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

  He should definitely not have been watching the road as if he was watching for her.

  She knew that he was going to hail her as soon as she saw him; the scene had that feeling of inevitability about it. She thought about trying to ignore him—but what was the use? If Leverance was not the next person to request her to go to Lyonarie, someone else surely would be.

  Omen or conspiracy, it seems that I am caught.

  So she led her donkey toward him, feeling weary to the bone, and wondering if for once she might get a real answer to her question of “why me?” After all, the Deliambrens didn’t believe in portents and omens. Their faith was placed on machinery, on curiosity, on discovery, on something they called “science.”

  “Don’t tell me,” she said, before he could open his mouth even to greet her. “You want me to go to Lyonarie to find out why the High King has been neglecting his duties.”

  Deliambrens resembled humans for the most part, far more than did, say, a Mintak. Leverance wore ordinary enough human garb: a jerkin, trews and boots of leather, and a shirt of what appeared to be silk. She knew better than to assume that the garments were as ordinary as they seemed, however, for nothing about a Deliambren was ever ordinary. Like all Deliambrens, the long, pale hair growing along the line of his cheekbones was immaculately groomed and blended invisibly into the identical shoulder-length hair of his head. His eyebrows were similar to those of an Elfin the way they rose toward his temples, but were thicker and as long as a man’s thumb. Leverance fancied himself as something of an adventurer, so his hair was simply cut off straight rather than being styled into some fantastic shape as many Deliambrens sported. Nightingale sighed, but only to herself, knowing that Leverance was certain he was “blending in” with his surroundings. It would be quite impossible to convince him otherwise.

  He stared at her with a flash of surprise, quickly covered. “Whyever do you say that?” he asked innocently. Too innocently.

  “Because every other person I know seems to want me to go there,” she replied tartly, and sat down on the wooden bench across from him. The wood of the table was smooth and bleached to grey by sun and rain, and another time she would have been quite pleased for a chance to sit here in the shade on such a broiling day. She had lost what patience she had and decided it was time to show it. “You may order me something to eat and drink, and you may pay for it. If you are going to try to get me to go to Lyonarie, you might as well begin with a bribe.” She kept the tone of her voice tart, to show him she was not going to tolerate any evasions, no matter how clever.

  Both of Leverance’s eyebrows twitched, but he summoned the serving girl with a single lifted finger and placed an order for wine, cheese, and sausage pastries. The serving girl, dressed far more neatly than Nightingale in her buff linen skirt, bodice, and white blouse, glanced covertly at the Gypsy, her contemptuous expression saying all too clearly that she could not imagine why this exotic Deliambren would be ordering luncheon for such a scruffy stranger, and a Gypsy to boot.

  Nightingale straightened abruptly, gathering all her dignity about her, then caught the girl’s glance and held it, just long enough that the girl flushed, paled, then hurried off. Now, at least, there would be no more covert looks and poorly veiled contempt.

  “I wish I knew how you did that,” Leverance said with interest and admiration.

  Nightingale shrugged. There was no explaining it to him; he simply wouldn’t understand why spending most of her time with Elves and other nonhumans made Nightingale seem strange and fey to those of her own kind. Most people, if asked why they avoided her after one direct confrontation, would stammer something about her expression—how they were sure she saw things that “normal folk” couldn’t, and wouldn’t want to. Well, and I do, but that is not why I unnerve them.

  As long as the impression she left with them caused them to leave her alone, she planned to cultivate the effect. If she had reasons to be fonder of her own company, and of nonhumans, than of her own kind, it was none of their business.

  “Well,” Leverance said, when the girl returned with the food and vanished again with unseemly haste, “as it happens, I was sent to find you, and to ask you to go to Lyonarie.”

  He laid the food out before her: wine in a pottery bottle, beaded with moisture; a thick slice of cheese and crusty rolls, beautifully brown pastries; a small pottery firkin of butter. She took her time; selecting a roll and buttering it, then pouring herself a cup of wine.

  “Why?” she asked, then amended her question. “No, never mind. Why me?” She bit into the roll; it might just as well have been straw, for she could not taste it.

  Now I discover if this is simple mortal conspiracy, or something I cannot escape.

  Leverance stroked the hair on his cheekbones thoughtfully. “Several reasons, actually, although you are not the only person being asked to go there. And you can refuse.”

  Not the only person? That’s new. Or does he mean that it is only his people who are sending more than one person to gather their information?

  She snorted delicately. “You still haven’t answered the question.”

  He held up a finger. “You are very observant, and yet you are very adept at making yourself unobserved.” He held up a second finger. “You have served as a willing collector of information for your people, for the Elves and for mine in the past.” A third finger joined the other two. “For some reason that my people are unable to fathom, things happen around you, and you are able to influence things through no medium that we recognize, and which other people refer to as ‘magic’. We don’t believe in magic, but we do believe you have some kind of power that acts in a way we can’t measure. We think that will help keep you safe and sane where other investigators have failed.”

  Other investigators? This was the first time Nightingale had heard about others—and the chill now filled her, body, soul and heart. She put down the roll, all appetite gone. The still, hot air could not reach that chill to warm her.

