Tal dropped his eyes and studied the top of Rayburn's immaculate desk, knowing that if he wanted to keep his job, he was going to have to keep his temper.
But I'm beginning to wonder if this is a job worth keeping. Why is it worth Rayburn's while to sweep this under the rug?
Rayburn waited for him to say something, and when he did not speak, the Captain shook his head. "I would have expected a piece of nonsense like this out of one of the green recruits, not out of a senior constable," he said with an undisguised sneer. "Really, you make me wonder if you are not ill with a brain-fever yourself! I hope you haven't been spreading this nonsense about—"
"I've told no one," Tal replied stoically. No one else would have cared, you bastard, except a few idiots like me who want to do their jobs right, and they don't have any power or influence. The rest are all too busy playing politics, just like you. "I saved it all for my report."
"Oh, did you?" Tal's hands, hidden by the desk, clenched at Rayburn's tone. "In that case, I won't have to order some punitive assignment for you for spreading rumors designed to cause panic or unrest." Rayburn drummed his fingers on the desktop for a few moments. "In that case, because of your fine record, I am going to forget I ever saw this."
Tal looked up in time to see the Captain turn in his seat, take the report that he had labored over for so long, and toss it into the stove beside his desk. Tal stifled an oath as Rayburn turned back to him.
"Now, Iorder you to say nothing more about this," Rayburn said with a cold core of steel underlying the false cordiality. "I won't have wild rumors of death-cults or renegade mages circulating through the streets. Do I make myself clear?"
The weak blue eyes had turned as icy and flat as a dead fish's, and Tal said what he was expected to say.
Go to Hell, Captain.
"Yes, Captain," he replied, trying not to choke on the two words.
Rayburn settled back into his chair with an air of satisfaction. "This district is quiet, and I intend to keep it that way," he warned Tal. "Even if any of that nonsensewas true, I would order you to hold your tongue on the subject. Rumors like that are all that it takes to spark a riot, and Iwill not have a riot on my watch." He waved his hand in a shooing motion at Tal. "Now, get out of here, and don't let me ever see anything like this report again."
Tal shoved the chair back, watching Rayburn wince as the legs grated on the floor, and left the office before he could say anything he didn't want Rayburn to hear.
He won't have a riot on "his watch"! As if he paid any attention to his district at all!
He seethed all the way back to his rooms at the Gray Rose, and only long practice helped him to keep his stoic expression intact. Not even the Mintaks, notoriously sensitive to body-language and able to read trouble from the most subtle of expressions, had any idea that Tal was suffering from more than his usual moodiness.
When he reached the safe haven of his rooms, his first impulse was to reach for a bottle—but he did not give in to it. Hewanted a drink—he wanted to numb his mind and his soul, wanted the oblivion that a bottle would give him, the few hours of respite when nothing mattered anymore. But that respite was a lie, and oblivion cured nothing, and he knew the depth and shape of the trap far too well to fall into it himself. Liquor had been the ruin of many a constable, in part because they needed to numb their feelings and their memories, and in part, he suspected, because more and more of late the good constables were not able to do their jobs properly.
You can drop into despair, or you can beat the bastards at their own game. I'll be damned if I let a pinheaded little shoe-licker keep me from doing my job.
Instead of reaching for that bottle, he sat down at his desk with pen and paper in hand. There was more than one mystery here, and the second one was a question that concerned him intimately.
Why had Rayburn suppressed all of this? Why was he so adamant thatnothing was to leak out?
Sometimes it helped him to make physical lists, and he began two of them, writing slowly and carefully, with his tongue sticking out at the corner of his mouth as he concentrated. Writing did not come easily to him, although reading did, but working at a difficult task would keep him from doing something he might regret later. Like reaching for that bottle.
Murdershe headed the first list, andRayburn was what he put on the second page.
He started the second page first.
Rayburn is trying to cover up the murders, he wrote. He's trying to make them appear perfectly common. Why?
Why, indeed? The victims were all poor, insignificant; their neighborhoods were those where crime was, if not a daily occurrence, certainly not a stranger. Except for the Gypsy girl, whose death had not even occurred in his district, there had been no notoriety attached to any of the cases. And there were no relatives clamoring for any other solution than the "official" one. Maybe he shouldn't be looking at the victims for his answer—maybe he should be thinking about the hand behind the murders.
Who or what could be doing this? he wrote on the first page. A disease of the mind—possibly spreading. A curse, or more than one. A mage.
Now he returned to the second page.Rayburn could be trying to prevent people knowing that there is a disease that makes them kill for no reason. But that assumed that Rayburn would be aware there was such a thing. . . .
Huh. He might. There was that tainted-wheat scandal. Nearly two dozen people died raving mad from eating flour made from it. The moneyed in this town would not want anyone to know about tainted food, especially not if it was a common article, like flour.
A good reason for Rayburn's superiors to want it hushed up—the only thing wrong with that theory was that in the wheat scandal, there were a lot more victims, spread across all classes, for they had all bought their flour from the same merchants.
It could still be a disease or a taint, but it would have to be coming from something only the poor are likely to come into contact with. He racked his brains on that one. Maybe the water? The poor got their water from common well-pumps that stood on every street corner. The rich? He didn't know, and decided to let the idea lie fallow for the moment.
A curse is more problematic—I've never actually seen a curse that worked, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Elven curses—everybody's heard of those. I can't imagine why a curse would take this particular form, though, unless it happens to be as undiscriminating in who it attaches itself to as any disease. Why a curse, why here, and why now? And why were all the victims of the poorer classes? It would make more sense for a curse to strike the rich and powerful—wouldn't it? Or was that just wishful thinking?
I suppose a curse or a cursed object would be able to work itself out no matter who was the victim, so long as they fit its qualifications. If the qualification is something as broad as "human," well, just about anyone would fit.