Scholar's Plot

by Hilari Bell

  Professor Dayless’ black skirts rustled as she brushed past us. When she climbed the short stair her gaze met that of the gamekeeper, but Quicken’s stoic expression didn’t change.

  The judicars looked a bit impatient.

  “We already have the university’s accounting for the damage they suffered,” the plump man said. “Do you have something to add?”

  “Yes.” Accustomed to speaking before a rowdy classroom, the professor was in no way intimidated. “In fact the university has appointed me, as head of the project in question, to speak for them in the matter of our debt claim.”

  She handed over a paper and the judicars passed it down the table. The plump man’s brows rose, the old one looked resigned, and the thin one looked as if a boring case had suddenly become interesting.

  “Very well,” said the plump man. “Does Pendarian wish to modify their claim?”

  “We do,” the professor said. “As head of the project, I can confirm that Master Quicken’s ‘sabotage’ did very little harm.”

  “That’s easy for you to say!” Stint’s voice rang from the audience. “I’m still trying to recreate—”

  “No comments from the audience are allowed,” the plump judicar said. “If you want to speak, sir, tell the guard and he’ll carry your request to us.”

  Professor Stint subsided, but I thought ’twas more because of Professor Dayless’ withering scowl than the judicar’s wishes. And having seen her fury at her own notes’ destruction, I had a hard time believing she took the loss so lightly now.

  “Whatever Professor Stint may say, the project will be moving forward again shortly,” she went on calmly. “I’d be more concerned about the information Quicken passed on. But since he had no access to Stint’s formulas before they were burned, and has not passed them on, it seems no harm was done there either. As project supervisor, the university has left it to me to reassess our damages. Considering the threat to Master Quicken’s daughter, I’ve chosen to be merciful and set them at three weeks of Professor Stint’s salary and one week of mine. That comes to forty-three silver roundels.”

  I heard a choked-off exclamation from Stint, and the crowd gasped. The judicars stared. Forty-three silver roundels was only a fraction of the first purse Quicken had taken, and we knew there’d been more.

  The thin judicar leaned forward. “Professor, if the court levies their usual ten percent charge for the hearing, Master Quicken will have made a great deal of money by taking those bribes. Does the university want that? Don’t you want the money left over after his daughter’s treatment? If not for your project, then for the university’s merit fund, or—”

  “I choose to charge Master Quicken only for the damage he caused,” Professor Dayless said firmly. “In compassion for his daughter’s — ongoing — needs. Your decision is up to you.”

  Since the function of the court is to make things right between those offended, and those who owe them, the judicars were bound to take her at her word.

  Quicken’s tearful wife paid his fine in full, and the crowd was still buzzing with puzzled speculation when Fisk rose and dragged me away.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said, the moment we were out from under Professor Dayless’ eye. “Not for one minute. She might have let him off the worst penalty because of his daughter, but she’d never let him keep that money. Not when it could go to her precious project or the university.”

  “And yet, she did exactly that,” I pointed out. “Unless Quicken has some power to compel her…”

  We both stopped talking. The more I thought on it, the more likely it seemed.

  “But ’tis ridiculous,” I said. “We’ve already got one blackmailer, and what could a woman her age have done? She has no rich spouse to cheat on — she’s married to her job. And if she did commit some academic crime — how many decades ago was her thesis written? — Quicken has no way to learn of it.”

  “No.” Fisk’s eyes blazed with sudden understanding. “It’s not some old sin — it’s those lying rabbits. The project, Michael! It has to be the project. She’s cheating on it, somehow. And Quicken, who’s not nearly as stupid as the professors think, knew about it. When he got caught, he turned it against her to get himself off. It fits!”

  “It even fits with what happened to Benton,” I said, in rising excitement. “They feared he’d notice whatever they were up to, so they forged that thesis to get rid of him. They were willing to destroy his life, to get him off the project.”

  “Not they,” said Fisk. “She. If Stint was in on it, he wouldn’t have been yelping protests this morning. So it has to do with the rabbits, not the formulas. I’ll bet those good results they suddenly started getting … aren’t. She’s faking the data. She’s doing something with the rabbits’ results to make them look better than they are. And Quicken, who knows those rabbits well, probably knew it all along, but he didn’t care. She must have… Curse it, I told her myself what the jeweler said about those rabbits! That’s why she faked his escape! She may have hoped he’d wander off to some other town, or even get killed by the guard. But he’s so incoherent she didn’t need to worry much about him.”

  “Unlike Benton,” I said grimly. “Who was spending more and more time with the rabbits, and would have revealed her cheating the instant he realized it. But how are we to prove this? Neither Dayless or Quicken is going to talk, and she’s probably spent the last two weeks covering her tracks.”

  “She has,” said Fisk slowly. “If those promising rabbits suddenly stop doing well, she can claim that Stint didn’t recreate the formula correctly. He could pass the blame for that on to Benton, if he wants to. But if I were Master Quicken, I’d worry about being the only one alive who knows what she did. If it was me, I’d tell the professor that I’d written down everything I knew, and that my record would be revealed if anything happened to me. And then,” he said, “I’d write down a record.”

