Four and Twenty Blackbirds bv-4 Read online

  "This is Tal Rufen," Othorp said as he tore off a hunk of bread for himself. "New man, High Bishop's own Guard from now on. Recommended by Justiciar Brune, from Haldene."

  Tal gave Othorp points for giving him the story he should follow, and nodded affably at the rest of the Guards, hoping there would be no jealousy over what should have been a prime position going to an outsider.

  "About time she got her own Guard," one man said without prompting, a fellow with a weathered face and graying black hair. "Stop messing up the duty-roster every time she takes a notion to go across the river. Hard on us, trying to reshuffle so that nobody gets stuck with double-duty."

  The others nodded, in total agreement, and Tal was taken a bit aback for a moment. Then he realized what was going on—as Othorp had hinted, these men were used to a fairly set routine with very little variance, and resented any change in it. They had the soft berth that he had described.

  As he listened to them talk, he had no doubt that most, if not all of them, would spring to the defense of their charges if one of the Justiciarswas attacked—assuming some of themcould spring anymore—but if there was no crisis, they simply didn't want to be stirred from their set ways.

  "Don't envy you, Tal Rufen," said another, one of the very men Othorp had complained about, whose uniform tunic strained over a decided paunch that overlapped his belt. "High Bishop's always gadding here, gadding there—you'll miss half your meals, leave your bed early and get to it late. When you aren't running your legs off to keep up with her, you'll be standing around outside of doors for hours and hours."

  "Oh, I'm used to that by now," he replied easily. "I was on third shift, dockside duty in Haldene. At least now, if it rains, I won't be spending a full shift out in it."

  "There is that, but I wouldn't have lasted a year on a third shift," agreed the second man, and tucked into his food with a will.

  There seemed to be plenty of that food; at least, the novices kept serving the Guards as long as any of them wanted further helpings, although the Priests and their fellow novices were apparently restricted to single servings.More of that asceticism, he decided, grateful that they did not impose their rules on their secular servants. At the end of the meal, all of the Brotherhood rose as one and filed out again, leaving the Guards to wipe their plates with the last of their bread and make a more leisurely exit.

  "High Bishop will want to see you, I'd expect," Othorp said, as Tal hesitated just outside the door, not certain what he was expected to do next. "I doubt she finished with you before dinner. You remember the way."

  He nodded; he would have made a poor constable if he couldn't remember a few turns and twistings of corridors. A constable was supposed to be able to negotiate an unfamiliar neighborhood in the dead of night.

  They parted at the first intersection of hallways, and Tal made his way back to the High Bishop's office. There was no one outside, and he tapped tentatively on the door, wondering if he was supposed to have gone first to Kayne.

  But it was Kayne who opened the door, and she seemed pleased enough to see him. "Come in, please," she said. "The High Bishop is just finishing up some business, but she has already mentioned that she wanted to talk with you before Evening Services."

  Evening Services! He'd forgotten that part of Abbey life! His dismay must have shown on his face, for Kayne chuckled. "Oh, don't worry," she whispered, a conspiratorial sparkle in her eyes, "The Guards aren't expected to attend all the Services. Just one of the ones on Sevenday. It's like the rest of the Abbey life;we have vocations; we don't expect you to, and we don't expect you to abide by the rules made for those who do."

  He sighed, just a little, and hoped his relief didn't show too much. Kayne gestured him inside and shut the door behind him.

  He resumed the chair he had vacated only a few hours ago, and waited for the High Bishop to finish whatever she was doing. It seemed to involve a great deal of paperwork, and some whispering between herself and her secretary. Eventually, though, Kayne went trotting off with a huge sheaf of papers, and Ardis turned her attention back to him.

  "This is a little backwards," she said with a crooked smile. "I usually know all about someone before I engage them, and I would like to rectify that situation now so I know what kind of man I am dealing with." She settled back into her chair, and clasped her hands in her lap. "So tell me, Inquisitor—what kind of a manis Tal Rufen? What does he care for? What does he despise? What makes him the man he is?"

  Her shrewd gray eyes regarded him soberly from beneath winglike brows the same color of gold as her hair.

  "Tal Rufen is a man who never wanted to be anything other than a constable," he told her. "As soon as I was old enough to play, I had a baton I'd made from an old broomstick and a constable's cape from a scrap of canvas. The others would play at robbers, and I'd capture them and hang them. When I got old enough, I learned everything I could about the job, and as soon as they'd take me, I applied. I've been a constable since I was sixteen, and if they'd taken me younger, I'd have gone. If you're looking for what drives me, that's it."

  "And do you consider this position to be a step back for you?" she asked unexpectedly.

  He had to think about that for a moment. "No—no, I don't think so. This is what being a constableshould be like. You've put me in a position to be able to do my job again, which was more than my Captain was doing. When this case is over, though—"

  "You're afraid it might turn into a glorified Bodyguard position," she stated, with a little nod.

