So I just have to make sure I'm on the right side.
If it was a Priest, in one of the other Orders, say, he and Othorp and Fenris might end up having to go in and pry the fellow out, which could get very ugly. Then again, at least if it was a Priest, as a Special Inquisitor he wouldn't have the problems with bringing him to Justice that he would have had as a constable. A Priest could claim immunity from secular authority, but not from someone delegated by the Church.
I'm the enforcement arm of the Church. I can throw anyone I need to into gaol.It wasn't the heady thought it might have been; he'd never cared for the power of the baton, only for its use as a tool to get bad people put where they couldn't hurt anyone again. It only meant that there was nowhere he could not go in the course of this investigation; he hoped that he wouldn't need to use that authority.
The other complication was the one Ardis herself had briefly touched on. If his target was a Priest and a mage—or just a mage—well, he would know that Tal was coming, and who Tal was, long before Tal ever learned whohe was, and there would be plenty of opportunity for "accidents" to occur. Magic opened up an entirely new set of problems, given that Tal really didn't know the full breadth of what a mage could and could not do.
This is no time to get cold feet, he chided himself. You've never backed away from a case before; not when you had to go after mad drunks, murderers, and cutthroats. Any one of them could have disposed of you if you'd made the wrong move. She's already told you that you can go to her or any of the other Justiciar-Mages she thinks is discreet and get help, which includes finding out what a mage can do. And besides, the High Bishop is counting on you. She thinks you can handle this, or she wouldn't have given you the authority in the first place.
Yes, and just whathad convinced her to give him the authority? He'd like to think that he showed his own competence as clearly as she showed hers, but he doubted that was the case. How could he have looked like a professional, when he'd come in exhausted, travel-worn, in shabby clothing? He wouldn't have impressed himself, and he doubted that his outward appearance had impressed her.
I probably looked like one of her Gypsy friends.Then again, maybe that wasn't so bad. If she had contacts among the Gypsies and Free Bards, she must be used to looking past shabby clothing and weary faces.
It could have been his careful investigation thus far that had impressed her—and he'd really like to think that was the case. Hehad done good work, especially considering all the opposition he'd faced. He could have done more if he'd just had some cooperation, and she probably knew that as well.
But the reason why she trusted him could also have been desperation. If you didn't have the faintest idea where to start with a problem, wouldn't you take the first person who came along and said, "I know what to do" and throw the whole thing at him? She'd had that letter on her desk when he came in; she'd probably just gotten it. She wasn't supposed to track criminals, she was supposed to sentence them, and considering that the Bardic Guild had its Guild Hall in Kingsford, she might not get much cooperation from the Kingsford authorities in trying to hunt down a killer of Free Bards. For that matter—maybe the killer was some high-ranking, crazed Master Bard! Hadn't he heard it said, more than once, that Bards were supposed to be mages?
It might be that when he walked in her door with additional evidence, she'd been disposed to welcome him as God's answer to her difficulty.
Maybe so. But she didn't get where she is now by being incompetent to handle her own problems.
For that matter, why did he agree so readily to become her servant? Or the Church's servant, really, but it amounted to the same thing in this case. What in Heaven's name made him throw away everything he'd done to this moment to take this position? He'dnever imagined himself serving the Church, not even as a secular adjunct. He neverwanted to be a Guard, even one with other duties. He would have done so if that had been the only answer, but he hadn't even begun to explore his options in Kingsford. He certainly hadn't come into that office looking for a position!
It might have been the personality of Ardis herself that had persuaded him. Tal knew that, in some respects, he was a follower, not a leader. He felt more comfortable with someone competent in authority over him, for all of his cherished independence; and what was more, he was honest enough to admit it, at least to himself.
Competent—I'd say. She couldn't run this Abbey better if she was a general and it was a military barracks.Not that he'd been in alot of Abbeys—but there were little signs when things weren't being run properly. Dirt in the corners, things needing repair, indifferent food, an aura of laziness or tension, a general sense of unhappiness.
A lot like the headquarters back in Haldene, as a matter of fact.
People weren't tense here, but they weren't slacking, either. Nobody was running around as if they were always forgetting to do things until the last minute, but no one dawdled. That novice, Kayne—she moved briskly, got things done, but there was no panic about it, no sense of being harried, and that went for every other person he'd seen. Even the rest of the Guards—though Othorp sighed over their condition, theywere competent and they got their jobs done properly; their biggest problem was that they were set in their ways. They weren't lazy, just so used to routine that changes in it made them uneasy. When it came down to it, that would probably hold true for all the Priests as well, and why not? Routine waspart of an Abbey. No, Ardis had this place well in hand. Maybe that was what he had responded to.
The moment I got here, I felt it.He hadn't even ridden all the way into the courtyard before someone came to greet him and ask his business—one of the Guards, he realized now. A stablehand had come to take his mules and tie them up for him, a novice had led him to a little chamber just inside the front door, and brought Novice Kayne to him. Kayne had questioned him briefly, and everything had fallen into place, and all without a lot of running about and fuss and feathers.
