"How, when mages are so watched and bound by laws and priests?" Skan asked skeptically.

She had no answer for that, but there was no reason why he couldn't pursue that particular quarry for a moment. "I suppose that accidents could happen," he mused aloud. "This is a large country. A child could be overlooked, or even run away from the school. Once he knew what he was, if he didn't turn himself in—"

"Then obviously he would already be a criminal," Zhaneel stated.

"A good point. Which would mean he would drift into the company of other criminals." He nodded, and leaned a little more into her preening; she knew where all the really itchy spots were.

"Which would mean that he would become a weapon in the hands of other criminals," she replied. "I think the most likely is that this woman had a great enemy, and that the enemy decided to rid himself of the woman during a time when he was unlikely to be caught."

"During the Dance, you mean? But everyone knew we were going to be there, didn't they? After all, it was supposed to be in our honor."

"That would be known to those in the Court itself. The fact that the murder looked as if a gryphon did it might actually only be a coincidence, if this was a crime of terrible and profound anger," she pointed out. "And the murderer could simply be incredibly lucky, to have gotten into his victim's suite, killed her, and gotten out without being seen. People dohave that kind of luck, you know." She glanced at him slyly. "Certainly, you did."

"Huhrrr." He thought that over. It was possible. Not likely, but barely possible. "He'd have to be lucky andgood. And if that's the case, we'll never catch him."

"But when nothing more happens, this will all evaporate in a few days," Zhaneel pointed out. "After all, youcould not have done the deed, even Palisar admits that. As unreliable as magic is, even if you had done this by magic, you would still have needed privacy and a great deal of time, and there would be traces. So, when nothing more is discovered, all the attention upon us will fade in importance in no more than a week, and they will remove their guards and precautions." She glanced at him, with a sideways tilt of her head. "They may never find the murderer, but this will soon become only the interest of what passes for a policing force here."

Skan sighed, and nuzzled her tiny ear-tufts. "You're right, of course," he said as she craned her head upward to blow out the lamp. "In a few days their suspicion of us will be forgotten."

There. I have said what will comfort her. Why don't I believe it myself?

Five

There was a familiar knock at the door, a little after dinnertime and just before Court. The servant spoke a sentence or two in hushed tones.

"Don't tell me," Skandranon groaned, as the servant—once again—ushered in Leyuet and the Spears of the Law. This was the third time in six days. "Another murder."

Leyuet nodded grimly. His dark face was drawn and new worry-lines etched the corners of his mouth. And was there more gray in his hair? It seemed so. "Another murder. Another professed opponent of the treaty. This time, in a room locked and barred from within. It mustbe by magic. You were, of course, watched all afternoon during your sleep period?"

Skan gestured broadly to indicate the pair of heavily-muscled spear-bearers, standing stoically in what passed for the corners of the room. "They never left my side, and they never slept." After the second murder, a single watcher had not been deemed enough to insure Skandranon's innocence by some parties, so a second Spear of the Law had been added to make certain that the first was not duped or slumbering. "I've either been here or in the garden. Just ask them."

Leyuet sighed, a look of defeat creeping over him. "I do not need to, for I know that they will confirm your words. But I also know that no magician of the Haighlei could have done this. As you rightly pointed out, to overcome all the disturbances in the use of magic would require more power than any of our priests or mages has available to him. Thus the mage must be foreign, with foreign ways of working magic." He rubbed his eyes, a gesture that had become habitual over the past several days, as Leyuet clearly got less and less sleep. "No Haighlei would ever have committed murder so—so crudely, so impolitely, either."

Skan coughed to keep from choking with astonishment. Every time he thought he understood the Haighlei ways, someone said something that surprised him all over again. "You mean to tell me that there is a polite way to commit murder?" he blurted.

Leyuet did not rise to the bait; he just shook his head. "It is just the Haighlei way. Even murder has a certain protocol, a set ritualistic aspect to it. For one thing, a murderer must accomplish certain tasks to be certain that the spirit of his victim has been purged from the earth. How else could the perpetrator feel satisfaction? But this conforms to nothing Haighlei. It is not random, but there is no pattern to it, either."

Zhaneel coughed politely, drawing Leyuet's gaze toward her. "All the victims were women as well as being opposed to the alliance," Zhaneel suggested delicately. "Could it be a case of a jilted lover? Someone who approached all three of the women about an assignation and was rebuffed—or someone who once had affairs with them and was cast off for another?"

But Leyuet only shook his head again. "There would be even more of ritual in that case. No, this has no pattern, it was done by magic, and it is like nothing we have ever seen in the Empire."

As if some madman among the Haighlei could not act in a patternless fashion."It is new, in other words," Skan said flatly. "And since it is new, and we are new, therefore—"

"Therefore I must summon you before the Emperor Shalaman once again," Leyuet finished for him, spreading his hands wide. "It is the pattern."

Skan simply bowed to the inevitable. I have no choice, after all. I cannot even try to go back to White Gryphon now; they might decide that retreat was an admission of guilt and send an army."Lead on," he replied, gesturing with his foreclaw. "I am at your disposal."

And I only hopethat isn't a prophetic phrase! I would very much prefer not to be "disposed of!"

Kanshin worked the little wooden ball up and around his fingers, from the index to the littlest finger and back again, in an exercise often used by street-entertainers who practiced sleight-of-hand and called it magic. He was no street-entertainer, however. He was a thief, and a master thief at that. More than any street-entertainer, he needed to keep his hands supple.

His father would be horrified, if he still lived, to know what "trade" Kanshin now plied. Better to be a master thief than a master-ditchdigger.That was what Kanshin's father had been, and his grandfather, and so on back for ten generations. That, so the priests and the gods decreed, was what Kanshin should have been.

Kanshin sneered at them all, at his father for being a fool, at the priests for the "decrees" that duped so many. A pox upon priests and gods together. Assuming there even are any gods, which I doubt.

He worked the ball around his left hand, across the palm, and up to the index finger again. My father believed in the gods and the priests, and we starved. I like my way better.