Four and Twenty Blackbirds

'Well, there is one thing that a bit of magic is good for, and that is as an aid to someone too scatter-brained to remember to label his boxes,' said Dasel Torney as he set the box down. 'Fortunately for one such as myself, there is the Law of Identity, which allows me to take a chip of Kaerlyvale beeswax and locate and remove a box of identical wax. Unfortunately, if that box happens to be in the middle of a stack, I can find myself with an incipient avalanche on my hands!'

Dasel Torney would not look to the ordinary lay-person like a man who could kill dozens of women in cold blood—but looks could be deceiving. Such men, as Tal knew, could be very charming if they chose.

But they were seldomhappy, not as completely, innocently happy as Dasel was. Once again, except for the gray hair, Tal could not have put an accurate age on Torney if he had not already known what it was from the records. His sheer joy in living made him look twenty years less than his actual age, which was sixty-two.

'Well!' Torney said, dusting his hands off. 'Welcome, Tal Rufen! You'll find a stool over there, somewhere, please take it and sit down.'

Looking around near the workbench, Tal did find a tall stool, and took a seat while Dasel Torney did the same on his side of the bench. 'Your wife is a very remarkable woman, sir,' he ventured.

For the first time since he entered the shop, Tal saw an expression that was not completely cheerful. There was a faint shadow there, followed by a softer emotion that Tal could not identify. 'My wife is the reason I was dismissed from the Church, Sirra Rufen,' Torney told him candidly. 'Or rather—I was permitted to resign. The permission did not come without a struggle.'

Tal felt very awkward, but the questions still had to be asked. 'I know that you may find this painful, but your wife did say you'd discussed the fact that someone like me would be coming to talk to you—'

Torney shrugged. 'And I know it will be my job to convince you that I had nothing to do with the murders— which, by the way,I think were done with the help of magic, speaking as a mage. Mages—Priest-Mages, at least—are expected to study the darker uses of magic so that they will recognize such things and know how to counteract them. I doubt I have to tell you that, though; I can't imagine that as learned and intelligent as High Bishop Ardis is, she hasn't already come to that conclusion.'

Tal hesitated, then said what he'd been thinking. 'There was only one murder in Kingsford, sir—'

'That you know of. There's stories in the street of another two beggar-girls with triangular stab-wounds here, and I know of a dozen or more down the river,' Torney interrupted him. 'I'm in trade, sir Rufen; I deal with people who sell me scents, oils, and waxes from all over the Human Kingdoms and beyond. The one thing that tradesmen do is talk—and there hasn't been anything more sensational to talk about in the last six months than murder— especially the murder of that poor Gypsy girl by the jeweler. Stabbed with a file, indeed! I knew then it was an ecclesiastical dagger, and when another girl was killed in the same way here, I knew it was only a matter of time before Ardis sent a Hound of God out on trail.'

Tal sighed. 'And you, of course, never leave the city.'

Torney nodded. 'I could bring witnesses to that, obviously, and it is just as obvious that they could be lying for me. Take it as given that I have the witnesses; what can I do that will convince you I could not have anything to do with these horrible crimes?'

'Tell me why you left the Church,' Tal replied instantly.

Dasel Torney nodded as if he had expected that very answer. 'I will give you the shortest possible version—I was a Priest-Mage, trained by the Justiciars, but not of the Order myself. I was out of the Teaching Order of Saint Basyl, and at forty years of age, I was given the assignment of acting as tutor to the daughter of a wealthy and extremely influential merchant of Kingsford—the head of the Chandler's Guild, in fact. I had the bad judgment, although the exquisite taste, to fall in love with her, and she had the poor taste to fall equally in love with me. The inevitable occurred, and we were discovered together. At that point, neither of us would give the other up, not even after ten years of separations and penances, nor under the threat of far worse punishments than we had already undergone.'

'Worse?' Tal asked, curiously.

Torney chuckled. 'There were those who thought I ought to pay for my sin by having the organ in question removed—and I don't mean my heart!'

Tal blanched; he couldn't imagine how Torney could joke about it.

'Fortunately,' Dasel continued, 'cooler heads prevailed, and both my fellow teachers and the Justiciars prevailed upon both the High Bishop and my darling's father to soften their wrath. In the case of the former, they prevailed upon him to simply allow me to resign provided I never used magic directly to make a profit—and in the case of the latter, they prevailed upon the Guildmaster to accept me as a son-in-law.' He quirked a smile. 'It did help that I have a talent with wax and scent, and that my ability as a mage was never better than minimal. It was very uncomfortable for all of us, however; he acted to both of us as if we were strangers. I thought he would never really forgive us. We never spoke outside of the shop until the Great Fire.'

Tal could well imagine what the Fire must have done to a candle and oil shop. 'Was there anything left?'

Torney shook his head. 'Not a thing. Nothing but ashes, and by the time we got back to where the shop had