The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III Read online

  All of that flitted through her thoughts as a background to T’fyrr’s terrible pain, and to the tears that scalded her own cheeks. But there was a further cost to this ahead for her. She had thought that she had opened herself to him completely before; but now, as she held him and sensed that this would bring him little or no ease, she realized that she had still held something of herself in reserve. Nothing less than all of herself would do at this moment—because of what he was.

  The Haspur had an odd, sometimes symbiotic relationship with the humans who shared their aeries and villages. Most of the time, it never went any deeper than simple friendship, the kind she herself shared with the Elves who had gifted her with her bracelets.

  But sometimes, it went deeper, much deeper, than that.

  She had always known, intellectually, that she was not the only human to have her peculiar gift—or curse—of feeling the needs and the emotions of others. She had never met anyone else with the gift to the extent that she had it, though. She had never encountered another human who found him- or herself pulled into another’s soul by his pain or his joy; never found one who was in danger of losing himself when bombarded by the emotions of others.

  But it seemed that there were many more of the humans who lived among the Haspur with that curse—or gift. Their gifts were—at least from what she gleaned from T’fyrr—as formidable as her own. And for those who bore that burden, a relationship with a Haspur could never be “simple” anything.

  They felt, and felt deeply, but had no outlet for their extreme emotions. At the ragged edge of pain, or sorrow, or that dreadful agony of the soul, the Haspur could only try to endure, dumbly, as their emotions tore them up from within, a raging beast that could not break free from the cage of their spirits.

  But humans did have that outlet—at least, the humans he called “Spirit Brothers” could provide it, by becoming unhesitatingly one, without reservations, with their friends, and snaring the pain.

  Becoming one, without reservations. Giving all, and taking all, halving the pain by enduring it themselves.

  She had one lover in all her life—one real lover, as opposed to friends who shared their bodies with her. She had not known; she was so young, she had not known that when she gave all of herself, the one she gave to might not be able to give in return—that he might not even realize what she had done. She had not thought she was the only one with this curse—or gift—and had supposed that her lover would surely feel all that she felt.

  He didn’t, of course. He hadn’t a clue; he’d thought she was the same as all the other ladies he’d dallied with, and she lacked the words, the skill, the heart to tell him.

  When Raven had left her the first time, it had felt as if something that was a part of her had been ripped away from her soul. She smiled and bled, and he smiled and sauntered off with a song on his lips.

  And he had never understood. He still didn’t; not to this day.

  She had learned to accept that, and had forgiven him for not knowing and herself for her own ignorance. But she had vowed it would not happen again and had never opened herself to another creature that deeply, never under any other circumstances, until this moment. But nothing less would do now, but to give everything of herself, for nothing less would begin the healing T’fyrr needed so desperately.

  She did not know, could not know, what would come of this. Perhaps an ending like the end of her love affair with Raven, and pain that would live in her forever, a place inside her spirit wounded and scarred and never the same again.

  But she could bear the pain, and she could heal herself again, over time. She had done it once, and she could again. T’fyrr could not, not without her help, for he did not truly understand the emotions festering inside his soul.

  Great power demands that the user consider the repercussions of actions. She had the power; she had long ago accepted the responsibility, or so she had thought.

  I was fooling myself. 1 should have known that the Lady would put this on me.

  But this was no time to have second thoughts; really, she had made all her choices long before she met T’fyrr, and this was only the ultimate test of those choices. What was it that Peregrine had said to her a few months ago? She had known at the time that he was trying to warn her of an ordeal to come—

  You cannot speak truly of the path without walking it.

  And she could not. Not without repudiating everything that she said, that she thought, that she was.

  So she opened the last of her heart to him, opened her soul’s arms to him and gathered him up inside the place where her own deepest secrets and darkest fears lay—she brought him inside, and she gave him all that she was, and all the comfort that she had.

  ###

  T’fyrr did not know how he had gotten to Nightingale’s room; he did not even realize that he was talking to her until he heard his own voice, hoarse and cracking, telling her things he had never intended to share with anyone.

  Especially not with her.

  She was too fragile, too gentle—how could she hear these horrible things and not hate him? He knew she was one of the kind who felt things; he had sensed that the first time he met her.

  The same as the Spirit Brothers, perhaps.

  But not the same, not with the training or the knowledge, surely. The idea of murder—it would surely send her fleeing him in utter revulsion.

  Only Harperus knew he had killed. Harperus had told him that it was an accident, something he could not have helped.

  Harperus had not even begun to understand.

  The Spirit Brothers of the Haspur would have been able to help him bear the guilt, although it would have meant that he and the Brother who chose to help him would have been in debt to one another for all their lives, bonded in soul and perhaps in body as well. The latter happened, sometimes, though not often. But the Spirit Brothers, male and female, were far away and out of reach, and he had no hope of reaching them for years, even decades . . .

  At some point in his babbling, it began to dawn on him that Nightingale not only understood, she felt as he felt. She wept for him as a Spirit Brother would have wept, gave him her tears in an outpouring of release for both of them.

