Victor Tyrell's house was not so grand as Brent's, but the interior was furnished with the same tasteful elegance. Rain was pouring through an open window and soaking an elaborately patterned carpet; Janyn closed the shutters.

"I'm surprised the housekeeper didn't see to that," he said. "Tyrell's heir, whomever he or she ends up being, would certainly prefer the house kept in good condition." A decent job done on upkeep might merit a bonus, and a better chance of continued employment under the new owner. "I'd wager the dye is going to run."

"Hard to do that when she ain't here," said the guard who'd been stationed at Tyrell's house. He'd insisted on personally escorting Tera and Janyn inside, and kept a suspicious eye on the out-of-towners.

"Why not? Did the sergeant order the servants to leave to keep them from tampering with the scene?"

The guard shook his head.

"Nope. She left the day of the murder. Moved back in with her sister and won't set foot in the place." He gave a little chuckle, apparently finding something humorous in the situation, or else in his knowing something the expert outsiders had not.

Janyn glanced at Tera.

"That doesn't make sense. If she was guilty she'd have either fled town outright or stayed on, but not moved out."

"What was she afraid of?" the magistrate skipped a couple of steps and asked the key question. "I think we need to find out."

Janyn turned to the guard.

"What was the name of the housekeeper, and where does her sister live?"

"Her name's Saya Lake, and her sister Mira lives with her family on the south street, just past Corro's Leathergoods. But you can't be thinking she did it. She's just an old lady!"

"It's not what she did we're interested in, but what she saw."

"Sergeant Paul already questioned her. She didn't know anything."

"Maybe so. But then again, maybe not."

Their examination of the rest of Tyrell's house wasn't as exacting as it could have been; both Janyn and Tera were eager to check out a possible witness instead of covering old ground that the sergeant's men had already gone over. Tyrell had been killed in his bedroom, his stained sheets making the tiny amount of spilled blood more obvious than it had been at Prentiss's, but beyond that there was again nothing: no signs of forced entry, the rumpling of the bedclothes the only sign of struggle. Perhaps he'd been asleep when the killer had arrived, making him all the easier to overcome and incapacitate. There was, however, no evidence of the method of entry or of how the crime had been carried out. It was possible that in their desire to finish up and leave, they had overlooked something, some minute trace, but Janyn doubted it. Everything was identical.

Everything except that Tyrell had had live-in servants and Prentiss's had only been day workers. Just maybe there was something more to be told.

The direction to "the south street" was easy enough to follow; like most villages Morova was built around a crossroads, with a single intersection and extensions in each cardinal direction. There were other buildings on the outskirts of town, such as Brent and Tyrell's homes, but the heart of the village was the crossroads. They found the house next to Corro's Leathergoods easily enough, and a slightly plump, gray-haired woman answered Janyn's knock.

"We'd like to speak to Saya Lake, please," he said.

"She don't want any visitors," the woman snapped. "Just go away."

"You're her sister?"

"And who else would I be? Lived here twenty-two years afore my husband died and seven since, haven't I?"

"Well, we represent the law and need to speak to Saya."

Mira squinted at them suspiciously.

"Sergeant's already talked to her, and besides, you're no guard and she ain't, neither."

Tera touched her medallion of office.

"No; I'm a Kadary Magistrate."

"And one of them crazy Zioites, too, by the look of you. Get on off; Saya doesn't need to be bothered. She just lost her job, on top of finding her employer dead."

The rain was starting to soak through Janyn's leathers and chill his skin; he could only imagine how Tera must feel in her ordinary cloth garments. Mira's face was tough and sere, that of a woman who'd lived a hard life in a hard world and who herself would be just as hard. Winning her over would be difficult, perhaps impossible. He dropped his hand to his sword-hilt.

"Do you want to arrest them, Tera, for assisting a killer to escape? I think people who deliberately try to hamper the law's investigation count as accessories under Kadary-area law, don't they?"

Mira's eyes widened in sudden fright, and Janyn tried not to think too closely about how he was bullying innocent people.

"Maybe Saya killed Tyrell and you're helping her," he went on regardless. Maybe she's not even here and you're only pretending, to give her a head start out of town."

