Scholar's Plot

by Hilari Bell

  “If ’tis something to do with the project that got Benton framed,” I said, “she might have reason to fear our questions, and to keep us from the thesis as well.”

  “Possibly. But then you have to explain why, as head of the project, she brought Benton into it in the first place. And why she went to the trouble and considerable risk of framing him. All she had to do to get rid of him was tell him his services were no longer needed — which seems to have been true, anyway — and let him go back to his history. Not to mention why she’d kill Hotchkiss.”

  Talking about our rival theories reminded Fisk of our quarrel, and his voice grew cooler as he spoke. Involved in the puzzle of Hotchkiss’ death, we’d fallen into the familiar pattern of working together, playing off each other’s ideas.

  But by the terms of our agreement, ’twas my turn to lead the investigation now.

  “I think we’ll find that whoever killed Hotchkiss also bribed him to proclaim Benton a cheat, to take him from the project,” I said. “A man who’d stoop to blackmail would also take a bribe.”

  “You really think a blackmailer is going to be murdered by someone who wasn’t his victim?”

  “We haven’t established for certain that he was a blackmailer,” I pointed out. Though ’twas hard to think what else that list of payments might represent.

  “We haven’t established for certain that old thesis is a forgery, either,” Fisk retorted, then scowled when he found himself walking down the logical trail I wanted to follow.

  “Then we’d best do that next, hadn’t we?” I said. “I’m so glad you agree.”

  Returning Mistress Peebles’ keys was even easier than taking them had been, since the key to her office was also on her key ring. Fisk hesitated a moment before putting it back in the drawer, and I could understand why — that ring held over a score of keys, which would probably admit us to most of the buildings on the campus, including the tower. But there was no way for us to keep it without her noticing it had gone missing, probably within a day. And we still had the half dozen keys we’d found in Hotchkiss’ desk to let us into the library, at least.

  By the time we left the building that held the university’s offices there were even fewer people on the paths, and the shadows between the phosphor lamps were deepening.

  ’Twas now late enough that the library might be deserted, and ’twas still early enough that the lamp we’d have to light would be taken for that of a hard-working scholar. We even had keys, which would probably open the library door. In short, ’twas the perfect moment to set about my part of the investigation.

  So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw the pale light of a phosphor lamp on the path ahead of us turn lavender, and then bright orange. We were too far away to make out the features of the thin man gazing up at it, but he didn’t seem alarmed. On the other hand, phosphor light doesn’t change color. Fisk and I both stopped to stare.

  “Mayhap some scholar’s experiment?” I said.

  The light turned blue and the thin man — who wasn’t wearing a scholar’s coat — began to dance an awkward, high-kneed jig.

  Fisk swore under his breath and began to run.

  I followed, and though I hadn’t recognized him, I wasn’t surprised when I reached the light and found Fisk clutching the mad jeweler’s arm.

  “How under two moons did you get out?” Fisk demanded.

  “The night lifted her skirts to me, the wicked hussy. So I had to step up, didn’t I? Up to the sill, not my will. Defenestrated, they call it. But I stepped up like a man. Pork the whole night, I will.”

  A feverish excitement shone in his face — but now that he was distracted from it, the phosphor light resumed its normal silver-green glow.

  On the other hand, anyone who’d seen that rainbow display was bound to investigate.

  “We shouldn’t stay here,” I said, taking the man’s other arm. “Where do we…?”

  I started to pull him down the path toward the library, and saw three young scholars pass through the light of another lamp, hurrying in our direction.

  We weren’t the only ones who’d seen.

  “Hang it!” Fisk turned, dragging the jeweler in the opposite direction. “I don’t want him caught — they’ll lock him up even tighter.”

  We had reached the darkest part of the walk, between two lamps. I pulled Fisk and the jeweler off the path.

  “You hide him,” I said. “I’ll draw them off.”

  I turned to check on the scholars — whom I couldn’t see at the moment, for they too were between lamps. But if I couldn’t see them, they probably couldn’t see Fisk and jeweler. Particularly if I gave them something else to look at, and in one way young men resemble cats — if something runs, they tend to chase it.

  I sprinted under the next lamp and heard a shout go up behind me. I too am a young man, and my heart leapt with the thrill of the chase. I kept to the path for some time, letting them see me as the circles of light flowed toward me and fell away. I’d hoped to simply outrun them — Benton couldn’t keep up with any of us in a footrace — but these scholars evidently kept themselves in better shape than my brother had. If anything they were gaining on me.

  At least none of them were members of the scholar’s guard, for no whistle sounded. I might be able to outlast them … but I also might not.

  My first thought, when I saw another scholar walking through the light ahead of me, was fear that he might join the chase. I didn’t want to lose them too swiftly, but when I saw him I almost swerved aside.

  My second thought was that if my magic worked as well as the jeweler’s I could have turned the light over his head pink, and set them after him — he was even in shirtsleeves like myself, with his coat thrown over his arm. But magic didn’t answer my command.

  On the other hand, did it have to?

