Denerim Confidential

Chapter 4

Fenris tried to keep his irritation from showing on his face as Alistair Guerrin left the Councilman's office. He had believed the bartender when he said that he and his adopted father hadn't spoken in years—but finding Alistair here now seemed too odd a coincidence for Fenris to swallow. Had Alistair lied? Or had he really chosen this moment to see the Councilman after years of silence between them?

Answers, he suspected, would not be forthcoming from Eamon Guerrin. The Councilman had made more than a few public statements about the Guard's treatment of suspected apostate mages, and every budget he put before the City seemed to take funding from magical safety and put it towards other, less controversial areas of spending. Fenris was operating on the assumption that Eamon would as soon see him fired and begging on the streets as asking questions in his office.

The Councilman cleared his throat. "To answer your earlier question, Detective, this is the first time I've seen Alistair in many years. We enrolled him in a boarding school as a teenager and haven't seen much of him since." He looked at Fenris sternly, with that sense of indignation and entitlement that only Denerim's wealthy could summon in the face of questions from a guardsman. "I suppose you're here to ascertain whether I have any enemies who might have come at me through Alistair?"

"Do you?" Fenris asked mildly.

"I doubt it. They would be far more likely to target my biological son Connor, or my wife Isolde. And I haven't received any threats lately. We do turn over anything suspicious to the City Guard, of course."

"Of course," Fenris murmured.

Eamon leaned back in his chair. "Do you have any leads on the attempted robbery?"

"The investigation is being aggressively pursued," Fenris replied, testing the nib of his pen on a notebook page. "If you wouldn't mind, there are a few background matters I was hoping to clear up."

Guerrin spread his hands wide. "Anything the Guard needs."

Fenris could not resist a slightly needling question. "Why adopt Alistair, if you intended to have so little to do with his upbringing?"

That got a reaction from the Councilman. He scowled furiously, as if Fenris had crossed a line. It was usually the expression someone made when they felt guilty. "I fail to see why that is relevant to your investigation, Detective," he snapped. "My wife and I took Alistair's care very seriously."

So his wife had something to do with the decision to send Alistair away. Interesting. The simplest explanation, of course, was that Alistair was indeed Eamon's by-blow. But that didn't quite fit for Fenris. For one thing, Alistair looked nothing like the smaller, plainer Eamon. For another, if Eamon was trying to hide his role in Alistair's parentage, adopting him was a strange way to do it. And earlier Eamon had referred to Connor as his "biological son"—the implication being that Alistair was not.

"Could Alistair's biological parents have reason to harm him?" he pressed.

"I sincerely doubt it. They're dead," Eamon said shortly. "At least, his mother is. She was a lovely young woman—she worked on my first campaign for City Council. When she died in childbirth I thought it only right to make sure the boy received proper care. She never told me the father's name. I gathered that their relationship was, ah, brief."

Too much explanation, Fenris thought, dutifully writing down the outline of Eamon's story anyway. I would have thought a politician would be a better liar.

"His mother's name would be helpful," Fenris said as he scribbled.

"Sara Cavell. That's C-A-V-E-L-L. But I really don't see what this has to do with—"