Four and Twenty Blackbirds

The Haspur's wingtips were shivering and he'd drawn himself in. It was obvious that his mind had still been on his fear of going into that confined space, when she and Tal had inconsiderately gone into detail about the terror-spells and punishments. Now Visyr was probably experiencing not only the fear he had felt at the alley, but the feelings he had suffered any number of other times in his life, all the while speculating what it would be like under one of those interrogation spells.

'But Visyr,' Ardis said gently, trying to correct the situation, 'you don't have anything to fear from us. In fact we owe you our gratitude.'

Tal echoed the sentiment, and added, 'You have been as brave as any of us, Visyr. None of this is your calling, yet you've taken to dangerous pursuits twice now. You are helping tremendously.'

Visyr sighed heavily. 'Do you really think this will help?' he asked.

Ardis exchanged a look with Tal, and Tal answered him. 'I have no doubt of it,' he told the bird-man. 'You can probably go back to mapping for the next few days, and with any luck, before this monster can kill again, we'll either have him or we'll have his accomplice and be on the way to catching him.'

Visyr gave the Inquisitor a penetrating look, and Ardis wondered if he'd heard anything in Tal's voice to make him doubt the human's sincerity. Tal looked straight back into his eyes, and Visyr finally shrugged and rose to his feet.

'I do not fly well after dark,' he said, by way of apology, 'and I would rather not trust myself afoot then, either. I must go.'

'I can't begin to thank you enough, Visyr,' Ardis told him, as Tal also rose to let him out. 'You have gone far beyond anything we would dare to ask of you.'

But when Tal returned to his chair, Ardis gave him the same kind of penetrating look that Visyr had graced him with. 'Well?' she asked. 'Just how useful is this sketch?'

'For now—quite useful,' Tal replied, 'but its usefulness is going to degrade very rapidly. The moment that this fellow gets word—and he will—that there's a picture of him circulating with the constables, he's going to change his appearance. Hair dye, a wig, a beard, those are the easiest ways for him to look like another person, and if he's really clever, he knows the other tricks, too.' He closed his eyes for a moment, calculating. 'I'd say the longest this will do us any good is a week; the shortest, two days.'

She nodded, accepting the situation. 'Maybe we'll be lucky.'

Tal snorted. 'So far, luck's all been with the killer. Think of it! Visyr actually had the accomplice cornered, if only for a short while, and the man got away because he went to ground like a rat down a hole!'

She tried not to grind her teeth with frustration; it only made her jaw ache. If only she could get her hands on one of those daggers!

'I wish Visyr could have gotten the dagger, or even a scrap of the man's clothing or a piece of his hair,' Tal said, sighing, echoing her thoughts. 'Well, he didn't. We'll have to make the best use of what hedid get us.'

'He's getting bolder,' Ardis said, thinking aloud. 'This is another daylight killing, and in a crowd. Maybe someone in the crowd saw something.'

'The tool this time was the used-weapons dealer across the street, so he probably got the dagger in a load of other things,' Tal noted. 'I don't suppose anything could—well—rub off from the dagger with the magic on it?'

Ardis pursed her lips and nodded. 'Contagion. That's not a bad thought to pursue; it certainly is going to give us as much as we've been getting off the bodies of the victims. If we can at least identify what other weapons were in the lot, maybe we can trace one ofthem back to where it came from.'

They continued to trade thoughts on the subject, but eventually they found themselves wandering the same, well-worn paths of speculation as they had so many times before this. Ardis noticed this before Tal—and she also noticed something else.

She was deliberately prolonging the session and he wasn't fighting to get away, either.

We're both tired, she told herself, knowing at the same time that it was only a half truth. We both hate idleness, and sleeping feels idle. We need rest, and sitting here and talking is the only way we get it aside from sleeping. But there was something more going on, and she wasn't going to face it until she was alone.

'You'd better go off and get some real rest,' she said, with great reluctance. 'I know this is something of a rest, but it isn't sleep, and that's what you need. If you can't get to sleep, ask the Infirmarian for something. I know I will.'

He made a sour face, but agreed to do so, and with equal reluctance, left the office.

That set off alarms in her conscience.