Ardis exchanged a look with Tal, and Tal answered him. "I have no doubt of it," he told the bird-man. "You can probably go back to mapping for the next few days, and with any luck, before this monster can kill again, we'll either have him or we'll have his accomplice and be on the way to catching him."
Visyr gave the Inquisitor a penetrating look, and Ardis wondered if he'd heard anything in Tal's voice to make him doubt the human's sincerity. Tal looked straight back into his eyes, and Visyr finally shrugged and rose to his feet.
"I do not fly well after dark," he said, by way of apology, "and I would rather not trust myself afoot then, either. I must go."
"I can't begin to thank you enough, Visyr," Ardis told him, as Tal also rose to let him out. "You have gone far beyond anything we would dare to ask of you."
But when Tal returned to his chair, Ardis gave him the same kind of penetrating look that Visyr had graced him with. "Well?" she asked. "Just how useful is this sketch?"
"For now—quite useful," Tal replied, "but its usefulness is going to degrade very rapidly. The moment that this fellow gets word—and he will—that there's a picture of him circulating with the constables, he's going to change his appearance. Hair dye, a wig, a beard, those are the easiest ways for him to look like another person, and if he's really clever, he knows the other tricks, too." He closed his eyes for a moment, calculating. "I'd say the longest this will do us any good is a week; the shortest, two days."
She nodded, accepting the situation. "Maybe we'll be lucky."
Tal snorted. "So far, luck's all been with the killer. Think of it! Visyr actually had the accomplice cornered, if only for a short while, and the man got away because he went to ground like a rat down a hole!"
She tried not to grind her teeth with frustration; it only made her jaw ache. If only she could get her hands on one of those daggers!
"I wish Visyr could have gotten the dagger, or even a scrap of the man's clothing or a piece of his hair," Tal said, sighing, echoing her thoughts. "Well, he didn't. We'll have to make the best use of what hedid get us."
"He's getting bolder," Ardis said, thinking aloud. "This is another daylight killing, and in a crowd. Maybe someone in the crowd saw something."
"The tool this time was the used-weapons dealer across the street, so he probably got the dagger in a load of other things," Tal noted. "I don't suppose anything could—well—rub off from the dagger with the magic on it?"
Ardis pursed her lips and nodded. "Contagion. That's not a bad thought to pursue; it certainly is going to give us as much as we've been getting off the bodies of the victims. If we can at least identify what other weapons were in the lot, maybe we can trace one ofthem back to where it came from."
They continued to trade thoughts on the subject, but eventually they found themselves wandering the same, well-worn paths of speculation as they had so many times before this. Ardis noticed this before Tal—and she also noticed something else.
She was deliberately prolonging the session and he wasn't fighting to get away, either.
We're both tired, she told herself, knowing at the same time that it was only a half truth. We both hate idleness, and sleeping feels idle. We need rest, and sitting here and talking is the only way we get it aside from sleeping. But there was something more going on, and she wasn't going to face it until she was alone.
"You'd better go off and get some real rest," she said, with great reluctance. "I know this is something of a rest, but it isn't sleep, and that's what you need. If you can't get to sleep, ask the Infirmarian for something. I know I will."
He made a sour face, but agreed to do so, and with equal reluctance, left the office.
That set off alarms in her conscience.
Instead of going to bed, she went to her private chapel to meditate. On her knees, with her hands clasped firmly in front of her, she prepared to examine herself as ruthlessly as she would any criminal.
It wasn't difficult to see what her symptoms meant, when she came to the task with a determination to be completely honest with herself. And this was a road she had already gone down before. The simple fact was that she was very attracted to this man Tal Rufen, but the longer she knew him, the more attracted she became. She knew now that if she had met him before she went into the Church she might not be sitting in the High Bishop's chair.
The bitter part is that the attraction is not merely or even mostly carnal, it's emotional and cerebral, too.That was another inescapable conclusion. He was her intellectual equal, and what was more, heknew that she was his. He showed no disposition to resent the fact that she, a woman, was the person in charge, his temporal superior.
And I had no real vocation when I entered the Church. I took vows as a novice in a state of pique and not for any noble reason.Perhaps that was why she examined the novices herself when they came to take their final vows; she wanted to be sure none of them had come here under similar circumstances, and might one day come to regret their choice.
Later she had surprised herself with the level of her devotion, once she got past the rote of the liturgy and into the realms of pure faith, but her original intent had been to find a place where she would be accepted, judged, and promoted on her merit. She knew that; she'd admitted it in Confession. She had thought that she was happy. Now—now she wasn't sure anymore.
If the man I'd been promised to had been like Tal I would have been perfectly happy as the Honorable Lady Ardis, probably with as many children as cousin Talaysen. I certainly do not seem to have lost the capacity for carnal desire and attraction.