Cry of the Nightbird

by Tirzah Duncan

  She inched open the door, peering around the corner. “Sir?” she whispered. Her eyes widened at the sight of a body crumpled against the floor below the window, the shutters standing open. It was exactly as it had sounded, and yet had she not really expected it. She stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind her and hurrying forward. “What’s the matter? It’s me, it’s Wren! Do you need help?”

  She stopped in her tracks, gasping, as the face raised itself from the floor, revealing a spray of battered black feathers and a beak.

  “Off…” Joreth’s voice rose in a heavy moan. It sounded like it scraped across the floor before reaching her ears. “Off, off, take it off, I can’t…” He broke into hyperventilation.

  Wren started forward again, hastily kneeling, and loosing a sturdy strap—the thing had been some sort of armored helmet, once—and easing the feathered mask from his face. His cheek and jaw were dark and swollen, and blood lines ran from his mouth. “What do you want me to do?” she asked, shaking. “Do I fetch someone? Do I—”

  “No!” he rasped loudly. “No one, no—get it off me, get it off! I can’t—” he said, voice rising in a panic as he scrabbled at his shirt, trying to drag it off with one arm and sit up at the same time.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you meant—here!” Wren helped him sit up a bit, then eased his shirt off over his head, feeling her face grow ever warmer in spite of the circumstances. She pulled back, then, coaxing some life out of the last spark of his oil lamp the better to see what she was about. She winced at the fresh cuts and bruises that mottled his torso.

  “You’re pretty bad, but I’ve seen worse,” she said, forcing her voice to be calm and brisk. His extra-wide pupils and hyperventilation told her he was in shock. She couldn’t look to him for orders in this state. That was fine, fine; she had, after all, seen worse. There was usually just someone else to deal with it. But if he said no one, she would fetch no one—unless inspection revealed anything life-threatening, in which case she would break that instruction and he would just have to live to deal with it.

  She helped him to his bed, and he collapsed over it crosswise, on his front. She pulled in a sharp breath and tsked, seeing that his back was no better off. He’d been in a right pummeling! Unsure what else to do, she turned to the washbasin and wetted his shaving cloth. She sat on the edge of the bed and began cleaning the blood from his back as gently as she could. The muscles jittered and spasmed with every touch, and she gritted her teeth in sympathy.

  “Alright, that’s done now. Let me work on the other side.” When he refused to roll onto his back, she helped him sit up very slowly and slightly, thinking then to fetch the tray. She gave him a few sips of cold tea and a few nibbles of shortbread, hoping the hydration and the sweet would help to revive him. His trembling did ease and his breathing even out as she went back to work inspecting and cleaning the injuries.

  “There we are, then,” she murmured. “The worst of it seems to be this shoulder, here. Deep bruising, mayhap a cracked collarbone, I couldn’t say, and a pair of puncture wounds in the muscle, not so shallow as I’d like. I can fetch bandages and make an herb compress for the moment, but we don’t want these wounds going rotten. You need care beyond my ken. Shall I fetch a discreet healer? I know of a couple.”

  “Chance blessed me when he brought you, Wrenling,” he sighed, making her go warm from the scalp down. “The mark of his Fair Daughter is upon you.” He snapped his fingers weakly. “Yes… yes, I suppose you’re right. I need a healer. The most shut-mouthed one you know. No mage, can’t trust mages, and I don’t need magic to live through this one… just a good surgeon and herbalist. I can hold on, so don’t hurry so much as to draw attention. Actually…” He stood slowly, one hand going to his head and the other to Wren’s shoulder. “Now I’ve got my breath back, and with another bite and a drink—brandy better than tea—I can go myself. That would be better than them knowing where I am. Fetch a mask.”

  Wren glanced reflexively at the feathered metal helmet lying where she’d dropped it on the floor.

  “Ah…” he said. “No, not that. That’s an identifying mark all its own. There should be a couple in the top-mid drawer over there; get both, and put one on yourself. Then fetch me a cloak.” He released her, and kicked the metal mask under his bed. Saying nothing as she finally took the time to mull over the mask’s meaning, the serving girl did as she was told.

