“Two hundred foxes,” Inglis murmured. “Do you think your god has His thumb in all this?”
“Oh, yes,” sighed Pen, signed himself, and tapped his lips twice.
*
The tavern where they were to rendezvous was a modest place, tucked up in an alley not far from the big chapterhouse of the Father’s Order on the Templetown heights. They found Oswyl and his assistant arrived before them, though not by much, in a small upstairs chamber, a compromise between cheap and private. But the pitcher of beer the servant brought was decent, the tureen of stew contained identifiable meat, the bread and butter were abundant, and Penric, by this time, was starving. The servant’s presence gave them all a welcome head start on the meal, but at last he decamped, closing the door behind him.
Though town-clean, Oswyl looked even more tired than Pen felt after barging around in the woods all day. Both Oswyl and his assistant Thala, who Penric gathered was also his apprentice, were dressed in their most formal gray uniforms, having just come from Learned Magal’s funeral; it being high summer, the ceremony had not been delayed. Penric was relieved to learn that the Easthome sacred animals had plainly signed her soul as taken up by the white god.
“Her service was very well attended,” Thala remarked. “Whoever killed her either did not know or did not care how much his deed would have her entire Easthome Order up in arms against him.”
“Aye,” said Oswyl. “Although I spoke to as many as I could, and their most common response after anger was bewilderment. Kin and colleagues both. Usually by this time in an inquiry I start to have some direction, some odd crack, some… unpleasant smell, but not here. She seems to have been the most blameless woman imaginable. I’d feel myself forced back to shot by mistake for a deer, except no one had any idea what she was doing out in those woods in the first place. Either she’d told no one of her errand, or at least one person was lying to me.” He sighed, as if this latter were an irreducible hazard.
“We made a good start on finding out everything she’d done day before yesterday,” said Thala, “right down to what she ate for breakfast, but about the third hour of the afternoon she left the chapterhouse and just never came back.”
“Afoot?” said Inglis. “Hard to get all the way up to those woods before dark that way. Livery stables…?”
“We’re in process of canvassing them all,” said Oswyl. “No luck yet.”
“Why shoot a sorceress?” Pen mused. “Why murder anyone, for that matter?” Belatedly self-conscious, he managed not to glance at Inglis. “I mean, in a premeditated way.”
Oswyl chased a bite of bread with a long swallow of beer, then sat back. “Some reasons are more common than others.”
“Money?” asked Inglis. “An inheritance…?”
“Money to be sure, but inheritances very rarely. Usually murder happens in the course of a robbery. Next most common is some brawl or ambush after losses at play, and after that, debt.”
“Her purse was still tied to her belt,” observed Thala, “though it didn’t hold much, and those little pearl earrings were still in her ears. No ordinary cutpurse would have left either. Stolen demons I can’t speak to.”
Oswyl nodded at her in a mentor’s approval. “Magal was an orphan, she didn’t gamble, and she neither owed nor was owed money,” he said. “We’ve checked all that. She owned no property. What she inherited from her late husband went to her daughter’s dowry and her son’s apprenticeship.”
“Temple divines are seldom rich,” Penric noted.
“To hear them complain of it, no, yet they seldom go hungry,” said Oswyl. Penric considered his dinner of last night, and let this comment go by. Oswyl continued, “But no, I’m… let’s say I would be surprised if money turns out to be an issue in this.
“Then there’s jealousy. And not just rivalries of the bedchamber, in all their customary variations. Siblings. Colleagues, fellow workmen, fellow students. The envy by one with lesser skill or luck of those with greater. Some very corrosive emotions, there. Except I’ve found nothing of that sort hanging on Learned Magal’s robes, either. So far.” He drank again, and frowned. “An odd sort of fellow traveler with jealousy and envy is revenge. That one can be tricky. People, and not just the stupid sort, can decide that the most absurd things were an unbearable slight to them. And not necessarily in retaliation for some wrongdoing, or in some cases even right-doing, as we of the Father’s Order have sometimes suffered.” He grimaced in memory. “Not all who experience justice appreciate it.”
