Closer to the Chest Read online

  :You probably didn’t notice, but the High Priest of the Sethorites was standin’ just on the other side of the pillar behind you, listenin’ to every bit of that,: Mags said, startling her so much at his unexpected contact that she nearly jumped.

  :I didn’t,: she thought hard.

  :Well, he just walked away. An’ I can’t read anythin’ off him, not without crackin’ into private thoughts. There’s nothin’ in the way of surface thinkin’, just a smooth shell. There’s plenty of people that got that sort of thing natural—it comes with concentratin’ hard on somethin’. Or it might be somethin’ to do with Sethor. Or for all I know, he’s got a Gift. I can’t tell.: She could hear the frustration in the way his thoughts had slipped into a more common sort of speech. And she didn’t blame him. He’d been trying to get closer to the High Priest and the upper echelon of the Sethorites for weeks now, and here the High Priest was . . . and he couldn’t get anything without moving into the unethical.

  :And now he’s taking his leave of the King,: Mags sighed. :I’d give a lot to know what he thought of all of that. He surely was paying close attention to it.:

  :I would, too,: she replied, and then was distracted as both the Prioress and the Abbess rose. As she looked around, it appeared that all the other ecclesiastics in the room were getting ready to leave as well. Oh, of course, she realized. They all have some sort of service at midnight that they have to observe.

  Mags must have realized the same thing, or heard her thoughts. He appeared from deeper in the room and strolled over to her as she and the others bid farewell to the Abbess and the Prioress. “If you like, we can escort you to your transportation,” he offered, smiling, but his eyes serious.

  With a little flicker of a glance, both the ladies indicated they knew exactly why he was making the offer. So far there had been no outrages, not even any inconveniences—but after being victimized, both of them were wary. “We’d appreciate it,” the Prioress said. “Older eyes are none too good on dark paths. My warhorse is down at the stable, and I believe there are carriages for everyone else that are supposed to be there.”

  “Then let’s go enjoy the night air on our way,” Mags said smoothly. “Ah! Here’s your husband, Lady Tyria. I assume it’s safe to leave you in his hands. Abbess, Prioress, shall we?”

  He gestured, and the ladies preceded him to the line of their fellows to bid farewell to the King.

  :You didn’t mean that about Lady Tyria being safe in her husband’s hands entirely in jest did you?: she asked.

  :No. Not entirely.: And with that, she had to be content.

  After all the tension of the previous evening, they were not entirely surprised to be awakened by screams the next morning.

  Mags shot out of bed, as if he had been propelled by an artificer’s spring. The sheet and blanket came with him, and he flung them on the floor, and grabbed for his clothing. Without even thinking, he was running with his shirt in one hand, his belt and boots in the other, and by the time he reached the greenhouse door, he had all of them on. Amily followed more slowly, but he knew she wasn’t far behind him.

  He burst through the door and paused for just a moment, orienting himself. It wasn’t at all difficult to tell where the screams were coming from—

  Not only was the screaming still going on, if anything, the shrieks were rising in pitch and hysteria.

  The Formal Garden.

  It would have been shortest to cut through the Palace, but with someone—no, several someones—screaming in terror out there, Mags wasn’t interested in testing the reactions of however-many now alert Guards lay between him and the other side of the Palace. So he surged forward in a dead run, planning to take the long way—or started to—

  He hadn’t gone more than a few running steps when Dallen came thundering up beside him, and slowed only long enough to allow him to get two handfuls of mane and haul himself up onto the Companion’s back. Then they were back at full speed, racing to the Formal Gardens so fast that they were actually the first to reach the scene of carnage.

  He went light-headed with relief when he realized that the body wasn’t a human body.

  One of the little muff-dogs had been pinned to the dial of the sundial, splayed out ritualistically. There wasn’t a lot of blood, because the poor little thing had obviously been viciously battered to death, from the way its limbs looked. A knife driven through a letter on that all-too-familiar coarse paper held it to the pathetic little corpse on the face of the sundial; the gnomon had been broken off at the base and lay in the gravel next to the dial.

