Four and Twenty Blackbirds (7 page)

Harden took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes for a moment, then took a small sip of the wine. "You're right, of course," he replied shakily. "I wasn't thinking—"

"No one could be, in those circumstances," Tal replied dryly. "Lad, most of the cits think we can do anything, and expect us to on a regular basis; that kind of thinking can get you believing you're supposed to really be able to. But you're just a man, like any of the cits—just you have a baton and some authority, people listen to you, and you can handle yourself against a couple of armed ruffians. And none of those things make you either a Priest or a mage, to save a soul or a body, either. Now, what made Brock think you should talk to me about this?"

"Well—I guess because it was another murder-suicide, and the knife is missing," Harden said after a moment of thought. "He told me about your theory, and it seems to fit. I suppose you could say that the beggar was a musician; at least, she was always singing. She didn't know the man,
I
had never seen him on my beat. Judging by the wound, it was a strange knife, too; like a stiletto, but with a longer blade. We looked for it, too, believe me. After he threw it away, it just vanished."

From the moment that Harden mentioned the rag-picker throwing the knife away, Tal had the feeling that this murder
did
match his profile; now he was sure of it. Once again, the knife was gone, and he was already certain that it would never be found.

He was also certain that no links would be uncovered joining the beggar-woman and the rag-picker, no matter how diligently he looked. The rag-picker probably was not even from this part of town, and he normally would never have been on that street. It was the same pattern all over again; the same damnable, frustrating pattern.

The use of magic
could
explain it, some kind of compulsion-magic, perhaps operating through the medium of the knife, but
why
? All the victims were utterly insignificant!

What was more, all the victims were utterly unalike, especially the last three. A real street-musician, a whore, and a beggar—aside from being poor and female, and marginally connected with music, they had nothing in common.

He shoved it all into the back of his mind and concentrated on coaxing Harden to talk himself out. The wine helped; it loosened the boy's tongue to a remarkable extent, and once Harden started, he kept going until he ran himself out.

Just like I did, the night that fellow jumped off the bridge in front of me. . . . 
 

He hadn't thought of that in many years now, but there had been a time when he literally could not get it out of his mind. Now he knew that his presence or absence would have had no effect on the man, but then—

Half the time I thought I'd somehow caused him to jump by just being there, and half the time I thought if I'd just tried harder I could have talked him out of it. In both cases, the guilt and self-recrimination were the same.

Now it was his turn to listen and say all the things that Harden wanted desperately to hear—things he
knew
were logical, but that guilt told him could not be true.

They emptied that bottle and another between them, though most of it went into Harden. At one point Tal ascertained that Harden lived alone, and had no woman or relative waiting anxiously for him to come home, and just kept replenishing his glass until he finally broke through the final barrier and wept.

That was what he had needed, more than talk, more than sympathy; he needed to cry, in the presence of someone who understood. Not all men needed the release of tears after something like this, but many did.

And may Rayburn find himself in this position one day, with no one willing to listen to him and pour the wine! 
 

He came very close to hating his superior tonight, and only the fact that Rayburn was not worth wasting hatred on kept him from doing so. If the Captain himself did not feel capable of offering such important moral support to his men, it was his responsibility to find someone who could and would! It should not have been left up to old Brock to find someone!

And getting the lad drunk was not the most optimal way to get him to unload his troubles, but it is the only way I know, Tal thought glumly. He should have been with someone who knows how to handle situations like this one, not with me. He's going to have a head in the morning, poor boy. On the other hand— 

He was Harden's senior. He could legitimately report him in sick. Rayburn would have to find a replacement for his shift—

Hell, Rayburn can walk the lad's beat himself and do some real work for a change! 
 

