Penric's Fox: Penric and Desdemona Book 3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Or bow-woman,” murmured the listening assistant, almost inaudibly.

  “Or he collected them after,” said Oswyl.

  “Mm.”

  Pen eyed the arrows’ penetration. “He was either close, or had a bow with a really strong draw. If the latter, probably a man. I… think not the former.” He cast the junior locator an apologetic nod.

  “Why not?” asked Oswyl—intent, not skeptical.

  “One reason to murder a sorcerer that leaps to my mind”—Penric cleared his throat—“is to steal their demon.”

  Inglis’s head turned at this. “People really try that?”

  “Yes,” sighed Pen.

  “It wouldn’t work with a Great Beast!”

  “Lucky for shamans. But if the killer was after the demon, he’d want to be as close to the sorcerer as possible. A knife, not a bow, would be the weapon of choice. About the only way one could get more distance is by that Roknari trick of a throwing the sorcerer into the sea with a leaking cushion and sailing away as fast as possible. A bow suggests a murderer who very much did not want to be lumbered with his victim’s demon.”

  Oswyl frowned. “What’s the range that a demon can jump?”

  “It,” Pen began, but then realized he didn’t have to offer a guess. “Desdemona, can you speak to that?”

  “It varies with the strength of the demon,” said Des, “but a long bowshot would certainly stretch it to its limits.”

  Oswyl’s eyes narrowed as he stared back and forth from the body to the encircling woods. “Or there were two. The bowman at a distance, the other close up.” He did not look as if the thought pleased him.

  It wasn’t an impossible scenario, and it did account for the demon, Pen had to grant.

  “It had to have happened before dark last night,” suggested Inglis, “to make that shot—twice—at that range.”

  “Unless she bore a lantern,” said Oswyl. Everyone looked around. No lantern lay broken or rolled away, but it might have been carried off like spent arrows.

  “A sorcerer can see in the dark,” Pen pointed out. “She might not have needed one.”

  “A bowman can’t,” said Inglis, clearly still taken with his own theory.

  “Unless he’s another sorcerer,” put in Pen. “Although in that case, he wouldn’t need to keep his distance.”

  Oswyl groaned. “Anything else you can tell me?”

  “A sorcerer is very hard to kill,” Penric began, rather in the teeth of the evidence before them.

  “Sorcerers with experienced demons are very hard to kill,” Desdemona corrected this, “if their demons wish to protect them. A young demon will be less adept. But if any demon wishes to throw off an unwanted rider, it’s not any great challenge.”

  Three people stared at him oddly. Penric went on in a louder voice, “What I was about to say is, that suggests this sorceress was taken by surprise, by ambush, and so was her demon.”

  Oswyl rubbed his toe into the dirt, his expression growing distant with this visualization. “Or the murderer was someone she trusted. Or murderers, gah.”

  Penric grimaced, a little sickened at the picture of the woman, or anyone, really, lured out and so betrayed. “I suppose so.”

  Oswyl’s head tilted as he studied the body. “I suppose she really was a sorceress? Speaking of complications. Because anyone could throw on a coat with a braid pinned to it. Or pin one on someone.”

  She’d certainly been wearing the coat when she’d died, by the blood soaking it. Penric knelt and fingered the braid, which was stiff and clean, comparable to his own after less than its first year’s use. Des…?

  Oh, yes. There is… an emptiness, here in this husk. Hard to describe, but distinctive enough. As if the place where the soul had resided is stretched larger than usual.

  Huh. Pen said aloud, “Yes, she was. Which means that the chapterhouse of the Bastard’s Order in Easthome should house a bailiff of sorcerers who is her master, and who can identify her. I expect a great many of our questions may be answered there.”

  He tested her hand for rigor, something that Oswyl had doubtless already done, and had more practice at than Pen, too. The stiffness might be starting to pass off, but then, the day was warm. Amberien? Helvia? he called on the two sorceress-physicians numbered among Des’s prior riders. Can you add anything?

  Helvia answered, Not really. Too many variables. Late yesterday or last night may be as close as you can come.

