Sarai sighed again. “In this case, I wasn’t expecting good news. What is it, another body?” “No, no,” Tikri hastily assured her. “Not that bad.” “Not even a dog?” Tikri shook his head. “Well, then?” Sarai demanded.
“Well, it looks like we have more than one killer. Mereth and her apprentice were studying the traces in Athaniel’s shop—the actual break-in was done by warlockry.”
Sarai frowned. “But it wasn’t warlockry that killed him. Mereth was sure of that.”
Tikri nodded. “So if our killer is a wizard, he has a warlock working with him,” he said.
“Maybe it’s a warlock who’s gotten hold of an enchanted dagger somewhere,” Sarai suggested.
“Maybe,” Tikri conceded. “But why would a warlock be doing any of this? A warlock can stop a man’s heart without touching him; why cut throats?”
“Why would anybody do all this?” Sarai retorted.
“A demonologist making a sacrifice, maybe? Or a wizard collecting the ingredients for a spell?”
“And how would a demonologist or a wizard do warlockry?” Sarai started to take a deep breath to say more and accidentally caught a lungful of smoke from the pyre; she lost whatever she had intended to say in an extended coughing fit. Tikri stood silently by, waiting.
When she regained control of herself, Sarai was no longer thinking entirely about warlocks or motives; the coughing had reminded her of her father’s failing health and poor Kalthon the Younger with his fits. Her family was not exactly robust or numerous anymore. She had to face the possibility that any day, she could find herself the new Minister of Justice permanently, not just filling in—and she would still be Minister of Investigation, as well.
As a girl, she had never expected to have this sort of responsibility; her father and brother were supposed to handle the Ministry of Justice, and back then there had been no Minister of Investigation yet. By rights, she shouldn’t have had a government job at all; she should have been married off years ago to a wealthy merchant, or to some noble not too closely related to her. She should be raising chickens and sewing clothes and tending children, not standing here watching a murdered friend burn and worrying about who killed him instead of remembering his life.
The idea of being the overlord’s investigator had sounded intriguing four years ago, but the idea of spending the rest of her life at it, at hunting down demented criminals and sadistic thugs, or worse, failing to hunt them down...
It was beginning to wear on her. She wondered how her father could stand going on being Minister of Justice, year after year.
But of course, maybe he couldn’t stand it, maybe that was why he was dying.
And here before her was the body of a man who could have saved her father, and had refused. Maybe, Sarai thought bitterly, she should be applauding, instead of mourning.
Then she blinked, startled.
Could that be the killer’s motive?
It wasn’t at all likely that all the victims had wronged any one person by their actions, but might they have done so by inaction? Was there something the killer wanted that all of them, the warlock, the soldier, the theurgist, the demonologist, the wizard, had failed to provide?
It seemed like a reasonable -possibility. It didn’t explain the almost ritualistic throat-slashing, or the use of both warlockry and wizardry, though.
Sarai remembered that Tikri thought there was more than one killer involved. That made sense—the man who threw Athaniel and Karitha around had clearly been immensely strong and must have been large and muscular, while Inza’s killer appeared to have slipped in through a window open only a few inches. De-ru’s killer had been big enough to kill him while he was awake, without leaving signs of a struggle, but had done so from the back—and an experienced old brawler like Deru would not have turned his back on anyone he considered a threat. That called for someone strong, but not big and burly.
But if there was more than one killer, why? Why would a group want to commit these murders? It seemed even less likely than an individual—unless it was some sort of conspiracy or cult at work.
Was there, perhaps, a secret conspiracy of magicians? Had Inza and Serem and the others been offered a chance to join, and been killed to insure their silence when they refused?
But why kill them all the same way, then? Was that a warning to others, perhaps? Or was it in fact a ritual? Was this a cult of some sort, perhaps followers of a demon that had somehow escaped from the Nether Void without coming under a demon-ologist’s control? Or people enthralled by some wizardry, perhaps? There were wizards who could command elemental spirits or animals or ghosts—why not people? Or might the killers be ensorceled? Sarai had heard rumors, dating all the way back to the Great War, of sorcerers who could control the thoughts of others.
Cults and conspiracies—what was she up against? Could there be a cult of killers? She seemed to remember stories of such a thing.
“Tikri,” she asked, “have you ever heard of an organization of assassins?”
“Do you mean the cult of Demerchan?” the soldier asked, startled.
Demerchan—that was the name. All she knew about it was vague legends and unfinished tales. “Do I? Could they be responsible for these killings?”
Tikri hesitated, then admitted, “I don’t know.”
“I don’t either,” Sarai muttered.
She didn’t know—so she would just have to find out. And not just about Demerchan. There were magicians involved. She intended to check out the organizations of magicians that might be involved—the Wizards’ Guild, the Council of Warlocks, the Brotherhood, the Sisterhood, the Hierarchy of Priests, and any others she could uncover.
“Tikri,” she whispered, “I’m going to need several men. And women, too, probably.”
Captain Tikri shot her a glance, then nodded.
CHAPTER 16
Four days later, a dozen blocks away, Tabaea lay back on the bed and stared up at the painted ceiling. This inn was a far cry from the dingy, malodorous places on Wall Street where she had spent most of her nights just a few months before. The sheets were clean, cool linen; the blanket was of fine wool, dyed a rich blue and embroidered with red and gold silk; the mattress was thick and soft, filled with the finest eiderdown.
No more burlap and straw for Tabaea the Thief, she told herself. Three fluffy pillows. A bottle of wine and a cut-glass goblet at her bedside, a fire on the hearth, and a bellpull in easy reach. Even the beams overhead were decorated, a design of red flowers and gold stars against a midnight blue background. The plaster between beams continued the blue, sprinkled with white stars and wisps of cloud.
She ought, she supposed, to be happy. She had more money than ever before in her life, she was stronger and healthier and more powerful than she had ever imagined she could be. She could take almost anything she wanted.
But she was not happy, and that “almost” was the reason why. There were things she wanted that she couldn’t have. True, she had gotten away with half a dozen murders, but they had not all yielded the results she sought.
She had killed Inza, and now she could work warlockry—but only at an apprentice level, at least so far. And sometimes it felt so good doing it that it scared her; she knew nothing about it and was afraid she was doing something wrong, something that, even if it didn’t harm her directly, would draw the attention— and the wrath—of the real warlocks, or, worse, of whatever it was that was responsible for the whispering she drew her power from.
She had killed Captain Deru, and with his strength added to the rest she was stronger than any man in Ethshar; she could wield a sword with the best of them and could put an arrow in a dog’s eye at sixty paces; but she still looked like a half-starved, plain-faced girl, and no one stepped aside at her approach, and no one was intimidated by her bellow. She had killed Athaniel, and that had done her no good at all; the gods still didn’t listen when she prayed and still didn’t come at her call. She didn’t know the right formulae, the invocations, or the secret names; none of that had transferred.
