Sarai sat dejectedly in Captain Tikri's office. She had spent the day taking Teneria the witch and Luralla the warlock to the scenes of the various murders, hoping that Teneria might be able to learn something useful with her unique understanding of how witchcraft and warlockry were related; Luralla had been along more as a power source for Teneria than anything else. The net result was nothing; Teneria could do no more than confirm what other witches had already learned. Wizardry and warlockry had been used, and the murderer had left no psychic traces.
Sarai gathered from Teneria that this last was unusual, but just what it meant was not clear. Some witches could choose not to leave traces; warlocks often left no traces, but did not appear to have any voluntary control over it; some spells that wizards used could hide or erase traces. Which of those applied here, Teneria could not say.
The witch was off to her room in the palace now, to refresh herself a little, and Luralla had gone home, leaving Sarai and Tikri in the office. A spriggan had followed them back to the palace; Sarai shooed it away with a shove of her toe, and the little creature backed away, but did not leave the room.
"I hate this," she muttered to herself. "I should be tending my father, or listening to his cases for him. There must be a sixnight's backlog by now."
"Then why don't you go handle some of them?" Captain Tikri asked from behind her. She turned, startled. "I couldn't help hearing," he said, not very apologetically at all.
"That's all right," she said. "I should go-but I couldn't concentrate on it."
"You might want to try, though-a distraction might help clear your thoughts on this whole mess."
Sarai stared at Tikri for a moment, then nodded. "Maybe you're right," she said. "I should…"
"Excuse me," an unfamiliar voice said.
Startled, Sarai turned around and found a small man in a nondescript brown tunic and breeches standing in the doorway.
"Yes? "she asked.
"I'm Kelder of Tazmor," the man said, speaking with a curious accent. "I got your message."
Sarai paused to gather her wits somewhat before she asked, "What message?" The accent, she realized, was Sardironese.
"Ah… you are Lady Sarai, aren't you?" Kelder asked.
"Yes, I am," Sarai admitted. "But I still…"
"You sent messengers to Sardiron," the little man said, "asking for help in solving a series of murders-didn't you?"
"Oh, yes, that message," Sarai said. "Of course. And you…?"
"I'm a sorcerer," Kelder explained. "A forensic sorcerer. When I got your message I came south as quickly as I could."
"Oh, I see; and you've just arrived? Do you need a place to stay? I'm sure a room…"
"No, no," Kelder assured her. "I have a very comfortable room at an inn out by Grandgate; I arrived in the city several days ago."
"Oh. And you've been seeing the city?" Sarai asked. Kelder nodded. "You might say that, Lady Sarai. You see, I've been investigating these murders independently-I didn't want to allow myself to be influenced by any preconceived notions you might have. This is the sort of study where my specialty can really shine, Lady Sarai. I think that the use of forensic sorcery has been shamefully neglected in Ethshar, not just in this city, but throughout the entire Hegemony. To the best of my knowledge, you haven't consulted any sorcerers on this case:"
"Forensic sorcery?" She glanced at Tikri, who shrugged. "I didn't know there was such a thing."
"It's rather a neglected field," Kelder admitted.
"I did talk to sorcerers, you know," Sarai said. "None of them were able to help."
Kelder shrugged. "Ethsharitic sorcerers," he said scornfully. "Amateurs."
"And you're a professional?" Tikri demanded. "I like to think so," Kelder said, a trifle smugly. "I've been studying forensic sorcery ever since I was an apprentice. In general, Sardironese sorcery is considerably more advanced than anything you have here."
"The Northern taint," Tikri remarked. "Yes, exactly," Kelder agreed, ignoring the captain's insulting tone. "The Baronies of Sardiron, and especially my homeland of Tazmor, were part of the Northern Empire throughout the Great War. Thanks to the relics of the Empire, we have far more to work with than you Southerners."
"So you've come south to show us how it's done?" Tikri suggested sarcastically.
"No," Kelder said, still unoffended. "I was at Sardiron of the Waters when Lady Sarai's messengers arrived, looking for information about cults or conspiracies, maybe involving surviving Northerners, and I thought I might be able to help." Tikri glanced at Sarai. "You thought we might be dealing with Northerners? My lady, they've all been dead for two hundred years!"
