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

  They waited until the street was empty of traffic, and stepped out as if they belonged in the house they had just left, on the chance that someone might be looking out a window. Thieves and escaped prisoners were not supposed to stroll out like a pair of down-at-the-heels gentry.

  It was a long, weary walk to the Chapel, and they had to stop often, so that T’fyrr could rest. But when they got within a few blocks of the Chapel, they were swarmed.

  But not by guards looking for them, nor by the mages’ men, but by Nightingale’s pack of children. Tam had taken word ahead, which Nightingale had not expected him to do, and the children must have been waiting, watching, along every possible route to the Chapel.

  A wheelbarrow appeared as if conjured; the children coaxed the Haspur into it—he had no tail and very little in the way of wing feathers to get in the way of sitting, now—and a team of a dozen rushed him along the street faster than Nightingale could run. She caught up with them at the entrance to the Chapel, her side aching, but her heart lighter than she’d had any reason to expect when she had set out a few hours ago.

  Father Ruthvere was waiting for them; he opened the door to the Chapel just enough to let them inside, and shut it again quickly.

  “They’ve been here looking for you,” he told Nightingale. “They have warrants for you and T’fyrr both.”

  His thin face was creased with worry and exhaustion, and her heart sank. Warrants? Already? How could they have gotten legal warrants past the King?

  “A warrant for T’fyrr?” she said incredulously. “But he’s in the King’s household, how could they get a warrant out on him?”

  “It’s part of the original warrant for the men who attacked the Deliambren,” the Priest told them, his mouth twisting into a grimace as he led them into the sanctuary. “The King already signed it; they’ve altered it to read ‘humans or nonhumans’ and they’re claiming that T’fyrr set up the attack in the first place—that the Deliambren Envoy recognized him, and that was why he kept asking for T’fyrr.”

  When T’fyrr made a growl of disgust, Nightingale only shrugged fatalistically. It figures. I shouldn’t have been so surprised. “It doesn’t have to be logical,” she pointed out, “it only has to be legal, and since, the King has already signed it and probably initialed the change, it’s legal. And me?”

  “You’re supposed to be the mysterious female who freed the attacker the Deliambren caught.”

  Father Ruthvere sighed and shook his head. “I haven’t a clue how they’re managing to get past the fact that you’d have had to be two places at the same time—”

  “If they have their way, it would never get to a trial where they’d have to produce proof,” she pointed out bitterly, feeling a surge of anger at High King Theovere, who had probably just signed the warrants without ever reading them once he was told what they were—vaguely—about. “When criminals can escape from locked dungeons or walk away, legally, it doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to see that two more ‘criminals’ could be murdered during an ‘escape attempt.’ And we don’t have any friends in high places or awkward relatives who might ask questions.”

  T’fyrr drooped despondently. “I had hoped that we had awakened Theovere to his sense of duty enough so that things like this, at least, could not happen. I thought he—”

  She took his arm, hoping to give him comfort. To have gone through all he had, only to be hit with more bad news, seemed grossly unfair.

  “Never mind,” Father Ruthvere said firmly. “You have sanctuary here, for as long as you like, and no one can pry you out of it since the Bishop is behind you. You can stay until you’re stronger, or your feathers have grown back, and fly out.”

  “But what about Nightingale?” T’fyrr asked instantly.

  She actually had an answer to that one, although she wouldn’t bring it up in front of Father Ruthvere. Well, an Elf who can appear in my room and disappear as well, can certainly manage to take me with him. She knew how he was doing it, of course; opening up Doors into Underhill wherever he chose. It took a tremendous amount of Magical power, but—

  But they might do it, just to tweak the noses of the human leaders and prove that the human mages are no match for them.

  “I can find a way to safety, love, trust me,” she said, and patted his arm reassuringly. “I found you, didn’t I?”

  T’fyrr still looked stricken, and she felt his despair enveloping him like a great black net. She tried to think of something, anything, to say—and swayed with sudden exhaustion, catching herself with one hand on a pillar just before she fell.

