Scholar's Plot (25 page)

When we finally came together ’twas long past time for breakfast. Fisk and Kathy hadn’t returned by the time I got back to Benton’s rooms, so True and I waited up for them, growing more and more concerned. Since he was sleeping on 
a cot in his front room, while Kathy took his bed, Benton waited with us.

When they finally came in, some of the delay was explained by the fact that Kathy was wearing her and Fisk’s stockings, while he carried her broken shoes. And it made sense that they’d take some time to make sure that big man’s sister hadn’t followed them.

I was tense from the long wait and would have had the full tale then, but Benton was yawning and Fisk said, rather shortly, that Kathy was tired.

She didn’t look tired to me. She was stepping a bit gingerly but her eyes sparkled, and under the leftover excitement of that wild night I thought I saw a sort of wonder.

Fisk was the one who looked tense and pale. But I acceded to his request and we agreed to meet and share our stories at breakfast … though by the time we’d all awakened and wandered down to Benton’s rooms, ’twas near midday.

I told them … not quite the whole story, for my possession of magic was a thing I’d shared with no one 
but Fisk, and I’d no desire for my family to learn of it. I was eager to talk to Fisk about it as soon as we had some privacy. And how odd it was to still feel anger that, when he’d freed Jack, Fisk had lied to me and betrayed all the principles I held dear … and at the same time, to know without doubt that he would never betray my secret to anyone.

Loyalty was the core of Fisk’s nature, and ’twas loyalty, felt toward another, that had made him betray me. If I was relying on that very trait, was it right to blame him for offering it to others? But how could I not 
condemn it, when it induced him to let criminals, quite vicious criminals, go free? I knew that Jack Banister would never reform … and so did Fisk, and he’d let him go anyway.

I still couldn’t agree with that, but I found it increasingly hard to maintain my anger.

I told them, somewhat truthfully, that I’d been forced to take to the river to elude my pursuer. Benton repeated a comment he’d made when I dripped my way 
in last night, about how only idiots strayed far from the bank, because the currents farther out could sweep 
the strongest swimmer away. Fisk, uncharacteristically, made no comment at all. Kathy said, somewhat absently, that she was glad I’d escaped.

She kept stealing glances at Fisk, and Fisk seemed to be taking pains not to return them.

They both became more animated when they talked about the game. Kathy assured me that even she had seen the strange couple cheating — and that she’d almost tripped over the girl as she’d gathered up the money that had fallen from the table.

“So how much did you lose?” Benton asked. “You paid for the jeweler’s housing as well — aren’t you running short?”

Kathy shook her head. “’Twas was only one hand’s bet, and I haven’t spent half the dress allowance Mother gave me. If I do run short, I can write and ask for more.”

An odd expression swept over Fisk’s face, but it 
vanished so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. 
He launched into the tale of how, after leaving the tavern, they’d crept down a nearby alley and hidden 
in a stable loft till they were sure they could make their way home safely. But I was more interested in another aspect of the game.

“From what you say, ’tis unlikely Stint has lost so much he’d accept a bribe to sabotage the project. Which means the whole affair was for naught.”

“We only eliminated one suspect,” Fisk said. “Anyone who worked on the project might have some need for money that we don’t know about.”

“Benton should know,” Kathy put in. “Since he works with them. But I expect he’s been completely oblivious.”

“I’m not oblivious,” Benton protested. “I just don’t pry into other people’s business.”

“Oblivious,” Kathy repeated.

“But others might not be,” I said slowly. “If we want to inquire into that, ’twould make sense to start with the one man that we know doesn’t need money. 
Besides, he owes Fisk a good turn. Benton, didn’t you say you’d finished recreating your research?”

“’Tis Skinday,” Benton protested. “He’ll be at home.”

“All the better,” Fisk pointed out. “We won’t have to catch him between lectures.”

“I think I’ll stay home,” Kathy said. “My feet are a little tender from yesterday.”

This might well be true, but ’twas so unlike the little sister who’d trailed after us with bleeding knees, and once a badly sprained wrist, that Benton and I both stared.

