction to be completed. People who might not mind spending a month or two in a well-appointed tent in the summer, would get decidedly testy about the idea in midwinter, and those whose businesses required that their materials stay dry were not likely to give up a roof for the sky.
Ardis chuckled. "Poor Arden! He'll never give up, not as long as there is a single crooked street in Kingsford."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps he will find other things to occupy him," Kayne observed. "He can't stay out of politics forever, as you have pointed out in the past. Speaking of politics, have you anything you'd like me to take care of for you, since you haven't got anything to dictate to me?"
"Here—" Ardis handed the young woman a small packet of invitations. "Accept the invitation to Duke Arden's musical entertainment, give permission for the Novice's Choir to sing at the opening of the new Wool Guild Hall with the stipulation that no more than half the repertory be hymns mentioning sheep, shepherds, spinners, weavers, or wool, and decline everything else with my sincere regrets." She shook her head. "I never got this many invitations to dinners and parties when I was a maiden looking for a husband; I can't conceive of why I'm getting them now."
Kayne accepted the packet with a shrug. "I haven't the background to tell you," she said with callous frankness. "Maybe they hope God will judge their entertaining with charity when they die if you attend."
Ardis stretched, the heavy sleeves of her scarlet robe falling down around her elbows. "That's as good a theory as any," she replied. "Now, I'll just write a brief letter to my cousin, and you can pick it off my desk and address it in the morning."
Taking that properly as her dismissal, Kayne rose and made the ritual bows: a brief nod of respect to Ardis, and a deeper genuflection to the small altar in the corner of the room. When she was gone, Ardis picked up her pen and took a clean sheet of paper. It never took long to write to Talaysen; words flowed as easily as if she was talking to him rather than writing. No matter how long it had been since they last saw each other, or how many leagues lay between them, they were still closer than many siblings.
When she had finished, she sanded the letter to dry the ink, then set it aside in the tray for Kayne to take in the morning. There were more records to deal with, for record-keeping had not been a priority when there were people who were going to die of injuries or exposure if something wasn't done about their needs right that moment.
Ardis had never minded record-keeping or paperwork, unlike some of her colleagues. These days it gave her some time to herself, time when she was not the High Bishop. Even now, it still gave her a twinge when she realized that the title and all that went with it were hers. It was an honor and a responsibility she had not expected to attain before her hair was totally white, if ever.
She had known all along that the position would be as much trouble as honor, and she was resigned to dealing with the former. These records were a part of that; extremely sensitive information that she did not want in the hands even of her loyal secretary. These were the Abbey records that dealt with crime and punishment.
Priests who "failed the Faith"—the euphemism for criminals—were seldom turned over to secular authorities, and were never punished publicly. Every Abbey had a section of cells with locks on the outside of the doors—effectively a gaol—and some even referred to that section by that name. Others, like the Justiciars' Kingsford Abbey, were more discreet, and called the section by the term "repentance retreat." Those who stole, committed fraud, or violated Church canon law ended up there until they truly, sincerely repented. Sometimes, however, there were cases that were more serious and required a solution that went beyond simple incarceration. There had been four such cases locked in the cells at the time of the rebellion and Fire, three of whom had been mages, and like the others who had been down there, they had been released by the rebels. One had died in a mage-battle. The one who was not a mage had fled, though not to the rebels, but to Ardis's people and had earned a certain amount of forgiveness by warning them and fighting at their side. Two had vanished completely.
Since they had last been seen fleeing for the city, it was presumed that they were dead, but Ardis didn't much care for making such presumptions. Especially not where these two were concerned, since both of them, like her little donkeys, had been locked into forms that were not human. One of them was the renegade Priest-Mage named Revaner, who had discovered transformative magic in the first place, and his transformation was public knowledge, since it had occurred very dramatically at the Midsummer Faire.
It was a tale that had been made into more than one song. Revaner had lusted after a young Free Bard and Gypsy named Robin; she had spurned his advances, and in revenge, he had conspired with a Guild Bard named Betris to catch and confine her. When she was caught, Revaner transformed her into a huge, brightly-colored bird that he displayed as a curiosity and forced to sing for his guests at the Faire. Master Talaysen, his apprentice Rune, and another Free Bard called Heron had discovered what had happened to Robin and appealed to the Justiciars. Ardis had directed them to bring the bird before her; they had stolen the captive and after a long and dramatic chase through the grounds of the Faire, had brought not only the transformed Bard, but had brought Revaner who had been pursuing them. The Priest made the mistake of underestimating Ardis's power and had claimed the bird as his property; Ardis and the other two Justiciar-Mages with her had demonstrated by breaking his spells that the bird was the Gypsy after all.
