Scholar's Plot

by Hilari Bell

  “You mean embroiderers?” I asked. My mother took in mending and did a bit of embroidery. It was easier than carrying bricks but it didn’t pay well, and as the hours stretched it was a harder job than you might think.

  “No,” said Peebles. “They’d concocted a glue that would stick most things to fabric, and survive a number of washings. Glass gems, silk braid, ribbons. They planned to set up a shop selling little pots of the stuff, along with beads and so on, to those who wanted to look well-dressed without paying a seamstress to actually be well-dressed.”

  “It sounds cheap.” Lady Katherine was wearing a cinnamon brown skirt with a soft leather vest, and a shirt whose only extravagance was the tightness of the weave and the foam of lace at her elbows. It might not have cost half the reward I’d earned for bringing down a murderous traitor, but I bet it would put a dent in it.

  For a moment I despaired. But she was rich, I wasn’t, and my plan was to get that small estate by way of reward, not purchase. So I’d better get on with it.

  “It is cheap,” said Peebles. “But Crown City’s full of people who want to be courtiers and don’t have money. There’s a fair chance they’re making a fortune.”

  There was an even better chance they’d gone broke, and were now carrying bricks. But what interested me was the shop they’d left behind. I smiled hopefully at Peebles.

  “Since that shop belongs to the university, you’ve probably got a key?”

  She didn’t want to give it to us, but I wanted to get into the shop now, instead of waiting till the middle of the night to burgle the place. I pointed out that there wasn’t much damage we could do — which was a lie, because if it was still there we could have made a decent sum by stealing the type. Kathy talked about how Benton’s whole future was riding on this, and Michael added that it wasn’t impossible that their father might buy the shop for Benton, if his academic career fell through. I was pretty sure this was a lie too, though I suppose it wasn’t impossible — just unlikely.

  The excuse that we might be interested in buying the place was enough for Clerk Peebles, who handed over the key with a pointed request that we get it back to her before she left work that evening.

  We stopped for luncheon on the way but the shop wasn’t far, midway between the university and the waterfront. Close enough to pick up deliveries from the docks, and near enough to the school that scholars wouldn’t hesitate to make the trip. In fact, it was closer to the university than either of the other print shops. Across the street were a boot maker and a baker, both of whom seemed to be thriving.

  The boot maker’s clerk came out on his front step to watch us, and I nodded pleasantly at him. “I’m glad I’ve got a key.”

  “’Twould be hard to break in without being seen,” Michael agreed. “At least, here at the front.”

  “We’ll check the back,” I said. “But meanwhile…”

  I opened the door and we all went in. But before I shut it, I took a minute to try all the likely keys on the ring we’d taken from Hotchkiss’ desk. None of them worked.

  “So ’tis not a key the professors are likely to have,” said Kathy.

  “Mayhap,” her brother replied. “But that still leaves anyone with access to Clerk Peebles’ desk drawer, and as Fisk told the good sergeant, that’s most of the university.”

  I closed the door and the dusty stillness settled around us. There was a lot of dust in the front room where we stood, on the shelves, small tables and bookstands. Through an archway I could see at least two presses in the workroom beyond. In its time, this place had bustled with printing and sales … now it only rustled with mice.

  “Come on. Let’s take a look.”

  It took only a glance to know we’d found what we were seeking — the smallest of the four presses was the only thing in the shop that wasn’t coated with dust and spider webs.

  “But we’d better make sure, anyway.” I went over to the big rack of cases where type was stored. They too were locked, and Mistress Peebles hadn’t given me those keys. But they were labeled with the fonts stored in them, and I’d come prepared. Kathy watched with considerable interest as I pulled out my picks. I tried to console myself with the knowledge that it had been too late to present myself as a solid, upstanding citizen before we’d even met — her brother had rescued me from the judgment scaffold.

  “This is a good building,” she said. “Sound. And you can see the river through that alley across the street.”