She lifted her chin and stared back.

“I’ll take the dishes to the tavern,” Fisk said, “and meet you outside after you’ve bundled up Benton’s notes.”

He scraped off the scraps for True, loaded the empty plates and bowls into the basket and departed. Benton had already picked up his notes — which sat all of three steps away, tied into a neat roll with a bit of string. I looked sharply at Kathy.

“Did you and Fisk quarrel last night?”

“No.”

“Then why hasn’t he spoken to you all morning?”

“He asked me to pass the butter. And he told me I was an idiot for taking on that great ox with nothing but a chair. And he said that next time he’s going to make sure I’m wearing sensible shoes, even if we’re only crossing the street for dinner.”

“Yes, but…” I couldn’t put the constraint I’d seen into words, but I knew ’twas there.

“Don’t worry about it. We didn’t quarrel.”

Her eyes were bright with mischief, and I wondered if she’d done something to tease Fisk. But my squire … 
associate … partner? could certainly hold his own against Kathy, so I took the notes from Benton and went out to join him.

On our way to Stint’s lodging, I shared the true tale of my adventures. After remarking that he’d known I was holding something back — which I didn’t see how he could — and the expected diatribe on my foolishness, Fisk started looking more thoughtful.

“If it obeys your heart’s desire, you’d better be careful what you want.”

“I thought of that. But it doesn’t work unless I’m in desperate straits, so I don’t think I’m likely to see someone I’m angry with drop dead, or have gold spring out of the air or some such thing.”

“Pity about the gold.” Fisk dodged around a scholar, who was so intent on the paper he was reading he paid no attention where he walked. “For the rest of it… I wonder if that’s how it works for the jeweler. If he has so little control over his thoughts that nothing gets in the way of his wishes.”

“If that were true, then Roseman would be dead. We saw him abuse the man.”

“Being abused doesn’t always stop people from loving someone,” Fisk said soberly. “It should, but I’ve seen it, and I’ll bet you have too.”

I thought I’d seen it in his own relationship with Jack Banister, even if he couldn’t see it himself. Which made his point even more clearly.

“Here we are,” Fisk said.

The landlady, who remembered our previous conversation, gave us a curious look. But she let us in and told us that the professor had the left side of the second floor. He opened the door at my knock.

“I’ve brought my brother’s notes,” I said, holding them up to show him. “May we come in?”

Since I was now in charge of the investigation, I’d decided to go with my usual policy of telling the truth. It had worked better, thus far, than duplicity had.

Stint looked tired, though he’d risen and dressed. But when he saw the tidy roll of papers his whole face lit.

“Yes, of course, come in. I owe Professor Sevenson for … this…” His gaze had fallen upon Fisk. “What are you doing here?”

“He’s working with me,” I said, as Fisk followed me into the room. ’Twas much like Benton’s, though Stint’s shelves held fewer books, and instead were crammed with vials of mysterious liquids, powders, and crystals, and chunks of dull-looking ore.

“We’re trying to clear my brother’s name,” I went on. “And Fisk played cards with you last night to see if you might have gambling debts so large you’d be tempted to sabotage the project.”

He stiffened indignantly, and Fisk added quickly, “But someone who counts cards like you do isn’t going to lose. Not enough to matter.”

“George is better than I am.” Stint now sounded torn between outrage and curiosity, and I gave him Benton’s notes hoping to tip the balance. It took his gaze off 
of Fisk, and he met my eyes straightly. “Even if I was 
in debt up to my eyeballs, I wouldn’t sabotage the project. Not by destroying my own work, and particularly not now, when it’s beginning to show results. The 
payoff from this project could surpass any bribe. I wouldn’t sabotage someone else’s work, either.”

That last was the more convincing because ’twas said absently, as his gaze returned to Fisk.

“Were they really cheating? Or was accusing them part of your con?”

“Signaling like crazy,” Fisk said. “I suspect they’re just passing through, or they wouldn’t have run a Pig and Squirrel. That’s not a game you can play twice. They probably left first thing this morning, before the rest of us were even awake.”

