Unusual Suspects: Stories of Mystery & Fantasy

by Dana Stabenow

“Old fogy’s got the duke’s ear,” the dwarf said. “Way I hear it, this could be the last year for the conference if they make him headmaster.”

  It wasn’t just college gossip, Gwynn realized. Everyone had heard about the possibility that Horatio might take over as headmaster.

  Gwynn stared down at Master Horatio. He was chewing away steadily, while frowning at Carima. A wave of anger swept over Gwynn and she fought hard to keep from wishing him harm. You never knew, with so many mages around, who might sense a wish like that or what ill use they could make of it.

  Suddenly, Master Horatio stopped chewing and looked straight up at Gwynn. She quickly dropped her eyes to her plate and tried to think of nothing but the food she was eating. But every bite seemed drier than the last, and she wished she had stayed in her own quiet room, eating bread and cheese.

  Maybe Master Horatio was wishing the same thing. When Gwynn stole another glance at him, she saw him reaching for a platter of food, then pausing for a split second to make a slight gesture—a poison-sniffing spell.

  Evidently Master Horatio knew how little liked he was.

  Finally, the banquet came to an end. A servant tossed one last dish on their table—a bowl filled with steaming-hot linen towels. Down at the head table, two servants were circulating with the fancier version—instead of the communal bowl, a platter with individual towels, neatly folded into flower shapes. Pretty, but all separate like that, probably lukewarm by the time they got around to everyone, Gwynn thought, as she buried her face in the comforting warmth of her own towel.

  “Disgraceful!” she heard Master Horatio say. Gwynn frowned and pulled away the towel to glance down. Did he have something against cleanliness? Evidently not. He was scowling at Master Radolphus, not the hot towels.

  “I won’t stand for it,” Master Horatio said. He was absently reaching out for the towel platter with one hand and shaking the forefinger of the other at Radolphus. “If you won’t take any action, then I’ll—”

  He froze, suddenly, holding the towel in one hand, his other forefinger still pointing at Radolphus. And then he vanished with noise like a peal of thunder and a flash of light so bright Gwynn was temporarily blinded.

  Before the purple afterimages had cleared from her eyes, Gwynn was up and running for the Maestro’s study to fetch the battered carpetbag in which he kept his traveling magic kit. Justinian would want to investigate this strange happening. And while he wouldn’t necessarily need his carpetbag—he was fond of saying that true mages relied on the contents of their skulls, not their spellbooks—carrying the bag let Gwynn make her way to the Maestro’s side un-challenged.

  In her brief absence, the hall had become a beehive of magical activity. The alchemists, potion-makers, and apothecaries had seized every bit of food and drink on the head table and were testing, sampling, and squabbling. Every window held an astrologer, pointing his traveling scope at the sky and scribbling diagrams. Tarot spreads jostled with crystal balls and scatterings of runes or bones. One mage was pouring colored sand into intricate patterns. Another was throwing powders into a small brazier, sending up puffs of variously colored smoke.

  The college mages seemed to be focused less on the food and more on the remaining linen towels. Everywhere you looked, you saw one of them studying a towel with a magnifying glass, holding one up to the light, or making magical gestures over one. Gwynn thought this seemed more sensible than what most of the other practitioners were doing—she couldn’t shake from her mind the image of Master Horatio with one hand pointing at Radolphus and the other holding the towel. But from the mages’ expressions, they didn’t seem to be learning much from the damp linens.

  “Good work,” the Maestro said, when Gwynn appeared at his side with the bag. “I don’t need it yet, but keep it handy. Sooner or later this lot will calm down, and we can get something done.”

  “Surely with so many mages trying, they’ll figure out what happened soon,” Gwynn said.

  “Not likely,” Justinian said. “The problem is there’s too bloody much magic in this room already. Odds are the attack was a magical one, so anything that could possibly have been used to trigger it will show a certain amount of magical residue—but that’s about as helpful as finding flour in the kitchen on baking day. Anything that’s been in the hall for more than five minutes will have some degree of magical residue. We’ve had adepts in here all day doing demonstrations. Apprentices practicing their homework. The cleaning staff using spelled brooms and dustcloths to ensure the hall was spotless for the banquet. So even if the evidence didn’t go up in smoke with Horatio, good luck separating traces of the crime from all those other traces—and that’s before all these amateur forensic wizards began cluttering up the atmosphere with their efforts.”