“That has possibilities,” said Penric. “A sorcerer might easily perform some legitimate act in service of their duties to which some caught-out wrongdoer might take exception. The person to ask in that case would be Learned Hamo.”
“If it were obvious, I’d think he should have thought of it sooner than this, and volunteered the information,” said Oswyl. “Nonetheless, yes, it does seem worth asking again.” He sopped up the last of his stew with a morsel of bread. “So much for our day in town.” As exhausting as it had been fruitless, apparently. “What of yours in the woods?”
Penric and Inglis took turns recounting their tale. Oswyl listened intently, his scowl set, till Penric came to his theory of the two hundred foxes, whereupon he looked deeply pained.
Inglis chewed on his knuckle for a moment. “Regarding the fox problem, Pen. I think I might get us some help with that.”
“Help how? Ordinary searchers won’t be able to tell one fox from another.”
“I wasn’t thinking of ordinary searchers. But I’ll have to ask around before I can make any promises. I’ll see what I can find tonight, after this.”
Penric wasn’t used to thinking of help in Temple matters, given both the solitary nature of demons and the rarity of sorcerers. He wasn’t sure whether to give credence to Inglis’s words or not, but decided it would be premature to melt with relief.
“Oh,” said Penric, “I should add, I met Baron kin Pikepool last night. He and his wife were at a dinner at Princess Llewanna’s town mansion.”
Oswyl’s brows climbed. “Rarified company.”
Penric, who had not found it to be all that rarified, shrugged. “He didn’t seem to have heard of the murder on his land yet, and I didn’t say anything about it. Is he on your list of people to talk to?”
“Very much so. Today, by preference, except that the funeral ran long and I am almost out of today. What did you make of him?”
Penric wondered if he meant, as a suspect? “Young. Bookish. Interesting for that.”
“Many men of his rank are skillful sportsmen.”
“Not him—bad eyes. Apparently a lifelong affliction. If you are looking for a bowman, he’s not it.” Not that kin Pikepool couldn’t have hired such a mercenary, and easier than most, if his purse was a deep as it had appeared. But why?
Around a last bite, Thala put in, “I was able to speak briefly with one of the kin Pikepool maidservants this morning. She said her lord spent day-before-yesterday at home, and he and his lady wife had friends in for dinner, who stayed late.” She mopped her lips, thoughtfully. “He sounded an unexceptionable employer, if not lordly enough to suit some in his household. The main objection seems to be that he routinely feeds a pack of poor hangers-on from his university days.”
Which… sounded more like people Pen would care to meet than most of last night’s company.
“It would be an odd plan,” said Inglis, “for a calculating murderer to leave the body to be found on his own land.” He hesitated. “Unless it was someone trying to cast suspicion in kin Pikepool’s direction.”
“More likely,” said Oswyl, “is that the body was intended to be better concealed, but that the murderer didn’t get back to do so before it was discovered.”
“Because he suddenly decided to chase a fox? Through those dire woods, at night? All night?” said Penric. “That’s a very distractible murderer. Or a very important fox.”
“You are thinking it bore away Magal’s demon, yes? An
d her murderer knew it?” said Oswyl. “It may be so, but why give chase? If it is as you describe, the demon would be crippled, impotent. And, certainly, unable to accuse her killer.”
“Which brings me back to the question, why was the kin Pikepool forester hunting foxes today?” said Penric. “And taking care to catch them alive, which is not the usual approach to foxes.”
Oswyl sighed. “So I will add the kin Pikepool forester to my list. After the baron.”
“Please.” Penric nodded. “He might have been physically capable of the act. Still leaves the problem of why.”
Oswyl drummed his fingers on the table and frowned. Some more. “This is not the first time that kin Pikepool has come to the attention of justice in Easthome. But I’m not seeing a connection.”
“Oh?” said Penric, trying, and failing, to imagine how Wegae and his willowy spouse could possibly have done so. “Was he caught stealing books?”
