And now—
Now he was beginning to get the feeling there was much more going on here than he had dreamed of, and he was afraid that the High Bishop was privy to more and more serious information than he had yet uncovered.
Was it possible that he was getting in over his head? Wasthat why everyone in Haldene had tried to put him off this case? Was it more serious than he knew—did it involve suspicion of someone with avery high rank?
It didn't have to be a noble, it could be a Priest, as he had suspected many times now—and it could be that she knew it, even had some suspects, but had no way to prove who it was. Perhaps that was why she had conscripted him so quickly. Oh, wouldn't that just open a box of beetles!
And I could end up being the scapegoat when I catch the man.Hecould, if Ardis was like other high-ranking people he'd worked under. But nothing he'd seen and heard so far made him inclined to think that she was. In fact, her reputation was that she protected her underlings from those who were higher in rank, provided that those underlings were on the side of the angels.
So I just have to make sure I'm on the right side.
If it was a Priest, in one of the other Orders, say, he and Othorp and Fenris might end up having to go in and pry the fellow out, which could get very ugly. Then again, at least if it was a Priest, as a Special Inquisitor he wouldn't have the problems with bringing him to Justice that he would have had as a constable. A Priest could claim immunity from secular authority, but not from someone delegated by the Church.
I'm the enforcement arm of the Church. I can throw anyone I need to into gaol.It wasn't the heady thought it might have been; he'd never cared for the power of the baton, only for its use as a tool to get bad people put where they couldn't hurt anyone again. It only meant that there was nowhere he could not go in the course of this investigation; he hoped that he wouldn't need to use that authority.
The other complication was the one Ardis herself had briefly touched on. If his target was a Priest and a mage—or just a mage—well, he would know that Tal was coming, and who Tal was, long before Tal ever learned whohe was, and there would be plenty of opportunity for "accidents" to occur. Magic opened up an entirely new set of problems, given that Tal really didn't know the full breadth of what a mage could and could not do.
This is no time to get cold feet, he chided himself. You've never backed away from a case before; not when you had to go after mad drunks, murderers, and cutthroats. Any one of them could have disposed of you if you'd made the wrong move. She's already told you that you can go to her or any of the other Justiciar-Mages she thinks is discreet and get help, which includes finding out what a mage can do. And besides, the High Bishop is counting on you. She thinks you can handle this, or she wouldn't have given you the authority in the first place.
Yes, and just whathad convinced her to give him the authority? He'd like to think that he showed his own competence as clearly as she showed hers, but he doubted that was the case. How could he have looked like a professional, when he'd come in exhausted, travel-worn, in shabby clothing? He wouldn't have impressed himself, and he doubted that his outward appearance had impressed her.
I probably looked like one of her Gypsy friends.Then again, maybe that wasn't so bad. If she had contacts among the Gypsies and Free Bards, she must be used to looking past shabby clothing and weary faces.
It could have been his careful investigation thus far that had impressed her—and he'd really like to think that was the case. Hehad done good work, especially considering all the opposition he'd faced. He could have done more if he'd just had some cooperation, and she probably knew that as well.
But the reason why she trusted him could also have been desperation. If you didn't have the faintest idea where to start with a problem, wouldn't you take the first person who came along and said, "I know what to do" and throw the whole thing at him? She'd had that letter on her desk when he came in; she'd probably just gotten it. She wasn't supposed to track criminals, she was supposed to sentence them, and considering that the Bardic Guild had its Guild Hall in Kingsford, she might not get much cooperation from the Kingsford authorities in trying to hunt down a killer of Free Bards. For that matter—maybe the killer was some high-ranking, crazed Master Bard! Hadn't he heard it said, more than once, that Bards were supposed to be mages?
It might be that when he walked in her door with additional evidence, she'd been disposed to welcome him as God's answer to her difficulty.
Maybe so. But she didn't get where she is now by being incompetent to handle her own problems.
For that matter, why did he agree so readily to become her servant? Or the Church's servant, really, but it amounted to the same thing in this case. What in Heaven's name made him throw away everything he'd done to this moment to take this position? He'dnever imagined himself serving the Church, not even as a secular adjunct. He neverwanted to be a Guard, even one with other duties. He would have done so if that had been the only answer, but he hadn't even begun to explore his options in Kingsford. He certainly hadn't come into that office looking for a position!
It might have been the personality of Ardis herself that had persuaded him. Tal knew that, in some respects, he was a follower, not a leader. He felt more comfortable with someone competent in authority over him, for all of his cherished independence; and what was more, he was honest enough to admit it, at least to himself.
Competent—I'd say. She couldn't run this Abbey better if she was a general and it was a military barracks.Not that he'd been in alot of Abbeys—but there were little signs when things weren't being run properly. Dirt in the corners, things needing repair, indifferent food, an aura of laziness or tension, a general sense of unhappiness.
A lot like the headquarters back in Haldene, as a matter of fact.
People weren't tense here, but they weren't slacking, either. Nobody was running around as if they were always forgetting to do things until the last minute, but no one dawdled. That novice, Kayne—she moved briskly, got things done, but there was no panic about it, no sense of being harried, and that went for every other person he'd seen. Even the rest of the Guards—though Othorp sighed over their condition, theywere competent and they got their jobs done properly; their biggest problem was that they were set in their ways. They weren't lazy, just so used to routine that changes in it made them uneasy. When it came down to it, that would probably hold true for all the Priests as well, and why not? Routine waspart of an Abbey. No, Ardis had this place well in hand. Maybe that was what he had responded to.