Oswyl grunted. “I hate those instances. With no connection to the dead person, men like that are hard to trace.”
Circling the body once more, Penric mulled, “I have to… not take it back, exactly, but—a sufficiently expert bowman might put two shafts in the air at once, possibly before he realized that shape in the gloaming was a woman and not a deer. And then, horrified at his deed, run off. Accounts for everything.” Except the demon.
“How likely is this?”
City-bred Oswyl was no archer, Pen recalled, despite his other skills. “I could have, when I was in practice. Well, I hope not the part about mistaking a woman for a deer.”
“That’s… a very tempting simplification.” Oswyl didn’t look like a man tempted. He looked like a man who had just bitten into something with a bad taste. Again. “I won’t dismiss it from the list just yet. But it needs verification. Everything needs verification.”
The lay dedicat from the village arrived, carrying a basket and leading an older woman. She turned out to be the Weir temple’s divine, the one who had sent so directly to the Father’s Order when her lad had come gasping back to her at dawn with news of his find. The assistant locator accepted the basket gratefully, diving into it for the food, some of which she pressed on Oswyl. Oswyl munched standing—from his prior knowledge of the man, Pen was fairly sure he hadn’t yet stopped to eat today.
The local divine solemnly examined the dead woman, and agreed with her dedicat that the corpse was no one they’d ever seen before, no member of her village flock or from the farms round about. A stranger up from Easthome, her tone implying the Hallow King’s seat was a dangerous sort of fleshpot where one might find murderers or worse on any corner. It made Des snicker. You could fit five of Easthome in the capital of Darthaca, and ten in old Imperial Thasalon. She has no idea what a fleshpot is. Pretty city, though, I’ll grant it that.
Inglis, who had gone off to take a wider circuit through the woods, still looking for the bowman’s stand, came back then with a third arrow in his hand. Thala watched him curiously.
“Aye, same fletching,” Inglis muttered, comparing it to the shafts in the corpse’s back. “It was just standing in the soil”—he pointed into the trees where the slope fell toward a distant secluded stream—“but there was a bit of this stuck to it.”
He offered up a tuft of coarse ruddy hair. Pen took it and sniffed. “Fox.”
“So I make it,” agreed Inglis.
Everyone stared at the scrap, doubtless all trying to fit it into the multiplicity of scenes they’d imagined to account for the abandoned body. Oswyl finally shook his head and took charge of the shaft, and Inglis pocketed the fur. And then they all joined in the task of carrying the woman’s body to their cart. The local divine signed a melancholy blessing upon it as they arranged it in the limited space as decently as possible.
Pen turned the cart around to head back downhill, swinging aboard as Inglis took up the reins and urged their tired horse into motion once more. The two locators mounted and fell in behind, making a rudimentary sort of cortege.
Pen hoped they’d learn the woman’s name soon. He was uncomfortable thinking of her as just the corpse, not that every person wouldn’t share that demotion in time. They turned onto a wider road, and the carthorse, perhaps recognizing the way home, began pulling less dispiritedly. Oswyl rode up beside Pen.
“We really have to find that demon,” Pen told him.
Oswyl shrugged. “Bastard’s Order business; I yield it to you. The problem of justice for this dead woman presses more on me than concern for a creature who by its nature cannot die.”
“Well, then, you might also reflect that the demon was the closest possible witness to the murder.”
Oswyl’s brows flew up. “Can a demon be a reliable witness? How in the world could it be called to take oath and testify?”
“It would depend on the demon. Desdemona could.”
Oswyl took this in, nonplussed, then shook his head, muttering, “Magic dogs. Demons. I swear to the Father, my inquiries never used to be this strange.” Distancing himself temporarily from the tangle, he pushed his horse ahead.
Easthome, lying along the river Stork, was already outgrowing the city walls rebuilt just a generation ago. The crude hearse and its escort circled through the outlying houses to the south gate, which put them closest to the heights dubbed Templetown, overlooking the red-roofed spread of Kingstown below. Penric and Inglis dismounted from the cart to give the balky horse less load to pull uphill, and also to keep it moving along through the more crowded streets. Passersby stared at the body inadequately wrapped in the picnic cloth, eyed the two Grayjays riding behind, swallowed any urge to call questions, and signed themselves.
The chapterhouse of the Bastard’s Order lay two streets behind the great stone bulk of the city’s, and the Weald’s, main temple. The old wooden merchant’s mansion that had formerly housed the servants of the white god had burned down twenty years ago, and been replaced with a fine new edifice, built more to the purpose, in the cut yellow stone of this country. As the chief chapterhouse of the realm, and in close competition with its sibling Orders for the other four gods, its architecture was high, balanced, and austere, not nearly as makeshift as the more provincial chapterhouses Pen was used to. It made him feel rather provincial himself.
Thala went to pound on the door and summon the porter. Despite the heat of the late afternoon—early evening by now in the long summer light—Oswyl paused to reorder his shirt and button up his vest before turning to help the other two shift the body out of the cart. The porter emerged, straight-backed in his tabard with its emblem of two white hands, fingers curled and thumbs out, pointing both up and down. He opened his mouth to demand the visitors’ business, but it stayed open in dismay as he took in their burden. “Oh, no,” he breathed. The recognition was instant; clearly, they’d chosen the right destination for the dead woman.
“First,” said Oswyl to him, “let us get her off the open street.”
“Aye, sir.” The porter gave way at once, admitting them to a spacious stone-paved hallway where they lowered their sad freight to the floor.
“Her braids declared her one of yours, and gave her rank and calling,” said Oswyl, “but told us nothing else. Can you give us her name?”
“Aye, sir. That’s Learned Magal. She’s been missing all day, and her bed was not slept in, but we thought she’d just gone to visit one of her children.”
“Do you know when she last left the house? Or when you last saw her do so?”
“She was in and out several times yesterday. I don’t really remember if, if they don’t match up. The night porter might have more to add. He comes on in an hour.”
Oswyl nodded. “I understand she has an overseer of sorcerers here. He or she should probably be the first informed.”
“That would be Learned Hamo. I’ll fetch him down at once, Locator.” He stared, still shocked, at the form at their feet. “Where did you find her?”
“In a wooded tract in the hills, about ten miles out of Easthome,” said Oswyl, watching the porter’s face.
It crimped in confusion. “Whatever was she doing there?”
“Not a place she usually frequents, then?”
“Not as far as I know, sir. Here, I’ll get the Learned.” The shaken man hurried away up the stairway.
He came scuffing back down very soon followed by an older man, gray-haired, in the workaday robes of a divine. It didn’t take the silver cord in the braids pinned to his left shoulder to tell Pen what he was, and Desdemona controlled a slight stiffness.