A Murder of Mages (24 page)

“This isn’t the big one,” he said. “That’s somewhere else.”

Satrine didn’t want to think about that. “All right, never mind. How can you figure out where he may or may not kill her?”

“I can’t,” Welling said, gritting his teeth. He put down the chalk and stalked away from the desks. “I have nowhere near enough information, and little more than second or third levels of speculation, which makes everything I try to build a house of straw.”

“So why am I here this early?” she asked, annoyed.

Welling looked up, surprised. “Because I need your help, Inspector Rainey.”

Satrine’s annoyance blossomed into anger. “With what? You’ve just admitted you don’t know anything! And our one decent lead you insist had nothing to do with it! So what can I possibly add?”

Welling’s mouth hung open for a moment, his eyes racing back and forth. Satrine imagined that he was thinking so many things that he was unable to verbalize any of it in a sensible way. Finally he said, “Jaelia Tomar was taken from Constabulary custody, and so we failed in our duties to her safety. I failed, specifically. And as of this moment, she may or may not be alive. If she is, then there is still some small chance of preventing her murder. If . . .” He faltered and looked at Satrine with confusion. “If all we do is wait for her body to turn up, then
what function do we serve? What are we, then, but the morbid cataloguers of the atrocities of humanity?”

His words knocked Satrine out of her anger. For several moments, she stood dumb, unable to come up with an adequate response to his oration. “You’re right, Welling,” she said finally. “I just . . . I need a cup of tea first before I can think.”

“It’s there on your desk,” he said, pointing to the cup she hadn’t noticed. “Cream only.”

That was a pleasant surprise. Satrine took her chair and sipped at the tea. “You made this?”

“No one else is around,” he said. “Nyla usually arrives around seven bells.” He took a good look at her. “Were you in a fight?”

“It was an eventful morning. Some Inemar rats had ganged up on the page you sent to fetch me.”

“How many?”

“Five,” Satrine said, trying her best to sound casual about it. “We only brought in one, though.”

Welling nodded respectfully. “That’s good work.”

“Thank you.” The tea helped. She was starting to feel functional. “What’s our next step?”

“The best lead we really have right now is what Jaelia Tomar told you yesterday about her husband having a rival or enemy in another Circle. We need to pursue that, find out who that rival was, what Circle.”

“Easy to say,” Satrine said. “How are we going to do that?”

He pointed to the pile of files on her desk. “Following your rebuke yesterday, I’ve spent a portion of the evening studying the records we have on Mage Circles in the city, which are woefully inadequate.”

She fingered through the files. “These aren’t all of them.”

“No, I narrowed it to the ones worth paying attention to. The large, nationwide Circles like Lord Preston’s or Red Wolf, with major presences in every city are far too decentralized to even be a factor. Minuscule ones who don’t even house themselves in this part of Maradaine weren’t worth examining.”

“But many Circles do have chapterhouses in Inemar.”

“As near as I can tell, it is the neighborhood with the highest concentration. So I took other factors into consideration, and narrowed down to eight Circles that, as far as I can tell, are similar to the Firewings. They have chapterhouses in this neighborhood, and that chapterhouse appears to represent a significant portion of their membership.”

“That’s something,” she said, glancing at the names: Four Winds Circle, Circle of Light and Stone, Crimson Crescent Penumbra Circle, and so on. “Is it just me, or do these Circles try really hard for poetical names?”

“There was one I eliminated whose name actually was a poem.”

Satrine laughed, despite herself. “So now we have eight Circles to look into. So what’s the next step?”

“We’re going to have to go back to the Firewings’ chapterhouse.” Welling did not look too pleased about that idea.

“I don’t see them being too cooperative, especially after we arrested Jaelia. And then she was kidnapped from our custody and is possibly in the hands of a murderer.”

“I wouldn’t expect much cooperation from them in any event,” Welling said. “Which means we’ll have to take a different approach.”

Satrine was intrigued. This was starting to sound more like her old work in Intelligence. “I think Captain Cinellan would disapprove of us breaking into the chapterhouse, even with a life on the line.”

“Breaking in?” Welling looked scandalized. “Not at all, Inspector Rainey. Not at all.”

“Sorry,” Satrine said, abashed. “I was thinking about—”

“The methods in Druth Intelligence. Of course, I won’t deny there’s a certain ruthless efficiency to such tactics, but the last thing we would want to do is violate the rights of the Firewings.”

“If you don’t expect them to cooperate, and you don’t want to violate their privacy, what do you intend to do?”

Welling gave her a very slight smile, so subtle that she
almost didn’t catch it. “I said their rights, Inspector Rainey. I said nothing about their privacy.”

“Then how do you . . .”

Pounding footsteps came from the stairs, the fast steps of a young boy running. Welling picked up his coat and belt off the desk. “I didn’t send out only one page in the middle of the night.”

A page soon came from behind the slateboards, a piece of paper in his hands. “I got the writ, Inspector Welling!”

“Excellent, son,” Welling said. “How was Protector Hilsom’s spirit at your late night call?”

“Angry as a kicked cat, sir,” the page said. “But he did it anyway.”

“Did what?” Satrine asked.

Welling took the paper from the page. “Wrote out a warrant to search the premises of the Firewings’ chapterhouse. And now that we have it, Inspector Rainey, let’s drum up a few of the footpatrol to join us on this venture. This is the sort of thing that works best with a show of the color.”