They had been not only his judges, but the instrument of his punishment; in breaking his spells, they turned his magic back on him, and he was the one who was transformed. Ardis was senior enough to decree that this was fit punishment, and transformed he had remained until the day of the Fire.
There were two more rebellious priests who were among the unaccounted-for, although they were not mages. Ardis had spent the last several days going over the records of the unidentified dead from the Fire, hoping to find matches for her missing miscreants. She frowned as she came up empty-handed.
This is not good. I would rather not contemplate the consequences of renegade Priest-Mages wandering about, feeding their own mad agendas. Granted, they had been stripped of their powers, but it hadn't been their magic powers that were the cause of their incarceration. They could still do harm.
They could set themselves up as Priests of some other Order out in the back of beyond, and go back to abusing those who are in their care. And we wouldn't know unless someone reported them, or the local Priest got curious because they stopped attending services in his chapel. Even then, we wouldn't know unless he made an inquiry—
She shook her head. The only thing that she could think to do was to send letters to the Clerks of the Records of all the other Orders, describing the runaways, advising that they might try to set themselves up in their own parishes, and asking that copies of any suspicious inquiries be sent to Kingsford Abbey.
If they dare try that and we catch them— She gritted her teeth. They would be made very unhappy.
I wonder how they would like serving the Church as oxen at one of the hermitage farms? That would be particularly appropriate in the case of Revaner.
She did what she could among the records, made a first draft of the letter she was going to have to send to the other Orders, and locked it in a drawer. She'd have to make some special preparations tomorrow, but this was one time when it made more sense to make copies magically than by hand. Someday, perhaps, she could allow Kayne to know this particular secret, but for now it was best kept as private as possible.
She turned back to the letter from her cousin, for the final paragraph troubled her. Talaysen very seldom asked her for anything, and the request he had for her this time was a disturbing one.
I have been receiving reports from Rayden of the murders of several Free Bards and Gypsies, he wrote. Ardis, I will be the very first to admit that my people tend to get themselves into trouble of their own accord, and occasionally some of them do end up on the wrong end of a knife. But these have all been violent, senseless, horrible murders by absolute strangers; no one understands why or how they happened, and all the victims have been women. Some of my people are becoming very alarmed; they don't know how to explain it, but the ones with magic think that there is some power that is deliberately seeking them out to slay them. I don't know what you can do—but you are a Priest, a mage, and a Justiciar. Can you try to find out what is going on and put a stop to it?
She smoothed her short hair back with both hands and stared at that last paragraph, cursing Talaysen for not sending her all the facts.
But that assumed that he had them; he might know nothing more than what he had told her. Still, if she had names, dates, places—she might have been able to start an investigation. It would be a great deal more difficult to do so with "information" that was this vague.
She had already told him, though, in an equally vague sentence at the end of her letter, that she would do everything she could to "help him with his problem."
She folded up his letter and locked it away with the other sensitive material in her special desk drawer. I'll put it in the back of my mind and sleep on it, she told herself, knowing that she often came up with solutions to difficult situations that way. Right now, more than anything, I need a little time to myself. My mind feels as bloated and stiff as a cow-gut balloon.
Now—now was her one hour of indulgence, the hour she kept solely for herself, when she could read in silence and peace, and not have to think of anything but the words on the page before her.