  It didn’t sound like much, after all these years roving with Michael, but I’d grown up in a town where the smallest sliver of a sea view was treasured.

  “You like dust and mice?”

  “Dust can be cleaned. And I also like cats. You seem to know a lot about printing. Is it just from your father’s work?”

  “Some,” I said. This wasn’t the first time she’d asked about my past — I tried to convince myself it was more than just friendliness. But she was a friendly girl, so odds were I was conning myself. “I worked as an ink boy a time or two, when cash ran short. But… Do you know the difference between a printer and a bandit?”

  “Yes,” said Kathy promptly. “’Tis that blood’s easier to get off your hands than ink.”

  Michael snickered. “You shouldn’t step on his lines, Kathy. Trotting out those musty jokes is Fisk’s favorite pastime.”

  “Well, it is hard to get ink off your hands,” I said. “You can get some of it with oil, but it never really comes out of the creases, or around your nails.”

  “How about blood? Does that come off so easily?” Kathy’s voice was flippant, but I had a feeling she was serious underneath. But serious why? Because she was considering a future with me? Or because she wanted to know more about the man who was trying to help her brother? This guessing game was driving me mad, but I knew better than to lie. Not if I wanted that future.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Not in the moral sense. I’ve never killed anyone. Which isn’t to say…” I turned the final pin and the lock popped open. “…that I’ve led a moral life.”

  There were several fonts that were similar to the one used on the forged pass, and we carried samples of half a dozen y’s and q’s out to the front room to examine them in the light from the big windows.

  It was Michael, with his sharp eyes, who found the letters with the long, curly tails.

  “Should we ink it?” Kathy asked. “To make sure? It looks different, backwards.”

  “We don’t need ink.”

  I looked around till I found the pile of scrap wood that all workshops accumulate, and picked out a piece of smooth soft wood, and another that was harder. I set one y and one q face down on the soft one, with the harder piece on top of the type’s flat back, and thumped the wood with my fist. The lower block was softer than I’d thought, and I had to wiggle the tiny type bits free. The dust around the presses was dark — from oil, not ink, which dries into a hard sticky lump. I scraped up a fingerful of dust and rubbed it into the indentation the letters had left. Even before I pulled out Benton’s pass to compare, I knew we’d found them.

  Which, as it turned out, didn’t tell us nearly as much as I’d hoped.

  “We should search the rest of the shop,” Michael said. “Just in case.”

  So we did, but all we learned was that the windows in the family apartment above the shop had a better view of the river.

  Kathy sounded a bit wistful, pointing that out. “’Tis a nice place.”

  It might be, if you hadn’t been raised in a manor house. Was she hinting she might not care? If she was — how I hoped she was — that was unbearably sweet. But I intended to offer her more than a broken down print shop. Preferably before I took the terrible risk of asking.

  “They should have been able to make money,” I said. “It’s closer to the university than its competitors, and two presses aren’t enough for a place like this. I grant you, Crown City is close enough to take up the slack, but scholars with a book, they’re like mothers wit
h an infant. They want to keep checking on it all the time. And when printers lay type they find all kinds of small errors. Then they have to ask the author if he really meant to say that, and how he wants to fix it. You need to be in the same town.”

  There was only one thing left to discover, and that was if anyone had seen our killer. In a busy crowded neighborhood I had some hopes for that. But it took us the rest of the afternoon to find the baker’s mother-in-law, who lived over his shop and kept an eye on things. She’d seen a plumpish man in a scholar’s coat go in, late one night about two weeks ago, and stay so long she’d finally gone to bed.

  “But since the university owns the shop, I didn’t think anything of it. He had a key, after all.”

  She stared curiously at us, who also had a key, though no scholar’s coat to go with it.

  “The coat’s no problem,” I said, as we set off to return that useful key. “I lifted one from a laundry yard on my first night in town. And every professor or scholar owns one.”

  “She was looking down on the man,” Kathy said. “So he might be thinner or plumper than he appeared.”