  Gravel. Won’t hold footprints. This whole area is gravel, plenty of gravel paths in and out. Nothing to find there.

  Dallen shoved his body between the three young ladies and one old one who were standing there in various attitudes of horror. Mags slid down from Dallen’s back, gathered them all up in his arms, and ushered them to one of the stone benches far enough away that they would be out of the way. As soon as he touched them, two of them burst out into terrified weeping, one (the old lady) grabbed his arm and clung to it as if she was afraid she would fall down at any moment, and the third went stark white and looked as if she was about to faint.

  He got them as far as the bench when the first Guard pelted in, running as hard as she could; providentially, it was a woman. She came to a halt next to him, rather than next to the sundial. “Let me,” she said, as soon as she got close enough to be heard over the crying. “I can handle them. The rest of my shift is on the way.”

  Since he was entirely sure he couldn’t, he gladly passed them over.

  He turned just in time for Amily to gallop up on Rolan. She slid off her Companion’s back at the sundial, and Rolan carefully made a second screen of himself to keep people in the Palace who were now looking out the windows from seeing anything.

  “Well,” she said, calmly. “There’s our outbreak. Would you call this an escalation?”

  He joined her and looked down at the poor, pathetic, innocent little victim. “I’d say so. This time he actually killed something. And it’s not as if he didn’t have opportunities to do that at the Abbey of Ardana. There were all manner of livestock animals there, if he’d wanted to make that sort of statement.”

  She nodded slowly, and they both examined the area without touching anything.

  The dog had been splayed out, belly up, in an X shape. It appeared boneless, which suggested that all of its bones had actually been shattered. Mags found himself hoping that the first blow had killed the poor thing, since . . . the amount of pain it would have been in . . .

  “I think he killed it with a blow to the head, then did the rest,” Amily continued, a little pale, but otherwise showing no sign of being disturbed. Then again . . . she was used to dead things now as much as most soldiers. “That makes sense, he would have wanted to kill it quickly, so it couldn’t alert anyone by crying in pain or yapping in fear. He wanted to make a statement, he didn’t want to get caught.”

  “When do you think it happened? While the Concordance was going on?” Mags asked.

  By this time more people were piling in. Nikolas ran up, without Companion, but at this point one more would have been one too many. More Guards. A Healer! The Greens were a welcome sight against the dark blue of the Guard uniforms.

  Mags reached through the crowd and got the Healer’s elbow before the man could be diverted to the women—who, after all, were only frightened and upset, and didn’t actually need a Healer. The Healer could deal with them after he told Mags, Amily, and Nikolas what they needed to know.

  “How long ago did this dog die?” he asked, before the Healer could say anything.

  The Healer looked startled for a moment, but then nodded, understanding why Mags had asked. “That’s a good question. Has anyone touched it?” the Healer asked. Mags shook his head “no.” “All right then, give me a moment.”

  The ginger
-haired Healer held his hand over the corpse, not quite touching it. He frowned as he concentrated. Finally he pulled his hand away. “Not less than four candlemarks ago, not more than six candlemarks ago.” He looked expectantly at Mags, who nodded.

  “After the Concordance, about the time pretty much everybody was in bed, and the kitchen folks hadn’t got up yet. Thenkee, sir,” he observed. The Healer took that as his signal to go to the four ladies, and eased his way back through the crowd.

  “Don’t touch that—” he warned someone, who was reaching for the knife-handle. “Not until Herald Kerit gets here.” At almost the same time, he was casting his mind about for the “feel” of Kerit, who was one of the teachers at the Collegium. I hope he’s already awake and I don’t—there he is—

  :Kerit—we’ve got something nasty for you in the Formal Garden,: he Sent.

