Scholar's Plot

by Hilari Bell

  “What are you doing here?” the guard asked Fisk.

  “I’m with him,” Fisk said, unhelpfully.

  “The guard released him this morning,” I said. “And I’m here to talk to someone about the project. Perhaps you could bring a professor to speak with us?”

  “Access to the project is restricted.” But the guard’s hand stopped twitching toward his sword.

  “I know that,” I said. “Which is why my friend and I will wait here, while you go fetch someone.”

  His hand went instead to his copper whistle, but as I made no move except to stand patiently, and Fisk did the same, he finally released it.

  “I’ll see if someone will come,” he said. “Stay here.”

  Even then he backed into the tower without taking his eyes off us, and I heard the lock click after the door closed behind him.

  “They should have put the lady professor on guard,” Fisk said critically. “She had twice his nerve.”

  “I heard a woman screaming last night. Wasn’t that her?”

  “Yes, but it was deliberate. In fact, it was the smartest weapon she could have chosen.”

  People whose brains and nerve impress Fisk are rare, and I hoped someone less formidable would come to meet us. So of course the guard returned with a straight-spined dame in a professor’s long gown.

  There aren’t many lady professors. The odds of two being assigned to this project were vanishing small, and I swiftly decided that trying to lie my way in would be ill-advised, as well as unworthy.

  “Madam Professor, I’m Benton Sevenson’s brother. I believe he didn’t forge his thesis, that he’s being framed because of something to do with your project. I’d like to discuss it with you and your colleagues.”

  “Access to the project is restricted.” Her gaze drifted past me. “As your friend here could tell you.”

  “I know,” I said. I didn’t have to look back — I could feel Fisk exuding harmlessness and innocence. ’Tis an act he performs well, having had so much practice. “But doesn’t it trouble you that someone went to such lengths to frame one of your colleagues? Aren’t you curious as to why?”

  “If someone framed him.” Her gaze returned to me. “You haven’t tested the foundation of your argument, young man. Can you prove he was framed?”

  “’Tis why I’m here,” I pointed out. “To find proof, and we’ll be taking a hard look at that forged thesis shortly. But if my theory is right, don’t you want to know the truth?”

  “Sevenson’s brother…” A frown gathered on her brow as she took in my rough, sturdy clothing, hard worn by miles in the saddle. “Michael Sevenson? The one who thinks he’s…”

  “I’m a knight errant,” I said calmly. “In search of adventure and good deeds.”

  I’ve had almost as much practice saying that calmly as Fisk has at pretending innocence, and the guard’s guffaw didn’t ruffle me.

  The professor snorted, as one accustomed to student follies. But her gaze lingered on my face and the frown deepened.

  “I’m sorry for Professor Sevenson,” she said. “But the evidence is clear. He forged his thesis. In any case, access to this project is restricted.”

  “Benton already knows all about it,” I pointed out.

  “Then you should talk to him.” She turned toward the door.

  “Wait,” said Fisk. “I was here last night on another matter. I want to see the madman who used to work for Atherton Roseman. I know the Liege Guard brought him here.”

  “That poor crazy man? Whatever for?” But she’d turned back to listen.

  “I’m … an acquaintance of his,” Fisk said. “I want to see that he’s well-treated. I know better than to hope he’s happy.”

  “Acquaintance,” she repeated. “Not a friend?”

  “I don’t think he has friends,” said Fisk. “But it was Michael and I who got him taken from Roseman … and no gods look after man. No insult intended, but it’s our duty to see he’s being cared for.”

  She didn’t appear to be offended, which I took as a mark in her favor, but she shook her head. “He’s not really involved with the project. In fact, I don’t know what they thought we’d do with someone who has magic, when our project only involves Gifts. But he’s housed in the tower, and I can’t—”

  “Captain Chaldon would agree ’tis our duty to check on him,” I said. “Since the guard brought him to you, ’tis a charge on their honor as well.”

  Mention of the captain made her hesitate.

