"This is Johan's work." Adira nodded at the charred and ruined warehouses and ships. "Or that of his agents."
The crowd rustled at the word "agents."
Virgil muttered to the Circle, "Destruction follows in our wake, too."
Simone jabbed his ribs.
With half a town listening raptly, Adira told how Johan had escaped east and found "this child of the forest," meaning
Jedit, which drew a laugh. Laughter died as Palmyra's mayor recounted the savagery that ravaged her marketplace.
Throat raspy and seared, Adira finished, "We tracked Johan here, only to learn he killed a kindly old sage named Hebe."
"We imagine it was he," corrected Bardolph the cleric. "No one witnessed his crime. Among our kind, only a confession or two witnesses can sink a criminal."
"Johan killed her, Bardolph." A broad-chested man with a yellow-gray beard had eyes and face red from fighting fires. "We all know it, even if we can't prove it. No one else had reason. Hebe was poor as a mouse and harmless and well liked. Ofttimes she tended ailments for no pay when the fishing was poor. The murderer had to be Johan, a stranger wreaking havoc and hate. But I want to know why he killed her."
"I can't say for certain," returned Adira, "except Johan dislikes leaving witnesses alive. Most likely Johan asked Hebe some questions, since she's local, and he doesn't know the region. We don't know what the tyrant seeks or where he goes, but both must link to magic. Hebe was a spellcaster, but only a small sage, you say, so it's unlikely Johan needed sorcery. That leaves only local knowledge. What might be Johan's destination that relates to magic?"
"Which way did he go?" asked a woman in a thick, soot-stained shawl. "Someone had to see the tyrant leave town. He rode in a sedan chair, and we don't see many of them! And he had that big crowd to feed!"
Murmurs drifted through the crowd. Heads were scratched. With Bardolph moderating, people came forward to offer facts. A vintner sold Johan's scribe three casks of wine. Johan's dotty old seer bought new shoes. The barbarian bearers had purchased a peck of oysters. As hours of testimony and debate dragged, Adira Strongheart gritted her teeth and stifled the urge to scream over dreary details. She was relieved that Johan had not booked passage or bought a ship. If the cruel tyrant sailed into the sunset, he might as well visit the Mist Moon for all Adira could find him.
Then someone mumbled that Johan's party vanished.
"Vanished?" blurted Adira. "How so?"
"Dunno." A blond, beardless lad was reluctant to speak. "I saw them quit the Dandysprat. The barbarians scooched, so the master might mount the chair. I thought it a powerful queer time to be departin', for t'was after midnight. Where could they walk by night? But the bald man waved a hand and off they trotted. South. Johan craned his head around like a vulture, but he didn't see me in the shadows. Lucky, I was, I know now! Then he twinkled his fingers, an' the whole party disappeared!"
"Invisible," said Adira, who possessed that trick herself.
"Yes, cap'n. Must'a been."
"South, they turned?" Musing, Adira faced that way. Night cloaked the coast, but Adira had seen that a rugged rise verged on a high plain, then trees.
She asked, "Are there roads along the coast through the forest?"
"We only venture south in ships," said a dark-tanned woman. "Precious little beachhead exists along the Storm Coast. Not till you round Sheep's Head."
Past that bald knob, the shore veered east to become the Craggy Coast on the way to Bryce.
"There's ox-paths for logging, but they dead-end," said a logger. "They don't like us venturing too deep."
"'They'?" Adira wished she could throttle these slow-speaking folk and shake out quicker answers.
"The people of the pines," said a lithe woman in furs with the look of a scout. "They don't welcome trespassers. They allow some logging, for they like coin to buy our iron and brassware. Too, they barter furs. But they ain't friendly about it."
"Arboria," put in Bardolph, "so they name the pinelands.
A mysterious clan. They've reappeared these past three years. For decades before they were gone."
"Where?" asked Jasmine Boreal, a wanderer of the woods. "Why disappear for decades, then come back?"
"And what," asked Adira, "could Johan seek in the depths of a dismal forest?"
Fear skittered on the night wind. People stared at the ground. Puzzled, Adira repeated the question.
With a pained sigh, the cleric Bardolph admitted, "Legend speaks of… an undying mage who inhabits a castle in the forest."
"Name?" prompted Adira.
More gloom. Bardolph shook his head. "We dare not invoke her name. The less said, the better. But be warned. She's capable of greater evil than Johan can conceive."
"She?" Adira waited, but no one sullied the silence. Finally she sighed and rubbed her smudged nose. She craved a solid meal, a bath, and a day's sleep, but likely she'd get none. Pondering the sparse news, she mentally shrugged. Many mages were undying or very old. Johan was centuries old, by all accounts. Yet he'd been bested by a ragtag army and Hazezon Tamar's sorcery.
For just a moment, the pirate queen's thoughts drifted to her ex'husband. She wondered what Haz was doing now and how he might have aided her quest. Mostly she wondered how two people so in love couldn't live together. Their marriage-had had to end peaceably before it erupted in blood. Still…
"Dira?" Simone the Siren touched her chief's elbow.
"What? Oh. Bless me, I'm luffing." Adira's apology made the Circle glance about in amazement. "It makes sense. Johan would visit a local mage to learn about another mage living in the nearby forest, then he'd kill the informant to cover his tracks. He hired agents to slow us further."
"Oh, yes," said Bardolph. "You mentioned agents before. Do you suspect someone in Buzzard's Bay stirred up strife?"
"I know it," said the pirate chief. "Meaning no offense, but one minute I was talking to your sheriff civil as I might, and the next some fluff sparkled in the air. Everyone turned ugly and riotous, including my crew, and here we be."
"Oy, I remember!" A lean man in the crowd rose on tiptoe to peer around. "It was Darswin and his gang shouting you down. Queer, them talking like patriots being offended. None of them wastrels was ever civic-minded. The whole bunch needs a good hanging."
A woman bleated, "I saw Darswin and one of his brigands duck into Noah's warehouse just before the fire! I thought they was pilfering."
"They must'a fired Noah's warehouse to kill the strangers!" bawled a man. "That arsonous son of a-"
"Find the bastards!" rose a chorus. "Find Darswin and his cronies! Scour the town! Find 'em!"
Roaring, coasters fanned out through dark streets. They left no door closed, no barrel standing, no shed unexplored. In the meantime Adira and her crew accepted Bardolph's invitation to sup in his small rectory. Slabs of coarse black bread and cheese were washed down with more beer. While Adira questioned Bardolph about forest lore, Jasmine Boreal and Whistledove Kithkin sat rapt. Virgil and Wilemina and others dozed off, Murdoch actually standing upright. The halloo of the hunt, like a pack of dogs chasing a scent, seemed to echo off the surrounding mountains.
Adira and Bardolph halted as halloos turned to cheers. Bardolph sighed. "Our quarry is treed. I must preside at their last sunset."
With pirates tagging along, the cleric paced sedately to the far end of Seafarers' Quay where most of the town congregated. Big men stood over three quailing suspects who had been shoved to their knees with hands bound behind. The criminals bore black eyes and bloody noses. Adira's pirates felt no pity, having fought fires that claimed half the shorefront.