“That is their traditional method,” the handsome Constable agreed.
“So what do you wish me to determine?”
“Their identities, for one. Then the identities of their murderers. Any information you could provide about the nature of the quarrel would be helpful,” he added, after consideration.
“You place a great store in my powers,” she said, evenly. There just weren’t spells written for that sort of thing. She would have to improvise.
“The second greatest mage in the kingdom should be able to level some keen insight into the affair,” he continued, diplomatically. “And as your husband is ranging the northern roads for a few days, I’m assuming that you may find your evenings lacking in entertainment.”
“So snuggling with a corpse or six is an idle amusement?” she sighed. “What my social life has become!”
As it turned out, Pentandra’s baculus, for which she was having a difficult time finding a name, did most of the work for her. As she cast her gaze over the half-dozen victims, the magic rod helpfully assembled key details for her review, things she might not have thought to consider on her own.
“The first is Wilderborn,” she declared, moments after beginning. “A fifth child, well-bred until his teenage years, then near-starved for a few years. He’s come out of it recently. He has worked as a smith, armorer, or farrier recently. His fingers recently wore three rings, two of silver, one of gold. Judging by his shoes he was a frequent visitor to the docks and taverns of every sort.”
“Good, good,” the constable nodded, making notes on parchment, as well as sketching the body elegantly with his pen. “Anything else?”
Pentandra bent her rod closer to the body, and willed it to do a more in-depth inspection. “Yes,” she said, a few moments later. “He was terrified just before he died. Terrified and resentful, as if he’d been betrayed. He’d recently had a tooth pulled, and gotten a shave . . . something about the barber. The barber was the man who betrayed him,” she said, with a measure of assurance. “Where was this man found?”
“There are two barbers in that district,” the constable nodded, excitedly. “I will put a watch on both.”
They continued with the next body, and the next, until Pentandra’s magic had revealed intimate details about each victim usually beyond the ken of normal investigation. When they were done with the last, she felt as if she had taken six brutal lovers in a row.
“Wine, my lady?” the constable asked. “I believe it’s about time for luncheon.”
“Wine would be good,” Pentandra agreed, tiredly. “So I have given you six lives, Constable. What can you make of them?”
“Actually, quite a picture,” the man said, shuffling his parchment. “Three of the victims you saw this morning were known to have acquired funds to some purpose, and were found in the same district – near to our barber friend. All disappeared after Yule, before our efforts. Two others were found on the opposite side of the district proximate to an inn that caters to merchant carters. They died weeks ago.
“But our Wilderlord . . . the sixth was found in the center of the district, but was not slain there. And his death was more recent. He was a landless knight known to have incurred enough gambling debt with the Crew that he was seeking escape in the Iron Band. They, it appears, do not honor the King’s Forgiveness of their debts. Rather disloyal of them,” he clucked. “But since Sir Auderrei is a noble, unlike the rest of these rascals, his murder takes precedence. That is, I can devote more resources to his murder.”
“I thought you wanted more than a single murderer,” she pointed out, frowning.
“Oh, I do. But this makes some things easier, procedurally. Trust me,” he said, leading her to a chair back in the kitchen. “The Crew and Opilio the Knife wanted to send a message to their new rivals, after the brutal slaying of their thugs. We just received it.”
“How is killing a landless, penniless Wilderlord sending us a message?”
“Opilio is pressed,” reasoned Sir Vemas. “We have quietly slain many of his men, stolen from his coffers not once but twice, and drained his market of future possibilities. All without revealing who we are. From his perspective, the masked men haunting his territory are seeking to dismantle his business, and he suspects one of his rivals in the Brotherhood – who else would dare?
“So he is indicating, through the seemingly casual execution of poor Sir Auderrei, that his operation is not at all damaged. He is demonstrating his authority and power. Ostensibly to his rivals, but really to anyone with the eyes to see the message.”
“Shall I attempt to track the specific murderer?” Pentandra asked, already considering what spells her baculus could use to complete the task.
“Oh, goodness, no,” he smiled. “The Crew regularly rotates those who commit such crimes into other schemes to avoid detection. One of their many feints at the law.”
