Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) (36 page)

“There are two barbers in that district,” the constable nodded, excitedly.  “I will put a watch on both.”

They continued with the next body, and the next, until Pentandra’s magic had revealed intimate details about each victim usually beyond the ken of normal investigation.  When they were done with the last, she felt as if she had taken six brutal lovers in a row.

“Wine, my lady?” the constable asked.  “I believe it’s about time for luncheon.”

“Wine would be good,” Pentandra agreed, tiredly.  “So I have given you six lives, Constable.  What can you make of them?”

“Actually, quite a picture,” the man said, shuffling his parchment.  “Three of the victims you saw this morning were known to have recently acquired funds to some purpose, and were found in the same district – near to our barber friend.  Two others were found on the opposite side of the district proximate to an inn that caters to merchant carters.  The sixth was found in the center of the district, but was not slain there.  He was a landless known to have incurred enough gambling debt with the Crew that he was seeking escape in the Iron Band.  They, it appears, do not honor the King’s Forgiveness of their debts.  Rather disloyal of them,” he clucked.  “But since Sir Auderrei is a noble, unlike the rest of these rascals, his murder takes precedence.  That is, I can devote more resources to his murder.”

“I thought you wanted more than a single murderer,” she pointed out, frowning.

“Oh, I do.  But this makes some things easier, procedurally.  Trust me,” he said, leading her to a chair back in the kitchen.  “The Crew and Opilio the Knife wanted to send a message, after the brutal slaying of their thugs.  The palace just received it.”

“So a barber and an inn,” she said, sighing.  “Is that all you have?”

“Oh, goodness, no,” he smiled.  “I have a fat folio on each of them, and a score others who plague the town.  But these murders are recent enough to be able to act upon before their killers have moved out of the area.  The Crew regularly rotates those who commit such crimes into other schemes to avoid detection.  One of their many feints at the law.”

“Then you plan on arresting them?” she asked.

“No, my lady,” the constable said, gently.  “I plan on responding to the ‘message’ with one of my own.  I shall infiltrate each of these businesses, learn who is in charge . . . and then I will slay them in such a fashion that will make no mistake about their message,” he said, boldly.

Pentandra frowned.  “To what end?  To enrage and incite them further?”

“What can they do against the palace?” he shrugged.  “Or a gang of animal-headed phantoms?”

“Plenty of things you cannot imagine,” she smirked.  “Among plenty of things that you do.  No, my dear constable, if you want to truly uncouple the hold the Crew has on the town, you do not need to boldly challenge them.  You need to encourage them to destroy themselves, first, and then attack them from another, unexpected direction.  I think it’s time your assassins were aided by High Magic.” she proposed.

“Gangster magi?” he chuckled.  “Isn’t that a little out of your scholarly purview?” 

“Not every user of magic is on the rolls of the Arcane Orders,” Pentandra said with certainty.  “Some of the most famous Remeran vendettas used fictional organizations or secret societies to confuse and manipulate an opponent without revealing themselves.  It was an old standard in the Game of Whispers.”

“The Remeran idea of politics,” he supplied.

“Just so,” Pentandra nodded.  “The Game of Whispers often included clandestine acts of magic against political foes.  It is said,” she said, loftily, “that every great Remeran family of magi has a secret codex of forbidden spells, passed down from generation to generation, to facilitate the house’s needs.”

Sir Vemas smirked, this time.  “And I am to assume that you, Lady Pentandra, come from such a great house of magi?”

She snorted.  “My family has been practicing magic since the earliest days of the Magocracy,” she replied.  “In Perwyn.  You may draw your own conclusions.  The key, unfortunately, will be disguising that fact,” she said, frowning at the thought.  “Even a spellmonger will immediately suspect me, or one of the other High Magi, and anyone with any skills will be assured.”

“I like that,” Vemas nodded.  “We can add a band of loyal acolytes to the mysterious myth of the Master of the Wild.  It wouldn’t take much stretch of the imagination to envision a fellow group of dark hedgemagi accompanying the nocturnal army of crazed killers bent on dominating Vorone’s underground.”