Although emotion wore a good bit of the wine off, Harden was still not fit to leave the inn, either. So when the tears were over, the guilt somewhat dispersed, and Harden reduced to telling Tal what a fine fellow he was in slurred and half-incoherent speeches, Tal excused himself long enough to tap on the door of one of the two Mintak brothers who worked as peace-keepers in the bar downstairs. He knew Ferg would still be awake; they had the same taste in books, and the Mintak would often come tapping on
his
door about this time of the night if his own library ran dry. He liked Ferg and his brother, and if anyone ever said a word against nonhumans in general and these two in particular, he took care to let them know just how he stood on the matter. If he hadn't been a constable, that might have gotten him into a fight or two, but between his baton and the brothers' muscle, troublemakers generally took their prejudices elsewhere.

Ferg answered the door quickly enough to have been awake and reading, sticking his shaggy brown head out of the door cautiously. A pair of mild brown eyes looked down at Tal out of a face that was bovine, equine, and human, all at once. He opened the door a little further when he recognized Tal, and as if to confirm Tal's guess, there was a book in his broad brown hand, a thumb stuck in it to keep his place. "Got a friend who needed to get drunk tonight," Tal said shortly, knowing Ferg would understand. "I need to get him down to a room for tonight."

The Mintak nodded wisely. "Hold a moment," he said in that deep voice all Mintaks shared regardless of gender. "Let me put the candle somewhere safer."

He withdrew his head; there was a little shuffling, and he returned, without the book. "Nobody's using the guest-room," the Mintak offered. "Might as well put him there, and we won't have to move him down any stairs."

"That might be best," Tal agreed. "He's a good lad, but I'd just as soon not run up too big a bill on his behalf."

There was a single, very small room on this floor, a room not much bigger than a closet, that the tenants had—with the agreement of the proprietors of the inn—fixed up as a bedroom for their own guests. Sometimes it was used for visiting relatives, and sometimes for those who were in the same condition as Harden. Once or twice it had been used by quarreling couples, and on those occasions, the rest of the tenants were very careful not to ask any questions of either party. Those who were going to entertain visitors for more than a day were careful to schedule the guest-room well in advance, but at any other time it was open for spur-of-the-moment use.

Harden would be less embarrassed to wake up in what was obviously a guest-room removed from Tal's lodging than he would be if he woke up in Tal's sitting room. And Tal's charity did not extend to giving up or sharing his own bed.

Ferg followed Tal back to his rooms; Harden looked up at their entrance and squinted at the sight of the Mintak, who towered over Tal by a good several inches.

"Din' I shee you downshtairs?" Harden slurred.

"That was my herd-brother, good sir," Ferg replied calmly. "Do you think you can stand?"

"Not by m'shelf," Harden acknowledged ruefully, after an abortive attempt that left him staggering and finally sitting right where he'd begun. " 'm drunk, butsha couldn' tell by m' dancin'."

"All right then, old man," Tal said, slightly amused. "We're going to get you to a bed where you can sleep it off."

Harden nodded wisely. "Good—idea," he said carefully. " 'f I can' stand, I sure can' walk, eh?"

Tal and Ferg got on either side of Harden and assisted him carefully to his feet. Both of them knew better than to move abruptly with him; at the moment, he showed no signs of getting sick, but any too-sudden movements could change that, and neither of them felt much like cleaning the mess up.

"Right you are," Ferg said cheerfully. "Now, we'll take your weight and keep you balanced, you just move one foot in front of the other, and we'll get you safely into a nice, warm bed." Obediently, Harden began to walk, swaying from side to side, supported by Ferg and Tal. "Good, you're doing fine," Ferg encouraged. "Right. Left. Right. Left. Now through the door—into the hall—"

This was hardly the first drunk Ferg had assisted into a bed—the Gray Rose encouraged patrons who had a bit too much to spend the night if they weren't rowdy. It was good for all concerned—the inn got a paying customer overnight, and the customer found himself only a bit lighter in the pocket, rather than waking up in an alley or a worse place. The Mintaks, with their enormous strength, were usually the ones called upon to help the inebriated into their rooms, so Ferg had plenty of experience; either of the brawny brothers could have carried Harden on their own, but the companionability of Ferg and Tal doing this together would likely be important to Harden when he thought back upon it. In a much shorter time than Tal would have estimated, they had Harden down the hall, in the bed with his boots pulled off, and under several blankets, since the room was too tiny to have a fireplace of its own. Tal closed the door quietly and marked his name down on the schedule outside. There would be a linen charge and a cleaning charge, and since Harden was his guest, he would be the one responsible. Ferg nodded approvingly.

