The case before her father impinged slightly upon her thoughts, and she considered the fact that Kallia, while not young and of no remarkable beauty, was a reasonably attractive woman, while Heremon was a dignified and personable man of late middle age. Could there be some sort of romantic, or at any rate sexual, situation involved here? Nobody had mentioned spouses on either side of the dispute.
But both Kallia and Heremon had plenty of resources at their disposal; why would either of them resort to robbery, or false accusations of robbery?
If Heremon were, in fact, the thief, why did he break in through the front door and generally make such a mess of the job? He might not have any experience at burglary, but he wasn’t stupid, to have attained his present status—the title “mage” was only given to a wizard of proven ability, one who had trained apprentices and who had demonstrated mastery of many spells.
And if Heremon was not the thief, who was? Had Kallia broken her own door and killed her own demon, to fake the theft? Killing a demon did not seem like a trivial matter, especially not for a demonologist, who would need to deal with other demons on a fairly regular basis. Sarai mulled the whole thing over carefully.
When court was finally adjourned, she and her father returned to their apartments for a late supper. Kalthon the Younger and his nurse had waited for them, so the meal was hurried, and afterward Lord Kalthon settled at little Kalthon’s side to tell him a bedtime story.
Sarai might ordinarily have stayed to listen—she loved a good story, and her father’s were sometimes excellent—but tonight she had other plans. Instead, she put on her traveling cloak and headed for the door.
Her father looked up, startled. “Where are you going?”
“I just want to check on something,” she said.
Kalthon the Younger coughed; he was a sickly child, always down with one illness or another, while Sarai was a healthy young woman, able to take care of herself. “All right,” Lord Kalthon said, “be careful.” He turned back to his son and continued, “So Valder the king’s son took the enchanted sword...”
Sarai closed the door quietly on her way out, and a few minutes later she was riding one of the overlord’s horses down Smallgate Street toward Eastside, toward Wizard Street.
CHAPTER 4
Lord Kalthon drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.
“Let’s go through it once more,” he said angrily. “You, the demonologist—what happened here?”
“Rander of Southbeach, my lord,” the demonologist said, with a tight little bow and a twitch of the black- embroidered skirts of his black robes.
“I didn’t ask your bloody name” Lord Kalthon shouted. “I asked what happened! Did Heremon the Mage rob Kallia of the Broken Hand or not?”
Rander’s attempt at an ingratiating smile vanished. He glanced hesitantly at the others, then said, “My lord, my arts show that Kallia has spoken the truth as she knows it.”
Lord Kalthon glared at him. “And?” he said.
“And so has Heremon the Mage,” the demonologist admitted reluctantly.
“And you can’t resolve this contradiction?”
“No.”
Lord Kalthon snorted and turned to the plump woman in the green robe. “I know you; you’ve testified before me before. Mereth of the Golden Door, isn’t it?” “Yes, my lord.” She bobbed politely. “Well?”
“My lord,” she said, in a pleasant contralto that Sarai envied, “like the demonologist, my spells have achieved confusing and contradictory results. I, too, find that both Kallia and Heremon speak the truth as they know it. Further, I can detect no distortion of memory in either of them. I used a scrying spell to see the crime with my own eyes, and I saw what Kallia described— Heremon taking the gold and other things; but when I used another divination, I was told that Heremon did not. I fear that some very powerful magic is responsible.” Kalthon turned to Okko and said, “Now what?” Okko hesitated, and looked very unhappy indeed. “Perhaps a witch...” he began. Sarai cleared her throat.
Kalthon turned an inquisitive eye toward his daughter. “Sarai,” he asked, “was there something you wanted to say?” “My lord,” she said, secretly enjoying her father’s startled reaction to this formal address from his daughter, “I have undertaken a little study of my own involving this case, and perhaps I can save everyone some time and further aggravation by explaining just what I believe to have happened.”
Lord Kalthon stared at her, smiling slightly. “Speak, then,” he said.
“Really, it’s not as difficult as all that,” Sarai said, stalling for time as her nerve suddenly failed her for a moment. What if she was wrong? Her father’s smile had vanished, she saw, replaced with a puzzled frown.
She took a deep breath and continued. “Kallia swears that she saw Heremon commit the crime, and every indication is that she speaks the truth, that that’s exactly what she saw. Furthermore, Heremon swears that he did not commit the crime, and chamber, and then ran for it. One of the warlocks burst his heart.” He glanced at Kalthon the Younger, who was listening intently, and then added, “I told her to.”
“What happened to the demon?” little Kalthon asked. “The one he conjured in the chamber.”
“The guards killed it,” the Minister of Justice replied. “Cut it to pieces with their swords, and eventually it stopped struggling.” He sighed. “I’m afraid that Irith isn’t very happy about it.”
“Who’s Irith?” Sarai asked.
“She’s the servant who cleans the justice chamber every night,” Lord Kalthon explained. “I told her that if she couldn’t get the stain out, not to worry, we’d hire a magician to do it.”
“Will you really?”
“Maybe,” Kalthon said. “We’ve certainly used plenty of magic already on this case.” He sighed. “More than I like. There are too damn many magicians in this city.”
Sarai nodded.
“And that reminds me, Sarai,” her father said, picking up the last drumstick. “Have you been dabbling in magic, perhaps?”
Sarai blinked, astonished. “No, sir,” she said. “Of course not.”
“So you really figured out that it was this Katherian all by yourself, then? Just using your own good sense?”
Sarai nodded. “Yes, Father,” she said.
Kalthon bit into the drumstick, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. “That was good thinking, then,” he said at last. “Very good.” “Thank you,” Sarai said, looking down at her plate.
“You know,” her father continued, “we use Okko and the other magicians to solve most of the puzzles we get. I mean, the cases where it’s a question of what the facts are, rather than just settling an argument where the facts are known.”
“Yes, sir,” Sarai said, “I’d noticed that.”
“Every so often, though, we do get cases like this one, with Kallia and Heremon and Katherian, and sometimes they’re real tangles. They usually seem to involve magicians, which doesn’t help any—such as the one where a man who’d been turned to stone a hundred years ago was brought back to life, and we had to find out who enchanted him, and then decide who owned his old house, and whether he could prosecute the heirs of the wizard who enchanted him, and for that matter we couldn’t be sure the wizard himself was really dead...”He shook his head. “Or all the mess after the Night of Madness, before you were bom—your grandfather handled most of that, but I helped out.” He gestured at Kalthon the Younger. “Yjur brother will probably be the next Minister of Justice, you know—it’s traditional for the heir to be the eldest son, skipping daughters, and I don’t think Ederd’s going to change that. But I think we could use you—after today, I think it would be a shame not to use wits like yours.”
“Use me how?” Sarai asked warily.
“As an investigator,” her father said. “Someone who goes out and finds out what’s going on in the difficult cases. Someone who knows about different kinds of magic, but isn’t a magician herself. I’d like to ask the overlord to name you as the first Lord—or rather, the first Lady of Investigation for Ethshar of the Sands. With a salary and an office here in the palace.”
Sarai thought it over for a moment, then asked, “But what would I actually do?”
