Ivor Denton still looked shaken by the experience as he told Alys about finding Rilah's body. She didn't blame him; while life on the desert planet was difficult and often bitter, even a law officer didn't stumble over bodies dead by violence often enough to get blase about it. Alys's own ease with such things had come from hard experience more than from her admittedly pragmatic nature, so she could sympathize. Worse, of course, was that he'd known and cared about the victim.
"She'd been stabbed, once," Ivor said once he regained his composure. "The knife had been left in the wound, like I said, probably to cut down on blood spatter according to Fath--to the Chief Marshal."
"It's okay to call him your dad, Ivor, and he's probably right. No thief wants to go running through town with a bloodstained shirt. That showed quick thinking on the murderer's part; it's much more natural to hold on to your weapon in a fight."
"Just a natural-born killer, for all it's his first time."
"His first time? Then you know the man."
Ivor nodded.
"He was sneaky enough. He hit Mita from behind without being seen--all she knew was that she was bringing Barrett's message to Rilah, then she felt a sudden pain in her head, and that was it. We figure that's why she was left alive. The knife didn't have identifying marks, either; it was just an ordinary single-edged blade, as much tool as weapon. The wound was a single downward stab, indicating the killer was Rilah's height or taller, but she was only five feet tall so that's no clue. But Barrett and I both saw him, saw his face. He's a known petty thief and housebreaker named Renno Val, even did a term of hard labor. His sketch was in our files, and Barrett and I both recognized him at once. Several other people recognized him, too--he apparently ran back to his lodging-house, grabbed up a rucksack he kept packed, and got out of town as fast as possible."
A crook who anticipated having to clear out fast would often keep the essentials of travel packed and ready, Alys knew. The few minutes it would take to pack from scratch often meant the difference between a clean getaway and the clubs and shackles of the law.
"He's got a two-day head start," Ivor said, "but he was heading south down the peninsula when he was last seen. Unless he's planning to catch a boat to Torinco, there's nothing that way."
"So did he just panic? If Val planned ahead enough to be packed to flee, and was clear-headed enough to grab his supplies before leaving town, I'd say he had some kind of plan. At least more than 'run off into the wilderness to die,' don't you think?"
Ivor looked at her sourly. He didn't like what he was hearing, but he was at least listening.
"What kind of plan?"
Alys shrugged.
"It could be just about anything. A boat hidden away for emergencies like you were saying, a gang of bandits he wanted to join up with, a hideout where he can hole up for a while as the hue and cry dies down, a knowledge of the terrain so he can get searchers looking in the wrong direction while he goes somewhere else, and that's just what I can think up off the top of my head. It may not be a complicated or clever plan, but there's going to be one."
"So you think it's no use?"
Alys gave Ivor a look.
"I didn't say I can't catch him. I'm just trying to give you a reality check about what we're up against. Your father would say the same thing if you were talking to him. Never assume that your quarry is going to conveniently act like a moron. They often do, but it's a lot easier to assume he's smart and take advantage of stupidity than it is to assume he's an idiot and learn he's not the hard way."
"Yes, Mom," Ivor said with a grin.
"Don't make me hurt you." The smile, however, was good to see. It meant that he had hope. Now all Alys had to do was to make it come true.
-X X X-
Tracking a man on foot across the fertile land surrounding Termi and the rocky desert just beyond it wasn't the easiest job in the world, but neither was it the most difficult. It helped that Termi was essentially the last outpost of civilization along the peninsula, so that when Alys found reasonably fresh trail sign leaving the tracks between the town and farms it had a good chance of being what she was looking for. What soon surprised her was that it didn't appear that Val was trying to double back. Based on what she knew of the area, that would be the expected move.
Maybe he does have a boat stashed down the coast? Chief Marshal Denton had sent letter transmissions to the nearby fishing hamlets alerting them of the murderer on the run, so it wasn't certain Val could pay for a ride from someone else. And there just wasn't anywhere else to go on the peninsula. It was surrounded by water, with Termi at the north end where it joined the continent. There were no trade routes in that direction, so joining up with a bandit gang was out of the question.
Alys had expected to find that Val had sought out terrain where he could conceal his tracks, then try to slip back north, towards the hope of civilization, but that just wasn't happening.
He has to be intending to hide out, Alys decided after a couple of days. He's going to hole up somewhere, wait out the pursuit, and then when everyone's more or less just going through the motions, that's when he'll try to make his getaway.
The question was, where was his hideout? A hill cave conveniently close to water or with a spring inside? Someone's abandoned shack?
It was on the third day when she figured out where he was going. and it almost made her laugh. Sometimes things just worked out right for her. Alys pushed on southward with increased speed, and with her overall fitness and experience at travel figured that she'd shaved several hours, perhaps whole days, off of Val's lead by the time she saw the slender, tapering spire of the Ladea Tower rearing up into the sky. The sweeping curve of its sides and the stonelike-yet-not-stone materials of its construction marked it as a relic of ancient civilization, dating back to the Great Collapse or even longer.
The idea of using the tower as a hiding place wasn't itself bad. The place had an evil reputation in Termi. Pursuers weren't likely to comfortably follow a man onto cursed ground, and they were even less likely to think to look there if they didn't actually know it was where their quarry had gone.
