Four and Twenty Blackbirds Read online

  Orm's own meal had been lighter than his companion's, and he lingered over his own dessert and over the mug of black tea that ended his meal. Only when enough time had passed that the tables nearest him held different customers than they had when the young man arrived did he casually pick up the roll of paper and carry it away with him.

  Once outside the door of the inn, he waited while his eyes adjusted to the thin, gray light. He stood in the street, out of the way of traffic, as the continuing snowfall dusted the shoulders of his coat with white. To anyone watching, it would look as if he was debating his direction. Then, with no sign of hurry, he tucked his map under his arm and strolled off towards Old Town and the house he had rented.

  Old Town was all of Kingsford that had not burned in the Great Fire; the Fire itself had been no respecter of rank, and had eaten as much into the sections housing the wealthy as into the sections housing those of middling fortune. Only the poor had suffered complete devastation, which was hardly surprising, considering that most of the homes of the poor had been, and were again, poorly-built firetraps. But enough time had passed now that there was no longer a shortage of housing; in fact, in some places there was a surplus. There were now segments of Old Town where one could rent modest homes for modest fees, and that was becoming easier all the time. The reason was simple; as more new homes were constructed, the older ones became less desirable.

  The owners of those modest—but older—homes had often capitalized on the shortage of living-space by renting out as much of their dwellings as they could spare, with the resultant added wear and tear that was only to be expected when strangers moved into a dwelling they had no vested interest in keeping up. Now the owners of such houses coveted a place with more space, in a better neighborhood, with more of the modern conveniences, and they had the means put by to begin building a new home—renting the entirety of their current abode made the acquisition of such a property much easier. So long as the tenant looked respectable and paid down the requisite sum, most such absent landlords saw no reason to be curious.

  Orm had counted on this when his employer Rand decreed that it was time for them to move their operations to Kingsford. It had not taken Orm very long to find the perfect house for them.

  Orm had further plans for the place; if Rand decided to stay here, it might even be possible to purchase the property outright. It would all depend on what Rand wanted, of course. Rand was the one with the money; Orm merely spent it for him.

  That genteel little house looked exactly like its neighbors in the row: tall, narrow houses, made of pale brown stone with gabled, slate-covered roofs, with passages between them too small for most muscular men to squeeze through. Out of habit, Orm did not enter the dwelling from the street-entrance; instead, he went around to the end of the block and slipped into the alley when no one was looking, entering his own house like a thief, through a window at the rear.

  It was good to stay in practice; although Orm hadn't stolen anything in years, it was wise to keep the old skills up.

  Rand wasn't around, which didn't surprise Orm in the least. He was probably out "celebrating the senses" as he called it; he always did that when his curse left him and he was able to walk the streets unremarked.

  Orm was in no hurry for that condition to become permanent. For now, Rand needed him and his skills, and paid well for them. If Rand ever became normal again, he would no longer require Orm. Until Orm amassed enough wealth that he no longer needed Rand, Orm would prefer that the curse remain intact.

  The two-story, rented house was divided into two suites, each one comprising an entire floor, linked only by a staircase at the front. Orm had the ground floor and Rand the second; Orm seldom entered his employer's domain unless, as now, he had something to leave there. Whistling cheerfully, he stepped into the unheated foyer at the front of the dwelling and climbed the stair leading off the tiny room to the second level.

  At the top of the staircase was a door, usually left locked. Unlocking the door, which led directly into the first room of the suite, he stepped just far enough inside to lay the rolled map down on Rand's empty desk. He never went farther than this unless Rand himself was here, and that was not just because he respected Rand's wishes for privacy. Orm's employer was a mage, and mages had very unpleasant means of enforcing their desires.

  Besides, there was nothing in Rand's suite that Orm was at all interested in. He already knew everything he needed to know about Rand himself, and Rand had no information Orm was at all interested in. Although Rand had several sources of wealth, Orm was not tempted to steal from him, either. Stealing from Rand would be as unproductive as draining a pond to get the fish; left alone, Rand would be the source of far more wealth to Orm than he would be if Orm was foolish enough to steal and run.

  So, leaving the new map in plain sight, Orm descended the stairs to his own cozy den. Rand would return soon enough, and Orm would reap the pleasant results.

  Orm built up the fire in the stove he had instead of a fireplace, and settled into a chair at his desk beside it with a pen and a ledger. Although Orm had begun his professional life as a thief, and had in the course of things been forced to injure or even kill, he was now, for the most part, in the less risky business of buying and selling information and expediting (though not carrying out) the plans of others. Rand was not his only client, although all of Orm's other commissions were of strictly limited scope. Rand had been Orm's chief concern since they "met" in a tiny village many leagues and months ago.

  Since that day, Orm devoted his time and energy to Rand, and Rand paid him handsomely for information, for personal services, and to ensure Rand's safety and security. Rand needed someone to take care of even the tiniest tasks for him, because Rand was generally not human.

