Scholar's Plot (3 page)

But as they pulled me to my feet to hustle me off, it occurred to me that my only crime was trespassing in a restricted area of the university. If I refused to pay my debt with coin, I’d probably be asked to redeem myself by working for the university, maybe even for the department I’d disturbed. I might be able to learn enough about the jeweler’s situation that I could leave without having to see him. Or maybe talk my way into his presence.

And the more quietly I went with my captors, the greater the chance that I could avoid meeting Michael.

What
was
he doing here, anyway?

What under two moons was
Fisk
doing here?

It had taken some time to find my way to the source of the commotion. Once I had, I barely had time to step into the shadow of a flowery shrub, and then watch as a band of young ruffians, and an older man in rough sturdy garb, hustled Fisk out of an old building and down the walkway.

He went meekly, and like me he wore a scholar’s black and red. But something about the relaxed assurance with which he endured his captors’ eager clutch made him look older and more confident than even the man who seemed to be in charge.

I let them pass me by, for trying to effect some escape would only have given away my own illicit presence.

Once they were out of sight, I even began to doubt what I’d seen. Not that I wouldn’t recognize Fisk’s walk and his curly crop, even by moonlight. But I’d been fantasizing quite often about finding Fisk in need of my rescue. If I’d seen a student who looked a bit like him, it wasn’t impossible that my idle daydreams might have tricked my eyes.

It was only in the nightmares that I arrived too late, and found him maimed, flogged, and, in one particularly hideous dream, hanged from a beam that creaked under his slowly swinging weight. I’d awakened from that one gasping, and shaking so hard that True came and licked my face.

When I actually thought about our quarrel, I knew that Fisk didn’t want to be found, much less rescued. So after I left Tallowsport, I’d dithered about the river plain for months, giving him time to get well ahead of me, whatever direction he’d gone in.

And now, when I wanted him, he was getting too far ahead, while I stood wrapped in bafflement.

I hurried off toward the main gate, taking one of the shortcuts I’d discovered while exploring the campus these last few hours. I’d found my target, the great library, quite easily, for my brother Benton’s directions had been precise. ’Twas only as I stared up at its looming bulk that I’d stuck on the question of what to do next. My plan was to burgle the chief librarian’s office. ’Twas what Fisk would have done, and I could think of no better scheme to find the evidence Benton needed. But when it came to doing such a thing without Fisk’s assistance, I found myself at a loss.

So I’d wandered the campus for a time, figuring out escape routes — as an amateur burglar, I was likely to need them. I was about to start trying to open the 
library windows when I heard a woman screaming and a whistle blowing repeatedly — clearly an alarm.

’Twas also a good excuse to leave a task I was almost certain to fail.

Now my roaming stood me in good stead, and I managed to reach the corner of a building near the gates in time to watch the small party of law keepers approach. They stopped to exchange a word with the gatekeeper, and between the magica lamps and the moonlight I could see their captive’s face clearly. ’Twas Fisk, no doubt about it. And despite his calm, somewhat depressed expression, he clearly needed a rescue!

I wasn’t fool enough to imagine he’d fall at my feet, weeping with gratitude. But if I got him out of whatever scrape this was, mayhap he’d relent enough that we could talk calmly, and mend this break between us.

The mob of them went on through the gates. I’d stepped out of the shadows to follow when I realized that I was in disguise, and here without permission. Benton had said the old gatekeeper was nearly blind with cataracts, but that he knew men’s voices well. And the scholar’s guard, whom he could summon with his whistle, weren’t handicapped in any way.

I took a breath and made myself think. I would be able to find Fisk any time in the next day or two, in the Liege Guard’s lockup. This close to Crown City, in the High Liege’s fief, there were no local guards except in the smallest villages. This might prove inconvenient, for the guardsmen who served the High Liege were generally better trained than local troops.

I’d probably only need to pay whatever fine Fisk had earned … and what had he been doing to raise such a ruckus?

If I tried to rush after him now I might end up under arrest with him, instead of being able to bail him out. All I had to do was wait till the lecture Benton was 
attending ended and I could depart with him, shielded by the crowd, as I’d come in. So I went back to the lecture hall. I paced up and down before the doors for several minutes before I realized that might look suspicious and set out to roam the campus once more.

I was too distracted to attempt burglary now. And if I could get Fisk’s help, I’d be less likely to get caught, anyway. I knew what I was doing on a university campus, in disguise, but what was he doing here?

In some sense, if it hadn’t been for Fisk, I wouldn’t have been here.

When I was finally ready to leave Tallowsport, having had several matters to tend to before I departed, 
I abandoned some minor scruples and wrote to my sister, Kathy. I’d left that task to Fisk before, as it seemed to me that a man who is unredeemed — not to mention disowned by his family — shouldn’t correspond with them. Not to mention that Father would be furious 
with Kathy if he caught her writing to me.

Over the next several years, as Fisk and Kathy’s correspondence took on a life of its own, there was no need for me to contact her. Fisk shared her news with me, and passed my news on to her. But after Fisk had been gone for three weeks, I abandoned any hope he might return and wrote to Kathy myself, asking if she’d heard from him.

She hadn’t, and she’d been frantically worried when his letters stopped coming so suddenly. After he’d 
written to tell her we were taking on the most powerful crime lord in the Realm, too. She’d begun to believe we’d both perished, and she expended quite a lot of 
ink describing exactly how inconsiderate that had been — of
both
of us.

I thought that unfair, since ’twas Fisk who was her correspondent. But he clearly wasn’t now, so I told her of our quarrel — putting all the blame for her worry on Fisk, where it belonged.

