Four and Twenty Blackbirds Read online

  "Not—I'm not really hungry," Harden said, his lips white, but he didn't pull away when Tal took his elbow and steered him back to the inn that was his home. There were never really crowds in this part of town, and a constable's cape always made traffic part as if there were flunkies clearing the way. Two constables together—even if one was out of uniform—prompted people to choose the other side of the street to walk on. It wasn't long before they paused under a wooden sign boasting a rose that might once have been red, but which had long since faded to a pale pinkish-gray.

  The Gray Rose—which may once have been known as The Red Rose, when its sign was in better repair—was a modest little inn in a shabby-genteel part of town, and encouraged long-term residents in the dozen two-room "suites" in the third story. These were right above the single rooms normally let out by the night. For a price just a little more than he might expect to pay for private lodgings and food, Tal got the benefits of living in an inn—meals he didn't have to prepare himself, and servants cleaning up after him—and none of the disadvantages of living in a boardinghouse, where he might have had similar benefit. Granted, the menu never varied—a fact which he tried to look upon as "being reliable"—and the rooms were tiny compared to a lodging, but he had privacy that he wouldn't have gotten in a boarding-house, he didn't have to tailor his hours to the preferences of a boarding-house keeper, he could bring home whatever visitors he cared to whenever he wanted, and he never had to come home to unswept floors and an unmade bed. During the day, the inn was quiet—all the really noisy activity associated with carousers and private parties in the rooms below his took place while he was on-shift. The girls cleaned his rooms as soon as he left them in the early evening, just before the evening rush and after cleaning everyone else's rooms. For their part, the proprietors appreciated having a constable in residence; that fact alone ensured that although things might get noisy, they never got past the stage of a generally happy ruckus. And knowing that there was a constable living here kept thieves from even thinking about trying their luck under the tiled roof.

  He steered an obviously shaken Harden past the broad-shouldered Mintak who minded the door, and raised two fingers and an eyebrow at one of the serving-girls as he went by her. She nodded, responded with a quick mime of eating, then turned away after Tal nodded back. He led Harden up the stairs to his rooms, knowing that food for two would be arriving shortly. He preferred to supply his own drink; the wine here was cheap, and beer was not to his taste.

  He unlocked his door and motioned Harden in ahead of him; the cleaning-girl had already been through this morning, so he knew that his sitting-room was presentable. There actually wasn't a great deal to tidy up; his needs were few, and so were his possessions. He had a single comfortable chair beside the tiny fireplace shared with the bedroom, a bookcase and a lamp standing next to it. A braided rag rug covered the worn boards of the floor, a wooden table and four stools standing on it, and a cupboard holding a few bottles of good wine, four glasses, knives, and plates, some preserved fruit, bread, crackers, and cheese, stood opposite the armchair. There was a chest just under the window that contained all of his other odds and ends, and a tiny desk beside it. As an awkward nod to the amenities, two mediocre landscapes purchased because he felt sorry for the artist decorated the yellow-white walls. One of the few women to ever come here as a guest had seemed surprised that there was so little that was personal in this room. "It's like your face, Tal," she'd said, as if she found it disturbing. "It doesn't tell me anything about you."

  But fellow bachelors felt comfortable here, and Harden settled onto one of the four stools with what seemed like real relief. The room was, in every sense, a very "public" room, and right now Tal sensed that the younger constable would not be comfortable with anything that verged on the personal. He left the outer door slightly ajar as a signal to the girl that she should bring the food straight in, and set about making Harden feel at ease.

  Hanging his cape and Harden's on once-ornamental pegs beside the door, Tal mended the fire and put fresh logs on, then fetched a bottle of wine and two glasses. Extracting the cork deftly, he poured both glasses full, put one in front of Harden, then took the other and sat on the stool opposite the younger man. He hadn't been there more than a moment when one of the serving-girls tapped on the door with her foot, and then pushed it open with her hip. She carried a large tray laden with bowls and plates, fragrant steam arising from most of them.