“Particularly,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “if those magi were to confront one of the Rats directly.  Right now the Crew seems hell-bent to deny there’re any
real
Woodsmen, despite the bodies piling up.  If one of them was forced to stare one of them in the eye, and hear it from their own lips, I imagine it would make quite an impression.  And remove all doubt that the Woodsmen are real.”

“My lady Pentandra, you have a fascinating imagination,” Constable Vemas praised.  “That has just the right mixture of mystification, malevolence, and magic to give us the cover we need!  Consider: a few Dark Magi, unsavory fellows who have taken witchstones from the Penumbra, naturally see Vorone as a base for an independent operations . . . and are following the Master of the Wild on his quest for revenge against the Rats!  Would that not be plausible?”

“It’s certainly romantic,” Pentandra said, rolling her eyes.

“The idea intrigues me!  A cult of mysterious assassins, perhaps, led by some vile creature who took advantage of the war to enrich himself . . .”

“Misdirection is one of Master Minalan’s favorite ploys,” she conceded.  “My plan was inspired on his use of news of a false peasant’s uprising to deter the Censorate from chasing him during his honeymoon.  Deception is a wizard’s tool.  Not to mention the basis for a great deal of Remeran drama.  And I
do
have a taste for theater . . .”

Vemas’ charming wit complimented Pentandra’s need for intellectual stimulation, and the six corpses below them in the cellar provided ample (if macabre) inspiration for their planning. 

“The timing must be adept,” Pentandra decided, imagining the difficult enterprise with her new baculus’ assistance.  She was starting to sketch things out with magemaps, which were much simpler with the aid of the rod. “We must spread just the right rumor, inspire just the right suspicion, and calculate precisely what response we can expect Opilio to make.”

“Opilio might be difficult,” Vemas frowned.  “He’s castled himself inside his headquarters, and rarely leaves, since his thugs started turning up dead . . . and without his silver.  What if we chose one of his rivals, instead, to make the point?”

“If we can make them think they are under attack by their fellows,” Pentandra agreed, “perhaps we can convince one of the other captains to strike at Opilio preemptively.”

Constable Vemas considered, “They will likely try to negotiate before they fight.  The Rat Crew has very specific rules about inter-crew fighting, as set as those for a formal duel.  According to those rules, they are supposed to appeal to their superior for adjudication before they begin hostilities.”

“Would that not be an ideal situation, then?” Pentandra asked.  “If we can get their leadership to congregate to settle the matter, we could eliminate them all at a time.”

“Oh, how bloodthirsty you are, in the name of the Duke,” Sir Vemas said, half reprovingly, half in admiration.

“You take issue with my methods?” she asked, surprised. “My lord, I am a Remeran,” she explained with a smirk.  “We learn such plots as matters of national history and family honor.  I have found few outside of Remere have the temerity to strike at their foes so boldly, yet so quietly, when hindered by the Laws of Luin.” Her own family had escaped the worst kinds of Remeran feuds and vendettas, thanks to her father’s stable but uninspired leadership, but she was aware of how bad they could become. 

“When your duke gives you a command to eliminate the enemies of the realm, my lady, it is under the Laws of Duin that one proceeds.  And, at need, under the shadowy Laws of Kulin.”

The trickster horselord was the professional outlaw of the barbaric pantheon, Pentandra knew, and under his unwritten “law” all manner of skullduggery was permitted. 

Just as the Laws of Duin governed the proper conduct of warfare and delineated the responsibilities of the noble warrior, Kulin was the deity of the raider, the spy, the bandit.  The use of violence outside of the law.  Even when it was under the order of sovereign authority the largely unwritten “laws of Kulin” were embraced only by the desperate, the degenerate, and the devious. 

In Remeran noble society the “laws of Kulin” were better known by their old Imperial name, the Game of Whispers.  It politely implied the social power of a family willing to step outside of the law, without mentioning the poisonings, ambush attacks, and throat-cuttings, the blackmail, coercion, and corruption that usually accompanied a mere whispering campaign in Remere.  The Game of Whispers and the Laws of Kulin both allowed (or at least acknowledged) all sorts of devious means to accomplish your goals.  They were also used to rationalize all manner of nasty work in the service of the state, Pentandra knew. 

