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

  Nightingale tried to imagine what this area might have looked like before the wooden tenements were built, but had to give up. She just could not picture it in her mind. Why would people have put so much open space between the buildings, then build the buildings so very tall? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to lay everything out flat, the way a small village was built? That way everyone could have his own separate dwelling, and one would not be forced to hear one’s neighbors through walls that were never thick enough for privacy . . .

  Ask anyone who has ever spent the night in an inn with newlyweds in the next room.

  Well, there was no telling what the ancestors had been thinking; their world was as alien to the Twenty Kingdoms now as that of any of the nonhumans. Nightingale certainly was not going to try to second-guess them.

  However, this area would be a good one in which to start her search. However much she disliked the crowding, she could hide herself better in a crowd than in more exclusive surroundings.

  At the first sign of a tiny cross-street, she pulled the donkey out of the stream of traffic and into the valley between two buildings, looking for a child of about nine or ten, one who was not playing with others, but clearly looking for someone for whom he could run an errand. Such a child would know where every inn and tavern was in his neighborhood, and would probably know which ones needed an entertainer.

  And people think that children know nothing . . .

  ###

  Nightingale kept her back quite stiff with indignation as she pulled her donkey away from the door of the Muleteer. Her guide—a girl-child with dirty hair that might have been blond if one could hold her under a stream of water long enough to find out—sighed with vexation. It was an unconscious imitation of Nightingale’s own sigh, and was close enough to bring a reluctant smile to the Gypsy’s lips.

  “Honest, mum, if I’d’a thunk he was gonna ast ye pony up more’n music, I’d’a not hev brung ye here,” the girl said apologetically.

  Nightingale patted the girl on one thin shoulder, and resolved to add the remains of her travel rations to the child’s copper penny. “You couldn’t have known,” she told the little girl, who only shook her head stubbornly and led Nightingale to a little alcove holding only a door that had been bricked up ages ago. There they paused out of the traffic, while the girl bit her lip and knitted her brows in thought.

  “Ye set me a job, mum, an’ I hevn’t dorfe it,” the child replied, and Nightingale added another mental note—to make this girl the first of her recruits. Her thin face hardened with businesslike determination. “I’ll find ye a place, I swear! Jest—was it only wee inns an taverns ye wanted?”

  Something about the wistful hope in the girl’s eyes made Nightingale wonder if she had phrased her own request poorly. “I thought that only small inns or taverns would want a singer like me,” she told the girl. “I’m not a Guild musician, and the harp isn’t a very loud instrument—”

  “So ye don’ mind playin’ where there’s others playin’ too?” the girl persisted. “Ye don’ mind sharin’ th’ take an’ th’ audience an’ all?”

  Well, that was an interesting question. She shook her head and waited to reply until after a rickety cart passed by. “Not at all. I’m used to ‘sharing’; all of us do at Faires, for instance.”

  A huge smile crossed the child’s face, showing a gap where her two front teeth were missing. “I thunk ye didn’ like other players, mum, so I bin takin’ ye places where they ain’t got but one place. Oh, I got a tavern-place that’s like a Faire, ’tis, an’ they don’ take to no Guildsmen neither. Ye foiler me, mum, an’ see if ye don’ like this place!”

  The child scampered off in the opposite direction in which they had been going, and Nightingale hauled the donkey along in her wake. The girl all but skipped, she was so pleased to have thought of this “tavern-place,” whatever it was, and her enthusiasm was quite infectious. Nightingale found herself hoping that this would be a suitable venue, and not just because her feet hurt, she was wilting with the heat, and her shoulders ached from hauling the increasingly tired and stubborn donkey.

  She also wanted to be able to reward this child, and not have to thread her way out of the neighborhood the little girl knew and hunt up a new guide. The streets were all in shadow now, although the heat hadn’t abated; much longer and it would be twilight. She would have to find at least a safe place to spend the night, then; it wasn’t wise for a stranger to be out in a neighborhood like this one after dark. In a smaller city she wouldn’t have worried so much, but she had heard of the gangs who haunted the back streets of Lyonarie by night; she was a tough fighter, but she couldn’t take on a dozen men with knives and clubs.

