Ovan Prentiss's home and his shop were in the same building, with separate entrances for his personal visitors and his customers. As Brent had suggested, it was a large, prosperous-looking place; Prentiss had clearly been doing well with his business. The shop door was shut and a hand-lettered "CLOSED" sign tacked up, while a sturdy-looking man in leather armor and carrying a sword and club like the sergeant's stood at the door.
"Hey!" he grunted as they approached. "No sightseers!"
He was a little shorter than Janyn, thickly built, and running to fat, with the kind of belly usually seen on lazy men who were fond of too much drink. A typical schoolyard bully grown up into a job that let him keep up the same role.
"I know that," Tera told him. "I was the one who asked Sergeant Paul to station you here."
He glanced down at her badge of office, recognized it, and nodded.
"All right, Magistrate. What about him, though?" He jerked a thumb towards Janyn. The hunter glared hard at him.
"Just...don't."
The man's hand dropped, and Janyn followed Tera into the house.
"There were no signs of forced entry on that door," he remarked.
"No, and the windows are of typical pattern, tall and narrow so they can be left open to cool the house."
"It raises questions. We'll have to check the shop door, too, but it is a point."
"I'll need to verify certain details with Sergeant Paul. There's the Tyrell murder to consider, as well. Were they by the same hand, or is it a coincidence?"
"They were part of the same business chain and often dealt with one another, according to my client. I'm betting that they're connected."
Tera nodded. The gesture looked strange, even a bit grotesque due to the extraordinary thinness of her neck.
"If we'd had a chance to examine Tyrell's body, we would know. The method of murder was so distinct that it would be nearly conclusive. Deacon did tell me that the wounds looked similar, but he didn't make a special examination; his job was just to embalm the body and see to the burial."
Prentiss's home, Janyn notes, was comfortably although simply furnished. He'd clearly done well and could afford quality items, but had avoided ostentation. The carpets and hangings were of solid colors with more vivid edgings for some contrast, the chairs and tables solid but without ornamentation. There was nothing of the fancy or the artistic, not even a spray of flowers in a vase or a small sculpture or painting. Combined with the lack of family, it suggested a picture of a man who had been all business, with nothing left for frivolity, amusement, perhaps not even love. A bookcase bore this out; half of the titles were related to his work, from practical guides in money management to atlases and maps of trade routes. Most of the others were also non-fiction: history, political theory, and basic science dominated.
It was a little sad, the hunter thought.
"I still think I should have tested the blood sample before we came here," Tera complained.
"You could have."
"Yes, but then you'd have gone through this scene before me."
"Don't you trust me?"
"Lord Zio teaches that we must always be willing to extend trust, but always be prepared to deny it."
"That sounds a little contradictory."
Tera shook her head.
"Not really. We want to do good and help other people, but the truth is that many people choose evil, in large or merely in petty ways. Denying that is denying reality. You seem trustworthy, Janyn, but you might be willing to conceal evidence that points towards Brent's guilt, either from a genuine belief in his innocence or because you were paid to hide that he was not. Or else, you might accidentally destroy evidence, brush away dust, walk on footprints, something like that."
Most of the time, if someone--particularly someone with legal authority--made those kind of insinuations Janyn would have been quick to take offense. Strangely enough, this time he did not. He supposed it was the matter-of-fact way in which she said it, as if it really didn't have anything to do with the two of them at all.
"So you decided to come with me just in case I was untrustworthy or incompetent?" he asked, bemused.
"Yes. Oh!" Her eyes widened, and she covered the surprised O of her mouth with her fingers. "I'm so sorry, Janyn. That must have sounded horribly insulting. I didn't even think--"
"It's all right. It's nothing that anyone else wouldn't have thought. The only difference is that you actually went and said it." He smiled. "It's kind of refreshing."
"Well, thank you for not being offended."
"Not at all. Now, let's see if we can find some evidence, if the village guards didn't go and destroy it all by now."
They looked through the rooms. Very little seemed to be out of place; there were certainly no signs of violence. The bed was neatly made and hadn't been slept in.
"Sergeant Paul told me that the body was found in an office," Tera said.
They found it at the end of a short hall, next to a barred door that led into the store's back room.
"No one got through that."
"They could have come in this way, then barred it behind them and left by another way," Janyn offered.
"The guard found the front door locked, I think."
"We'd better check on keys, then. If one is missing..."
Tera nodded, then opened the office door.
It looked to be fairly typical of its type. Shelves with boxed ledgers lined one wall, and a wooden writing desk was between two windows. These and the chair were the only furnishings; the floor was bare stone. A lamp with a glass chimney sat on the back left corner of the desk, positioned to throw the best light across the work of a right-handed man prone to tilting his paper. A ledger was still open on the desk, as was a small clay ink-pot.
The chair was laying on its back on the floor, and a used quill pen had dropped and left a small ink stain under its tip. These were the only signs of anything amiss that Janyn could see at first glance.
"I could wish this room was cluttered with bric-a-brac, so that we could tell how much of a struggle there might have been."
"Yes; there could have been a substantial fight here, or none at all," Tera agreed.
"The quill suggests that he was actually attacked in this room, not just left here to be found."
They began to inspect the room. Tera confirmed their impression that it was the murder site by finding several small bloodstains, possibly spattered when the cuts had been made as the cauterization would prevent further blood loss. It was no more than a few drops each. Perhaps, Janyn thought, they had dripped instead from the murderer's weapon? Janyn himself observed that there was a layer of dust on the windows, confirming that no one had entered by that direction, impossible as it might have seemed anyway.