  In the old days, before I set out to burgle someone’s home I’d spend the better part of a week watching my target. I’d observe, not only that household’s nightly routine, but their neighbors’. I’d learn how many people lived there, and which of them might react violently to a burglar. I’d scout a number of escape routes I could take in a hurry, and how many people along them owned dogs. I’d try to get into the house on the pretext of delivering something, to get an idea what might be worth stealing and what I’d be likely to trip over in the dark.

  So of course, Michael and I set out to burgle Quicken’s house without ever having set eyes on it.

  The helpful Peebles gave us directions in exchange for an account of what had happened at the hearing, about which rumors were already flying around the campus. Michael told her that we wanted to ask Quicken a few questions, away from his employer’s presence — which, he later told me, he fully intended to do, once we’d read Quicken’s record and he had no reason to lie to us.

  I was still reasonably sure Quicken would have written up some kind of document — with a project this crooked, in which everyone involved had more money and power than I did, I’d have made several. On the other hand, the odds that he’d left those documents with a friend, or kinsman, or even a lawyer, were high. But Michael had a “feeling” we should tackle Quicken’s place tonight. “Like you get in the silence before a thunderclap,” he said.

  I never sensed anything before a thunderclap, but I’d been around Michael long enough to respect his Gifts.

  I’d also been around him long enough to know that, though he was probably sensing something real, it didn’t always mean what he thought it meant. So I was deeply grateful when he told Kathy, over her objections, that we were leaving her safely behind.

  Michael didn’t usually overprotect his sister, and for a moment I wondered if he was keeping her home because he suspected there was something going on between us. But since nothing was going on, I didn’t see how he could suspect.

  How would Michael react when he did find out? Assuming he ever had to f
ind out, that Kathy didn’t run screaming from my proposal in the first place. Or even worse, compassionately tell me that we were such good friends and she didn’t want to see our relationship change.

  I wasn’t reassured when Kathy said that, after reading my letters for so many years, she wanted to see me burgle something. In fact, I was beginning to regret how candid my correspondence had been. But Michael put his brotherly foot down, and we saddled up and set off for Master Quicken’s house about an hour before dark.

  We left the dog behind too — the rasping gasps he makes trying to bark might be loud enough to matter.

  According to Peebles, Quicken had a cottage an hour’s walk from town, on the estate of a university board member — whose property included a stream-cut canyon that actually held enough game to keep. But the board member and his family were in the city for the summer, trying to get a daughter wed, so Quicken had been able to take a job with the project. It also meant the manor house would be “empty.” Empty, except for whatever housekeeper, maids, menservants, and grooms the owner had left behind to get in our way.

  The sun was setting when we arrived at the manor’s gates, with a sliver of the tan Creature Moon about to follow it down. But the Green Moon was rising so there would be plenty of light … plenty of light for people to see us, that is.

  Yielding to Michael’s understanding of the countryside we rode past those imposing gates, beyond which lay the impressive manor. After a hundred yards the tall stone wall became shorter, and then gave way to a fence of long wooden rails, with fields of sprouting things beyond them. There was a reason Michael was in charge of this part of the expedition — half a mile down the road we found a gap in the fence, with a rutted cart track beyond.

  “’Tis for produce carts, plows, and livestock to pass away from the house,” he told me. “Many don’t mind such things, but sooner or later a new bride will complain about the ‘low’ traffic on the drive, and a road like this is made. Then folk usually find ’tis a more convenient way to reach the road from the fields, anyway.”

  We took the track, which soon degenerated to a pair of ruts, toward the looming bluff. Then we rode along the bottom of its slope back toward the manor, till we came to Quicken’s cottage.

  It was easy to find, because lamplight glowed in several of the windows. There weren’t any woods here on the plain, but the bottom of the bluff was cluttered with scrubby bushes, many as tall as small trees, so we lurked in them. There must have been some moisture nearby — I could smell that fresh, wet-earth scent, that’s so much cleaner in the countryside than city mud.

  “We’ll wait till they’ve been asleep at least two hours,” I said. “Then I’ll go in, and you can keep the horses quiet.”

  We had an excellent view of the cottage from where we lurked, and the manor’s upper floors were visible in the distance, though all its windows were dark. With the family gone, the staff had probably closed off the upper rooms.

  “I’ll go in with you.” Michael kept his voice low too, though we were some distance from the house. “I’m more likely to know where someone would hide things in a country cottage.”

  It was a country cottage, with several large sheds and a privy out back.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Assuming he didn’t leave his documents with someone else, rendering this whole thing pointless. But I told you why murders happen during a burglary, remember? I’m a lot more worried about someone waking up and catching you.”

  “I can be as quiet as you can,” said Michael, stung. “In fact, I’m quieter.”

  “Tramping through the woods, yes. Burgling a house, no.”

  There wasn’t much point to it, because burgling was the part of the expedition I was in charge of and I wasn’t about to let him come with me. And it wasn’t only because I needed to earn that reward — if I got her brother killed, any hope I had of wooing Kathy would vanish. I couldn’t say that to Michael, however, and our bickering passed the time as we waited for the lamplight to go out … and waited … and waited.