Sarai shrugged. "We think they've all been dead for two hundred years," she said. "The World is a big place."
"Oh, I think they have," Kelder said. "So, sorcerer," Tikri said, "you know something about cults and conspiracies?"
"No," Kelder said, "but I know forensic sorcery. So I came here and studied the places where the killings occurred-I confess, it wasn't until I followed you and those other two women today that I was sure I had located them all. And of course, I was too late to study the bodies, unfortunately."
Sarai looked at him with renewed interest. The funny little man with the northern accent was full of surprises. "You followed us?" she asked. The sorcerer nodded.
"Do you think you learned something?" she asked. "Yes, my lady," he said.
"And what might that be?" Tikri asked. "Was sorcery involved in these crimes?"
"Not that I know of," Kelder said, "but that doesn't mean very much. Sorcery doesn't always leave traces. But I did learn that there were four people who had, prior to today, been in each room where a person was murdered."
"Four?" Sarai stared. "So it was a conspiracy…"
"Yes, four, my lady, two men and two women, but it was not necessarily a conspiracy. I could not determine the exact times that these people were there, only that they had been. And I have identified one of the four as the final victim, the witch Kelder of Quarter Street-I assume that he visited the rooms in the course of investigating the crimes. One or more of the others might have been legitimate visitors as well, perhaps even among the other investigators. Should all three prove to have been there for other reasons, then perhaps that will prove that there was more than one murderer. Have your investigations found anyone who visited all those places?"
Sarai blinked. "Well, I did, after the killings."
"Yes, of course," Kelder agreed, "I should have expected that. Then I assume one of the two women was yourself-might I test that hypothesis, please?"
"How?"
"With this talisman." He drew a flat silver object from inside his tunic and held it out. A circle of milky crystal was set into the center of a metal oblong roughly the size of Captain Tikri's hand. "If you would be so kind as to touch your fingertip to the white disk…"
Sarai glanced at Captain Tikri, who shrugged. Then she reached out and touched the crystal.
"Thank you. And do you perhaps…"
"I was in all of them," Tikri interrupted.
"Ah. Then could you…?" Kelder held out the talisman again.
Tikri glanced at Sarai.
"Do it," she said.
Tikri obeyed, tapping one forefinger lightly on the white crystal.
"Thank you, sir." Kelder pulled the talisman away and closed both his hands around it, holding it near his chest, not quite touching the fabric of his tunic. He stared down at it for a moment, stroking the metal with his thumbs, clearly concentrating hard.
Sarai watched with interest; she had rarely seen sorcery in action before, and nothing at all like this.
After roughly a minute and a half, the little Sardironese looked up at Sarai again.
"It's definite," he said. "You, Lady Sarai, were one of the women, and the captain here was the other man. There is evidence that the two of you, and my late namesake, all visited the sites after the other woman. I therefore suspect that this other woman is connected with the crimes. Unless there was another…"
Sarai shook her head. "I can't think of any other woman who visited all the rooms before I took Teneria and Luralla around this morning," she said. "Mereth saw some of them, but she didn't go to every room. Can you tell us anything more about this woman?"
Kelder glanced down at his talisman. "She has black hair and brown eyes," he said. "And is not tall, certainly not as tall as you, though I cannot specify her height any more exactly than that. She is thin and light on her feet, with a rather square face, a wide nose, and pale skin. She usually wore black clothing and may have gone barefoot. Beyond that…" He turned up an empty palm. "Beyond that, I'm afraid I know no more."
"That isn't Mereth," Sarai said. "The height's right, but not the rest of it. Are you sure of this? "
"Oh, absolutely. A woman fitting that description visited each murder site within a sixnight or so of the killings."
Sarai looked up at Tikri. "That description doesn't bring anyone immediately to mind," she said. "Does it for you?"
"No." Tikri frowned. "I'm not sure how much we should trust this information."
The sorcerer tucked his talisman back in his tunic. "That's entirely up to you, of course," he said, "but I give you my word that it's reliable information. I don't know that this woman killed anyone, but she was very definitely there. If I had been able to see the bodies, I could have told you whether the same knife was used in every case…"
Sarai waved that aside. "We already know that," she said. "The wizards tested that for us. It was the same knife every time."
