Scholar's Plot (20 page)

Fisk and I, unarmed, skidded to a stop. Kathy ran into Fisk’s back and set him staggering.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Fisk demanded. “That man is our guest.”

“Yeah? Well, we been paid to un-guest him,” one of the men who’d stopped us said.

The third man was hustling the jeweler on down the street. The poor man’s struggles were more effective against just one captor, but the end was in no doubt — he would be carried away.

And unarmed, there was little Fisk and I could do to stop it. If we rushed the thugs their clubs would make short work of us. If we ran back to get our weapons, they’d be long gone by the time we—

An ear-shattering scream ripped the quiet night.

All of us jumped, including the thugs.

“Help!” Kathy shrieked. “Help, robbers, help, please, somebody get the guard, help, robbers, help!”

She darted around the startled thugs, still shrieking. The nearest one had the sense to swing at her, and Fisk — who never goes near armed thugs if he can avoid it — took advantage of his distraction and tackled the man. They went down on the cobbles in a welter of flying knees and elbows, and Kathy ran after the man who’d taken the jeweler, still screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Here now!” The thug who was guarding me stared wildly about, as windows and doors began to open. A man in his nightshirt, waving a poker, charged into the street looking for the source of the commotion.

“I’d run if I were you,” I said pleasantly. “She’s got a scream that could pierce plate armor. She always did, even as a toddler.”

He was running before I finished speaking. His comrade released the jeweler and raced into the night. The last man had to fight free of Fisk before he could flee, and the outraged citizens nearly caught him.

Fisk rolled to his feet, cursing with a fluency that assured me of his well-being despite the blood flowing sluggishly from his lower lip. Kathy was explaining to half a dozen concerned men and a few sturdy women that we’d been dining in the tavern, and had just met up with our uncle when we’d been set upon.

She had our “uncle” by the arm, and I heard him mutter something about, “wicked rabbits, running off like that.” But Fisk was headed in her direction, and I had faith in their ability to keep the jeweler under control, and also keep the citizens from summoning the guard. Our assailants were long gone so there was little a guardsman could do, and Kathy would no doubt promise to report the crime in the morning.

Besides, a more urgent matter pressed for my 
attention.

The only sign of disturbance in Benton’s front room was an overturned chair, a dropped quill that had spotted the floor with ink, and half a dozen papers that had fallen from the desk. ’Twas the sound of thumping that led me to my brother, lying bound and gagged on his own bed with the blankets wrapped around his head to muffle shouts. Which was why, a smart man, he’d given up on shouting and was energetically kicking the wall. He was bruised and shaken, but aside from the shock of being overcome and bound he’d not been harmed.

I heard footsteps overhead as I was freeing him, and deduced that Fisk and Kathy were restoring the jeweler to his own room. But Benton had time to put his room to rights, and put a kettle on for tea, before Fisk and Kathy came down to join us.

“We’ll have to set a guard,” Kathy was saying as she came in. “If they tried for him once, there’s nothing to stop them from trying again.”

“We’ll have to find somewhere else he can stay.” Fisk’s voice was unaccountably sharp. “We can’t have you tangling with thugs — thugs with clubs! — every night, or people will start to notice.”

I looked at Fisk closely, but his lip had already stopped bleeding and his movements were easy. ’Twas not injury that made him so testy.

“Phoo,” said Kathy. “He missed me by a good foot. You’re just miffed that I stopped them when you couldn’t. Though you may be right about finding some other place for the jeweler to stay — we can’t stand guard all night and investigate by day. Not for long.”

“
You’re
not standing guard,” said Fisk. “Or investigating either, if this turns into a thugs-with-clubs affair.”

“Which brings us to the real question,” I murmured. “How did they know he was here in the first place?”

It took all three of us to convince Mistress Katherine she wasn’t going to take a watch shift. Michael went and got his sword to take the first watch and Benton took the second. This left me to rouse the jeweler before dawn, to pack before he left for his new lodging.

Benton, after some thought, had come up with a friend he’d studied with, whose older brother owned a farm in the countryside.

“He was a merit scholar, and a good one, but his whole family could use the money,” he said. “They’re kindly people, and there are lots of animals for your mad friend to bring into the house. If he likes squirrels and rats, he should be delighted with goats.”

He probably would be. But Michael was right; the real question was how they — whoever they were — had known he was here. The landlady might indeed have talked to someone about our guest. Or someone might have gotten suspicious and come looking for him. I was his only “friend” in town, after all, so it made sense they’d look for him here.