Not what I would have expected from a place being run by a woman.But just as he thought that, he knew it could just be prejudice on his part.
I don't expect much out of women when it comes to running things.But—really, look at the women he'd had the most to do with! You didn't expect much of women, when all you saw them doing was falling apart in a crisis. The women he saw on a day-to-day basis mostly seemed to be looking for men to take care of them.
And they weren't very bright. Or if they were, it had been starved or beaten out of them a long time ago. You could have some pity for the pathetic streetwalkers of the dockside district, you could have sympathy for all the hard work a tavern-wench had to do—but the women who took those jobs were not exactly the cream of the day's skimmings when it came to intelligence. So far as that went, most of themen he saw were not long on mind-power.
Well, more than half the battle in getting rid of a prejudice was in recognizing that itwas one. Ardis would have been as formidable as a man; the Abbey would have been just as well run; hence, there were other women who were her equals in intelligence, and he had just never run into any before. Which was not too surprising, when you considered his social circle—or lack of one.
That brought him to the High Bishop herself; she seemed very young to be wearing a miter, and even younger to be wearing the gold miter. Most of the Bishopshe had seen had been gray haired—and male. He might have a prejudice, but so did the Church; females inany position of authority were rare birds, indeed.
So how had Ardis, not only female, but relatively young, gotten where she was now? It couldn't have been an accident that she had been the highest ranking Priest in this Abbey when the previous High Bishop died—and even then, it wasn't the usual thing for a Priest to simply step into the vacancy. He vaguely recalled that High Bishops had to be elected by the Council of Bishops, which meant she had to pass muster before all of them—gray-haired men.She can't be any older than I am, or not much, he decided.Not that I'm all that young, but I'm not all that old, either.
Well, she was related by bloo
d to a lot of important people, including Grand Duke Arden. After almost single-handedly saving Kingsford from a fire which—so rumor had it—renegade Priests had a hand in setting—well, if Duke Arden suggested that his cousin ought to be made High Bishop, he rather suspected that there were plenty of people on the Council of Bishops who would take that as a Very Good Idea.
The Great Fire might have had something to do with the decision. He hadn't been in Kingsford long, but stories about the Fire had spread all the way to the High King's capital. The Grand Duke was considered a hero—but Ardis was considered a saint for throwing herself and the Abbey into the problem of healing, housing, and feeding all of the refugees.If I have my politics right—making Ardis High Bishop might solve some problems here for the Church, in the case of those rogue Priests. The Bishops wouldn't want to give up their authority over their own renegades, but unless the Grand Duke had assurance that the caught Priests would get full and appropriate punishment, well . . . Ifhe had been Duke Arden, he'd have been tempted to hang the bastards from the highest tree and let the Church complain all they liked about it. But by making Ardis High Bishop, everybody would be satisfied—the Duke had assurance that the criminals would get everything they deserved, and the punishment would all come from an instrument of the Church.
She might also know a few inconvenient secrets about the other Bishops herself; most people in power did.
Still, she was a remarkable woman; she would have stood out in any setting, and in this one—
She's amazing. Nothing short of amazing.
Attractive, too. At least, to him. That vixen-grin she'd flashed him, full or humor and what almost looked like mischief; she could charm the boots off a man with that one, if she ever used it as a weapon. Another prejudice; he'd always thought of female Priests as being unattractive, waspish, something like young Kayne, but more so. It was odd to think of a physically attractive woman in a Priest's robes. Very odd, actually.
Why had she become a Priest in the first place? She didn't seem the type to have been pulled in by religion. She just didn't have that glassy-eyed sort of devotion he expected out of someone dedicating their life to religion.
But maybe that's another prejudice on my part. I just don't know that many Priests, I suppose.
Still, she was well connected, probably money or titles or both, attractive, intelligent—why had she become a Priest?
Might have been the traditional thing. I've heard some of the noble families do that—firstborn inherits the estate, second-born goes into the military, third goes to the Church, whether they like it or not.
But he couldn't picture Ardis being coerced into anything, so she must have had some reason to go. A disappointment in love? No, she didn't seem like the type to moon tragically around because someone she wanted didn't want her. More than that—a tragedy? The man she loved had died?
She wouldn't dive into the Church unless she thought she could exorcise the grief in work. But she doesn't seem at all grief-ridden; there's usually a shadow over people who lose a loved one.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she was a mage. He didn't know of too many places that could train a person in magic, and most of them wouldn't be the sorts of places that would appeal to someone as well-bred as Ardis. And the rest were all in nonhuman lands.
I certainly can't picture her marching up to an Elf Hill and demanding to be let in. The Elves would drive her mad with their ways.
But he also couldn't picture Ardis ever letting a talent go to waste. Maybe that was the reason; it made more sense than anything else.