  Dinner was, as usual, stew with fresh bread and butter, pickled vegetables, and baked apples. If Tal wanted anything other than the "house meal" he had to pay a little extra, and once in a while, for variety, he did so. But his tastes in food were plain and easily satisfied, and he doubted that Harden was going to pay very much attention to what he ate so long as it wasn't absolutely vile.

  The girl maneuvered her heavy tray deftly in the cramped space; before Harden even reacted properly to her presence, she had placed his bowls of stew, pickles, and apples in front of him and Tal, plunked the plate holding a hot loaf and a pannikin of butter between them, and dropped wooden spoons in each bowl of stew. Then she was gone, empty tray held loosely in one hand, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Harden blinked and picked up the spoon automatically. Tal cut slices from the loaf for both of them and buttered them generously. "You might as well eat," he said casually, gesturing with his spoon. "It's not bad, and it's hot. You may not feel hungry, but you need food."

  By way of example, he dug into his own meal, and in a moment, Harden slowly began eating as well. Neither of them said a word until all their plates were empty, nothing was left of the bread but crumbs, and the wine bottle held only dregs. Tal collected the dishes and the empty bottle and put them outside his door, then returned to the cupboard for a second bottle of wine. He poured fresh glasses, then resumed his seat.

  "All right," he said, as Harden took the glass in both hands but did not drink. "Now tell me what happened."

  Harden shivered, his sober, angular face taking on a look both boyish and lost. "It was this morning," he began. "Late morning. I was on my third round; there's a little half-mad beggar-girl that always takes a particular corner, and I have to keep an eye on her, because sometimes she darts out into the street and starts dancing in the middle of the road. She scares the horses and holds up traffic, people get angry." He shrugged apologetically; Tal understood what he did not say—that when something like that happened, people always blamed the constables. But what were they supposed to do? You couldn't lock up every crazy beggar in the city, there'd be no room for real criminals in the gaols.

  "So you kept an eye on her," Tal repeated. "She ever done anything worse?"

  Harden shook his head. "Mostly she just sits like today and sings hymns, except she makes up words for them. You can tell when she'd be going to cause trouble, she acts restless and won't sit still, and she wasn't like that today, so once I saw that, I ignored her. She's harmless. Was harmless," he corrected himself, growing pale again. "No one ever minded her. I was on the opposite side of the street from her. I—I really don't know what happened then, because I wasn't really looking for any trouble. She wasn't going anywhere, and no one out in the street was going to bother her. I thought, anyway."

  He sat quietly for a moment, and Tal sensed his internal struggles as the constable warred with the seriously shaken man. "All I can tell you is that the very next thing I knew was that people on the other side of the street were screaming and pointing, a couple were trying to run, and there was a rag-picker standing over her, waving a bloody knife in the air. Then he threw the knife away, and before I could move, he ran out into the street. And I could swear, honestly, he actually threw himself right under the wheels of a heavy water-wagon. The driver couldn't stop, the wagon turned over and the barrel burst and flooded everything, and by the time I got it all sorted out the rag-picker was dead, too." His hands were trembling as he raised his glass and drained it in a single gulp. "I—didn't do anything. I didn't stop
him, I didn't even see him kill that mad girl, I didn't stop him from killing himself—" His voice rose with each word, and he was clearly on the verge of hysteria.

  A natural reaction, but not at all useful. Better snap him out of this.

  "Are you a mage?" Tal interrupted him.

  Harden stopped in midsentence and blinked owlishly at him. Probably the question seemed utterly irrelevant, but Tal had a particular strategy in mind. "Ah—no," he stammered.

  "Then you couldn't have done anything, could you?" Tal countered. "There was no reason to assume that a rag-picker was going to murder the beggar; they're normally pretty feeble-bodied and just as often they're feeble-minded, too. They don't do things like that, right? Rag-pickers wander along the gutter, collecting trash, and half the time they don't even see anything that's not in the gutter in front of them. You had no reason to watch him, you didn't even know what he'd done until it was too late."