  Kerit’s Mindvoice was sluggish; he was not a graceful waker. :Ugh. Was that the screaming? Is someone dead?:

  :Something.: Better to warn him so he wasn’t startled. :Our nasty friend left one of his letters pinned by a knife to a muff-dog.:

  :Oh gods . . . is there a Healer there? I’m going to need one or I’m going to throw up all over the evidence.: Poor Kerit. Aside from Mindspeech, his Gift was to touch things and read their past. Normally he didn’t have to read anything dead. Normally he didn’t have to deal with anything this evil.

  :Yes, there’s a Healer here. Sorry, old man, but we have to have anything we can get from this. We’ve got precious little on our nasty friend as it is.:

  :I know, I know. I’m on my way.: Satisfied that Kerit would turn up reasonably soon. Mags turned to one of the Guards and asked him to make sure the Healer stayed.

  Just after the Healer had turned his charges over to a pair of servants and had returned to Mags’ side, Kerit turned up on the trot, looking like he’d slept in his uniform. But then, he always looked like he slept in his uniform, and his head of unkempt brown hair always looked like an unmade bed. He eased his way through the growing crowd of the curious and got to the sundial. His face turned green when he saw what it was he was supposed to be “reading.”

  Mags didn’t even have to prompt the Healer. The Healer touched Kerit’s elbow, and his face went back to merely pale.

  “I don’t think you need to touch the dog,” Amily suggested, helpfully. “Just the knife and the letter.”

  Kerit gave him a grateful glance as Mags nodded agreement. Gingerly he reached out, touched the hilt of the knife, and closed his eyes.

  He opened them almost immediately, to Mags’ profound disappointment. “Brand new. Kept in the dark, brought here in the dark and used in the dark. Whoever did this knew about my particular Gift.”

  Damn! “What about the letter?” Mags suggested. “He won’t have been able to write that in the dark.”

  Kerit nodded, and took a corner of the letter in his thumb and forefinger, being careful not to touch the dead dog. Then he swore, and let go of it. “This bastard is too clever to live,” he snarled. “He did the very opposite with the letter. He passed it around to so many people that I can’t read anything but a crowd of hands.”

  Mags wanted very much to do more than swear, but he didn’t. “Thanks, Kerit. Go with the Healer and get your insides settled. We can take it from here.”

  Nodding, Kerit did just that, looking relieved to have his part in this over so quickly.

  While the Guards kept the ever-growing crowd of curious courtiers and servants at bay, Mags and Amily lifted the sad little corpse, knife, letter, and all from the sundial. Gardeners who had been waiting at the edge of the crowd swooped in and carried the sundial itself off, stopping long enough to pick up the gnomon before they hustled it away to be stored somewhere out of sight.

  Nikolas intercepted them before they got too far. :I’m sending the sundial to Steveral,: he told Mags. As soon as the first set were out of the way, another trio of gardeners swooped in with an ornamental statue of a dog. Which seemed in rather poor taste to Mags, but maybe whoever’s dog it turned out to be would decide it was meant to be a memorial. The gardeners with the sundial dutifully headed in the direction of Lord Jorthun’s manor-house.

  Meanwhile Mags bundled the dog, letter, and knife in a piece of canvas that the gardeners had brought with them. “Now where?” asked Amily. Already there were frantic calls of dogs’ names coming from the open windows of the Courtiers’ part of the Palace, as word spread as every woman who had a muff dog and couldn’t immediately locate it went slightly insane looking for it.

  Mags jerked his head at the Palace. “I don’t want to be anywhere near any of that,” he said. “Lord Jorthun. There’s no point in looking for any clues here; the demon that did this is too clever by half. This gravel around the sundial is not going to hold any footprints, there wasn’t any dew last night to show prints. He picked exactly the right place for his little statement.” He let out his breath in an angry sigh. “Nikolas sent the gardeners ahead with the sundial, we might as well take the rest of it, too. Maybe Jorthun can make something out of this.”

  Amily nodded. “Dia is going to be furious.”

  Mags rather thought she was going to be a lot more than furious. “The gods help this bastard if Dia gets him before the Guard does. They’ll be burying him in a comfit-box.”