  He shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think I'd be satisfied to stand at attention at ceremonies for the rest of my life."

  A brow lifted. "I don't think there will be any danger of that," she told him crisply. "You may not pursue investigations as . . ." She paused to search for the correct word. " . . . as tense and distressful as this one. But you will be pursuing investigations; I have needed someone with your skills to aid me as a Justiciar for some time, and now that I am High Bishop, I need your skills more than before. Magic isn't always the right way to find the answers, and when it is useful, it doesn't always supplyall of the answers. I mislike making a Judgment without all of the information."

  He nodded grave agreement, and she continued. "Now, besides wanting to be a constable all your life, what else are you?"

  "Dull." He laughed. "As a person, I'm afraid I tend to become my work. I don't have many interests outside of that. Games—skill games, not cards or dice. Reading. History, mostly."

  She smiled at that, and he wondered why, but she made no comment. "Parents?" she asked. "Other ties?"

  He shook his head. "Parents are both dead; I was a late-born child, came long after Mother thought she was past having any, and I don't think either of my parents was comfortable around a child. They both died a few years ago. No close friends, no women who cared to put up with the hardships of being a constable's wife."

  "I understand." She contemplated him for a moment. "Perhaps you are more suited to our sort of life than I had thought. I was afraid it would be too dull for you; our entertainments are mostly mental. If you had a vocation, you could be one of the Brotherhood."

  She's right, actually. How many of the lads on the force told me that I lived like a Priest?"That may be," he agreed. "Since most of my life could be packed up on the back of a mule and carried off with me." He thought about that for a moment, and added, "The only things I'm really going to miss in Haldene are the books I left behind and the friends I left them with. A pair of Mintak brothers; we used to play castle-board and share books we'd read. Other than that—" He surprised himself with a bark of laughter. "Other than that, the only thing I'd like is to see the Captain's face if he ever finds out what I'm doing now. I have the feeling that as a Special Inquisitor, technically I outrank him."

  A broad grin sprang up on Ardis's face, making her look very like a vixen in her coat of scarlet and little round red cap. "I sometimes think that the reason God demands that we leave revenge to Him is because He prefe
rs to keep such delights to Himself," she said sardonically. "I quite understand. Well, Tal, before I send you off to the bed you very much deserve, I only want to tell you three things. Make free of the Abbey library; use of it is one of the privileges of being attached in service to the Abbey, and I think you'll be pleased by what you find."

  He flushed a little and ducked his head, obscurely ashamed for some reason that his hunger for books had been found out, and her smile softened. "Tomorrow you can present your papers to whomever you think you will need to work with; trust me, no hour is too early for Captain Fenris, if you can find him. Use your own discretion as to who you inform of your true rank; I'll take care of notifying the Duke myself."

  He started to object, and stopped himself. She was right; she had ways of getting to the Duke quickly, where he would have to wait days or weeks for an audience. "I'll probably tell this Captain Fenris, High Bishop, and I'd rather tell him in person, myself. I want him to see me, I want to see him, so we can—"

  "So the two hounds can sniff noses and decide not to fight," she interrupted with an ironic look that dared him to say otherwise. And since that was pretty much what was going to happen, he couldn't deny.

  "Well, we do have to know that we can trust each other," he pointed out. "Where I'm going to be prowling—well, I might need someone to come to my aid, and if I have to ask Fenris for help, I want him to be willing to send a man with me. He won't do that if he's never seen me."

  "I rather thought that." She lost her smile. "That brings up the last point—remember that you can't track this murderer down if you're dead, Tal. This is a ruthless creature, and if he realizes that someone is tracking him, he may deviate from his chosen victims to remove you from his trail."

  With a feeling of shock, he realized that she was right. It had not occurred to him, he had been so preoccupied with the pursuit, and so focused on thefemale victims, but she was right. Whoever this was, he was smart enough to not only elude pursuit, but to avoid it in the first place.

  That meant he was not only clever, he was intelligent. Someone like that would be smart enough to watch for pursuit, and if he could not shake that pursuit from his trail, he would eliminate it, or at least try.

  I'm going to have to think like someone who is stalking one of the Great Cats in unfamiliar territory. At any moment, it could be the Cat who becomes the stalker, and the former hunter becomes the prey. Tal had never been in a position like this. It gave him a very unsettled feeling, to think of himself as the hunted, rather than the hunter.

  "I'll remember," he promised. "And I won't go picking up any strange knives!" She nodded, accepting that promise.

  With nothing else to be dealt with, he took his leave; Kayne was waiting outside the door with another sheaf of papers, and hardly waited for him to clear the doorframe before entering the office. He wondered a little at this; did the woman never rest? It was long past the time when most folk would have considered that they had put in a good day's work.