Oswyl blinked, then said, “Oh. Not the present baron. His predecessor. Uncle, I think. He was accused of pushing his wife down the stairs during some marital spat. Broke her neck in the fall. Two, three years ago. The tribunal was truncated when the accused man fled the realm. But after some legal delays, his title and property were sequestered for the crime, and passed along to the nephew. I suppose they couldn’t leave the estate without management. I don’t remember if the old baron was rumored to have died abroad. This is hearsay, by the way. I didn’t work on the case—given the status of those involved, it was too far above my head.”
“I don’t suppose this uncle was a burly bowman?”
“No idea. But that he’s a thousand miles away, or dead, and has no known history with Learned Magal whatsoever, disinclines me to get too excited.”
“That first could be reversed,” noted Inglis. “Not the second, I grant.”
“Mm.” Oswyl glanced across at Penric. “Would you be willing to come along with me to kin Pikepool tonight? I should like to borrow your rank.”
“Which one?” said Penric. “Learned divine? Sorcerer?”
“Those as well, but I was thinking of your kin rank. That is”—Oswyl cleared his throat—“you once told me your father was a baron, Penric, but you had not mentioned whether your mother was a baron’s wife.”
Irregular birth was a common assumption about members of the Bastard’s Order, and too often correct for Penric to take offense. “Very much so, although she’s a baron’s widow now. There were seven of us, my three sisters and three brothers. And then me, the youngest.”
Oswyl nodded. “It will serve to get us in the front door. And not the servants’ entrance. Kin lords can be, mm, difficult to deal with to those not of the highest echelon of Temple inquirers, themselves with kin bonds.”
“I’d have thought your Temple calling was a password for every portal.”
“Unfortunately not.” Oswyl paused, eyes narrowing in curiosity. “Why, is yours?”
Penric had never thought about it. “I’ve… not tried every portal yet.”
Oswyl snorted, and rose. “Well, let us see how you work to open this one.”
*
The kin Pikepool townhouse lay farther out from the Hallow King’s Hall than the lordly mansion of last night, on a narrower street. The row of dwellings was more modest but more recently built, also of the cut stone so common in the capital replacing, by fire and fiat, so many earlier wooden structures. The young baron was evidently sociable enough to keep two cressets bracketing his entry burning in the early night, with a porter to tend them and the door.
“Learned Lord Penric kin Jurald of Martensbridge to see Baron kin Pikepool, upon an urgent Temple matter,” Penric told this functionary, thinking of his princess-archdivine’s tutorials. “And colleagues.” Alas that he hadn’t had time to return to his room and change into his whites with his shoulder braids, which spoke so firmly for him. But the porter, after a wary glance at his grubby person and the tidier Grayjays, gave way at least to the point of leaving them standing in the hall rather than on the step while he went to find out if his master was receiving such odd company. He disappeared into a doorway off the single central hallway, returning soon after.
“This way, Learned,” and, entering before them, “Learned Lord Penric, my lord. And party.”
They entered a pleasant bookroom, primarily furnished with a writing desk behind which their host-and-quarry sat with papers and ledgers spread out. Oil lamps and wall sconces relieved the evening shadows, warming the room quite enough without a fire in the grate. Wegae’s eyes, magnified by his spectacles, widened with interest at the pair Penric trailed. “Ah, yes. It’s all right, Jons.” He unfolded from his chair and came around his desk, receiving Penric standing, as an equal.
Pen ran through the introductions, with no reaction from Wegae beyond baffled curiosity. They were invited to two cushion-padded benches set across from each other before the dark fireplace. The porter brought around the desk chair to make up the numbers, which Wegae took. Penric politely declined Wegae’s offer of refreshments, and the servant went off. Penric and Oswyl glanced across at each other. When Oswyl did not at once take the lead, Penric opened his hand to him; he seemed to take a breath like a swimmer before plunging in.
