Tal hesitated, then said what he'd been thinking. "There was only one murder in Kingsford, sir—"
"That you know of. There's stories in the street of another two beggar-girls with triangular stab-wounds here, and I know of a dozen or more down the river," Torney interrupted him. "I'm in trade, sir Rufen; I deal with people who sell me scents, oils, and waxes from all over the Human Kingdoms and beyond. The one thing that tradesmen do is talk—and there hasn't been anything more sensational to talk about in the last six months than murder—especially the murder of that poor Gypsy girl by the jeweler. Stabbed with a file, indeed! I knew then it was an ecclesiastical dagger, and when another girl was killed in the same way here, I knew it was only a matter of time before Ardis sent a Hound of God out on trail."
Tal sighed. "And you, of course, never leave the city."
Torney nodded. "I could bring witnesses to that, obviously, and it is just as obvious that they could be lying for me. Take it as given that I have the witnesses; what can I do that will convince you I could not have anything to do with these horrible crimes?"
"Tell me why you left the Church," Tal replied instantly.
Dasel Torney nodded as if he had expected that very answer. "I will give you the shortest possible version—I was a Priest-Mage, trained by the Justiciars, but not of the Order myself. I was out of the Teaching Order of Saint Basyl, and at forty years of age, I was given the assignment of acting as tutor to the daughter of a wealthy and extremely influential merchant of Kingsford—the head of the Chandler's Guild, in fact. I had the bad judgment, although the exquisite taste, to fall in love with her, and she had the poor taste to fall equally in love with me. The inevitable occurred, and we were discovered together. At that point, neither of us would give the other up, not even after ten years of separations and penances, nor under the threat of far worse punishments than we had already undergone."
"Worse?" Tal asked, curiously.
Torney chuckled. "There were those who thought I ought to pay for my sin by having the organ in question removed—and I don't mean my heart!"
Tal blanched; he couldn't imagine how Torney could joke about it.
"Fortunately," Dasel continued, "cooler heads prevailed, and both my fellow teachers and the Justiciars prevailed upon both the High Bishop and my darling's father to soften their wrath. In the case of the former, they prevailed upon him to simply allow me to resign provided I never used magic directly to make a profit—and in the case of the latter, they prevailed upon the Guildmaster to accept me as a son-in-law." He quirked a smile. "It did help that I have a talent with wax and scent, and that my ability as a mage was never better than minimal. It was very uncomfortable for all of us, however; he acted to both of us as if we were strangers. I thought he would never really forgive us. We never spoke outside of the shop until the Great Fire."
Tal could well imagine what the Fire must have done to a candle and oil shop. "Was there anything left?"
Torney shook his head. "Not a thing. Nothing but ashes, and by the time we got back to where the shop had been, scavengers even had sifted those and carried away any bits of metal they'd found."
All this had the ring of truth about it—furthermore, it would probably be very easy to verify all these facts. "What happened then?" Tal asked.
"Well, the Great Fire destroyed Loren Bertram's fortune and business—but—" He smiled. "I suppose it's my training as a Priest that makes me value things of the spirit and heart more than of the material world. My minimal ability in magic saved our lives, and when Bertram was deepest in despair, I was ready to fight. He gave up, but I was just beginning, and determined to prove that I could be his friend and restore what he'd lost. Between Loyse and myself, we scraped together enough for a tiny slice of a shop. The good will we had built among the traders got us raw goods on credit. My considerable talent in the business has brought us back to where we are now. We have a level of comfort, if not luxury. It's been a difficult time, but the results of our efforts have been well worth it. But best of all, Bertram saw how I stood by him as well as Loyse, and now heis my friend, not my enemy."
A very short version of what must have been a difficult twenty years, but all of it was verifiable now that Tal knew the facts behind the simple resignation. And if Torney had been trying to rebuild a business out of the ashes of the Fire, there was no way he could have been out of Kingsford to commit the earlier murders.
And there must be a world of things that had been left out of that simple story—Tal could only wonder at a love that was powerful enough to defy Church and parent, and still emerge radiating joy.
"I knew when I saw her that your wife was a remarkable woman," Tal said. "She must be far more than that—"
"I wish I were a poet or a musician," Torney replied softly, turning a half-carved candle in his hands. "I cannot begin to tell you what she means to me. I would have given up everything simply to be in her presence—and if they had locked me away in a solitary cell for a lifetime of penance, I would never have repented a moment of the time I spent with her. And she feels exactly the same towards me." He looked up. "I suppose that's remarkable. To us, though, it is as natural as breathing, and as necessary."
If a man's soul could be said to shine from his eyes, Tal saw Torney's at that moment—and felt a little in awe.
Of all of the things that he could have uncovered in the course of this investigation, this was the most unexpected.
"Haveyou any idea who this might be?" he asked after a moment. "Is there anyone among the Priests or the Priest-Mages that you knew who could be doing these things?"
"That's what has me troubled and puzzled," Torney replied, picking up a knife and gently carving petals of wax out of the side of the candle in his hands. "I'm older than Ardis—she wasn't the High Bishop at the time I was dismissed, she was nothing more than the most promising of the young Justiciar-Mages. There is one man whocould very easily be doing these things, but the last time I saw him, he wasn't a man anymore."
Wellthat certainly made Tal sit up straight. Torney didn't chuckle, but it was clear that he was amused—he'd obviously intended that his statement would startle Tal, perhaps as a gentle sort of revenge. Without any prompting, he told Tal the tale of Priest-Mage Revaner, Guild Bard Beltren, and the Gypsy Free Bard called Robin.
"I've heard something like this before—" Tal said, uncertainly, when Torney was through.
"Likely enough; the Free Bards made a ballad out of it, though they changed the names to protect their own hides," Torney replied. "Now, the part that didn't make it into the ballad was that Ardis doesn't know how to reverse that particular effect, since it was all tangled up with Revaner's original dark sorcery, the Bards' magics, and her own. As far as any Priest-Mage I ever spoke to knew, Revaner was going to be a bird for the rest of his life. And the part that no more than a handful of people know is that during the Great Fire, the Black Bird disappeared."