  When he returned to his little room, and sat down on the side of the bed, he realized that he had been working on nervous energy for some time. The moment he got off his feet, it ran out, leaving him exhausted.

  For a while, he simply sat there, examining his new quarters. This was the first time he'd had a chance to get a good look at them.

  As was to be expected in an Abbey, this little room, about the size of his bedroom back at the Gray Rose, was not what anyone would call luxurious. At least it didn't have penitential stone walls, though; like the rest of the Abbey, this room was plastered and painted white, with all woodwork and exposed beams stained a dark sable. There was a closet opposite the door; the closet stood open, and his bags were inside—obviously, he was expected to tend to his belongings himself. The narrow bed was set along one wall, and a small table and chair on the other. There was a bookcase—empty—at the foot of the bed, a nightstand with a candle alight in a pewter holder on it at the head. Except for a hook on the door and two more on the wall, that was all there was.

  The bed was firm enough, with plenty of blankets, which would be welcome since the room did not boast a fireplace. But there were no windows, either, so at least there wouldn't be any drafts—though in summer, there wouldn't be any cooling breezes.

  How are we supposed to deal with these woolen uniforms in summer? Or do they have a summer uniform as well?

  He couldn't imagine the Priests wearing those long woolen robes in summer either, so perhaps the summer-weight clothing had been packed away for the season.

  Well, if I don't get my things put up now, I probably won't get to them for days. Somewhere, he dredged up a last bit if energy, and got back to his feet.

  The books he had brought with him all fit nicely into one half of the first shelf of the bookcase. He hung his civilian clothing up first, then his new uniforms. All the rest of his belongings, such as they were, fit into the two drawers of the nightstand.

  Except, of course, for his weaponry. He had seldom employed it as a constable, but he kept in constant practice; a hand-crossbow and a belt-quiver of bolts went on one hook on the wall, his short-sword on the other. His various boot-, belt-, and wrist-knives he laid out on the table, along with his cudgel and a bag of lead shot. That last served double-duty, both as a weapon in and of itself and as ammunition for the sling tied to it. Over the back of the chair he laid his wide, stiff leather belt that served as kidney-protection, and the leather collar that protected his throat. His leather wrist-braces went on the table with his knives.

  He'd worn none of this for his interview with Ardis; he hadn't known what kind of guards she'd have and how they'd take to a man bearing arms into her presence. But he had no doubt that someone had looked through his weapon-bag when they put it in this room, and that Othorp knew precisely what he'd brought with him—and that it all had that well-worn look.

  He'd wear all of this tomorrow when he went into the city to find Captain Fenris. He got out of his new uniform, blew out the candle, and was surprised at howdark the room was without the light. There wasn't even a line of light from the hall under the door. He might have been inside a cave.

  And it was quiet; unnervingly quiet to a man used to sleeping in an inn. He couldn't hear anything out there in the hall, and if there was someone on the other side of his walls, he couldn't hear any sounds from them, either.

  He felt for the head of the bed, and climbed under the thick, soft woolen blankets. But once he was there, he kept staring up at the ceiling in the darkness, unable to quite get to sleep. Partly it was the silence, so thick it made his ears ring, but partly it was a belated state of nerves.

  It was all catching up with him now, and he found himself a little dazed. He had come here to the Abbey on a whim when he'd been unable to locate the Captain of the Kingsford constables or the Kingsford Sheriff; everyone knew about the Justiciars, of course, and down in Kingsford he had heard stories about Ardis and had taken the chance that she might hear him out and perhaps get him an appointment with Captain Fenris. He had not expected her to take a personal interest in the case.

  He had expected even less that she would turn around and coopt it and him. After trying to deal with the authorities in Haldene, he had really been anticipating that he would be put off. In fact, if his suspicions were correct, and a Priest or high Church officialwas involved in this, Ardis would have had every reason to deny him an interview at all. He'd been steeling himself for the long trudge across the bridge to Kingsford again, a scant dinner, and the cheapest room he could find. His resources, never large to begin with, were dwindling quickly.

  And now—

  Now he was beginning to get the feeling there was much more going on here than he had dreamed of, and he was afraid that the High Bishop was privy to more and more serious information than he had yet uncovered.

  Was it possible that he was getting in over his head? Wasthat why everyone in Haldene had tried to put him off this case? Was it more serious than he knew—did it involve
suspicion of someone with avery high rank?

  It didn't have to be a noble, it could be a Priest, as he had suspected many times now—and it could be that she knew it, even had some suspects, but had no way to prove who it was. Perhaps that was why she had conscripted him so quickly. Oh, wouldn't that just open a box of beetles!

  And I could end up being the scapegoat when I catch the man.Hecould, if Ardis was like other high-ranking people he'd worked under. But nothing he'd seen and heard so far made him inclined to think that she was. In fact, her reputation was that she protected her underlings from those who were higher in rank, provided that those underlings were on the side of the angels.