  Pen blew out his breath and stood up. “I do wonder why she was just left like this. Surely the murderer could have delayed discovery, perhaps indefinitely, by digging some shallow grave. He’d had time. Or hadn’t he, and in that case, why not?”

  “Add the question to the list,” said Oswyl. “I promise it won’t be the last. Meanwhile, spread out and see if there is any more this clearing has to say. Mute things may sometimes give more telling testimony than witnesses. And then we’ll take this poor woman home.”

  Pen walked about, looking, and Des looked through his eyes. He mostly found a great deal of nothing. No lantern, no footprints, no dropped objects. No demon. Oswyl’s dual-murderers idea seemed ever more plausible. “Or,” he commented to Oswyl aloud, “it could have been one murderer, of either sex, and one hired mercenary with a bow. Such ruined men will kill for surprisingly little money.”

  Oswyl grunted. “I hate those instances. With no connection to the dead person, men like that are hard to trace.”

  Circling the body once more, Penric mulled, “I have to… not take it back, exactly, but—a sufficiently expert bowman might put two shafts in the air at once, possibly before he realized that shape in the gloaming was a woman and not a deer. And then, horrified at his deed, run off. Accounts for everything.” Except the demon.

  “How likely is this?”

  City-bred Oswyl was no archer, Pen recalled, despite his other skills. “I could have, when I was in practice. Well, I hope not the part about mistaking a woman for a deer.”

  “That’s… a very tempting simplification.” Oswyl didn’t look like a man tempted. He looked like a man who had just bitten into something with a bad taste. Again. “I won’t dismiss it from the list just yet. But it needs verification. Everything needs verification.”

  The lay dedicat from the village arrived, carrying a basket and leading an older woman. She turned out to be the Weir temple’s divine, the one who had sent so directly to the Father’s Order when her lad had come gasping back to her at dawn with news of his find. The assistant locator accepted the basket gratefully, diving into it for the food, some of which she pressed on Oswyl. Oswyl munched standing—from his prior knowledge of the man, Pen was fairly sure he hadn’t yet stopped to eat today.

  The local divine solemnly examined the dead woman, and agreed with her dedicat that the corpse was no one they’d ever seen before, no member of her village flock or from the farms round about. A stranger up from Easthome, her tone implying the Hallow King’s seat was a dangerous sort of fleshpot where one might find murderers or worse on any corner. It made Des snicker. You could fit five of Easthome in the capital of Darthaca, and ten in old Imperial Thasalon. She has no idea what a fleshpot is. Pretty city, though, I’ll grant it that.

  Inglis, who had gone off to take a wider circuit through the woods, still looking for the bowman’s stand, came back then with a third arrow in his hand. Thala watched him curiously.

  “Aye, same fletching,” Inglis muttered, comparing it to the shafts in the corpse’s back. “It was just standing in the soil”—he pointed into the trees where the slope fell toward a distant secluded stream—“but there was a bit of this stuck to it.”

  He offered up a tuft of coarse ruddy hair. Pen took it and sniffed. “Fox.”

  “So I make it,” agreed Inglis.

  Everyone stared at the scrap, doubtless all trying to fit it into the multiplicity of scenes they’d imagined to account for the abandoned body. Oswyl finally shook his head and took charge of the shaft, and Inglis pock
eted the fur. And then they all joined in the task of carrying the woman’s body to their cart. The local divine signed a melancholy blessing upon it as they arranged it in the limited space as decently as possible.

  Pen turned the cart around to head back downhill, swinging aboard as Inglis took up the reins and urged their tired horse into motion once more. The two locators mounted and fell in behind, making a rudimentary sort of cortege.

  Pen hoped they’d learn the woman’s name soon. He was uncomfortable thinking of her as just the corpse, not that every person wouldn’t share that demotion in time. They turned onto a wider road, and the carthorse, perhaps recognizing the way home, began pulling less dispiritedly. Oswyl rode up beside Pen.

  “We really have to find that demon,” Pen told him.

  Oswyl shrugged. “Bastard’s Order business; I yield it to you. The problem of justice for this dead woman presses more on me than concern for a creature who by its nature cannot die.”

  “Well, then, you might also reflect that the demon was the closest possible witness to the murder.”