  Rand particularly needed Orm now that they were operating in the city; although Orm was not a native of Kingsford, he was quite familiar with both Old Town and New. Rand only knew Kingsford as it had been before the Great Fire, and as a result was frequently disoriented when he went abroad in the streets. This had frustrated him to the point of fury, and Orm had been trying (though with little success) to draw diagrams of the city as it was now. Then when Orm had learned that a bird-man in the service of the Duke was making detailed and highly accurate maps of the city, he had moved heaven and earth to find a clerk who could be bribed to supply him with ongoing copies. To the clerk, he was an enterprising merchant looking for the best spots to place fried-pie stalls; the clerk found nothing amiss in this. A merchant prepared to put money into a large number of fried-pie stalls could stand to make a fortune or lose one, depending on whether he found good locations or poor ones. Vendors of foodstuffs had been operating from barrows since the Great Fire precisely because no one knew yet where the good locations were—but that meant that there was no such thing anymore as a place that people could patronize regularly other than an inn. The first person to capitalize on this situation could find himself a very wealthy man, and it would be more than worth his while to bribe a clerk for advance copies of the new city maps.

  Rand had been very pleased when Orm presented him with the first of his new maps; pleased enough to make Orm's reward a golden one, even though the map was of an area that Rand would not be able to use, at least not effectively. The mage rightly considered the reward to be one for initiative rather than immediate services rendered, and had brooded over his acquisition with his strange eyes half-closed in pleasure.

  He would not have been nearly so pleased if he'd known that Orm knew why he was going to want those maps—knew why he had wanted to come to Kingsford in the first place—knew what his real name was.

  It's really very amusing, actually, Orm thought as he finished the last of his little notes and sat back in his chair, listening for the sound of Rand's footsteps on the walk outside. He's quite, quite naïve. To think that he really believed that since I was not a native of Kingsford I would not have recognized him for what he was!

  Perhaps it was only that it
never occurred to him that his employee would turn his considerable skills to ferreting out everything he could about his new employer. Perhaps it was that he completely underestimated the ability of the Free Bards to spread information in the form of songs, and overestimated the ability of the Bardic Guild to suppress it when they tried. Or perhaps it was that he simply had no idea how good a tale the story of the foul deeds and punishment of Priest Revaner was.

  Very singable—though that shouldn't be surprising, considering it was composed by the Free Bard they call Master Wren.

  Oh, Orm knew all about his employer—more than was in the song, for there were still plenty of people in Kingsford who knew the story in its entirety, and even a handful who had seen the end of it themselves. Those acrobats, for instance. . . .

  Once they had reached Kingsford, Orm had made it a part of his business to sniff out those who had actually been witnesses to the tale of Priest Revaner—or, as Master Wren titled it, "The Faithless Priest." Now he knew just about everything there was to know, including a few secrets known only to Revaner's fellow Priests, for even a Priest likes to talk.

  Priest-Mage Revaner, of the Kingsford Order of Saint Almon, had often claimed that he never wanted to be a Priest. He had felt himself restricted by the rules of his Order, his vows before God, and the constraints associated with being a Priest in the first place—most notably, celibacy and chastity, but also poverty and humility. Orm personally didn't see where he had anything to complain about—presumably he should have known those rules before he ever took his final vows—but it hardly mattered.

  The fact was that Revaner wanted many things. Wealth, for one—and that state was attainable only to those of sufficiently high office. Even then, it was wealth that, in the end, belonged to the Church and not to the Priest, and that wasn't good enough for Revaner. So Priest Revaner had set about using (or misusing) his magics to help him gain wealth and hide it away from the prying eyes of his superiors. So much for that obstacle, and although it chafed him, the virtue of humility was easy enough to feign. Celibacy, while irksome, was constricting only in that it meant he could not attain further wealth and the position he had not been born into through marriage. But chastity—there was a problem.

  Revaner craved women, but not just any women. His women had to be subservient to him in every way. Since he did not consider himself to be particularly impeded by his other vows, the vow of chastity made no difference to his desires. Unfortunately, confined to the Abbey Cloister, it was difficult to get away for long to indulge himself, and impossible to bring a woman there.

  But when Faire Season came, he saw a possible answer to his problems, for a few weeks, at least. So with a little judicious bribery, a bit of flattery, and cultivation of one of the Masters of the Bardic Guild, he got himself assigned as a Faire Warden, patrolling for unlawful use of magic, for the duration of the Faire.

  That much had Orm's admiration. Clever, that. He had his own tent on the grounds of the Faire, and he knew that on his watch, the only person who would have been checking for magic was himself.

  Revaner saw the Faire as his own private hunting-preserve, a place where he could indulge himself in ways he had only dreamed of before. He had his own private tent and servants whose minds were so controlled by magic that they never saw anything he didn't want them to see. His duty only lasted from the time the Faire opened in the morning until sunset, and mostly consisted of walking about the Faire searching for the signs of magic. And while he was doing that, he was marking women for further attentions, thus combining duty with pleasure. Orm rather fancied that Revaner had assumed that as long as he confined his attentions to those technically outside Church protection—Gypsies, for instance, or other folk who did not consider themselves Churchmen—his victims would never dare report him to Church authorities.

  For the most part, he would have been right. There aren't very many pagans or Gypsies who would trust the Church to police its own, and those who had turned from worship of the Sacrificed God to some other deity would be afraid of being taken and punished as heretics. Complaints against a Priest to secular authorities would be turned over to the Church, and where would they be then?