"N-no, that's not true..."

"Talk to Magistrate Serin, not me. She's the one who'll decide to bring you in or not," Janyn snapped, hoping Tera would follow his lead, let him be the heavy, offering threats, and her be the one holding his leash.

As soon as the woman's eyes turned to her, Tera said, "I don't think that will be necessary, Janyn. I'm sure Saya Lake is home like her sister says." To Mira directly she added, "You understand, though, that these questions must be asked and answered. The righteous do not try to keep justice waiting on the threshold."

Her final statement sounded like a quotation, perhaps from Zio since Janyn did not recognize it. It was, however, particularly apt.

The old woman trembled a bit, and she seemed to have aged a decade in the course of the exchange.

"All right, come in. But you take it easy on her, you hear me! Saya isn't one of your suspects." She led Janyn and Tera inside, into a plain but neat living room. A fire burned in the hearth, dispelling a little of the chill in the room. Janyn stood with his back to the flames rather than drip on the furniture.

"I'll go and get Saya for you," Mira answered, then scurried into the back of the house.

"I feel sick," Janyn said quietly when she was gone.

"It was necessary."

"She was just trying to protect her sister from pain."

"That's just it," Tera said. "She cares about her sister--one person that she loves--more than she does about what's right. Her sister's comfort matters more than the lives of strangers in her mind. Overcoming that was and is necessary. You did what justice demanded."

Tera said it with passion, but also with the firm confidence of one stating a self-evident fact. To her, he supposed that's what it was; she had the zealot's absolute faith in her convictions.

Janyn found it more than a little frightening.

Mira returned a few moments later, escorting another woman with an unconscious mirror of a bodyguard's positioning.

"Magistrate Serin, this is my sister Saya. She's willing to speak with you."

"Sit down, Miss Lake," Tera prompted, indicating a chair with a gesture. She then dismissed Mira with a sharp, "Thank you. If we need to speak with you we shall let you know."

Mira opened her mouth as if to protest, then shut it again under the power of Tera's steady gaze. She glanced at where her sister sat fidgeting nervously, then over at Janyn, and finally stepped away, the defender routed. Perhaps because of his guilt, Janyn began gently with the housekeeper.

"Miss Lake, your sister may or may not have told you this, but Miss Serin, here, is a Kadary Magistrate and I am a hunter from the Guild in Aiedo. We've been asked to look into the murders of your former employer and of his business associate, Ovan Prentiss."

"P-Prentiss? Mr. Prentiss has been murdered?" Saya asked fearfully. She had the same broad features and thick-bodied build as her sister, but on her it looked very different. She was at least five or ten years younger and had none of Mira's toughness, so what looked hard and powerful on one sister just seemed soft and weak on this one. Janyn wondered whether it was a natural difference in character or a reaction to recent events.

"Yes, in the same manner as Tyrell."

"I didn't know." No surprise; even the small-town grapevine couldn't provide information to someone who was hiding out and not receiving visitors. Even if Mira had found out, she probably wouldn't have told her sister for fear of upsetting her more.

"We think that you can help us."

"But I don't know anything! All I did was find the body in the morning and call the guard!"

"That isn't true," Tera said. "Sergeant Paul believed you. He didn't think you'd lie to him. We know differently."

"You can't mean that! It isn't right."

"Why did you leave Tyrell's house?"

"I--I was scared!"

"Of what?"

"My employer had just been murdered!"

Janyn shook his head.

"We didn't believe that before," he told her, "and now that we've met you and your sister, we believe it even less."

"Some people do get squeamish when confronted with death," Tera agreed, "but for the most part it is a daily reality here on Motavia. Death from age, death from disease, death by accident, by monster, from human hatreds or greed, or simply from overwork from trying to survive. You know it all too well to fear it when it has passed you by. A hard-working village woman would know that, just as you'd know there was room, board, and coin waiting for you if you stayed on as caretaker for Tyrell's heirs, yet you did not stay."

"I--"

"You aren't a stupid woman, Saya," Janyn said. "If you were, Tyrell wouldn't have kept you on. I know men of his type better than that. Your employer's death would be a misfortune, truly, but hardly a source of superstitious fear. You'd know he'd have been slain by one with a personal hate and no reason to harm you after the fact."

