No boy would ever question an adult about a paid errand; for one thing, no boy ever turned down the opportunity to run an errand for pay, and for another, any boy would automatically assume that the business of an adult was too important to be interrupted for a simple errand.
He had paid the boy just enough to make it worth the trouble to go across the bridge in the cold and blowing snow; he waited until the boy was gone, then followed in his wake. Once the boy had started out on the bridge, Orm took up a position in a clump of bushes on the bank, watching the gate with a distance-glass until the boy arrived.
When the boy reached the Abbey, he was made to wait outside; rude treatment, that was just what Orm had hoped for. After a bit of time, a fellow in the uniform of the Church Guards came out and listened to the boy's story. He didn't even bother to look at the parcel; he shook his head, gave the boy another small coin, and sent him back across the river. Orm got a very good look at the man, and was satisfied that he would recognize him again; before the boy reached the bridge, Orm was hurrying back to his apartment, where the boy found him.
"It wasn't that Tal Rufen fellow, sir," he said, when Orm answered his door. The boy handed over the parcel—which was, remarkably, still unopened. "He says he isn't missing anything."
Orm made a noise of mingled vexation and worry. "Well, I'll just take it back to the inn and leave it there with the proprietor," he said at last, waving his hands helplessly. "I really don't know what else to do. What a pity! I'm sure someone is missing these. Well, you did your best, and I'm sorry you had to go out in all that snow."
He gave the boy another small coin, thus ensuring his gratitude, and sent him off.
Well, now I have a face. Let's see what that face does.
He bundled himself up to his nose with a knitted hat pulled down to his eyes, and took a fishing-pole and bucket of bait out to the bridge. There was reasonably good fishing in the clear water under the bridge, and he wouldn't be the only citizen of Kingsford who paid the toll to perch out on the span and attempt to add to his larder, especially not in winter, when a job at casual labor was hard to find and no one was building anything, only doing interior work. This would be the best place to intercept his target, and even though his target might well know what Orm looked like from the sketch circulating among the constables, not even Rand would be able to pick Orm out from the rest of the hopeful fishermen out on the bridge in the cold.
Nevertheless, it was a miserable place to have to be. The wind rushed right up the river and cut through his clothing; he soon picked up the peculiar little dance of the other fishermen as he stamped his feet and swayed back and forth to try and increase his circulation. By the time Tal Rufen finally appeared, mounted on a sturdy old gelding, Orm was more than ready to leave the bridge. He hauled in his line and followed in Tal's wake; the bridge guard looked at his empty string, gave him a grimace of sympathy, and didn't charge him the toll. Orm gave him shivering, teeth-chattering thanks, and followed in Tal Rufen's wake.
Orm's disguise was quite enough to permit him to follow Tal unnoticed through the city, but it wouldn't have gotten him into the Ducal Palace, and as Tal presented himself at the postern-gate, Orm went on with his head down and his shoulders hunched.
Now what?If he'd had several weeks to follow Tal Rufen, he might have been able to get himself into the palace by obtaining or creating a suit of livery and slipping over a wall or in the servants' gate. But with no notice, no idea that the man was allowed inside the gates, and no time to obtain livery without risk—it wasn't going to be possible.
His best bet at this point was to abandon the pole and bucket somewhere, and come back to watch the gate. There were plenty of places where he could loiter without attracting attention to himself. The palace was surrounded by the homes of the wealthy and powerful, like hens clustered around a rooster. But unlike the Ducal Palace, they did not have extensive grounds and gardens, only little patches of garden behind sheltering walls—which meant that the area around the palace was a maze of streets and alleys. In the summer and at night those would be patrolled by guards to discourage ne'er-do-wells and would-be thieves, but in the middle of winter no one would bother to patrol by day. The hard part would be to find a place where he could leave a fishing pole and a bucket without someone noticing and wondering where they had come from.
In the end, he had to wait for a rubbish-collector to come by, collecting rags and bones from the refuse of the mighty, and throw the items onto his cart when he wasn't looking. The rag-and-bone man would not question his good luck when he found those items; the poor never questioned windfalls, lest those windfalls be taken from them.
Now freed of his burdens, he hurried back to the palace and watched the gate.
Eventually Tal Rufen emerged, but without the horse—and no longer wearing his Church Guard livery. That probably meant that the man was planning on going about within the city.
I just hope he isn't planning on visiting any other places where I can't go,Orm thought glumly, anticipating more hanging about on freezingly cold street corners while the constable did whatever he was doing out of Orm's sight.
But luck was with him, for Tal Rufen headed straight into neighborhoods where Orm felt most at home. And then, to Orm's great pleasure, he went into a tavern. Orm followed him in, got a seat at a table near him, and warmed his hands on a mug of hot ale while the constable began interviewing people, who arrived punctually, one with each half hour, as if by previous appointment. It wasn't too difficult to overhear what he was talking about; Orm wasn't overly surprised to learn that Tal Rufen was looking for information about Rand—or rather, about the person or persons who had killed the girl called Curlew. Through some miracle of organization, he had managed to find many of the witnesses to the kill; by a further miracle, he'd arranged consecutive appointments with all of them. Why he was interviewing them here instead of in a constabulary, though, Orm couldn't hazard a guess.
