Ardis smiled sardonically. "You caught that, did you?" she asked, referring to the behavior of the young dandy's parents when she had questioned them.
Tal nodded, and so did Kayne.
"So we can assume that these men, the secondary victims, are people who would not question the origin of a stray knife that came into their hands, especially if they had any reason to believe that it was stolen." She raised an eyebrow, inviting comment, and once again the other two nodded. "They would simply take the object, especially if it appeared valuable. They would most probably keep it on their persons."
Tal held up a finger and, at her nod, added a correction. "All but one or two—I think the knife-grinder I saw had been given the knife to sharpen. And it's possible the jeweler was brought the knife to repair some damage to the hilt. In both those cases, the men were perfectly innocent of everything. But I'd say it was more than possible in a couple of cases that the men who had the knife actually stole it themselves," Tal told her. "And that may account for a couple of the victims where the connection with music is so tenuous it might as well not be there."
"He took what he could get in those cases, in other words." Ardis made a note of that on the side of a couple of the dubious cases. "That argues for a couple of things. Either there is only one knife—"
"That isn't right, unless he's changing the hilt," Tal interrupted. "The one I saw didn't look anything like the one Visyr saw."
"Then in that case, it is a very powerful and complicated spell, and he can't have it active on more than one weapon at a time." Ardis made another note to herself, suggesting a line of magical research. "To a mage, that is very interesting, because it implies a high degree of concentration and skill, and one begins to wonder why so powerful a mage isn't in Duke Arden's Court."
"Maybe he is—" Kayne began, but Ardis shook her head.
"There's only one mage in his Court, and she's one of my fellow Justiciars. Furthermore, she hasn't detected anyone casting a spell that requires so much power anywhere in the Ducal Palace." Ardis sighed, for it seemed to her that the answer was, more and more, likely to involve a Church mage. "There simply aren't that many powerful mages in the Human Kingdoms outside the Church."
Tal grimaced, and Kayne shook her head. "It certainly seems to be the direction the hunt is tending." She sighed philosophically.
Ardis closed her eyes and told her stomach to calm itself. "I would much prefer to be able to point a finger at an Elf, since there are plenty of Elves who would gleefully slaughter as many mortals as they could get their hands on, but I have been assured that no Elf would be able to cast magic on anything made of iron or steel. So, that's the end of that idea."
"What about other nonhumans?" Tal asked. "Idon't think it's likely, mind you, but what about them?"
"I don't think it's likely either," she told both of them. "Any nonhuman is going to be very obvious, and a nonhuman mage even more so. Even if a nonhuman mage didn't practice magic openly, he'd be conspicuous, because he would have to be wealthy. He simply wouldn't be able to purchase the privacy he would need to work magic without being wealthy."
"If this Justiciar-Mage can detect the casting of spells in the palace, why can't we have mages watching for the casting of magic out in the city?" Tal wanted to know.
"You can see the smoke from a fire in the forest quite clearly, but can you pinpoint the smoke from an individual fire in the city?" Ardis countered. "There's too much else going on out in a large population of humans; with as much disruption as there is in Kingsford, a mage would have to be in the same city block as the caster in order to detect the casting of even a powerful spell."
"Have we enough mages in Kingsford to try that?" Kayne asked. "Couldn't we station mages around to catch him in the act?"
A reasonable idea, but not very practical, considering that the priestly mages of Kingsford had more demands on their time than they had hours in the day. "I think we would have better luck trying to find where the knives themselves are coming from," Ardis said tactfully. "If he's using more than one, someone has to be making them for him. There just aren't that many missing ecclesiastical knives."
Tal went very quiet at that. "I didn't know that," he said finally. "I'd just assumed that he'd stolen or found ritual knives—maybe in secondhand shops or something of the sort. But if he's making them—that almost means there has to be more than one person involved."
Ardis felt her stomach turn over again. One murderer was bad enough—buttwo ? "I've had people looking for a maker in Kingsford, and I can't find any smith who'll admit to making triangular-bladed knives."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that too much," Kayne said with a wave of her hand. "They don't have to come from Kingsford, or this kingdom, or even a Human Kingdom. Any little village smith would do, and I bet there are plenty who would he happy to get a job in the winter when people don't need farm equipment mended. All he needs to do would be to get a smith somewhere else to take a commission for the finished blades, and he can put whatever hilt he wants to on them. For that matter, he could be rehilting the same knife, over and over. That would solve the question of why you saw one kind of knife, Tal, and why Visyr saw another."
Tal shook his head. "I don't think so," he said firmly. "I think I've figured out why they're disappearing when all he'd need to do would be to drop them into the river to destroy our ability to trace him from them. What he's doing is taking them as his mementos."
"His what?" Kayne asked.
"Mementos." Tal offered an apologetic smile. "Trophies. Killers like this like to have things to remember their victims by. A lock of hair, an item of clothing, even jewelry. It lets them experience the thrill of the murder all over again. I know of one man who gave his wife a present of the jewelry he'd taken from the woman he killed; made a point of asking her to wear it, and he said later it was so he could relive the murder. I think that's why the knives are disappearing; I think our man is collecting them, cleaning them, and keeping them as trophies. He probably has them all mounted on a wall somewhere, or done up in a little display case."
Kayne looked a little green. "That's sick," she said in disgust.
"And murdering twenty or thirty women isn't?" Ardis countered, feeling certain that Tal had uncovered another piece of the puzzle. "I think Tal's right. I also think that the mage in question is smart enough to wipe not only every vestige of blood off the blade but cleanse it of every glimmer of magic, so we can't trace it. He may even have shielded the room the knives are in against a trace. We could search till we die of old age and never find the daggers."