  Something in him turned to her as a flower turns toward the sun, as a drowning creature seizes upon a floating branch. Something in her answered that need, granted him light, kept him afloat. He was beyond thinking at that point, or he would never have let her do what she did. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, not for her! She was a Gypsy, a Free Bard, who should be as free as the bird that was her namesake, and not bound as a Spirit Brother!

  But it was already done, before thoughts even began to form in the back of his terror-clouded mind.

  She stayed awake with him until his internal sense told him that the sun was rising, comforting and holding him, and even preening his feathers as another Haspur would—a Haspur, or a Spirit Brother.

  He did not understand how she knew to do this; he did not understand why he accepted it. He was beyond understanding now, beyond anything except feeling. It was feeling that held him here, weak as a newborn eyas, simply accepting the comfort and the understanding as an unthinking eyas would accept them.

  Finally, he slept, exhausted.

  ###

  When he woke again, she was there beside him, stroking his wings with a hand so gentle it had not even disturbed his sleep, although he had felt it and it had soothed him out of the nightmares he had suffered for so long. He blinked up at her, astonished that she was still there.

  Silence stretched between them; he felt as if he must be the one to break it. Finally, he said the only thing that was in his mind.

  “You should hate me—” And he waited to see that hate and contempt in her eyes for what he had done.

  Her expression did not change, not by the slightest bit.

  “How could I hate you?” she asked, softly. “You hate yourself more than enough for both of us. I want to help you, T’fyrr. I hope you will
let me.”

  He blinked at her again, and slowly sat up. She shook her hair back out of her face, and rubbed her eyes with her hand as she sat up too.

  “I think that there is something that you believe you need to do, to make up for what you did,” she said then. “I will help you, if that is what you want. I will come with you to the King, and stand beside you in your task. I will give you my music, and I will give you my magic; you can have one or both, they are freely given.”

  “And when the King sees again the things that he does not want to see?” T’fyrr asked, very slowly. “Will that—”

  She nodded, deliberately. “I believe that will be what you need, as your duty and your penance. It will not be easy, and it will not be pleasant.”

  He sighed, and yet it was not because of a heaviness of spirit. Somehow, in truly accepting this burden, his spirit felt lighter rather than crushed further down. “No penance is,” he replied somberly. Somehow, in the dark despair of last night, he had come to a decision—hopefully, it was one of wisdom and not of weakness and expediency. Theovere was too far down the road of irresponsibility to be recalled by ordinary means. “I will need your magic, if you will give it,” he said, feeling as if he were making a formal request or performing a solemn ceremony with those simple words.

  She nodded, and bowed her head a little. “Since you will have it, I will give it,” she said, making her words a pledge as well as an answer.

  Then she raised her lovely, weary eyes to his again and smiled tiredly. “And you should eat—for that matter, so should I. We can do nothing half-starved.”

  Those words, which would have made him wince away less than a day ago, only made him aware that he was ravenous. “And after we eat?” he asked. “Will you come with me to the Palace?”

  “Yes.” She brushed her hair back over her shoulders. “It is time that I accepted my responsibilities as well, and stopped hiding in corners behind the name of Tanager. But I will not,” she added, with a warning look in her eyes, “be Nightingale. Not here, and not now. I do not trust Tyladen’s friends, nor Harperus’ associates. They speak too lightly and too often to too many people. They can afford to; they have many protections. I am only a Gypsy, and far from the wagons of my Clan. What few Magics I have will not protect me if powerful men come hunting.”

  “As you are far from your people, I am far from the aeries of mine,” he said impulsively, laying his hand over hers. “So perhaps we should fly our pattern together, from now on?”

  “And we should begin now.” She rose at that, and stretched, lithe and graceful. “Let me get clean, first, then Lyrebird and T’fyrr will eat together, and he will take her to the Palace to present her as his accompanist. Or should you go and make some formal request for an accompanist? Should this be an official, perhaps a royal, appointment?”

  He actually managed a smile at that. “It would be easiest simply to do so,” he pointed out. “Just as Harperus did with me. If the King hears you once, he will see to it that the appointment simply happens. He is not about to put up with interference from his Council a second time over so ‘trivial’ a matter as his personal Musicians. They believe it is trivial, and it is both unfortunate and our good luck that he does not. This one time, his obsession can work for us.”

  She paused for a moment, one hand on the door to the bathroom, then nodded. “I think I see that. It is a risk, but so is everything we are doing.”

  She closed the door behind her, and there came the sound of running water from beyond it. He lay back down on her bed, closing his eyes for a moment, intending to plan out the next few hours in detail. He would have to get her past the guards, first, of course . . .

  But his body had other ideas, and he dozed off, to awaken again with her hand on his arm. She was dressed in one of her most impressive costumes, and he had little doubt that the Ladies of the Court would attempt to emulate her dress before too long. He also had a shrewd notion that they would not succeed.