  “And as we’ve already established,” Michael finished, “everyone at the university might lay hands on Clerk Peebles’ keys. Which narrows our pool of suspects to exactly the same as ’twas before.”

  I had to agree. We were nowhere.

  In the days before Quicken’s hearing, we did nothing. Oh, I trailed after Fisk and Kathy as they tracked down others who owned a printing press, and asked if anyone had sought to borrow it. They hoped that whoever had printed the pass might have searched elsewhere before he found the deserted shop — but none of us were surprised when their inquiries proved futile.

  And worse yet, the third professor applying for Benton’s job arrived in Slowbend. Fisk had gone to visit the jeweler when he learned this, and after he told us Benton became so quiet that I knew he’d dared to hope after all. Fisk hadn’t learned the date of the interview, and it still might take them several days to choose among the applicants.

  But our time was almost gone.

  When the day of the hearing dawned, we gathered in the square before the guard barracks, where the low platform of the judgment scaffold had been set up. Benton and Kathy were relegated to stand with the rest of the crowd, but Captain Chaldon collared Fisk and me, and sent us to sit on the bench where witnesses waited to be called. Professor Dayless, already seated there, nodded in response to my greeting but said nothing. She was so nearby that Fisk and I couldn’t talk without being overheard. The bench was hard, too.

  I was about to start some conversation with the Professor whether she wanted it or not — but then the judicars came in, three of them, one plump, one old, one thin. Here in the Crown’s fief they were clad in robes of the Liege’s blue, with silver braid on their collars and the bottoms of their sleeves.

  Despite the formal garb, it worked much like the village judgments I’ve seen. First a blacksmith whose shoddy work had lamed a horse, then a boy whose slingshot had broken a window, came up to receive judgment on the debt they owed. The last was Master Quicken, which meant the judicars considered his case the worst of the three.

  After the boy’s grumbling father paid the whole price of the window, even though it might have been previously cracked, as he’d claimed, Captain Chaldon climbed to the platform. He said that since I’d reported it, I should bear witness to Quicken’s bribe taking. The plump judicar, who seemed to be the court’s spokesman, called for me to come forward.

  I didn’t know what Captain Chaldon had told them, but all three judicars stared as I mounted the steps to the platform. The last time I’d stood upon a judgment scaffold it hadn’t gone well for me. This warm summer day was very different from the icy wind that had once raised goose bumps on my skin, and my palms were sweating as I climbed the short stair. My heart beat uncomfortably hard.

  The thin judicar cast me a knowing look, but he only directed me to tell them why I’d gone to Trowbridge, and what I’d learned there.

  I had to start by explaining that I was Benton’s brother, and when I gave my own name the Liege Guardsmen in the audience stared. But no one else paid much attention, and I relaxed a bit and related our conversation with Master Barrows as accurately as I could.

  The judicars then asked Fisk if he could confirm what I’d said and he did so, without having to leave the anonymous security of the bench. They told me I could step down, but to hold myself in readiness in case Master Quicken wished to dispute my testimony.

  I don’t know where they kept Quicken — in the barracks overlooking the square, mayhap — but as I gratefully resumed my seat on the hard backless bench, two guards led him forward. The others accused hadn’t even been in the guards’ custody, and despite his escort Quicken wore no chains. I had to remind myself that, although to me this was a matter on which my brother’s future rested, and mayhap a murder as well, the only charge before this court was vandalism.

  Quicken’s expression was still impassive, but his shoulders hunched like a man expecting a blow. He went up the scaffold’s rickety steps with the nimbleness of a man accustomed to walking rough ground, and faced the judicars readily.

  “Master Lat Quicken,” the plump one said. “You’ve been accused by Michael Sevenson of taking a bribe from an unknown party, presumably to destroy the…” He looked down at his notes. “…the research papers of a confidential project at Pendarian University, which had employed you as a gamekeeper. Do you dispute Sevenson’s testimony? It is, at this point, unsubstantiated except by his colleague,” the judicar added helpfully.