  “We don’t even know for sure the killer used magic,” Radolphus said. “Could have been poison. Or a knife in the ribs. No matter what he used, odds are it disappeared with Horatio.”

  “Yes,” Justinian said. “The old goat would have to be a banger.”

  “A what?” Gwynn asked.

  “A banger. He didn’t approve of necromancy.”

  “He didn’t approve of much,” Gwynn said.

  “No, but he was especially down on necromancy,” Justinian said. “A banger’s someone who casts a spell to ensure that when he dies, his body will explode and incinerate. Remember that even the best necromancer needs at least a tiny bit of the remains to work with. But whatever’s left of Horatio’s all blown to dust and spread all over the hall.”

  “Couldn’t we dust the hall and let the necromancers use that?”

  “Too mixed up. For every bit of Horatio, you’d have a hundred bits of somebody else. Fingernail parings, bits of dead skin, cat dander—you could aim to call up Horatio and find yourself trying to interrogate that old one-eared ginger tom Cook used to have in the kitchen to keep down the mice.”

  Though some of the necromancers were sweeping up piles of dust and sifting them into bags—hoping, Gwynn supposed, to hit on a pile that contained a sufficiently high percentage of Horatio to be useful.

  “You’ve got to admire the killer’s nerve,” Radolphus said.

  “And his skill,” Justinian added. “Whoever did this knew that the best magicians in the duchy would all be here, and that they’d all insist on investigating. But look at it!”

  The more traditional magicians from the college faculty had apparently despaired of finding a corner quiet enough to hear themselves chant and were packing up and relocating. But their departure did little to calm the chaos in the hall. A quarrel had broken out between a dervish and a tarot reader whose cards had been scattered and torn by the dervish’s dance, and it looked likely to escalate into a full-scale brawl as more and more guests took sides.

  “I fear we won’t be solving anything here,” Justinian said, with a sweeping gesture to the hall.

  “You think it’s unsolvable?” Radolphus asked. His face looked drawn and anxious.

  “No, but we’ll be solving it here,” Justinian said, tapping one temple. “Let’s go back to my study, Gwynn. You had a front-row seat for this, up in the musicians’ gallery. I want to hear what you saw.”

  “I’ll come too, if I may,” Radolphus said. “Since I’m one of the prime suspects, I’ve put the seneschal in charge.”

  Back in the study, Justinian and Radolphus settled down, and Gwynn described everything she’d seen and heard from the balcony. To no avail.

  “Still puzzling,” Radolphus sighed.

  “Still an utter bloody bafflement,” Justinian said. He got up, stirred the fire with the poker in an irritated manner, and strode over to the cabinet where he kept the wine and glasses.

  Gwynn hurried to fetch another log. To her dismay, she discovered another little folded paper animal balanced on top of the woodpile. Anyone reaching for another log would almost automatically pick up the tiny cat to put it aside. And when Justinian opened the cabinet, Gwynn saw little angular paper birds peeking out of
every goblet. Had Gwynn missed them earlier, or had Carima been skulking around again?

  Master Justinian simply tipped the little paper toys out onto the shelf. He appeared oblivious to them, but Gwynn noticed he had been careful not to touch them all the same. Had he set off one of the spells, she wondered? Or did he know what they were beforehand? And if he knew, why didn’t he do something? Get rid of the dangerous things?

  Silly question, she told herself; this was the man who had once let a wounded viper stay in his study because it was too cold outside. He wouldn’t care about the danger of a few small bespelled objects. He was probably going to take the origami figures apart and study them when he got around to it.

  “Blast,” Radolphus said. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time, what with all the rumors that the duke was going to put Horatio in my place. The duke’s bound to wonder if I had anything to do with it. And the longer it takes us to find a solution, the more convinced he’ll be.”

