Four and Twenty Blackbirds

that this force knows a great deal about how both investigation and magic operate.' He raised one eyebrow at her. 'It hadn't escaped my notice that every one of the suicides was eitherby means of running water orunder running water—even the jeweler.'

Now she was surprised, for she had thought that last horrific case had all been perpetrated indoors. 'How could the jeweler—'

'He worked with acids, and he had a kind of emergency downpour rigged in his studio,' Tal replied. 'He had a pipe coming down from his rooftop cistern that ended in the ceiling of his studio, with a valve on the end that was operated by a string with a drain beneath it. After he drank his acids and poisons, he staggered over beneath the pipe and pulled the string. When he was found, the cistern was empty—the initial investigation missed that, because by then the floor was dry.' He looked at her expectantly.

'Obviously I don't have to tell you that running water is the only certain means of removing evidence of magic.' She tapped the ends of her forefingers together and frowned. 'This is beginning to form a picture I don't like.'

'Because most of thehuman mages are in the Church?' Tal asked quietly.

Surprised, but pleased at his audacity, she nodded. 'There is the possibility that it is not a human, but frankly—what you've told me fits no pattern of a nonhuman mind that I am aware of. At least, not a sane one, and the nonhuman races are very careful not to allow their . . . problems . . . to escape to human lands.'

'Just as we are careful not to let ours escape to theirs,' he corroborated. 'Still. Elves?'

She shook her head. 'Elves take their revenge in a leisurely fashion, and an artistic one. This is both too sordid and too hasty for Elves to be involved.'

'Haspur aren't mages, nor Mintaks, nor Deliambrens,' he said, thinking out loud. 'It could be someone from a very obscure race—but then, I'd have known about him; he'd stand out in those neighborhoods like a white crow. What about Gypsies? I've heard some of them are mages.'

Again, she hesitated. 'There are bad Gypsies—but the Gypsies are very careful about policing their own people. If this is a Gypsy, he has somehow eluded hunters from among his own kind, and that is so difficult that I find it as unlikely as it being an Elf. I have information sources among them, and I have heard nothing of—'

She stopped in midsentence, suddenly struck by something. Her cousin's letter—

Tal waited, watching her expectantly.

'I was about to say that I have heard nothing of this,' she said very slowly, 'but I have hadsome distressing information from my sources. The victims—have they by any chance been Free Bards or Gypsies?'

Again, she got a startled look from him. 'I can only speak for the cases in Haldene; I didn't get much detail on the ones in the other towns and villages, and frankly, I didn't spend much time investigating when I learned that the murders were going in the direction that I had feared. No Free Bards, and only one Gypsy,' he told her, licking his lips. 'But—perhaps this will seem mad to you, which is why I hesitated to mention it—every one of the dead women was either a musician of sorts, or posing as one.'

Ardis pursed her lips. 'So. There is a link between the victims, even when they seem disparate in everything but their poverty.'

I don't like this. I don't like this at all.Ardis was not aware that she was frowning until she caught a brief glimpse of worry on Tal's face. She forced her expression into something smoother.

'I believe you, Tal Rufen,' she said at last. 'Anyone planning to hoodwink me would have concocted something less bizarre and more plausible.'

The constable's visible relief conjured at least a tiny smile onto her face. 'So you'll vouch for me if I have trouble getting information?' he asked hopefully.

'I'll do more than that.' She pulled the bell-cord that summoned Kayne from the next room. When the novice arrived, eyes brimming with suppressed curiosity, Ardis motioned for her to sit down as well.

'Tal, this is Novice Kayne, my personal secretary. I suspect you will be working at least peripherally together.' They eyed one another warily; a grayhound and a mastiff trying to decide if they were going to be friends or not. She hid her amusement. 'Kayne, I am making Tal one of the Abbey Guards, and my personal retainer.' She smiled a bit wider as they both turned startled eyes on her. 'Please get him the appropriate uniforms and see that he has housing with the others. A room to himself, if you please, and a key to the garden doors; his hours are likely to be irregular. He is going to be a Special Inquisitor, so draw up the papers for him. No one else is to know of that rank for the moment except you and the Guard-Captain, however. To the rest, he is simply to be my Personal Guard.'

Kayne's eyes danced with excitement; this was obviously the sort of secret she had hoped to be privy to when Ardis appointed her to her post. 'Yes, High Bishop. At once. Guard Rufen, have you any belongings you wish me to send to your quarters?'