Four and Twenty Blackbirds

He shook his head. 'Parents are both dead; I was a late-born child, came long after Mother thought she was past having any, and I don't think either of my parents was comfortable around a child. They both died a few years ago. No close friends, no women who cared to put up with the hardships of being a constable's wife.'

'I understand.' She contemplated him for a moment. 'Perhaps you are more suited to our sort of life than I had thought. I was afraid it would be too dull for you; our entertainments are mostly mental. If you had a vocation, you could be one of the Brotherhood.'

She's right, actually. How many of the lads on the force told me that I lived like a Priest? 'That may be,' he agreed. 'Since most of my life could be packed up on the back of a mule and carried off with me.' He thought about that for a moment, and added, 'The only things I'm really going to miss in Haldene are the books I left behind and the friends I left them with. A pair of Mintak brothers; we used to play castle-board and share books we'd read. Other than that—' He surprised himself with a bark of laughter. 'Other than that, the only thing I'd like is to see the Captain's face if he ever finds out what I'm doing now. I have the feeling that as a Special Inquisitor, technically I outrank him.'

A broad grin sprang up on Ardis's face, making her look very like a vixen in her coat of scarlet and little round red cap. 'I sometimes think that the reason God demands that we leave revenge to Him is because He prefers to keep such delights to Himself,' she said sardonically. 'I quite understand. Well, Tal, before I send you off to the bed you very much deserve, I only want to tell you three things. Make free of the Abbey library; use of it is one of the privileges of being attached in service to the Abbey, and I think you'll be pleased by what you find.'

He flushed a little and ducked his head, obscurely ashamed for some reason that his hunger for books had been found out, and her smile softened. 'Tomorrow you can present your papers to whomever you think you will need to work with; trust me, no hour is too early for Captain Fenris, if you can find him. Use your own discretion as to who you inform of your true rank; I'll take care of notifying the Duke myself.'

He started to object, and stopped himself. She was right; she had ways of getting to the Duke quickly, where he would have to wait days or weeks for an audience. 'I'll probably tell this Captain Fenris, High Bishop, and I'd rather tell him in person, myself. I want him to see me, I want to see him, so we can—'

'So the two hounds can sniff noses and decide not to fight,' she interrupted with an ironic look that dared him to say otherwise. And since that was pretty much what was going to happen, he couldn't deny.

'Well, we do have to know that we can trust each other,' he pointed out. 'Where I'm going to be prowling— well, I might need someone to come to my aid, and if I have to ask Fenris for help, I want him to be willing to send a man with me. He won't do that if he's never seen me.'

'I rather thought that.' She lost her smile. 'That brings up the last point—remember that you can't track this murderer down if you're dead, Tal. This is a ruthless creature, and if he realizes that someone is tracking him, he may deviate from his chosen victims to remove you from his trail.'

With a feeling of shock, he realized that she was right. It had not occurred to him, he had been so preoccupied with the pursuit, and so focused on thefemale victims, but she was right. Whoever this was, he was smart enough to not only elude pursuit, but to avoid it in the first place.

That meant he was not only clever, he was intelligent. Someone like that would be smart enough to watch for pursuit, and if he could not shake that pursuit from his trail, he would eliminate it, or at least try.

I'm going to have to think like someone who is stalking one of the Great Cats in unfamiliar territory. At any moment, it could be the Cat who becomes the stalker, and the former hunter becomes the prey. Tal had never been in a position like this. It gave him a very unsettled feeling, to think of himself as the hunted, rather than the hunter.

'I'll remember,' he promised. 'And I won't go picking up any strange knives!' She nodded, accepting that promise.

With nothing else to be dealt with, he took his leave; Kayne was waiting outside the door with another sheaf of papers, and hardly waited for him to clear the doorframe before entering the office. He wondered a little at this; did the woman never rest? It was long past the time when most folk would have considered that they had put in a good day's work.

When he returned to his little room, and sat down on the side of the bed, he realized that he had been working on nervous energy for some time. The moment he got off his feet, it ran out, leaving him exhausted.

For a while, he simply sat there, examining his new quarters. This was the first time he'd had a chance to get a good look at them.

As was to be expected in an Abbey, this little room, about the size of his bedroom back at the Gray Rose, was not what anyone would call luxurious. At least it didn't have penitential stone walls, though; like the rest of the Abbey, this room was plastered and painted white, with all woodwork and exposed beams stained a dark sable. There was a closet opposite the door; the closet stood open, and his bags were inside—obviously, he was expected to tend to his belongings himself. The narrow bed was set along one wall, and a small table and chair on the other. There was a bookcase—empty—at the foot of the bed, a nightstand with a candle alight in a pewter holder on it at the head. Except for a hook on the door and two more on the wall, that was all there was.

The bed was firm enough, with plenty of blankets, which would be welcome since the room did not boast a fireplace. But there were no windows, either, so at least there wouldn't be any drafts—though in summer, there wouldn't be any cooling breezes.