  “Nonsense,” Justinian said. “Why would you kill Horatio at the banquet, with so many inconvenient witnesses around, when you could have knocked him off quietly at any time?”

  “Thank you,” Radolphus said. “Though I’d find it more reassuring to hear that you can’t possibly imagine me a murderer.”

  “Reassuring and irrelevant. You know very well I can’t, but that won’t convince anyone in Horatio’s camp. We’ll just have to figure out what other mage did kill him.”

  “Doesn’t have to be a mage,” Radolphus said. “If it was poison, anyone could have done it. We’ll know soon enough. We’ve got adepts scouring the kitchen as well as the dining hall. Someone’s bound to find something.”

  “If someone used poison, we’d find it, which is why a clever murderer wouldn’t use poison,” Justinian said.

  “Besides, he was scanning everything for poison,” Gwynn said.

  “Except the towels,” Justinian said. “And they’re not telling much.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a damp wad of linen, and frowned at it.

  “Is that Master Horatio’s towel?” Gwynn asked.

  “No, that would have gone up in smoke with him,” Justinian said. “This one’s mine. But if it was a spell that did Horatio in, it would have to have been cast on all the towels—there would be no way anyone could ensure he’d get one particular towel from the platter.”

  “Besides, if the towels were bespelled, wouldn’t Master Horatio have noticed?” Gwynn asked. “For that matter, wouldn’t everyone at the head table?”

  “No, because we were all expecting bespelled towels,” Horatio said. “The duty mage in the kitchen would have cast a stasis spell to keep them hot until they reached the tables—just as he did with all the food.”

  “Your food, maybe,” Gwynn muttered.

  Justinian was gesturing over the towel and frowning.

  “Nothing, I assume,” Radolphus said.

  “Too much. Remnants of the stasis spell. Faint signs of other kinds of magic that would have been in the air at the banquet, most of them relatively harmless—light spells, poison sniffings, beauty spells. None of them dangerous. Also traces of bleach from the laundry, and the rosewater they scented the water with.”

  “Rosewater?” Gwynn said. “Could that be significant? We didn’t get rosewater up in the minstrels’ gallery. Of course, we just got big bowls of hot towels, not those fancy folded ones.”

  “If he had a reaction to the rosewater, you mean?” Justinian asked. “The way Master Killian breaks out in hives and has trouble breathing when he eats a crayfish by mistake? It’s a thought. Could also have been something he ate that his body reacted to.”

  “Of course, you’d have to know Master Horatio rather well to know he couldn’t tolerate rosewater or crayfish or whatever,” Radolphus said. He got up and strolled over to the cabinet with his empty wineglass in his hand. “And he’s never shown the slightest anxiety over what’s in his dinner, as long as there’s plenty of it. No, my money’s on a spell of some sort, targeted to Horatio.”

  “Then why can’t we find any traces of it?” Justinian said, frowning at the rectangle of linen. “I wouldn’t expect it to be easy, but we should be able to find some faint trace…”

  Gwynn suddenly realized that Radolphus had spotted the little origami birds lying on the shelf and was reaching to touch one.

  “Don’t touch that!” she shouted.

  They shouted. She and the Maestro had uttered the very same words, in unison.

  “Don’t touch what?” Radolphus said. He had frozen, one foot about to take a step, one hand hovering between the wine bottle and the little folded creatures.

  “The little paper birds,” Gwynn said. “They’re bespelled.”

  “With what I thought was a relatively tailored spell,” Justinian added.

  “Tailored to what?” Gwynn asked.

  “Not you, certainly,” Justinian said. “If I’d known—go ahead and touch one,” he said, turning to Radolphus. “They’re annoying, not dangerous.”

  Rather hesitantly, Radolphus picked up a bird. He blinked in surprise, then he dropped the bird and his face assumed a bemused expression.

  “How interesting,” he murmured. “And rather ingenious. But quite unscrupulous. Am I correct in assuming that Carima is behind this?”

  “Yes, and I have no idea how it’s done,” Justinian said. “I spent several hours this afternoon trying to find out, with no luck. I didn’t even pick up the fact that they were completely indiscriminate spells. If I had—”

  He glanced at Gwynn and shook his head.

