Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Mercedes Lackey Page A

trail followed the route of the Newgate Trade Road, then it left the road where it crossed the river and followed that instead. There was no doubt in Tal's mind, now that it was laid out in front of him. Whatever this was, it was following the course of trade. The pattern was quite clear.
    And he knew that it was not over, although the deadly shadow was no longer stalking the streets of his city. The mind that had conceived of these murders in the first place was not going to simply stop needing to commit them.
    He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. His first partner had been a constable who had solved the case of a madman who'd gone about mutilating whores. Tal remembered what the man had told him.
    "A man like this has a need in him, lad," the old fellow had said. "It's a craving, like drugs or strong liquor. He needs what he gets from doing things like this, and what he gets is power. The ability to control everything that happens to these girls, the moment they get into his hands—what they feel, how much they feel, and the most important control of all, when and how they die. That's what he gets. When you've got to find the man who does things like this, that's what you look for—that's what'll tell you what he's made of, not how he does it. Look for what he gets." 
    If ever there was a case that those words fit, this was it.
    And Tal knew that the mind behind these crimes, the mind that craved the power he had over the victims, had not suddenly been cured of its particular brand of madness. Rather, that mind was aware exactly how dangerous that last death had been—and he had moved on before he could be caught. Being caught was no part of his plan.
    He had to have been watching, somewhere—he won't get the thrill he needs just by hearing gossip. He must have seen and understood what was going on when I took over the situation, and recognized that I was a constable. He wasn't going to take any more chances at that point. The murderer knew how perilous it was that there had been a constable close enough to witness that last death, and to have seen the knife and know it had vanished for certain. Tal's attempt to find the knife only proved to the murderer that Tal knew what he was looking for. The murderer had probably taken himself and his associates (if any) to another hunting ground.
    Mortality Clerks were both cooperative and incurious, a fabulous combination so far as Tal was concerned. They not only supplied him with the bare statistics he'd asked for, they usually gave him the particulars of each murder.
    The "musician" connection was still there. And the dates were in chronological order.
    The further a town is from here, the farther back the rash of murder-suicides goes.   
    There was no overlap of dates—no case where there were times when the deaths occurred in two different places at nearly the same date. The unknown perpetrator staged his deaths, no less than three, and so far no more than nine. Then, at some signal Tal could not fathom, he decided it was time to move on, and did so.
    He was finished here. That was the good news. The bad news was that he had moved on.
    Unfortunately, the most likely place was the one city in the entire Kingdom where his depredations would be likely to go completely unnoticed for weeks, if not months, due to the chaotic conditions there. The Kanar River was the obvious and easiest road; it flowed easily and unobstructed through a dozen towns between here and the place that must surely attract this man as a fine, clear stream attracted trout fishers.
    The great, half-burned and half-built metropolis of Kingsford.
     

Chapter Four
    Reading too long—especially letters with terrible penmanship—always made Ardis's eyes ache, and the Justiciar-Priest closed and rubbed them with the back of her thumb. Rank did have its privileges, though, and no one asked the Priests of her Order to sacrifice comfort in return for devoting their lives to Justice and God. Though