The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III Page 18

  She looked around frantically for something to make his life difficult before he got a chance to use that net. If he caught T’fyrr in it, he could entangle the Haspur and—

  No, best not think about that. Find a way to stop him!

  There! She darted out of the fight long enough to seize a spiky piece of wrought-iron sculpture—or, at least, Tyladen alleged that it was sculpture—from an alcove in the wall. It wasn’t heavy, but it was just what she needed. She slid back into the crowd nearest the fellow with the net, just in time to see him back out of the crowd a little himself and spread the net out to toss it.

  She heaved her bit of statuary into the half-open folds just as he started to throw it.

  He lurched backward, unbalanced for the moment by the sudden weight of iron in the net. He was quick, though; he whipped around to see if someone had stepped on the net, and when he saw how the spikes of the sculpture had tangled everything up, his mouth moved in what was probably a curse. He pulled the mess to him, since no one seemed to be paying any attention to him, and began to untangle it, moving out of the crowd completely for just a moment.

  That was when Nightingale slipped up behind him and delivered an invitation to slumber with a wine bottle she’d purloined from an overturned table.

  He dropped like a felled ox: net, statue, and all. Nightingale dropped the bottle beside him after giving him a second love tap to ensure that he stayed out of the conflict for a while.

  There was no longer a background of music to the brawl; Silas and the rest had probably deserted their stage before the fighting engulfed it.

  She moved around the periphery of the fight, looking for T’fyrr, and finally spotted him again as his wings waved above the crowd momentarily. She worked her way in toward him.

  But as she got within touching distance of him, she saw that another of the bully-boys was moving in on him, and the weapon he carried was like nothing Nightingale had ever seen before. In fact, she wouldn’t have known he had a weapon at all if she hadn’t seen the “blade” glint briefly in the light. It was needle-like, probably very sharp—and poisoned? Dear Lady, who knew? It might very well be!

  She was too far away to do anything!

  She opened her mouth to shout a futile warning as the man lunged toward the Haspur. But T’fyrr was not as helpless as he looked; somehow he spotted his attacker, coming from an angle where no human would have seen him moving. He grabbed a chair, whirled with the speed of a striking goshawk, and intercepted the weapon as the man brought it down toward the point where his back had been a heartbeat before. With all the noise, there was no sound as the man drove it into the chairback, but he staggered as he hit the unyielding wood instead of the flesh and feathers he had been aiming for.

  It must have embedded too deeply in the wood of the chair to pull free, for he abandoned the weapon and leapt back, looking around for help.

  But there wasn’t any help to be had. The third man had either seen Nightingale fell his partner, or simply had noticed that he was down. Instead of dealing with his part of the attack, the third man was helping the semiconscious net-wielder to his feet and dragging him out of the fight toward the door. There was no door-keeper at this point, and he was not the only person helping an injured friend out.

  They’re going to get away, and I can’t stop them, damn it!

  The man with the stiletto took another look at T’fyrr, who had tossed the chair aside, and with wings mantling in rage, was advancing on him.

  He gave up. Faster than Nightingale would have believed possible, he had eeled his way into the brawl and out of T’fyrr’s sight and reach. While T’fyrr looked for him, futilely, Nightingale saw him reappear at the side of his two companions, taking the unconscious man’s free arm, draping it over his shoulder, and hustling both of the others toward the entrance and out before she could alert anyone to stop them.

  She cursed them with the vilest Gypsy curses she could think of—but she couldn’t follow them with anything more potent than that.

  With the peace-keepers converging on the fight wholesale, and no one around trying to keep it going, the battle ended shortly after that. Peace-keepers didn’t even try to sort out who started what; they simply separated combatants and steered them toward the entrance, suggesting that if there was still a grievance after the cool air hit them, they could resume their discussions outside. There didn’t seem to be anyone with any injuries worse than a blackened eye, either, and a good three-fourths of the people involved had only been trying to keep themselves from getting hurt by the few folk actually fighting.

  Nightingale had seen it all before; people who, either drunk or simply worked up over something, would take any excuse to fight with anyone who wanted to fight back. The three bravos must have known something like this would happen, too, and had counted on it.

  Which, unfortunately, argued very strongly that they were professionals in the pay of someone with enough money to hire them.

  While the peace-keepers dealt with the mess, Nightingale picked her way through the overturned tables and chairs toward T’fyrr. There was an uncanny silence beneath the dance lights—as she had thought, Silas and his crew had decided that discretion was better than foolhardiness and had abandoned their platform for the safety of one of the performance rooms. She saw them across the empty dance floor, with Silas in the lead, making their way cautiously back toward their stage.

  But at the moment, she had someone else she wanted to talk to.

  The Haspur stood so quietly that he might have been frozen in place—but there was a faint trembling of his wing feathers that told her he was locked in some kind of emotional overload.

  Better break him out of it.

  “Hello T’fyrr,” she said calmly, touching his arm lightly, and projecting peace and a sense of security at him.