  The child turned to make certain that she was still following, and waved at her to hurry. Nightingale wished powerfully then for that rapport with animals that Peregrine and Lark seemed to share; if only she could convince the donkey that it was in his best interest to pick up his feet a little!

  But he was just as tired as she was, and surely he was far more confused. He’d never been inside a city at all, much less had to cope with this kind of foot-traffic, poor thing.

  The child slipped back to her side, moving like an eel in the crowd. “Tisn’t but three streets up, mum, just t’other side uv where ye met me,” she said, looking up into Nightingale’s face anxiously. “Oh, I swan, ye’ll like the place!”

  “I hope so,” the Gypsy replied honestly. “I can promise you, at least I won’t dislike it as much as I did the last!”

  The little girl giggled. “La, mum, ye’re furrin, an’ the Freehold, it’s got more furriners than I ken! Got Mintaks, got Larads, got Kentars, got a couple ’a Ospers, even! Half the folk come there be furrin, too!”

  Now that certainly made Nightingale stand up a bit straighten “Why all the—” She sought for a polite word for the nonhumans.

  “Why they got all the Fuzzballs?” the child asked innocently. “Well, ’cause other places, they don’ like Fuzzballs, they don’ like furriners, they even looks at ye down the nose if ye got yeller skin or sompin'. Not Freehold, no, they figger Fuzzball money spends as good nor better’n a Churcher. I like Freehold. I’d’a taken ye there fust, but I thunk ye wanted a place where ye wouldn’—ah—”

  “Where I wouldn’t have any competition?” Nightingale replied, laughing at the child’s chagrin. “Oh, my girl, I promise you I am sure enough of my own songs that I don’t have anything to fear from other musicians!”

  The child grinned her gap-toothed grin again and shrugged. “Ye’ll see,” she only said. “Ye’ll see if I be takin’ ye wrong. Freehold—it’s a fine place! Look—’tis right there, crost the street!”

  But the building the girl pointed to was not what Nightingale expected—

  The Gypsy blinked, wondering if the child was afflicted with some sort of mental disorder. This wasn’t a tavern or an inn building—it was a warehouse!

  It was one of the old, pre-Cataclysm buildings, four tall stories high, with a flat roof and black metal stairs running up the side of it from the second story to the rooftop, and more black metal bridges linking it and the buildings nearest it from roof to roof. She narrowed her eyes and tried to see if someone had partitioned off a little corner of it at ground level as a tavern, but there was no sign of any partitioning whatsoever. Whoever owned this building owned the whole thing. Set into the blank face of the wall was a huge sliding door, and a smaller entry-door was inset in it. This was a warehouse!

  But there was a sign above the entry door, and the sign did say The Freehold . . .

  The child scampered on ahead and pounded enthusiastically at the door. It opened, and she spoke quickly to someone Nightingale couldn’t see. By the time she managed to coax her willfully lagging donkey to the doorway, whoever had been there was gone, and the child was dancing from one foot to the other with impatience.

  “He’s gone t’ git the boss,” the child told her. “Ye wait here wit me, an’ the boss’ll be he
re in a short bit.”

  Nightingale looked up at the sign above her head, just to be sure. It did say The Freehold, that much hadn’t changed. But how could anyone ever make any kind of profit running a tavern in a place this size? The cost of fuel and candles alone would eat up all the profits!

  She tried to make a quick estimate of just how much it would cost to heat this huge cavern of a place in the winter; just as she came to the conclusion that she didn’t have the head for such a complicated calculation, the “boss” appeared in the door.

  A human of middle years, average in every way from his hair to his clothing, looked her up and down in surprise. “You are a Gypsy, aren’t you?” he said, before she could say anything to him. “And a Free Bard?”