  Quicken considered it, in his careful way. “No. If I did, they’d just send off for Josh, and he’d tell you the same. Aye, I took their bribe.”

  “Whose bribe?” the old judicar asked. “And what were you asked to do?”

  I found myself leaning forward, for it looked like we might finally get some answers.

  “He didn’t give his name,” Quicken said. “Not ever. Nor signed his letters, either. Just showed up with a purse full of coin, over ten gold roundels when I counted it up, and asked if I needed it.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his thin throat. “Master Sevenson, who spoke before, he told you about my Nan. What he didn’t know, when that bastard turned up, the infection was on her. The fever came and went, but each time it came back stronger. The doctor was saying as how the bone might be infected, and without magica to heal it she’d lose the leg. A long course of magica,” he added grimly. “More than he could spare, for charity. More than anyone was like to spare.”

  A murmur of sympathy rippled through the crowd behind us, and the old judicar sighed.

  “He knew of your distress, this stranger?”

  “He didn’t say so,” the gamekeeper said. “But I think he must have. ’Cause I wouldn’t have taken his money without.”

  Having seen Quicken’s attitude toward his employers, I wasn’t certain of that. But it did seem the man had chosen his victim carefully.

  “So you accepted the bribe,” the plump judicar prompted. “What did he ask you to do in exchange?”

  “At first, just report on what they were doing and if it worked.” Quicken was more relaxed now, speaking freely. “To ‘keep him appraised’ was how he put it.”

  “So when you first took bribe money, it was only to spy on the project?” the thin judicar asked.

  Quicken hesitated again, but he answered. “No, sir. He said up front that if they looked to be making progress, he’d want me to do something about it. But if the bone was infected… I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but my Nan.”

  ’Twas clear from their expressions that not even the judicars blamed him for that. Only a monster could.

  Fisk shifted on the bench, and I glanced aside and saw him frowning. Benton had told me of young Nan’s illness, so ’twas no lie. Though as Fisk himself had taught me, a thing may be perfectly true, but still be an act.

  Was Quicken acting? Why?

  �
��Did you report on the experiment’s progress, as you’d been paid to?” the plump judicar asked.

  “Aye, sir. I’d pass him notes, through Josh, and he’d write back with questions. Or sometimes just send another purse.”

  “And when the project began to make progress, that’s when you burned the papers?”

  Quicken’s gaze fell. “Well sir, he’d paid me all that money. I had to do something. I’d seen Professor Dayless making her rough notes, but I knew there was a finished copy so it didn’t seem I’d be doing much harm. Didn’t know Professor Stint hadn’t copied his stuff,” he added, with an apologetic glance at the crowd.

  I turned and saw that Stint stood in the audience. Not a potential witness, then.

  Fisk’s frown had deepened to a scowl, and he jabbed an elbow into my ribs. I nodded, for I’d already realized that while Quicken hadn’t denied burning the papers, he hadn’t admitted to it, either.

  But it seemed the judicars thought he had. The next sharp question came from the thin judicar.

  “Did you have anything to do with the death of Master Hotchkiss, who was murdered in his home on campus shortly before you burned those notes?”

  “No, sir. I had nothing to do with that, and I don’t know anything about it.” Quicken hesitated a moment, but then went on. “If that’s connected to the project, I don’t see how. Maybe the professors did research in the library or something, but Hotchkiss never came round to see it. And the man who paid me never mentioned him, or the library, or anything.”

  “But you do confess to accepting a bribe to betray your employer, to revealing information you were expected to keep confidential, and to destroying property not your own in an attempt to harm the project you were paid to assist?” the old judicar asked precisely.

  “Aye, sir,” Quicken said. “I did all that. I’d have done worse, if it was the only way to save my daughter.”

  I thought they’d pronounce his sentence then. They’d have the university’s statement of damages in their notes, and there seemed to be little more they needed to establish. But they told Quicken to stand aside, that his employer wished to speak.