  “I don’t suppose it does any harm,” she said. “It might please him to see someone he knows. But if I let you in—” her stern gaze turned to Fisk “—no more trying to break into the tower. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” Fisk could have been lying, but I didn’t think he was. Which put something of a crimp in my backup plan.

  “Very well,” the professor said. “You can come in.”

  I brushed past Michael and made my way up the steps. The guard looked nervous about letting me past, and even more uncertain about whether his job was to follow me or keep watch on Michael — who wasn’t coming in, but looks a lot tougher than I do. He was still looking back and forth when I followed the lady into the tower, and shut the door behind us.

  “Thank you, Professor…?”

  “Dayless. And I’m in charge of the project’s operations, so don’t think you can go over my head.”

  “I have no doubt that you’re in charge.”

  It made her stern lips twitch, in a way that reminded me of my sister Judith. As Judith would be in thirty years, if she’d been given authority. I had no doubt this woman was in charge. But…

  “He won’t give up.” I gestured to the door, where Michael waited. “He thinks his brother is innocent, and he’s going to find the truth one way or another.”

  Michael fought for what he believed in.

  “If Professor Sevenson was framed, I hope he does,” she said. “In fact, I hope the truth is revealed even if he wasn’t. But he can’t have access to the project.”

  Inside the tower, one hallway ran along the front of the building, and another down the center, in a T shape. The bottom of a narrow staircase rose at the far end of the central hallway. They built them that way in the bad old days, to force an attacking army to march down the hall before they could start up. The professor led me down the central hall, and I counted three doors on one side and two on the side that held the staircase.

  “Benton told us about his brother,” she said. “How he’d gone off to do the craziest thing he could think of, mostly to annoy his father, but then … Benton said it sounds like he’s actually become a knight errant. He said it was the best example he’s ever seen, of illusion becoming truth.”

  It seemed that Kathy shared my letters, too.

  “‘Illusion becomes truth, when men believe it,’” I quoted Phisterian. “I suppose it depends on your position on the nature of truth.”

  The professor looked at me with new interest, which was what I’d intended. “You don’t believe there’s only one reality, unchanging, except in our perception of it?”

  “Not even close.” I could tell which room was the jeweler’s — it was the only door with a lock.

  She must have seen my expression change. “What else can we do? He can’t go wandering about, not with the abilities he has.” She was pulling out keys as she spoke. “He gave one of the maids a stone, a simple bit of quartz. It made every man she saw fall in love with her. Not just the lad she was courting, all of them. Fortunately the effect vanished when we smashed the stone, but… I asked one of them later, a happily married man in his fifties, what it was like. He said that it was as if everything he’d ever wanted, ever yearned for throughout his life, had been made real in the person of one, rather ordinary servant girl.”

  I sighed. “No, he can’t roam loose.”

  “I’ll send someone to open the door when you knock,” she said. “All the staff have keys.” After I went through she locked it shu
t behind me.

  The curtains were closed, keeping out the light he hated, but a dim glow leaked around their edges. The musty scent was the same as in his old room — I’d attributed it to the rats he’d kept, but it must be him, quite distinct, even though I felt a draft from one of the windows.

  It took some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and there was no sound in the room. But once I could see I spotted him immediately, sitting frozen at a big table covered with tools, and scraps of wood and wire. The moment my gaze found him he relaxed. His clothing rustled as he reached for a mug that sat beside a tray, which held the remains of a decent luncheon.

  “So you’ve stepped through the world once more.” His voice was the same too, harsh and breathless. But his hair, once so wild, was pulled into a ragged queue. “Stepping on toes again, I’ll warrant, cracking snails, cracking nails. Always the way, with you.”

  “I came to see how you are,” I said, without any hope of a sensible answer.

  But I got one.

  “Not too bad, for being mad. They want me to perform sometimes, but I can pick my trick. The girls are kind, and the furry ones.”