"Oh." Kelder essayed a quick little bow of acknowledgment.
Sarai smiled at him. "I'm not disparaging your information, Kelder of Tazmor," she said. "Thank you for bringing it to us. If you learn anything more, please come and tell us."
"Of course." Kelder bowed again, and stepped away.
Sarai looked up at Tikri. "Do you think this woman is the killer?"
Tikri shook his head. "No woman smaller than you could be strong enough to have committed these murders single-handed. Perhaps she's the high priestess of a cult that's responsible for this-if she exists at all."
"I think she exists," Sarai said. "Why would the sorcerer lie?"
"To throw us off the track," Tikri suggested. "Perhaps he's part of the conspiracy."
"I hadn't thought of that," Sarai admitted, staring at Kelder's back and chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. "We could check his story, though."
"How?"
"Witchcraft. Where's Teneria?" Sarai turned, peering out the door as if she expected to find the young witch standing in the hallway.
Thin, black hair, light on her feet, usually wore black-that described Teneria, Sarai realized. The height was probably wrong, though; the journeyman witch stood very close to Sarai's own height. And her long, narrow face, with its pointed jaw, hardly looked square, and while her nose was noticeable, that was because it was long, with a bump in it, not because it was wide. Her complexion wasn't particularly pale. And weren't her eyes green?. She wasn't there to check.
Sarai snorted with sudden annoyance. Was she going to be matching every female she met against the sorcerer's description, from now until the murderers were caught?
She debated sending Tikri to fetch Teneria, but before she could decide, Teneria actually did appear in the doorway. "Just the person I was looking for!" Sarai called. Teneria entered and bowed before Lady Sarai, then asked, "How may I be of service?"
"You don't already know?" Sarai asked wryly. The ghost of a smile flickered across the witch's rather somber face. "No, my lady," she said. "Not at the moment."
"I need to know what's true and what isn't," Sarai said. "You witches are good at that."
Teneria cocked her head to one side and replied, "In a way. We can generally tell when people believe what they say- whether that's actually the truth is sometimes an entirely different matter. And it works better with some people than others." Sarai nodded, and asked, "Suppose you spoke to a woman I thought had been connected with the murders; could you tell me whether she had, in fact, been connected?"
Teneria frowned. "That would depend. Probably. If she spoke at all, almost certainly. If she spoke freely, with no magical constraints, absolutely. But I would not necessarily be able to ascertain the nature of the connection."
"Could you tell if a person had actually committed one of the murders?"
"Oh, yes, I would think so. Unless there was a very great deal of magic hiding the fact."
"Suppose you were to walk down the street, or through the market; could you pick a murderer out of the crowd?"
Teneria shook her head. "Only if I was incredibly lucky. The murderer would have to be thinking about the actual killing and feeling a strong emotional reaction to those thoughts, with absolutely no magical protection of any kind. Even then, I couldn't be sure without stopping to investigate. What might look like a murderer's thoughts at first glance could just be a housewife worried about killing a chicken for dinner."
"I thought it was probably too much to ask," Sarai admitted. "If you could do that, we'd have just had witches working for my father for years, instead of relying on Okko and the others for most of it."
Teneria shrugged.
"But if we brought you a person and asked, 'Is this the murderer,' you could tell us?" Sarai asked.
"Ordinarily, yes."
Sarai nodded. "Good enough," she said. She pointed. "That man in the brown tunic there is a sorcerer by the name of Kelder of Tazmor; he claims to have magically established that a particular woman was present in each room where a murder was committed-though not necessarily at the time of the killing. I want you to find out how reliable his information is."
Teneria followed the gesture, but said nothing at first.
"Does sorcery interfere with your witchcraft?" Sarai inquired.
"Not usually," Teneria replied. "Sometimes."
"Will it this time?"
Teneria turned and walked away from the dais, toward Kelder. "I'll let you know," she said, over her shoulder.
Ten minutes later, she let them know. Kelder believed absolutely in what he had told Sarai and Tikri. Sarai thanked the young witch, and stared down at the spriggan that was clutching at her ankle.
Who was that woman Kelder had described?