  “How, failed?” she asked in a small voice.

  He correctly interpreted her frozen expression. “Nothing serious—no one died, for Hadron’s sake! They were just found out, somehow, and they were discredited in ways that forced them to leave the city. We think we failed by choosing someone too high in rank. You know how to extract information of all kinds—Harperus says that you have the ability to sieve gold out of the gutters. That is why you.” He scratched his head, then added, “Besides, the roads north and south of here are closed. North the bridge is out, and south Sire Yori has put up a roadblock and he’s taking all beasts of burden as ‘army taxes.’ You could only go on to the King’s Highway or retrace your steps.”

  Nightingale flushed, and mentally levied a few choice Gypsy curses on the Deliambren for choosing the precise words guaranteed to make her go on. Gypsy lore held that to retrace one’s steps was to unmake part of one’s life—and you had better be very sure that was something you wanted and needed to do before you tried it.

  Leverance blinked benignly at her as she muttered imprecations, just as if he didn’t know the implications of his words. “Well,” he asked. “Can you go? Will you help?”

  Signs and portents, omens and forebodings. I do not want to go, but it seems I have no choice. But she was not going to tell him that. For one thing, if they had sent others on this path, others who had been found out, that argued for someone knowing in advance that they had been sent. She trusted those Deliambrens that she personally knew, but within very strict limits—just as she trusted, within limits, those Elves she knew. But there were Gypsies that she would not trust, so why should every Elf, every Deliambren, or even every Free Bard be entirely trustworthy?

  Talaysen probably didn’t know about the others. The Elves might not have thought it worth stooping to ask help of mere mortals until now. Only the Deliambrens know the whole of this; but if there was someone acting as an informant against their agents, there is no reason why it could not have been an Elf, a Deliambre
n, or even one of us. Everyone has a price; it is only that most honest folk have prices that could never be met.

  “I will think about it,” she temporized, giving him the same answer she had given Master Wren. “My road goes in that direction; I cannot promise that I will end up there.”

  If there is an informant, damned if I will give you the assurance that I will be the next one to play victim! It is too easy for a lone woman, Gypsy or no, to simply disappear.

  She smiled sweetly and ate a bite of tasteless roll, as if she had not a care in the world. “I am alone and afoot, and who knows what could happen between here and there? I make no promises I cannot keep.”

  Leverance made a sour face. “You’ll think about it, though?” he persisted. “At least keep the option open?”

  She frowned; she really did not want to give him even that much, but—she had a certain debt to his people. “Did I not say that I would?”

  Leverance only shrugged. “You hedge your promises as carefully as if you were dealing with Elves,” he told her sourly, as she packed up the rest of the uneaten lunch in a napkin to take with her. “Don’t you know by now that you can trust us?”

  The suns heat faded again, although no clouds passed before it, and she took in a sharp breath as she steadied herself, looking down at the rough wood of the table, grey and lifeless, unlike the silver of her bracelet.

  Trust them. He wants me to trust them, the Elves want me to trust them, and Talaysen, damn his eyes, trusts me. There is too much asking and giving of trust in this. Her right hand clenched on the knot of the napkin; her left made a sign against ill-wishing, hidden in her lap.

  “I only pay heed to what my own eyes and ears tell me,” she said lightly, forcing herself to ignore her chill. “You should know that by now, since it is probably one of the other reasons why you picked me. Thank you for the meal.”

  She rose from the bench and untied her donkey from the handrail beside the road without a backward glance for him.

  “Are you sure you won’t—” Leverance began plaintively.

  Now she leveled a severe look at him, one that even he could read. “I gave you what I could promise, Deliambren. A nightingale cannot sing in a cage, or tethered by a foot to a perch. You would do well to remember that.”

  And with that, she led her donkey back out into the road. It was, after all, a long way to Lyonarie, and the road wasn’t growing any shorter while she sat.

  She only wished that she could feel happier about going there.

  CHAPTER TWO

  From the vantage of a low hill, at the top of the last crest of the King’s Highway, Lyonarie was a city guaranteed to make a person feel very small, entirely insignificant.

  That was Nightingale’s first impression of the metropolis, anyway. There was no end to it from where she stood; seated in the midst of a wide valley, it sprawled across the entire valley and more.

  It did not look inviting to her; like something carved of old, grey, sun-bleached wood or built out of dry, ancient bones, it seemed lifeless from here, and stifling. In a way, she wished that she could feel the same excitement that was reflected in the faces of the travelers walking beside her. Instead, her spirit was heavy; she hunched her shoulders against the blow to her heart coming from that grey blotch, and she wanted only to be away from the place. Heat-haze danced and shimmered, making distant buildings ripple unsettlingly. As she approached, one small traveler in a stream of hundreds of others, she had the strangest feeling that they were not going to the city, it was calling them in and devouring them.

  It devours everything: life, dreams, hope . . .