  I summoned up my reserves and put on a bit more speed, increasing the distance between me and the hunters on my heels. I heard one of them gasp for his friends to go on, and glancing back saw him stop and bend forward, catching his breath while his more fit companions ran on.

  The man in front of me was walking while I ran. I gained ground on him quickly, marking the intervals when he passed in and out of the light.

  I caught him in the deepest shadow, and offered a breathless apology as I yanked his coat away, sending books and notes flying. His curses followed me as I raced onward.

  My pursuers encountered him — indeed, judging by the shouting one of them almost ran over him as he knelt to pick up his fallen books.

  But unless they stopped to talk to him, in which case I’d escape easily, they had no way to know that I now possessed the means to change my appearance. All I needed was another scholar in his shirt sleeves — and surely few would wear a jacket on a night this warm.

  There was no one in sight at the moment so I put my mind to running, turning corners occasionally, but establishing a pattern of keeping to the lighted paths. I only prayed that the next people I encountered wouldn’t be a troop of that accursed scholar’s guard.

  I gained more distance as they began to tire, but they clung to my trail with dogged determination and I was beginning to run short of breath myself.

  I came up on yet another cross path, and off to my left saw a scholar walking away from me … and he too carried his coat over his arm!

  I turned onto the leftward path, right under a tall lamp, and then put on the best burst of speed my laboring lungs could supply while I dragged the dark coat over my betraying white sleeves. I passed just one building, then in the darkness between the lamps I swerved off the path, falling into a walk moments before I reckoned they’d come into view.

  ’Twas an absurdly simple trick — but even if they noticed me walking away from the path, they should at least be forced to split up, uncertain which of us to chase.

  I heard one of them call out as they rounded the corner, but he was so breathless I couldn’t understand what he said. Fisk has trained me well enough that
I didn’t look back, but every particle of my being focused on the sound of their footfalls on the gravel as they ran nearer, nearer … and right on down the path, after my decoy.

  I took to my heels as soon as they were out of sight once more, for they’d soon catch up with a man who wasn’t running and learn their mistake. Now, I only needed to gain a bit of distance before I found a place to hide.

  In the yard between four buildings, an ornamental garden that centered on a small fountain looked wonderfully inviting — it had benches to hide behind, flowerbeds, and even some sculpted topiaries.

  I immediately turned toward the far less notable junipers that clustered beside the buildings, diving into the thickest clump I could find and burrowing in like a rabbit escaping the fox. The tangled woody stems were a bruising maze, but the branches were thick — and prickly enough to discourage casual investigation.

  To refrain from hiding in the obvious place is a good trick for eluding pursuit. An even better trick is to be willing to do something your pursuers won’t.

  I was near the center of the bush when they burst around the corner, and immediately went still. In my stolen black coat I must be all but invisible, and the branches had twisted my face away from them. I closed my eyes and breathed through my mouth, as quietly as I could — though they were puffing so loud they probably couldn’t have heard anything softer than a shout.

  “Do you see him? If he was the guy in the coat, he must have come this way.”

  “I don’t see anyone. I didn’t see anyone in a coat, either. Are you planning to run around tackling everyone on campus? Because the last one almost took a swing at me.”

  “We both saw him take that path,” the other one said. “If he wasn’t ahead of us then he must have turned off, and I did see someone walking this way. Look behind that fountain, will you? And make it quick. He may be getting away.”

  “I hate to be the one to break the news, but he’s gotten away.” The scholar was walking around the fountain as he spoke. “I don’t know why I’m running after whoever it is, anyway. I’m not an alchemist.”

  “Well, I am, and I want to know what he was doing with that lamp! It had to be a chemical … but did he put it on the phosphor moss? Into the water? Or if it was some sort of smoke or gas, how did he direct and concentrate it so quickly?”

  “If you can find him I’ll be happy to help you ask, but he’s probably halfway across campus by now. Or snug in his own room.”

  “Curse it, I have to find out what he was doing! If he’s part of Mumphrey’s team then their project will beat ours outright. The council offered a prize, you know. Fifty silver roundels…”

  They’d already finished with the easily searched garden. Their voices were growing fainter as they walked away.

  “…will buy a lot of beer, even split four ways.”

  “That’s great — for you and your team. I’ve got a class first thing…”

  I waited till they were long gone before I struggled out of the bushes, which made only a slight shushing noise.

  Remembering Fisk’s jest about the difference between a bandit and a scholar, I pulled out my purse and tucked a brass roundel deep into one of the coat’s pockets. I then hung it over one of the garden benches, trusting it would make its way back to its owner — with all these identical coats they must put names in them somewhere, if only to get the right coat back from the laundry, and this was the only apology I could make to the man I’d robbed so roughly.

  I still had work to do this night, but first I needed to find Fisk. We’d had no time to discuss the matter, but I thought he’d have taken the jeweler back to his tower. He’d already determined the man was being well-treated, and what else could be done with him? Besides, I hoped to catch up with them before the madman was returned to his rooms. That scholar wasn’t the only one who was curious about how he’d changed the color of that phosphor light.

