Assault in the Wizard Degree, page 11
I considered. Rikka crossed her arms, and a scowl creased her otherwise attractive face. “So…what exactly did she do to earn a charge of ‘sacrilege’?”
“Shortly after Serikkaylen completed her duties, the leader of the guards chosen for the next shift arrived. It is customary for the newly arrived leader to inspect the inside of the tent before relieving me.”
“And did he?”
“He only got as far as opening the entrance to the tent. That’s when he discovered that something was amiss and immediately raised the alarm.”
“In case you’re curious, I was the leader of the Guards of Equilux that day,” Sir Caltrop inserted smoothly. “I immediately saw that one of the pastries had been taken. Since Sir Halvar didn’t see any food being removed from the tent, I can only assume that the missing confection was eaten.”
I sat back in my high chair.
Okay, I hadn’t expected this. I’d been involved with crimes ranging from grand theft to murder. But theft and consumption of a ‘sacred’ dessert?
That was a brand new one to put on Dayna Chrissie’s resume.
“So eating this sacred food was forbidden,” I said. “And that act broke the rules of this ceremony.”
“Broke? More like thoughtlessly violated them!” Caltrop declared, theatrically aghast. “The ceremonial duty was one I cherished, and I was shocked to find that one as slow as Rikka would dare eat one of the most sacred items.”
Rikka’s jaw remained clenched, but something close to a growl rumbled in her throat. Her fingers twitched as if she was preparing one of her throwing knives.
“I am innocent of all you accuse me of,” she fumed.
Caltrop dismissed her statement offhandedly. “And I say you are guilty.”
I frowned skeptically. “Well, Caltrop, is that all you have? I’m not impressed.”
“Not impressed? And why not?”
“For starters, what if you ate the item?”
He snorted. “Now you’re talking nonsense.”
“Did you actually see her pick up this ‘confection’ and eat it?”
“That’s irrelevant,” Sir Halvar snapped, annoyed. “No one else could have eaten it. Sir Caltrop hadn’t walked more than halfway into the tent, so there was no way for him to reach the table the sacred object had been set upon. I see no other possible explanation for what took place.”
Rikka’s eyes flashed fire. Galen tried to shush her, but she tossed her copper-red mane back and said, “What if both of you are lying?”
Caltrop gasped. “You would dare question the loyalty of the Senior Keeper?”
“Why not? He’s as much a part of the House of Zakaris as you!”
“Enough!” Angbor roared, and he slammed his fist on the table. Rikka’s mug and the rest of the cutlery jumped with a clink. “It is time for Dayna Chrissie to speak and settle this once and for all.”
I looked up, startled at that pronouncement. “Me, King Angbor?”
“Of course,” he huffed. “I know of what you did for Good King Benedict. And I have heard much of your great deeds throughout the land.”
“That makes one of us, anyway,” Caltrop murmured.
“So I implore you,” Angbor concluded grandly. “Work your magic immediately and divine the answer to all of our questions, right now!”
Great. I’d had to deal with months and months of skepticism from Fitzwilliam’s court over whether I was capable of doing anything worthwhile. Now, I got the exact opposite – the certainty that Dayna here could wave a magic wand and solve everything in the blink of an eye.
Just my rotten luck.
Chapter Eighteen
Angbor looked at me expectantly. It felt odd to be put in this position. From plaited beard to armor-plated torso, he looked every inch the commanding Warrior King, but he had chosen to put all his faith in a comparatively fragile alien being. And wouldn’t you know, I was going to have to disappoint him, at least a bit.
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” I cautioned. “But I don’t work like that. I need to get my gear, and I need to see the crime scene itself.”
“Why?” His brow furrowed dangerously. “I see no reason why you cannot work your magic the same way my son does.”
Caltrop gazed at me through half-lidded eyes. “It seems to me that the King has been taken in by a rank amateur. Or a fake.”
“Dayna is no fake,” Galen shot back. “She does things none of us here can.”
