He made a note, but he didn't expect to get much information. He just didn't know enough about the subject of curses and cursed objects to ask the right questions.
But there was another question that was related.Why did Rayburn keep talking about riots if any of this got out? Did the Captain have some information, perhaps passed on from his superiors, that would make him think that there was a possibility of a riot if wild enough rumors began to spread?
It could be. There've been riots and near-riots over nonhumans recently. There was that nonhuman ghost that carried off a High Bishop! When people talk about curses that work, they usually claim they came from nonhumans. Elves and the like, most of the time, but still . . . people tend to lump all nonhumans into one group, and figure that if Elves work magic, they can all work magic.
There were a fair number of nonhumans working in this city, some of them quite prosperous, and the usual prejudices and resentments against them by those too lazy to make their way by hard work. Nonhumans were easy targets whenever someone wanted a scapegoat. Maybe Rayburn knew more about the riots and disturbances in other cities than Tal did—and maybe he was keeping a lid on this because he was afraid there would be more of the same here if rumors of curses and nasty magic got out.
That certainly fits in with all that talk of civil unrest and rioting. Oh, talk of a knife with a curse on it would certainly set people off, especially if they thought it was part of a plot! Things had been unsettled lately, and he doubted that they were going to get any calmer. There were a lot of changes going on, Deliambrens moving huge machines across the countryside, new mechanical devices showing up and putting people out of work as more machines replaced hand-labor, more and more nonhumans moving into the Twenty Human Kingdoms. That would make a lot of people unhappy and uneasy, and ripe for trouble. There were always troublemakers happy to supply the trouble. Maybe Rayburn wasn't as much of an idiot as Tal had thought.
And maybe he is, doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Keeping things quiet because he wants to make some rich patrons happy, instead of keeping things quiet so trouble-mongers don't have anything to work with.
He shook his head. Not enough information. Without knowing what Rayburn knew, and who (if anyone) had ordered him to keep all this under the rose, it was still most likely that Rayburn was being a sycophant and a toady.
Last of all on his list—what if it all was being done by magic, magic that was directed and purposeful, rather than random like a curse?
Well, that kind of magic meant a mage was working it, and that meant—what?
Elves are mages, they don't like humans, and we humans are encroaching more and more into their lands. If it was an Elf, or it was rumored that it was an Elf that was doing this, that would bring up more resentment against nonhumans. That just didn't feel right, though. As he understood it, when there was some indication that nonhumans were going to have their rights taken away, the rich were in favor of the move because they would have had first chance at confiscated properties and would have been able to purchase former free creatures as slaves. Rayburn's patrons would not want riots—unless the ultimate goal meant more profit—
Oh, I'm making this far too convoluted. I'm not certain any of Rayburn's patrons are that smart.
Who else could be working this kind of magic? They say that some Gypsies are mages—well, Gypsies have some friends in questionable places, but I've never met a Gypsy that would have done to one of their own what was done to that poor girl. Of course, there are bad cases in everyone's family, and I suppose it could be a Gypsy mage. But that wouldn't cause any trouble with Rayburn's superiors.
Gypsies, Elves—who else worked magic? Some Free Bards, allegedly, through music. But how would that figure in the fact that the victims were all musicians of a sort themselves?
Free Bards getting revenge on substandard minstrels? The idea made him smile reluctantly. No, that's too far-fetched, even for me. Who else could it be? The only other mages that I know of are Priests. . . .
Priests! Suddenly an entirely new range of questions opened up before him.
What if this is being done by a Priest who is a mage? he wrote on the first page.
Why? Well, by strict Church standards, every single one of the victims and their putative killers were unrepentant sinners. Of course, the Church wouldnever condone murdering unrepentant sinners, but the Priest could be mad. He could imagine himself to be the punitive arm of a stern and judgmental God; could even believe that God was commanding him to do away with these people in fashions that would horrify other sinners into instant repentance.
Right. Assume it is a Priest. Assume that the Church doesn't know for certain, but suspects this is what is going on.
That would definitely fit the other question, which was Rayburn's behavior. One word from a Priest to Rayburn advising him to keep all of this quiet, and Rayburn would be scratching to cover it like a fastidious house-cat. If the Church didn't even have a suspect yet, there wouldreally be a cat among the pigeons, as every Priest that was in on the secret watched his fellows with suspicion.
Next idea—assume they have a suspect or two, but don't have evidence yet. They'd have Rayburn digging holes to dump evidence, if they had to!
Next—they know who it is, and they have him locked up, but he's still doing this. A barred cell isn't going to stop a really determined magician, but I've never heard of a Priest being executed. As far as I know, they can't be executed, only imprisoned, and nothing is going to stop a renegade mage but execution. Certainly the Church would not want anyone to know that they couldn't keep a crazy Priest-Mage from killing people! The resulting scandal could rock the Church to its foundations, calling into question virtually every aspect of control now exercised by Church officials. There had been enough scandal already associated with the Church's possible involvement in the Great Fire at Kingsford, and the trickery and chicanery of High Bishop Padrick had caused great unrest.
Riots? There'd be riots over that one, all right. With the Church claiming its tithe and doing damned little for the poor with that tithe, all it would take would be a hard winter, bad storms, and food shortages. A real, full-scale riot directed against the Church would produce enough angry people to level every Church-owned structure in the city.
If the Priestwasn't mad—if he was doing this with Church sanction—
A chill ran down his spine. Don't think that. Don't write it down.
It could be some terrible experiment in magic gone wrong. And that would be another reason for Rayburn's superiors to want it nicely sunk in the bottom of the harbor. No one would want people to know that the Church permitted anyone to dabble in the kind of magic that would drive a man to murder a relatively innocent woman and then kill himself.
Something else occurred to him and he wrote that down under the Murders topic. What if this isn't local? What if we aren't the only city to have this going on?
Well, if it wasn't local, itprobably had nothing to do with the Church. Not that the Churchcouldn't be involved, but mages couldn't work magic at great distance, and something that caused murders in more than one city couldn't be hidden for long if Church officials knew about it. Things like that leaked out, novices learned things they weren't supposed to know, spreading rumor and truth more effectively than if the Church was spreading the tales deliberately.