“Then we shall kidnap one of the Knife’s rivals,” Vemas decided, “and put to him an ultimatum.  Ishi’s tits, I’ll deliver it myself.  “A mask and a cloak with a cowl – all very mysterious.”

Pentandra had to give all credit for the nocturnal force known as the Woodsman to the constable.  Once given the idea, he eagerly pursued it until his men were armed and garbed according to plan. 

He had procured dozens such outfits from the unlikeliest of places without arousing suspicion: inside the vaults of the palace.  The attics and storerooms of the complex were filled with the residue of past revels, and that included a number of masks and costumes for the masquerade fad, when it had last infected the Alshari court.  Sir Vemas had found a number of animal masks of cloth, wood, leather and plaster within them, cast-offs of entertainments of yore. 

To combat the signature tool of murder the Crew carried, the iron shiv known as a Rat’s Tail, Sir Vemas and his men chose weapons designed to intimidate.  While the Rat’s Tail was small and did not leave much of a trace, Constable Vemas wanted the attack on the Market ward’s Crew to send a message as much as eliminate the rogues. 

He’d settled on a plain slashing infantry blade for the task, and requisitioned a dozen of ancient make long unused from the depths of the palace armory the next day.  They were heavy in the blade, not particularly well balanced, and ungainly for anything but basic combat.  But a smith the constable trusted to keep his mouth shut quietly sharpened and altered the swords with jagged edges that would yield a vicious result in their employment, as well as make them lighter. 

“A very distinctive edge,”
Vemas had said, wickedly, when he had distributed the blades to his guardsmen-turned-gangsters that night in the upper chamber at Boval House. 
“Heavy, brutal, basic, and at odds with the Crew’s normal subtle style.  They will cause as much damage as a goblin’s rusty blade.”

She recalled the night the guardsmen eagerly dug through the variety of masks, many cunningly carved or shaped of parchment and glue. 
“Choose wisely,”
the constable had counseled. 
“Make sure that you can see and breathe in them, before you make a selection.  You may have to fight in them, remember.  Do not let your vanity overcome practicality, gentlemen.”

Most of the incipient thugs selected visages of wolves or stags, though the largest among them, Carastan, chose a brown bear for his mask, fitting to his stature.  The light-fingered guardsman Fen the Quick chose a raccoon’s bandit mask, and two former ruffians, Mastril and Hanrei, picked tusked boars for their effigies.  Since then, they’d skulked about through the mists and the snow banks, allowing themselves to be seen from afar in their costumes.  And, of course, they had worn them as they had tracked and then slaughtered Opilio’s couriers when they brought him the week’s collections.

Two weeks later, Opilio’s entire treasury disappeared from his strongbox, thanks to Pentandra’s special spellwork.  When the enchanted coin one of the merchants paid Opilio’s men was activated, it swallowed all of the silver in a six-foot spherical radius of the coin into a hoxat pocket.  The other end of that pocket was anchored on Pentandra’s baculus.  The metaphysical theft yielded almost seven hundred ounces of silver to the Woodsmen, when Pentandra retrieved the coin from the pocket’s other end.  More importantly it shorted Opilio dramatically when he was already operating at a loss due to the previous week’s theft.  Without money to pay his men, much less send his proper tribute to his master, Opilio was in deep trouble (and debt) with his own organization.  With whom he also felt he was struggling.

The Woodsmen were beginning to be seen more often, though never confronted, and Vemas started another rumor, this time implementing one of the other four captains in the gang.  Now it was time to capitalize on that rumor, and goad the vermin into action.

“The Crew have rules about stealing from each other,” Vemas explained, “but those rules are just sacred enough to get violated pretty regularly.  Meaning that their first response to a theft that large would be was ‘whoever did this can’t be a Rat’.  Followed quickly by ‘although it might be a Rat pretending
not
to be a Rat.’  That sort of thing happens a lot, particularly in the south.”