Scholar's Plot by Hilari Bell

had an alibi, their suspicion fell on us. They have no evidence,” he went on, a bit more mendaciously, “so they had to let us go. But you can understand how worrying it is, being suspected of murder. We have to find out who really did it, and clear ourselves.”
    I had to admit, ’twas a masterful ploy — surprise, to shake her off balance, followed by subtle flattery, along with seeming candor and genuine need.
    But Professor Dayless wasn’t the only one accustomed to seeing through student tales. The clerk regarded Fisk steadily.
    “Isn’t that the Liege Guards’ job?”
    “Maybe,” said Fisk. “But if they’re focusing on us, they might miss the real killer. For instance, did they talk to you?” Peebles only blinked, but Fisk is better at reading faces than I. “I thought not. And I’ll bet you know more about this university than anyone.”
    She picked up a pen, turning it in her hands. The sharpened end was black with ink and the other ragged, as if someone had nibbled on it. Benton did that with his pens.
    “How very flattering. You think that will convince me to spill secrets?”
    “So there are secrets to be spilled?” Fisk countered.
    “If there were, which there aren’t, why should I tell them to you?”
    “If they were actual secrets, you shouldn’t.” Fisk smiled, charmingly. First pull the line, then release the tension — it often hooked more answers than continued pressure would. Fisk seated himself on one of the stools before her desk, and after a moment of hesitation I quietly did the same. I was still somewhat miffed, but watching Fisk work a person was more educational than any class a professor might teach.
    “But an innocent man’s been murdered,” Fisk went on. “And others are accused of the crime. Surely you can answer some ordinary questions. For instance, do you know if Master Hotchkiss had any enemies?”
    “Besides Benton, you mean? No, you needn’t protest. I knew Scholar Benton, as well as Professor Sevenson, and I don’t believe he’d ever forge a thesis — much less murder anyone. I don’t know that about either of you,” she added.
    It might have been Fisk’s investigation, but ’twas for Benton’s good. I couldn’t resist stepping in.
    “You don’t know us. But if we’d done it, we’d not be so foolish as to hang about asking questions. We’d have run into the next fiefdom, and then two more. By the time they worked through the legal maze of three fiefdoms, we’d be long gone.”
    “There is that.” She put the quill down again. “But Hotchkiss didn’t have any enemies. He wasn’t liked, not by most, but I know of no one except Professor Sevenson who had reason to hate him.”
    “Did you know him well?” I asked. Fisk had fallen silent, ceding me the conversation with the ease of years of practice. As if we were still a team. The thought hurt, but I pressed on, “Were you and Hotchkiss scholars here, mayhap?”
    “I was never a scholar anywhere,” the clerk said. “My son Seymour had the brains in the family.”
    Looking at the tidy filing cabinets, I doubted that — but the soft way she’d said his name told me her son was dead, so denying her statement wouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Fisk had caught it, too.
    “What did your son think of Master Hotchkiss, then?”
    “I don’t think he knew him,” the clerk said. “Hotchkiss was several years behind him, and Seymour… He wasn’t good at making friends.”
    Some rich and painful irony lay under those words, but Fisk was doing math.
    “If Hotchkiss was younger than your son, he’d be in his … late thirties? That’s very young, to be head librarian in a place like this. I thought he’d be around your age, maybe older.”
    “He was young,” she said. “But he invented the alphanumeric system. He could have been head librarian anywhere in the Realm, these last twenty years.”
    I had no knowledge of this system, but Fisk clearly did. “The alphanumeric … he