“You forget,” Pryce said with a grin. “I knew Gamor Turkal, too… probably better than all of you put together! And then… I saw the way you looked at Sheyrhen when you thought she had called me ‘darling’ in the bar last night. The rest was easy.” He sniffed modestly.
He turned quickly from the visibly relieved barkeep to the defiant inquisitrix. “Berridge Lymwich,” he mused aloud. “She certainly has cunning and desire that know few reins… ”He stared hard at the cold-eyed woman who faced him with her chin thrust forward.
He continued, his tone softening. “But she also has an entire castle of sisters who spend all day and night trying valiantly to teach her… that ambition without wisdom is meaningless.”
Lymwich held her defiant pose for a moment more. Then the words made it past her mental defenses, and she blinked. Her stare wavered and she turned quickly to look at her inquisitrix leader.
WendchrixTurzihubbard smiled benevolently and slowly nodded.
As Berridge Lymwich looked down at the deck, her fists clenching and unclenching, Pryce stepped carefully around her and faced the mine owner. “And now we come to Asche Hartov, visitor to our fair shore… ”
“All right, all right!” the gaunt man exploded, surprising everyone, including Covington. “You want to know why I came to Lallor? I’ll tell you why. Did I have the opportunity to meet with Geerling Ambersong and Gamor Turkal? Yes, I did, but I didn’t kill them! I tell you, I didn’t!”
“Wait a minute,” Pryce cried, trying to mentally catch up with the mine owner’s words. “If you didn’t kill them, what did you do, Asche?”
Hartov stared at Pryce, his lips trembling. ‘You know, Blade,” he whispered, almost blubbering. “Don’t you?”
“I only think,” Pryce stressed. “You know.”
“Yes,” Hartov cried, hiding his face in his hands. “I plotted with themFullmer and Turkal and 1.1 admit it!”
Pryce hastily looked at Lymwich and Turzihubbard, holding his arm out to keep them back. “To do what, Asche?” he demanded. “Speak now, or they’ll disintegrate you. You plotted with them to do what?”
The mine owner’s head shot up, tears blinking out of his eyes, remembering where he was… and what powerful people were in attendance. “Not to kill anyone! To steal magic artifacts! We only planned to plunder the secret workshop, I swear!”
“Only to plunder the workshop” Lymwich cried, but a quick look from Pryce shut her up.
“Details,” Covington demanded urgently of the mine owner. “In twenty-five words or less.”
“Gamorit was Gamor! He came to me with the idea. Teddington and I met with him several times. Turkal said he could get us inside. Fullmer would transport the material, and I would secrete it in one of my empty mines.”
“It would take three people days to empty the workshop!” Dearlyn Ambersong interjected angrily.
“Not all at once!” Hartov babbled. “A bit at a time.”
“But then Gamor was gone,” Pryce said soothingly. “Wasn’t he, Asche?”
“Yes,” Hartov said, grabbing that reality like a life preserver. “I looked all over Lallor for him. Fullmer… Fullmer made me stay until we heard from him. Curse him!”
“Ah, yes,” said Pryce. ‘Teddington Fullmer.” He turned away from the shuddering mine owner for the moment and addressed the others. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is as good a time as any to reveal to you a most important principle of detection. The most important letter for a detective is Y. And the most important why at the moment is this: Why hasn’t the murderer killed me?”
The question caught everyone off guard for a moment. “Think about it,” Pryce suggested. “The murderer was powerful enough to kill Geerling Ambersong, and I am merely his lowly student. Here I am, devoting all my energy to finding my master’s killer, and what happens to me?” He looked resolutely at Gheevy. “Nothing. Why?”
It was safe to say that they were all perplexed. Pryce continued. ‘When you think about it, there can only be one reason… ”
Mystra Superior Wendchrix Turzihubbard wasn’t interested in playing guessing games. “And what is that, Mister Blade?” She made it clear by her tone that the answer should be forthcoming immediately.
He looked at her calmly, pausing as thunder rumbled in the distance. “Because the murderer can’t.”
“Why not?” Turzihubbard retorted evenly.
He looked directly at her, but he spoke to them all. “Because the person who killed my teacher and master, Geerling Ambersong, is also dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Blade Straight and True
The sky rumbled once more. Pryce looked up to see storm clouds gathering directly in the ship’s path. “Captain!” he called. “Can we avoid the storm?”
“No,” Scottpeter called back. “But the beacon from Mount Talath will pull us through. It may be rough, but we’ll make it!”
“Fair enough.” Pryce turned back to the others. “But it doesn’t give us much time.”
“Mr. Blade!” Turzihubbard called out. “Explain yourself!”
He looked at her helplessly. ‘This is the only thing that makes sense, Mistress Turzihubbardespecially if you follow Sante’s teachings, which my master most certainly did. I ask you all to think about who else is dead.”
He looked from one to the next as he carefully explained. “Gamor is gone. Geerling is gone. We will never know who killed them unless we solve the mystery of who murdered Teddington Fullmer.”
It was silent on deck except for the creaking of stevlyman wood and an ominous rumbling far off in the sky. Finally Matthaunin Witterstaet managed to choke out a laugh. “My word, Mr. Blade. It sounds rather like the sort of conundrum I set for my immigration test”
Pryce turned to him and smiled. “Yes, Matthaunin, that’s true. For instance, why can’t a person living in Halarahh be buried west of the River Ghalagar?” They all looked at each other for the answer, but it was forthcoming only from Pryce. “Because he’s still living. Remember?” A few of them started to laugh, but Pryce added, “Unlike Teddington Fullmer.” That sobered them up again.
“All right,” Pryce stated, taking a position in the middle of the deck. ‘Think. Remember that most of you were in Schreders’s tavern the afternoon I spoke with Fullmer in the grotto. Any one of you could have overheard us planning a meeting for that night. But who is the only one who could have killed him and then, more importantly, placed him in the locked secret workshop?”
Pryce glanced at the clouds, which were boiling and turning black, then moved in among his audience for the intellectual kill. He looked from Witterstaet to Lymwich and back again. “You two told me. How much magic do the people we pressed into moving the contents of the workshop possess?”
“Why, none,” said Matthaunin.
“And why would they kill Fullmer, anyway? To get the workshop for themselves?” Pryce waved that thought aside with a look of distaste. “A motive shared by all is no longer really a valid motive. Look for an unusual motive, a motive with a difference. In that motive the truth may lie.”
He pointed at the remorseful mine owner. “Would he kill Fullmer in order to get out of their plan to plunder the workshop? I don’t think so.” He pointed at Azzo and Karkober. ‘They were serving food and drink to dozens of people at the time Fullmer was attacked. The kitchen crew will corroborate that they never left the dining area.”
“None of them possesses magical abilities,” Lymwich spoke up. “And I was keeping my shift in front of the orbs of eyewitness in the Mystran Inquisitrix Castle, along with several of my sister inquisitrixes.”
Both Pryce and the Mystra Superior looked at Lymwich in surprise. How dare she interrupt this denouement? But her purpose became clear when she turned to confront Pryce on the skyship deck. “There was only one other person with the necessary magical power,” she said accusingly. Lymwich pointed directly at him. “You.”
Pryce Covington did not panic at her assertion. He even managed a small smile. “I didn’t do it,” he said mildly.