“Then you plan on arresting them?” she asked.
“No, my lady,” the constable said, gently. “I plan on responding to the ‘message’ with one of my own. It is time for our Woodsmen to come forth from the shadows in a way that will make no mistake about their message,” he said, boldly.
Pentandra frowned. “And how do you propose to do this?”
“Hoods and simple masks have sufficed for our brave fellows up to now. Opilio knows he has a rival, and is being attacked. Let us finally show him the Woodsmen he’s been hearing about. It is time for the masks to come off!”
“Oh, no,” Pentandra said, shaking her head, as she sipped a healthy swallow of wine. “That is not what you need to do. You have invoked their imaginations. Now you must fulfill that promise,” she said, contemplating.
“Could you explain, my lady?” he asked, studying her.
“If you merely remove the masks and expose them as guardsmen – even former guardsmen – then you reveal the scope and nature of your plot. The goal is the destruction of the Crew, not merely their discomfort. Instead, keep the mystery intact.
“If you want to truly uncouple the hold the Crew has on the town, you do not need to boldly challenge them. You need to encourage them to destroy themselves, first, and then attack them from another, unexpected direction. The sigils in town were an excellent piece of foreboding, it must be fulfilled. I think it’s time your assassins were aided overtly by High Magic.” she proposed. “And endowed with monstrous powers.”
“Gangster magi?” he chuckled. “Isn’t that a little out of your scholarly purview?”
“Not as much as you might think,” she answered, diplomatically. “Some of the most famous Remeran vendettas used fictional organizations or secret societies to confuse and manipulate an opponent without revealing themselves. It was an old standard in the Game of Whispers.”
“The Remeran idea of politics,” he supplied.
“Just so,” Pentandra nodded. “The Game of Whispers often included clandestine acts of magic against political foes. Particularly in the early days after the Conquest. It is said,” she said, loftily, “that every great Remeran family of magi has a secret codex of forbidden spells, passed down from generation to generation, to facilitate the house’s needs.”
Sir Vemas smirked, this time. “And I am to assume that you, Lady Pentandra, come from such a great house of magi?”
She snorted. “My family has been practicing magic since the earliest days of the Magocracy,” she replied. “In Perwyn. You may draw your own conclusions. The key, unfortunately, will be disguising that fact,” she said, frowning at the thought. “Even a spellmonger will immediately suspect me, or one of the other High Magi, and anyone with any skills will be assured. Unless we give them another suspect, like the ‘Master of the Wild’. A backwoods sorcerer who came upon a witchstone, for instance, as the songs suggest, raising a band of disciples from the depths of the forests . . .”
“I like that,” Vemas nodded. “We can easily add a band of loyal acolytes to the mysterious myth of the Master of the Wild. It wouldn’t take much st
retch of the imagination to envision a fellow group of dark hedgemagi accompanying the nocturnal army of crazed killers bent on dominating Vorone’s underground.”
“Particularly,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “if those magi were to confront one of the Rats directly. Right now the Crew seems hell-bent to deny there’re any real Woodsmen, despite the bodies piling up. They play it off as a hoax or a joke. Now we must make it so clear that the threat they face is real – and supernatural – that they cannot deny it to themselves or the rest of the ward.”
“How would we demonstrate that?” he asked, soliciting her suggestions.
“Well, if one of them was forced to stare one of them in the eye, and hear it from their own lips, I imagine it would make quite an impression. And remove all doubt that the Woodsmen are real.”
“My lady Pentandra, you have a fascinating imagination,” Constable Vemas praised. “That has just the right mixture of mystification, malevolence, and magic to give us the cover we need! Consider: a few Dark Magi, unsavory fellows who have taken witchstones from the Penumbra, naturally see Vorone as a base for an independent operation . . . and are following the Master of the Wild on his quest for revenge against the Rats! Would that not be plausible?”
“It’s certainly romantic,” Pentandra said, rolling her eyes.