“Yesterday morning, the lay dedicat from the village temple at Weir was checking snares in your woods nearby, when he came across the body of a woman,” Oswyl began. “His divine sent promptly to the Father’s Order. I was dispatched to examine the scene, together with, later, Learned Penric and Shaman Inglis.”
“Five gods,” said Wegae, and signed himself in reflexive dismay. “Who was she? What had happened to her?”
Oswyl’s narrow look at this first reaction evidently found nothing to pause for—Pen wasn’t sure if he was disappointed—for he went on to summarize the scene much as he had for Learned Hamo. “She proved to be an Easthome Temple sorceress, Learned Magal. Do you know the woman? Ever meet or see her?”
Wegae, wide-eyed, shook his head from side to side. “I direct my devotions to the Father’s Order these days. I’ve not had much to do with the house of the white god. They’d always seemed rather strange and secretive, over there. Um.” He looked briefly as if he’d like to swallow back that last remark, considering present company, but it was too late and he forged on. “I’d not even met a sorcerer to talk to before Learned Lord Penric last night. Wait.” He blinked, turning his head to Pen. “Did you know about this then? Is that why you spoke to me?”
There seemed no reason to dissimulate. “Yes, and yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“At Princess Llewanna’s party?” Pen countered, dodging the question nimbly.
Wegae seemed to accept this: “Oh, of course.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair, but his stare at Pen remained round. Maybe it was just the spectacles? “Why would anyone do such a heinous thing?”
“That is my puzzle to solve,” said Oswyl, “and it’s proving peculiar. How she was killed was clear enough. Why is still unknown. It was not theft. The only treasure she bore was her Temple demon, which seems to have, ah, escaped. Perhaps you could speak to that, Penric?”
Penric cleared his throat. “Our present best guess was that when Magal died, her demon jumped to a passing fox, which ran off into your woods. The murderer seems to have given it chase, futilely. Learned Hamo, Magal’s Temple superior, has passed me the mandate to locate and secure the lost demon, which we think is still somewhere on your lands.”
“Oh,” said Wegae. “Did you wish permission to search my woods? Certainly you may.”
“Thank you,” said Penric, wondering if this was an opportune opening for a confession. If you’re going to, yes, opined Des. Ah, so she was listening in, good. “In fact, Shaman Inglis and I took a preliminary look up that way earlier today.”
“What did you find?” Wegae asked, his interest in the tragedy clearly overshadowing any concern about trespassers on land he never visited. He could have chosen to be sticky about
that.
“Not the fox we were looking for, unfortunately. But we did encounter your forester, Treuch, who was very busy about the woods—trapping foxes. He’d secured seven of them alive, so far. I will say, he did his job for you by inviting us to leave.”
“Treuch.” Wegae grimaced. “He quite frightened me as a boy, when I was dragged up there to try to teach me the sports of a nobleman. I was only my uncle’s heir presumptive at that point, his poor wife not yet having proved barren, so eventually my complete ineptitude frustrated them into desisting. Thankfully.”
“You could dismiss him now, if you don’t like him,” Pen noted.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that! He’s been a kin Pikepool retainer for ages and ages. He knows no other life.”
“But you may see,” said Oswyl, “why I also wish to obtain your permission to question your people.”
“Oh,” said Wegae again, more thoughtfully. “Do you think Treuch could have had something to do with it? I mean, he’s a hardy man, but he’s not… I could picture him killing someone in a drunken brawl, except that he doesn’t brawl. Or drink that much.”
“Either he has something to do, or knows something about it,” suggested Oswyl.
Pen considered yet again his theory of a man killing a woman by mistake for a deer. “If he shot someone in error, thinking them an animal or a poacher, would he run off, or report it?”
“I should think report it, although… a Temple sorceress would be a very alarming victim for the man.” He added after a moment, “For any man.”
“Do you think he would be physically capable of such an act? Putting two arrows through a person at that distance?” asked Oswyl.
“Well, yes, but…” Wegae shrugged unhappily. “Many men might have that skill. My late uncle, for one.”
Penric's Fox: Penric and Desdemona Book 3 Page 5