  • • •

  After informing the Prince of what had happened, Mags and Amily arrived at a workroom just off the kennel at Lord Jorthun’s manor house, shortly after the sundial had been delivered to the same place. By that time Nikolas had been there, with the poor dead dog, for about a quarter candlemark. Mags’ prediction about Dia’s reaction was right. She was far, far more than merely furious. When they arrived she was still examining the poor little body minutely, bent over it with a lens. Finally she stood up straight, and looked at them, then shook her head. “She was killed instantly with a blow to the head, then . . . beaten until every single bone was in fragments,” she said, in an ice-cold voice, only her eyes betraying her rage. “I can’t tell which dog she was, and anything that identified her has been taken away. We’ll just have to wait until someone can’t find her little bitch. And I don’t want to be the person that tells the owner.”

  “I will,” Mags said, not relishing the task.

  “No, you won’t,” Nikolas contradicted him. “I will. I want your face kept out of this as much as possible. It’s bad enough that you took over the investigation this morning, but that could be explained by virtue of the fact that you were the first Herald on the scene. But no more. So far he has only gone after women, and has been very careful about choosing those who can’t or won’t fight back.”

  “Except the Votaries of Betane,” Mags reminded him.

  “Who were far from Haven at the time he struck,” Jorthun countered. “He’s taking more risks now. He could easily have been caught last night. He tried to drive a young girl to suicide, and he’s actually killed a dog with his own hands. He’s getting bolder, and quite frankly he might well think he’s invincible—or invincible enough.”

  “That’s my thought,” Nikolas said, in complete agreement. “I don’t want to give him another target. And remember, it probably won’t be you. It will probably be Amily.”

  Since Jorthun was nodding at that, Mags kept his mouth shut. Besides, he really did not want to have to deal with another weeping woman today, and . . . the owner was going to weep. They might be fashionable, but the muff-dogs were also endearing. Women openly adored them, and he’d seen plenty of men take the little things on their laps when the lady-owner wasn’t around.

  “Kerit said the knife was brand new, and kept in the dark until it was used,” he told them all. “And that the letter had been passed around so many hands that it was impossible to tell anything about it.”

  “So he knows, not only about Gifts, but about some fairly obscure ones.” Jorthun picked up the letter, and
looked it over. “Death to the vain, and vainglorious. Death to she who treads on the backs of men. Death to she who deceives her masters. Death to she who spurns the worthy and breaks their spirits. Death, disgrace, and degradation to the harlot and whore. Well, that’s rather specific, don’t you think?”

  “It sounds like someone who’s been jilted—perhaps? Or passed over, or completely overlooked,” Nikolas observed. “Also, put together with someone who knows about quite obscure Gifts and how to befuddle them, I’d say we are dealing with a man of some education.”

  “Highborn?” Dia asked.

  “No way to tell,” her husband admitted. “But my instincts say no.” His brow furrowed. “It might be my snobbishness speaking, but I just can’t see anyone highborn using some of the obscenities that have been in the past letters and painted in the Temple of Betane and the Scriptorium of Ardana.”

  “But why kill the dog?” Mags asked.

  “Not prepared to do anything to a human being yet, but needing to kill something to make his point, perhaps?” replied Jorthun. “Or just as his anger built to the bursting point, he came across the dog?”

  “Well . . . if someone was observing the Court from outside, it would be reasonable for him to assume that every woman has one of these little dogs,” Nikolas pointed out. “They’re certainly ubiquitous, and they’re so good-natured, they’ll go to anyone who pets them. If he wants to terrify and upset every woman in the court, killing one of the dogs in that particularly brutal fashion will certainly do that. The Healers will be making up soothing teas by the gallon today.”

  “So basically,” Mags said, thinking out loud, as Amily, white-lipped with fury, helped Dia wrap the little thing in a kind of shroud, “it probably didn’t matter who owned it, just that only women own these things, so it became a target.”