“—could as well have been learned the other way around.” As you did, his eye-glint implied.
“And the Bastard, it is said, was the last of the gods,” put in Oswyl, though Penric didn’t see how he had a stake in the debate.
Thala frowned. “It’s all starting to sound like hearsay evidence to me,” she said, eliciting a muffled choke of, possibly, laughter from Oswyl. She did not turn in her saddle to check.
“Welcome to the study of history,” said Penric genially.
“And theology?”
A sudden silence fell from all three men.
“Maybe… not so much,” said Penric at length. Although that was not a conviction based on his seminary studies for a divine. Nor hearsay. “But there is no question people can get theology wrong, too.”
“People can get almost anything wrong,” sighed Oswyl. “Theology cannot be an exception.”
“Mm,” Penric conceded.
At the next turn, the road narrowed, and the riders strung out and resorted themselves. The early summer sun was making its slow climb into a blue sky, but their shadows still stretched long across the nearby fields, the strokes of the horses’ legs sweeping like scissors. From passing farmsteads, cows released from their morning milkings made their clanking way into pastures, and distant voices echoed around the byres and coops and granaries.
Penric took the opportunity to drop back beside Oswyl, displacing Lunet, though not out of earshot, and detailed to him his new theory from last night’s inspiration. Well, from Des. He wasn’t sure if naming his source would lend weight to his words or not. As Pen had guessed, his argument about the alternate victim elicited more scowls than smiles from the senior locator.
“What did Learned Hamo think of this… idea?” asked Oswyl. That last word seemed deliberately neutral, replacing something tarter, but at least he seemed to be turning Pen’s words over in his mind rather than spitting them back outright.
“He didn’t think it was impossible. I mean, from the point of view of the sorceress—either one—or their demon. The actual identity of the murderer being another matter.”
Oswyl mulled as their horses plodded up the steepening road. “It seems almost a distinction without a difference, from where I stand. Magal’s murder is the crime that will go to court. Her killer must still be secured. Everything must still be proved.”
“It might cut down your list of suspects. Or at least redirect it.”
“Oh? It seems to me it just lengthens it.” After a little silence, he added, “I’m not sure it even is a crime to injure or kill a demon. I mean, doesn’t your Order dispose of them routinely?”
“Technically, they are given back into the hands of the white god, whence they came. The god disposes.” Or sometimes not, Pen was reminded. Des’s displeased silence at this turn in the conversation was palpable. “It is no more nor less routine than when the machineries of justice hang a criminal. Whose soul must also go on to the gods, or be sundered as the case may be. A consequence not controlled by any executioner, else justice would be sacrilege.”
It was Oswyl’s turn to say, “Mm,” although with less concession in it.
After a longer silence, Penric asked, “Oswyl… have you ever been only part-way through one of your inquiries and been sure you were right?”
“Eh? Certainly.”
“You’d push for it, yes?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because sometimes, I’m proved wrong. Later.”
Pen digested this. “I suppose that’s all right.”
Oswyl glanced aside at him, looked between his horse’s ears, and said, “Not if the accused is hanged first.”
Pen opened his mouth, had just the mother-wit not to ask Has that ever happened to you? and let his jaw sink closed. As Oswyl’s was.
No. He had no envy of Oswyl’s calling. He’d be sticking with the white god, thank you.
How fortunate for us all, murmured Des. She might be smirking; might be serious. Or both. Pen rather thought both.
Penric leaned into his stirrups as the road angled up and began to switch back and forth, and the lower edge of the kin Pikepool forest tract closed in around them, casting moist green shadows. He begged Des’s Sight again, stretching his senses for foxes, or rather, for one animal that might be much more. The surrounding woods grew glorious, colors seeming brighter, limned with life and movement both swift and subtle, but no foxes as such, though he was briefly distracted by the flash of birds and the musky dusk of a badger. The shamans in the party, too, grew more alert, and he wondered how strangely—or akin—they sensed all this, but no one called an alarm before they finally turned aside into the rutted lane leading to the old kin Pikepool manor house and farm.
Approached from the front, the fortress-like house seemed nearly as brown and blank as when seen from the back. They rode around it to the stable yard before encountering any other people.
As they dismounted, an old man emerged from the house, alarm on his features which faded as he spotted Wegae and Jons. “Oh,” he said. Pen thought he might have tugged on his forelock if he hadn’t been bald. “Young master.” His tone was respectful enough, but… ah. Young master not my lord. Old retainer, then, relict, like the rest of this place, of the prior baron.
“Ah, Losno, good,” said Wegae, turning with an air of familiarity. “We will be here for the day. We’ll rest the horses in the pasture.”
“I’ll fetch the lad.” The man trudged off to roust out a stable boy, or gardener’s assistant, or general young village laborer—it looked as if the one gangling youth held all such posts. He and Jons and the shamans coordinated in setting the tack in a line atop the fence and loosing the beasts. The pasture’s current equine occupants looked as dubious about this alien influx as Losno and his lad, although neither of the human hosts bit, squealed, or kicked.
“Losno is the gardener and caretaker,” Wegae explained to Penric and the Grayjays, “along with his wife, who sees to the house. As much as it gets, these days. I’ll collect them all for you in a moment.”
“Please,” said Oswyl.
Pen was dismayed to spot five new fox skins tacked to the stable wall, reeking in the sun. A quick check of the stall found it empty, or emptied. Inglis and Lunet joined his examination.
“Can you tell anything by looking at them?” Pen asked anxiously.
“Not… especially,” said Inglis. “They all seem alike, if that helps any.”
If anyone had killed the wanted fox already, they would likely have been jumped-to by its demon, Pen reflected uneasily. Creating a whole new problem, but clearly it had not happened to the old gardener or his lad. Nor, when they came out in a few minutes, his wife or her scullion-girl, who could have been sister to the boy. Or maybe cousin, or both, rural villages being what they were.
Oswyl sat them all down on a bench beside the back door and, reinforced by Wegae’s weedy authority, began a systematic inquiry. Penric listened, hanging back as anonymously as he was dressed, although he did carry his braids tucked away in his inner vest pocket. The pattern of questions was starting to become familiar. The news about the dead sorceress found in the Pikepool woods induced shock and surprise in the four servants, and some haste to assure everyone listening that they’d seen or heard nothing of it. Pen had no idea if any of them were lying, even with a flash of Sight; all he could sense was agitation, and a certain amount of wriggling gruesome curiosity from the boy, which did not require magic to discern. He wondered if Oswyl could tell any more by experience.