  She nodded cautiously, but he only smiled, showing the same gap at the front of his teeth that the child boasted. “Well! In that case, we might be able to do some business. Will you enter?”

  “What about the beast?” she asked dubiously, keeping a tight hold on the donkey’s halter. She was not about to leave him outside, not in this neighborhood.

  “Bring him in; there’s a stable just inside the door,” the man replied readily enough. “If you have a big enough building, you can do anything you want, really, and the owner thought it would be nice if people didn’t have to go out into the weather to get their riding-beasts.”

  “Oh.” That was all she could say, really. It was all anyone could say. Who would have thought of having a stable inside your tavern?

  “Trust a Deliambren to think of something like that,” the man continued, as an afterthought. “He’s almost never here, of course, but he’s always coming up with clever notions for the place, and the hearth-gods know a Deliambren has the means to make anything work.”

  Ah. Now it makes sense! And now it made sense for a tavern to be situated in a warehouse, for only a Deliambren would have the means to heat the place—yes, and probably cool it in the summer, as well!—without going bankrupt.

  She turned to the girl, and held out the promised penny, and with the other hand fumbled the bag of travel food off the back of the packs. “Here, take this, too,” she said, holding it out as soon as the child accepted her penny with unconcealed glee and greed. “Can I find you in the same place if I need a guide again?”

  The child accepted the bag without asking what was in it—hardly surprising, since almost anything she was given would be worth something to her. Even the bag itself. She clutched the bag to her chest and nodded vigorously. “Yes, mum, ye jest ast fer Maddy, an’ if I ain’t there, I be there soon as I hear!” She grinned again, shyly this time. “I tol’ ye that ye’d like this place, mum, didn’ I jest?”

  “You did, and I don’t forget people who are clever enough to guess what I’d like, Maddy,” Nightingale told her. “Thank you.”

  Before she could say anything more, the child bobbed an awkward curtsey and disappeared into the crowd. The “boss” of the tavern was still waiting patiently for her to conclude her business with Maddy.

  “Don’t you think you ought to look us over and see what we can offer before you make a decision?” the man asked her, although his amused expression and his feelings, as loud as a shout, told her he was certain she would want to stay here. This was quite unlike the proprietor of the Muleteer, whose feelings of lust had run over her body like a pair of oily hands.

  She simply raised an eyebrow; he chuckled, and waved her inside.

  The doorway opened into a room—or, more correctly, an anteroom—paved like the street outside, furnished with a few wooden benches, with a corridor going off to the right. A Mintak boy appeared in the entrance at the sound of the donkey’s hooves on the pavement.

  Nightingale had seen many Mintaks in the course of her travels, but never a youngster. Like all the others she had seen, this boy wore only a pair of breeches and an open vest; his hide, exactly like a horse’s, was a fine, glossy brown. His head was shaped something like a cross between a horse and a dog, but the eyes were set to the front, so that he could see forward out of both of them, like a human, instead of only one at a time, like a horse. He had a ridge of hair—again, much like a horse’s mane—that began between his ears and traveled down his neck, presumably to end between his shoulder blades.

  Unlike the adults, who were muscular enough to give any five men pause, this boy was thin, gawky, awkward, exactly like a young colt. Although he had three-fingered hands that were otherwise identical to a humans, with nails that were much thicker and black, his feet presumably ended in hooves, for Nightingale heard them clopping on the pavement.

  “This lady is a musician, and she’ll be joining us, Kovey,” the man said. “Take her little beast and—” He turned back to Nightingale. “I assume that room and board will be part of the arrangement?”

  “That’s the usual,” she replied shortly, unable to be anything but amused herself at the way he had decided that she was going to stay.

  “Right then, have her things taken up to the Gallery and put ’em in the first empty room. Then leave word at the desk which it is.”

  The Mintak boy nodded his hairy head and trotted over to them, extending his hand for the donkey’s lead-rope. The donkey stepped up to him eagerly as Nightingale put the rope into his large, square hands. He smiled shyly, showing the blunt teeth of a true herbivore.