  Oswyl’s brows flew up. “Can a demon be a reliable witness? How in the world could it be called to take oath and testify?”

  “It would depend on the demon. Desdemona could.”

  Oswyl took this in, nonplussed, then shook his head, muttering, “Magic dogs. Demons. I swear to the Father, my inquiries never used to be this strange.” Distancing himself temporarily from the tangle, he pushed his horse ahead.

  *

  Easthome, lying along the river Stork, was already outgrowing the city walls rebuilt just a generation ago. The crude hearse and its escort circled through the outlying houses to the south gate, which put them closest to the heights dubbed Templetown, overlooking the red-roofed spread of Kingstown below. Penric and Inglis dismounted from the cart to give the balky horse less load to pull uphill, and also to keep it moving along through the more crowded streets. Passersby stared at the body inadequately wrapped in the picnic cloth, eyed the two Grayjays riding behind, swallowed any urge to call questions, and signed themselves.

  The chapterhouse of the Bastard’s Order lay two streets behind the great stone bulk of the city’s, and the Weald’s, main temple. The old wooden merchant’s mansion that had formerly housed the servants of the white god had burned down twenty years ago, and been replaced with a fine new edifice, built more to the purpose, in the cut yellow stone of this country. As the chief chapterhouse of the realm, and in close competition with its sibling Orders for the other four gods, its architecture was high, balanced, and austere, not nearly as makeshift as the more provincial chapterhouses Pen was used to. It made him feel rather provincial himself.

  Thala went to pound on the door and summon the porter. Despite the heat of the late afternoon—early evening by now in the long summer light—Oswyl paused to reorder his shirt and button up his vest before turning to help the other two shift the body out of the cart. The porter emerged, straight-backed in his tabard with its emblem of two white hands, fingers curled and thumbs out, pointing both up and down. He opened his mouth to demand the visitors’ business, but it stayed open in dismay as he took in their burden. “Oh, no,” he breathed. The recognition was instant; clearly, they’d chosen the right destination for the dead woman.

  “First,” said Oswyl to him, “let us get her off the open street.”

  “Aye, sir.” The porter gave way at once, admitting them to a spacious stone-paved hallway where they lowered their sad freight to the floor.

  “Her braids declared her one of yours, and gave her rank and calling,” said Oswyl, “but told us nothing else. Can you give us her name?”

  “Aye, sir. That’s Learned Magal. She’s been missing all day, and her bed was not slept in, but we thought she’d just gone to visit one of her children.”

  “Do you know when she last left the house? Or when you last saw her do so?”

  “She was in and out several times yesterday. I don’t really remember if, if they don’t match up. The night porter might have more to add. He comes on in an hour.”

  Oswyl nodded. “I understand she has an overseer of sorcerers here. He or she should probably be the first informed.”

  “That would be Learned Hamo. I’ll fetch him down at once, Locator.” He stared, still shocked, at the form at their feet. “Where did you find her?”

  “In a wooded tract in the hills, about ten miles out of Easthome,” said Oswyl, watching the porter’s face.

  It crimped in confusion. “Whatever was she doing there?”

  “Not a place she usually frequents, then?”

  “Not as far as I know, sir. Here, I’ll get the Learned.” The shaken man hurried away up the stairway.

  He came scuffing back down very soon followed by an older man, gray-haired, in the workaday robes of a divine. It didn’t take the silver cord in the braids pinned to his left shoulder to tell Pen what he was, and Desdemona controlled a slight stiffness.

  Will you be all right with another demon this close? Pen asked her in worry.

  Oh, aye. At this rank, we are both tame Temple demons. Think of it like two people’s spouses who can’t abide each other, but feign civility for their mates’ sakes.

  Hamo’s mouth, too, fell open in a huff of dismay at what lay in his hall. “No mistake, then.”

  “The locators brought her in, sir, and, um… these gentlemen,” the porter supplied. That last was probably meant as a politeness, given Pen’s and Inglis’s grubby day-in-the-country garb, but he left his superiors to sort themselves out, stepping back. Though not very far.

  Hamo knelt to touch the woman’s face, then signed himself, lips moving in some short prayer. His jaw clenched as he took in the blood and the stubs of the arrows. He rose and turned to Oswyl, face more deeply lined than a moment ago. “What happened?”

