The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III

by Mercedes Lackey

  “As our host, Sire T’fyrr, you must take the head of the table. As the lowest in rank, I must take the foot—”

  Lord Levan and Lord Atrovel both made token protests, which the Seneschal dismissed, as they obviously expected him to.

  “Lord Secretary, Lord Artificer, I leave it to you to choose left or right hand,” the Seneschal concluded.

  Atrovel, a short, wiry, dark-haired man robed in blue and gold, grinned. “Well, since no one has ever accused me of being sinister, I shall take the right,” he punned. Levan Pendleton cast his eyes up to the ornately painted ceiling, but did not groan.

  “Since I am often accused of just that, it does seem appropriate,” he agreed, taking the seat at T’fyrr’s left. “We are all here, Sire T’fyrr, in hopes of showing you that not everyone in the King’s Council is—ah—distressed by your presence.”

  Acreon winced. “So blunt, Levan?” he chided. The Lord Artificer only shrugged.

  “I can afford to be blunt, Acreon,” the man replied, and turned again to T’fyrr. T’fyrr found him fascinating; the most birdlike human he had yet met. His head sported a thick crest of greying black hair; his face was sharp and his nose quite prominent. Perched on the nose was a pair of spectacles; they enlarged his eyes and made him look very owl-like. The rest of the man was hidden in his silvery-grey robe of state, but from the way it hung on him, T’fyrr suspected he was cadaverously thin.

  “Why can you afford to be blunt, my lord?” T’fyrr asked, a bit boldly. The human laughed.

  “Because I am in charge of those who make strange devices, Sire T’fyrr,” he replied genially. “No one knows if they are magical or not, so no one cares to discover if I can accomplish more than I claim to be able to do. That is why folk think me sinister.”

  “That, and the delightful little exploding toys, and the cannon you have conjured,” Atrovel said with a smirk. “No one wants to retire to his room only to find one of those waiting for him, either.”

  “Oh, piff,” Levan said, waving a dismissive hand. “They’re too easy to trace. If I were going to get rid of someone, I’d choose a much subtler weapon. Poison delivered in a completely unexpected manner, for instance. In bathwater, or a bouquet of flowers. It would be a fascinating experiment, just to find out what kind of dosage would be fatal under those circumstances.” And he turned toward Nob, who was offering a plate of sliced meat, his eyes wide as the plate. “Thank you, child—and I’ll have some of that pudding, as well.”

  “There, you see?” Atrovel threw up his hands. “No wonder no one wants to dine with you! You’d poison us all just to see how we reacted!” He helped himself to the meat Nob brought him, and turned toward T’fyrr. “Levan would like to get on your good side because his worst rival is Lord Commerce Gorode; he’s in charge of the Manufactory Guild, and they are always trying to purloin Artificers’ designs without paying for them—and Lord Gorode already hates you just because you aren’t human.”

  “Ah,” T’fyrr said, nonplussed at this barrage of apparent honesty. He hoped that Harperus’ little “devices” were hearing all of this.

  “The Seneschal,” Atrovel continued, pointing his fork at Acreon, who munched quietly on a plate of green things without saying a word, “is on your side because he actually thinks you’re honest. Are you?”

  “I try to be,” T’fyrr managed, and both Levan and Atrovel broke into howls of laughter.

  “By God, this is more entertaining than Court Dinner!” Levan spluttered. “T’fyrr, you must be honest, or you’d never have answered that way! What a change from all those oily, wily Guild Bards! Dare I actually ask if you are interested in music instead of advancing yourself?”

  “Music is—is my life, my lord,” T’fyrr said simply, expecting them both to break into laughter again. But they didn’t; they both sobered, and the Seneschal nodded.

  “You see?” Acreon said quietly. “Honest, and a true artist. Innocent as this boy, here—Sire T’fyrr, I thought you might need a friend, now I am certain of it. I hope you will consider me to be your friend, and call on me if you need something the boy cannot provide.”