  Interesting. If I did not have the abilities I do, I would be very suspicious at this point. They have parted me from my transportation and my belongings and gotten me inside a building with no clear escape route. Do they assume that I am naive, or do they assume that as a Gypsy I do have other senses at my command?

  It could be either. Her clothing marked her as country folk; it could be presumed that she was not familiar with the ways of cities and the hazards therein. On the other hand, the man had not only recognized her as a Gypsy, but as a Free Bard . . .

  Boy and donkey trotted off down the corridor, and Nightingale’s escort ushered her past the second doorway and into the “tavern” proper.

  The man waited for her reaction, but she was not the country cousin she looked, and she didn’t give him the gasp of surprise that he had expected. She had assumed that the “tavern” took up a good portion of the building as estimated from outside, and she had not been mistaken. Maddy had not been mistaken in comparing this place to a Faire. The main portion of the tavern—she couldn’t think of a better name for it—had a ceiling that was quite three stories above the rest, and pierced with the most amazing skylights she had ever seen. They were not clear, but made with colored glass, exactly like the windows in the larger Cathedrals. Below the skylights hung contrivances that Nightingale guessed were probably lights. Beneath these skylights was an open floor, all of wood, with a raised platform at one end and with benches around it, exactly like a dance floor and stage at a Faire, except that at a Faire the dancing area would be floored in dirt.

  This took up approximately half the floor space. The rest—well, it looked very much as if someone had taken all of the entertainment and eating places at a really huge Faire and proceeded to stack them inside this building.

  All around the walls, from the ground floor to the ceiling, there were alcoves for eating and drinking, many with comfortable seating and a small stage for one to three performers. Many of the alcoves had recognizable bars in the back; some had doors that could be slid across the front, cutting them off from, the main room. Some boasted braziers and what might be odd cooking implements as well. Some had nothing at all but the seating.

  Not that this place was as elegant as the skylights indicated; in fact, the opposite was true. The building showed its heritage quite clearly; walls and the ceiling were roughly finished, huge metal beams were exposed, and ropes and wires hung everywhere.

  Still it was a monumental undertaking, putting this place together at all, and Nightingale rather liked the unfinished atmosphere. That was the difference—outside, things looked unkempt. In here, they looked unfinished. Out there in the r
est of the city, there was the feeling of decay and decline, but in here there was unfulfilled potential.

  It was then that she realized that she was no longer hot, or even warm; that from the moment she had passed within the front door, she had been cooled by a dry, crisp breeze that came out of nowhere.

  Ah, more Deliambren magic, of course. And how better to lure patrons to a place like this, down in a dubious quarter of the city, than to ensure that they will be invisibly cooled in summer and warmed in winter!

  There was no one on the main platform, but about half the other small stages had performers on them; not just musicians, but a juggler, a contortionist, a mock-mage, and a storyteller who had his audience often in stitches. Savory—though unfamiliar—aromas drifted from three of the tiny kitchens. It was difficult to say precisely where every sound and scent came from in this cavernous place, but Nightingale had the impression that there were similar setups just off the second or third floor balconies. And as Maddy had claimed, a good half of those customers that Nightingale spotted were not human.

  “The top floor’s lodgings,” her escort said diffidently. He waved his hand vaguely at the upper story. “Right side’s for customers, left’s for staff. You’ll be staff, of course—”

  “You’re assuming I’m going to stay,” Nightingale could not resist pointing out dryly. He turned to her with his mouth agape in surprise.

  “You—why wouldn’t you?” he managed, after a moment during which his mouth worked without any sound emerging.

  “You might not want me, for one thing,” she said with patient logic. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “You’re a Free Bard, ain’t you?” the man retorted. At her nod, he shrugged, as if that was the only answer he needed. “Tyladen—that’s the boss, the owner—he’s left orders. Free Bards show up looking for work, they got it. He says you’re all good enough, that’s enough for me. He’s the one with the cashbox.”