Penric's Fox: Penric and Desdemona Book 3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  And himself, for another, Pen reflected. Could wasn’t would. Necessary but not sufficient, as his mentors had tagged arguments in seminary.

  Wegae went on, “Uncle Halber was a passionate hunter, and skilled in all the usual manly sports. Riding, wrestling, you name it.”

  “What exactly happened to him?” asked Oswyl.

  Wegae looked surprised. “Do you not know? I thought everybody did.”

  “Only in broad outline. His was not my case, and those inquirers and justiciars most closely involved were obliged not to gossip about it.”

  Bet they do anyway, murmured Des, in the halls of their house. Even the Father’s devotees are not so inhumanly rigid.

  Hsh, thought Pen back, though he privately agreed.

  “I’m not sure I know that much more myself,” said Wegae. “I was working as a lay dedicat for the Father’s Order at Shallowford at the time, and only had letters from my mother and sister about the matter, and from the lawyers, until the legal issues were settled and I was sent for. My mother was following things more closely here in Easthome, on my behalf. You might ask her. It was all so very disturbing. Although it did involve a Temple sorceress, come to think.”

  “Who?” Oswyl and Penric both asked at once.

  “Not Magal. What was her name?” He knuckled his forehead. “Sverda. Or Svedra, one of those.”

  Pen came off-point, letting his breath back out. “Locator Oswyl has likely heard more of the tale than I have. Could you begin at the beginning?”

  “Insofar as I know it. My aunt was found dead at the bottom of the main staircase of the old manor house, assumed to have broken her neck in an accidental fall, unwitnessed. It would have passed quietly as a private tragedy, but at her funeral no sacred animal signed her soul as taken up. At my mother’s insistence, a Temple sensitive was dispatched at once to look for her ghost, lest her soul be sundered. That was this Learned, um, Svedra. She testified to have found my aunt’s shade, repeatedly acting out a different tale on the stairs. She would have it that she was pushed down by her husband, presumably in the midst of one of their many disputes—I have to admit, she was a notable shrew—”

  “Not normally a capital crime,” Thala muttered almost inaudibly into her notebook, where she’d been industriously jotting.

  “Although any woman married to my uncle, well, never mind. And then, apparently, he descended after her to twist her neck to be sure. It might have started as an accident, but it didn’t seem to have finished as one, or so it was charged. Anyway, Uncle Halber was arrested on the suspicion, and somewhere in the proceedings seems to have gone over the line from protests to self-justifications. Confession of a sort, I suppose, although not repentance.”

  “What happened to your aunt?” asked Penric. “Was she sundered?”

  “At the very last, no. She’d resisted the prayers performed at the stairs to send her on her way until her husband was finally arrested, but then she consented to go to her goddess. The Daughter, in the end, by her second rites. I hope she found some comfort there. She’d had little enough in life.”

  The assistant glanced up from her notebook, and asked curiously, “Can ghosts lie?”

  Oswyl gave her query an approving nod. “I would never take such testimony as definitive on its own without some cross-check. Or several cross-checks, by preference. At most, it is a pointer, one more scent to follow up.”

  Good question, Des, Pen thought. Can ghosts lie?

  Well, they’re not usually any smarter than they were in life… Although they can be mistaken, or still in the grip of the passions that are forcing them to linger. Your friend Oswyl is wise not to take them at face value. As their sundering proceeds, all that fades away, of course.

  “The whole case drew in any number of inquirers and divines and lawyers and judges before it was done,” Wegae allowed, “because of my uncle’s status. If there was any stone left unturned, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I was surprised there was any of the estate left by the time they were all done.”

  Oswyl dipped his chin in rueful understanding of this.

  “How did he come to escape?” asked Pen.

  “He was too lightly guarded, I suppose. He was being kept at Magpie House, not the municipal prison, although he was supposed to be moved there once he was sentenced. He must have had help, and a horse, from somewhere.”

  “How do you know he’s dead?” asked Oswyl.

  “We had a letter from some mercenary captain in Ibra, addressed to kin Pikepool generally in Easthome, a sort of to-whom-it-may-concern missive—I suspect those captains have practice at the task.”