  "But after—" Harden began.

  "You said it yourself, it all happened quickly. How close were you? Across the street you said, and I'd guess half a block down." Tal shrugged as Harden nodded. "People were shouting, screaming, blocking the street—panicked. You couldn't possibly have gotten across to him with any speed. There was certainly no reason to think he'd throw himself under a wain! And short of using magic to do it, you couldn't have stopped him from where you were standing! Right?"

  Harden nodded again, numbly. Tal poured his glass full and topped off his own. "That was a hell of an experience," he said, with a little less force. "A hell of a thing. Bad enough when you come pick up the pieces, but when it happens right in front of you, it's natural to think you could have done something the cits couldn't. But just because you're a constable, that doesn't give you the ability to read thoughts, move faster than lightning, and pick up water-wagons with your bare hands."

  Harden took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes for a moment, then took a small sip of the wine. "You're right, of course," he replied shakily. "I wasn't thinking—"

  "No one could be, in those circumstances," Tal replied dryly. "Lad, most of the cits think we can do anything, and expect us to on a regular basis; that kind of thinking can get you believing you're supposed to really be able to. But you're just a man, like any of the cits—just you have a baton and some authority, people listen to you, and you can handle yourself against a couple of armed ruffians. And none of those things make you either a Priest or a mage, to save a soul or a body, either. Now, what made Brock think you should talk to me about this?"

  "Well—I guess because it was another murder-suicide, and the knife is missing," Harden said after a moment of thought. "He told me about your theory, and it seems to fit. I suppose you could say that the beggar was a musician; at least, she was always singing. She didn't know the man, I had never seen him on my beat. Judging by the wound, it was a strange knife, too; like a stiletto, but with a longer blade. We looked for it, too, believe me. After he threw it away, it just vanished."

  From the moment that Harden mentioned the rag-picker throwing the knife away, Tal had the feeling that this murder did match his profile; now he was sure of it. Once again, the knife was gone, and he was already certain that it would never be found.

  He was also certain that no links would be uncovered joining the beggar-woman and the rag-picker, no matter how diligently he looked. The rag-picker probably was not even from this part of town, and he normally would never have been on that street. It was the same pattern all over again; the same damnable, frustrating pattern.

  The use of magic could explain it, some kind of compulsion-magic, perhaps operating through the medium of the knife, but why? All the victims were utterly insignificant!

  What was more, all the victims were utterly unalike, especially the last three. A real street-musician, a whore, and a beggar—aside from being poor and female, and marginally connected with music, they had nothing in common.

  He shoved it all into the back of his mind and concentrated on coaxing Harden to talk himself out. The wine helped; it loosened the boy's tongue to a remarkable extent, and once Harden started, he kept going until he ran himself out.

  Just like I did, the night that fellow jumped off the bridge in front of me. . . .

  He hadn't thought of that in many years now, but there had been a time when he literally could not get it out of his mind. Now he knew that his presence or absence would have had no effect on the man, but then—

  Half the time I thought I'd somehow caused him to jump by just being there, and half the time I thought if I'd just tried harder I could have talked him out of it. In both cases, the guilt and self-recrimination were the same.

  Now it was his turn to listen and say all the things that Harden wanted desperately to hear—things he knew were logical, but that guilt told him could not be true.

  They emptied that bottle and another between them, though most of it went into Harden. At one point Tal ascertained that Harden lived alone, and had no woman or relative waiting anxiously for him to come home, and just kept replenishing his glass until he finally broke through the final barrier and wept.

  That was what he had needed, more than talk, more than sympathy; he needed to cry, in the presence of someone who understood. Not all men needed the release of tears after something like this, but many did.

  And may Rayburn find himself in this position one day, with no one willing to listen to him and pour the wine!

