Page 98 of Turncloak

“Now, if you’ll allow me to construct a narrative of my own?” she said, nerves dissipating as she found her groove. “I have physical evidence to prove that the intruder entered the Order through an open window in the hospital wing.” A chastising glance at Nissa. “There, for reasons still unclear to me, the intruder spent around half an hour healing several of the patients on the ward before proceeding farther into the building. I’d like to call Detective Etan Herlan to the stand.”

A detective rose from the backmost pew and strode to the witness stand, silver cloak swilling around her feet. She was in late middle age, gray-brown hair tucked behind heavily studded ears. Bright red kohl lined her blue eyes, matched perfectly to the crimson tint on her thin lips.

“Detective Herlan.” Auria reveled in the crackle of anticipation in the air. “You were a patient in the hospital wing on the night in question. Can you describe your experiences to me?”

“I had been on the ward for several months, after severe blood loss led to multisystem organ failure. Paliran had tried to cure me herself for many weeks, to no avail. That night, I had gone to sleep feeling particularly terrible, my skin more jaundiced than ever, the whites of my eyes a muddy yellow, but I was also oddly—at peace. As though my body expected not to wake. But then I did wake, and felt well for the first time since my injuries.

“I was extraordinarily confused and disoriented for the first few moments, but when the room sharpened around me, I realized there was someone there. Healing. A vague outline, the afterimpression of a shape, standing over the bed next to me. They hadn’t closed the curtain, so I saw, or rather heard, everything. A low male voice, muttering and incanting. Strange spellwork, unfamiliar to me, but if I had to parse it, I’d guess he was trying to relieve a tormented mind of its anxieties.”

“What happened next?”

“After the invisible mage finished healing, he left the ward for the main corridor. It was only then I realized someone else was awake and watching.”

“Who was that person?”

“Nissa Naszi. She’d been peering through a narrow crack in her curtains, and when the intruder left the hospital wing, she followed. Wand in hand.”

“Very well. Would you like to cross-examine the witness, Captain Karvas?”

Karvas made a stuttering job of the cross-examination, inexperienced as he was in the trial system, and largely focused on the same argument he’d tried to spear Auria with. Extraordinarily confused and disoriented was, he posited, evidence of unsound mind, and an unsound mind was unable to provide valid testimony.

“Yet you described a similar phenomenon when your alarm woke you at dawn,” reasoned Auria. “It was your justification for not pursuing the fabled Killoran.”

Karvas had no response to this. Herlan was dismissed from the stand.

“If it’s undeniable evidence you seek, Captain,” Auria went on, “I have one of our esteemed colleagues from crime-scene investigation on hand to describe the next movements of the intruder. Officer Lizon?”

Lizon, a short, pale-skinned Enchanter with long pitch-black hair and a penetrative green gaze, sauntered slowly up the aisle to the bench.

Auria picked up a new sheaf of notes. “Can you describe what you discovered when examining the crime scene?”

Being that this was not an official trial, Auria had not been required to enter any of this into evidence, and so Karvas was now squarely on the back foot.

When Lizon spoke, it was deathly quiet, nasal, with an acute southern accent. “My first port of call was to sweep for foreign footprints, of which we found many, of course. Likely from Healers, and from the various guests Detective Naszi and her fellow patients entertained. But there was indeed a trail of prints matching Detective Herlan’s testimony precisely, beginning at the windowsill beyond Naszi’s bed.”

There had actually been two sets of prints beginning at the sill—Nissa had admitted to Auria that Killoran had visited her earlier the same night—but Auria opted to omit this from evidence.

“Can you describe these footprints?”

“Size twelve, broad enough to suggest a male intruder. They belonged to a set of boots manufactured by a Bethune & Sons up in Novarin.”

“Can you describe the trajectory of these footprints after arriving at Naszi’s bedside?”

“I used vestipedan, a common spell used in crime-scene investigations to illuminate the path a given set of footprints followed. It showed that the owner of said boots ambled around the hospital wing for approximately half an hour, stopping at various bedsides, before eventually departing the ward, searching the Order for a further quarter hour, then finally arriving at the common room.

“Thereafter, the footprints in the common room were muddled, chaotic, suggesting some sort of physical altercation with multiple parties. Casting the same spell upon the footprints of detectives Naszi and Marriosan confirmed that they were said parties. Finally, all three footprints led to the office of Captain Karvas, before the intruder leapt out of the window and into the night. There, we lose him.”

Auria smiled. “Thank you, Officer Lizon. Captain, if you’d like to…?”

Karvas was already on his feet. “And you’re able to pinpoint these footsteps to the night in question?”

“The spellwork is not yet advanced enough to—”

“So it is possible, then, that this supposed intruder entered the Order on a different night entirely?”

“I suppose so.” Lizon scratched at his small chin. “But when considered alongside the testimony of Detective Herlan…”

Changing angles, Karvas said, “Saffron Killoran is of tall stature and broad foot, is she not? Could the footprints not have belonged to her?”