Except— Maybe she went into the Church because the Church was the only place where she would be expected to exercise all of her intellect.
This was all sheer speculation. He didn't know enough about the Church, the lives of the nobles, or Ardis herself to make a really intelligent guess.
That was part of the trouble; he knew nothing about the High Bishop, except the little that she had told him herself. He had nothing to make judgments on, and that left him at a disadvantage.
I'm going to have to make it my business to learn everything I can about her,he decided. This clearly wasn't going to be the kind of situation he'd had back in Haldene, where he was just one constable among many. He was the only Special Inquisitor; he and she were going to be working closely together. It wasn't even the equivalent position to the other Abbey Guards.
In a sense, she's going to be both my superior and my partner. Or—maybe a little more like when I first came into the force, and I was attached to a senior constable. I had to learn as much about him to work smoothly with him as I was learning about being a constable.
It was a long time since he'd been in that kind of position; it was going to take some getting used to. Still—why not? The only trouble was that it meant he was going to be working on two investigations, not one. The murder chase, and the investigation of Ardis.
What the hell. I work better under pressure.
And with that thought, his exhaustion finally overcame his nerves, and he slept.
Chapter Six
Visyr hovered, wings pumping furiously to keep him in place, roughly a hundred wingspans above Archer Lane. Hovering was harder than any other kind of flying, but Visyr was used to it, and his chest- and wing-muscles were stronger and heavier than any of the Haspur who specialized in fancy flying and aerobatics. He kept taking deep breaths of the icy air to bring new fuel to those muscles as he made notes on his pressure-sensitive Deliambren dryboard with the tip of a needle-sharp talon, notes too small for mere human eyes to read. After each entry, he glanced down at the street below and concentrated on the next building on the north side of the street, measuring it by eye and noting its position relative to its neighbors. This was his special talent; any Haspur could hover above a street, and any Haspur could make a rough map that would show the placement of buildings and their sizes relative to one another, but very few could gauge the dimensions so precisely that a physical measurement would be off by no more than a fraction of an inch. It was a peculiarly Haspur talent, this ability to create accurate maps from memory—a useful talent in a race that flew—but Visyr was an artist among the talented.
When he had filled his dryboard—a flat, white board sensitive to pressure, used by the Deliambrens as a note-pad—he would fly back to his drafting room at the Ducal Palace and transform the notes into an actual city block on the new map he was making for the Grand Duke. When he was done, Duke Arden would have a map of Kingsford that showed not only every tiny lane and back-alley, he would have one that showed every structure that existed at the time the map was finished, including sheds and fences. His constables wouldn't have to guess where miscreants might be hiding to ambush the unwary, they would know where every blind-alley, dead-end street, and cul-de-sac lay. This was making Captain Fenris very happy; in fact, the Captain had a page checking on Visyr's maps and making copies of them as Visyr completed each section.He could hardly wait for the whole thing to be done. With the rebuilding of Kingsford proceeding rather chaotically in some sections, Fenris's people were at a distinct disadvantage when they had to pursue a footpad into an area that might have changed since the last time they were there.
This, however, wasnot why Visyr had come down out of the mountains. Although the Duke and his people certainly appreciated what the Haspur was doing, and although he was gaining a great deal of support for himself and other nonhumans with this work, this was not what he had intended to do. Eventually, or so Visyr hoped, he would be part of the great Deliambren mapping expedition; that was why he and his beloved, dynamic mate Syri had left their homeland in the first place. But humans were dreadfully short-sighted when it came to permitting nonhumans to doanything in their lands, and the Deliambrens didn't want to mount this project until they had iron-clad agreements of cooperation as well as permission from the rulers of all of the Twenty Kingdoms, agreements that no subsequent monarch could overrule.
Not that I blame them, Visy
r mused, as he noted down the size of the warehouse below him, and the dimensions of the tiny scrap of yard behind it. Taking that ship out is going to be an effort worthy of an epic song, and if they ever have to stop it they may not be able to get it started again. The ship and many of the machines the Deliambrens intended to use were ancient; parts were difficult to duplicate and had to be made one at a time by hand, and the mechanisms themselves were often poorly understood. Intended to be manned by an assortment of races, controls were not always suited to the hands, hooves, or beaks of those who were to operate them. Visyr didn't envy those assigned to tend and use the things. The expedition itself was a massive effort on the part of not only the Deliambrens but of many other nonhuman races, and even of some humans as well. There would be hundreds of people tending and operating the ship and all of its mechanisms, and more working outside it.
His assignment with the ship would be simpler; basically, what he was doing now. He would be one of a few mapping-scouts, making an aerial survey of heavily inhabited areas where the ship couldn't go; other scouts would roam ahead to find a safe route for the behemoth that contained the bulk of the expedition. Once and for all, the Deliambrens hoped to surveyall of Alanda, or this continent, anyway, to locate mineral resources, underground watercourses, and ancient ruins, as well as mapping the surface accurately.
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