By the time they were done, the place not only looked as if it had been ransacked, it looked as if several people had worked with great malice to destroy everything here. They glanced around for a moment, and Rand nodded with satisfaction at the extent of the damage. Then, throwing shabby, patched cloaks over their own clothing, they each took a handle of the cart and trundled it openly out into the street. There, they were completely ignored even by a passing constable, for who would ever look at a refuse-collector? The cart was well balanced and light, but it was still dreadfully difficult to pull when fully loaded. As it rumbled and squeaked, Orm laid aside his concern with being stopped, and just concentrated on getting the cart back to the boathouse.
Orm was thoroughly fatigued by the time they reached the haven of the boathouse, though Rand seemed perfectly capable of hauling the cart halfway to Birnam if need be. Orm wondered about that; wondered if the last kill didn't have something to do with this unusual energy.
Or perhaps it was simply because Rand got so much exercise in the form of the Black Bird that he was far stronger than Orm would have supposed.
With the cart inside the boathouse doors and the doors themselves closed, Orm took up the second stage of the night's work. Not too surprisingly, Rand now abdicated in the further work to be done, leaving it all to Orm. Orm suspected that the only reason he had helped in loading and pulling the cart was to get the bodies cleared out before anyone else came back—he was able to handle one intruder, but a pack of them would have been too much even for a mage. But now that they were safely in hiding—well, it would all be on Orm's shoulders.
And if Ormdidn't take certain precautions, he could be tied to the kills as easily as Rand. The bodies needed to be immersed in running water for at least an hour to cleanse them of all of the magical traces of Rand's power—and, incidentally, of Orm's touch. That was the easy part; Orm tied ropes around them and lowered them into a hole he'd chopped in the ice. There they would remain for the requisite time, and in the meantime, he and Rand changed their clothing, cleaned up, and threw the clothing, weighted by an old stone anchor, into the hole.
When the hour was up, they both hauled the bodies out of the water and stacked the now-rigid corpses in a corner, throwing an aged tarpaulin over them, just in case. They'd be frozen stiff by morning, and easier to handle. By then, false-dawn lightened the eastern horizon, and Orm was so weary he would have been perfectly prepared to share the boathouse with their four "guests." He and Rand made their way back home together, like a pair of late-night carousers; Orm was too tired to even think and too numbly cold to care. He fell straight into bed and slept around the clock.
They made a kill every two nights for two weeks. Rand remained in human form the entire time, and their kills were mostly by simple ambush out on the street. There were two more that were under roofs, but Orm didn't see those; instead of using a tool, Rand handled the kill personally. Rand was alone with the women, and Orm stood lookout for several hours. Afterwards, the condition of the bodies suggested that Rand had found leisure to be even more inventive than he had been with the bookshop girls, and much more like the jeweler-kill in grisly details.
Other than those two, however, the kills were quick; the longest part of the proceedings was bringing the bodies back to the boathouse and cleansing them. Rand picked out the kills, Rand made the kills, usually with a tool, and Orm cleaned up afterwards. With only one body to pick up in the handcart and take to the boathouse, cleanup wasn't all that difficult and it didn't take a great deal of time. Orm became quite confident as he casually wheeled his rag-cart past constables, though the constabulary appeared more tense day by day. During the days, he continued to pursue his safeguards, as Rand spent most of the rest of the days and part of each night engaged in something in the room of his apartment that Orm associated with magic. Orm could hear him walking about up there, and wondered what he was doing. It was more than idle curiosity; after seeing the mage's "other face"—and one that Orm was more and more convinced was the true one—Orm was very concerned about his own safety. When Rand went down, he wouldn't go without taking Orm with him if he could. And if Rand thought he could arrange for Orm to take the whole blame, he certainly would.
The street-kills were, in some ways, riskier than the ones Rand performed through a tool, and the power-payoffs were nowhere near as high. Orm figured that Rand must need the extra power to stay human, in order to work on something special. He was certainly keeping at his work with amazing diligence, the like of which he had not demonstrated before.
Finally, after three days without a kill, Rand emerged from his apartment and came down the stairs to enter Orm's sanctum, wearing that peculiar nervousness that warned Orm he was about to change back into the Black Bird. He had a small package wrapped in old silk (probably cut from a secondhand garment) in his hand, and gave it to Orm.
Orm unwrapped it; he expected another knife, but it was one of the pens, lying on the yellowed silk in his hand like a sleek, slim black fish.
"I want you to find a way to substitute this for the same object Tal Rufen carries," Rand said, clasping his hands behind him, a gesture that Orm already knew was to hide the fact that they were trembling uncontrollably. "When you've done that, it will be time to move the bodies. Pile them up in the dead-end alley behind the bookshop—no one ever comes there at night. Try to do it artistically if you can."
Orm nodded. "What then?" he asked, taking care not to show the slightest trace of dismay. But he knew—he knew. There was only one reason why Rand would want him to plant an object on High Bishop Ardis's personal bodyguard and assistant.
