Drat.
This was disturbing, troubling; did this mean a lack of faith on her part? Had her entire life been based on a lie?
What am I supposed to do now? she asked the flame on the altar. What am I supposed to think?
But the flame had no answers, and eventually, her knees began to ache. Giving it up, she went to bed, but sleep eluded her. Finally she resorted to one of the Infirmarian's potions, but even though it brought sleep, it also brought confused dreams in which a winged Tal pursued a murderous mage who had her former betrothed's face.
The next day brought more work, of course; just because she was pursuing a murderer, that did not mean that other judgments could wait on the conclusion of this case. All morning long she sat in sentencing on criminals who had already been caught and convicted, and in judgment on other miscreants, hearing evidence presented by junior Justiciar-Mages. In the afternoon, she read the latest round of case-records brought from other Abbeys of the Justiciars.
She hoped that a little time and work and the realization of the direction her emotions were taking would enable her to put some perspective on things. Tal did not appear to give his report until after dinner; but she discovered to her concealed dismay that nothing had changed.
She listened to his litany of what had been done and the usual lack of progress, and wondered what was going on in his mind. Shethought he had given some evidence of being attracted to her in turn, which would have been another complication to an already complicated situation, but she was so out of the habit of looking for such things that she could have been mistaken.
I feel like a foolish adolescent, she thought, with no little sense of irritation. Look at me! Watching him to see if he is looking at me a little too long, trying to second-guess what some fragment of conversation means! The next thing you know, I'll be giggling in the corner with Kayne!
"We need a more organized effort, I think," she said at last. "We're going to need more than the tacit cooperation of the Kingsford constables. I think we're going to need active effort on their part. Do you think Fenris would object to that, or resent it?"
"Not really," he replied after a moment of thought. "He's a professional, and he doesn't like these killings in his streets. I think the only reason he's held back from offering to put on more men to help is that he's afraidyou might resent his trying to get involved. After all, this is a Justiciar case."
"Well, it ought to be more than just a Justiciar case," she replied. "Get us a meeting with him tomorrow, if you can—"
She broke off as he frowned; he had been trying to take notes with a pen that kept sputtering, and his efforts at trimming the nib only made it worse.
"Only scribes ever learn how to do that right," she said after the third attempt to remedy the situation failed. "Here. Take this; keep it. I can always get another, but to be brutally frank, it isn't something you would be able to find easily."
She handed him a refillable Deliambren "reservoir" pen, the only gift her fiance gave her that she ever kept. He accepted it with a quizzical look, took the cap off at her direction, and tried it out. His eyebrows rose as he recopied the set of notes he'd ruined.
"Impressive," he said quietly. "Deliambren?"
She nodded. "One of those things that you have to have connections for. I can get another from Arden, and considering who gave me that, I really ought to." She smiled crookedly. "Weare supposed to discard everything from our past when we take final vows; I should have gotten rid of it long ago."
And was that reminder of what I am meant for him or for myself?
He finished his notes and went away, intending to go across the river and try to catch Fenris in his office to set up that conference for the next day. She played with the quill pen that he'd ruined for several minutes, caught herself caressing the feather, and threw it angrily into the wastebasket.
She was having a serious crisis of conscience, there was no doubt of that. But second-guessing her life-decisions was not going to solve anything.
The cure for all of this is work,she decided, and went back to that old file of defrocked Priest-Mages. There was something there, sheknew it had to be there, if only she could figure out what it was. Thanks to Tal's investigative work, there were some she could remove from the file altogether—although she left the drunk in. The drunkard-act could have been just that, an act, intended for the benefit of Tal alone. No, she would not dismiss him just yet.
But if I'm going to keep him, perhaps I ought to reconsider some of the others I'd dismissed.
She came to the file of Revaner Byless; she remembered him with extraordinary clarity, and every time she reread his file, she became more convinced that he fit the profile of their killer perfectly. But although the Black Bird had escaped, it was surely dead by now—
And how could he be doing all this as a bird, anyway? How could he possibly work magic?
But—maybe he wasn't a bird anymore.
A sudden thought struck her with the force of a blow—the recollection of an incidental comment that Tal had made.