  He jumped in startlement and she saw, still floating in that strange, detached calm that exercising her power brought her, that he extended his talons for a moment before he recognized her. And he did recognize her; that tiny touch was all she needed to read the recognition and dismay flooding through his mind and heart.

  He looked for one short moment as if he might still try to pretend that he didn’t know her, but she kept her eyes fastened on his, and he finally shook his head.

  “Hello, Nightingale,” he replied in that deep, rumbling voice she knew so well. The tension in the arm beneath her hand told her he was still caught up in the fighting rage the attack had stirred up in him. But he spoke to her calmly enough to have fooled anyone but her, or someone like her. “I—I am sorry I did not greet you, but I was afraid that something like this might happen. I did not want anyone following me to know that I knew you.”

  She nodded; it would be time enough later to find out why he was being followed, and what in the world had brought him to Lyonarie—presumably with Old Owl, since that was the last Deliambren she had seen him with. Right now, there were other things she needed to do.

  Bring him calm, for one thing, and help him convince himself that the danger is over for now.

  “I saw them; there were three of them. One never got close to you, one had that stiletto knife, and one had a net.”

  His eyes widened at the mention of the word “net.”

  Well, that certainly touched a nerve.

  “Whoever they are, they’re gone now,” she pointed out quickly. “I saw them leave—unfortunately, I wasn’t in a position where I could get someone to intercept them.”

  He took a deep breath. “I would rather that they escaped than you got yourself involved in my troubles,” he replied.

  She only shook her head. “I have to start my next set,” she said instead, changing the subject completely. “Why don’t you join me?”

  He blinked at her slowly, as if he didn’t quite understand what she had just said. “Do you mean to listen,” he asked, “or to participate?”

  “Either,” she told him. “Both. It will do you good to think about something else fo
r a little until your thoughts get organized and you have a chance to calm yourself down. I know how good your memory is; surely we both know enough of the same music to fill a set. I also know how good you are—and there is no one else I would rather share a stage with. I would love to have you join me, unless you’d rather not.”

  But he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if her reply had answered some need of his own. “There is nothing I would like better,” he said, his voice now a bit more relaxed. “If you would care to lead the way—?”

  By the time the two of them reached her little stage, Nightingale noticed that Xarax had altered the lighting to suit both of them. She gave T’fyrr her stool and took a chair for herself; after a brief consultation to determine some mutually acceptable music, they began.

  The Rainbow Room had emptied as the brawl began, now it slowly filled up again with customers who were shaken by what had just happened. While fights were not unheard of in Freehold, there had never been one of this magnitude, and the regular customers were still asking themselves how and why the violence of the outside world had intruded on this place they had considered immune to it. Nightingale could have told them, of course.

  When powerful people are determined that something will happen, no place is safe that has not been warned and has not created specific defenses against the weapons that they can bring to bear. Powerful people have the means to make things happen, no matter what anyone else might want.

  But that was not what these people wanted to hear, and at the moment, that was not what they needed to hear, either. They needed to be soothed, and since that need matched T’fyrr’s, that was what Nightingale gave them all.

  As she played and sang, and wove a web of magic to hold them all in a feeling of safety and security, she opened herself cautiously to T’fyrr. “Reading” a nonhuman was always a matter for uncertainty, but she thought that she knew him well enough to have a solid chance at getting a little beneath his surface.

  Do I? It is an intrusion. But he is in need—it’s like the ache of an unhealed wound. Could I see him wounded physically and not help? No, this is something I must at least try to help with.

  She closed her eyes, set part of herself to the simple task of playing, and the rest to weaving herself into the magic web, opening herself further to him, letting herself slide into his heart.

  There is fear; that is the surface. Singing seemed to ease him somewhat, but beneath the obvious concerns—anxiety over being followed, remnants of fear from the moment when he had seen an attacker targeting him, more fear for what the attack really meant—there was some very deep emotional wounding, something that went back much farther than the past few hours, or even weeks.

  She sensed that, but she did not touch it. Not yet.

  We are too much alike, more than I knew. If I go deeper—he will have me. She felt that old, unhealed ache of her own, the scars from all of those others that she had given herself to, who had in the end only seen that she knew them too well, and fled. If I had known he would be another—But she had not known.

  She could pull herself back and not give what he needed to him. There was still time to retreat.

  I cannot retreat. He is my friend. He was trying to protect me by pretending he did not know me; I owe him enough to venture deeper.

  So she did, slipping past the fear, the anger—

  Ah. The fear and the anger are related. He fears the anger.

  There was pain, dreadful pain both physical and spiritual; more fear, and with it a residue of self-hate, deep and abiding doubt, and a soul-wounding that called out to her. There was nothing to tell her what had caused all this, what had changed the confident, happy creature she had met in the Waymeet to the T’fyrr who doubted, even despised himself and sought some kind of redemption here in Lyonarie. She could only read the emotions, not what caused them.

  But being Nightingale, now that she knew the hurt existed, now that it was a part of her, there was no choice for her, either. She had to find out what it was that troubled him, and why, and help him if she could.