  T’fyrr was at an utter loss of what to say, so he replied with the feeling that was uppermost at that moment. “Thank you, thank you very much, Lord Acreon,” he said, as sincerely as he could. “I am not so innocent that I do not realize that my position here is extremely delicate. The King offended many of high estate today, but I am the safer target for their wrath, and they will probably try to vent it sooner or later.”

  “Innocent, but not stupid,” Levan said, jabbing a fork into his meat with satisfaction. “I like that. So, Atrovel, why are you here, anyway?”

  Atrovel waved his knife airily. “Because I enjoy seeing so many of our pompous windbags—ah, excuse me, noble Council members—discomfited. It is no secret that I dislike most of them, and am disliked in return. The King trusts me because I amuse him; they hate that. I enjoy causing them trouble. They are boring, they have no imagination, and they don’t appreciate music. That is enough for me.”

  “And you appreciate music?” T’fyrr asked. Although none of them really watched him eating, they weren’t going out of their way to avoid watching him swallow down neat, small bites of absolutely raw meat. That was interesting. Although he could eat other things—and would dine on the cooked meat on one tray, soon—he’d deliberately chosen the raw steak as a kind of test.

  Levan snorted and picked up his goblet to drink before answering. “Enjoy? Oh, my dear T’fyrr, this is the foremost musical critic of the Court! Or at least, he thinks so!”

  “I know so,” Atrovel replied casually, raising one eyebrow. “Your performance, by the way, was absolutely amazing. Were you simulating an instrumental accompaniment with your voice?”

  So someone had noticed! “A very simple one,” T’fyrr admitted. “A ground only. I could not have replicated a harp, for instance—”

  “Oh, don’t start!” Levan interrupted. “I like music as well as the next man, but having it dissected? Pah! You two wait until you’re alone and let the rest of us just listen without having to know what it all breaks down to!”

  “Fine words from one who spends his life breaking things into their components to find out how the universe runs,” Acreon pointed out mildly. He had graduated from salad to some mild cheese and unspiced meats. T’fyrr suspected chronic indigestion; hardly surprising, considering how hard he worked.

  “I prefer to leave some few things a mystery, and music is one of them,” Levan replied with dignity. “However—are all your people so gifted? Or are you the equivalent of a Bard among them?”

  T’fyrr passed an astonishingly pleasant hour with the three Royal Advisors, and after the Seneschal and the Artificer pled work and left, spent two more equally pleasant hours discussing the technicalities of music with Lord Atrovel. The diminutive fellow was as much of a dandy as Harperus, and just as certain of the importance of his own opinions, but he was also scathingly witty, and his observations on some of the other Council members had T’fyrr doubled up in silent laughter more than once.

  When Lord Atrovel finally left, T’fyrr sent Nob off to bed (over the boy’s protests that he was supposed to help the Haspur undress), and unwrapped himself. He let the silk wrapping fall to the floor—consciously. No more picking up after himself; no more going to fetch things.

  I have to give the boy something to do, or he’ll think he isn’t doing his job. This was not a situation he had anticipated, to say the least.

  He had thought—when he actually let himself entertain the notion of success at all—that he might possibly end up as one of the King’s private musicians. He had a notion what that meant; he would have been a glorified servant himself. That would have been fine—but this was out of all expectation.

  He palmed the lights off, and stayed awake awhile, cushioned in his new bed, thinking.

  I have a servant, a retainer—someone who depends on me to be a good master or a bad, and has no choic
e but to deal with what I tell him to do. What kind of a master will I make? That was one worry on top of everything else; could he, would he become abusive? He had a temper, the winds knew; if he lost it with this boy, he could damage the child, physically. On the practical side, he had no idea of the strength or the endurance of a human fledgling; Harperus had said the boy was—what? Something like twelve years of age. What could he do? What shouldn’t he do?

  Perhaps it will be safest to watch him, and send him to rest at the first sign that he is tired. I wonder if he can read? If not, I shall see to it that he learns. If so, I shall find out if he enjoys reading, and make that one of his tasks. It would be a safe way to make the boy rest, even if he didn’t think he should.