“All humans can perform a handstand, while we cannot. That doesn’t make their species any less of a two-legged exhibition of the grotesque.”
“The reason I can’t work like Galen is simple,” I said, pointedly ignoring Caltrop’s barb. “I use science, and my chosen tools. Not magic. Using magic would be akin to cheating, don’t you think?”
I’d chosen my words carefully, given my knowledge of Angbor’s views. He appeared to mull over my words for a moment before giving an amused grunt.
“There is something new under the sun each morning,” he remarked. “Very well, get your ‘gear’ ready. My son shall guide you to the sacred tent. The rest of us shall await you there.”
With that, the centaurs stepped back from the table. The hall echoed with the heavy clops of their hoofbeats as Angbor led the way outside. I slipped out of my seat and jumped down to the floor. Galen put out a hand and steadied me as I did so.
“What might you have in mind, Dayna?” Galen asked, as I retraced the route back to my room. Galen easily kept up with me as he walked at my side through the dark, high-beamed wooden hallways.
“The usual,” I admitted. “Just try and do my job as well as I can, and handle the fallout. Though this time is different.”
“How might that be?”
“If you accept Zenos’ words as true, I think his prophecy points to Caltrop as the guilty party in all of this.”
“A son of the third house turns hope into a lie,” Galen recited. “I thought of that yesterday evening, when I spoke to my father.”
I nodded. It made sense that Galen figured it out before me. The Wizard was no slouch in the intellectual department, and he had a familiarity with his culture that I lacked. The ‘third house’ element had probably been evident to him from the start.
“What concerns me,” he continued, as we pushed open the door into my bedroom, “is the issue of ‘salvation’ that Zenos gave to me in particular.”
I snatched up my metal crime scene case by its handle. “That salvation shall come to one you love? Meaning Rikka, of course.”
“Undoubtedly.” Galen turned, placing my case securely inside one of his saddlebags. “Since that salvation shall spring from a kernel of the truth, I have concluded that it must concern something extremely small. Might you have brought your magnifying lenses?”
“I’ve got everything I need right there,” I confirmed. “Lead on, we’ve got a case to solve while the sun shines.”
“Indeed,” he said, as he indicated we should turn away from the throne room. “I only have one request as you complete your work.”
“That being?”
“Should you find that Rikka is innocent, I implore you to make it a convincing case.”
I threw him a glance as we approached a doorway flanked by a pair of centaur guards. “I’m not sure I understand. Why the concern?”
He shook his head as we passed the guards and emerged into the bright morning sunshine. “I would prefer not to say, except to note that it is for the same reasons I encouraged Rikka to wear her full set of armor and weapons.”
Galen increased his speed a jot, which meant that I had to jog to stay at his side. Even though he carried my crime scene gear, I was hard-pressed to keep up. I’d been skimping on my morning runs up by Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and I felt that skimping as my lungs and heart protested the sudden exertion.
Luckily, it wasn’t too far to run. We rounded the corner of Angbor’s vast timber hall and came to a relatively open part of the Holt’s inner courtyard. An octagonal tent, roughly the width and height of my centaur bedroom, sat in the middle of a grassy expanse. Vertical burgundy and white stripes decorated the sides, and a bright purple banner flew crisply from its central pole.
Angbor and the rest of the centaurs from the breakfast table had gathered around the front of the tent. The entrance flap had been pulled back to allow easy access. I came to a stop in front of the King, doing my best not to huff and puff while I caught my breath. Galen covered for me by taking his time pulling my case out his saddle bag.
“Here you are, Dame Chrissie,” he said, offering it to me by the handle. “The sacred tent has been left alone and untouched since the discovery of the crime. And I, for one, am interested in which forensic techniques you wish to employ to test the truth of it.”
“For-en-sicks,” Sir Yaegar said, as if tasting the word and finding it less than palatable. “This is something new to me. What does it mean?”
“It’s the use of science,” I clarified, as I hefted my case. “The application of specific tests and techniques used to determine innocence or guilt.”