The professor shrugged off the notion of pursuit. “We get card sharps here sometimes, on their way to Crown City. Were
you
cheating?”

“Yes,” Fisk said, to my surprise. “But my partner wasn’t, and she’s the one who put up our stake. And lost some of it.”

“I saw that girl, gathering up the pot.” Stint’s gaze was still on Fisk, and a grin was spreading across his face. “But I wasn’t about to go back in, not with her brother smashing the place up. You’re very good.”

“So are you,” said Fisk. “Good enough to make all the money you’d need, without cheating. Which brings us to the real question; does anyone else involved with the project need money?”

“No one who counts,” said Stint. “As far as I know. Dayless has nothing but her salary, but if she lived 
beyond her means she’d have gone broke long ago. The scholars are always broke, but they don’t care. Their parents pay their tuition and give them a stipend 
for room and board,” he added. “If they gamble they 
do it with each other, for tin points, so even if they lost all the time it wouldn’t matter. And speaking of mattering, I owe Professor Sevenson for this. So if you’re really planning to … what was it, clear his name? I should tell you that you don’t have a lot of time. I hear they’ve already interviewed a second applicant for his job.”

This news was so disturbing it almost distracted me — but working with Fisk has taught me that ’tis the things folk
don’t
say that you have to listen for.

“Who is it that needs money, but doesn’t count?” I asked.

“What?” He had to think back over what he’d said. “Oh, I was talking about Quicken, and his daughter’s leg. It took magica medicine to get it to heal.”

Fisk, who knows the price of magica medicine, winced. Stint went on, as oblivious as Benton.

“He has relatives in another town, connections of his wife’s, who have some money and they chipped in to help.”

“Or so he told you,” Fisk said. “It sounds like he needed money badly.”

“Yes, but that was four or five months ago. And I doubt Quicken has any idea what this project is about, or why it matters. I suppose if someone approached him, he might have understood that burning the notes would set us back. Though since Dayless had a copy, and I can reconstruct my formulas—” He lifted the rolled notes in his hand, in demonstration. “—setting us back a week or so is all it would do. Though he probably wouldn’t have realized that, either. The man’s only a gamekeeper, after all.”

We left Professor Stint to his notes, and had made our way out to the street before Michael spoke.

“My father has many faults. But he taught every one of us that just because someone is poor, or Giftless, that doesn’t mean they might not be brave or intelligent or kind or wise or good.”

“It’s not low birth that makes him ‘only a gamekeeper,’” I said. “Stint’s probably taught plenty of merit scholars, and given them his respect. It’s Quicken’s lack 
of education. Stint’s probably assuming, and he may be right, that the man left school as soon as he’d learned 
to read, write, and figure. So of course he couldn’t understand a complex professorial experiment. But despite your desire to leap to the defense of the downtrodden, it sounds like the man had a serious need 
for money several months ago. And he works at the heart of the project.”

I shared Michael’s distaste for Stint’s snobbery. But while I knew that the poor and uneducated could be brave, intelligent, and true, I also knew they could 
be cowardly, stupid, and dishonest. As could noblemen. The difference was that nobles had power and the poor didn’t … which made the poor more likely to be desperate.

And speaking of desperate, the sooner we found whoever had framed Benton the sooner I could leave, so I tried to fix my attention on the problem instead.

“What’s the difference between a bandit and a gamekeeper?”

Michael looked resigned, but he too knew his place. “I don’t know. What?”

“A gamekeeper usually likes his victims … and he kills them, anyway.”

“All right, he needed money. But according to Stint, his daughter’s injury, and that need, came upon him four or five months ago. If he was hired then to sabotage the project, why hasn’t he done something before this?”

“I don’t know, though it’s worth trying to find out. I wonder how many of Master Quicken’s neighbors we’ll have to talk to, before we find one who knows where his wife’s rich relative lives.”

“We may not need to trouble them,” said Michael. “’Tis not that Benton is oblivious. He just chooses what to care about.”

