Read Online Scholar's Plot by Hilari Bell - Free Book Online

that, sir.”
    And the gatekeeper passed us through.
    “So, we’re going with your usual plan,” Fisk said, as soon as we were away from the man’s keen ears. “We’re going to walk up to people and tell them everything.”
    “’Twill likely get us farther than your usual plan, of skulking about and trying to burgle things. Which got you caught. By the scholar’s guard.”
    Fisk, who’d already opened his mouth to reply, closed it with a snap and I went on.
    “Benton said the project was housed in a tower, at the west end of the campus, against the—”
    “I know where it is.” Fisk stepped out in front of me. “What building do you think I was trying to burgle? And it wasn’t the scholar’s guard who caught me — a lady professor was working late and we surprised each other.”
    “You think your jeweler’s housed there?”
    Fisk was leading me between the buildings, on neat graveled paths that bustled with scholars, professors, and even groundskeepers doing something with potted mums. The campus was more pleasant by day, with the sun glowing on windows that had been opened to vent the summer heat. Snatches of voices came from them as we passed, talking about quadratic equations, the essential nature of the gall bladder, and ballad cycles in the reign of High Liege Cormorigan.
    I would go mad in such classrooms in a week, but Fisk looked wistful.
    “Where else would someone who can work magic be, except part of a research project trying to give people magic?” Fisk asked.
    “’Tis not about magic.” A subject I find uncomfortable to discuss. “’Tis about giving Gifts to those born without them.”
    Fisk shrugged, also uncomfortably. His great grandmother had been from a Gifted line, but she had no Gifts, and passed none on to her descendants. This sometimes happens, and by Fisk’s generation the family had fallen on such hard times that he’d been forced to take to theft to keep a roof over their heads. ’Twas after that he met Jack Bannister, who’d taught him far too much, and given him a taste for criminality that I, for one, refused to believe he’d been born with. Whatever he might say.
    But Jack Bannister was high on the list of subjects we weren’t going to discuss, and I was relieved when Fisk stopped at the intersection of several paths and gestured to one that ended at the foot of an ancient tower.
    “There it is. And when we’re finished with your part of the investigation, I’d like to stop by the library and take a look at this thesis Benton’s supposed to have 
copied.”
    “You think you can prove ’twas forged?”
    “Depends on how they did it. Or if it was forged. We have only Benton’s word for that.”
    Even Fisk wasn’t so cynical as to suspect Benton … which meant he only said it to provoke, so I ignored him.
    Like many old buildings, the tower’s door was several yards above the level of the ground. The windows held the thick glass rounds that let in light, but distort the view. There was a walled bailey off to one side, and I guessed there was a cellar with four stories atop. ’Twas probably there long before the university had been built up around it, and the guard at the front door would have looked quite at home had he been standing up with a halberd or a pike, instead of sitting on a camp stool and… “Is he knitting?”
    “Looks like it,” Fisk said. “I couldn’t tell what he was doing last night.”
    “Is he the one who hauled you off?”
    “Unless they’ve got two knitting guards.”
    I stared at the building, only a few hundred yards away, and tried to think of another way to do this. I couldn’t think of anything, and ’twas unworthy of a knight errant to stand dithering.
    “Come,” I said. “We only want to ask a few questions.” I matched the deed to the word, starting briskly off toward the guard with Fisk trailing reluctantly behind me.
    The guard put down his knitting as I approached. It appeared to be a sock, which I was once