Highest-”
“Yes yes, all that. And you’re saying he’s hiding from our murderer?”
“Burrowed deep, Sergeant. Quivering-”
“I see. Should I then assume Whitemane has met the killer?”
Birklas shrugged. “Perhaps he has. More likely his runners have, or his junction guards, or his rooftop peepers-”
“But not hith food tathters,” Blather cut in.
“No,” Birklas solemnly agreed. “Not his food tasters indeed. Blather, how are his food tasters doing?”
Blather Roe prodded the skewered rats. “Done, I would thay.”
“Excellent! Now, Sergeant, is there anything else we can do for you?”
“Maybe. The princess and Lordson Hoom.”
Birklas’ eyebrows lifted. “Oh dear, not a conversation to accompany supper…”
Guld squatted down. “I can wait.”
Dead Sekarand’s tower creaked in the off shore breeze that had grown steadily since the sun had set. Guld wrapped his cloak around his shoulders, exhaustion more than the wind making him chilled. Below, the day’s haze of wood smoke had been stripped away. Oil-glow and candlelight spotted the sides of the tenements like muddy stars at Guld’s feet, as if they were all mortals could achieve to mirror the bristling night sky.
Guld heard a scuffing at the stairway, then Stul Ophan’s grunt as the magus climbed onto the platform. “Burn’s uneasy rest, Guld,” the old man gasped. “A simple rendezvous on a street corner would have done me better.”
The sergeant leaned on a merlon and looked down on the wharf district. “I may have the man, Stul,” he said.
The magus stopped cursing. From behind Guld, Stul Ophan said, “How certain are you? When will you make the arrest?”
“I haven’t worked that detail out yet. Am I certain? Well, my gut’s still in knots-something I’ve missed, but it may still point to the same man, once I’ve worked the unease loose.”
“What do you wish of me?”
Guld turned. Stul Ophan stood near the trapdoor, a silk cloth in one hand with which he blotted his brow. The magus shrugged feebly. “I’m not the best with heights, Sergeant. You’ll forgive me if I remain here, though it relieves me naught with the whole edifice swaying as it is.”
Guld opened his mouth to say something, then scowled and said instead, “You live in a damned tower!”
Ophan shrugged again. “It’s… expected of me. Isn’t it? I reside on the main floor, mostly.”
The sergeant studied the man a moment longer, then sighed. “I was thinking of the hounds. The ones I sent on the trails leading from Lordson Hoom’s murder. A man, maybe two men-one a warrior, or a veteran-the other unknown. And a woman’s scent as well, or two women, or none…”
“If the hounds danced to a woman’s scent, Guld, how could there be none?”
“Good question. Can you attempt an answer? Before you do, let me say there was a woman who fled the scene that night, but she’s not the killer.”
Stul Ophan frowned, mopped his forehead. “I don’t understand.”
Guld grimaced. “Recall your own discoveries, Magus. And your uncertainties. Answer me this: a man is not a man, and might be mistaken for a woman-if sorcerous paths are the means of investigation-or even if a hound finds the scent. Assume your efforts to ascertain the killer’s gender were not confused-that, as with the hounds, your answer was a true one. How could that be?”
“A man not a man? Mistaken for a woman, even by hounds? Sergeant, there is no answer to be culled from such confusion. We were deliberately misled-”
“No. It was more a matter of the murderer’s indifference-a past knowledge that such detection efforts would, inevitably, yield confusion. Like a demon’s riddle, Stul Ophan. The answer is too simple. Do not think so hard.”
The magus scowled. “You mock me, Guld.”
Guld turned back to gaze down on the city. “What, Stul Ophan, would be the mark of a eunuch?”
He heard the air slowly hiss through the man’s teeth.
“You are right, Sergeant. A demon’s riddle indeed. You’ve found the killer.”
“I know him,” Guld corrected. “I’ve not found him.” His gaze narrowed as he looked down at the Noble Quarter. “But I think,” he said, “someone else has. The knot begins to unravel.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, she’s on the move,” Guld said, as he watched lantern after lantern light up the rooftops, each marking a path taken by the one mystery that remained in this game. The sergeant spun and raced to the stairs. “Go home, Magus,” he said. “The night’s work begins in earnest.”
He’d made his inquiries, following his audience with the king. He’d asked enough questions, delivering the right kind of pressure when necessary, and had harvested enough details to put things together. Lordson Hoom’s unpleasant appetites included a taste for blood, the application of pain. It was what had drawn him and Princess Sharn together. It was what had made-for both the Lord and for Seljure-the union unattractive. Damned frightening, in fact.
There’d been no maid-in-waiting at her side last night, because the girl had already been sent off, close on the killer’s trail. Hoomy had been revealed as a mere acolyte in those twisted arts of flesh and pain. The killer had shown the princess just how far-how wonderfully far-things could be taken. A brush of promise on Sharn’s trembling lips, and now she thirsted for more.
The maid in waiting had done her job well. Guld’s man had reported her return at dawn; and now she and the princess were on their way, and they’d lead Guld and his men to the quarry.
He exited the tower’s gaping gateway and moved quickly down the streets. Sharn was making a terrible mistake. The last thing Guld wanted to do was to arrive too late-although it’d serve to deliver a message to the king: Impede my investigation at your peril, Sire. You should’ve let me question her. But the satisfaction of that wasn’t worth a young woman’s life-likely the lives of two young women, since the maid-in-waiting would probably share Sharn’s fate.
He’d worked out their route from the succession of lights revealed by his men, and arrived with, he guessed, moments to spare, at the mouth of an alley opening onto Fishmonger’s Round. A battered, partly slumped barrow marked the alleymouth. Guld crouched on the broken slate and recovered his breath.
The Round was empty, the post black and unadorned, save for the fiercely flapping notice, which had yet to be removed by Bauchelain. Atop the post sat a crow, asleep, rocking with the gusting salt-breeze. A dog loped across the cobblestones to lap at Beru’s Fount. Guld remained in the shadows. He slowly unsheathed his longsword, and fervently hoped that his squad had managed to stay on the trail, which they should have picked up outside the palace.
A lone knot of uncertainty remained for the sergeant. The eunuch had managed to leave Sorrowman’s unseen. There were sorceries that could achieve that, of course. A possibility that troubled Guld.
He stiffened as he saw a cloaked woman arrive from the street to his right. The handmaiden. Damn, a brave lass. He watched as she cautiously approached the wood post in the Round’s centre. There to await him? That makes no sense-I can’t imagine the girl actually spoke to the eunuch-it would’ve been enough to simply ascertain his daily hiding place. No, this makes no sense at all. He thought to voice a shout, to run out there, but instead remained motionless behind the slight mound, as a second robed figure-the princess-appeared, following the maid with languorous, appallingly confident strides.
The maid had stopped in front of the post, and seemed to be regarding its height as if about to supplicate herself before it. Sharn was about ten paces away and closing.
Atop the post, the crow bestirred itself.
Guld’s eyes widened with sudden understanding. He opened his mouth to bellow out a warning, then something hard and heavy hammered the base of his skull. Groaning, he sagged, fighting waves of blackness. Close, yet seeming from a great distance, he heard a deep voice whisper at his side.
“Apologies, Sergeant. This is but one, and I want them both. We need to wait. We need the blood, for only then will Korbal Broach be vulnerable-enough to call for help. And then my long hunt ends…”