  He came very close to hating his superior tonight, and only the fact that Rayburn was not worth wasting hatred on kept him from doing so. If the Captain himself did not feel capable of offering such important moral support to his men, it was his responsibility to find someone who could and would! It should not have been left up to old Brock to find someone!

  And getting the lad drunk was not the most optimal way to get him to unload his troubles, but it is the only way I know, Tal thought glumly. He should have been with someone who knows how to handle situations like this one, not with me. He's going to have a head in the morning, poor boy. On the other hand—

  He was Harden's senior. He could legitimately report him in sick. Rayburn would have to find a replacement for his shift—

  Hell, Rayburn can walk the lad's beat himself and do some real work for a change!

  Although emotion wore a good bit of the wine off, Harden was still not fit to leave the inn, either. So when the tears were over, the guilt somewhat dispersed, and Harden reduced to telling Tal what a fine fellow he was in slurred and half-incoherent speeches, Tal excused himself long enough to tap on the door of one of the two Mintak brothers who worked as peace-keepers in the bar downstairs. He knew Ferg would still be awake; they had the same taste in books, and the Mintak would often come tapping on his door about this time of the night if his own library ran dry. He liked Ferg and his brother, and if anyone ever said a word against nonhumans in general and these two in particular, he took care to let them know just how he stood on the matter. If he hadn't been a constable, that might have gotten him into a fight or two, but between his baton and the brothers' muscle, troublemakers generally took their prejudices elsewhere.

  Ferg answered the door quickly enough to have been awake and reading, sticking his shaggy brown head out of the door cautiously. A pair of mild brown eyes looked down at Tal out of a face that was bovine, equine, and human, all at once. He opened the door a little further when he recognized Tal, and as if to confirm Tal's guess, there was a book in his broad brown hand, a thumb stuck in it to keep his place. "Got a friend who needed to get drunk tonight," Tal said shortly, knowing Ferg would understand. "I need to get him down to a room for tonight."

  The Mintak nodded wisely. "Hold a moment," he said in that deep voice all Mintaks shared regardless of gender. "Let me put the candle somewhere safer."

  He withdrew his head; there was a little shuffling, and he returned, without the book. "Nobody's using the guest-room," the Mintak offered. "Might as well put him there, and we won't have to move him down any s
tairs."

  "That might be best," Tal agreed. "He's a good lad, but I'd just as soon not run up too big a bill on his behalf."

  There was a single, very small room on this floor, a room not much bigger than a closet, that the tenants had—with the agreement of the proprietors of the inn—fixed up as a bedroom for their own guests. Sometimes it was used for visiting relatives, and sometimes for those who were in the same condition as Harden. Once or twice it had been used by quarreling couples, and on those occasions, the rest of the tenants were very careful not to ask any questions of either party. Those who were going to entertain visitors for more than a day were careful to schedule the guest-room well in advance, but at any other time it was open for spur-of-the-moment use.

  Harden would be less embarrassed to wake up in what was obviously a guest-room removed from Tal's lodging than he would be if he woke up in Tal's sitting room. And Tal's charity did not extend to giving up or sharing his own bed.

  Ferg followed Tal back to his rooms; Harden looked up at their entrance and squinted at the sight of the Mintak, who towered over Tal by a good several inches.

  "Din' I shee you downshtairs?" Harden slurred.

  "That was my herd-brother, good sir," Ferg replied calmly. "Do you think you can stand?"

  "Not by m'shelf," Harden acknowledged ruefully, after an abortive attempt that left him staggering and finally sitting right where he'd begun. " 'm drunk, butsha couldn' tell by m' dancin'."

  "All right then, old man," Tal said, slightly amused. "We're going to get you to a bed where you can sleep it off."

  Harden nodded wisely. "Good—idea," he said carefully. " 'f I can' stand, I sure can' walk, eh?"

  Tal and Ferg got on either side of Harden and assisted him carefully to his feet. Both of them knew better than to move abruptly with him; at the moment, he showed no signs of getting sick, but any too-sudden movements could change that, and neither of them felt much like cleaning the mess up.