  But what I wanted to know was how he controlled his magic.

  We stood in the shadows, watching three scholars go chasing after Michael as mindlessly as Trouble chased rabbits. I wished I’d had time to come up with a lie for him to tell if they caught him … though how I could have explained what happened to that lamp, I had no idea.

  “Why were you just standing there, making the lamp change color?” I asked my companion critically. “You might as well have put up a sign, ‘Mad Mage on the Loose.’ If they catch you running around out here, you may end up in a real cell.”

  “They wanted it,” he said. “I had to oblige.”

  But he looked thoughtful, and turned to go back to the tower without resistance.

  Aside from a few small distractions, such as waiting for a lad to climb out of some female scholar’s window — we knew it was a girl, because she leaned out to give him a lingering farewell kiss — we made it back to the tower with no trouble.

  I headed for the elm, assuming he’d escaped from the yard his windows looked out on. But to my surprise, he took my arm and led me around to the other side of the building. All those windows had been locked last night, but now one of them swung open.

  “You got out that way?” I kept my voice down, since the guard was still at his post at the front of the building. “Wasn’t your door locked?”

  “What’s a lock when a man has wings? Flew to my love, I did.”

  I took that for madness … but then I remembered the way that lamp changed color, and how Michael’s unpredictable magic had saved him when he was thrown off a cliff. He might be telling the simple truth.

  For a moment I considered asking him to fly us up to the window, and promptly rejected that idea for several good reasons — not least of them that I had no desire to sprout feathers.

  “We could go around and climb the tree,” I said aloud. “But I got caught trying that last time…”

  He went with me to fetch the rain barrel, and then refused to help me roll it over to the window, so it took me as long as it had last night. But once I stood it up beneath the sill he climbed up willingly. I gave him a final boost into the room beyond, and he waited there while I followed him up and in.

  It was evidently being used for storage, with trunks and boxes full of papers, though the moons shone on the other side of the building so it was too dark to see much.

  The door to the hallway was closed, which he might have done himself. But how had he gotten out of his room in the first place?

  “Was your door left unlocked?”

  “The door? Not to me. I was free.”

  He crossed the room and opened the door as if to demonstrate, gesturing for me to precede him like a some baron’s fancy butler. So I did. His room was right across the corridor, and even in the dark I could see bright new splinters where the latch had broken out of the frame.

  The back of my neck prickled in primitive warning. Prying open a latched door is the clumsiest form of burglary. It makes a lot of noise, and it shouts to everyone who walks by, Hey, this house is being burgled!

  Jonas Bish, who’d taught me house breaking, had once handed me a crowbar and made me do it, so I’d understand why it was so important to learn to pick locks. And that had been a relatively flimsy door.

  Whatever had broken this door open had twisted the doorknob in its socket, and bent the iron latch before the frame cracked. And maybe you could somehow muffle the noise that had made with magic … but if you could do that, why not use magic to pick the lock? For that matter, why not go out the window, and simply escape through the courtyard?

  The jeweler was mad … but that didn’t mean he was stupid. And if magic had done this, he was definitely going to get locked up in a real cell.

  I opened the broken door and stepped into the smashed room beyond. The curtains had been ripped aside and moonlight poured through the windows on this side of the building, displaying the wreckage in the square patches where it shone and obscuring the rest. The scarves and vines had been pulled down from the ceiling, some of them shredded as if with claws. The
delicate cages were in splinters.

  It looked as if a giant squirrel had rampaged through the room, smashing things in rage and panic.

  I didn’t know much about magic — and he was mad, after all. But I couldn’t think of any reason he’d destroy his own work.

  The jeweler made a sound of distress, but instead of going to the smashed cages he hurried to the overturned bureau, checking to be sure no squirrels had been caught in the furious destruction. He heaved a relieved sigh when he found no furry bodies, then knelt on the floor, carefully searching for something small.

  “Did he do this?”

  I jumped half a foot, even as I recognized Michael’s voice coming from the doorway behind me.

  “What are you…?” But it was obvious what he was doing here, and he would have seen the rain barrel and followed us in.

  “How did you lose them?” I asked instead.

  “Borrowed a coat.”

  He wasn’t wearing it now, which was too bad — it was late enough that we’d stand out among the few scholars who were still wandering the campus. But before I could ask what happened to it, Michael went on, “How could he do all this without the guard hearing him? It must have sounded like a bull was loose in here.”

  “Could he have used magic to muffle the noise as he did it?”

  The jeweler had been picking up nutmeats, carefully brushing them free of pottery shards. Now he put them on the largest piece of the broken plate, and set it on the sill outside his window. Then he closed and latched it.

  “Dinner time’s done,” he said. “Break the law if you come in here, you will.”

  “You’re asking me?” Michael’s voice was exasperated. “For all I know he could use magic to pick up the tower, and carry it over the plains. But … would he do this?”

  I didn’t see why. On the other hand … well, mad. And I could think of a number of reasons he might feel the kind of rage that could provoke this.