So what was he doing so far from Haldene?
"Tal Rufen of Haldene," she said, breaking the silence and making him start. "You're a long way from home."
The entrance of Kayne with a loaded tray gave him a reason not to answer, but Kayne didn't stay. Ardis caught her secretary's eyes and made a slight nod towards the door; Kayne took it as the order it was and left them alone. Ardis poured out tea and handed him a cup and a plate of cheese and unleavened crackers. Tal drank his cup off in a single gulp, asked permission with a glance, and poured himself a second cup that he downed while he wolfed crackers and cheese as if he hadn't eaten all day.
Perhaps he hasn't. Very curious.
But if he did his work the way he ate, his superiors would never be able to find fault with him; he was quick, efficient, and neat. Without being rude or ill-mannered, he made the food vanish as thoroughly as if he were a sleight-of-hand artist, and settled back into his chair with a third cup of tea clasped between his hands.
"I don't see very many constables from outside of Kingsford," Ardis continued, "And then, it is usually only in the summer. I would say that it must have been some very urgent errand to urge you to travel so far in the middle of winter."
"If you consider murder an urgent errand, you would be correct, High Bishop," the man replied quietly in a ringing baritone. "For it is murder that brings me here." He waited for her to interrupt, then went on. "I want to beg your indulgence, however, and allow me to tell you this in my own way."
"If your way is to begin at the beginning and acquaint me with the facts as you discovered them, then proceed," she told him, watching him from beneath lowered lids.
He nodded soberly and began his narrative. He was precise, detailed, and dry in a way that reminded her of a history book. That, in turn, suggested that he had more than a passing acquaintance with such books. Interesting; most of the constables she knew were hardly scholars.
She had interviewed any number of constables over the course of the years, and he had already stated it was murder that brought him here, so it was no surprise when he began with the details of a particularly sordid case. The solution seemed straightforward enough, for the murderer had turned around and immediately threw himself into the river—
But it can't be that straightforward.
Her conclusion was correct, for he described another murder, then a third—and she very quickly saw the things that linked them all together. The bizarre pattern of murder, then suicide. And the missing knife.
She interrupted him as he began the details of a fourth case. "Whatis going on in Haldene, Tal Rufen?" she demanded with concern. "Is there some disease driving your people to kill each other? I cannot ever recall hearing of that many murder-suicides in a single year in Kingsford, and this is a far larger city than little Haldene!"
He gave her a look of startled admiration. "I don't know, my Lady Bishop," he replied with new respect. "I did consider that solution, but it doesn't seem to match the circumstances. Shall I continue?"
She gestured at him to do so, and continued to listen to his descriptions, not only of the chain of murder-suicides in Haldene, but similar crimes that he had uncovered with patient inquiry over the countryside. They began in a chain of villages and towns that led to Haldene, then moved beyond.
Beyond—to Kingsford, which was the next large city in the chain, if the pattern was to follow the Kanar River.
He came to the end of his chain of reasoning just as she came to that realization.
"Interesting." She watched him narrowly; he didn't flinch or look away. "And you think that Kingsford is now going to be visited by a similar set of occurrences? That is what brought you here?"
"Yes, High Bishop," he told her, and only then did he raise a hand to rub at his eyes, wearily. "I do. And now I must also make a confession to you."
"I am a Priest," she said dryly. "I'm rather accustomed to hearing them."
She had hoped to invoke at least a faint smile from him, but all he did was sigh. "I fear that I am here under somewhat false pretenses. Iwas a constable of Haldene, but I'm rather afraid that I am no longer. I began investigating this string of tragedies over the objections of my superiors; I continued against their direct orders. When they discovered what I had learned, they dismissed me." He waited to see if she was going to react to that, or say something, and continued when she did not. "I would have quit in any case, when I saw where this—series of coincidences—was heading." He smiled, with no trace of humor. "There is a better chance that the King will turn Gypsy tomorrow than that my superiors would permit me to take leave to inform authorities in Kingsford about this. After all, the plague has left Haldene; it is no longer a problem for those in authority there."
"I . . . see." She wondered for a moment if he was going to ask her for a position. Had all of this been manufactured just to get her attention? "Have you gone to the Captain of the constables in Kingsford?"
"I tried," he replied, and this time hedid smile faintly. "He's not an easy man to get to."
"Hmm. True." In fact, Captain Fenris was the hardest man tofind in Kingsford, but not because he was mewed up in an office behind a battery of secretaries. It might take weeks before Tal was able to track him down. "I believe that at the moment he is on double-shift, training the new recruits. He could be anywhere in the city at any given moment, and his second-in-command is unlikely to make any decisions in a situation like this."
"More to the point, I'm hardly going to get a glowing recommendation from my former superiors in Haldene, if his second-in-command were to make an inquiry about me," Tal pointed out. "They'll probably tell him I'm a troublemaker with a history of mental instability."