  Father Ruthvere took over, his expression mirroring his relief at having something immediate he could do. “Never mind all that now,” he said soothingly. “Tomorrow everything may change. Before anything can happen, you both need to rest, recover your strength.” He made shooing motions with his hands in the direction of the belltower. “Go!” he said. “The Bishop will be sending his own guards to make sure you aren’t taken from sanctuary by force. You won’t need to stay awake to avoid arrest. All you need to do is get your strength back.”

  Nightingale sighed with relief and let down her guard. Weariness came over her then, so potent it left her dizzy.

  Fortunately, they were not supposed to go up to the top of the belltower—for one thing, when the bells rang they would have risked deafness or even death up there. No, there was a well-insulated tiring room at the base of the tower that they would be living in for the next few days at the very least. It had a staircase that led directly up to the top of the tower, so that once T’fyrr grew his feathers back—a matter of two or three weeks, at a guess—he would have free access to one of the better take-off points in this district. If he had to fly out, and he left at night, no one would ever know.

  The two of them staggered into the tiring room to find that Father Ruthvere had been there before them, laying out bedding, wash water and a basin, even food. One set of bedding.

  But by the time they reached the doorway, they were so tired that all they cared about was the bedding. They literally collapsed into it, Nightingale only a fraction of a heartbeat behind T’fyrr, and curled up together in a comforting tangle of limbs. She pulled the blankets up over them both, as much to hide the sad state of his feathers as for warmth.

  He was asleep first; she listened to his regular breathing and allowed herself to weep, very quietly, with relief and joy. Not many tears, but enough that she had to wipe her face with a corner of a blanket before she was through. That released the last of her tension; she had only two thoughts before slumber caught her:

  We are as surely in prison here as in the gaol. We cannot leave without being taken by our enemies. We have been caged at last.

  It doesn’t matter as long as we are together.

  ###

  T’fyrr would never have known how long he slept if Father Ruthvere hadn’t told him.

  “Three days?” he said incredulously. “Three days?”

  The Priest nodded, and T’fyrr shook his head. “I believe you, but—”

  “Well, you woke up long enough to eat and—ahem,” Father Ruthvere said, blushing. “But other than that, you slept. Nightingale, too,” he added as an afterthought. “Though she stayed awake a bit longer than you did.”

  Probably healing me. That would account for how well I feel and the memories of music in my dreams.

  T’fyrr sighed and roused his feathers. “Well, what has been happening? Are we still under siege?” he asked. “Or are our enemies satisfied to have us boarded up and out of the way?”

  Father Ruthvere played with his prayer beads. “The latter, I suspect,” he said after a moment. “You obviously cannot press charges against your captors since you are a fugitive yourself, and as for Nightingale—” He shrugged. “The nonhumans are in an uproar, but there is no one to lead them and Theovere—”

  “And Theovere is near death.”

  They all turned as one, T’fyrr feeling the blood draining from his
skin and leaving him cold everywhere there were no feathers.

  Harperus stood in the door to the tiring room, face drawn and as pale as his hair, his costume little more than a pair of plain trews and an embroidered shirt. “Thank the Stars you’re awake at last,” he said without preamble, as both Nightingale and T’fyrr stared at him, trying to make some sort of sense out of his first statement. “Theovere was attacked and is in a coma, his physicians are baffled—” He held up his hands as T’fyrr mantled what was left of his wings in anger. “Wait, let me tell this from the beginning.”

  T’fyrr subsided. “Make it short, Old Owl,” he rumbled. “None of your damned Deliambren meanderings!”

  Harperus nodded. “Shortly, then. The marvelous music box broke down completely this morning, and no amount of fiddling by Lord Levan would get it working again. The High King sent pages looking for you, and found me instead, and I gave him an earful.”

  The Deliambren crossed his arms over his chest, his dour expression reflecting a smoldering anger beneath the stoic surface. “I told him about your vanishing, the warrants that he had signed, the attacks and the kidnapping. I told him that now that the warrants had been signed, by his hand, neither you nor Nightingale had any protection or rights under the law. He was very—stunned.”