But somehow that didn’t convince any of us. I was glad we were getting him out of town. Preferably at an hour we weren’t likely to be followed, which was why I was going in to wake him before dawn.

I found the jeweler already awake — assuming he’d slept, which he might not have. He was working by lamplight on a tangle of gears and wires that lay on one of the tables, his mad eyes framed by tousled hair.

But the hair was clean, and so were his clothes. Benton had been taking good care of him, just as the university maids had. Hopefully Benton’s farmer friends would do the same, but all this moving about had to be unsettling for him.

“What are you making?” I wanted to break the news that we were going to move him again gently, but taking a closer look at the intricate mess of springs and levers I became genuinely curious.

“A puzzle, a toy, a meal. Like the one you’re playing at, but not for you, this one’s for the others. Catnip to cats, your puzzle is, setting them rolling and playing with their bright teeth, biting, biting, biting.”

“No.” I sat down beside him. “I really want to know. What does it do?”

He peered at me, and saw that I meant it. He picked up a handful of nuts, which Benton must have provided, and dropped them into a hopper at the top of his contraption, which he then latched shut.

“Here,” he pushed it across to me. “The bar’s the star, though the comets jingle. Give it a press.”

There were lots of dangling chains and gears, very bright and tempting, but I pressed down on the small bar hidden in the midst of the distractions. It moved easily, probably pulled by springs hidden in the mechanism. A series of wheels spun and flashed, and a single nut rolled out of a gap at the bottom of the mechanism.

“For your friends.” I was smiling. “I think they’ll like it very much.”

“They’ll play with it even after the nuts are gone, for they like moons and stars and buttons. Have to bolt it down, I will,” he added. “Or they’ll run off with it.”

I seized this small, lucid moment.

“Remember last night, when those men tried to take you? We think they were sent by someone involved in the project the professors were working on, back at the tower. There’s something wrong with that project, and we’re afraid someone thinks you saw something.” Come to think of it, he might have seen something. His windows looked onto that yard. “Do you know what’s wrong with the project?”

“Oh, I know all kinds of wrongs and secrets. The rabbits keep ’em, so sly they are. Not like rats, rats are honest, and even clever squirrels aren’t the liars rabbits are. But your friend, he’s already finding the answers he needs.”

“Michael? What do you mean? He’s trying to find out about the project too, but he hasn’t learned much.”

“The project, the reject, a bunch of shiny spinning wheels, that is. I meant that he’s finally falling into bed with that magic of his. Prickly, ickly, but he’s beginning to figure it out.”

“How did you know…?”

Michael, with his magic, could see a glow around magica. Who knew what this man, with his magic, could see or sense.

“You’re about to fall too.” He cackled suddenly, a sound that lifted the hair on the back of my neck. “But you’ll like it, lad, they always do, the cockerels strutting off to the slaughter. Led by pretty pullets, they always are. But goats aren’t rats, or even squirrels. He’s a fool to think it.”

The thread of this conversation was getting slippery.

“Then you know we’re going to take you to a… Wait a minute. How do you know what Benton said about goats?”

“The birds sing it, the wind sighs it. How’s a man not to learn what the voices in his own head tell him?”

But I was watching, and his eyes flicked aside as he spoke … to the empty hearth between the windows. A hearth with a chimney that would go straight down through the rooms below it.

I rose and went to kneel beside it — no fire, not in late Roseon, and in the predawn dark the whole world was quiet. I stuck my head inside to listen.

At first I heard nothing but a sort of windy emptiness. I stilled my breathing, closed my eyes, and focused on a faint scratching sound. Then I distinctly heard the clink of glass, and a muffled curse. The scratching sound resumed till I heard paper rustle, as a finished sheet was set aside to dry. Benton, up early despite taking a midnight shift, working on his notes.

How much louder would voices be?

I went back to the jeweler. “So you know we’re going to take you to stay with Benton’s friends in the countryside. And you know why. Are you willing to go? It may be dangerous for you here, and Benton wouldn’t send you to anyone who wasn’t kind.”

“So were the tower folk but I don’t care for humans, any more than the moon gods do. Fur is better, even the soft fur of liars. Though squirrels, they’re soft too, and don’t bite as much as rats. Want the nuts they do, and ready to pry, to lie, to cheat, to die. Or let others do it for ’em, more like.”

“Do you mean Hotchkiss? Was he involved with the project somehow?”

“I never mean anything.” The bright eyes met mine, for all the good it did. “I’d offer you a nut, but you’ve already got two that are speaking to you, and a number that don’t. I miss the tower squirrels. Kindness, now, they had cheese in all their paws.”