  “Her body was found by a lay dedicat of the village temple…” Oswyl went on to summarize the early morning’s events, how he came to be called out on the inquiry, and what he’d first found in the clearing. “I could see at once I wanted a Temple sensitive, and I knew Shaman Inglis and Learned Penric to be fishing not far from there, so I conscripted them to my aid.”

  A look of relief came over Hamo’s face, as the uncanniness he could very well sense about the two strangers was slotted into a settled place. He might not know Inglis, but he obviously was well-up on his colleagues and rivals in magics across town at the Royal Fellowship, for he merely nodded and said, “Shaman Inglis. You bear a Great Wolf, I think?”

  “Yes, Learned,” said Inglis, returning the nod in like kind.

  “Shaman Inglis has some prior experience in my inquiries,” added Oswyl on his behalf. Of course, he didn’t say on which side. Inglis controlled his wince.

  “And, Learned Penric…?” Hamo’s face held the usual doubt, given the way the claimed rank clashed with Penric’s apparent youth.

  “Learned Penric of Martensbridge”—Penric favored him with a short bow—“court sorcerer to Princess-Archdivine Llewyn of Martensbridge. I followed in Her Grace’s train on her visit for her great-nephew’s name-day ceremonies, and some other Temple business here in Easthome she means to accomplish at the same time.” Given that Llewyn was aunt to the Hallow King, and the mewling infant in question his newborn heir, Pen, too, left Hamo to sort it out for himself.

  “Ah!” Hamo sounded enlightened rather than taken aback. “I believe I have heard something of your story.” His eyes narrowed. “You inherited Learned Ruchia’s demon, yes? I thought I recognized that extraordinary density.”

  “You knew Ruchia?” asked Penric, interested. Although now was not the time to follow it up.

  “We met once or twice.” Also recognizing the diversion, he waved it aside for a much more urgent concern. “You saw where Magal lay? Her soul was not”—he swallowed—“astray or sundered, I trust?”

  “Seemingly not.”

  Hamo’s shoulders slumped in relief. “That, at least,” he muttered, and tapped his li
ps in a brief prayer of gratitude to their mutual god.

  There followed some time devoted to physical necessities: carrying the sorceress’s body to a decent temporary rest in a sort of infirmary at the far end of the house, sending for the female physician Oswyl recommended as working often with his Order’s unhappy (Penric read it gruesome) inquiries, requisitioning a dedicat to take the locators’ horses back to their mews and the carthorse back to its livery. Junior Locator Thala, perhaps expecting to be sent off on this lowly task, brightened at being allowed to stay by Oswyl’s side.

  They eventually fetched up at what was clearly Hamo’s working office on the third floor; crowded shelves, writing table piled high with papers, not quite enough chairs, a lapse Hamo repaired by stealing one from a neighboring chamber.

  As soon as they were seated—not settled, Pen gauged unsettled was closer to describing the mood in the room—Oswyl began in what must be practiced formality.

  “I am sorry for the loss of your colleague—and friend?”

  “Both, I hope,” said Hamo.

  “But I must ask a great many questions.”

  “Please do,” sighed Hamo. “This is… this is horrible. Mags is lying downstairs, while some sundered fool is out there… Whatever you require, Locator.” And Pen didn’t need second sight to read the sincerity in his voice. Thala removed a little notebook and a lead stylus from her vest, and sat back looking attentive.

  “First, I must know Learned Magal’s kin. The porter mentioned children?”

  “Yes, two, a daughter and a son. Her daughter lately made a very good marriage to a silversmith, and her son is apprenticed to an instrument maker. Both here in Easthome. Oh gods, I must send someone to tell them, or, no, I should go—”

  “I will undertake that task next, Learned. It’s in my mandate for such tragedies, and such close kin should not be told second-hand.”

  Hamo looked relieved, and gave up the names and addresses of the two, which the assistant jotted down.

  “And a husband?” Oswyl asked. Given that Magal was a member of the Bastard’s Order, the presence of children did not necessarily imply the presence of a husband, howsoever it required a father.