The desk lamp was empty of oil; it had been left lit to use it all, then burnt down the wick besides until it had finally gone out from want of fuel. It suggested that the crime had occurred at night, while Prentiss was at work on his ledgers. A glance at the papers on his desk revealed nothing special; if there was a motive to be found there it was the kind that someone would have to tease out with hard work and an abacus.
About the method of murder, there was no indication whatsoever.
-X X X-
"So you're telling me that it's impossible, is that what you're saying?" Sergeant Paul sounded belligerent, almost angry. Janyn supposed that he had a point.
"No, no," Tera corrected. "That clearly isn't the case, because Mr. Prentiss is dead. What I said was that I could not see how it could have been done."
Janyn picked up a leg of roasted fowl and tore at it with his teeth. The several hours he and Tera had spent going over the dead man's house, checking for any sign at all of the killer's presence, had been hard, futile work. He'd breakfasted lightly before leaving for Morova, and lunch had been travel-rations on the road a couple of hours before he'd arrived for his meeting with Brent. He was hungry and ate with relish the good food served in the inn's common room.
"Once we're done here, I'll run the necessary tests on Mr. Prentiss's blood," Tera continued. "I picked up the supplies at the apothecary's on the way over." She patted her satchel.
"You said there were some drugs that couldn't be detected, though?" Janyn prompted.
"Yes; some dissipate quickly in the blood or simply leave no traces that anyone knows how to find, yet. Still, even negative results would mean something."
"Yeah; it would mean we still didn't know any more than we do now," groused the sergeant, spearing a forkful of vegetables. "I've got two men dead in three days. One was a trader, one a shop-owner, meaning that there were plenty of business links between them which could lead to a common motive. Both were killed at night in their own homes, sliced up without ever putting up enough of a fight to leave a mess. Okay, maybe they were drugged, but if so, how? The killer leaves no sign of forced entry that we could find, or you either. Hey, what about techniques?"
"We considered that. Techniques wouldn't last long enough to incapacitate a victim for the time it would take to...do the rest of it," Janyn answered.
Paul shook his head.
"Nah, I don't mean like that. I'm saying, what if he was killed by a technique? The killer could have just looked through the window and nailed his victims that way. Some people's Zan techniques act like that, cutting their enemies up with wind razors."
Janyn was just warming to the idea when Tera shot it down.
"It would explain a lot about the circumstances of the crime, Sergeant, but it won't work. The fact that the wounds were cauterized makes that impossible. That would be a combination of two separate elements, fire and air, while attack techniques use one element only."
She had a point. Hunters used techniques in battle regularly, making sure to develop whatever potential they had. It offered alternatives to ordinary weapons, as some monsters were just more vulnerable to cold, fire, lightning, or whatever.
"What about technique combinations?" Janyn wondered. "They're hard to pull off in the heat of battle, but for murder..."
He and Tera looked at each other thoughtfully, and in her eyes he could see the precise moment when she rejected the idea, only a second or two before Janyn himself did.
"It might explain the wounds, a variant on the conventional Fire Storm, although it would require two killers working together. There is no way it would have left the room so intact, however."
"What are you two talking about?" the sergeant interjected between bites of meat.
"Combination effects, created by the simultaneous use of two or more techniques or skills against a common target. The energies can merge and thereby create a new attack partaking of qualities drawn from its various sources. Wat and Zan together, for example, can create a Blizzard, a cyclone of frozen wind spraying ice crystals throughout an area."
"Do all you magistrates know this stuff?" he asked, a bit of respect showing in his voice.
Tera shook her head.
"I don't think so, though I'm sure some do. We all have our own skills and backgrounds, you see. I was an assistant professor at Motavia Academy for a time; I taught Patterns in Technique Studies to second-years."
Janyn would never have placed her as a professor, although recalling her methodical examination of the corpse and the crime scene he could see her as a student, a researcher.
"Blast it; it was a good idea while it lasted," Paul cursed while acknowledging her expertise.
"It would have cleared up a lot," Janyn agreed.
"It didn't fit the facts," Tera countered. "We must put it aside and move on." Building bridges of common interest clearly was not her goal; she'd obviously spoken without considering the sergeant's feelings. Possibly, she hadn't even stopped to consider that his feelings might even be involved.
Tera's personality, it seemed, was turning out to be as unique as her appearance. So often, the reverse was true.
"Well, one thing we know for sure is, it ties in with local trade," Paul declared. "Maybe Prentiss and Tyrell had some deal going on, and somebody resented being left out--or else wanted a piece of the action, maybe."
"By 'somebody,' you mean Dolan Brent." Janyn did not phrase it is as a question.
"He was Tyrell's biggest rival--really, his only rival. Morova wasn't big enough for more than the two of them. Maybe he figured it was only big enough for one. Or maybe Tyrell figured that way, and Brent fought back. Prentiss's store was the biggest in the village. About a third of the sales here went through him."
"A third of the sales of what?"
"Of everything, Magistrate. I figure if anyone bought anything around here, one out of three meseta went to him. He even sold to some other stores. Being bigger, he could negotiate better prices than they could with guys like Brent and Tyrell. Then he'd resell to the other stores for a profit, but at less than it would have cost for the others to buy directly from the traders."
"If you're right," Janyn noted, "there'll be evidence of it in the dead men's business records."
"We'll be going over those tomorrow. It'll be dog-work of the worst kind, but we'll do it. If Tyrell and Prentiss had a deal going to cut Brent out, then that'll pretty well tie the noose for Mr. Dolan Brent."