I can't believe it. He's going to do what I was most afraid of. He's going after the High Bishop. He's beyond insane.
Rand smiled, the corner of his left eye twitching. "Tal Rufen and Ardis will certainly go inspect the site, and that is when—" He broke off. "Never mind. Just go out now; take care of it."
With that, he turned on his heel and left, moving very quickly, though not at all steadily. He was about to turn back into the Black Bird, and he wasn't going to do it in front of Orm.
Meanwhile, Orm was holding himself to this room only by force of will. Hewanted to bolt, now, before he got caught up any further in this madness.Steady on, Orm told himself.I saw this coming; I'm prepared for it. The only question is, when do I jump? I have to pick the time and place when Rand won't expect me to abandon him, and when he'll be the most vulnerable.
After due consideration, he decided to wait until the last possible moment at this "special Kill" itself.
I'll get the pen into Rufen's pocket, dump the bodies the way Rand wants me to, and wait around for Rand to make his move. When he does, I'll get out of here. I won't wait around to watch and see what he does. Maybe all he plans is to get Rufen to give the High Bishop the pen and then take over her, but I'm not counting on it. Even if he kills her, he's never going to get away with it; every Church mage in the Human Kingdoms is going to descend on Kingsford to catch the murderer. And when they do, I am not going to be here to see it.
The first order of business was to find Tal Rufen, who could well have been anywhere, and many of the places he might be were those where Orm could not go. The simplest course of action—sending him the pen as if he'd left it somewhere—would just not do. It was likeliest that he would check, discover that he still had his pen, then try to send it back or find its rightful owner. The knives had all had magic on them intended to make the person who touched themwant the knife, and feel uncomfortable when it wasn't on their person, but Orm doubted that the same was true for the pen. A spell of that nature wouldn't do for an object that was to enter a place that was the home to dozens of mages, who would likely sense something wrong. The magic on this pen would have to be invisible, undetectable, right up to the point when Rand invoked it.
Find Rufen.That was his first order of business. So, with a hearty sigh, he donned his fisherman-gear, and plodded out into the freezing cold to wait on the bridge. Soo
ner or later, Tal Rufen would have to pass him here, no matter where he went in the city.
But as the day dragged on, Orm thought for certain that his luck had deserted him; he had gone out onto the bridge before noon, and never saw the least sight of Tal Rufen all day. Even his fishing-luck left him: his bait was stolen a dozen times without ever getting a solid bite; Orm suspected that there was a single, clever fish down there that kept taking the bait and passing it out to his friends. He could picture the miserable thing now, thumbing its nose at him—if fish had noses—and telling an admiring crowd just how poor a fisherman Orm really was.
He was just about frozen all the way through, his feet numb, his fingers aching, as the sun hovered redly just above the western horizon.Rand is just going to have to wait a day, he told himself, wanting to shout aloud with frustration.Maybe two. Maybe more! After all, it's not as if I could somehow call Rufen out into Kingsford—it's not my fault that he hasn't been stupid enough to leave a perfectly comfortable, warm building and traipse across a bridge in a frigid wind.
He looked up to gauge the amount of time left until dark, and for a change looked back at the city instead of the Abbey.
That was the moment that he saw Tal Rufen being carried along in a knot of congestion towards the bridge, heading for the Abbey.
He didn't stop to think, but he didn't move quickly, either. He already knew what he had to do, but he had to make it look genuine.
I'm a discouraged fisherman after a day of catching nothing, and when I go home, I can look forward to no supper. I'm numb with cold, and I'm too wrapped up in my own troubles to pay attention to where I'm going.
He bent in a weary, stiff stoop to pick up his bait-bucket, draped his pole over his hunched shoulders, and began to make his way towards the Kingsford side of the bridge, nearing that tangled clot of pedestrians, small carts, and riders with every step. Rufen was afoot rather than on horseback, and there would never be a better time than this to make the substitution.
I can't feel my fingers; what if they won't work right? What if he realizes I've gotten into his document-pouch? What if—
As his mind ran over all the worst prognostications, his body was acting as he had told it to act. He limped towards Rufen with the gait and posture of a man twice his age. At just the right moment, he stumbled and fell against the constable.
And even as Rufen was apologizing, asking if he was all right, and handing him back his fishing rod, Orm was continuing to "stumble" against him, accepting his support and using it to cover his real actions. Rufen had dropped his document-pouch; Orm picked it up, dropped it, picked it up again, and dropped it a second time, then allowing Rufen to pick it up himself. In the blink of an eye, as Orm picked the pouch up the first time, the pen was gone, lifted neatly out of the document-pouch. In another blink, as Orm picked it up the second time, Rand's pen was in the pouch with the rest of Tal Rufen's papers—and Rufen never knew his "pocket" had been picked twice, once to extract the first pen and once to replace the pen.