  T’fyrr only growled; he had lost all patience with the once-great High King about the time his captors had pulled out his third primary.

  I am not entirely certain I even want to help him now . . .

  “I told him the Church had you in sanctuary,” Harperus continued, “convinced that both of you were innocent of any wrongdoing. And I showed him how all those things that you had been hinting at were true, all the abuses of nonhumans, all the things that had been happening to human and nonhumans alike. I guessed that he might have been so thoroughly shaken up that he might actually listen instead of dismissing it all.”

  “Well, was he?” T’fyrr asked. It would take a miracle—

  But evidently that miracle had occurred. “Enough to issue orders immediately revoking the warrants on you two, and to take the Seneschal and a gaggle of secretaries into a corner and start drafting interkingdom edicts granting basic rights to all peoples of all species,” Harperus said with a note of triumph. But his triumph faded immediately. “That was when, according to the Seneschal, that mysterious woman struck. He called for breakfast; it arrived, and with it a lace handkerchief and a message. Theovere picked it up, opened it, and read it before any of the bodyguards even thought to look at it first—and he collapsed on the spot.” Harperus shook his head. “I looked at him, and I’m baffled. There’s no contact poison I know of that would work that way, and he shows no other signs of poisoning other than being in a coma no one can wake him from.”

  T’fyrr looked aghast at Nightingale, who only nodded, her lips compressed into a thin line. “If our enemy can hire mages to pluck T’fyrr from the sky, she can certainly hire a mage to write a note-spell to try to disable or loll Theovere. There was nothing on the note when they looked at it, right?”

  “Right,” Harperus replied, looking at Nightingale with respect and a little awe. “But it didn’t kill him—”

  “It doesn’t have to,” she pointed out. “If he is in a coma, he could stay that way indefinitely. The Advisors can reign as joint Regents on the pretense that someday he might wake up. This could go on for years. Come to think of it, that’s better than killing him for their purposes. If a new High King was selected, they’d all be out of their positions.”

  “But what can we do?” T’fyrr asked, puzzlement overlaid with despair. Now—we have no choice. Nightingale and I may have a day or so to escape while our enemies obtain new warrants for us, but what of all the nonhumans in the Twenty Kingdoms?

  What is there left for them but to gather what they can and flee? “We are not physicians, and even if we were, surely the Kings own doctors know best what is good for him.”

  “The King’s doctors are as baffled as I am,” Harperus replied. “And I am baffled by the message I received less than an hour ago.” He raised his eyebrows and looked straight at Nightingale as if he suspected her of some duplicity. “The messenger seemed human or Deliambren, but had—unusual eyes and ears. And he spoke in riddles.”

  The corner of Nightingale’s mouth twitched. “Go on,” she said. “That sounds like an Elf to me. I happen to know there’s one—ah—in the area.”

  In answer, Harperus handed her a piece of paper. She took it, and read it aloud for the benefit of T’fyrr and Father Ruthvere.

  “Tell the Bird of Night and the Bird of the King that the High King can be sung back from the darkness in which he wanders, if the guard-dog is released to return to his home. Half of the futures hold Theovere high, half of them hold him fallen. If the two Birds should sing to him as one, hearts bound, wrongs remembered but not cherished, their enemies may be confounded. No Elf, nor human mage, nor brightly conceited artificer can command the power to accomplish this, for this is the Magic of the heart and the Sight.’ ”

  “I’m not certain I care for that ‘brightly conceited,’ part,” Harperus muttered under his breath. Nightingale must have heard him anyway, for she treated him to an upraised eyebrow.

  “Does this mean that Nightingale and I have—the ability to sing him out of this?” T’fyrr said incredulously. “But how?”

  “It was accomplished by Magic,” Nightingale pointed out. “It’s possible that Magic can undo it. There might even be a mage somewhere inside his mind, holding him unconscious; if that’s the case, Bardic Magic could reach Theovere in a way no other magic could duplicate—or block.”

