Teneria cocked her head to one side and replied, “In a way. We can generally tell when people believe what they say— whether that’s actually the truth is sometimes an entirely different matter. And it works better with some people than others.” Sarai nodded, and asked, “Suppose you spoke to a woman I thought had been connected with the murders; could you tell me whether she had, in fact, been connected?”
Teneria frowned. “That would depend. Probably. If she spoke at all, almost certainly. If she spoke freely, with no magical constraints, absolutely. But I would not necessarily be able to ascertain the nature of the connection.”
“Could you tell if a person had actually committed one of the murders?”
“Oh, yes, I would think so. Unless there was a very great deal of magic hiding the fact.”
“Suppose you were to walk down the street, or through the market; could you pick a murderer out of the crowd?”
Teneria shook her head. “Only if I was incredibly lucky. The murderer would have to be thinking about the actual killing and feeling a strong emotional reaction to those thoughts, with absolutely no magical protection of any kind. Even then, I couldn’t be sure without stopping to investigate. What might look like a murderer’s thoughts at first glance could just be a housewife worried about killing a chicken for dinner.”
“I thought it was probably too much to ask,” Sarai admitted. “If you could do that, we’d have just had witches working for my father for years, instead of relying on Okko and the others for most of it.”
Teneria shrugged.
“But if we brought you a person and asked, ’Is this the murderer,’ you could tell us?” Sarai asked.
“Ordinarily, yes.”
Sarai nodded. “Good enough,” she said. She pointed. “That man in the brown tunic there is a sorcerer by the name of Kelder of Tazmor; he claims to have magically established that a particular woman was present in each room where a murder was committed—though not necessarily at the time of the killing. I want you to find out how reliable his information is.”
Teneria followed the gesture, but said nothing at first.
“Does sorcery interfere with your witchcraft?” Sarai inquired.
“Not usually,” Teneria replied. “Sometimes.”
“Will it this time?”
Teneria turned and walked away from the dais, toward Kelder. “I’ll let you know,” she said, over her shoulder.
Ten minutes later, she let them know. Kelder believed absolutely in what he had told Sarai and Tikri. Sarai thanked the young witch, and stared down at the spriggan that was clutching at her ankle.
Who was that woman Kelder had described?
CHAPTER 21
Captain Tikri’s files were a mess. Lady Sarai had thought her own records, up in her bedroom, were not as organized as they ought to be, and had always been embarrassed when she thought of the tidy shelves and drawers that her father and his clerks maintained. By comparison with Tikri’s random heap of reports and letters, her records were a model of order and logic. “What are you looking for, anyway?” Tikri asked, as Sarai dumped another armful on his desk.
“I don’t know,” Sarai said, picking a paper off the stack. “But I hope I’ll know it when I see it.”
“How will you know it if you don’t know what it is? I’d offer to help, but how can I?” Sarai sighed.
“What I’m after,” she said, “is some record of a crime that the conspirators might have committed before the murders. Once they killed Inza, we were looking for them, and I’m sure they’ve been careful, and certainly we’ve been careful, checking out everything that we thought might be connected. Right?” “Right,” Tikri said, a trifle uncertainly. “Well, this conspiracy probably didn’t burst out of nowhere, full-grown and completely ready, the night poor Inza died,” Sarai explained. “They must have been preparing before that. They may have killed more dogs, for example, before working their way up to people. They may have injured people without killing them. They may have stolen things they needed for their magic. And maybe, since they weren’t so experienced yet, they left traces and clues. Now do you see what I’m after?”
“Oh,” Tikri said. He hesitated. “How far back do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” Sarai admitted. “You may not find anything.”
“I know that,” Sarai said, flinging down a thick report and glaring angrily at Tikri. “Don’t you think I know that? But I don’t have much of anything else left to try. The Wizards’ Guild wants to catch whoever it is for themselves, because it won’t look as good for them if I do it, so they won’t help me any more than they have to.” Tikri started to protest, and Sarai cut him off. “Oh, they’ll put up a pretense of cooperation, I’m sure,” she said, “but half of them probably still think I’m trying to blame them for all this, or steal the credit. I won’t know if they’re covering up something or not; I can’t be sure, and they aren’t about to tell me. The Council of Warlocks is no help; they’re all afraid that if they do anything to help me they’ll draw down the Calling on themselves. The Brotherhood is less organized than a children’s street game; they don’t even know who’s in charge, or who their members are. The Sisterhood isn’t much better-they don’t know how many witches there are in Ethshar, let alone what any of them are doing. And none of them seem to be getting anywhere with their magic, anyway. So what else would you suggest I do?”
“The magicians can’t help at all?”
“They can’t help any more. Okko says the gods can’t see anything through the haze of wizardry; Kallia says the demons won’t tell her anything, and she doesn’t know whether they know anything to tell. The warlocks all swear their magic doesn’t handle information. Kelder’s told me all he can, and that’s more than I could get from any Ethsharitic sorcerer. Wizards and witches tell me what magic was used, what went where, but they can’t give me names or faces. So I’m reading these papers. Don’t you ever sort them?”
“No,” Tikri admitted.
Sarai let out a wordless noise of exasperation and turned back to the reports.
Tikri, hoping to be of help, began picking up papers and glancing through them, as well. The two sat, reading silently, for several minutes.
“Here’s a report of a missing dog,” Tikri ventured. Sarai glanced up. “Let me see it.”
Tikri obeyed; Sarai skimmed through the report quickly, then put it to one side. “It might be worth another look,” she said.
A moment later she found one herself.
“What ever happened in this case?” she said, handing two pages to Tikri.
Tikri read enough to remind himself what had happened. “Oh, this,” he said. “Nothing happened. We never found out who it was.”
Sarai took the two sheets back. “ ’Guardsman Deran reports tending to stabbing victim in tavern,’ ” she read. “ ’No accusations or arrests made.’ ” She looked up. “That’s in your handwriting.”
Tikri nodded. “That’s right,” he said.
“The other one isn’t,” Sarai pointed out.
“No, that’s the lieutenant who was in charge, Lieutenant Sen-den,” Tikri agreed. “He sent it in the next day.”
“And you actually managed to keep the two together? It is the same stabbing?”
Tikri shrugged. “Sometimes I get lucky,” he said. “It’s the same one.”
“Guardsman Deran Wuller’s son tended to two knife wounds, a slash and a stab, on the upper left thigh of a man who gave his name as Tolthar of Smallgate, who claimed to have been discharged from the city guard five years previously for being drunk while on duty,’ ” Sarai read aloud. “ ’It was Guardsman Deran’s conclusion that the stabbing was a result of a disagreement with a young woman; witnesses at the scene reported that the so-called Tolthar had been seen talking with a woman shortly before the stabbing. Those elements of their descriptions of the woman that are in general agreement were as follows: Thin, black hair, below average height, wearing dark clothing.’ ” She put down the report. “Short, thin, black hair, dressed in black,” she said. “A stab and a slash. Sound familiar?”