  The news about Penric’s brother Drovo dying in that mercenary camp in Adria had come from such a captain, although additionally from a friend, Pen was reminded.

  “Could it have been forged?” asked Oswyl.

  “I’ve no idea, really.” Wegae paused in brief reflection. “On the whole, I hope not. We gave it to the lawyer to keep with the other estate documents—he should still have it, if you wish to examine it.”

  “Maybe later,” said Oswyl, “should it prove in any way pertinent. We’ve more immediate concerns. May we go up on your lands tomorrow?”

  “Yes, certainly. Would you like me to go with you, to smooth things over? The people there don’t take well to city strangers, and it’s been too long since I visited. I’m supposed to be overseeing it responsibly. The lawyers were very firm on that point.” He pushed up his spectacles and vented a small sigh. “The old manor neither produces nor consumes much, but it can’t be farmed, the timber is hard to extract, and it has no known minerals. I suppose a hunting preserve remains its best use.”

  “That might be helpful,” allowed Oswyl.

  They spent a few minutes arranging a rendezvous for the expedition in the early morning. Wegae himself saw his three visitors to his door, student fashion. Penric wondered if he had not grasped, or just didn’t believe in, the much stiffer public manners of most older men of his rank. (The private manners of barons Penric had no illusions about.) Oswyl seemed something between impressed by this extraordinary courtesy and suspicious; since the latter was his usual mode, Pen gave more weight to the former. The long summer twilight had faded into full dark; the porter lent them a lantern, to be returned on the morrow, which Thala dutifully took charge of.

  As they were making their way back through the shadowed streets of Kingstown, Oswyl said, “That went more easily than most of my encounters with kin lords. I should keep you around, Penric.”

  “Mm, I don’t think it was all my doing. Wegae seems a man who’d rather be back in his university life, except without the poverty. No one misses the poverty. And he probably wouldn’t be willing to give up his marriage for it, either.”

  “Understandable.”

  They were climbing the Templetown stairs when Penric, noting the private moment, thought to ask, “Whatever happened to Inglis’s heartthrob, Tolla kin Boarford? His letters stopped mentioning her, and he’s not said anything to me since I’ve been here.”

  Thala gave a slight twitch, as though she wanted to bring out her notebook, but continued climbing ahead of Oswyl, lantern lifted and eyes resolutely forward.

  Oswyl’s lips twisted, half grimace, half amused. “She became betrothed to someone else. He’s been glum ever since.”

  Pen reflected on this. “How can you tell the difference?”

  Oswyl barked a short laugh. “Glummer, then. I was relieved for him, myself. I did not see how that arrangement could ever prosper, in the long run, after what happened to her poor brother. I thought he should rest content with her forgiveness, which he did surely earn, and not bay for the moon.”

  “Did you say so?”

  “Of course not.”

  Penric grinned, and saved the rest of his breath for the climb.

  Reaching the Templetown heights, they stopped first by what proved to be a sort of boarding house for single female devotees of the Father’s Order, where Oswyl scrupulously s
aw his assistant safely inside. They parted company then, heading toward their respective beds.

  Pen was entirely ready for his. He wondered if he might attend on the princess-archdivine in his day dirt and wash after, to speed things up. He didn’t want to risk knocking at her chambers after she’d retired. And it wasn’t as though he had any definitive news to report, just a mess of miscellaneous information and far too many foxes.

  Des commandeered his mouth to speak aloud, breaking through his bleary musings. “Pen.”

  “What?”

  “Ask Learned Hamo what sorceress held Magal’s demon before her.”

  Pen stopped short in the street, his tilting mind seeming to whirl onto a whole new axis. After a blinking moment, he said, “Huh.”

  “Because there were two victims in that clearing, and Oswyl is only asking after the history of one of them.”

  “A man would have to be mad…”

  “Some men are.”

  “This is a great leap, Des. With not nearly enough evidence to hold it in the air. Oswyl would sniff at my fancies.”

  “So good you are a member of the white god’s order and not the gray’s, then. Are not furious fancies in His gift?”