There were tears in his eyes. But however kind the squirrels might be, the humans back at that tower were the ones in charge. And one of them knew he was here.

“You need to pack,” I said. “Benton will take you to the farm at first light, and you can bring anything that can be stowed in two horses’ saddlebags. There lots of squirrels, out in the countryside.”

His gaze went back to his mechanism, shutting me out, and I suspected Benton would have to pack for him. It was the only form of protest he had, and he knew why he had to go. I said goodbye and locked 
the door behind me, wondering just what he’d heard coming down the chimney back in the tower. Stint’s 
lab had been right above his room, and I thought Dayless’ office might be above that, as well.

“’Tis probably how he learned so much about Roseman’s organization,” Michael said.

We’d seen the others off — somewhat later than we’d intended.

The jeweler had refused to pack for himself, and when Benton had gone up to pack for him he’d insisted on taking half the attic’s contents. He had three 
horses’ saddlebags to fill, however — Benton rode Chant, the madman mounted Tipple, and because he was being so recalcitrant, Kathy accompanied them on the placid mare she’d borrowed from the royal stables. Michael and I, on foot, trailed them to the outskirts of the city and made certain no one was following when they set out.

That matter seen to, we got ourselves an early breakfast and were waiting at Clerk Peebles’ office door when she showed up for work. After a night’s thought, concern for Benton had won out — she not only gave us directions to the homes and offices of the known blackmail victims, but to Professor Stint’s home as well.

Michael was optimistic about his theory that Stint resented Dayless’ control over the project enough to sabotage it, and he wanted to ask his neighbors if the professor needed money. Or had suddenly come into money, even if he didn’t need it.

However, two of the three people we wanted to investigate today, board member A and Professor Nilcomb, were Hotchkiss’ victims, which meant I was in charge. We were now on our way to the workshop of Master Dobbs, the contractor who’d worked on the library six years ago, and I hoped he’d be willing to name the board member who’d demanded a bribe. Whom Hotchkiss had blackmailed for it.

But Michael was still talking about the project. “Voices do travel up and down chimneys. You can’t hear them if you’re talking yourself, you have to really listen to make out words, and it doesn’t work if the wind is blowing … but he had nothing to do but listen, in that quiet room. He probably knows everything that was said in Stint’s lab. ’Tis too bad he can’t relay it sensibly, or the case might end right now. And he’d be out of danger, free to go home to his friends.”

There was only pity in his voice, not the fear that had been there before.

“Was he right?
Are
you falling into bed with your prickly magic?”

“I’d not say that, though I do have some new ideas. After we speak with Master Dobbs, shall we go on to Professor Stint’s home?”

“Depends on what Dobbs tells us.”

Michael was focused on Stint, but I’ve known him long enough to know when he’s using one topic to distract me from another. “What new ideas? About magic, I mean.”

He hesitated a moment before replying, confirming my suspicion.

“Professor Dayless was speaking about the project yesterday, and the subject drifted from Gifts to magic. She said… Well, the short version is that she thinks the use of rational thought blocks off our access to magic, but that if it didn’t, ’twould be no more unnatural for us to possess magic than Gifts.”

I’d been saying something like that to Michael for almost four years, but he’d ignored me. And the part about rational thought blocking it was interesting.

“That would explain why the simple and the mad sometimes have magic,” I said. “And why you’ve only been able to use it when you’re panicking about something.”

“I wasn’t panicking,” said Michael. “Well, mayhap with the cliff, and that was justified. But if ’tis true, it means that magic doesn’t drive you mad.”

“I told you that,” I said. “Years ago.”

“Yes, but now I wonder… Ah, here’s Dobbs’ work yard. And after this, we go on to Professor Stint’s. Agreed?”

He looked so relieved that it was clear he’d thought better of finishing that sentence. And it was no longer my job to find out what he was wondering about.

“We’ve got a lot of people we need to talk to today, and if they’ve started doing interviews for Benton’s job we’d better get them done as fast as we can. We’ll figure out the most sensible route once we know where board member A lives.”

The contractor’s shop was near the river, about half a mile from the university. Once he noticed Michael’s noble accent, he ushered us into his office and asked us to sit with the good will of a man delighted by the prospect of new business.

“What can I do for you, young sirs? Renovating some rooms near the campus? Pigsties, most of those student apartments. I’m sure I can make the place more comfortable for you.”

“We’re not scholars,” Michael said, in his absurdly honest way. “We’ve a few questions about the renovations you did in the campus library.”