Volume 2 - Chapter 118 - To Bait a Trap

I looked down the side of Halspus’ cathedral, considering for a second time the possibility of jumping.

Assume I somehow only broke my legs. Assume I can ignore the pain enough to Biosculpt. Assume that no one initially notices me hurtling down into the busy square below. Could I get my legs pulled together fast enough to make an escape?

Probably not.

“They’re still coming up the tower?” Gregory asked me from over at the door.

“Yes,” I replied, grateful now for the winding, twisting spiral staircase that had been such a pain making my way up here. That and the Slayer playing up her decrepit state was giving us time. Mind you, not time we were getting much done with.

Whatever she’d told Hamiltar, he’d left Forcreek and the acolytes behind. For the best, considering she’d waited until they were a quarter of the way up the stairs to reveal what awaited him at the top. He had not been happy. She’d had to argue strenuously for him not to immediately turn around and go fetch more of his fellow clerics.

At least that had been for a reason I had to concede would make sense. Until he determined we hadn’t killed the Bishop, he wanted the support before getting within biting range of me. Even mostly disarmed of weapons and magic, I was still dangerous, and I appreciated that being acknowledged.

Just significantly less than any other time.

“They’re almost here,” I told Gregory, closing the window. “Try to look innocent and not like we were going through the dead man’s things for the last twenty minutes.”

He nodded and assumed a look of sorrow mixed with regret that was perfect. Exactly the kind of look of someone you hadn’t liked but didn’t want to see dead having died.

“Had practice?” I asked him.

“With my father’s friends? Plenty.”

Good.

The door opened, and I winced, squinting as Halmiltar stepped through. The jovial priest’s expression had gone furious, a nimbus of holy light around him that made my skin burn and my eyes feel like they were being pulled from the sockets. His expression grew more severe when he saw the dead body of the Bishop. His hands made the signal of Halspus, and I gritted my teeth and resisted the sudden urge to run, flee, jump right out that window as parts of my skin began to hiss. I backed up against the wall, trying to resist the sudden need to bite the damn priest before he killed me first.

“Hamiltar,” Derrick said reprovingly.

Gregory didn’t even both with the verbal warning, simply stepping between me and the priest, some strange music filling the air.

The light lessened in intensity, and so did the music. Father Hamiltar grunted.

“Didn’t mean harm, but this, this is worthy of scouring every inch of the Temple in holy light,” he said angrily. “You two! Do not move, do not so much as twitch, and you will speak only to answer my questions. Understood?”

Gregory glanced my way, and I nodded once. Even if the Slayer was willing to help us, we wouldn’t be able to get out on our own.

Our only hope was to put our faith in the cleric of Halspus being reasonable.

Well, it had been a fun life.

Hamiltar gestured for us to go by the door. He wasn’t worried in the slightest about us making a run for it. Slayer Derrick moved between us and the doorway, smiling in a way that I thought was supposed to be reassuring. Keeping us inside, but making it clear she didn’t think this would end badly. Or just putting us at ease before the executioner’s axe descended.

She needn’t have bothered.

Hamiltar took his time to get to the body, carefully looking over everything before he risked disturbing it with his passage. More thoughtful than I had expected. I might not have hidden my own searching well enough.

He did eventually get there, and laid a finger first on the bishop’s forehead then his chest over his unbeating heart.

“Body is cold,” he noted, glancing up at Derrick. “Slayer, can you attest to this one’s location?”

The Slayer did attest, but only to the time after she had picked me and Gregory up from my home. I realized, to a bitter taste of irony, that my playing up being tired the entire way here was probably just increasing suspicion I hadn’t gone right to bed after the Bishop’s meeting.

Hamiltar’s flinty gaze swung my way. “Your house has been under observation.”

I shrugged slightly, tail twitching slightly. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

Likely the ones I had noticed first following me around. If we didn’t count Lord Karsin’s unlucky servant. I didn’t put much stock into the stalking skills of the clerics of Halspus. They preferred their murders in the light of day.

“No one reported you leaving last night,” he said. “Although it is entirely possible you did.”

Was it going to be one of these kinds of conversations?

“It’s entirely possible,” I admitted, forcing my tail to still. “You could have me tested for the residue of the alchemical used that ensured I fell asleep soon after the Bishop left, but I doubt this place has the equipment to do so.”

“You’d be surprised,” Hamiltar grunts, moving the head slightly. “Gunshot from the front, no residue. I’d search you, but we’ve already done it once. None of you carried one. And I doubt you could smuggle one in from someone else.”

The Halspusian priest would be shocked by some of the things I could do, given time. But I was hardly going to disabuse him of that notion.

He’d by now moved on to examining other parts of the body. All the same spots I had checked. To my mild annoyance, he didn’t miss anything. I knew I wasn’t the expert that Voltar was, but I considered myself to be at least better than some random Halspusian priest!