  “Along with obscene verse, but yes.”

  “Ask, Pen,” she repeated, a little impatiently. “We just need an answer, not an argument.”

  “Aye.” He changed directions and began striding toward the Bastard’s chapterhouse, recalculating people’s bedtimes and willingness to be visited at them by a grubby, overexcited sorcerer. Within a few paces, he was jogging. He wasn’t actually sure if Hamo lived in at the chapterhouse, the way Magal had. Well, the porter would know his address if not. If anyone else besides Pen and Oswyl was likely to be haunting the night over this matter, it was Hamo.

  He arrived breathless to be scrutinized by the night porter, whom they’d briefly interviewed yesterday, and who thus recognized and admitted him even without his whites and his braids. The man tried to make Pen wait in the stone-paved hall while he went to inquire if Hamo would receive him, but Pen dogged his heels, and he hadn’t quite the nerve to insist. Their first stop was Hamo’s work chamber. Pen was not too surprised to see yellow candlelight sifting through the doorway.

  Hamo squinted up from his writing desk, his quill paused in air. He was still dressed in his most formal white tunic from the funeral, although his outer robe and braids hung on a peg on the wall. “Ah. Learned Penric. What brings you to me at this—”

  Pen blurted, “The sorceress who held Learned Magal’s demon before her. Was it a Learned Sverda?”

  Hamo’s gray brows rose in surprise. “Svedra, but yes. Why do you ask?”

  Pen let his shoulders thump against the doorframe. The name felt like a stone thrown into a murky pond, creating agitation but no clarity. “Mention of her came up earlier this evening, in connection with an investigation she once performed as a Temple sensitive.”

  “She performed many such, in her time,” said Hamo. “Why don’t you come sit down? You look a little, ah…” He did not complete the description, but Pen didn’t doubt it. Hamo waved the anxious, and curious, porter back to his post. Deprived of his chance to eavesdrop, the man seemed to depart in some disappointment.

  Pen pulled a chair around and sank into it. And then felt at a loss, his thoughts all so newly disarrayed.

  “What brought up Svedra?” Hamo prompted him, setting aside his quill and papers.

  “I hardly like to say yet. It’s all wild supposition.”

  Hamo’s eyes narrowed. “Go on anyway.”

  “What if—” Penric paused, Oswyl’s remarks about not leading a witness dancing in his head. “Do you remember any of her assignments as particularly fraught?”

  Hamo leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers against each other. “Not especially, but I don’t know them all. I’d only been her supervisor for five years before she had her fatal stroke a few months ago. She’d held her demon for over three decades. I may have been her appointed Temple bailiff, but she was much my elder in age and experience. She mostly chose her own tasks and went where she pleased. Which tends to be the way of senior sorcerers. Sorceresses even more so.” He winced in some memory he did not confide.

  This wasn’t getting there—fast enough—Pen led anyway. “About three years ago, she was called out to lend her Sight and expertise to a domestic murder inquiry involving Baron Halber kin Pikepool, yes?”

  Hamo’s attention sharpened. “An unpleasant fellow, by her remarks. Yes, she was in and out on that several times. Trips to the country, and much back and forthing to the Father’s Order, the city magistrates, and the Hallow King’s court. There were disputes over jurisdictions, which we tried our best to leave to them. The gods having no such boundaries.” He hesitated. “But I thought the man was dead. All disposals in the hands of higher Powers now.”

  “There was a letter. But not a body, nor any eyewitness account of one.”

  “Mm…?”

  “Imagine…” When out on thin ice, move fast, had been a lesson of Pen’s canton mountain boyhood. Did it apply here? “Picture a proud, hard man who has lost everything, and been brought as low as humanly possible, facing an ignoble death. Who did it to himself, but only blamed others.” Indeed, there’s only half a chance his wife was the infertile one, Des put in. “Fled from justice into self-exile, but then, for whatever reason…” Yes, why? Pen was having a hard time positing why a fellow who had got away clear would put himself back at such risk. That’s because you don’t think like that, said Des. Thankfully. “This is all utter speculation, you understand.”