Orm "shyly" accepted Rufen's apologies, stumbled through a clumsy apology of his own, then hurried on to the city as Rufen headed back to the Abbey. Orm's job wasn't complete yet. He still had a baker's-dozen bodies to put out before daybreak.
Captain Fenris was an actual veteran of combat, a survivor of one of the feuds that had erupted among the nobility until the High King came back to his senses and put a stop to them. The Captain was no stranger to mass slaughter, but most of his constables were not ready to see bodies heaped up in a waist-high pile. The callousness of the scene unnerved them completely; even the hardiest of his constables was unable to remain in the vicinity of the cul-de-sac. Only Fenris waited there, as Tal and Ardis answered the early-morning summons. The rest of the constables guarded the scene from the safe distance of the entrances to the alleyway.
"It's not as bad as it could be," Fenris said, quite calmly, as he led the two Church officials down the alley. "No blood and the bodies are all frozen. If this had been high summer, it would have been bad."
It was quite bad enough. Tal had learned after many hours spent in morgues how to detach himself from his surroundings, but the number of dead in itself was enough to stun. Fenris's warning about what they would find made it possible for him to face the pile of about a dozen bodies with exterior calm, at least.
The corpses were all fully clothed, in straight positions as if they had already been laid out for burial. That made the way they were neatly stacked all the more disturbing; just like a pile of logs, only the "logs" had been living human beings before they were so callously piled. Three of them had been severely mutilated, with patterns carved into their flesh; patterns resembling, in a bizarre way, ornamentation. These three were on the top of the pile, their garments open to the waist, to best display their condition.
Of all the many scenes where crimes had occurred that Tal had seen over the years, this was the most surreal. The alley was deep in shadow, the sky overcast, the area so completely silent that the few sounds that passing traffic made never even got as far as this cul-de-sac. This could have been the Hell of the Lustful, the damned frozen in eternal immobility, denied even the comfort of their senses.
Inside, while part of him analyzed what was in front of him, the rest of him was trying to cope with the idea of someone capable of such a slaughter.And someone capable of making a display like this, afterwards. That's what's the most unnerving. He strove to take himself out of the scene, to view it as if it was a play on a stage, but it was difficult not to imagine himself as one of those victims.
"I sent a runner to tell Arden's people. What do you think?" Fenris asked as he edged his way around the pile.
"Have them laid out, would you?" Tal asked, instead of answering him. The bodies were all coated in ice, which was interesting, for it suggested that they had all been in the water at one time. Even their garments were stiff with ice.
And that would make sense, if he's using the water to remove magic we could trace.That would be why there was no blood, and no obvious bloodstains; they had been underwater long enough for the blood to wash out of their clothing.
And isn't that what all the advice-givers say? Rinse out blood with cold water to keep it from staining? He fought a hysterical urge to laugh.
Fenris nodded at the two silent figures waiting to one side; robed and hooded, these must be two of the Priests who collected the dead in Kingsford. They said nothing, but simply went to work; handling their charges respectfully, carefully and gently, as if the corpses they moved were of the highly-born, or were sleeping, not dead. Tal, watching them with surprise and admiration, found himself wishing that all those who cared for the dead were as compassionate as these two.
When they were finished, Tal walked along the row, carefully examining each one. Interestingly, one was male, and strangled, but the rest were all women, and had been stabbed. With a third of them, the mutilated ones, it was difficult to be certain, but he thought that the final, fatal wound was the knife-blow to the heart that was so characteristic of "their" killer. In the case of the rest, except for the man, that was certainly so.
These victims were not musicians, but there were enough similarities in how they had died that Tal was certain that they tied in with their murderer, and he told Fenris so.
"You think perhaps that one was someone who walked in at the wrong time?" Fenris hazarded, pointing to the lone male.
Tal nodded. "And those, the ones that were cut up—he's done this before, that Gypsy I told you about."
"That was at the hands of a jeweler," Fenris noted.
"As it always has been at the hands of a tool," Tal agreed. "But this time it does look as if he's done the work with his own hands, and I have to wonder why."
Fenris leaned over one of the bodies to take a closer look. "Interesting. I think you may be right. Maybe he didn't want to expend the magic he needed to use tools? But I can see something else here—these are all—well, human flotsam. They're not musicians.
Is he getting desperate? Could that be why he didn't take tools?"
Tal considered that for a moment. "He might be. We've made a fairly good job of warning real musicians off the street. But do remember—just because we haven't found tools, that doesn't mean he didn't use them—they may simply be under the ice downstream, and we won't find them until spring."
"He may need power, and a great deal of it." That was Ardis, her face so white and still it could have been a marble likeness. "That would make him desperate enough to do the work himself, and to murder so many in so short a period of time."
"Or he's taunting us," Tal suggested. That was his private opinion. "He's piled up all these victims to say—'Look at me! See what I can do, and you can't stop me!' He knows we're after him, and he knows we haven't got a single idea of who he is or where to find him. This is his way of thumbing his nose at us."
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