  “I have to vanish for a while, that much is clear,” Joreth murmured as he slumped on his bed, exhausted. He held up his mirror as the predawn light began to edge its way through the shutters. He gingerly touched his cheek, his jaw. “This is too nasty and swollen for makeup to sort it out, and I really can’t afford to look so suddenly and so very pummeled the day after the Nightbird takes his beating. It will be far less likely to be put together if I vanish on some vague errand. I can leave Garren and Tossel jointly in charge; they dislike one another enough that it’s unlikely they would scheme together behind my back, and the irritation of dealing with the other would distract them from contemplating overmuch the power suddenly in their hands, but at the same time they’re both professional enough to get the work done.”

  “A sensible choice,” yawned Wren, curled up in his chair. “But someone will need to go with you, yeah, to help you out? Just considering your injury and all. You’ll need a right arm until your own right arm is back in action.”

  Not that you’ll volunteer or anything, Joreth thought, rolling his eyes. Still. “You have a point. An assistant would ease the difficulty of the journey.”

  “And it would have to be an assistant you could trust with knowledge of your injury,” she said, voice so painfully hopeful that Joreth actually winced. Of all the little skills she’d picked up over the years, why couldn’t subtlety have been one of them? But no, she was a thirteen year old girl with a crush, the poor whippet; skill and subtlety in romantic pursuit didn’t usually show up until after that first physical firestorm burned off.

  “Fine,” he sighed after a moment of waffling. “You can come.”

  Her eyes widened, and she sat up as with a second wind. “Of a truth? I’d be honored, sir.”

  Joreth did not miss the whispery snap of her fingers, a soft thank-you note to Lord Chance. His lips twitched. “No time to lose, then. Would you mind packing my things?” If she was going to fawn, he would see to it that she fawned usefully.

  “Not at all, sir! What would you like me to get?” she asked, scrambling to her feet.

  He closed his eyes, turning the mirror over and again in his hands as he directed her through the packing of everything he thought necessary, excepting those things he deemed it best for her not to know the location of. He would slip those in when she went to fetch her own things.

  He waved the mirror in direction as she shuffled through his wardrobe. “That—no, the other one, the brown one. Yes, that one. No, don’t pack it,” he decided. “I’ll wear that one out. It’s not my favorite, but it’s good enough for the road, and it has a good concealing hood. I’ll need that,” he sighed.

  “Why not your favorite, though?” Wren asked, draping the good-enough cloak over the trunk.

  “Because my favorite,” Joreth sighed, “is a bit ripped up and rather tragically drowned somewhere in the canal.”

  “Oh.” An awkward silence stretched between them. The nighttime activities that had led to his collapsing through his window in such poor form, the reason he needed to leave town in such a hurry—it hadn’t been avoided, as such, but neither had either of them looked directly at it.

  “Shall I…” Wren began stumblingly. “Speaking of which, I mean, would you like me to pack your, um, the mask, as well?”

  “Might as well. Can’t have anyone rooting through the room while I’m away and coming across it,” he said mildly.

  She nodded vigorously, already stooping to fish under the bed for the thing. She pulled it out and just knelt for a moment, turning it over in her hands with an odd look on her
face. “So it’s you they’ve been singing songs about.”

  “Yep. Put it away.”

  She turned and settled it in among his things with care, burying it under clothes. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I’ll admit I’m surprised. It doesn’t seem quite like you.”

  Joreth felt unexpectedly stung by the words. From anyone else under his new rule, that might have been expected, but that a girl who so swooned over him should think him not the heroic sort—yes, that did sting, actually. “Good,” he said lightly. “It’s not supposed to seem like me.”

