Knights Magi (Book 4) (17 page)

“Yes, I know,” sighed the other apprentice.  “More shadowmagic.  I hate shadowmagic.  That stuff complicates everything.”

“You don’t say,” Tyndal said, dryly. 

“You don’t still think it was one of the students?  Or one of the staff?”

“I haven’t ruled out anyone but you . . . and it wouldn’t be fair to the others if I didn’t consider you a suspect, too.”

“I’ve already got a witchstone, why would I want another?”

“I didn’t say you were a
good
suspect, I just said it wouldn’t be fair,” Tyndal said, a little annoyed. 

“Am I interrupting?” came an amused female voice from the door.  Estasia.  As much as he enjoyed her company, he was a bit annoyed she was there.  He liked to present his best side to a girl, and that was hard to do when you were half-mad with rage and magically crippled. 

But she was more than just a sympathetic ear.  She was a good mage, a brilliant mage, by all accounts.  She was helpful.

“Just my slow descent into madness,” groaned Tyndal.  “What do you want?”

“That’s no way to treat a guest, Sir Tyndal!” Rondal complained, quickly standing.  “Sire Cei would be ashamed!  What can we help you with, my lady?” he asked. :You have news?”

She snorted at Tyndal’s display.  “I just thought you’d be interested to know that the remnants in the glass vial found in the courtyard were
not
, in fact, Bardain.”

“Ah!” Tyndal said, triumphantly.  “Then you were wrong!”

“No,” the comely alchemy student said, patiently, “there was plenty of Bardain in your vomit, that part I got exactly right.  I just said that the residue in the
glass
in the yard wasn’t Bardain.  But it was even more intriguing.  It was Lanlinyeir.”

“What . . . is Lanlinyeir?” asked Rondal, sparing Tyndal the task.

“It’s a highly exotic,
extremely rare
herbal extract from some island somewhere,” she said.  “I spent hours tracking it down.  It’s only mentioned a handful of times anywhere.”

“So what does it do?” Tyndal asked.  “Shadowmagic?”

“No.  It makes you
forget
.”

“What?”
Tyndal asked confused.

“Like that, exactly,” Estasia teased.  “It makes you forget everything that has happened in the last twelve to fourteen hours.  Essentially everything that you experienced from the time you woke up that morning,” she explained.

“But I remember everything!” Tyndal protested.  “What kind of stupid herbal extract is that?”

“It’s actually quite useful, hence the ‘rare and exotic’ nature of the substance.  But you’re right – you
do
remember everything from that night.  So it wasn’t used on you.”

“Then who?” Rondal frowned.

“The thief used it on
himself,
” Estasia proclaimed, entering their room unbidden.  “It takes fifteen or twenty minutes to take effect, but after that, you won’t remember
anything
that happened after sunrise.”

“Why would the thief use it on himself?  That’s even more confusing!” Tyndal said, angrily.  He had a thick warwand in his hand he continuously smacked into his palm.  The young woman watched with a mixture of horror and fascination.

“Stop, slow down,
relax,
” Estasia said, soothingly, closing her hand over his to still his wand.  “You aren’t thinking this through.  It was actually very clever – very clever indeed.”

“Why is it clever to steal a witchstone and then forget where you put it?”

“I was perplexed about that myself, until I figured it out.  The thief didn’t take the potion to forget where they put it,” Estasia reasoned. “The thief took it so that he would
forget he was a thief
.”

“I . . .
what?
” Rondal asked.  Tyndal was gratified that he wasn’t the only one confused.  If his brainy fellow apprentice didn’t follow the bewitching student’s reasoning, he didn’t feel so bad about his own failure.

“Look at it from
his
perspective,” the pretty alchemist said, taking a seat on the one chair the boys shared.  “You want to steal a witchstone, but you know – with absolute certainty – that the moment you do, you’re going to be a suspect.  Possibly subjected to torture or execution if you’re exposed.  How do you steal the stone and then avoid revealing that you stole it under heavy questioning?  How do you even avoid suspicion?”

“By . . . not having a guilty conscience,” Rondal said, finally understanding.  “If you don’t
remember
the crime, you can’t fee guilty about it!”

“Exactly,” she smiled.  “You’re smarter than you look,” she tossed at Rondal. 
The idiot beamed like a puppy who was patted on the head.  Then she ignored him and spoke directly to Tyndal. 

“Let’s go back over what we know about the crime.  When the thief stole the witchstone, they had to know
where
Tyndal was, when he would be alone in his room, and that he would not be disturbed long enough to complete the theft.”

“Then they had to poison me,” Tyndal reminded her.

“Right,” she agreed.  “And that could have happened at any time yesterday.  Bardain can take a few hours to work.  But it works slower on some than others.  So they had to keep watch on you, somehow, and then wait until it had taken effect enough to get you back to your room.”

“That wouldn’t be too hard,” reasoned Rondal, staring at the alchemist.  “He’s not exactly . . . subtle.”

“No, he is not,” Estasia agreed, amused.  “So someone was watching you.  Did anyone seem to be following you around or watching you more than usual yesterday?”

“That’s not exactly the kind of thing I keep track of,” Tyndal said, annoyed.  “I may have an ego, but I’m not in love with myself that much.”

“Let’s assume they watched you from afar.  They saw you head back to your room.  They had to know that you would not be joined.  What were you doing when he was being robbed?” she asked Rondal, suddenly.

“Me?” he asked, surprised.  “I was in the Scriptorum, copying a scroll on Thaumaturgy.  Why?”

“Who was with you?”

“No one,” Rondal said, his lips pursed.  “There were other people there, but no one was really with me.”

“So you could have been watched,” she nodded.  “But . . . not by the same person who was watching Tyndal, I expect.  Not if they had to know where both of you were at the same time.