Unless, of course, there were constablesalso interviewing witnesses, and there was no room to put all of the interviewers and interviewees. That idea rather amused Orm, the thought of the chaos such a situation would cause. Why, they might not have the room to actually interview criminals! It indicated to him, at least, that the authorities were grasping at straws, which was a comforting thought, given the inconvenience and worry that the sketch of his face had given him.
Needless to say, no one had much to tell Rufen, other than their obvious eyewitness accounts, many of which conflicted with each other. One witness swore that the killer had been snarling and swearing at the girl before he killed her, for instance; another claimed that the killer had slipped through the crowd unnoticed, dressed in the black costume of a professional assassin. What Rufen made of those accounts was questionable, though if he was a trained constable, he would already know that "eyewitness" accounts were seldom as accurate as their tellers thought. People would change their memories to suit what they thoughtshould have happened—so for twenty people who saw something happen, there would be at least three who would make things up that fell in line with their own pet conspiracy theories. Orm had already taken advantage of that in manipulating the memories of his neighbors to suit his own purposes.
Orm had to admire Rufen's persistence, though; he gave no indication that any of what he was told bored or disappointed him. He merely listened and took notes with a rather ingenious little pen that never needed dipping in an inkwell. Deliambren, Orm guessed; most clever mechanisms were Deliambren.
That gave Orm another idea; he went out and purchased a change of outer clothing—this time something less threadbare, but all in black, like one of Shensi's artistic friends—a graphite-stick, and one of those inexpensive blank books. He returned to the inn, got another table near Tal Rufen, and ordered a hot drink.
When the drink arrived, he took turns sipping it, staring into space, and scribbling frantically in the book. After one amused look, the serving-wench left him alone. It would have been obviou
s to any dolt that Orm was—supposedly—composing something, probably poetry, and probablybad poetry. In actuality, he was writing down everything Tal Rufen wore, ate, drank, used, and said, in something that looked very like blank verse. Orm knew from experience that between his abbreviations and his tiny, crabbed, slantwise letters, no one could read his handwriting except himself, so he had no fears that one of the serving-girls might get curious and read something she shouldn't.
He'd used this particular ruse more than once in his career, but never had it been more useful than now. So long as a place wasn't jammed with people, and so long as he kept paying for frequent refills of his cup, no one minded a mad poet taking up a little table-space. He was clean, moderately attractive, and he gave the serving-wenches something to giggle about. None of them would make overtures towards him, of course—as a class, serving-girls were sturdily practical little things, and had no time in their lives for a—probably impoverished—poet. Any flirting they did would be saved for someone with a steady job and enough money in his pocket to buy more than an endless round of tea.
He continued the pretense of being a writer for as long as Tal Rufen interviewed people who had been present at the kill; pretended fits of thought gave him the opportunity to stare at the Church constable or anyone else for as long as he liked without anyone taking offense, because itlooked as if he was staring blankly into space, and not actually at anyone. The serving-girls found it amusing or touching, according to their natures. Tal Rufen noticed, then ignored him, precisely as Orm had hoped. The last thing that a constable of any kind would expect would be that a man he was trying to track down would come followinghim , so Rufen paid no further attention to the "poet" at the corner table.
Orm was neither impressed nor amused by Rufen; he was adequate, certainly, and thorough, but hardly brilliant. In his opinion, there was nothing really to fear from this man except his persistence.
Orm took care to leave first, when he sensed that Tal was about to wind up his interviews. He thanked his latest serving-girl shyly, picked up the bag that held his other clothing and stuffed his writing paraphernalia into it, and left. He ducked into the shelter of an alley and changed his coat back to that of the fisherman, pulled a different wool cap down over his head, and waited, bent over and tying a bootlace, for Tal to emerge from the tavern.
When the constable appeared, Orm gave him a little bit of a lead, then followed him. From the inn, Tal went back to the palace, got his horse, and returned to the Abbey without making a single stop along the way. By this time, it was late in the afternoon, and Orm doubted that Tal would be doing anything more until the morrow. It would, however, be an early day for him; most of the people associated with the Abbey rose before dawn, and he suspected that Tal Rufen would be no exception.
Orm took his time, getting himself a fine dinner, and only returning to his apartment after dark. Coming in through the back, he listened for sounds of Rand, but complete silence ruled the place. Rand could not walk up there in his current form without making scratching noises on the floor; either he was asleep, or out, and in neither case would he be aware that Orm was back. Orm grinned; let him assume that his employee was out keeping an eye on Tal Rufen all night; it would avoid an argument. Besides, the heavy meal made him sleepy, as he had hoped it would.He was going to have to get up with the dawn if he expected to catch Rufen on his way out tomorrow, and that meant he really ought to go to bed now if he expected to get a decent night's sleep.