  “Go on, Learned Penric,” said Hamo, more tightly.

  “Suppose he came back for revenge on those he blamed and hated for his downfall. And found the sorceress whose accusation had destroyed him beyond his reach, but her Temple demon… not.” Pen took a gulp of air. “Maybe Magal was no one to him, just a barrier he had to get through to reach his real target.”

  Hamo gripped the table edge, bent his face down, and swore. Short, horrible, heartfelt words.

  Ah. Maybe telling Hamo all this so soon had not been such a good idea. Although witnessing Magal’s body had been dismaying, Pen had to admit there had been an element of stimulating intellectual puzzle to it all. For Hamo, this had to be a much more personal outrage.

  The more so, Des pointed out, as Hamo himself put Magal in this harm’s way, by choosing her to receive Svedra’s demon.

  Ouch, thought Pen weakly. He swallowed, feeling a bit sick.

  When Hamo raised his face, it was gray with new tension. “That is a grotesque idea.”

  “Truly. But it may explain why a woman whom no one disliked…”

  “Yes.” Hamo drew a long breath, letting it out slowly. He lowered his hands from the table edge to his lap, where he clenched them, perhaps to conceal their shaking. After a moment, he said, “Do you really imagine Baron Halber kin Pikepool is still alive? Why?”

  “Well… One hears of such things. There was such a case in Greenwell Town, when I was a boy. A man came back from the wars after his wife had remarried. It was something of a mess. Or men reported lost at sea, who turn up years later.”

  “And how many cases where no one came back, making nothing to remark? No tale worth repeating? One hundred to one? Five hundred to one? The exception always gets more attention than the rule. I’m not sure you should race off down this road too quickly.”

  “I’m not sure I should, either,” Pen said frankly. “But I don’t think I would have evolved the notion at all without Halber’s tale to start the trail of thought.” Des sent him an impression of a throat-clearing noise, and he corrected, “We would have,” which only caused Hamo to squint at him.

  “What does Locator Oswyl think of your theory?”

  “I haven’t tried it on him yet. I can’t imagine it will please him. He prefers firmer evidences.”

  “I thought you were seeking such, today?”

  “Oh.”
Getting practiced, Pen made short work of describing his and Inglis’s day in the woods, the encounter with Treuch, and the elusive scattering of the kin Pikepool foxes. It did not make Hamo look any happier.

  “As a suspect, or at least a man engaged in suspicious activities, this forester Treuch does have the advantage of being certainly alive, and present in the area,” Hamo pointed out.

  “There is that. Baron Wegae didn’t seem to see him as a, a plotting sort of fellow, but who knows? Maybe…” Pen hesitated. “Would you be able to look back over any records the chapterhouse may maintain of Learned Svedra’s assignments, and see if there is anything, mm, overlooked? Other possibilities?”

  Hamo grimaced. “Tomorrow. In full light, yes. I will.”

  “Tomorrow,” Pen went on, “we’re all going up again to look around the old kin Pikepool manor and forest. If the demon is indeed in a fox, and we find it, maybe… it will tell us some more.” How, Pen couldn’t guess.

  “If you do find this fox—or Magal’s demon howsoever contained—bring it to me unharmed.”

  “I’ll try, sir.” Pen hesitated. “What will you do with it?”

  Hamo pressed the heels of his hands hard over his eyes, which emerged blinking and reddened. “I have no idea. Yet.” He added under his breath, “And here I thought I was finally going to sleep tonight…”

  Penric stretched in his chair, the day’s aches catching up with him, his penalty for sitting down. As Hamo did not at once add more, he rose. “I should go. We mean to start out early.”

  Hamo nodded, waving a weary dismissal. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “If we find anything more definite, I’ll try to let you know as soon as I can.”

  “Please.”

  “And if you find anything… I’ll stop back in tomorrow night after we return?”

  “Do, yes.”

  As Penric reached the door, Hamo spoke again. “Penric…”

  “Sir?”

  “If this mad murderer, whosever he may prove to be, is still seeking our demon-fox, and you are seeking this same fox… Well, just be careful up in those woods, yes?”