  I counted four rooms on the lower floor, and two rooms with dormer windows above. I was able to count them because the lamps kept moving from one room to another.

  Clearly no one was going to bed. It wasn’t even much of a surprise, when Quicken went to the largest shed and emerged five minutes later leading a big placid horse, already harnessed for the cart to which Quicken hitched him.

  “’Tis probably a plow horse from the manor,” Michael murmured. “Too old for field work, but able to pull a small wagon like that all night.”

  His hand hovered over Chant’s nose, ready to cover his nostrils to silence any neigh. This trick fails about half the time, in my experience. But we must have been upwind, or downwind, or whatever it is, because Chant stayed silent. Tipple did too — not because the trick worked, but because trying to bite the hand I laid over her nose distracted her from neighing.

  Quicken’s horse did raise its head, ears pricked in our direction. But the gamekeeper just gave its neck a friendly slap, before he led it over to the kitchen door and the loading began.

  It took longer than I expected, more “moving out” than “fleeing for our lives.” Pots and pans rattled their way into the wagon bed, soon to be muffled, not only by pillows and blankets, but by big feather ticks as well. The only thing they didn’t pack was the furniture.

  The daughter had been working inside, as her mother carried things out and her father packed them into the wagon bed. But finally the last lamp was extinguished, and Nan came limping out to be lifted up to the driving bench. She still walked with a crutch, but her leg moved easily and she was putting weight on it. I thought the doctor was probably right, that she’d heal fully in time.

  The track they drove out on ran past the bushes where we stood. Michael and I held both the horse’s noses again, and for once it worked. There was enough light for me to see that the tearful wife wasn’t crying now; she looked angry and determined. The daughter’s thin face showed excited interest as she gazed at the darkened countryside, but she cuddled close to her mother’s side.

  I waited till they were almost out of sight before I turned to Michael.

  “Now what? If there were any documents in that house, they’re in the wagon now.”

  “It appears that Master Quicken has decided to do more about his fears than write a note,” Michael said.

  “That’s usually why people flee in the middle of the night. But what do we do about it?”

  “I’m surprised,” Michael admitted. “Except for Hotchkiss’ murder, nothing about this project, even if ’tis a cheat, seems to be worth abandoning your life. And that’s what Master Quicken is doing.”

  “I think Dayless might kill, to keep her job,” I said. “She has all your brother’s obsession, without his conscience or his heart. Quicken may be right to run. Although…” The thought emerged slowly, like a monstrous fish rising from deep water. “Even if Quicken threatens her somehow, I don’t think she’d do anything this fast. She’d want to wait till the hearing, and her project, aren’t at the forefront of everyone’s mind before she arranged any little accidents. I wonder what spooked him, to make him move this quickly.”

  Too quickly. The furniture that hadn’t fit into that cart was probably precious to his wife.

  “You’re right.” Michael’s voice was no longer low, and he swung into Chant’s saddle. “Something has frightened Master Quicken, and I don’t think he’s a man who frightens easily.”

  “So?” I mounted Tipple as I spoke.

  “So let’s go ask him.”

  There was no reason for us to gallop over a rough track by moonlight, so we didn’t, though some uneasy notion I couldn’t quite bring to the surface made me itch to do so. I expended my nervous energy arguing with Michael. The direct approach might have done better than subterfuge so far, but that didn’t mean Quicken would tell us anything, much less the truth. If someone had gotten me hauled up before the judicars, I certainly wouldn’t.


  Once we’d reached the main road the flat countryside made it easy to see Quicken’s wagon, even in the distance. Of course he could see us too, but with a loaded wagon and a lame child he could hardly outrun us. We chased after him at an unthreatening walk, drawing slowly nearer.

  I don’t know when he spotted us, or what was going through his head, but when we were a dozen yards away he pulled his horse to a stop and waited till we rode up to him. And then sat, silent, leaving us to make the first, revealing move. This man was no fool, for all his lack of higher education.

  Of course, Michael made it. “Master Quicken. We hoped we might speak with you. Alone, mayhap?”

  The wife clutched her daughter and started to protest, but Quicken held up a hand for silence. “You’ve got no call to stop me from leaving. I paid my debt. I’m as free to come and go as any man.”

  “Which makes the fact that you’re running off in the middle of the night even more interesting,” I pointed out. “What are you afraid of?”

  I expected the man to think this over, and his wife put a hand on his arm to stop him, but he answered almost at once. “You’re right, we ought to talk. Away from here,” he added, with a glance at his daughter’s wide eyes.

  We dismounted and tied our horses to the wagon, like neighbors stopping for a chat, while Quicken set the wagon brake and climbed down. Then we all set off, walking up the road together.

  “’Tis Professor Dayless, isn’t it?” Michael asked, as soon as we were out of earshot. “She’s faking her project results.”

  “Aye. She’d come down at night, switch the rabbits’ collars and move ’em from one cage to another, so it looked like they were getting better at avoiding the magica.”

  I suddenly remembered the first time I’d seen the professor, descending to the yard from a tower I’d thought empty because all the lights were out. I may have been lucky she’d chosen to scream.