Chapter 15

A SHOW OF COLOR turned out to be a dozen Constabulary Patrol, most of whom had just reported for duty with the sunrise. They walked the six blocks to the chapterhouse, with Welling and Satrine at the head, looking more like an organized mob than Constabulary on official business. The streets were beginning to buzz with activity, though most anyone walking about made a point of clearing out of the way of the swath of red-and-green coated Constabulary coming up the lane. Satrine found the whole thing strangely thrilling, the blatant display of authority.

“We should have marched them in formation,” Satrine joked. “Leading them on horseback.”

“That would have been ostentatious,” Welling said.

“Like this doesn’t make a statement.”

“It does,” Welling said. “‘We’re coming.’”

Welling didn’t hang back on the stairs when they reached the chapterhouse. He bounded up, two steps at a time, and gave a resounding knock on the door. “Maradaine Constabulary! We have a warrant for a search of the premises! Open peacefully or the door will be battered in!”

“How much time will you give them?” Satrine asked.

“A count of ten,” Welling said.

Satrine was starting to think Welling was enjoying this a bit too much. “They could still be asleep.”

“And Jaelia Tomar could still be alive, so I’m not
wasting any more time.” He snapped his fingers and gave a nod to the uniformed patrolmen. Two of them charged up the steps and smashed their shoulders into the door. It only budged a little. They hit it again. A third time yielded no better results.

“Good door,” Satrine said.

“Hmm,” Welling said. He pulled his arm back, and his hand shimmered and shone with yellow energy. Satrine grabbed the two patrolmen and pulled them away.

The door flew open before Welling did anything else. The same old man from the day before, now in a dressing gown, came storming out, eyes on Welling. “Let that go, Inspector!”

The glow around Welling’s hand dissipated, but Satrine noticed her partner’s muscles tense, the wince of pain in his face. Despite that, Welling reached into his pocket and produced the writ for the old man’s inspection. “We have a warrant. We will search these premises.”

“What for?”

“Either for Jaelia Tomar, or evidence about those who may have wished her harm.”

“Who would—the last I saw Jaelia she was being arrested by you!”

Satrine stepped forward, touching the man on the arm. She gave a slight nod to Welling and the patrolmen, who filed into the house. “We know that. However, she was broken out of Constabulary custody.”

“Broken out—”

Satrine cut the old mage off before he could continue. “You do understand that there are two possible parties we think would do such a thing.”

“Two parties? What do you mean?”

Satrine gave a nod, indicating inside the chapterhouse. “Either she was rescued by her allies . . .”

“You mean us? Preposterous!”

“Or she was abducted by the same people who murdered her husband.”

The old man shoved Satrine’s hand away. “This is all some sort of ploy to invade our privacy, discredit our Circle. It won’t work.”

“Why would we do that, sir?”

“We’ll have our counselor on the lot of you!” He glared at Satrine, and then stomped down the stoop. After a moment of glancing about, the old man stalked down to the street. “I see you all!” he shouted at the shops and homes across the way. “We will not be bullied!”

“Bullied?” Satrine asked. She came down the steps. “Who has been bullying you?”

“You people are all the same,” the old man said, his voice dripping with scorn.

“Who are ‘you people’? All I know is a member of your Circle is dead, another is missing and likely in danger! Help me!”

“You come here, invade our home, and ask me to help you?” The man’s face was full of anger.

“Your choice,” Satrine said. “You can fight us, or try to save your friend.”

The old mage snarled, and went back up the steps into the house. Satrine followed after him, but before she got inside, Welling came out with a journal and a handful of papers.

“I have it, Inspector Rainey,” he said with a manic look of triumph on his face.

“Those are private papers!” the old man shouted. He lurched toward Welling, his bony hand outstretched.

Satrine noticed a faint glow forming around his fingers. She grabbed the man’s arm. “Please, sir, don’t give us a reason to arrest you as well.”

“As if you don’t want to!”

“We don’t, sir,” Welling said. His voice was full of compassion, the level of which surprised Satrine. “Your house has suffered enough injustice.”

The old man huffed and went back inside.

“What did you find?” Satrine asked.

Welling thumbed through the journal. “The Circle of Light and Stone. That’s who the Tomars—the whole of the Firewings, actually—were having their row with.” He took his whistle out of his pocket and blew hard. One of the patrolmen came out. “Keep the search going. Send someone back to the stationhouse to put in a report.
Inspector Rainey and I will go to the chapterhouse of the Circle of Light and Stone. We will likely need a similar complement of patrolmen to meet us, preferably with another writ of warrant, if one can be provided in due haste. Have it done under my authority.” The patrolman saluted and went back inside the house.

Welling bounded down the steps and marched down the street at double time. Satrine ran to catch up with him.

“Where is Light and Stone?”

“Straight shot ahead of us, corner of Jewel and Downing.”

“You already know that?”

“I spent the night digging through records. Three years ago there was a feud between several Circles, including Light and Stone. A huge magic-fueled rumble broke out right in front of their chapterhouse.”

Satrine nodded, vaguely remembering. It had been an enormous tragedy, several civilians killed, many more injured. But in North Maradaine, it was just another horrible story to remind her to stay away from Inemar. She shook off the thought.

“For someone who hasn’t slept, Welling, you seem full of energy.”

“I believe I’m about to solve one murder, Inspector Rainey,” he said. “And I have the chance to prevent another. For that, I could run the length of the city and back.”