"A friend of yours?" Ferg asked. "A fellow constable? And what brought him to this pass?"

"A bad incident on his beat," Tal replied, grateful that Ferg knew enough of the constables to know what a "bad incident" was.

"Ah. His first, no doubt. Well, better to purge himself in the presence of one with the experience to advise him—but I misdoubt he'll be fit for duty in the morning. . . ." The Mintak cocked his head in obvious enquiry, and Tal had to chuckle at his curiosity. Tal never ceased to be bemused by the blazing intellect and extensive vocabulary possessed by Mintaks. Other humans too often dismissed Mintaks as being as stupid as the beasts they resembled, but Tal knew better.

"Oh, I plan to take care of that," Tal replied. "In my opinion as a senior constable, that boy has a touch of something. Food poisoning, maybe. I'll have a note run over to the station to that effect before I go to bed."

Ferg chuckled. "Mendacious, but reasonable. A good Captain would have excused him from his duty for a day or two anyway. It is a pity there is nothing in the rules requiring that absence from duty. Well, good night—and I have a history I think you might enjoy, when you have the leisure for it."

"And I have a Deliambren travel-book I think you'll like," he replied, and saluted the Mintak as he opened his own door.

He stayed up long enough to write sick-notes for both Harden and himself—after all, they
had
eaten the same meal, and they
were
both suffering similar symptoms.

Uh-hmm. We're both light-headed, dizzy, flushed, and in the morning we'll both have headaches and nausea. Well, Harden will. Brock will probably guess, but he won't let on to the Captain. Tal decided that if his hangover wasn't too bad in the morning, he would go ahead and appear for duty on his shift, but in case it wasn't, he was covered. He left a third note, telling Harden that he'd written him up for sick-time and not to go in on his shift, on the tiny table beside the bed, and sent one of the inn's errand boys around to the station with the other two notes. Harden, when he took a final look in on him, was blissfully, if noisily, asleep.

Tal nodded to himself with satisfaction, closed the door, and sought his own bed, after taking the precaution of drinking a great deal of water.

But when he finally lay in the quiet darkness, with only the faint sounds of creaking wood and faint footsteps around him, his mind wrestled with the problem of this latest case. It fit; it certainly did. There was no doubt of that.

But what did it all mean?

The whole thing is mad,
he thought, tossing restlessly.
The pattern is there, but no motive.
Maybe that was why Rayburn was so stubborn about admitting that the cases were all tied together; there was no discernible motive to any of them. That was one of the first things drummed into a constable's head when they taught him about murder:
find the motive, and you find the killer.
But in this case, the killers were obvious; it was the
motive
that was missing.

Why? Why, why, why? Why these people? Why that particular kind of knife? What was there to gain? It has to be the same hand behind all of them, but what is the motive? 
 

No the killer
wasn't
obvious, after all. The people who used the knife and spilled the blood couldn't be anything more than tools, hands to wield the blade, and nothing more. So, the law still held true.

Find the motive, and you find the killer. 
 

So what was the motive? What could drive a man to use other people to kill like this? If there was a purpose, what was it? Where was the killer all this time?

And
who
was the killer?

The next murder got the attention of the entire city; it was a nine-day wonder that kept the taverns a-buzz for long enough that even Tal got tired of it.

But this time, like some strange disease that strikes three homes in a row, then suddenly occurs halfway across the city, this crime happened so far outside of Tal's district he would never have heard of it, if the circumstances hadn't been so bizarre. Whoever, whatever was behind all this, "he" had moved his area of operation from the waterfront side of the city to the tenement district farthest inland.