She'd only begun taking this hour for herself in the last few weeks; until now, things had been too hectic even to steal a single hour for herself. This was the quiet time she had been hoping for since the Great Fire; in the months that had followed the conflagration, she had been forced to do the work of four people. There had been the situation in her own Order to consolidate, by making certain that her allies in the Order were placed in every position of importance and those whose loyalties were in doubt were put in positions of equal stature, but where they could do her no harm—such as Father Leod. Occasionally, she had been forced to manufacture such positions, to avoid making an outright enemy by demoting him. Then there had been the relief effort in the city—the number of deaths had been appalling, and as the days passed, more and more of the missing had to be added to the rolls of the "presumed dead." The number of burned and injured was even worse than the number of dead, for at least the dead no longer suffered. The injured suffered terribly, for fatal burns made for a long, drawn-out, agonizing death when there were not enough painkillers to treat more than a fraction of those hurt. For those who were most likely to die anyway, she had had to make the unpleasant decision to give them the painkillers with the worst long-term side effects—since after all, they would not survive long enough to suffer them—but while they still breathed they could have less agony. Then there were the homeless . . . and the illnesses that followed exposure to the elements, food and water that could not be kept clean, and of course the overwhelming shock and grief.
The one saving grace had been that it was summer rather than winter. The one miracle was that some of the warehouses where the tents used in the Kingsford Faire were stored had been spared. One of Ardis's first acts was to order the warehouses broken into and the tents erected on Faire Field to shelter the homeless, no matter who owned them. Her second had been to commandeer as much canvas as existed within several days' journey and arrange for it, rope, tools, and poles to be made available to the refugees. It was amazing how many of them acquired tent-making skills when the raw materials were left at hand for them to use. She had ensured that no avaricious profiteer could scoop it all up and sell it by having the canvas parceled into reasonable bits and rationed by armed guard.
All of the resources of the Church had been put to the task of making it possible for people to begin salvaging their lives again, and between the Church and their Duke, by that winter, most people had some sort of reasonable shelter to meet the snow.
And now, most people had real walls and roofs, and it was their duty to get their lives in order, and not the Church's. Things were not back to normal, and would not be for many years to come, but they were at the point where people could take over their own lives.
And Ardis could, at last, go back to some of her old habits. She might even be able to devote more of her time to reading than just that single hour.
Kingsford was not a jewel without a flaw; there were plenty of them. The Duke's coffers were far from bottomless, and he could not remedy every ill. He would very much have liked to build places where the poor could enjoy walls and roofs as solid as those of their "betters," but he had to budget his resources, and there were others with fewer scruples ready to supply the needs of the lowborn. Nor had the nature of the people who had lived there been changed by the Fire. So as a result, the new Kingsford was a great deal like the old Kingsford. There were blocks of ramshackle tenements that looked as if they would fall down in the first strong wind—but somehow managed to survive all the same. There were a few lawless places where even the constables would not walk at night. There were thieves, cutpurses, sharpsters, game-cheats, procurers, unlicensed street-walkers, and those who preyed upon their fellow humans in every way that had ever been thought of.
Ardis, who as a Priest was far more cognizant of the breadth of human nature than Duke Arden, could have told him that this would happen. She had also known that it would be useless to tell him, as this was the last thing he wanted to hear. So she had held her peace, and as Kingsford rose Phoenix-like out of the ashes, she did her best to counsel and console him when some of his city's new-grown "feathers" were broken, dirty, or stunted.
At least now that winter had settled in, there would be less violent public crime for her people to handle. Dealing with that was yet another task of the Justiciars, although they generally only were involved when a putative criminal was apprehended and not before. The death rate wouldn't drop off, for the very old, the weak, and the very young would succumb to the cold and the illnesses associated with the cold. Those deaths were the purview of the Charitable Orders in the city itself, and not of the Justiciars. Justiciars and Justiciar-Mages could and did work limited Healing magics, but not often, and it was not widely known that they could do so; the fact that the Justiciars worked magic at all was not exactly a secret, but detailed knowledge was not widely disseminated. The problem with doing magical Healing was that it was difficult to know when to stop—and who to help. It would be easy to spend all one's time or energy on Healing and get nothing else done.
That would certainly be a cause for rejoicing among the city's miscreants and criminals, who would be only too happy for the Justiciars to spend their time on something besides dispensing justice.
Well, they're all bottled up until warmer weather. When the winter wind howled, even the cutthroats huddled beside their stoves and waited for spring.
And just as they, she settled into her often-uneasy new position, huddled beside her stove, and took an hour's consolation each night in books.
This wasn't frivolous reading—she'd left all that behind her outside the Cloister walls—but she didn't often choose devotional works, either. Usually, it was law or history; occasionally, works on magic.