  As my eyes continued to adapt, I could see more of the room. It wasn’t the cluttered magpie nest of his previous quarters, but he’d only been here a few months. Already a handful of bright scarves had been nailed to the rafters, along with a mass of cut vines that dropped leaves onto the floor as they dried. But mostly there were cages, almost a dozen, made of scraps of wood and wire. Some hung from the ceiling, with the vines, still others were stacked on chairs, the desk, a bureau, and four or five were piled in a corner. All of them were empty, their doors open.

  “The furry ones. Do they let you work with their rabbits?”

  Could they be that stupid? Unless they wanted him to work magic on the rabbits, in which case I pitied the Heir’s mistress.

  “Rabbits! Never touch ’em. I don’t have what they want, that’s why they leave me alone, a stone, a bone. It’s those cheating rabbits have what they want. But they lie, they lie. Rats, now, rats will tell you the truth. But they won’t let me catch any.”

  So what were the cages for? I was about to ask, but the answer came through the window, brightening the dim light briefly as a squirrel’s body pushed the curtain aside.

  The jeweler, usually so voluble, fell silent instantly, watching the squirrel scamper along a chest to a plate with half a dozen nutmeats on it. Instead of snatching one and running off, it sat on its haunches, staring back at us as it ate and whipping its curly tail.

  “Do you get a lot of such company?” I asked softly, though it was clear he did. The chest had been dragged over to the window to provide them with easy access, and the shells removed to encourage them. The squirrel chose another nut, nibbling busily.

  “The sun and snow, they come and go. Some will eat out of my hand, if I hold like water. Been bitten too, but I don’t mind.”

  The squirrel grabbed a third nut and whisked away. There was no cage anywhere near the plate … and all their doors were open.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ve seen all I need.”

  His eyes turned back to me, unexpectedly shrewd. “I don’t have what you want either, but that don’t mean you should trust those lying rabbits.”

  “I won’t.” I went to the door and knocked. I hadn’t been there long, so I was pleasantly surprised when the lock clicked open immediately.

  The man who let me out was middle-aged, and dressed more like a gardener than a scholar.

  “Thank you for waiting.” It helps to be polite to people you want to pump for information. “Are you one of the ones who look after him?”

  “No, they mostly leave that to the maids. But they don’t seem to mind. If you’d like to go now…”

  He’d already locked the door, and was turning toward the big door at the end of the hall.

  “I’d like to talk to Professor Dayless first. She’s in charge of him, isn’t she?”

  “Well, yes. But she said I was to show you out.”

  What I really wanted was to get a look at the rest of the building, in case Michael was right about the project and I had to burgle it someday. Though I genuinely believed Master Hotchkiss’ murder was a more likely thread to pull.

  “How about you show me up to Professor Dayless’ office, and then you can take me out. Master, is it? You don’t look like a professor.”

  The man snorted, but he led me to the far end of the hall, where the stairs began. “I’m the gamekeeper who trapped those rabbits they’re using. I help handle them, feed them, clean the cages. Unless they’re running the tests, I’ve not much to do in the middle of the day.”

  “Professor Sevenson told us about the rabbits.” I followed him up the stairs. “You must have known him.”

  “We talked some,” the man admitted. “He didn’t have much more to do around here than I did. Though they didn’t make him hang around all the time.”

  As we walked down the second story hallway to the next flight of stairs, I noticed a strong scent of herbs and chemicals coming from an open door. Looking in as we passed, I saw glowing tabletop braziers, and flasks and jugs and mortars, and shelves of still more glassware against the walls. But the man who sat at the big table, in his shirtsleeves even though the windows were open to relieve the heat, was writing in a notebook. He was in his late fifties or early sixties, with a fringe of salt and pepper hair around a bald head shiny with perspiration. He didn’t look up as we passed.

  Professor Dayless’ office was on the third floor, above the lab, but a lot smaller — there were six doors off this corridor. Like the chemist’s, her door was open. Unlike him, she looked up immediately.