  Revaner had used his magic to coerce women who didn't cooperate with him—which was another violation of secular law, twice over; first for using coercion inside the Faire boundaries, and secondly for using magic as the instrument of coercion. Then there was the violation of Church law in using his powers and his position to further his own ends.

  Altogether he was a very naughty boy.

  Revaner had enjoyed himself to the fullest, with nothing more than merest rumor to alert his superiors to the fact that he was a lawbreaker so many times over that he would be doing penance until he died if he was caught.

  The blatant misuse of everything the Church gave him would have had even the most corrupt of them livid. Not to mention the amount of keep-quiet money they would have had to pay to his victims.

  They did not even know who the cause of the rumor was; he had managed to keep his identity secret. But he had already made one fatal error, and that had been when he had checked to see who the Prior of the Abbey of the Justiciars at Kingsford was without also making the effort to discover who his underlings were. The Prior was lazy and subject to a venial sin now and then of his own—but immediately beneath him in rank was Justiciar-Mage Ardis, already known for dispensing the purest justice without regard for rank, privilege, or station, and it was Ardis who was truly in charge of the Faire Judiciary. Then, after three weeks of enjoyment, Revaner had made his second fatal error.

  He had approached a Gypsy Free Bard named Robin and was rebuffed, publicly, vehemently, and in such a way as led to a great deal of humiliation on his part and amusement on that of the witnesses. But his success had bred overconfidence and inflated his pride, and his pride would not tolerate such a blow. Obsessed with the girl and angered at her contemptuous refusal, he had conspired with a Guild Bard named Beltren, one of his cronies, to kidnap her.

  Even that might only have earned him exile to some distant, ascetic Abbey in a harsh and unforgiving climate, constant penance and prayer, and perpetual confinement to his cell if he had been caught—but his pride was too high to merely use her and discard her. No, he had to triumph over her and keep her as a private trophy. He had used his magic to transform her into a man-sized bird of gaudy plumage, placed her in a cage, and compelled her with further spells to sing for his pleasure. Then he displayed her for all the Faire to see.

  Pride and folly went hand in hand, and he was bound to fall over such a blatantly stupid action; Revaner was found out, of course, and he was condemned by the Justiciars to the same condition he had forced upon the Gypsy girl. Transformed into a black bird of amazing ugliness, he was displayed in a cage above the gate of the Abbey as an example to others. And since he was a bird, without access to his wealth, his connections, or his persuasive tongue, no one was tempted to try to defend him.

  When fall came that year, he was taken down and lodged in a cell in the Abbey until the warmer weather arrived, in larger, if not more luxurious quarters. But when spring came, it was easier to keep him there instead of putting him back on display. Eventually, he became a fixture in the Abbey gaol.

  Then came the Great Fire, and the revolt within the Abbey itself. And, presumably, during the confusion or perhaps out of misguided compassion, someone left the cage door open and the bird escaped.

  The Gypsy transformed into a bird had not been able to fly, but even as a bird, Revaner was still a mage, and he could use his magic to aid his wings. He had put as much distance between himself and Kingsford as possible, ending up at last in Sandast, a trade-city situated below a cliff riddled with caves. There Revaner had made a home, stole food, and attempted to work out how to change himself back.

  That much Orm had managed to reason out for himself. What he didn't know was how Revaner had learned that the key to transforming himself back to a man was the death of some
one else, and it was the one thing that he was not likely to ever find out. There were only two people who had ever known that, and Revaner's first victim was the second. Short of bringing back the dead spirit to speak, Orm was unlikely to discover what the circumstance had been.

  Orm had recently removed himself to Sandast from the vicinity of Kingsford until a certain party returned to his homeland. A business deal had gone awry, and it wasn't particularly healthy for Orm to linger in the vicinity of Duke Arden's city. Although his original customer was no longer available, it had occurred to Orm that the information he possessed could easily be sold elsewhere. Sandast, for instance. And it was in the course of trying to find a buyer for that information that he had come upon Revaner in the moment of his third attempt at transformation.

  Now, there had been rumors of a madman stalking the streets at night and murdering unwary victims by driving an enormous spike or spear through their chests, but Orm had dismissed it. After all, such a person would hardly be inconspicuous, loping about with a spike the size of a small tree trunk over his shoulder! So when his search for a client took him out into the dense fog of a typical Sandast evening, he wasn't particularly worried about coming across anything worse than a pickpocket or back-alley assaultist, either of which he could handle easily.

  Not until he rounded a corner and found himself in a dimly lit cul-de-sac, facing a scene out of nightmare.

  Filtered light fell down from windows above onto the murderer and his latest victim, and the murderer was a great deal more conspicuous than a madman with a spike. A huge black bird, with the body of a street-singer impaled on its lancelike beak, glared at Orm out of angry red eyes. Blood was everywhere, turning the dust of the street into red mud, plastering the feathers of the bird in sticky tufts, splattered against the peeling walls of the buildings surrounding the cul-de-sac. Orm had been so startled, and so fascinated, that instead of running, he had simply stood and stared.