“You have both Serikkaylen and Sir Caltrop here,” Jorvath pointed out. “How do you plan to ‘test’ them further? You can question both at leisure.”
“Maybe later. That’s not how this works. Humans – or centaurs – can lie outright. Or they can stretch the truth, if they feel something they did was embarrassing. Sometimes, they can even be honestly mistaken. I’m a crime scene analyst by trade. So, I’m going to see what the crime scene itself can tell us.”
The centaurs traded looks among themselves. “I see little difference between this and magic,” Angbor muttered. “If you can make objects talk, then call yourself a ‘wizard’ and be done with it!”
“I can make them talk,” I agreed. “But only in certain ways.”
I turned and stepped through the tent’s open entry flap. I walked forward a few steps, allowing the centaurs outside to peek inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the lower light level.
The floor of the tent was a mass of well-trodden turf and bare dirt. Multiple hoof prints on the grass blades and dirt made a well-trodden muddle. So, no help from that quarter.
The interior was ringed with chest-high wooden platforms. Set out from left to right were silver platters containing stacked wheat cakes, quartered roast mutton, and a colorful set of hazelnut-sprinkled desserts that looked like a cross between pastry and candy. The desserts and cakes still looked good, but a distinctly off-putting aroma came from where the meat had been sitting out.
I went over and took a closer look at the pastry platters before my sense of smell was overwhelmed by the decaying meat. Compared with the other offerings available from centaur cuisine, these were surprisingly refined. The pastry treats were laid out in neat circles, around forty to a dish.
Three or four could easily fit in the palm of my hand. The design on the top of each one was a two-toned swirl of gold and white. The gold came from semi-crystallized honey while the creamy-white substance looked like cheese, drizzled with light brown chunks of something harder and woody looking.
I took a sniff. The pastry had a sweet scent, mixed with the tart smell of processed dairy. I looked back questioningly at the centaurs hovering back at the entryway.
“Okay, the golden part of this swirled design is honey,” I said. “The white stuff…that’s the same type of cheese we had at last night’s dinner? Topped with diced hazelnuts?”
“That’s right,” Halvar said.
I pointed at the closest platter. An empty space smack dab in the middle advertised the missing pastry. “This is the heart of the case, isn’t it?”
The King nodded. “That is the pastry my daughter is accused of eating.”
I shook my head. “It’s too obvious. There’s not even an attempt at hiding anything here.”
“Why can’t all of you accept the truth about this?” Caltrop growled vehemently. “Why are we even bothering with bringing a ‘crime scene analyst’ into this? It’s flat-out stupid!”
I’d had just about enough of Caltrop the Bastard, and my temper finally wore out.
“Yes, it’s stupid!” I shot back. “Because the ‘why’ behind this supposed crime is stupid! Crimes need motives, and Skallgrym Serikkaylen doesn’t have one!”
Rikka had hung back, but I could see her glowering expression as Caltrop weakly protested, “The mare is known to be slow. Perhaps she was too slow to realize that she should not have committed sacrilege in sating her hunger.”
I turned my back on the Bastard before I got completely knocked out of my mental zone. I studied the platters more carefully. The delicate artistry behind each pastry was nice, but there was something more going on here. A nuance to the design that I hadn’t seen before.
I peered closer. Yes. There was a nudging tickle in the back of my mind, the same feeling I got when staring into the aftermath of a violent crime scene. Everything looked chaotic at first. But when you stared at it long enough, patterns became apparent. There was a subtle pattern that had been incorporated into the platter. And the missing pastry wasn’t the only disturbance in that pattern. The more I looked, the more I was sure.
There were three irregularities on that platter.
I needed better light to be sure.
“Sir Halvar,” I called back over my shoulder. “What, exactly, is an act of sacrilege in this tent?”
“I would think it quite self-explanatory,” he intoned. “According to the Book of Equilux, it is sacrilege for any centaur to touch, eat, move, or otherwise disturb the Equilux platters or the food upon them. The act of sacrilege destroys the sacred harmony–”
“Yes, yes. Does it say anything about humans?”