“He had to be alone.  He had to be in his room.  He had to be drugged.  They had to have a means of getting into his room without being spotted.  Once those conditions were met, all he had to do was scale the roof, cast his shadowmagic spells to conceal his identity, paralyze Tyndal with the wand, take the stone, escape through the window, and then down a rope or something into the courtyard.  So whomever it was is good with heights.”

“Not really the sort of thing you can test for,” Rondal mumbled.

“But they also were canny enough to plan this thing, and then have the resources to do it.  They had Talent,” she recited as she paced the scene of the crime.  “They had some education, so that leaves out the first year students, perhaps the second years.  And they weren’t idiots.  They were good enough to realize you had put a trace on the gloves,” she reasoned, “so they abandoned them.”

“Wouldn’t they have hidden the stone near to where they dropped the gloves?” asked Rondal.

“Nowhere near where they hid the stone,” Tyndal said, shaking his head.

“You’re right,” she nodded.  “They would not have taken the chance.  So they hid the stone first, abandoned the empty wand, marked gloves and incriminating cloak, wandered away . . . and
then
they took the potion. They were gone by the time you two arrived in the courtyard. 

“That means they only had fifteen minutes to stash the stone –
somewhere
– and get back to wherever he was
supposed
to be . . . in time to forget everything and not end up wandering around the campus aimlessly.”

“That would arouse suspicion,” agreed Rondal.  “So where could they have hidden the stone?”

“Pretty much anywhere,” admitted Estasia.  “And there are a dozen different entrances to the various towers as well as balconies and such.  Whoever this thief is, he’s nimble.  They could have easily gotten back inside without notice.  Or hidden in one of the outbuildings.”

“So that helps us . . . not at all,” groaned Tyndal.

“No,” Rondal said, evenly, “it actually tells us quite a bit about our thief.  Look at the specialized equipment he had.  That wand isn’t something you can buy at the student canteen!  And those gloves are lightly enchanted, too, for grip, and they’re specially made. Far beyond the scope of a student.  Someone else would have to provide them.” 

“So he was unlikely to be working alone, if he was a student,” Tyndal said, nodding.  It made sense.

“He wasn’t poor, or his backer wasn’t.  And he was smart and sophisticated enough to anticipate us using some psychomantic method of avoiding even a truth-telling.  If you don’t
remember
doing something, you can’t
lie
about it.”

“So he has knowledge of shadowmagic, alchemy – herbalism – and warmagic—the paralysis spell, remember?”

“That was a wand of undetermined origins,” Tyndal reminded her.  “And not, strictly-speaking, a warmagic spell.  It does have other uses.  Unless you
learned
its origins,” he added hopefully.

“No,” she said, sadly.  “I examined it with Master Indan.  It was a basic one-use spell.  Whoever did it didn’t leave enough of a trace to get a signature.  Professional.”

“But that still indicates a lot of resources – consider how much such a thing must cost, if they didn’t make it?   Add that to this expensive forgetting potion.  And the expensive sedative that lured me to sleep.  And the enchanted cloak that must have taken someone a year to make.  That is someone who has a lot of coin in their purse.  But yeah, I guess this thief has a clever brain, too.  Or his partner does.”

“That’s actually likely.  I doubt any of the boys here would have the skills, much less the brains, to undertake such an enterprise on their own.”

“I beg to differ, milady,” Rondal said, shaking his head.  “These are some of the smartest—”

“Smart,” she interrupted, “but
unsophisticated
.  If
you
were a half-trained student mage, would you consider trying to imperil your future, not to mention your life, by daring to steal the witchstone of one of the first and greatest knights magi?”

“I am a half-trained student mage,” Rondal countered, a little sourly.  “And no, I wouldn’t try to steal a witchstone . . . unless I knew what it was really capable of.”

“No, of course—hey, you think I’m
great?
” Tyndal asked, confused.  That was unexpected.  And welcome.  He made note of the interest, as the Laws of Love suggested he do.

“Enough
other
people do so that you have that reputation,” Estasia said, coolly.  “It’s what people
believe
, not what actually
is
, that matters in a case like this.”

“Ouch!” Rondal said, wincing on his fellow apprentice’s behalf.  Tyndal ignored the jab.  He knew she liked him.

“She’s right,” Tyndal sighed.  “On parchment, I’m not a guy you’d want to mess with unless you were very good.”

“On
parchment,
” conceded Rondal.  “But there was a lot of forethought here.  Someone had to give you the Bardain.  Someone had to watch where you went.  Someone had to prepare to rob you.  And it’s possible – if not likely – that the thief handed off the prize to the confederate before taking the Lanlinyeir.  Or stashed it along the way.”

“That would save a lot of time,” agreed Tyndal.  “If the thief didn’t have to worry about holding the stone, then they’d have ample time to get back to . . . wherever they were supposed to be.”

“Have we accounted for everyones whereabouts?” asked Estasia.

“Close enough,” reported Rondal.  “The Head Master spoke casually to each boy and got his alibi without him realizing it.  Almost all of them were studying or doing their assigned chores, and the ones who weren’t had witnesses.”

“That’s annoying,” Tyndal said, disgustedly. 

“That doesn’t mean that we can rule them all out, though,” Rondal reminded him.  “With the thief not remembering committing the crime, he could have been lying, truthfully, when he spoke with the Head Master.”

“And the confederate doesn’t have to be another boy, either,” observed Tyndal, his eyes opening a little wider.  “It could be . . .
anyone
.”  Involuntarily his eyes flicked to Estasia.

“Hey!”
she protested, “I was in front of witnesses when I heard the commotion!  And I’m the one who agreed to test the vial,” she pointed out.  “I even consented to have my work double-checked by Mistress Quintine!  Flawless,” she added, casually.