Four and Twenty Blackbirds

He took hair from his own brush, put it in a little silk bag, and left it among dozens of identical little silk bags holding other bits of flotsam among Rand's magical implements. He had not stolen anything, so he took the chance that the guard-spells Rand surely had on his equipment would not betray him. Evidently, they didn't; Rand never said anything, and Orm now had a piece of evidence that would bolster his own protestation of innocence. Why else, after all, would the mage have some of his hair, except to implicate an otherwise blameless man?

The hair could be used to do almost anything, including to create an illusion of Orm at the scene of one of the crimes—and that might take care of that incriminating sketch. After all, he'd 'disappeared' after he went into the alley—and that could have been the illusion vanishing.

And why would Rand want to implicate an innocent man in his crimes? Orm had reasons, if anyone asked. They might not bother to ask; Rand was so clearly mad that they might assume this was another of his mad acts. But Orm intended to claim he'd had conflicts with his fellow tenant, and that Rand had threatened to seek revenge after one of them. The assumption then would probably be that Rand intended to escape, leaving Orm to take all of the blame for the murders. That was how constables tended to reason, and that interpretation suited Orm perfectly.

He also began establishing his own alibis and an unshakable persona as a solid citizen who couldn't possibly have anything to do with Rand and his kills. First, he obtained the registration records from a respectable (if common) inn that was within a short walking distance of his current neighborhood. It didn't take a great deal of work to alter the records so that they showed that he had arrived in Kingsford and taken up residence there in early fall, had stayed there until early winter, then removed himself to the apartment he now lived in. He slipped the records-book back into the inn the same night he obtained it. No one would notice the alteration; it was very likely that the people whose names he had removed were there under false identities in the first place. This gave him an arrival date that was much earlier than his actual arrival in Kingsford, and this was a date that conflicted with some of the other murders Rand had done outside of Kingsford. With the Church involved, there was every reason to expect that at least some of the killings in other cities would be tied to Rand.

That done, he began reaffirming his acquaintance with all of his neighbors. He already knew them, of course, and they knew him, but now he went out of his way to cultivate them. By dint of careful conversations, he was able to establish himself in their minds as having been in the general vicinity since that early autumn date listed in the inn records. All he had to do was to mention events in the neighborhood that had taken place during that time period as if he'd witnessed them, and agree with the version the person he was talking to related. And how did he learn of those events? By asking leading questions of a different neighbor, of course. It was an amusing game; he'd find out about event A from neighbor One. He'd then establish himself with neighbor Two by relating event A, then solicit event B from neighbor Two. He would take his tale of event B to neighbor Three, and so on, until he came back to neighbor One with the story of event G, and solicit the tale of Event H to take on to neighbor Two, beginning the chain again. Within a few days, at least a dozen people were not only convinced he'd been in the neighborhood, but that they'd actually seen him there at the times he spoke of.

It was amazingly easy to convince people of trivial things of that nature; he'd done it before when he'd needed to establish an alternate identity. As long as your version of what you wanted them to remember fitted with their real memories, you could insert yourself into almost anyone's recollections.

He also established himself in their minds as a very fine, affable fellow—and his fellow tenant as a rather odd duck, surly, unpleasant, possibly something of a troublemaker. That, too, was easy enough to do, since Rand didn't go out of his way to be polite when he was in his human form.

Now Orm needed a reason to be in Kingsford, which he established when his neighbors 'knew' enough about him to want to know what he did for a living. His profession? Oh, he was a small spice-trader, a very convenient profession that required no apprenticeship and not a great deal of capital, merely a willingness to take personal risks and a taste for exotic places and danger. It was also one that required a great deal of travel, at least at first, as a young man would build his contacts with spice-growers or collectors in more exotic lands. It was also a highly seasonal profession; most trading took place in the spring and fall, with summer being the time for a small trader to set up at Faires, and winter being the time to rest and get ready for spring, which would account for his apparent idleness.

Now that he was of middle years, he presumably had his spice-sources in hand, and he should be ready to settle and operate from the secure venue of a shop. He needed a city where there was a great deal of trade, he told his neighbors, and Kingsford seemed like a fine choice of a home. Duke Arden was a great leader, the city was clearly thriving, the people here honest and hardworking—with the nearness of the Faire and the river, who could ask for more? He was looking for a place for a shop, trying to make sure he would have no rivals in the immediate neighborhood, hoping to find a suitable place that was already built, since he could only afford to lease the place at first.

This was a simple and understandable explanation for money with no obvious source of income, and irregular hours. It passed muster with all of his neighbors; the only danger was that one or more of them might ask him if he could sell them some exotic spice or perfume oil. Fortunately none of them did, so he didn't have to make an excursion out to obtain what heshould have had at hand.

And having had their curiosity satisfied abouthim , that left Rand open to inquiry. The fellow upstairs—well, he really couldn't say what that man did. Never seemed to be at home very much, but never seemed to do anything that you could count aswork , either. He added a touch of scorn to that last, as would be expected from a hard-working fellow who'd made his own way in the world without any help from anyone else.

And finally, he managed to get himself an alibi for at least one of the murders, the latest. He began playing daily games of fox-and-hounds with an old man living three doors down; by the time the week was over, thanks to Orm's gentle persuasion, the old fellow would honestly believe and claim that they had been playing fox-and-hounds every afternoon for the past month. Since a game of fox-and-hounds generally lasted all afternoon, any questioners would discover that he'd been with his neighbor at the time that Rand's accomplice was trying to make off with a murder-weapon.

Now he had his identity established as an honest small trader looking for a home to settle down in, and any claims that Rand made to the contrary would have witnesses with stories that directly contradicted the mage's claims.