Hamiltar had found the confession now, and his hands gripped the desk as his eyes scanned both pages. Despite its heavy weight, it shook until he reached the end of the second page, fury, sorrow, and horror fighting for control of his expression with every word.

His eyes closed, a shuddering breath tore through his frame, and then when they re-opened, they glared at mine with an intense focus. “Did you read this?”

Breath in. Critical moment. He was unbalanced, and probably not very stable over what was in that letter.

It wasn’t worth denying that. We’d been up here for twenty minutes. He’d already accepted we could not have logically killed him.

“I read it,” I admitted. “There are pages missing.”

“I can tell that,” he said. “Your doing?”

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Gregory coughed. “You can have us searched, Father, but it wouldn’t suit either of our goals to hide them, would it?”

Hamiltar’s gaze swung Gregory’s way. “It depends on what was in them. No matter. You both will be thoroughly searched, regardless. You, did you suspect this?”

He’d turned his attention back to me.

“Bishop Gallaspie was always a potential suspect just because of his position in the program, Father Hamiltar,” I told him calmly. “In truth, I thought him far too closed in his ways of thinking to even think of doing something like this. Nor did I think personal gain would motivate him. I underestimated how far he would go in the name of his faith, however.”

Hamiltar grunted. “You are far from the only one. Anything else?”

“There was higher suspicion of him in recent times because of certain factors that developed,” I started, then winced as the light in his hands grew brighter. “Circumstantial evidence pointed to a member of his retinue being the Priestkiller.”

“Acolyte Forcreek,” Hamiltar said. “What circumstantial evidence?”

“I have a bolt with the Priestkiller’s blood on it from the fish shop where he killed an acolyte of Lareran,” I replied. “It’s been in put in a tracking device and has been pointing at the cathedral of Halspsus since then.”

Hamiltar’s expression collapsed for just an instant before going stony, wanting to hide his dismay. I could relate a little. The reverse of what I felt when I discovered Versalicci’s betrayal. And maybe a mirror of that, depending on what Bishop Gallapsie’s relationship was to him.

Derrick gasped, realizing. “You, this was a setup, wasn’t it, to make sure Forcreek was the Priestkiller!”

“In part,” I lied. “I have my own doubts about Imperial Intelligence’s motives, and did want to give some warning. But yes, today’s meeting was to determine if Forcreek was the Priestkiller.”

“You used me, Harrow,” Slayer Derrick growled, hand reaching for her sword belted at her waist, currently in the hands of the Temple guards. “I do not appreciate that.”

“We used you,” Gregory said, drawing her irate gaze. “Slayer, you can’t avoid the fact that trying to hide as much about this as possible was always going to seem suspicious.”

Slayer Derrick spat out some things about the Temple of Tarver hearing about this, but she left her hostility at that.

I wasn’t very sympathetic to Slayer Derrick feeling hurt at the moment. Not just over the little stunt with the carriage, this investigation could have been finished sooner if she’d been willing to share information instead of hoarding it along with the other two heads of the Diabolism program. She had not, and people were likely dead because of it.

Finally, quietly, Hamiltar spoke up again. “What are the chances it is someone besides Forcreek? Or that someone planted that crossbow bolt?”

I kept my tone gentle. Whatever odds we might be at or end up in the future, this was a man confronting a very uncomfortable truth, and he wasn’t outright denying it.

“Even if it is someone besides Forcreek,” I said. “Then they have been in the cathedral since we started tracking the Priestkiller.”

“I can confirm that,” Gregory said quietly. “I’ve been one of the people rotating shifts on the device.”

“And on someone planting it,” I said. “It’s very technically possible. But when Metrill Harper and I came upon that crime scene, we were very soon after the crime. And, the bolt was very well hidden, there was existing evidence of a bolt being fired at the crime scene and an opportunity for the Priestkiller’s various defenses to not be active at the time.”

Hamiltar’s shoulders slumped. “I am, of course, to take your word uncritically on this?”

“I wouldn’t recommend uncritically taking it,” I said. “I’d ask what I get out of lying by doing it?”

There were plenty more palatable lies I could have said. Or not said anything at all. But now that our best chance to find out for certain was dead, I needed to plant the idea in this man’s head. Otherwise, Forcreek may slip through our fingers. If he hadn’t already.

I hadn’t lied earlier when I said I didn’t favor Forcreek for the murders. It was entirely possible he didn’t know about Gallspie’s death.

“I doubt he did this,” Hamiltar said. “He has been troubled these last few weeks, although I never suspected what you accuse him of. He would not have been so calm as he appeared this morning if he had done…this.”

As good as I was going to get for confirmation, and from someone far more acquainted with the young cleric than myself.

“What do you think, Foulhorn?” he said, glaring at me. “Any theories in that devious brain of yours as to who did it?”

Well, even if I had been willing, I wouldn’t be after that.

“My apologies, Father,” I said. “But Mr. Voltar is the brain in the equation, and Mr. Dawes. What intellectual capabilities I have are in a different, narrower direction, or so I’m told.”

