“That has possibilities,” said Penric. “A sorcerer might easily perform some legitimate act in service of their duties to which some caught-out wrong-doer might take exception. The person to ask in that case would be Learned Hamo.”
“If it were obvious, I’d think he should have thought of it sooner than this, and volunteered the information,” said Oswyl. “Nonetheless, yes, it does seem worth asking again.” He sopped up the last of his stew with a morsel of bread. “So much for our day in town.” As exhausting as it had been fruitless, apparently. “What of yours in the woods?”
Penric and Inglis took turns recounting their tale. Oswyl listened intently, his scowl set, till Penric came to his theory of the two hundred foxes, whereupon he looked deeply pained.
Inglis chewed on his knuckle for a moment. “Regarding the fox problem, Pen. I think I might get us some help with that.”
“Help how? Ordinary searchers won’t be able to tell one fox from another.”
“I wasn’t thinking of ordinary searchers. But I’ll have to ask around before I can make any promises. I’ll see what I can find tonight, after this.”
Penric wasn’t used to thinking of help in Temple matters, given both the solitary nature of demons and the rarity of sorcerers. He wasn’t sure whether to give credence to Inglis’s words or not, but decided it would be premature to melt with relief.
“Oh,” said Penric, “I should add, I met Baron kin Pikepool last night. He and his wife were at a dinner at Princess Llewanna’s town mansion.”
Oswyl’s brows climbed. “Rarified company.”
Penric, who had not found it to be all that rarified, shrugged. “He didn’t seem to have heard of the murder on his land yet, and I didn’t say anything about it. Is he on your list of people to talk to?”
“Very much so. Today, by preference, except that the funeral ran long and I am almost out of today. What did you make of him?”
Penric wondered if he meant, as a suspect? “Young. Bookish. Interesting for that.”
“Many men of his rank are skillful sportsmen.”
“Not him—bad eyes. Apparently a lifelong affliction. If you are looking for a bowman, he’s not it.” Not that kin Pikepool couldn’t have hired such a mercenary, and easier than most, if his purse was a deep as it had appeared. But why?
Around a last bite, Thala put in, “I was able to speak briefly with one of the kin Pikepool maidservants this morning. She said her lord spent day-before-yesterday at home, and he and his lady wife had friends in for dinner, who stayed late.” She mopped her lips, thoughtfully. “He sounded an unexceptionable employer, if not lordly enough to suit some in his household. The main objection seems to be that he routinely feeds a pack of poor hangers-on from his university days.”
Which… sounded more like people Pen would care to meet than most of last night’s company.
“It would be an odd plan,” said Inglis, “for a calculating murderer to leave the body to be found on his own land.” He hesitated. “Unless it was someone trying to cast suspicion in kin Pikepool’s direction.”
“More likely,” said Oswyl, “is that the body was intended to be better concealed, but that the murderer didn’t get back to do so before it was discovered.”
“Because he suddenly decided to chase a fox? Through those dire woods, at night? All night?” said Penric. “That’s a very distractible murderer. Or a very important fox.”
“You are thinking it bore away Magal’s demon, yes? And her murderer knew it?” said Oswyl. “It may be so, but why give chase? If it is as you describe, the demon would be crippled, impotent. And, certainly, unable to accuse her killer.”
“Which brings me back to the question, why was the kin Pikepool forester hunting foxes today?” said Penric. “And taking care to catch them alive, which is not the usual approach to foxes.”
Oswyl sighed. “So I will add the kin Pikepool forester to my list. After the baron.”
“Please.” Penric nodded. “He might have been physically capable of the act. Still leaves the problem of why.”
Oswyl drummed his fingers on the table and frowned. Some more. “This is not the first time that kin Pikepool has come to the attention of justice in Easthome. But I’m not seeing a connection.”
“Oh?” said Penric, trying, and failing, to imagine how Wegae and his willowy spouse could possibly have done so. “Was he caught stealing books?”
Oswyl blinked, then said, “Oh. Not the present baron. His predecessor. Uncle, I think. He was accused of pushing his wife down the stairs during some marital spat. Broke her neck in the fall. Two, three years ago. The tribunal was truncated when the accused man fled the realm. But after some legal delays, his title and property were sequestered for the crime, and passed along to the nephew. I suppose they couldn’t leave the estate without management. I don’t remember if the old baron was rumored to have died abroad. This is hearsay, by the way. I didn’t work on the case—given the status of those involved, it was too far above my head.”
“I don’t suppose this uncle was a burly bowman?”
“No idea. But that he’s a thousand miles away, or dead, and has no known history with Learned Magal whatsoever, disinclines me to get too excited.”
“That first could be reversed,” noted Inglis. “Not the second, I grant.”
“Mm.” Oswyl glanced across at Penric. “Would you be willing to come along with me to kin Pikepool tonight? I should like to borrow your rank.”
“Which one?” said Penric. “Learned divine? Sorcerer?”
“Those as well, but I was thinking of your kin rank. That is”—Oswyl cleared his throat—“you once told me your father was a baron, Penric, but you had not mentioned whether your mother was a baron’s wife.”
Irregular birth was a common assumption about members of the Bastard’s Order, and too often correct for Penric to take offense. “Very much so, although she’s a baron’s widow now. There were seven of us, my three sisters and three brothers. And then me, the youngest.”
Oswyl nodded. “It will serve to get us in the front door. And not the servants’ entrance. Kin lords can be, mm, difficult to deal with to those not of the highest echelon of Temple inquirers, themselves with kin bonds.”
“I’d have thought your Temple calling was a password for every portal.”
“Unfortunately not.” Oswyl paused, eyes narrowing in curiosity. “Why, is yours?”
Penric had never thought about it. “I’ve… not tried every portal yet.”
Oswyl snorted, and rose. “Well, let us see how you work to open this one.”
The kin Pikepool townhouse lay farther out from the Hallow King’s Hall than the lordly mansion of last night, on a narrower street. The row of dwellings was more modest but more recently built, also of the cut stone so common in the capital replacing, by fire and fiat, so many earlier wooden structures. The young baron was evidently sociable enough to keep two cressets bracketing his entry burning in the early night, with a porter to tend them and the door.
“Learned Lord Penric kin Jurald of Martensbridge to see Baron kin Pikepool, upon an urgent Temple matter,” Penric told this functionary, thinking of his princess-archdivine’s tutorials. “And colleagues.” Alas that he hadn’t had time to return to his room and change into his whites with his shoulder braids, which spoke so firmly for him. But the porter, after a wary glance at his grubby person and the tidier Grayjays, gave way at least to the point of leaving them standing in the hall rather than on the step while he went to find out if his master was receiving such odd company. He disappeared into a doorway off the single central hallway, returning soon after.