There was, however, one major flaw in that plan. It would be impossible for Val to hide out inside the Ladea Tower, because he couldn't get inside it. It didn't matter if he was the most expert thief in the world, because the tower was sealed not by locked doors and barred gates, but by magic. In her younger days, Alys had traveled with the Esper Rune Walsh, who'd been the one to do it. Indeed, that seal was probably part of where the Ladea Tower's reputation had come from in the first place.
Alys was cautious in her approach to the tower. Had Val given up and left? Or would he search for some secret entrance? After all, one could just walk through the southern entrance into the tower's ground floor, which was a single windowless atrium-like room. The seal, Rune had explained, was on the stairs that led into the higher levels above. It made them not only invisible but intangible as well--a person's mind would trick themselves into walking around them when they thought they were walking through supposedly empty space. Val could try as hard as he liked, but he'd never find the way up without breaking the seal's magic.
There were tracks in the dust leading into the tower, Alys observed with a feral grin. There were none coming out. She drew her slashers, boomerang-like blade weapons that could be thrown to slice up one or a row of enemies and would then come back to her hand. Alys snapped open the blades of one slasher into their throwing position, but left the other folded. With the blades closed, the slasher could work as a makeshift dagger, albeit without a hand-guard and with a grip not designed for either stabbing or cutting. Her senses at a fever pitch, she stepped inside. Alys kept herself in the center of the broad archway--an exposed target that way, but also as distant as possible from the only ambush spots.
It proved to be a good decision. Val had been lurking just inside the right side of the arch, but he had to take several steps to reach Alys, far too much of a delay to successfully surprise someone who knew where the attack would have to come from and was ready for it. Alys parried, striking aside the low thrust at her abdomen, then stepped in and delivered a backfist to his chin with the hand holding the open slasher. Val staggered two steps back but quickly regained his footing.
"I don't suppose you'd be willing to surrender and come quietly?" Alys offered, mostly for form's sake and not with any real expectation of success.
"Don't be stupid," Val sneered. He held his dagger low, his thumb against the flat side of the blade, and Alys cursed mentally. Just her luck to get an enemy who knew what he was doing in a fight.
"Yeah, I suppose coming back to be hanged isn't really a sensible idea," she admitted.
"Hanged?" Val said, or rather yelped.
"Don't they hang you for murder in Termi? I can never remember all the different rules."
"You can't trick me," Val laughed. "I know you're just a thief after my take."
He struck then, coming in straight at her in a thrust that was deceptively difficult to avoid. Most people tried to retreat or parry, unaware that their reflexes would be a step behind the attacker's. Alys used the open space to her advantage, though, though, dodging to the side and letting Val charge past. As he did, she pointed the folded slasher at the back of his legs and unleashed the Foi technique. The sudden blast of heat and force against his calves knocked him sprawling, but he rolled suddenly, his own open hand coming up, and Alys flung herself aside just in time to avoid taking the surge of stinging cold and ice crystals from his Wat technique full in the face.
They both got to their feet as fast as they could, but Alys was quicker and she could see a sheen of sweat on Val's face. As a matter of course, hunters trained to master any techniques they could and built their skill with the semi-mystical abilities, but ordinary people generally did not unless their profession encouraged it. Val knew a tech or two--luckily not any of the teleportation ones or he'd have been long gone--but he didn't have the mental resources to keep firing them off one after the other. A knife in the belly and a slashed throat was his preferred fighting style.
Val charged her, quickly closing the gap between them, but Alys seized the initiative, striking out to force the thief to react instead of act. Steel rang against steel as their blades clashed, parrying and cutting. Alys had an edge in size and strength over the wiry thief, but his knife was made for this kind of fighting while her slashers were strictly makeshift work for hand-to-hand combat.
Worse yet, after a few passes she was starting to get the impression that Val was a better knife-fighter than she was.
A second later, his blade gashed Alys's left hand and sent the folder slasher spinning away out of her grip. She grunted in pain and used her leg, kicking at his knee to put Val off-balance. He caught his footing again, though, and started another attack. In the half-second she'd gained, Alys hurled the open slasher at Val's feet. It skimmed along the ground, but suddenly glowed with orange light and exploded upwards, spinning around Val's body in a vortex of whirling energy that cut and slashed at the thief.
The slasher broke off at the top of its spin and sailed back to Alys's hand; she snapped the blades shut and hooked it back onto her belt. Val pitched forward, crashing to the tower floor, sprawled lifelessly. Alys kicked the knife away from the dead man's hand reflexively--too often she'd seen those only almost dead or merely stunned recover enough for a desperate trick--before she stripped off her left glove and took a look at the wound. It was a nasty, deep gash that stung like blazes, but looked to be a clean cut. Alys drained a dose of Monomate and in moments the healing medicine had done its work, the cut having healed over with fresh, pink skin, not even leaving a scar that might have reduced the mobility of her fingers.
Monomate was remarkable stuff, but it wouldn't do anything for Renno Val. The thief was dead. He wasn't the first man Alys had killed in battle, but it still bothered her. She didn't feel guilty--he'd chosen to fight and had certainly been doing his best to kill her--but it was still a waste.
Particularly, she thought glumly, since he isn't even the man I'm looking for.