Too bold, far too bold, but his eyes only narrowed.

“If you had to apply those narrower intellectual capabilities lurking inside your head?”

I looked around the room, considering how much to share. Well, it wasn’t like I had much to begin with.

“There’s only three real difficulties with this, none of which lack an answer,” I said. “First, how did the killer gain access to the Bishop’s rooms inside the temple without being noticed or raising an alarm? They either live here or were able to get past the security of the temple.”

His face grew stony again. He didn’t like either of those possibilities, not a bit. Gregory glanced warningly at me, but I kept going.

“The second difficulty is the bishop’s position,” I said. “Two possibilities there, either he was taken so suddenly by surprise while writing his confession he did not have time to even twitch, or he was familiar with them and either was talking or otherwise casual and not moving when they put a bullet in his brain.”

Hamiltar considered the body again. “He didn’t move much at all, did he? Would death be that instantaneous?”

“Sometimes,” I stated. “Depending on the ammunition used, it could have increased the odds. But that takes us to the third difficulty. No one heard the gunshot from the bishop’s office.”

“What if a silencer was used in conjunction with a loud noise to mask the remaining sound?” Hamiltar said. “The ringing of a church bell, or something just as loud?”

I tilted my head. “Possible. Normally a gunshot could be heard over a church bell, especially in an enclosed place like this. But possible. They’d have to time their shot perfectly though. I favor a different reason. Divine magic to make someone unnoticeable.”

Silence, then Hamiltar shook his head. “No other divine magic can hide from Halspus’ gaze. Not in his house. Neither of their followers.”

I wonder who the other one in that was besides Baltaren. Lareran?

I shrugged. “You would know better than I, Father. So, you’ve asked many questions of me. Can I ask for one in return?”

He grunted, which I took as assent.

“Am I walking out of here?” I said.

He pondered that for a moment. I couldn’t read minds, of course, but I guessed every instinct he had was warring against the lack of evidence or logic for me killing the bishop. Or even ability, frankly. Even with the element of surprise, a fight with the bishop would be very difficult. Came with your opponent wielding power anathema to your very essence.

After half a minute, the storm of turmoil on his face eased.

“I cannot hide this,” Hamiltar said. “Nor can I simply let you walk out. My own brethren would kill me if I let that happen.”

“So they would just kill me instead?” I asked.

Gregory shifted, and Slayer Derrick moved just as fast. I didn’t pay attention to whatever was being whispered between them for now. Mostly her warning him off.

“If they know it was not you, they would rather focus on the actual killer,” Hamiltar said gruffly.

“If they know someone else was the actual killer, I think I am still likely to be killed,” I replied.

Hamiltar glared. “And have to answer to Imperial Intelligence? I think not.”

“Can you guarantee it would be under a day if evidence was swiftly presented to my innocence?” I asked.

I could maybe survive a day in their holding cells, in public view where hopefully the few reasonable ones could keep the others in check. At night, when they would have a better chance at simply cutting my throat and claiming it must have been this mysterious killer of their bishop the next day.

“Yes,” Hamiltar said, and I was unable to completely hide my surprise.

He chuckled without any mirth. “Gallaspie’s confession was left out for a reason, even if parts of it are taken. I would be shocked if we did not find that someone has told the contents to the newspapers tomorrow morning, or sent them to the rumour mills. We will be busy enough without having an Infernal in custody with demands from both Imperial Intelligence and the cult of Lareran-”

“And Tarver,” Gregory added.

Hamiltar glared at him over the interruption but continued. “And them as well. We will be dealing with enough. So limited time in a cell. And I will impress upon our church leaders what a help you’ve been, so you may be released sooner.”

“Appreciated,” I said. “I’m sure such words will make it clear to my guards what a help I’ve been to the church of Halspus.”

Hamiltar’s eyes narrowed, and I resisted the urge to wink. Yes, Father, I can tell when you’re using me as a piece of bait to try to ferret out traitors in your own organization. It would probably be too brazen to ask him to sneak me a knife.

I had some of my own in my mouth if anyone got too close, but being able to bite mattered little when the other side could melt me by channeling divine power.

“It will be made clear,” he said flatly.

Gregory looked over to me questioningly, and I nodded slightly. It was as close as Hamiltar could come to openly saying he’d have trustworthy people watching. Hopefully, pressure could get me out before then, but I wouldn’t be left alone.

Not ideal, but it was either that or try to make my own way out with only Gregory’s help against an entire cathedral of Halspusians.

I glanced Derrick’s way and added one irritated champion of Zaviel to that list of opposition. The Slayer had kept her peace since her initial outburst, but she still did a poor job of hiding her anger. Again, my sympathy was limited.

“Well,” I said, holding up the arm clasped in the diabolism-suppressing artifact. “You already have me halfway there. Let’s make it official. I surrender, Father Hamiltar.”