“The idea intrigues me! A cult of mysterious magical assassins, led by some vile creature who took advantage of the war to enrich himself . . . we make the promise of the Master of the Wild a reality.”
“Misdirection is one of Master Minalan’s favorite ploys,” she conceded. “My plan was inspired on his use of news of a false peasant’s uprising to deter the Censorate from chasing him during his honeymoon. Deception is a wizard’s tool. Not to mention the basis for a great deal of Remeran drama. And I do have a taste for theater . . .”
“Opilio might be difficult,” Vemas frowned. “He’s castled himself inside his headquarters, now, and rarely leaves, since his thugs started turning up dead . . . and without his silver. What if we chose one of his rivals, instead, to make the point?”
“Perhaps we can convince one of the other captains to strike at Opilio preemptively.” Pentandra agreed. “Stir him up against Ransung or Harl. Incite him to attack them.”
Constable Vemas considered, “That would be difficult, without extraordinary circumstances. The Rat Crew has very specific rules about inter-crew fighting, as set as those for a formal duel. According to those rules, they are supposed to appeal to their superior for adjudication before they begin hostilities.”
“Would that not be an ideal situation, then?” Pentandra asked. “If we can get their leadership to congregate to settle the matter, we could eliminate them all at a time.”
“Oh, how bloodthirsty you are, in the name of the Duke,” Sir Vemas said, half reprovingly, half in admiration.
“You take issue with my methods?” she asked, surprised. “My lord, I am a Remeran,” she explained with a smirk. “We learn such plots as matters of national history and family honor. I have found few outside of Remere have the temerity to strike at their foes so boldly, yet so quietly, when hindered by the Laws of Luin.”
Her own family had escaped the worst kinds of Remeran feuds and vendettas, thanks to her father’s stable but uninspired leadership, but she was aware of how bad they could become. The merchant houses were particularly bloodthirsty, down along the coast.
“When our duke gave us the command to eliminate the enemies of the realm, my lady, it is under the shadowy Laws of Kulin that we proceed.”
In Remeran noble society the “laws of Kulin” were better known by their old Imperial name, the Game of Whispers. It politely implied the social power of a family willing to step outside of the law, without mentioning the poisonings, ambush attacks, and throat-cuttings, the blackmail, coercion, and corruption that usually accompanied a mere whispering campaign in Remere.
The Game of Whispers and the Laws of Kulin both allowed (or at least acknowledged) all sorts of devious means to accomplish your goals, whether it was for personal, intuitional, or filial gain. They were also used to rationalize all manner of nasty work in the service of the state, Pentandra knew. She never suspected her own family of doing more than dabbling in the Game. She never figured she would be capable of playing it.
That line had been crossed long ago, she realized.
“Yes,” she decided, slowly, “let us target someone who might strike against Opilio, to demonstrate the reality of his situation.”
“We shall kidnap one of the Knife’s rivals,” Vemas decided, “and put to him an ultimatum. Ishi’s tits, I’ll deliver it myself. “A mask and a cloak with a cowl – all very mysterious.”
“I think it needs to be more than a mere domino and cowl, Sir Vemas,” she said, tapping her lip. “What do you think of this proposal . . .?” she asked, as a mischievous look came into her eye.
Sir Vemas loved her plan. Pentandra merely overheard one of the castellan’s drudges complaining of the number of old storerooms that were crammed with old relics from bygone ages. Among them, the debris from generations of social occasions, were dozens of old masks and costumes from masquerades long past, collecting dust and attracting vermin.
Sire Vemas procured dozens of such outfits from the disused palace storerooms without arousing suspicion. The attics and storerooms of the complex were filled with the residue of past revels, and that included a number of masks and costumes for the masquerade fad, when it had last infected the Alshari court. Among them he had found a number of animal masks of cloth, wood, leather and plaster within them, cast-offs of entertainments of yore. Enough to outfit the Woodsmen.
To combat the signature tool of murder the Crew carried, the iron shiv known as a Rat’s Tail, Sir Vemas chose weapons designed to intimidate. While the Rat’s Tail was small and did not leave much of a trace, Constable Vemas wanted the attack on the Crew to send a message as much as eliminate the rogues.