  Gwynn felt better at her own lack of success with the paper animals.

  “No trace left behind,” Radolphus said, peering down at the bird. “Just the ordinary residue you’d get from anything that had been in an atmosphere with so much magic.”

  He was leaning close to the bird, but with his hands clasped behind his back, as if afraid to touch it.

  “You can pick it up if you like,” she said. Radolphus continued to stare at the bird, so Gwynn reached over and picked it up herself. “Only paper now,” she said. She undid a few of the folds and shook the entire paper out flat. A few crumbs of gingerbread fell out of the folds and onto the table.

  “That’s it!” Justinian exclaimed. “That’s how it was done!”

  Gwynn noticed that he was staring not at the paper but at the gingerbread crumbs.

  Radolphus was gesturing over another of the little paper birds.

  “You can tell they’re bespelled, if you bother to check,” he said. “But it’s so faint that you might not notice it if you weren’t looking for it. Especially in the banquet hall, with so much magic swirling around. The stasis spell alone would pretty much drown it out. Still—however depraved he would have found these, I doubt if the shock would have killed him. More likely set him off on a rant, and wouldn’t someone have noticed if Carima handed him one?”

  “But it wasn’t a paper bird,” Gwynn said. “It was the linen towel.”

  “Precisely,” Justinian said. “And there’s a good reason we found no trace of a deadly spell in the towel. The spell was never in the towel—it was caught up in the folds.”

  “And Master Horatio was at the far end of the table—by the time he got his towel, everyone else had touched theirs,” Gwynn added.

  “Thereby dissipating the spell harmlessly,” Justinian said, with a nod.

  “They weren’t that elaborately folded,” Radolphus said.

  “I imagine once you’ve mastered the technique, you can accomplish a lot more with much less folding,” Justinian said. “And the spell that killed Horatio must have been a lot more accomplished than these silly birds. For one thing, it was tailored to him, or we’d have seen a lot more casualties.”

  “You don’t think Carima did it, then?” Radolphus asked.

  “I think she’s still learning the technique.”

  “Yes,” Gwynn said. “Remember the way she kept folding things, over
and over, all day—it’s what we’re always taught to do when we’re first learning a technique. Do it over and over until we don’t even have to think about it.”

  “Rather alarming that she could do it right in the room without either of you noticing she was spellcasting,” Radolphus said.

  “Of course, these little toys don’t really do that much,” Justinian said.

  “They do enough,” Radolphus muttered. Gwynn noticed that his face had turned bright red. “Absolutely unprincipled, leaving those things around where impressionable young minds could find them.”

  “But consider what she could have done if she were better at this folding magic, whatever it is,” Justinian said. “And someone is. That’s the person we want.”

  “The witches,” Radolphus said.

  “One of the witches. I doubt if it was an official plan. This smacks more of the act of a single fanatic.”

  “All the same, they’re not going to react well if we start asking them which of their number is a murderess. And if we show too much interest in this paper-folding spell technique, whoever did it will get the wind up.”

  They both frowned and stared at the little paper birds.

  How maddening to know how it was done and still not know who did it, Gwynn thought. She brushed the gingerbread crumbs off the table and found herself thinking that if, no, when the Maestro identified the killer, Cook might enjoy hearing that her gingerbread had played an important part in solving the puzzle.

  “Cook,” she said aloud. “She was complaining yesterday about all the extra people underfoot in the kitchen, temporary help from the village, servants of the visiting delegates. And there was an old woman I’d never seen before sitting in the kitchen, folding laundry. At least, that’s what I thought she was doing. I bet she was bespelling the towels. If we didn’t spot the folding as spellcasting, there’s no way Cook would—but if she saw the old woman again, Cook would recognize her.”

  Justinian and Radolphus looked at each other.

  “Worth a try,” Justinian said. “Let’s go find Cook. No, you stay here, sprout,” he added, as Gwynn got up to follow them. “If this gets unpleasant, Radolphus and I can take care of ourselves.”