  The hurt was hers; the soul-pain was hers now, as she had known it would be. That was the curse that was also her gift. Once she read a person this deeply, she was committed to dealing with what she found—

  Which was one of the reasons why she preferred to spend as much time in the company of those who were not human as possible. It was difficult to read nonhumans, harder still to read them to that extent; very seldom did she find those whose hearts called to hers for help. The concerns of the Elves were either only of the moment, or of the ages—she could help with neither. The Deliambrens were as shallow streams to her, for they simply did not understand human emotions. Other nonhumans either could not be read at all, or their needs were so alien to her that their pain slipped away from her and vanished into darkness before she could do more than grasp the fact that it was there.

  Not so with T’fyrr. She braced herself against the pull of his needs and his hurts, but only to keep herself from being devoured by them. His aches were hers now, and would be until and unless she helped him to heal them. The bond between them might even last beyond that moment; it was too soon to tell.

  And too late to call it back and say, “No, wait—”

  She brought her awareness back to the here and now, her hands playing of their own will, despite the new hurts in her heart, the hurts that were not hers, and yet were now a part of her. She felt, as she always did on these occasions, as if the pain should somehow manifest itself physically, as if she should bear bleeding wounds on her hands and breast, as if she should look as bruised and broken outside as T’fyrr was within.

  But, of course, there were no such signs, nor was it likely that T’fyrr had any notion what had just happened. He sang on, finding his momentary release in music, just as she herself often did.

  Ah, Lady of the Night, we are more alike than I had thought!

  With the readiness, if not the ease, of long practice, she walled as much away as she could inside herself and smoothed over the pain that she could not wall away. Eventually, it would all be dealt with . . .

  Or not . . .

  But for the moment, it was this moment that counted.

  And there were more duties that she owed than this one. She had her duty as a musician as well as a healer, and it was as a musician that she was operating now. She sang and smiled, played and probed the needs of her audience, and answered those needs. And eventually, the set was over.

  “Let’s go somewhere quiet for the break,” she said once they had taken their bows and left the stage. “We have a great deal of catching up to do.” And as the skin around his eyes twitched, she added quickly, “Unless you have somewhere you need to go? I don’t want to get in the way of anything that you are already committed to.”

  “No,” he said after a moment’s awkward silence. “No, I don’t have anywhere to go, and no one is expecting me. I had hoped to get back before darkness fell, but—”

  “Darkness had already fallen by the time you left Tyladen’s office,” she pointed out, and he sighed.

  “I thought as much.” He said it in a discouraged, but unsurprised tone. “I suppose I can fly in the darkness; there is enough light coming up from the streets—”

  She interrupted him, feeling more than annoyed at Tyladen for not taking care of this himself. “It was Tyladen’s fault that you were here longer than you wanted to be, and Tyladen’s fault—or so I suspect—that you were caught here by those men. Tyladen can damn well arrange for you to be taken to—ah—wherever it is you need to go in some kind of protected conveyance! And I’ll tell him so myself!”

  She actually started in the direction of Tyladen’s office, when T’fyrr, laughing self-consciously, intercepted her. “By the four winds, now I see the Nightingale defending the nestling!” he said, catching her arm gently. “So fierce a bird, no wonder nothing dares to steal her young! No, no, my friend, I can fly at night, I am not night blind like a poor ha
wk. And I will be far safer flying above your city at night than I will be in any kind of conveyance on the ground!”

  She let herself be coaxed out of going to confront the owner of The Freehold; he was right, after all. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for a marksman to make out a dark, moving shadow against the night sky. But that did not make her less wroth with Tyladen for his sake.

  If I didn’t dare let him know that I am working for the Deliambrens, I would give him a real piece of my mind! The wretched, stupid man! Oh, how I’d like to—

  She forced herself to remain calm. Even Tyladen could not ignore this night’s near-riot, and when she told him what she had seen—

  Well, he just might decide to take a little better care of his agent!

  She hesitated, then offered her invitation. “Then if you can stay—and want to stay—I have one more set. After it’s over, we could go up on the roof; it’s quiet up there, and no one will bother us. And no one will know if you leave from there if I don’t tell them.”

  He pondered a moment, then agreed. But she sensed not only reluctance but resistance. He knew, somehow, that she was going to try to get him to talk about what had happened to him, and he was determined not to do so.

  And being Nightingale, of course, this only ensured that she would be more persistent than his determination could withstand.

  Just wait, my poor friend, she thought as they spoke of inconsequentials that he apparently hoped would throw her off the track. Just wait. I have learned my patience from the Elves, who think in terms of centuries. If I am determined to prevail, you cannot hold against me.

  ###

  T’fyrr sat through Nightingale’s last set as part of the audience, watching those who were absorbed in the beauty of her music and the power that she put into it. She held them captive, held them in the palm of her hand. There was no world for them outside of this little room, and every story she told in melody and lyric came alive for them. He saw that much in their dreaming eyes, their relaxed posture, the concentration in their faces.