  As for the task Harperus had assigned to him—

  I believe I have a far wider field of opportunity than either of us thought. He would have to give this a great deal of consideration. If he was going to be the King’s Chief Musician, that implied that he would be performing solo, probably quite often, possibly even on a daily basis. He would have plenty of opportunity to sing things that just might put the King in mind of some of the duties he was neglecting.

  I wish that I had one of the Free Bards here; the ones that Harperus says work magic, he thought wistfully. It would greatly help if I could use magic to reinforce that reminder . . . If only Nightingale were here! She and I make such a good duo—and she is a powerful worker of magic, I know she must be, even though Harperus didn’t mention her by name. And it would be so good to have a real friend, someone I could trust completely, to be here with me.

  As well wish for Visyr and Syri to come help him; the Free Bards were all very nearly as far away as the Fortress-City and his other two friends.

  Well, it would be enough for the moment for him to keep the Deliambrens aware of developments by means of those ugly little “devices” of theirs. They must surely have gotten an earful tonight, before the talk turned to music!

  And that brought him to something else he really should think about.

  Lord Acreon, Lord Levan, and Lord Atrovel.

  Out of all of the Kings Advisors, three—admittedly three of limited power, but still—had openly allied themselves with him. The question was, why had they done so? The reasons were without a doubt as various as the men themselves. And likely just as devious. T’fyrr was under no illusions; each of these men had agendas of their own that allying themselves with him would further. The King would certainly notice that they were openly his “friends,” and that could hardly hurt them. Right now, the King was not very happy with most of his Advisors, and while he might forget that by tomorrow, he also might remember.

  Whatever had been done to lull the King into the state he was in now, for the moment, T’fyrr had cracked it, and with that crack, some of their power had escaped.

  Lord Acreon, the Seneschal. T’fyrr had the oddest feeling that the Seneschal had meant every word he had said; that he had sided with T’fyrr because he thought that T’fyrr was honest, a real musician, and needed a friend who understood the quagmire this Court truly was. He wasn’t entirely certain if Acreon actually liked him, but Acreon was going to help him.

  Perhaps Acreon himself is not certain if he likes me. I doubt that he has had much commerce with anything other than humans. I wonder if I frighten him a little? He does not strike me as a particularly brave man, physically, although I think he is very strong in the spirit. I also think, perhaps, he does not know how strong he is.

  Could Acreon be trusted? Probably. Of the three, he was the one with the least to lose and the most to gain if T’fyrr succeeded, out of all expectation, in making the King see where his duty lay. He was already overburdened and uncredited for most of the work he did; if the High King began acting like the ruler he was supposed to be, a great deal of that burden would be lifted from the Seneschal’s shoulders.

  He might even be able to enjoy spiced meat again, without suffering a burning belly.

  He decided that he would make use of the Seneschal in the lightest way possible—by asking advice, not on difficult things, but on the subject that the Seneschal probably knew better than any other, his fellow Advisors. Acreon would probably tell him the truth, and if the truth were too dangerous, T’fyrr suspected he would be able to hint well enough for the Haspur to guess at the truth. Very well. Trust the Seneschal, as long as Acreon had nothing to lose by what T’fyrr was doing.

  Levan Pendleton. The Lord Artificer was a puzzle. He liked music well enough. He was fascinated by the workings of things, and devoured facts the way a child devoured sweets. Those traits, T’fyrr was used to—the Deliambrens were rather like that.

  He is also utterly amoral. He saw no difficulty in ridding himself of an enemy by murder; had even boasted tonight how he would do so. T’fyrr, adept at reading the nuance of voices if not of human expressions, sensed that he meant every word he said. He might even have been warning me, obliquely. He all but said openly that he was for sale. He might have been telling me that someone might buy his services to use on me.

  There were only two things that Levan Pendleton valued—fact and truth. They were also the only things he cared about; he had said, more than once, that no matter what the cost, he would not conceal facts or distort the truth, at least when it came to his discoveries about the workings of the world. He had described, as if it were only an amusing anecdote, how his stand had already gotten him in serious conflict with the Church, and that only his rank and position had saved him from having to answer to Church authority.

