Four and Twenty Blackbirds

As soon as he entered the front door, he was greeted by a Desk-Sergeant stationed just inside. He presented his identification, and the man's attitude changed from civil to positively submissive.

'Sir!' the man said, all but rising to salute. 'The Captain is not in, but I can send a runner after him, or send a runner with you to guide you—'

'I don't precisely need to see Captain Fenris in person,' Tal replied, interrupting the man, but as politely as he could. 'What I need is access to city records. I have the names of five men who were once associated with the Abbey who might still be living in Kingsford, that I would like to track down. If that's possible.'

The Sergeant nodded, his lips thinning a little. 'I'm sure I don't have to point out that these men might have changed their names—' he began.

Tal didn't quite chuckle. 'And I'm sure I don't have to point out that if they've been up to any more— mischief—the constabulary records will have noted those name changes.'

The Desk-Sergeant smirked. 'Third floor, fourth door on the right. Show the guard your credentials; the Captain has already left standing orders about you.'

As Tal climbed the stairs, he wondered just what those 'standing orders' were, since he had stressed that Ardis did not want it known that he was a Special Inquisitor. Evidently the Captain had his own way of establishing someone's authorization without resorting to the actual titles.

A guard on a records-room, though—that's interesting. I suspect there's a great deal of delicate information in there. Dear God—Fenris must trust me more than I thought! Or he trusts Ardis to know that I'm trustworthy, which amounts to the same thing. With a sensation of unsettled emotion, he wasn't quite sure how he should react to that revelation. Should he feel flattered? Perhaps a little, but he suspected that situation was due more to Ardis's competence than his own. He was embarrassed, certainly; it was embarrassing to be accorded so much respect when he didn't really feel he'd earned it.

Still it was helping him get his job done, and for that alone he was grateful. When he presented his papers to the guard at the end of the corridor (who was evidently guardingall of the rooms at that end, not just the single records-room) he got another smart salute, and was able to return it with grave equanimity.

The room in question was small, but lit quite adequately by means of a clearly often-patched skylight. Folios of papers filled all four walls, and if it had ever boasted a window, the window had long since been boarded up. Tal would have been at a complete loss as to where to start had there not been an indexing-book on the table in the center of the room.

It still took hours before he found three of his five men. He resolved to take what he had and come back later; as it was, he would only be able to investigate one before he was due back at the Abbey.

He picked the easiest of the lot, a former Priest who had resigned with no reason given. That, to his mind, was the most mysterious of them all; there had been no disciplinary actions taken, no marks against him, yet out of nowhere, he resigned and left the Church altogether. There was nothing about him in the constabulary records either, except his name and address.

Tal saluted both the guard and the Desk-Sergeant on his way out; both seemed gratified by his courtesy, which reawoke that faint sense of embarrassment. He could only chase it away by telling himself that it was nothimself they were reacting to, but to the fact that he served Ardis. She was the one they really respected, not him. He was a walking Title, rather than a respected person, and the humility of the realization was an odd but real comfort.

Snow fell steadily now, and it had accumulated to ankle-depth since he'd entered the building. He waved away an offer to get his horse; the address he was in search of was not in that far away, and he would be less conspicuous on foot.

He pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head; the Church Guards were assigned plain black wool cloaks to cover their resplendent uniforms, wonderfully inconspicuous garments unless you happened to be going through a neighborhood in which garments without patches and holes were oddities. The place he sought now was not that shabby an area, although it could best be described as 'modest' rather than 'prosperous.'

This was a street of small shops and tradesmen, many of whom were now lighting lanterns and candles against the sudden gloom of the late afternoon snowstorm. As snowflakes fell thickly all about him, Tal paused to check his address against the shop to his left.

This is the place,he decided, a little surprised to find that itwas a shop and not the address of a place that had rooms to let. 'Bertram—Chandler' said the sign above the door, with a picture of a lighted candle to make the meaning clear to the illiterate.I hope this isn't just an address where letters are left to be picked up. If that happened to be the case, the shopkeeper could in all honesty claim that he didn't know Dasel Torney, and had no notion where the letters left there in that name were going.

Tal brushed snow from his shoulders, shook it off his hood, and opened the door. A bell jingled cheerfully as he did so, and he entered a shop that was no wider across than his outstretched arms, but was a warm and cheerful place nonetheless, brilliantly lit, and softly fragrant.

On shelves to the right and left were displayed bottles of lamp-oil. On the bottom-most shelf were common pottery jugs that contained equally common rendered animal oil; in the middle were large casks of distilled ground- oil, which the customer would use to fill his own container; on the top, delicate glass flagons of clear, scented oils