The living souls in the clearing were all vivid enough, congruent with their bodies. Inglis’s bore the added spiritual density of his Great Wolf, unsettling if one didn’t know what it was. Or maybe even if one did. Penric slowly turned, scanning with sight and second sight together, but found no convenient miming ghosts. Lost souls usually attached themselves to a place, rarely to their own bodies; the strange shamanic practice of carrying away the ghost of a slain spirit-warrior bound to a sacred object did not apply here. Nor was there any sign of the stray demon, not that Pen expected it. Demons could not, after all, jump to trees, which were the only other living things about. The demon must have been carried off by its new host. And there was a pressing question or five.
Pen signed himself in the tally of the gods, let his Sight fade, and turned to Oswyl. “No ghost. No demon. No help. Sorry.”
Oswyl huffed the sigh of a man perpetually unsurprised that his luck was not in. “Worth checking.”
“Very much so.”
“Can you tell anything else?”
Inglis’s hand tracked the line from the arrow shafts into the woods, seeking the archer’s vantage, but then he shook his head. “No saying how much she turned as she fell.”
Pen crossed his arms and stared down at the woman. “A few things. She’s young, to start with.”
Oswyl cocked his head. “Surely not. Middle years.”
“I mean young for a Temple sorceress. The Bastard’s Order does not usually invest a trained woman aspirant with a demon until she is done childbearing, or at least is sure she wishes no child. The chaos that demons usually shed”—Pen paused to choose a delicate term—“thwarts conception.”
Oswyl’s brows twitched up. “For some, that would be a benefit.”
“True. But a female sorcerer must be extraordinarily clever, attentive, and experienced to successfully manage a demon and a pregnancy both at once. Some few have done it, but it’s not a recommended path. So the greater likelihood is this woman has not borne her demon long.”
“I don’t see any spent arrows,” noted Inglis, craning his neck. “Two shots, two hits. Suggests an expert bowman.”
“Or bow-woman,” murmured the listening assistant, almost inaudibly.
“Or he collected them after,” said Oswyl.
“Mm.”
Pen eyed the arrows’ penetration. “He was either close, or had a bow with a really strong draw. If the latter, probably a man. I… think not the former.” He cast the junior locator an apologetic nod.
“Why not?” asked Oswyl—intent, not skeptical.
“One reason to murder a sorcerer that leaps to my mind”—Penric cleared his throat—“is to steal their demon.”
Inglis’s head turned at this. “People really try that?”
“Yes,” sighed Pen.
“It wouldn’t work with a Great Beast!”
“Lucky for shamans. But if the killer was after the demon, he’d want to be as close to the sorcerer as possible. A knife, not a bow, would be the weapon of choice. About the only way one could get more distance is by that Roknari trick of a throwing the sorcerer into the sea with a leaking cushion and sailing away as fast as possible. A bow suggests a murderer who very much did not want to be lumbered with his victim’s demon.”
Oswyl frowned. “What’s the range that a demon can jump?”
“It,” Pen began, but then realized he didn’t have to offer a guess. “Desdemona, can you speak to that?”
“It varies with the strength of the demon,” said Des, “but a long bowshot would certainly stretch it to its limits.”
Oswyl’s eyes narrowed as he stared back and forth from the body to the encircling woods. “Or there were two. The bowman at a distance, the other close up.” He did not look as if the thought pleased him.
It wasn’t an impossible scenario, and it did account for the demon, Pen had to grant.
“It had to have happened before dark last night,” suggested Inglis, “to make that shot—twice—at that range.”
“Unless she bore a lantern,” said Oswyl. Everyone looked around. No lantern lay broken or rolled away, but it might have been carried off like spent arrows.
“A sorcerer can see in the dark,” Pen pointed out. “She might not have needed one.”
“A bowman can’t,” said Inglis, clearly still taken with his own theory.
“Unless he’s another sorcerer,” put in Pen. “Although in that case, he wouldn’t need to keep his distance.”
Oswyl groaned. “Anything else you can tell me?”
“A sorcerer is very hard to kill,” Penric began, rather in the teeth of the evidence before them.
“Sorcerers with experienced demons are very hard to kill,” Desdemona corrected this, “if their demons wish to protect them. A young demon will be less adept. But if any demon wishes to throw off an unwanted rider, it’s not any great challenge.”
Three people stared at him oddly. Penric went on in a louder voice, “What I was about to say is, that suggests this sorceress was taken by surprise, by ambush, and so was her demon.”
Oswyl rubbed his toe into the dirt, his expression growing distant with this visualization. “Or the murderer was someone she trusted. Or murderers, gah.”
Penric grimaced, a little sickened at the picture of the woman, or anyone, really, lured out and so betrayed. “I suppose so.”
Oswyl’s head tilted as he studied the body. “I suppose she really was a sorceress? Speaking of complications. Because anyone could throw on a coat with a braid pinned to it. Or pin one on someone.”
She’d certainly been wearing the coat when she’d died, by the blood soaking it. Penric knelt and fingered the braid, which was stiff and clean, comparable to his own after less than its first year’s use. Des…?
Oh, yes. There is… an emptiness, here in this husk. Hard to describe, but distinctive enough. As if the place where the soul had resided is stretched larger than usual.
Huh. Pen said aloud, “Yes, she was. Which means that the chapterhouse of the Bastard’s Order in Easthome should house a bailiff of sorcerers who is her master, and who can identify her. I expect a great many of our questions may be answered there.”
He tested her hand for rigor, something that Oswyl had doubtless already done, and had more practice at than Pen, too. The stiffness might be starting to pass off, but then, the day was warm. Amberien? Helvia? he called on the two sorceress-physicians numbered among Des’s prior riders. Can you add anything?
Helvia answered, Not really. Too many variables. Late yesterday or last night may be as close as you can come.
Pen blew out his breath and stood up. “I do wonder why she was just left like this. Surely the murderer could have delayed discovery, perhaps indefinitely, by digging some shallow grave. He’d had time. Or hadn’t he, and in that case, why not?”
“Add the question to the list,” said Oswyl. “I promise it won’t be the last. Meanwhile, spread out and see if there is any more this clearing has to say. Mute things may sometimes give more telling testimony than witnesses. And then we’ll take this poor woman home.”
Pen walked about, looking, and Des looked through his eyes. He mostly found a great deal of nothing. No lantern, no footprints, no dropped objects. No demon. Oswyl’s dual-murderers idea seemed ever more plausible. “Or,” he commented to Oswyl aloud, “it could have been one murderer, of either sex, and one hired mercenary with a bow. Such ruined men will kill for surprisingly little money.”