Today it was to be a very private work on magic which had arrived with her cousin's letter, written expressly for her by one of Talaysen's Gypsy friends, and to be destroyed as soon as she finished reading it. It was a short manuscript on Gypsy magic—or rather, the fashion in which Gypsies used the power that was magic. Another manuscript had come with this one, which had been hidden inside the larger tome—also written by a Gypsy, it described the means by which miracles could be faked. After some editing for form rather than content, Ardis intended to have this one published for the general public.
Then, perhaps, there will be less of a chance for another High Bishop Padrik to deceive the public.
She evened the manuscript and set it down on the desktop before her. But before she had read more than the introductory sentences, Kayne returned, a frown on her face.
"There's a fellow here who insists on seeing you," she said with annoyance. "He won't leave, and short of getting guards to throw him out, I can't make him leave. He claims to be a constable from Haldene, and he says he has information it's vital to give you."
Ardis sighed. "And it can't wait until my morning audience hours tomorrow?" she asked wearily.
Kayne shook her head. "He says not, and he won't talk to anyone else."
Ardis weighed duty against desire, and as always, duty won. "Send him in," she said with resignation, putting her manuscripts safely away in that special drawer, and locking it. She secured the lock with just a touch of magic as the importunate visitor came in, escorted by Kayne, who made no effort to hide her disapproval.
But Ardis was not so certain that Kayne's disapproval was warranted. The fellow was quite clearly exhausted, his plain, workaday clothing travel-stained, and his face gray and lined with weariness.
First impressions were important, and this man impressed her because of his physical state. If whatever he had to tell her was not really important, he would have taken the time to clean up and don his finest garments.
"Constable Tal Rufen of Haldene," Kayne announced with an audible sniff, and Ardis rose and extended her hand. Rufen took it, went to his knee in the appropriate genuflection, and pressed it briefly to his forehead in token of his submission to the authority of God and the Church. So he was a Churchman. Not all humans were—the Gypsies, for instance, held to their own set of deities, chief of whom was the Lady of the Night. Very different from the Church's sexless Sacrificed God.
"Sit down, Tal Rufen," Ardis said as soon as he rose to his feet. She turned to her secretary. "Kayne, please bring us some hot tea and something to eat, would you?"
Kayne's disapproval dropped from her like a cloak when she saw that Ardis was going to take the man seriously. "Yes, High Bishop," the young woman said respectfully, as Ardis's visitor dropped into the chair she indicated with a lack of grace that bespoke someone nearing the end of his strength.
Ardis ignored that and settled into her own chair, steepling her fingers together as she considered the constable before her.
The man was of middling stature and middling years; she would guess he was very nearly her own age, perhaps a year or two older. He had probably been a constable for most of his adult life; he exhibited his authority unconsciously, and wore his uniform tunic with an easy familiarity that suggested he might be more uncomfortable in civilian clothing than in his working garb. No paper-pusher this, he had the muscular strength of a man quite used to catching runaway horses and running thieves, wrestling rowdy drunks and breaking down doors. The lines on his face suggested that he didn't smile much, nor did he frown; his habitual expression was probably one of neutral sobriety. He had an oblong face with a slightly squared chin, high, flat cheekbones, and deepset eyes of an indeterminate brown beneath moderately thick brows. Gray in his brown hair suggested that he might be a bit older than he looked, but Ardis didn't think so.
He probably earned those gray hairs on the streets. He looked competent, and a competent constable took his duty seriously.
So what was he doing so far from Haldene?
"Tal Rufen of Haldene," she said, breaking the silence and making him start. "You're a long way from home."
The entrance of Kayne with a loaded tray gave him a reason not to answer, but Kayne didn't stay. Ardis caught her secretary's eyes and made a slight nod towards the door; Kayne took it as the order it was and left them alone. Ardis poured out tea and handed him a cup and a plate of cheese and unleavened crackers. Tal drank his cup off in a single gulp, asked permission with a glance, and poured himself a second cup that he downed while he wolfed crackers and cheese as if he hadn't eaten all day.
Perhaps he hasn't. Very curious.
But if he did his work the way he ate, his superiors would never be able to find fault with him; he was quick, efficient, and neat. Without being rude or ill-mannered, he made the food vanish as thoroughly as if he were a sleight-of-hand artist, and settled back into his chair with a third cup of tea clasped between his hands.