  T’fyrr could supply him with plenty of facts, anyway. He had traveled in lands that the Lord Artificer had never even heard of, and that meant he could enlarge Levan’s knowledge of Alanda. As for things closer to home, the devices and machines that the Artificer so loved, if he could not explain the workings of Deliambren machinery, he could at least supply information on the workings of simpler things. The staged pumps that brought water up to the highest aeries, for one thing, or the odd, two-wheeled contrivance that the Velopids rode instead of horses.

  I can probably entertain Levan for months, even years, and as long as I entertain him, I am too valuable for him to eliminate. I am also too valuable for him to permit anyone else to get rid of me. I can trust Levan Pendleton, but within strict limits.

  And those limits would be determined mostly by what T’fyrr himself could or could not supply. An added benefit was T’fyrr’s vast collection of music, much of it from strange cultures. Levan liked music, and to have someone who could not only perform it but explain the meaning or the story was something he had not anticipated. This could be a very good position to be in, so long as T’fyrr did not overestimate the limits of his entertainment value.

  Levan Pendleton would be most useful simply as a patron. If people didn’t like to go to dinner with him—they would also be disinclined to try to eliminate or disgrace one of his friends.

  Lord Secretary Atrovel. Now there was a puzzle! He seemed completely shallow, a sparkling brook that was all babble and shine on the surface, but was nothing more than a lively skin of water, unable to support or hold anything of value. Yet the man was witty, and while it was possible to be witty and be stupid, it wasn’t very likely.

  Atrovel had access to everything the King did and said. That was his job. Now, it was probably not a bad idea to have a flippant fellow for a secretary, a man who really didn’t care a great deal about the correspondence and documents he handled. But still—T’fyrr had the feeling that that sparkling surface was not all there was to Atrovel.

  Perhaps, though, the deepest thing about him is his pride. He was certainly a man who had no doubts whatsoever about his own worth, and had no modesty about it, either. He would be the first to tell you just how important he was.

  That might have been what T’fyrr sensed: beneath the flippant exterior was a man with a deep sense of pride in himself. If that was true, then the worst thing one could do to Lord Atrovel would be to harm his pride, to make hi
m look foolish. He would never forgive that, and as Secretary he had access to the means to take revenge. Certain papers could fall into the hands of an enemy, perhaps . . . certain others vanish before they could be signed.

  Lord Atrovel could be trusted—warily. And T’fyrr would have to be very careful of that touchy little man’s feelings.

  Oh, this is all too much to think about—Yet there remained one more human that T’fyrr sensed he must consider tonight, before he slept.

  High King Theovere.

  Now there—there was a puzzle and a question more complicated than that of Lord Atrovel. For one thing, he is not sane. He is not rational. He has mood changes that do not necessarily correspond to what is going on around him, and his ability to concentrate is not good. His priorities are skewed. His Advisors don’t care, because his insanity gives them leeway to do anything they really want. The problem is, what caused this? Theovere was not the man he once was. Harperus had been quite emphatic about that. High King Theovere had been well-respected, if not precisely beloved; he had kept every one of the Twenty Kingdoms under his careful scrutiny. So what happened? Why did he suddenly begin to lose interest in seeing things well-governed?

  Was it a lack of interest? Was he ill, in some way that simply didn’t show itself on the surface? There were certainly hints of that in the childishness, the petulance, the obsessive interest in music and other trivialities.

  And yet—and yet there was still something of the old King there as well. King Theovere wanted T’fyrr the way a child wants a new toy, yes, but there was something else beneath that childish greed.

  He is using me. Something in him is still vaguely aware that there is trouble in his Kingdoms, trouble involving nonhumans, and he is using me, he said so himself. I am to provide an example of excellence and tolerance. And I don’t think the Advisors are truly aware that he is using me in that way, even though they heard him say so. They don’t believe he could still have that much interest outside his little world of Bards and Musicians.