He’d settled on a plain slashing infantry blade for the task, and requisitioned a dozen of ancient make long unused from the depths of the palace armory the next day. They were heavy in the blade, not particularly well balanced, and ungainly for anything but basic combat. But a smith the constable trusted to keep his mouth shut quietly sharpened and altered the swords with jagged edges that would yield a vicious result in their employment, as well as make them lighter.
“A very distinctive edge,” Vemas had said, wickedly, when he had distributed the blades to his guardsmen-turned-gangsters that night in the upper chamber at Boval House. “Heavy, brutal, basic, and at odds with the Crew’s normal subtle style. They will cause as much damage as a goblin’s rusty blade.”
The guardsmen eagerly dug through the variety of masks, many cunningly carved or shaped of parchment and glue.
“Choose wisely,” the constable counseled. “Make sure that you can see and breathe in them, before you make a selection. You may have to fight in them, remember. Do not let your vanity overcome practicality, gentlemen.”
“This is much better than those domino masks,” Carastan said, a bear mask in one hand and a boar in the other. “My jaw is just too distinctive not to be recognized. Only so many men my height in Vorone.”
“Scary things, these,” Mastril said, admiringly. “Hate to see one of these comin’ at me in an alley.”
“That’s the idea,” Pentandra agreed. “These are designed to inspire terror. I’ll add glamours to each of them, to make your foes doubt whether they are artificial . . . or your real faces. So I would avoid the fuzzy, fluffy, and cute,” she advised.
“Oh, I dunno,” Fen the Quick drawled, picking up a particularly battered and moth-eaten woodchuck mask. “I’d piss my tights if I saw this in the moonlight!”
Most of the incipient thugs selected visages of wolves or stags, though the largest among them, Carastan, chose a brown bear for his mask, fitting to his stature.
The light-fingered guardsman Fen the Quick chose a raccoon’s bandit m
ask, and two former ruffians, Mastril and Hanrei, picked tusked boars for their effigies. That allowed them to skulk about through the mists and the snow banks, allowing themselves to be seen from afar in their costume to demonstrate the reality of the ghostly gang
Two weeks earlier, Opilio’s entire treasury disappeared from his strongbox, thanks to Pentandra’s special spellwork. When the enchanted coin one of the merchants paid Opilio’s men was activated, it swallowed all of the silver in a six-foot spherical radius of the coin into a hoxter pocket. The other end of that pocket was anchored on Pentandra’s baculus.
The metaphysical theft yielded almost seven hundred ounces of silver to the Woodsmen, when Pentandra retrieved the coin from the pocket’s other end. More importantly it shorted Opilio dramatically when he was already operating at a loss due to the previous week’s theft. Without money to pay his men, much less send his proper tribute to his master, Opilio was in deep trouble (and debt) with his own organization. With whom he also felt he was struggling.
By now, the Knife was paranoid . . . almost as paranoid as his fellow captain, Ransung Bloodfinger.
“It’s a crescent moon. It’s foggy outside. Let’s go inspire some terror,” Carastan said, once all of his men were costumed beyond recognition. “No fighting, at first. Just let yourselves be seen.”
The Woodsmen trooped out into the darkness and mists of Vorone and made their way to the Market ward, where they spread out into pairs and lurked. They haunted the exteriors of the wildest pubs and taverns, those late-night taphouses the thieves and ruffians of Vorone preferred.
They did nothing, beyond lurking. Each made certain that they were seen. For those drunkards bold enough to approach the mad-looking figures, they heard a single phrase uttered: The Master of the Wild Approaches.
Then they would fade away into the mists, leaving a stammering fool in their wake. And wine-soaked rumors.
Over the course of the next few nights the Woodsmen were seen more often in the ward at night. They instantly became figures of menace. No one wanted to attack them, not when they seemed so frightful. Most who witnessed them swore that the eyes of the animal blinked, glowed, or burned with an eldritch fire. Some insisted that the heads were, indeed, real animals, and supported their theory with wild tales.
Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series Page 29