He blinked. “Why, no. Humans are not mentioned in our sacred texts at all.”
“Good.”
The centaurs let out a chorus of gasps as I snatched up the dessert platter in one hand.
Chapter Nineteen
My voice rose as I made my announcement. “Coming through!”
I marched back outside, dessert plate in hand, the centaurs falling away to each side. I looked around, squinting against the bright sunshine, and spotted a nearby tree stump that was level enough for my needs. I walked over and set the platter down, a proper herd of sputtering stallions in tow.
“You…you can’t just do that!” Sir Halvar stammered.
The rest of the centaurs wore similarly shocked expressions. Only Rikka, who brought up the rear, looked secretly pleased.
“Of course I can,” I countered. “Find me a passage in the ‘Book of Equilux’ that says I’m not allowed to examine evidence.”
“But…the sacred holiness of the tent…”
“Look, you specifically stated that sacrilege has taken place. True, or not true?”
“Yes…” Halvar agreed, faintly.
“And you yourself said that an act of sacrilege destroys the sacredness of this place, correct?” He bobbed his head, so I continued in a sharper tone. “If so, then that tent’s not sacred ground anymore. It’s a crime scene. That gives me license to do what I damn well please, and I’m just about out of patience with all of the fake piety and politicking going on!”
“She never carries much of a store to begin with,” Galen murmured to his father. Angbor quickly nodded in agreement.
I turned my attention back to the dessert platter. That same subtlety of design nagged at the back of my mind again. Something besides the missing delicacy marred it. Now that I had the whole platter in brighter light, I was sure of it.
A quick tilt of my head, and I saw something change. Not the shape or color itself, but the pattern of glitter that came off the honeyed shine of the cakes. I stood back and nibbled on the knuckle of my index finger, searching for the memory that had triggered.
“This is preposterous!” Caltrop fumed. “I don’t see why we’re waiting about doing absolutely nothing.”
“I also fail to see the purpose,” Halvar agreed. “Are we supposed to stand by and watch this human figure out how something was baked?”
“Be quiet,” Angbor rumbled, “or I shall have Jorvath gag both of you.”
The two centaurs glared sullenly at the ground. Of course, I wasn’t trying to understand anyone’s pastry-making process. I was an adequate cook at best, and I’d only recently agreed to let Shelly teach me some of her culinary secrets. Most of them, from what I could tell, involved lots of butter and various types of brown, white, and cane sugar.
Various types of sugar…
I immediately flashed back to one of my classes in organic chemistry. I’d learned that the shape of honey crystals had to do with the nature of the complex and fragile sugar molecule. That same temperamental molecule, which made up a huge part of the ingredients of anything sweet or savory, depending on temperature for its shape.
The honey, which was nothing more than a highly concentrated solution of glucose and fructose, naturally underwent a change at room temperature. The process, which was called granulation, meant that the crystal-like formations all tended to grow in the same direction over a period of weeks or months. The centaur chef in charge of these desserts had seen this, and blended it into the dessert’s overall pattern.
Each pastry was a swirl of honey-yellow and cream cheese-white stripes, while the circles of the thirty or forty pastries on the dish itself followed a spiral swirl. I gave the dish a careful spin, watching the glint of the sugar crystals as the plate turned on its axis.
“Okay,” I began, “whoever it was that touched this platter ate only one pastry.”
“Your science is ever so impressive,” Caltrop smirked. “As if we couldn’t tell that ourselves, with our own eyes.”
“And while they ate one pastry,” I continued, giving him a look. “They touched two more, and decided not to eat them.”
Caltrop went quiet, his skin turning a shade paler.
“What do you mean, Dayna?” Galen urged.
“It’s hard to see, but whoever prepared these desserts swirled the honey crystals to face in the same direction,” I explained. “The two pastries to the left of the missing one are off-kilter. Someone picked them up then placed them back down on the plate, without noticing the underlying pattern that had been disrupted.”