  “What are you doing here? I let you see him. And frankly, sir, he’s in my charge, not yours.”

  “He’s being well-treated,” I said honestly. “And probably as happy as he can be. I only wanted to ask… He said the squirrels bit him, but he doesn’t seem to be trying to trap them.”

  “We think he meant to, at first,” she said. “But they have sharp teeth, and are willing to visit if he sets out nuts. I suppose they’ve reached an agreement.”

  “It looks like it,” I said. “Too bad the rabbits are such liars, or he could make pets of them.”

  She cast me a somewhat startled look.

  “Just something he said. But thank you, professor. I’m satisfied.”

  “Why did you tell her you were satisfied?” I asked Fisk. “You could have said you wanted to see him again, and gone back. And taken me in with you!”

  He’d already told me about the number of doors on the first floor, the lab on the second, and that Professor Dayless’ office was above the lab. Still…

  “I didn’t have to do this much,” Fisk said. “The project is your investigation.”

  And what small progress we’d made was due to him, yes, I knew that.

  “Very well. We can go to the library next, and you can take a look at that thesis Benton is said to have copied. It must be a forgery, and if you can prove it we might be able to establish his innocence before other applicants for his job even start…”

  We’d been walking down the path, away from the tower, but now Fisk stopped.

  “What? You were the one who said you wanted to see that thesis.”

  “So I may. Eventually. But it’s my turn to investigate Hotchkiss’ murder now, and I want to start by checking out the scene of the crime.”

  “He was killed in his home,” I said. “As he was leaving to go to the lecture, according to Captain Chaldon. Why do you want to look at the place he died?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to look. That’s why they call it investigating. And you agreed that after you talked to the professor at the tower, it would be my turn.”

  “I didn’t even get in to the tower.” But that wasn’t his fault. And I had agreed. “All right, ’tis your turn. What next, my … associate? You won’t be able to simply walk into Hotchkiss’ house, y
ou know. ’Twill be locked. You’ll have to get permission from Headman Portner, and maybe Captain Chaldon too. Whereas at the library, they might just let us in.”

  Fisk chose to ignore this sensible suggestion. “I don’t need permission, I just need a key. And we will need it — if we burgled Hotchkiss’ house in the middle of the night and wandered around lighting candles, someone would call the scholar’s guard. This is a search we need to do by day.”

  “Where are you going to get a key to—”

  I was interrupted by a pealing bell, and then doors in all the buildings around us burst open and scholars flooded out and down the paths like … I was about to say, like a flock of blackbirds, but the students where noisier, and most of them shed their black coats as soon as the sunlight heated them. Fisk had to grab one of them, to stop him long enough to ask directions to the office of the university’s chief clerk.

  “What makes you think the clerk will have a key? Much less give it to you?” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the clatter.

  “The clerk always has spare keys,” said Fisk. “You think the headman wants to be bothered every time someone locks himself out? As for giving me the key… I’ll start out slow, a few questions, a bit of flattery… What man wouldn’t want to help catch a murderer?”

  “A man who doesn’t want to lose his job,” I said. “For passing out his keys to strangers.”

  “You’d do it,” Fisk said. “If I pitched it right.”

  “I did fall for your pitch,” I said. “Once. But this clerk may be a smarter man than I.”

  However, when we reached the clerk’s office that proved impossible on the face of it … for the clerk was a woman.

  “Are there many women working here?” Fisk asked pleasantly, after we’d introduced ourselves. “We’ve just come from talking to Professor Dayless and, well, it’s unusual to see so many women in positions of authority.”

  Nancy Peebles was a plump, middle-aged woman with smooth dark hair and a comfortably worn face. Her office was small, but her desk all but filled it, and a clutter of papers covered the desk. Between that and the file cabinets, there was barely room for Fisk and me. I leaned against the wall, put my hands in my pockets, and prepared to watch the show. Fisk had done little to help with my investigation, after all. I saw no reason to intervene in his.