“So, what have we here?” Justinian asked.

“Dead prisoner,” the magician said. He was a thin, balding man with a look of habitual anxiety etched into his sharp features. “I cast a stasis spell on the body, soon as I could, so you could see it as near as possible to how I found it.”

“Stasis spell?” the duke shouted. “I authorized no spells! There’s been enough magical skullduggery already!”

“But surely your grace ordered him to preserve the evidence as well as possible for my arrival,” Justinian said. “That’s what a stasis spell does. It’s a lot like what happens when something’s frozen. But frozen in time instead of temperature.”

“Ah,” the duke said. “I see.”

He still looked baffled, but apparently decided to let the matter drop.

The stasis spell, Gwynn thought, would account for the still-damp blood.

“So, tell me the features of the case,” Justinian said.

As he and the castle mage talked, Gwynn decided that this magical murder was doing the Maestro good. Oh, he’d complained about the cold air and the night journey. But the puzzle before him seemed to keep him from dwelling on his cold. He coughed and sneezed a lot less often, and without any magical side effects.

And she was glad it wasn’t her job to figure out what had happened. The evidence was sparse. In fact, apart from the blood-smeared body of the dead anarchist, nonexistent. His live confederate, still chained to the opposite wall, tried to look fierce, and occasionally muttered under his breath about damned unnatural spellcasters. The dozen guards readily demonstrated that their muskets and pistols had not been fired, and the few knives they carried were free of blood, not to mention far too small to have produced the prisoner’s wound. And anyway, nothing physical could have produced the wound without piercing the prisoner’s shirt and doublet which were, apart from dirt and bloodstains, undamaged.