  “I know. But you just didn’t strike me as… well…” She bent over his packs, tying the leather laces tightly and with meticulous care as she struggled to finish the sentence. “The risk-taking sort. I mean, obviously you like a dangerous business, but you run it so carefully. You had a reputation as a very careful assassin, you know. You plotted your rise to power to carefully, now you’re running the agency so carefully, too… Now, the Nightbird, he’s a man on the edge. He’s a man who doesn’t care so much for his life as Joreth does.”

  Wren looked up at him, then, frowning. “Going out into the night alone, with none but Lord Chance to watch his back, sticking it to the Graylads and the Perils both, acting as if he can keep doing it forever, when they can’t afford to let him… Last night might have been the death of the Nightbird. And stepping out of my place, sir, only because you stepped out of yours, perhaps it should be.”

  Joreth blinked. “Let the Nightbird die?”

  She nodded. “He’s done a lot, sir, done enough. The songs will live, the stories will only grow. He’s done his service to this city, he’s inspired a lot of people. He’s been a great man, a good man. But don’t you think… don’t you think the Nightbird should die before you both do?”

  Joreth pressed his lips together for a few long seconds, considering the sense of her words. “No.”

  Wren sighed. “I thought not. Had to try, though, sir, had to try. Since you won’t see sense, would you at least take someone to watch your back?”

  Joreth groaned and settled a hand—carefully—over his face. “No. No, Wren, not on this. You can come with me on the journey, but you’re not going to be the Nightbird’s little sidekick, girl.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” he said firmly, sitting up and snatching a shirt from under the brown cloak. “I’m not having someone at my back who doesn’t even understand why I’m doing it.”

  “Then tell me,” she coaxed.

  “If I told you, you’d know, not understand. You don’t risk your life for things you know, you risk your life for things you—” He stopped, catching his breath as he began to pull his shirt over his head. He forced his breathing to slow, gritted his teeth, and gingerly eased it on over his painful back and shoulders. “You risk your life for things you understand from the core of your being,” he finished.

  “I don’t want you to die,” Wren pressed. “I understand that from the core of my being.”

  “Then you don’t understand enough. So you don’t want me to die. Talk to me again when you want the Nightbird to live.”

  Lord Ferlund of Cavernad sat in his late father’s office, eyes wandering around the place as he absently tapped a stick of chalk on the slate of expenses he was supposed to be looking over. The payroll for all his staff, the men-at-arms, animal upkeep, the payroll for the sheriff and his deputies and expenses, road and bridge repairs that seemed never to end... Tap, tap, tap, went the chalk, as the teenaged lord stared unseeing at a yellowing tapestry tassel.

  This work was nothing new to him; he knew what his accountant required, and it was nothing he wasn’t quite capable of handling, as his father had begun teaching him how to keep books when he was ten. It was simply impossible for him to keep his mind on so mundane a job when he was waiting for word to return from his spies.

  Spies. That had been a new and, at first, exciting idea for Ferlund. He had sent a letter with his condolences to Rirsmouth, and with his trusted messenger he had sent instructions to make subtle inquiries as to whether anyone suspected foul play surrounding the lady’s death, to ask about strangers passing through and where they had come from, and to poke around a bit just to see what he could see for himself.

  That had cost him from his private treasury, of course; and he had spent further coin sending one of his servants as a messenger to the duke of Graeme to, essentially, make tentative inquiries as to whether a marriage possibility would be open in that direction—if there was a positive reception, Ferlund would of course go himself—but with instruction to discreetly attempt to discover if there was any evidence of a plot against the Rirsmouth-Cavernad alliance.

  Then he’d discovered the unpleasant side of sending spies into the world. Waiting. Wondering. Hoping. Snapping his fingers softly to Lord Chance because that was all he could do. Staring at the walls and thinking of what, if anything, they would bring back to him—and what he might or might not be able to do with it. It wore on his nerves, he thought, more surely than if he were himself creeping through enemy corridors by night.

  But that was the lot of a lord, more often than not, his father had told him: To give the orders and snap your fingers in solitude. Do what you can, but you can only oversee so much yourself. On the whole, you must trust your people to do their job, as you do yours.