Her next letter came from Slowbend, not Crown City, telling me that Benton was in trouble and I must come at once. When the letter carrier found me, I was only three days’ ride away. In fact, I’d gotten into town just this morning, and Benton came down to the stable attached to his rooming house to make his case before I even got Chant unsaddled.

“I didn’t do it,” he said. “I was framed.”

Benton was much of a height with Fisk, and also had brown hair. But where Fisk was solid, Benton’s stocky frame ran to plump. And Fisk’s sharp eyes never held the dreamy abstraction that so often filled Benton’s.

When we were younger, I’d sometimes come across my brother standing with a book in one hand, and a single sock or half-eaten apple forgotten in the other.

Even Father hadn’t thought to do anything with Benton except send him to University, pay his fees, and then (according to Kathy) boast to all the neighbors when he graduated last fall, with honors.

If this scandal destroyed his academic career, that would all change. They planned to hire someone to replace Benton for the fall term, he told me gloomily, which meant they’d start interviewing other scholars in just a few weeks. Once they’d given his job away … well, no university needed two professors of ancient history. Most didn’t even need one, and Father wouldn’t tolerate an idle son hanging about. Indeed, Benton might find himself forced into the job of steward that I’d taken up knight errantry to avoid — and ’twould suit him even worse than it would have suited me.

But after he graduated, the university had promptly hired Benton as a junior professor specializing in the history of the ancients. I thought ’twould feel strange, to go straight from sitting in a classroom to standing before one and teaching, but clearly no one at the university found anything odd in it. And, as I soon learned, he hadn’t gone straight from learning to teaching. He’d had to write a dissertation, first.

“I know how it looks,” Benton said. “But I didn’t 
plagiarize it. Not one word!”

He was petting True’s ears, and True leaned against him consolingly, his ropy tail beating the packed earth of the stable floor. True is mostly hound, with dashes of other breeds, and a short brindled coat in which the ears are the softest part. Benton not only shares my Gift for animal handling, he loves them even more than I do. He was distressed when I explained the dog was mute — though as far as I can see, it doesn’t seem to bother True.

I had unsaddled Chant, filled the feed trough with hay and the big bucket with water, and was now brushing his dappled hide with long, soothing strokes. A relaxed setting for asking difficult questions.

“Who says you did? And why is that important?”

“Why … why is it
important
? A dissertation is a scholar’s masterwork, Michael! Mine is the reason I got this job, instead of being packed home to Father when I finished my courses. And it must be
original
work. To copy your dissertation from someone else, ’tis … ’tis the worst thing you can do!”

I thought there were things far worse, but maybe for a scholar ’twas true. If it was, this university must be a safe and kindly world. Which made it a place Benton would do well in. Clearly ’twas both my brotherly and knightly duty to restore him to it.

And besides that, Benton and Kathy were the only members of my family who hadn’t scoffed at my desire to be a knight errant, even though ’tis a profession two centuries out of date. I didn’t owe him much for that — I’ve become accustomed to being laughed at — but it did incline me kindly toward him.

“I’ll take your word for the importance,” I said. “So who accused you?”

“’Twas Master Hotchkiss, the head librarian,” Benton said. “Not his fault. He’s creating a catalog of all the books, giving them numbers and filing them in order. And he’s working in the ancient literature room now, and he found this old thesis and read it and … Michael, it was mine!”

“’Tis not impossible for people working in the same craft to have the same idea,” I pointed out. “Sometimes at near the same time, in villages at opposite ends of the Realm.”

“It wasn’t just the same idea,” said Benton. “Someone else might have thought of it, too. Though I thought I was the only one who cared enough about the ancients, and their relics, to bother. If we were able to learn more about their lives, people might be more interested. I’ve found that—”

“So this other paper was much like yours. But why do they claim you copied it?”

When Benton started talking about the ancients, ’twas best to interrupt him quickly.

“It wasn’t just that he had similar ideas,” Benton said. “There were paragraphs, whole passages sometimes, that used the same words, the same phrasing I did. Not quite word for word, but with only a few things changed. Which made it worse, because it looked like I’d copied it, then deliberately tried to make mine look different.”

I came out of Chant’s stall and found the oat bin. ’Twas a good thing Benton’s rooming house reserved space for its tenants in a nearby stable, or ’twould 
be expensive to house him. After setting up a tribe of orphan children in their own chandlery, I was a bit short of coin. In fact, if I stayed in the city for more than a day or two, I was going to have to ask Kathy to pick up Chant’s tab.

“I didn’t copy any part of my dissertation.” Benton’s voice was firm now. Bitter and proud. “I’d never seen that other paper before. And I’d have sworn I read every book on the ancient history shelves, in the years 
I studied here. Though it might have always been in another section — or even in another room, as disordered as things are in the areas Master Hotchkiss hasn’t cataloged. He found it in a stack of ancient poetry, and it might have been there for years. If I had copied my thesis, that would have been a good place for me to hide 
it after I copied the parts I wanted. But I didn’t.”

The passion had left his voice now, only defeat remaining. I knew what ’twas like, to stand before a tribunal and be condemned, so I gave him an encouraging slap on the shoulder on my way into Chant’s stall. I dumped a measure of oats into the feed bin, checked to be sure he still had enough water, and then departed, giving my horse a farewell slap on the rump. Much the same gesture I’d used on Benton, now that I thought on it.

“If that other paper was so much like yours, and 
you didn’t copy it, then whoever created it must have copied you,” I said. “How long is this dissertation of yours? Twenty pages? Forty?”

Benton cast me a wry look. “Two hundred and fifty-two. Though some of that is diagrams, and examples of how you might show the relationship of objects buried at different depths. You see, the deeper an object is buried the older it will be. So if you can determine the age of any item on that level, you can—”