Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Mercedes Lackey Page A

large, steady-looking fellows. "You two go north and south along the river, and see if you can't find the constables patrolling this district."
    He turned to a smaller, soberly clad man, plain and ordinary. "You go to the station and alert the constables there."
    All three nodded, and went briskly off on their assigned errands. That left him with four more, all dockworkers, who should know this area. "You see if you can't find that knife," he told them, although he knew it was a hopeless quest. The mysterious, vanishing blade was going to vanish again, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. "You saw him throw it away; something about it may tell us why he went crazy that way."
    The four looked at him a little oddly, but began their search the moment he explained that he was a constable. He dealt with the murder scene a few moments later, draping the girl's body with a tarpaulin given him by a barge-man.
    At least this time I saw it, and I know exactly what it looks like, he thought bleakly. I can describe it to knife-makers, armorers, smiths—there can't be that many knives like that in this city. I can check with secondhand stores and have people keep a watch for it. Maybe I can track it down that way, or at least find out what kind of a knife it is. 
    Or he would—if this was not some strange cult of murder and suicide, with special ritual blades of their own. There were not many things more secretive than a religious cult, and doubly so in a circumstance like this one.
    Still, someone has to forge these things. I'll check with smiths.   
    By the time the local constables arrived—more than a bit annoyed that an apparent outsider had so cavalierly taken over their crime—he had all of the information that really mattered to him. The girl was local; she cleaned and gutted fish at one of the salting-houses. The knife-sharpener was new; no one had ever seen him here before. The orange-girl, the candy-monger, and the fellow with the feathers were all locals as well, and knew the fish-cleaner by sight.
    "Everyone knew her," the orange-girl sobbed, weeping messily into her apron. "She was always singing, whistling—so cheerful, her voice so pretty, we always told her she ought to go for a Free Bard—"
    Tal froze inside, although he knew there was no sign of his reaction on his face. There it was, the music connection again! What was going on here?
    He patted the girl on the shoulder, trying awkwardly to comfort her, then turned to the newly arrived constables. "I'm sorry to have barged into your territory like this," he began, knowing that if he apologized immediately, the new arrivals would stop being annoyed and start being grateful that he had done all the preliminary work for them. "I would never have, except that I know from my own experience that if you don't take over in a case like this, there's a panic. Wild tales spread like a fire in dry grass, and the next thing you know, you're getting reports of a wholesale massacre of fishwives. And if you don't herd all these people together at the start, they'll manage to wander off on their own errands before you can get any sense out of them."
    He handed the man he judged to be the most senior his own notes. "Here's what I've gotten, sir, and I hope it will be of use to you," he continued, as frowns softened to reluctant approval. "The ones who swore they had to go, I got addresses for in case you have to do a follow-up. Any my statement is in the pile as well, and my own address."
    "Oh, we know where to find you," the senior constable replied, with more approval showing when Tal made no mention of getting credit on the report, or indeed having anything to do with this other than be a witness. "You can go ahead and go now, if you like. We can take it from here."
    Tal turned to go, and the candy-monger, with a display of honesty that was quite remarkable, handed the package containing his shirts back to him, undamaged except for a bit of dirt. "You tried, sir,"