"I don't see very many constables from outside of Kingsford," Ardis continued, "And then, it is usually only in the summer. I would say that it must have been some very urgent errand to urge you to travel so far in the middle of winter."
"If you consider murder an urgent errand, you would be correct, High Bishop," the man replied quietly in a ringing baritone. "For it is murder that brings me here." He waited for her to interrupt, then went on. "I want to beg your indulgence, however, and allow me to tell you this in my own way."
"If your way is to begin at the beginning and acquaint me with the facts as you discovered them, then proceed," she told him, watching him from beneath lowered lids.
He nodded soberly and began his narrative. He was precise, detailed, and dry in a way that reminded her of a history book. That, in turn, suggested that he had more than a passing acquaintance with such books. Interesting; most of the constables she knew were hardly scholars.
She had interviewed any number of constables over the course of the years, and he had already stated it was murder that brought him here, so it was no surprise when he began with the details of a particularly sordid case. The solution seemed straightforward enough, for the murderer had turned around and immediately threw himself into the river—
But it can't be that straightforward.
Her conclusion was correct, for he described another murder, then a third—and she very quickly saw the things that linked them all together. The bizarre pattern of murder, then suicide. And the missing knife.
She interrupted him as he began the details of a fourth case. "What is going on in Haldene, Tal Rufen?" she demanded with concern. "Is there some disease driving your people to kill each other? I cannot ever recall hearing of that many murder-suicides in a single year in Kingsford, and this is a far larger city than little Haldene!"
He gave her a look of startled admiration. "I don't know, my Lady Bishop," he replied with new respect. "I did consider that solution, but it doesn't seem to match the circumstances. Shall I continue?"
She gestured at him to do so, and continued to listen to his descriptions, not only of the chain of murder-suicides in Haldene, but similar crimes that he had uncovered with patient inquiry over the countryside. They began in a chain of villages and towns that led to Haldene, then moved beyond.
Beyond—to Kingsford, which was the next large city in the chain, if the pattern was to follow the Kanar River.
He came to the end of his chain of reasoning just as she came to that realization.
"Interesting." She watched him narrowly; he didn't flinch or look away. "And you think that Kingsford is now going to be visited by a similar set of occurrences? That is what brought you here?"
"Yes, High Bishop," he told her, and only then did he raise a hand to rub at his eyes, wearily. "I do. And now I must also make a confession to you."
"I am a Priest," she said dryly. "I'm rather accustomed to hearing them."
She had hoped to invoke at least a faint smile from him, but all he did was sigh. "I fear that I am here under somewhat false pretenses. I was a constable of Haldene, but I'm rather afraid that I am no longer. I began investigating this string of tragedies over the objections of my superiors; I continued against their direct orders. When they discovered what I had learned, they dismissed me." He waited to see if she was going to react to that, or say something, and continued when she did not. "I would have quit in any case, when I saw where this—series of coincidences—was heading." He smiled, with no trace of humor. "There is a better chance that the King will turn Gypsy tomorrow than that my superiors would permit me to take leave to inform authorities in Kingsford about this. After all, the plague has left Haldene; it is no longer a problem for those in authority there."
"I . . . see." She wondered for a moment if he was going to ask her for a position. Had all of this been manufactured just to get her attention? "Have you gone to the Captain of the constables in Kingsford?"
"I tried," he replied, and this time he did smile faintly. "He's not an easy man to get to."
"Hmm. True." In fact, Captain Fenris was the hardest man to find in Kingsford, but not because he was mewed up in an office behind a battery of secretaries. It might take weeks before Tal was able to track him down. "I believe that at the moment he is on double-shift, training the new recruits. He could be anywhere in the city at any given moment, and his second-in-command is unlikely to make any decisions in a situation like this."
"More to the point, I'm hardly going to get a glowing recommendation from my former superiors in Haldene, if his second-in-command were to make an inquiry about me," Tal pointed out. "They'll probably tell him I'm a troublemaker with a history of mental instability."
Honest. And he hasn't said a word about wanting a position.
"I will admit that I'm becoming obsessed with this case," Tal continued, and then she saw a hint, just the barest glimpse, of something fierce and implacable. It gazed at her out of his eyes for a moment, then vanished. "Who or whatever is behind this, I want it stopped."
"And you want from me?" Ardis spread her hands. Now, if there was going to be a plea for anything, she had given Tal an opening.