He let it hang for a moment and once again Tera picked up on his cue.

"Unless, of course, the story you told was a lie. Despite what you told the sergeant, you did see something, or you do know something. Otherwise, you simply wouldn't be here in hiding--but you are here, and you are afraid."

"It isn't the fact of death that you fear, but the threat of it," concluded Janyn.

"N-no, no, I don't know anything. I told the guard what I'd seen."

"You are lying to us," Tera said harshly. "You are sitting there and lying to our faces, when we know you are lying. You are deliberately assisting a murderer to escape justice. You are laughing at everything that is right and decent!" She was about trembling with her anger, with a righteous fury at Saya's protests.

"I'm...I'm not! Why are you saying these things?" Saya screamed, and began to weep. Janyn was surprised by her sudden breakdown and realized that she must have been under a much greater strain than he'd thought.

"What are you doing to her?" Mira cried, rushing into the room, coming to her sister's side and putting a supportive arm around the weeping woman's shoulders while glaring defiantly at Tera and Janyn. Clearly she had not been routed but only forced into temporary compliance.

"I am putting her under arrest as an accessory after the fact to multiple murder."

"You can't do that!"

"Yes, I can, and I am. Janyn?"

It surprised him, how furious the magistrate was and yet how controlled she kept her voice. And I took the "hard" role for myself, earlier! he thought.

"I told you before," he said with a sigh. "I told you what would happen." This was so stupid! Blind fear destroying judgment, making the housekeeper act not just against abstract concepts of right and wrong but also her own interests. Clearly, though, applying fear of the law to counter her fear of the killer wasn't getting it done, and Janyn knew all too well that logic and reason never overcame irrational emotions.

Wait a minute.

"The worst of it is, what you're doing doesn't even make sense. If we figured out that you know something, don't you think the murderer knows it, too?"

Janyn's gut twisted with the thought of what he was about to do, but he pressed on.

"This killer isn't some oaf, some thug that can't think from one step to the next. He's clever, and sly, and cruel. Think of what he did to Tyrell and to Prentiss. He obviously stayed in town after killing Tyrell so he could kill Prentiss, so he could see what we saw: that you ran away and hid. That you were scared. There's only one thing to be scared of in that house, Saya, and that's the killer."

Janyn paused, just for the barest moment to gather himself to go on, but Tera stepped in at once. Did she realize what it was costing him?

"Have you told Mira what you saw, yet?" she asked. "Or are you just using her as a shield? When the killer comes for you and she dies protecting you, will you weep for her? Or will you just cower in the corner and be glad to have lived for a few seconds longer?"

An anguished wail burst from Saya, and she looked over at her sister. It was obvious she hadn't thought that far ahead--hadn't allowed herself to think that far ahead. Her fear had demanded that she hide in the only place she felt safe, but it was a purely emotional reaction. She hadn't rationally considered the possible consequences of her actions. She was too scared to face them.

Now she didn't have a choice.

"There's only one way out," Janyn said, rushing in greedily. At least let him be the one to offer hope. "Talk to us. Tell us all you know. If you die now, the killer's secrets die with you. If you talk freely, then there's nothing to be gained from your death. The secret will still be out. It's the only thing you can do that could give the murderer a reason to leave you alone, and it may help us actually catch the killer. Once he's been brought to justice, you'll be completely safe."

"Or, I arrest you as an accessory and all of Morova will know that you have something to say but you aren't talking. Then even the most foolish murderer would see that you have to be killed."

"Stop it!" Mira shouted. "How can you call yourself the law? How can you do this to her?"

Saya looked, blank-eyed, from her sister to Janyn to Tera and back again. Tears were streaming down her face, but the only sounds she made were little whimpers.

"Fine," Tera snapped. "Bring her along, Janyn; we'll take her to the guardhouse."

"You can't do that!" Mira all but exploded.

"Bring her, too," Tera's voice held enough anger and disgust to slash at the senses like an attack.

"The shadows..." Saya whimpered. "The shadows..."

"What was that?" Janyn said. "What about the shadows?"

But she said no more, only rocked gently forward and back.