Benton looked startled at the question, but he knew that Mistress Quicken’s maiden name was Barrows. Her brother who’d helped with their medical bills 
lived in Trowbridge, two days’ ride from here, and in another fiefdom.

Since the third applicant for Benton’s job might arrive any day now Michael and I set off immediately — leaving Trouble behind because Kathy said someone had to help her look after Benton, and he was too gloomy for her to manage alone.

Little did she know that I was leaving
my
trouble behind, because she agreed to stay in Slowbend.

It felt painfully familiar to gather up our gear while Michael readied Tipple and Chant for travel–but that was nothing compared to the sweet and terrible pain of being in Kathy’s presence.

I’d hoped that the waterfall of emotion that had overwhelmed me in the loft might drain away. By the time I woke up the next day, I’d almost convinced myself 
it had. Then she came out of Benton’s bedroom, wearing a worn dressing gown and thick socks, yawning, and the waterfall flowed into a river with deep, dangerous currents, like Benton had been babbling about. 
It swept me up, and carried me so far from shore that the idea of being separated from her for four days felt like I’d be leaving an arm behind. Nothing as violent as an amputation, just something I’d keep reaching for, and being constantly startled when it wasn’t there.

Surely this sudden love would fade, maybe as fast as it had arisen … though thinking back on it, it wasn’t all that sudden. I had grown closer to her with every letter we’d written over the last three years, without even realizing it. Now I felt as if I knew her as well as my own hands.

But I’d be away from her for several days, which should let me get my unruly emotions under control. Though pushing thoughts of her aside only left another matter, one that still preyed on my heart, to rise to the surface.

It was awkward between Michael and me at first. The project was his investigation, so he was in charge of the journey. But he seemed self-conscious about it, asking me for agreement on things we’d settled years ago, like him caring for the horses while I set up camp.

By the second day of the ride some of the awkwardness had worn off. Michael was fretting about the potential arrival of the Benton’s replacement, and my absurd yearning for Kathy … it didn’t fade, but I was able to push it to the back of my attention, thinking about something besides her for as much as, oh, five minutes at a stretch.

We ended up sharing a lot of details about the separate parts of our investigations. From Michael, I learned more about what Dayless said about magic, and his adventures with Pig — which sounded crazier and more reckless the more he told me. I also learned more about the rabbits and how the project worked, and we agreed that Quicken could have sabotaged that part of the experiment more effectively, more easily, and without drawing attention to himself.

At that point, if I hadn’t been avoiding Kathy, I might have suggested we turn around — the gamekeeper wasn’t an idiot, and the more we discussed his other opportunities the less it looked like he’d have burned those papers. But he
had
needed money, the only one close to the project who had, so we rode on.

As the day passed, I told Michael more about our adventures in the library, the intricacy and solidity 
of Hotchkiss’ system, and how strange it was that such a mind would resort to blackmail. I knew scholars could be as greedy and vicious as anyone, but it seemed there was still a part of me that was disappointed that was so.

It was a sentiment Jack would have mocked mercilessly, but Michael understood.

We made camp early that night, and rode into Trowbridge in the late morning. It was a thriving small town, the administrative center of the fiefdom, not the farming village I’d expected. But instead of rowdy, scholarly arguments about whether Liege Jorrian was really a usurper, or the density of air, here the topics that raised people’s voices were a drop in the price of barley, or whether the Bittner’s dairy or the Happert’s made the best cheese.

We chose an inn, booked a room for the night, and asked the stout and ruddy innkeeper if he knew of a man called Barrows, said to live near there.

“Ah, that’d be the Barrows’ farm,” the man said. “But you don’t look… Well, it’s an hour’s ride north. You’ll pass the tree Tam Longner was climbing, and fell out of and broke his arm. Take the first lane to the left after that, and you’re there in no time.”

Despite the stone-paved streets it was a country village, after all — at least, as far as directions were concerned. I was about to ask for a better description of the tree Tam Longner fell out of, when Michael spoke.

“We don’t look like the people who usually call on Master Barrows? How so?”