  T’fyrr thought about that for a moment, and nodded. “I believe that I see,” he said, and roused what was left of his feathers with a hearty shake before straightening up and holding his head high. “Those in a coma are said to understand what happens around them. We must go, of course—”

  “Wait a moment!” Harperus objected, blocking the door. “I haven’t told you the rest of it. If you flee now, you’ll be outrunning warrants that won’t ever have a chance to catch up with you before you cross a nonhuman border. If you stay, try, and don’t succeed—the Advisors are spreading the rumor that Nightingale is the female assassin and in the hire of T’fyrr. They’re saying as proof of this that there was no trouble until T’fyrr arrived at Court. If Theovere dies, you’ll die—and if he simply remains in a coma, you’ll die anyway. Someone has decided that you two are the obstacles that need to be removed for the Advisors to have a free hand again.”

  Nightingale dropped the paper at her feet. “That doesn’t matter,” she said steadily, and glanced over at T’fyrr.

  I was wrong to discount Theovere. He can be reached; he was nearly his old self before they struck him down. We must help him, for his own sake, and for the sake of all those who are depending on us.

  His heart swelled with pride and love for her. “She is right,” he agreed. “It does not matter. Our enemies are counting on our cowardice. We must teach them better. And—” He hesitated for a moment, as the last of his anger with Theovere washed away. “And the High King needs us,” he concluded. “If we desert him—we are no better than they. Perhaps, we are worse. We will try, for nonhumans and humans alike.”

  Harperus wordlessly stood aside, and the two of them walked out of the tiring room, through the Chapel and out into the street.

  High King Theovere needs us, and he is the Twenty Kingdoms, for better or worse. With luck on our side—

  —perhaps we can make it, “for better.”

  ###

  Nightingale settled at the High King’s side, next to T’fyrr. The Haspur looked very odd, with patches of down-feathers showing where coverts had been taken, with his wings denuded, with reddened, visible scars and with not even a stump of a tail.

  No one could deny his dignity, however; a dignity that transcended such imperfections.

  That dignity had gotten them past the Bodyguards to the Captain, and from
there to the one person T’fyrr thought might still back them: the Seneschal. The Captain and the Lord Seneschal had been skeptical of their claims to be able to reach Theovere by music—but they were also no friends of the King’s Physician. The Seneschal simply didn’t trust someone who was often in and out of the suites of the other Advisors. The Captain just didn’t trust him, period. It was his opinion that there had been too much talk of purgings and bleedings, and not enough of things that would strengthen rather than weaken a patient.

  So the Captain of the King’s Bodyguard chose a time when the Advisors were all huddled together in Council, threw out the Physician and smuggled them in.

  “Now what?” T’fyrr asked her as she surveyed Theovere’s bed. Theovere was in it, somewhere in the middle, hardly visible for all the pillows and feather comforters piled atop him, and lost in the vast expanse of it. The bed itself was big enough to sleep three Gypsy families and still have room for the dogs. “Do we need to have physical contact with him?”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied as the Captain moved a little in silent protest to that suggestion. He might not trust the Physician, but he also made no bones about the fact that his trust for them was very limited. “No, there’s nothing we can do with a physical contact that we can’t do without it.”

  She turned to the Captain then, as something occurred to her. “You were there when he collapsed, weren’t you?”

  The beefy man nodded, face red with chagrin and anger at himself. “And why I didn’t think—”

  “You’re not at fault,” she interrupted gently. “There should have been no way for a note to get to the King that hadn’t been checked for problems first. Unless—”

  He looked sharply at her. “Unless?”

  “Unless that note was put on the tray by one of the King’s Advisors and had the seal of the Council on it,” she said, and got the satisfaction of seeing his eyes narrow with speculation. “Now, I know if I were an Advisor to the High King, knowing that the King wasn’t getting any younger, and suspecting that a successor might be named soon who would want his own Advisors in place . . .” She let her voice trail off and raised an eyebrow significantly.