He hesitated. "I want—authority," he said finally. "Credentials. Not a great deal, just enough that if anyone asks me why I'm snooping around, I can say I'm acting on your behalf and with your knowledge. Of course, I'll keep you informed every day, even if I find nothing, and I won't actually do anything unless it is to stop a murder in progress. I won't search houses or people, I won't try and haul anyone off to gaol, I won't threaten or bully. I'll just observe and ask questions."
Ardis graced him with her most skeptical look. "And that's all you want?"
"Well, obviously I'd like to have all of the Kingsford constables working on this, I'd like the services of a mage, and I'd like four or five personal assistants," he replied a little sarcastically. "But I'd also like to be made Captain of the constables, stop this madness before it infects Kingsford, and be rewarded with the Grand Duke's daughter. Obviously none of this is possible, so I'm asking for the least I need to continue to track this case."
"And what had you planned to do to make ends meet?" she asked bluntly. "I assume you aren't independently wealthy."
He shrugged. "I was working on the case in my off-time anyway. I have enough muscle and experience to get a job as a private guard, or even a peace-keeper in a tavern. I can still work on it in my off-time, and without being harassed for doing so, if I can just get minimal credentials."
So, he's willing to support himself in a strange city just so that he can continue following this—whatever it is. He's right. He's obsessed. I wish more people would become that obsessed when it is necessary.
"Let me assume for the moment that there really is a—force—that is causing these deaths. It occurs to me that alerting the entire constabulary to this case might also make that force go into hiding," she said aloud, not quite willing to answer his request yet.
"That could easily be true," he agreed. "Which is, unfortunately, a good reason not to inform Captain Fenris—or at least, to ask him not to inform the rest of the constabulary. And it also occurs to me that this force knows a great deal about how both investigation and magic operate." He raised one eyebrow at her. "It hadn't escaped my notice that every one of the suicides was either by means of running water or under running water—even the jeweler."
Now she was surprised, for she had thought that last horrific case had all been perpetrated indoors. "How could the jeweler—"
"He worked with acids, and he had a kind of emergency downpour rigged in his studio," Tal replied. "He had a pipe coming down from his rooftop cistern that ended in the ceiling of his studio, with a valve on the end that was operated by a string with a drain beneath it. After he drank his acids and poisons, he staggered over beneath the pipe and pulled the string. When he was found, the cistern was empty—the initial investigation missed that, because by then the floor was dry." He looked at her expectantly.
"Obviously I don't have to tell you that running water is the only certain means of removing evidence of magic." She tapped the ends of her forefingers together and frowned. "This is beginning to form a picture I don't like."
"Because most of the human mages are in the Church?" Tal asked quietly.
Surprised, but pleased at his audacity, she nodded. "There is the possibility that it is not a human, but frankly—what you've told me fits no pattern of a nonhuman mind that I am aware of. At least, not a sane one, and the nonhuman races are very careful not to allow their . . . problems . . . to escape to human lands."
"Just as we are careful not to let ours escape to theirs," he corroborated. "Still. Elves?"
She shook her head. "Elves take their revenge in a leisurely fashion, and an artistic one. This is both too sordid and too hasty for Elves to be involved."
"Haspur aren't mages, nor Mintaks, nor Deliambrens," he said, thinking out loud. "It could be someone from a very obscure race—but then, I'd have known about him; he'd stand out in those neighborhoods like a white crow. What about Gypsies? I've heard some of them are mages."
Again, she hesitated. "There are bad Gypsies—but the Gypsies are very careful about policing their own people. If this is a Gypsy, he has somehow eluded hunters from among his own kind, and that is so difficult that I find it as unlikely as it being an Elf. I have information sources among them, and I have heard nothing of—"
She stopped in midsentence, suddenly struck by something. Her cousin's letter—
Tal waited, watching her expectantly.
"I was about to say that I have heard nothing of this," she said very slowly, "but I have had some distressing information from my sources. The victims—have they by any chance been Free Bards or Gypsies?"
Again, she got a startled look from him. "I can only speak for the cases in Haldene; I didn't get much detail on the ones in the other towns and villages, and frankly, I didn't spend much time investigating when I learned that the murders were going in the direction that I had feared. No Free Bards, and only one Gypsy," he told her, licking his lips. "But—perhaps this will seem mad to you, which is why I hesitated to mention it—every one of the dead women was either a musician of sorts, or posing as one."
