“Not normally a capital crime,” Thala muttered almost inaudibly into her notebook, where she’d been industriously jotting.
“Although any woman married to my uncle, well, never mind. And then, apparently, he descended after her to twist her neck to be sure. It might have started as an accident, but it didn’t seem to have finished as one, or so it was charged. Anyway, Uncle Halber was arrested on the suspicion, and somewhere in the proceedings seems to have gone over the line from protests to self-justifications. Confession of a sort, I suppose, although not repentance.”
“What happened to your aunt?” asked Penric. “Was she sundered?”
“At the very last, no. She’d resisted the prayers performed at the stairs to send her on her way until her husband was finally arrested, but then she consented to go to her goddess. The Daughter, in the end, by her second rites. I hope she found some comfort there. She’d had little enough in life.”
The assistant glanced up from her notebook, and asked curiously, “Can ghosts lie?”
Oswyl gave her query an approving nod. “I would never take such testimony as definitive on its own without some cross-check. Or several cross-checks, by preference. At most, it is a pointer, one more scent to follow up.”
Good question, Des, Pen thought. Can ghosts lie?
Well, they’re not usually any smarter than they were in life… Although they can be mistaken, or still in the grip of the passions that are forcing them to linger. Your friend Oswyl is wise not to take them at face value. As their sundering proceeds, all that fades away, of course.
“The whole case drew in any number of inquirers and divines and lawyers and judges before it was done,” Wegae allowed, “because of my uncle’s status. If there was any stone left unturned, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I was surprised there was any of the estate left by the time they were all done.”
Oswyl dipped his chin in rueful understanding of this.
“How did he come to escape?” asked Pen.
“He was too lightly guarded, I suppose. He was being kept at Magpie House, not the municipal prison, although he was supposed to be moved there once he was sentenced. He must have had help, and a horse, from somewhere.”
“How do you know he’s dead?” asked Oswyl.
“We had a letter from some mercenary captain in Ibra, addressed to kin Pikepool generally in Easthome, a sort of to-whom-it-may-concern missive—I suspect those captains have practice at the task.”
The news about Penric’s brother Drovo dying in that mercenary camp in Adria had come from such a captain, although additionally from a friend, Pen was reminded.
“Could it have been forged?” asked Oswyl.
“I’ve no idea, really.” Wegae paused in brief reflection. “On the whole, I hope not. We gave it to the lawyer to keep with the other estate documents—he should still have it, if you wish to examine it.”
“Maybe later,” said Oswyl, “should it prove in any way pertinent. We’ve more immediate concerns. May we go up on your lands tomorrow?”
“Yes, certainly. Would you like me to go with you, to smooth things over? The people there don’t take well to city strangers, and it’s been too long since I visited. I’m supposed to be overseeing it responsibly. The lawyers were very firm on that point.” He pushed up his spectacles and vented a small sigh. “The old manor neither produces nor consumes much, but it can’t be farmed, the timber is hard to extract, and it has no known minerals. I suppose a hunting preserve remains its best use.”
“That might be helpful,” allowed Oswyl.
They spent a few minutes arranging a rendezvous for the expedition in the early morning. Wegae himself saw his three visitors to his door, student fashion. Penric wondered if he had not grasped, or just didn’t believe in, the much stiffer public manners of most older men of his rank. (The private manners of barons Penric had no illusions about.) Oswyl seemed something between impressed by this extraordinary courtesy and suspicious; since the latter was his usual mode, Pen gave more weight to the former. The long summer twilight had faded into full dark; the porter lent them a lantern, to be returned on the morrow, which Thala dutifully took charge of.
As they were making their way back through the shadowed streets of Kingstown, Oswyl said, “That went more easily than most of my encounters with kin lords. I should keep you around, Penric.”
“Mm, I don’t think it was all my doing. Wegae seems a man who’d rather be back in his university life, except without the poverty. No one misses the poverty. And he probably wouldn’t be willing to give up his marriage for it, either.”
“Understandable.”
They were climbing the Templetown stairs when Penric, noting the private moment, thought to ask, “Whatever happened to Inglis’s heartthrob, Tolla kin Boarford? His letters stopped mentioning her, and he’s not said anything to me since I’ve been here.”
Thala gave a slight twitch, as though she wanted to bring out her notebook, but continued climbing ahead of Oswyl, lantern lifted and eyes resolutely forward.
Oswyl’s lips twisted, half grimace, half amused. “She became betrothed to someone else. He’s been glum ever since.”
Pen reflected on this. “How can you tell the difference?”
Oswyl barked a short laugh. “Glummer, then. I was relieved for him, myself. I did not see how that arrangement could ever prosper, in the long run, after what happened to her poor brother. I thought he should rest content with her forgiveness, which he did surely earn, and not bay for the moon.”
“Did you say so?”
“Of course not.”
Penric grinned, and saved the rest of his breath for the climb.
Reaching the Templetown heights, they stopped first by what proved to be a sort of boarding house for single female devotees of the Father’s Order, where Oswyl scrupulously saw his assistant safely inside. They parted company then, heading toward their respective beds.
Pen was entirely ready for his. He wondered if he might attend on the princess-archdivine in his day dirt and wash after, to speed things up. He didn’t want to risk knocking at her chambers after she’d retired. And it wasn’t as though he had any definitive news to report, just a mess of miscellaneous information and far too many foxes.
Des commandeered his mouth to speak aloud, breaking through his bleary musings. “Pen.”
“What?”
“Ask Learned Hamo what sorceress held Magal’s demon before her.”
Pen stopped short in the street, his tilting mind seeming to whirl onto a whole new axis. After a blinking moment, he said, “Huh.”
“Because there were two victims in that clearing, and Oswyl is only asking after the history of one of them.”
“A man would have to be mad…”
“Some men are.”
“This is a great leap, Des. With not nearly enough evidence to hold it in the air. Oswyl would sniff at my fancies.”
“So good you are a member of the white god’s order and not the gray’s, then. Are not furious fancies in His gift?”
“Along with obscene verse, but yes.”