  He got up, finding himself less stiff than he would have expected, given that he had spent the night in a human bed. She sent the bed back up into the wall with a touch of her hand; slipped the carrying case over her larger harp, and slung it across her back. It did not look as incongruous as he would have thought.

  “Shall we?” she asked, gesturing to the door. He led the way; she locked the door after them both.

  She disappeared into Tyladen’s office for a moment, presumably to tell him where they were going and how long they expected to be gone. She is one of their chief attractions; she owes her putative employer that much, I suppose. After a hearty meal in the single eating nook open at this early hour, they went out into the street together. There was no sign of last night’s altercation, but the moment they crossed the threshold of Freehold, his hackles went up, and he moved into the center of the street, away from dangerous overhangs.

  It did not escape his notice that she made no objection to this, that, in fact, her eyes scanned the mostly deserted street with as much wariness as his.

  They stepped out together onto the cobblestones of the street, both of them dreadfully out of place in this part of the city. Between his appearance and her costume, anyone looking for them was likely to find them immediately.

  Well, there was no help for it.

  Nightingale walked beside him as serenely as if the previous night had never happened, as if she did not look like an invitation to theft. He tried to imitate her and actually succeeded to a certain extent.

  But there was one thing, at least, that he was going to do. He had coins in his garment, plenty of them, and he was not going to appear at the gate to the Palace with her, walking afoot like a pair of vagabonds. As soon as they reached one of the more respectable sections of the city, he hailed a horse-drawn conveyance, an open carriage with two seats that faced each other, and gestured her up into it.

  She raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. He took his place beside her, although it was dreadfully uncomfortable and he had to hold his wings and tail at odd angles to get them to fit inside.

  Now, how am I going to get her inside the gate? The guards aren’t going to want to let her pass, she hasn’t a safe-conduct or an invitation . . . He worried at the problem without coming to a satisfactory solution as the streets grew progressively busier, and stares more covert. This was not the only conveyance on the street, but many of the others were private vehicles, whose occupants gazed at them with surprise. He ignored them, trying to think what he could do with Nightingale. Perhaps he could leave her at the gate, go in, find the Seneschal and get a safe-conduct for her—

  But that would leave her alone at the gate, and anyone who spotted her with me on the way here could—do whatever they wanted. She is with me, which makes her presumably valuable to me.

  Would anyone dare to try anything under the noses of the guards?

  Oh yes, they could and would. Especially if my unknown adversary is highly placed in the Court. A little thing like a kidnapping at the gate would hardly bother him. He could make it a private arrest, for instance.

  There was reasonable foot traffic at this hour, and the conveyance made excellent time; not as good as he would have flying, of course, but still quite respectable. The two horses drawing it were able to trot most of the way.

  They reached the gate long before he had come to any satisfactory solution to his problem. But, as it happened, the solution was waiting for him, standing beside the guards with a smaller and far more elaborate and elegant, gilded version of the conveyance waiting beside him. The Palace grounds were extensive enough that there was an entire fleet of conveyances and their drivers available for those who lived here, just to ferry them around within the walls.

  Nob? What’s he doing here?

  “Is that someone you know?” Nightingale asked, as his eyes widened in surprise.

  “Yes, it’s my servant—but how did he know I was coming in this morning, and why did he order a conveyance?” T’fyrr asked, more as a
rhetorical question than because he expected an answer.

  But Nightingale shrugged. “I told Tyladen where I was going. Tyladen probably foresaw the difficulty of getting me inside without waiting around at the gate and sent word to Harperus. Old Owl must have exercised some of his diplomatic persuasion and got me an invitation or a safe-conduct. I expect that’s why your lad is here; to bring the pass and to get us to the Palace in the manner suitable to your rank.”

  T’fyrr nodded; it made sense. But Nightingale added, “The one thing I don’t want is to run into Harperus. He knows me on sight, and I don’t want any of the Deliambrens aware that I’m here.”

  He grimaced; at this point, that was a very difficult request to satisfy. “I don’t know how—”

  But she interrupted him. “I can keep him from noticing me as long as I stay in the background. If Old Owl shows up at all, T’fyrr, you keep him busy, please? Don’t let him think about talking to me. Tell him I’m shy, whatever it takes to get him to leave me alone. Make up something—or better yet, tell him about the attack last night. That should get his mind off me.”

  He wasn’t at all sure he could do that, but he nodded again. “I can try,” he said truthfully, and then the conveyance stopped in front of the gate, and it was too late to discuss anything more.

  Nob had indeed brought “Lyrebird’s” safe-conduct, although from here on she would have to come and go through a lesser gate elsewhere; she was only a lowly accompanist, after all, and not a Sire dubbed by the High King’s own hand. Nob chattered excitedly at a high rate of speed, which kept T’fyrr from having to say much and Nightingale from having to say anything. The safe-conduct was from Theovere himself; Old Owl had gone straight to the highest authority available. He must have described Lyrebird in the most glowing terms; the King was most anxious to hear this remarkable player from the infamous Freehold.