Ardis pursed her lips. "So. There is a link between the victims, even when they seem disparate in everything but their poverty."
I don't like this. I don't like this at all. Ardis was not aware that she was frowning until she caught a brief glimpse of worry on Tal's face. She forced her expression into something smoother.
"I believe you, Tal Rufen," she said at last. "Anyone planning to hoodwink me would have concocted something less bizarre and more plausible."
The constable's visible relief conjured at least a tiny smile onto her face. "So you'll vouch for me if I have trouble getting information?" he asked hopefully.
"I'll do more than that." She pulled the bell-cord that summoned Kayne from the next room. When the novice arrived, eyes brimming with suppressed curiosity, Ardis motioned for her to sit down as well.
"Tal, this is Novice Kayne, my personal secretary. I suspect you will be working at least peripherally together." They eyed one another warily; a grayhound and a mastiff trying to decide if they were going to be friends or not. She hid her amusement. "Kayne, I am making Tal one of the Abbey Guards, and my personal retainer." She smiled a bit wider as they both turned startled eyes on her. "Please get him the appropriate uniforms and see that he has housing with the others. A room to himself, if you please, and a key to the garden doors; his hours are likely to be irregular. He is going to be a Special Inquisitor, so draw up the papers for him. No one else is to know of that rank for the moment except you and the Guard-Captain, however. To the rest, he is simply to be my Personal Guard."
Kayne's eyes danced with excitement; this was obviously the sort of secret she had hoped to be privy to when Ardis appointed her to her post. "Yes, High Bishop. At once. Guard Rufen, have you any belongings you wish me to send to your quarters?"
"I have a pack-mule in your courtyard, and a riding-mule," Tal said dazedly. "I left them tied to the post there."
"I'll see that they are taken care of." She rose quickly to her feet, and looked briefly to Ardis for further instructions.
"You can come back for him here," Ardis said. "Oh—and draw out his first quarter's pay, would you?"
"Of course, High Bishop." The young woman left in a swirl of rust-colored robes and anticipation.
Ardis settled back in her chair, secretly a little pleased to have so startled the stone-faced constable. "There are times when it is very useful to have no one to answer to but one's own self. So, Guard Rufen, you are now a Special Inquisitor. That means that no one can hinder you in whatever you wish to ask or wherever you wish to go. That which is told to you is under the same veil of secrecy as the Confessional; you may tell it to no one except your direct superior, which is myself, since you are the only Inquisitor the Kingsford Abbey now boasts. Within reason, and Kayne will tell you when you have transgressed those bounds, you may requisition anything you need from the Abbey resources. That includes bribe-money—"
She laughed at his shocked expression. "Oh, come now, Inquisitor Rufen—do you take me for a cloistered unworldly? You will have to bribe people; often only money will loosen the tongue when not even threat of eternal damnation will have an effect. Simply tell Kayne what it is for, and keep strict accounts."
"Yes, High Bishop," he said faintly.
"Come to Kayne for whatever you need," she continued. "Report to me once a day if you have anything new to report, to Kayne if you have nothing. Take your meals in the Abbey or in the city, as you prefer, but meals in the city will have to come under your own expenses. Wear your uniform as you deem advisable; always within the Abbey, but outside of the Abbey, you may choose to wear civilian clothing. As a Special Inquisitor, your duty is to investigate what I deem necessary, not religious irregularities. Those are for the General Inquisitors, of which this Abbey has none. The city constables will not interfere with you when you show them your papers—but in any event, once they know you by sight, they won't bother you. I'll tell Fenris only that you are conducting an investigation for me. Only Duke Arden's men might continue to impede you, and they won't after I send my cousin a little note. The people who will know your true rank will be myself, Captain Fenris, Captain Othorp, Duke Arden, and Novice Kayne. Any questions?"
Tal Rufen still looked as if he had fallen from a great height onto his head. "Ah—just one," he said, finally. "Why?"
As an answer, she tossed him her cousin's letter—for those who did not know Talaysen—or Gwydain, the name he had been born with—the contents were innocuous enough.
