"He's getting bolder," Ardis said, thinking aloud. "This is another daylight killing, and in a crowd. Maybe someone in the crowd saw something."
"The tool this time was the used-weapons dealer across the street, so he probably got the dagger in a load of other things," Tal noted. "I don't suppose anything could—well—rub off from the dagger with the magic on it?"
Ardis pursed her lips and nodded. "Contagion. That's not a bad thought to pursue; it certainly is going to give us as much as we've been getting off the bodies of the victims. If we can at least identify what other weapons were in the lot, maybe we can trace one ofthem back to where it came from."
They continued to trade thoughts on the subject, but eventually they found themselves wandering the same, well-worn paths of speculation as they had so many times before this. Ardis noticed this before Tal—and she also noticed something else.
She was deliberately prolonging the session and he wasn't fighting to get away, either.
We're both tired, she told herself, knowing at the same time that it was only a half truth. We both hate idleness, and sleeping feels idle. We need rest, and sitting here and talking is the only way we get it aside from sleeping. But there was something more going on, and she wasn't going to face it until she was alone.
"You'd better go off and get some real rest," she said, with great reluctance. "I know this is something of a rest, but it isn't sleep, and that's what you need. If you can't get to sleep, ask the Infirmarian for something. I know I will."
He made a sour face, but agreed to do so, and with equal reluctance, left the office.
That set off alarms in her conscience.
Instead of going to bed, she went to her private chapel to meditate. On her knees, with her hands clasped firmly in front of her, she prepared to examine herself as ruthlessly as she would any criminal.
It wasn't difficult to see what her symptoms meant, when she came to the task with a determination to be completely honest with herself. And this was a road she had already gone down before. The simple fact was that she was very attracted to this man Tal Rufen, but the longer she knew him, the more attracted she became. She knew now that if she had met him before she went into the Church she might not be sitting in the High Bishop's chair.
The bitter part is that the attraction is not merely or even mostly carnal, it's emotional and cerebral, too.That was another inescapable conclusion. He was her intellectual equal, and what was more, heknew that she was his. He showed no disposition to resent the fact that she, a woman, was the person in charge, his temporal superior.
And I had no real vocation when I entered the Church. I took vows as a novice in a state of pique and not for any noble reason.Perhaps that was why she examined the novices herself when they came to take their final vows; she wanted to be sure none of them had come here under similar circumstances, and might one day come to regret their choice.
Later she had surprised herself with the level of her devotion, once she got past the rote of the liturgy and into the realms of pure faith, but her original intent had been to find a place where she would be accepted, judged, and promoted on her merit. She knew that; she'd admitted it in Confession. She had thought that she was happy. Now—now she wasn't sure anymore.
If the man I'd been promised to had been like Tal I would have been perfectly happy as the Honorable Lady Ardis, probably with as many children as cousin Talaysen. I certainly do not seem to have lost the capacity for carnal desire and attraction.
Drat.
This was disturbing, troubling; did this mean a lack of faith on her part? Had her entire life been based on a lie?
What am I supposed to do now? she asked the flame on the altar. What am I supposed to think?
But the flame had no answers, and eventually, her knees began to ache. Giving it up, she went to bed, but sleep eluded her. Finally she resorted to one of the Infirmarian's potions, but even though it brought sleep, it also brought confused dreams in which a winged Tal pursued a murderous mage who had her former betrothed's face.
The next day brought more work, of course; just because she was pursuing a murderer, that did not mean that other judgments could wait on the conclusion of this case. All morning long she sat in sentencing on criminals who had already been caught and convicted, and in judgment on other miscreants, hearing evidence presented by junior Justiciar-Mages. In the afternoon, she read the latest round of case-records brought from other Abbeys of the Justiciars.
She hoped that a little time and work and the realization of the direction her emotions were taking would enable her to put some perspective on things. Tal did not appear to give his report until after dinner; but she discovered to her concealed dismay that nothing had changed.
She listened to his litany of what had been done and the usual lack of progress, and wondered what was going on in his mind. Shethought he had given some evidence of being attracted to her in turn, which would have been another complication to an already complicated situation, but she was so out of the habit of looking for such things that she could have been mistaken.
I feel like a foolish adolescent, she thought, with no little sense of irritation. Look at me! Watching him to see if he is looking at me a little too long, trying to second-guess what some fragment of conversation means! The next thing you know, I'll be giggling in the corner with Kayne!
"We need a more organized effort, I think," she said at last. "We're going to need more than the tacit cooperation of the Kingsford constables. I think we're going to need active effort on their part. Do you think Fenris would object to that, or resent it?"
"Not really," he replied after a moment of thought. "He's a professional, and he doesn't like these killings in his streets. I think the only reason he's held back from offering to put on more men to help is that he's afraidyou might resent his trying to get involved. After all, this is a Justiciar case."
"Well, it ought to be more than just a Justiciar case," she replied. "Get us a meeting with him tomorrow, if you can—"
She broke off as he frowned; he had been trying to take notes with a pen that kept sputtering, and his efforts at trimming the nib only made it worse.
"Only scribes ever learn how to do that right," she said after the third attempt to remedy the situation failed. "Here. Take this; keep it. I can always get another, but to be brutally frank, it isn't something you would be able to find easily."
She handed him a refillable Deliambren "reservoir" pen, the only gift her fiance gave her that she ever kept. He accepted it with a quizzical look, took the cap off at her direction, and tried it out. His eyebrows rose as he recopied the set of notes he'd ruined.
"Impressive," he said quietly. "Deliambren?"
She nodded. "One of those things that you have to have connections for. I can get another from Arden, and considering who gave me that, I really ought to." She smiled crookedly. "Weare supposed to discard everything from our past when we take final vows; I should have gotten rid of it long ago."
And was that reminder of what I am meant for him or for myself?