Four and Twenty Blackbirds

'Well, there's no trace of magic, which is what we expected, but it's more than merely frustrating,' she was saying to her assistant as Tal and Kayne entered. Kayne went white, then red at the sight of the nude body, then excused herself. Ardis didn't even notice.

Tal took his place on the other side of the table. The body hadn't been in the water long enough for any real damage to have occurred, but Tal did notice one thing. 'He doesn't look drowned,' he pointed out. 'Look at the expression; he doesn't look as if the last thing he was doing was struggling for air.' In fact, the expression on the corpse's face was one of profound relief; if Tal hadn't known better, he would have thought that the man had died in his sleep. It was most unsettling to seethat expression onthis body.

'True.' Ardis frowned. 'Of course, that could be simply because the cold rendered him unconscious first. His lungs are full of water, at any rate, so drowning is definitely what killed him.'

But Tal had already moved on to the next thing he was looking for. Again, the fact that the fellow had drowned in very cold water, and soon after committing the murder, had kept the formation of those strange bruises to a minimum—but the bruises were there. Ardis and the other Justiciar bent over them to study them at close range when Tal pointed them out.

'You say you've seen these on the other killers?' Ardis asked, delicately turning the man's arm to avoid further damage as she looked at the bruising on the inside of the upper arm.

'All the ones I was able to examine,' Tal replied. 'They don't look like the bruises that would come from falling, or from being struck.'

'No, they don't,' the other Justiciar replied. 'There's no central impact point on them; it's more as if the limb was shoved or struck by something large and soft, but shoved or impacted hard enough to leave a bruise.' He looked up at Tal from across the table, and nodded. 'You must be the Special Inquisitor; I'm Father Nord Hathon, the Infirmarian.'

That accounted for his presence here: his medical knowledge. Ardis was calling in anyone she thought might give her a clue. Tal had no doubt of the Priest's competence, for no one who worked closely with Ardis had ever proved less than competent.I just hope that the same can be said about me.

'Look on the legs for the bruises, too,' Tal told him. 'You'll probably find them on the backs of the thighs and the calves.'

'Fascinating,' Father Hathon murmured, following Tal's suggestion. 'I can't account for this; kicks would have been directed towards the shins or the knee, blows to the head or torso, and attempts to seize the hands probably wouldn't have left these bruises on the wrists and hands. Those are particularly odd; they don't look like ligature marks, but they don't look like blows, either. Falls would have left bruises on the outside of the arms, not the inside, and on the shins again. This isn't quite the damage one would see from crushing, but it isn't far off from it.'

Tal shook his head. 'I don't understand it, either,' he confessed. 'All I know is, they look just like the ones I saw on the other bodies.'

'Fascinating,' Father Hathon said again. Ardis straightened up from her own examination and wiped her hands on a towel placed nearby.

'I don't think we'll learn anything more here.' She sighed. 'There's nothing magical in the clothing, no traces on the body. We might as well turn his corpse over to his relations. We're questioning the relatives, but I'm virtually certain that they're going to say precisely what all the friends and relatives of other secondary victims have said.'

'This is a most curious case, Ardis,' Father Hathon said, still examining the body. 'I fear the only way that you will apprehend this perpetrator is when he makes a mistake.'

'So you agree with me?' she asked, turning to look at him. 'The man didn't simply go mad and murder a stranger, like the fellow at the Cathedral?'

Father Hathon looked up, and nodded.

'Absolutely,' he replied. 'This is not behavior that can be rationalized even by a very disturbed soul, and despite what the laity might believe, people do not suddenly run mad and begin killing strangers without giving very powerful signs that all is not right with them long beforehand.'

'People don't suddenly run mad and murderstrangers at all,' Tal interjected. 'It might look as if they have, but either a person they really wanted to kill was one of the job-lot, or else the people they kill bear some strong connection or similarity to someone theydo want to kill but don't dare.'

When both Ardis and Father Hathon turned to look at him in surprise, he flushed. 'I—handled a case like that,' he murmured apologetically. 'We caught the murderer and I got a chance to question him. Fellow ran mad in the marketplace and killed three older women. Turned out he really wanted to murder his mother. I got curious and looked up other cases of supposed stranger-killings, and indeed they were like his.'

Ardis and Hathon exchanged a look; hers was rather proud and proprietary, his was an acknowledgement. Hathon continued, this time including Tal. 'I shall question these relatives myself to assure myself about signs of a