Tal read it through quickly; that answered one of her questions: he was obviously not only able to read, but fairly literate. Which means he may well be an amateur scholar of history. I shall have to be sure to let him make free with the Abbey library. He got to the last paragraph, and she watched him as he read it through twice.
He looked up at her. "This Talaysen—this is—?"
"Free Bard Talaysen, Master Wren, Laurel Bard, and advisor to the King of Birnam."
"And the leader of the Free Bards, as well as a person respected and admired among the Gypsies. I see." He handed the letter back to her. "I think we can probably assume that most, if not all, of the murders he speaks of bear the same signature as the ones I told you about."
"I would say so." She put the letter away in her desk. "You also asked for a mage; I can offer you two. The first is a fellow Justiciar who also has some other abilities—he can touch minds, and sometimes read the past from objects. His name is Arran, and he just happens to be another cousin of mine."
The corner of Tal's mouth twitched a little at that; the first hint that he had a sense of humor. "Are you related to half the Kingdom?" he asked.
She sighed. "Only a third. Oh, not really, but sometimes it feels as if I am," she replied feelingly. "Especially when they all seem to have favors they want granted."
"Well, it looks as if you are granting another," he observed cautiously.
She shook her head. "No. That wasn't what I meant when I handed you that letter. I would have done this if Talaysen hadn't sent that letter and that request. It was simply a confirmation of everything you told me, with the additional information that there were more victims than even you knew about. It is the duty of the Justiciar to see that all creatures have justice. Generally, miscreants are brought before us, but it is fully within our power to order investigations when the secular authorities are moving too slowly."
"Or not at all," Tal muttered bitterly, giving her a brief glimpse of how deeply his anger ran that he had not been heeded.
"Or not at all," she agreed. "It is our duty to see to it that nothing impedes an investigation that needs to be made. Not even when suspicion indicates a suspect within the Brotherhood of the Church."
Another startled glance from Tal made her nod. "This isn't the first time I have suspected a Priest-Mage of wrongdoing," she told him with brutal frankness. "The only difference is that all the other times I at least had actual suspects. Now I have only the—what did you call it?—the signature?"
"The signature," he confirmed. "The methods and the victims change, the settings change, but the signature stays the same. There are some very basic needs being addressed here. A great anger is being fed, and I suspect there is some—" He hesitated.
"Sexual link?" she asked shrewdly. By now he was over being shocked or surprised by anything she would say, and nodded. Probably due to the fact that I suggested it could be a Priest. "If it is a member or former member of the Brotherhood, that would not be a surprise. Sometimes the appearance of chastity is used as a disguise rather than being part of a vocation. Sometimes it is used as an escape. Sometimes it is a symptom of a great illness of the spirit, rather than being embraced joyfully."
He nodded, his face very sober. "Domination, manipulation, and control; that's what drives these murders, for certain. Maybe revenge."
"With the ultimate control being, of course, the control of the victim's life and death." She nodded her understanding. "Not one constable in a hundred thousand would have reasoned that out. I do not think my confidence is misplaced."
She would have said more, possibly embarrassing the man, but Kayne returned at that moment. "Your belongings are in your quarters, as are your uniforms and your first-quarter pay, Inquisitor Rufen," she said as she came in the door. "Your mules are in the stables, and you will have just enough time to clean yourself and change into a uniform before dinner, where you will have an opportunity to meet the rest of the Abbey Guards. And by the time you are ready for dinner, your papers will also be ready and I will bring them to your quarters." She beamed at both of them, and Ardis rewarded her.
"Well done, Kayne, very well and efficiently done, and thank you." She stood up, and Tal Rufen did likewise, again making the genuflection when she extended her hand. "That will be the last time you need salute me in that fashion, unless we are in the presence of others, Inquisitor," she told him. "I do not stand on formality in private with my associates."
He stood up, and gave her a half salute. "Thank you, High Bishop," he said, with more feeling than he had yet shown under any circumstance. "Thank you for—"
He was at a loss for words, but she already knew what he would have said if he could have. "Thank you for competence and courage," she replied. "Thank you for being ethical, even at a cost. Both of you. Those traits are too rare, and should be cherished. Now, if you would?"
Kayne took the hint, and so did he. The new Inquisitor followed her secretary out the door, and she resumed her chair, wondering what box of troubles she had just opened even as she turned her eyes towards her page.