The following day, at dawn, Orm was back on the bridge with a new fishing-line and bucket, and while he was waiting for Rufen to put in an appearance, he actually caught two fish! Both were river-salmon, large and fat, and he gave one to the toll-guard who'd passed him through the day before. Let the man think that it was out of gratitude; Orm wanted to have a reason for the man to think well of him and let him out on the bridge without question if he had to come back here anymore. He and the guard exchanged a few words—Orm sighed over the difficulties of finding work in the winter, complained about showing up where there was supposed to be some work this morning, only to find a dozen men there before him. The guard made sympathetic noises, and promised that Orm could fish without toll whenever he was out of work. This pleased Orm twice over—once that the guard would not be surprised if he didn't show up for a while, or indeed, ever again; and twice because he wasn't going to have to pay out toll-fees for the privilege of spying on that damned Tal Rufen.
This time when Rufen appeared, it was at the side of a woman that Orm assumed was High Bishop Ardis. He recognized Rufen at a distance just by recognizing the old gelding, and there was someone else there with him—someone obviously of very high position within the Justiciars. It was a woman, dressed in a fine cloak and robes of Justiciar red, and although she was not wearing the miter of the bishopric, she was wearing a scarlet skull-cap edged with gold under the hood of her scarlet cloak. She was also mounted on a fine white mule, and most of the Justiciars rode very ordinary-looking beasts when they left the Abbey. Given all of those factors, it would have been more surprising if the womanhadn't been Ardis.
Orm followed them discreetly, but they went straight to the headquarters of the Kingsford constables, and from there to the Ducal Palace again. Both were places he couldn't go, so he loitered in the freezing cold until they came out again. They went straight back to the Abbey, and did not emerge again that day.
Uneventful—except that by seeing them together, Orm had actually established that Tal Rufen was acting for the High Bishop and as her assistant as well as her personal guard. If she'd had any other assistant, there would have been three or four people going across the bridge to Kingsford. That was useful information, and Rand would be pleased to have it.
The Black Bird was waiting for him this time, and from the look of him, was a bit impatient. Orm heard him scrabbling about upstairs as he paced, and went straight to his room as soon as he changed, with his notebook tucked under one arm. Rand's eyes grew alert at the sight of it. With talons instead of hands, of course the Black Bird was unable to read these things for himself, so Orm read to him from his own notes. The Bird's eyes grew very bright, and when Orm was done, he gave a cawing laugh.
"Good!" he said. "Very good! Excellent, in fact. You don't need to follow Tal Rufen for the present, Orm. I might ask you to resume later, but for now, the next couple of days, we can concentrate on other things. For one thing, there are some odd articles I'd like for you to get for me. One or two of those Deliambren pens, for instance; I'm aware that they'll be difficult to obtain, so make a concerted effort to get them."
Baffled, Orm nodded. I suppose that Rand is trying to find a way to take Rufen out of this equation. That makes sense; by now it certainly seems that Ardis is the main force behind investigating the kills. Without her pursuit of the case, it won't get very far. Without Rufen, Ardis will be effectively without hands and feet. The Bishop can't move around the streets unobtrusively, and she certainly can't interview the kinds of people I saw Rufen talking to today.
He wondered about the pens, though—unless—
A lot of spells have written components—with one of those pens, even the Bird might be able to manage writing.
Or perhaps he wanted to try writing letters.
It's Rand; he's crazed. He might just want a pen because Rufen has one.
That made about as much sense as anything.
The important thing was that it looked as if Rand was concentrating on getting Rufen disposed of; and for once, Orm was in agreement with the madman's ideas. If Rand decided to take the direct approach, perhaps even by eliminating the constable forever, well, Rufen wasn't going to be guarding his own back, he was going to be watching out for Ardis. And if he decided to take the indirect approach, there were any number of ways that Orm could think of that would tie Tal Rufen up in complications and even scandal until he was unable to do anything about the murders.
And meanwhile, he isn't going after anyone dangerous and he isn't ra
nting at me. That in itself was enough to keep Orm contented—
For now, anyway. It might be a warm day in Kingsford before he felt completely content again.
Chapter Fourteen
Obtaining the Deliambren pen was not as difficult as Rand apparently assumed it would be; Orm had information about who might have such items within a day. He'd been quite confident that he would have word within a week at the latest, although Rand obviously was under the impression that such an exotic item would have to be imported at tremendous expense. But a small Deliambren contrivance, while a luxury, was also useful—and it was something that a wealthy person would want to be able to show off. That meant that the wealthy would not leave such an object safely at home, they would take their pens with them. When they removed their little prizes from the secure area of their home, eventually, the pens would be lost—or stolen.
It was the latter that Orm was most interested in. Such things turned up now and again in the goods that pick-pockets disposed of to fences. There was one minor problem, at least as Orm foresaw. Because they were the expensive toys of the very rich, they should be relatively rare, but Orm's information led him to believe that there were more of them here in Kingsford than in many cities Orm had been in. This might have been because a good many of them were gifts from Duke Arden to people he particularly wanted to reward, and Arden had strong Deliambren alliances. This was especially evidenced in the presence of the crimson-winged map-maker, who was, word had it in some circles, helping Arden and Kingsford as a token of Deliambren concern. Pens, however, were more tangible, and likely cheaper than even a day's work from the Haspur.
Four and Twenty Blackbirds bv-4 Page 38