Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Maybe a little more discreet pressure on the bird-man. I could remind him that some of the people dying are friends of his friends. How important are kin and friends to one of his kind? I should find that out if I can.

Now that would be a coup; if she could get Visyr to cooperate,he might be able to get his talons on a knife before the killer stole it back. If they just had a knife, their job would be enormously easier.

I'll concentrate our efforts on stopping the murders by getting women under cover, she decided. And once they're under cover, I'll concentrate on getting hold of a knife.

She sighed, and felt a little of the tension ease. With clearly formed tasks of her own to concentrate on, it would be easier to keep other, more troubling thoughts at bay.

She got up and returned to her desk, prepared now to open the complicated channels of communication between the Church and the people of the streets. There was, after all, only so much time before the murderer struck again, and she was determined to give him as few opportunities as possible.

Chapter Ten

Tal was not altogether certain that Ardis would be happy about the course he was pursuing today, but he had decided to take advantage of his status as a Special Inquisitor to pry into a number of records he probably should not see under ordinary circumstances. He'd tell Ardis when he made his report; it was always easier to apologize for overstepping one's bounds than to get permission aforehand, though careers and friendships would always suffer from that policy's overuse.

He'd had Kayne get him copies of the Abbey records of Priests, all of whom had been associated with the Kingsford Abbeys, who'd been dismissed or resigned from the Church over the past twenty years. He wasn't confining himself to Priests who were also mages; although he had never seen or heard of such a killer working with someone else, it had occurred to him that the stakes were too high for him to ignore the possibility. The murderercould be a Priest in league with a mage, and they didn't even have to have identical obsessions for the partnership to work. If the Priest in such a partnering, for instance, had been expelled from the Church for misappropriation of funds, well then, there might certainly be substantial enough money to just hire a mage. Alternately, a mage might be in conspiracy just for the side benefits. It was easy enough to guess what the mage would get out of such an association; everyone knew that there was power to be had from death, and the more violent the death, the more power could be obtained. For someone with no morals and a great deal of ambition, this would be a situation too tempting to refuse. Often magical prowess was directly linked to the power available to be used, in much the way that a glass-blower could only become adept at creating huge ceremonial bowls by having enough raw glass and fuel for his furnace to practice with.

So, against the occasional grumblings of his old, walk-the-streets-and-listen constable reflexes, he spent more time in papers and tablets. There were six Priest-Mages who fulfilled those qualifications, and another nine Priests. Written at the end of the records of four of the Priest-Mages was the disappointing word, 'Deceased,' followed by a date, but at the end of two were the more cryptic words, 'Missing, presumed dead.' Since the dates on these records were clearly the time of the Great Fire, he could only assume that the two Priest-Mages had somehow gotten misplaced in the confusion. Where they were missingfrom, the records gave no clue, although he suspected very strongly that there were other records associated with these that only Ardis had access to.

The causes for dismissal were enlightening, but not particularly surprising. Tal had been a street-constable for too long not to know that Priests could be as fallible as ordinary folk, and as weak. It often appeared to him that the real sin was in getting caught sinning rather than the act itself.

Fraud, embezzlement, fornication, abuse of privilege—those were the most common, though there were one or two other references that might have puzzled someone with less experience than Tal. 'Inappropriate behavior with children,' for instance, followed by a very heavy punishment, made him very glad that this was a file on a Priest who was demonstrablydead, or Tal might have been tempted to pay an extra-legal visit to the man.

In the end, he had only five names out of the possible fifteen who might still be living in Kingsford. To track them down quickly, he would need help. It was time for a visit to Captain Fenris.

He'd already made one visit, as formal as one ever got with that energetic man, presenting himself and his credentials to Fenris during one of his instructional rounds for new constables. Fenris had been skeptical of Tal's abilities—not that he'd been so ill-mannered as to show that he was, but Tal could read volumes into his little pauses and silences. But as it happened, an altercation over a game of chance had broken out not far from where he met up with the Captain, and Tal had gotten caught up in quelling the small riot and sorting out the claims and counterclaims afterwards. After that, Fenris treated him with the respect his own superiors never had, leaving word with his own men that Tal was to get full cooperation, no questions asked.

Tal tucked his list of names and descriptions into his belt-pouch, bundled himself against the cold, and headed for the stable. His old nag of a horse was patient and easy to handle; it was a matter of a few moments to get him saddled and bridled, and he was through the Abbey gate and heading across the bridge into Kingsford.

Captain Fenris worked out of a common-looking, three-storied building just outside the walls of the Ducal Palace; though it had no stable of its own, a servant took Tal's horse and led it through a postern-gate to the Duke's stables. As Tal dusted the snow from his shoulders and approached the front door, he had to chuckle a little at the thought of his stocky, common-as-dirt gelding being housed side-by-side with the Duke's matched carriage- horses and fine saddle-breds.