  The great, hulking city-beast was unlike any other major population center she had ever been in. There were no walls, at least not around the entire city, though there were suggestions of walled enclaves in the middle distance. That was not unusual in itself; many cities spilled beyond their original walls. It would have been very difficult to maintain such walls in any kind of state of repair, much less to man them. The city simply was; it existed, just as any living, growing thing existed, imbued with a fierce life of its own that required it to swallow anyone that entered and make him part of it, never to escape again.

  Was this the reason why I felt such foreboding? That was reason enough; for someone of Nightingale’s nature, the possibility of losing her own identity, of being literally devoured, was always a real danger.

  It was not just the heat that made her feel faint. Thousands of silent voices, dunning into my mind—thousands of people needing a little piece of me—thousands of hearts crying out for the healing I have . . . I could be lost in no time at all, here. She would have to guard herself every moment, waking and sleeping, against that danger.

  She took off her hat and wiped her forehead with her kerchief, wishing that she had never heard of Lyonarie.

  The shaggy brown donkey walked beside her, his tiny hooves clicking on the hard roadbed, with no signs that the heavy traffic on the road bothered him. Traffic traveled away from the city as well as toward it, right-hand side going in, left-hand side leaving, with heavy vehicles taking the center, ridden horses and other beasts coming next, and foot traffic walking along the shoulder. The road was so hard that Nightingale’s feet ached, especially in the arches, and her boots felt much too tight.

  She’d had a general description of the city last night from the innkeeper at the tavern she’d stayed in. From this direction, the King’s Highway first brought a traveler through what was always the most crowded, noisy, and dirty section of any city, the quarter reserved for trade.

  Oh, I am quite looking forward to that. Stench, heat, and angry people, what a lovely combination.

  About six or seven leagues from the city itself, the road had changed from hard-packed gravel to black, cracked pavement, a change that had given both Nightingale and her beast relief from the dust, but which gave no kind of cushioning for the feet. She knew by the set of the donkey’s ears that his feet hurt him, too. This grey-black stuff was worse than a dirt road for heat; on top of that, waves of heat radiated up from the pavement, and both she and the donkey were damp with sweat.

  I do wish I’d worn something other than this heavy linen skirt—and I wish I’d left off the leather bodice. I should have chosen a lighter set of colors than dark-green and black. This is too much to suffer in the name of looking respectable. I think I could bake bread under this skirt! She dared not kilt it up, either, not and still look like an honest musician and not a lady whose virtue was negotiable.

  The road up the valley toward Lyonarie led across flat fields, every inch cultivated and growing a variety of crops, until suddenly, with no warning, the fields were gone and buildings on small plots of land had taken their place.

  As if they had grown there, as well, like some unsavory fungus.

  These were small, mean houses, a short step up from the hovels of the very poor, crowded so closely together that a rat could not have passed between them. Made of wood with an occasional facing of brick or stonework, they were all a uniform, grimy grey, patched with anything that came to hand, and the few plants that had been encouraged to take root in the excuses for yards had to struggle to stay alive under the trampling feet of those forced off the roadway by more important or more massive traffic.

  The sight made her sick. How can anyone live like this? Why would anyone want to? What could possibly tempt anyone to stay here who didn’t have to? No amount of money would be worth living without trees, grass, space to breathe!

  The houses gave way just as abruptly a few moments later to warehouses two and three stories tall, and this was where the true city began.

  Those who ruled the city now showed their authority. A token gate across the road, a mere board painted in red and white stripes, was manned by a token guard in a stiff brown uniform. He paid no attention to her whatsoever as she passed beneath the bar of the gate. His attention was for anyone who brought more into the city than his own personal belongings. Those who drove carts
waved a stiff piece of blue paper at him as they passed—or if they didn’t have that piece of paper, pulled their wagons over to a paved area at the side of the road where one of a half-dozen clerks would march upon them with a grimly determined frown. No one cared about a single Gypsy with a donkey, assuming they recognized her as a Gypsy at all. She passed close by the guard, fanning herself with her hat in her free hand, as he lounged against the gatepost, picking his teeth with a splinter. She was near enough to smell the onions he had eaten for lunch and the beer he had washed them down with, and to see the bored indifference in his eyes.

  She was just one of a hundred people much like her who would pass this man today, and she knew it. There was virtue and safety in anonymity right now, and suddenly she was glad of the sober colors of her clothing. Better to bake than to be memorable.

  How could I have forgotten? I wanted to be sure that no one would remember me; there might be someone waiting and watching to see if I show up! It must be the heat, or all this emotion-babble . . .

  But the press of minds around her was a more oppressive burden than the heat. This was why she hated cities, and Lyonarie was everything she disliked most about a city, but constructed on a more massive scale than anything she had previously encountered. There were too many people here, all packed too closely together, all of them unconsciously suffering the effects of being so crowded. Most of them were unhappy and had no idea how to remedy their condition—other than pursuing wealth, which brought its own set of problems whether the pursuit succeeded or failed. Their strident emotions scratched at her nerves no matter how well she warded them out.

  Never mind that. I’m here, so now I need a plan, however sketchy. She hadn’t actually formulated a plan until now; she’d been hoping, perhaps, for some unavoidable reason not to go on to Lyonarie. Geas or fate—or not—here she was, and it was time to make some kind of a plan.