“No disrespect, sir. It’s that you look like someone who travels a lot, and not in a fancy carriage, either. But I shouldn’t be saying more.”

And he didn’t. We had to ask a number of townsfolk, before we finally found a shopkeeper who said that no matter what Master Barrows claimed her 
compote hadn’t made anyone sick. And that a score 
of folk had bought jars from that same batch, and eaten it with no ill effect!

A long discussion ensued, and we learned that a well-dressed gentleman, who traveled in a very nice coach, had called on Master Barrows several times in the last four months, and it was after that he’d started throwing money about. Which had raised some eyebrows, and not just hers, let me tell you.

“What did Master Barrows say to account for this gentleman giving him money? For I’ll wager he said something,” Michael added, with the easy air of someone who was country raised himself, despite being the baron’s son.

“He said his sister’s husband had landed a soft job at the university over in Slowbend. But if you ask me, that’s rubbish. What’s a scholarly place like that need a gamekeeper for?”

That part we understood — it was why the gamekeeper had been allowed to wait so long before earning his bribe that was a mystery.

Armed with this incriminating information we went back to the inn, resaddled our horses, and rode out to the farm to ask Josh Barrows just that question. And we only made two wrong turns, at other trees, before we found Tam Longner’s.

The Barrows’ farm showed the sudden influx of money; a rain barrel made of bright new wood contrasted with the barn’s weathered planks, and there was fresh paint on all the doors and shutters … except for one set, which was being replaced by an actual glass window as we approached.

Master Barrows was outside, supervising the glaziers, and when we rode up he came over to us, with the authoritative air of the man who owns the place.

“Master Barrows?” Michael asked.

“Aye, that’s me. What can I do for you gents?”

He’d been doing more than supervise, for there were sweat stains on his shirt … but his vest was new too, and of better quality than the rest of his clothes.

“We need to ask you some questions.” Michael, taking charge. “About the man who pays you to send money to your brother-in-law, in Slowbend.”

Barrows didn’t flinch, but his expression congealed into blankness. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s me as gets money from Lat. He’s paying back a loan I made him when he and Judy first married. ’Cause now he’s got a job at the university, and all.”

“He has a job,” Michael admitted. “But it doesn’t pay enough for him to buy magica medicine to heal his daughter’s leg, far less send money to others. He claims his money comes from you, that you’re rich enough to help your niece when she needed it so badly. And I’m sure you would,” he added, somewhat hypocritically. “But you couldn’t have afforded to do so, without the aid of that well-off gentleman from court.”

It was the way color faded from his tanned cheeks that told us the arrow had struck home.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Barrows said. “And you’ve no business here.”

He went into the house, slamming the newly painted door behind him.

After a few friendly words we took Master Barrows’ place, helping the crew install his new window. They wouldn’t let us construct the frame, but we could saw boards to the length they marked, mix the plaster and caulk, and when they had the frame ready, we helped lift the heavy panel of glass rounds into place. I launched a discussion of the price of even old-style glass, but the master carpenter gave me a shrewd glance, and not only refused to comment, he didn’t let his men gossip either.

As soon as their cart rolled out of the yard, Michael went up to the door and knocked. “Master Barrows? We’re not going to leave till you talk with us, so you might as well do so. The glaziers have gone, so you can speak free—”

The door swung open, and a red-faced Master 
Barrows almost knocked Michael over as he burst into the farm yard. It must have been maddening to skulk in his own house, listening as we tried to pull gossip 
out of his neighbors. But that didn’t, in my opinion, excuse the poker he was gripping so hard his knuckles were white.

“Do you know that what you’re doing is illegal?” I asked sharply. “You could be brought before the judicars to answer for it.”

I had no idea if he’d done anything illegal or not, but there was a good chance he thought he had. He lowered the poker, and spoke instead of swinging.

“You got no call to say that. All I did was pass some money along.”

“You just told us ’twas Lat who sent money to you,” Michael pointed out. “Come, Master Barrows, tell us the truth. We intend no harm to you. Or even to Master Quicken, though if he’s committed some crime he may have a debt to pay.”