The Hallowed Hunt

muttered, not approvingly. 'Now I remember why I fear to open letters from Hallana.'

Ingrey asked, 'Could this affect Ijada’s case, do you think? If it should be brought to testimony? How goes the preparation for her case? I think—I am guessing—you hear all such news early.' If Lewko’s subtle resemblances to Hetwar extended beyond age and style, that is.

'Oh, aye. Temple gossip is worse than court gossip, I swear.' Lewko sucked on his lower lip. 'I believe the Father’s Order has empaneled five judges for the pretrial inquiry.'

That in itself was news of significance; minor cases, or cases that were to be treated as minor, would only get three such judges, or one, or if the accused was especially unlucky, a junior acolyte just learning his trade. 'Do you know anything of their characters?' Or against them?

Lewko raised a brow at that question. 'Highborn men, experienced in capital cases. Serious-minded. They will probably begin to question witnesses as early as tomorrow.'

'Huh,' said Ingrey. 'I saw that Rider Ulkra had arrived. All of Prince Boleso’s household will have come from Boar’s Head with him. Nothing to delay the inquiry, then. Will they call me to testify?'

'As you were not there at the time of the prince’s death, perhaps not. Do you wish to speak?'

'Perhaps... not. I’m not sure. How experienced are these serious men in matters of the uncanny?'

Lewko grunted and sat back. 'Now, that’s always a problem.'

Ijada was following this with a frown. 'Why?'

He cast her a measuring glance. 'So much of the uncanny—or the holy, for that matter—is inward experience. As such, testimony about it tends to be tainted. People lie. People delude themselves, or others. People are swayed or frightened or convinced they have seen things they have not. People are, frankly, sometimes simply mad. Every young judge of the Father’s Order soon learns that if he were to dismiss all such testimony at the first, he would not only save endless time and aggravation, he would be right nine times out of ten, or better. So the conditions for acceptance of such claims in law have become strict. As a rule, three Temple sensitives of good reputation must vouch for each other and the testimony.'

'You are a Temple sensitive, are you not?' she said.

'I am only one such.'

'There are three in this room!'

'Mm, sensitive perhaps, but somewhat lacking the further qualifications of Temple and good reputation, I fear.' His dry glance fell as much on Ingrey as Ijada.

Hallana, it occurred to Ingrey, might be another valid witness. But difficult at present to call upon. Although if he wanted a delaying tactic, sending all the way to Suttleaf for her would be one, to be sure. He filed the thought away.

Ijada rubbed her forehead, and asked plaintively, 'Do you not believe us, Learned?'

Lewko’s lips compressed. 'Yes. Yes, I do, Bastard help me. But belief enough for private action, and evidence sufficient for a court of law, are two separate things.'

'Private action?' said Ingrey. 'Do you not speak for the Temple, Learned?'

He made an equivocal gesture. 'I both stand within and administer Temple disciplines. I am also barely god-touched, though enough to know better than to wish for more. I am never sure if my erratic abilities are my failure to receive, or His failure to give.' He sighed. 'Your master Hetwar has always resisted understanding this. He plagues me for aid with unsuitable tasks and dislikes my telling him no. My order’s sorcerers are at his disposal; the gods are not.'

'Do you tell him no?' asked Ingrey, impressed.

'Frequently.' Lewko grimaced. 'As for great saints—no one commands them. The wise Temple-man just follows them around and waits to see what will happen.'

Lewko looked briefly introspective: Ingrey wondered what experiences he might have had in this regard. Something both rare and searing, at a guess. Ingrey said, 'I am no saint of any kind.'

'Nor I,' said Ijada fervently. 'And yet... '

Lewko glanced up at them both. 'You say true. And yet. You have both been more god-touched than anyone in the strength of such wills ought to be. It is the abnegation of self-will that gives room for the gods to enter the world through saints. The rumors of their spirit animals making the Old Weald warriors more open to their gods, mediating grace as the sacred funeral beasts do for us, have suddenly grown more convincing to me.'

So is my dispensation as much in danger as Wencel asserts? Ingrey decided to probe the question more obliquely. 'Ijada is no more responsible for receiving the spirit of her leopard than I was my wolf’s. Others imposed it upon her. Cannot she be granted a dispensation like mine? It makes no sense to save her from one capital charge only to lose her to another.'

'An interesting question,' said Lewko. 'What does Sealmaster Hetwar say of it?'

'I have not mentioned the leopard to Lord Hetwar yet.'

Lewko’s brows went up.

'He does not like complications,' Ingrey said weakly.

'What are you playing at, Lord Ingrey?'

'I would not have mentioned it to you, except Hallana’s letter forced my hand.'

'You might have undertaken to lose that missive on the way,' Lewko pointed out mildly. Wistfully?

'I thought of that,' Ingrey confessed. 'It seemed but a temporary expedient.' He added, 'I could ask the same question of you. Pardon, Learned, but it seems to me your allegiance to the rules flexes oddly.'

Lewko held up his outspread hand and wriggled it. 'It is murmured that the thumb is sacred to the Bastard because it is the part He puts upon the scales of justice to tip them His way. There is more truth than humor in this joke. Yet almost every rule is invented out of some prior disaster. My order has an arsenal of rules accumulated so, Lord Ingrey. We arm ourselves as needed.'

Making Lewko equally unpredictable as ally or enemy, Ingrey realized unhappily.

Ijada looked up as another knock sounded at the street door. Ingrey’s breath stopped at the sudden fear it might be Wencel, following up this morning’s events as swiftly as Lewko, but judging from the muffled arguing in the porter’s voice, it could not be the earl. At length, the door swung inward, and the porter warily announced, 'Messenger for Learned Lewko, m’lord.'

'Very well,' said Ingrey, and the porter retreated in relief.

A man dressed in the tabard of Prince Boleso’s household shouldered past him; a servant, judging by the rest of his clothes, his lack of a sword, and his irresolute air. Middle-aged, a little stooped, with a scraggly beard framing his face. 'Your pardon, Learned, it is urgent that I speak—' His eye fell on Ingrey, and widened with apparent recognition; his voice ran down abruptly. 'Oh.'

Ingrey’s return stare was blank, at first. His blood seemed to boil up in his head, and he realized that he smelled a demon, that distinctive rain-and-lightning odor, spinning tightly within this man. One of Lewko’s sorcerers in disguise, reporting Temple business to his master? No, for Lewko’s expression was as devoid of recognition as Ingrey’s, though his body had stiffened. He smells the demon, too, or senses it somehow.

It was the voice more than the appearance that did it. Ingrey’s mind’s eye scraped away the beard and eleven years from the servant’s face. 'You!'

The servant choked.

Ingrey stood up so fast his chair fell over and banged on the floor. The servant, already backing up, shrieked, whirled, and fled back out the door, slamming it behind him.

'Ingrey, what—?' Ijada began.

'It’s Cumril!' Ingrey flung over his shoulder at her, and gave chase.

By the time Ingrey wrenched open both doors and stood in the street, the man had disappeared around the curve, but the echo of running footsteps and a passerby’s astonished stare told Ingrey the direction. He flung back his coat, put his hand on his sword, and dashed after, rounding the houses just in time to see Cumril cast a frightened look back and duck into a side street. Ingrey swung after him, his stride lengthening. Could youth and fury outrun middle age and terror?