It was unpalatable—but it was truth. He winced, and nodded.
"So we continue to react as quickly as possible, and we pray that he makes a mistake somewhere, sometime."
He nodded again. "I can't think of anything else to do," he replied helplessly. "And he's proven twice that he can act right in the middle of a crowded street at the height of the day and still get away. He doesn't have to wait for the cover of darkness anymore. He has us at a complete disadvantage, because he'll always wear a different face. Witnesses do us no good. I can't think ofanything that will help except to instruct the constables to keep an eye on female entertainers."
"Unfortunately, neither can I." She bit her lip; it was getting a distinctly chewed-on appearance. "I'll—think on this for some time. Perhaps something will occur to me."
Think? She meant that she was going to pray about it. He knew exactly what she was going to do, she was going to spend half the night on her knees, hoping for some divine advice. Maybe she'd get it, but he wasn't going to hold his breath.
Her eyes were focused on something other than him, and he tried to be as quiet as possible to keep from disturbing her. Abruptly, she shook her head and looked at him again.
"You might as well go," she told him. "You go do whatever it is that lets you think; perhaps you can evolve some plan. If anything happens, or if they find the body, I shall have someone fetch you."
He stood up, gave a brief, stiff nod of a salute, and took his leave.
His own form of meditation was to sit and focus his eyes on something inconsequential while his mind worked. When he got back to his room, that was precisely what he did, leaving the door open so that if Kayne came for him, she would know he was waiting for the summons. He sat down on his bed with his back to the wall, and stared at a chipped place on the opposite wall.
This case was precisely like all the rest, with nothing left to tie the murderer to an actual person. Tal had been studying case-histories in the files of the Justiciars with Kayne's help over the last week, and he had found one other murderer like this one—a man who'd been compelled by some demon inside him to kill, over and over again. "Demon" was the word the Church clerk had used, but Tal and Ardis had both been a bit less melodramatic. "I would say,need, rather than 'demon,' " she had commented when he showed her the case. "As you yourself pointed out; domination, manipulation, and control. This man was driven by his own need, not by some other creature's, he was the only director of his actions."
That particular man had taken mementos from each of his victims, some personal trinket from each of them, and once the Justiciar-Mages realized what he was doing it was through those mementos that he was caught. They had done something that allowed them to follow those objects to the place where they were lying—which happened to be the man's apartment, hidden behind a false wall in a closet.
It was obvious to Tal that the missing knife or knives served the same purpose here, but a mage would know better than to leave such a knife uncleansed after the murders, so there was no hope that a trace of the victim's blood would provide the link they needed to find him. Tal was certain—and so was Ardis—that the person they sought was male. The fact that all the people taken over had been male was the telling clue, rather than the fact that all the known victims were female. A woman who hated other women usually felt that way for some other reason than confusion about her gender—in fact, other than women who were of the cutthroat variety of thief, females who murdered other females usually did so out of jealousy or rivalry and considered themselves intensely female. It was Ardis's opinion that in order to control the secondary victims, the murderer would have to identify intensely with them, and it was Tal's opinion that most females, even one with severe mental and emotional warping, would find that distasteful.
They could both be wrong, of course, but again, women who murdered women almost always killed people they knew, and it would simply not have been possible for the murderer to get to know all of the widely disparate victims in the short period of time between murders.
Men kill strangers; women don't, except by accident, or as part of another crime. That was the pattern that had emerged from Tal's study of the records.
As to where their killer got his knowledge of magic—the most logical place to look was the Church itself. This troubled Ardis, and although she faced it unflinchingly, Tal avoided bringing the topic up. But that made it yet more likely that the killer was male, for Ardis knew all of the female Justiciar-Mages in all Twenty Kingdoms personally; none of them had gone missing, was subject to strange or inexplicable trances lately, or indeed ever had been in all of the cities, towns, and villages in question. "I don't think it's possible to do this remotely," Ardis had told him. "I think the killer has to be there, nearby, somewhere. There are just too many things that can go wrong if he can't actuallysee what's happening."
Which meant their killer was hidden somewhere in plain view of the scene. It would have to be somewhere above the level of the street, too, in order for him to have a decent view.
Tal wished that there was some way to conscript that bird-man. Ifanyone had the ability to spot someone watching the murders, it would be him! And no one in the entire city of Kingsford had a better chance of stopping another murder in the act than this Visyr. At least, he would if the murder took place in daylight, in the open street. After this last incident, the murderer was quite likely to go back to murders at night, or even indoors.
We still don't know how he's taking control of his secondary victims. How hard would it be to take a room in a big inn, stand up on the balcony, and take over one of the patrons? Tal thought glumly. Then, when the constables come to question everyone, the murderer can either be gone completely out the window, or protest that, like everyone else, he was tucked up in his virtuous bed.
Frustrating.
But if Visyr would just volunteer his services. . . .
Ah, but why should he? He wasn't human, he had no interests here except for hispaid position in the Duke's household, he probably hadn't the least notion what a Free Bard was. He was a predator; how would he feel about murder?
Well, obviously he felt strongly enough about it to try to kill the presumed murderer.There was that. Tal just wished he could have read the bird-man a little better; obvious things like feather-trembling and eye-pinning were one thing, but what had it meant when the creature went completelystill ? What had some of those head, wing, arm, and talon movements meant?
You can't coerce a flying creature, and I don't know what to say or do that would tempt him or awake whatever sense of justice lives in him. I fear the answer is that there is no answer for this one, unless the Duke lends us his services. That meant that the Duke would have to do without whatever the bird-man was doing for him, and he didn't know just how willing the Duke would be to sacrifice anything he personally wanted to this man-hunt. Especially when there was no guarantee that there would be any concrete result from the sacrifice.