  As he did his. Ferlund shook himself, blinking rapidly and bringing his gaze back to the figures before him. He sighed and scratched the sums on a slate of his own, finally marking confirmation and acknowledgement of the total. Why did everything have to cost so much money? The rye harvest had best do quite well, or the fiefdom would have trouble keeping afloat. Dicing with nature… Ferlund shuddered and snapped his fingers. Never rely on a bumper crop, Father had always said. But he had to rely on one thing or another.

  He set down the chalk and rubbed his eyes. “Chance take it, I need to marry,” he murmured to himself, figuring his small personal treasury and income from the castle’s own beasts into the whole, and finding it still worrisome. “Or perhaps if I can prove there were any misdeeds afoot, Cavernad will receive a fee of compensation. Or to make up for the funeral expenses, at least, please.”

  After looking over several more slates, wiping some clean, writing notes to his accounts keeper on others, he pushed back his chair with a groan. The work wasn’t finished, but he’d made as much of a dent in it as he’d ever seen Father do. He was going to reward himself with an evening walk.

  He found himself at the usual spot, more out of habit by now than out of any morbid fascination, and sat on a mossy rock as the sun sank in the sky, flicking rocks into the ravine and trying not to notice the pair of men-at-arms that had observed him heading out and tailed him at a distance. He didn’t want them along, but neither did he suppose it would be wise to go out without them, anymore. The compromise was to pretend he couldn’t see them, as they pretended to suppose they were hidden.

  Slow footsteps through the trees, the brushing aside of branches. Gone were the days Ferlund stared at the ravine without caring who crept upon him. His hand going to his sword as his body went taut, his eyes searched the stand of scrubby trees. “Who goes there?” he asked in a voice he hoped was commanding, yet calm.

  “Dania,” the soft voice floated back, a cringing whisper.

  His knotted shoulders loosened, and his hand fell away from his hilt. He found a smile pulling at his cheeks even as he knew he shouldn’t smile. “Come on out. I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  She emerged looking pale and downcast, her eyes only rising to meet his for a moment. He patted the rock beside him. “Have a seat. We’re not alone, though,” he said quietly as she came nearer. “I’ve got men-at-arms tagging along.” He jerked his head back towards where said men were lurking.

  She nodded, but still only looked at her feet, bare in the warmth and primly clean. She said nothing as a minute passed. Ferlund felt his insides squirming as some unspoken tension built with every silen
t second.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked at last, wanting to put an arm around her, but thinking that, what with the company, it was perhaps best not.

  “You’ve an heir on the way,” she said softly. “A bastard heir, that is, I mean, I’m not supposing—it’s just, what I mean is that I know it’s yours, is all, and I— I just—I—” Still corpse-pale, her words stuttered to a panicked stop and she just gasped for air.

  Ferlund felt a buzzing beginning in his head, and he knew the blood must have drained from his face as well. He could not afford this now. He literally could not afford this now. “What you mean is, you’re pregnant,” he clarified.

  “And it’s yours,” she said, her fingers folding over her abdomen, her voice trembling but insistent.

  Ferlund flapped a hand. “Yes, yes,” he muttered. Dania wasn’t the sort of girl to keep multiple lovers on a string. “Yes, I… yeah…” he said, feeling helpless. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, face in hands. “Oh. Early frost. Chance’s Ill Daughter strike me. What now?”

  “That’s what… what I was wondering, your lordship,” she whispered, her voice trailing off until it was near inaudible.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, wondering why on earth she shouldn’t. Because, he thought wearily, Father had always said that a people’s problems were the lord’s problems. He couldn’t let her see him like this. He drew his face from his hands and sat up. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, forcing false authority and confidence into his voice. “It’s my problem now. I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure something out, alright?”

  “Alright,” she said.

  Several minutes passed in silence as Ferlund ran the figures through his head, over and again, holding them side-to-side with various options.

  “I don’t suppose,” he began slowly, “that you’d be willing to… lose it?”

  Her mouth pulled into a tight pucker. “I’d rather not risk it. And I’d rather not.”