Four and Twenty Blackbirds

by Mercedes Lackey

"What, how could I not want to become a bigger target for slander, libel, and intrigue than I already was?" she responded tartly. "If I were only the Abbess and the Chief Justiciar, I would have been much safer; as a woman, they would always underestimate me so long as I didn't intrigue for a high position. If I had the power, but not the title, I would not be nearly the threat to other power-holders inside and outside the Church as I am since I wear the miter. I am not so fond of fancy hats that I was pleased to put up with all that just so I could wear one."

  Kayne snickered at Ardis's designation of the High Bishop's miter as a "fancy hat." Ardis leaned over her desk and fixed her young secretary with a stern look.

  "If you are going to prosper in the Church, you'd better keep in mind that a woman is always in a more precarious position than a man," she said carefully. "It is much better to hold power quietly, without trappings, than it is to make a show of it. The men will resent you a great deal less, listen to you a great deal more, and might even come to respect you in time."

  Kayne nodded, slowly. "So that's why—" She spread her hands, indicating the office.

  "Correct. The appearance of austerity and modesty, the reality of a certain level of comfort." Ardis smiled. "You should have seen this office when my predecessor sat here. It looked like a cross between a Cathedral and a throne room. I cleared most of that out, sold the expensive trash to pay for this, and donated the rest to one of the orphanages Arden established after the Fire." She chuckled reminiscently. "Somewhere in Kingsford there are orphans bouncing on his overstuffed, plush-covered sofa and grinding muddy little feet into his appalling carpet, and I do hope he finds out about it."

  Kayne snickered again. "Well, is there anything you'd like to dictate to me before I retire to my office and catch up on the last of the work from yesterday?"

  Ardis considered the stack of correspondence before her. "How are things coming across the river?"

  By "across the river," Ardis meant in the city of Kingsford, which had been half burned down by a disastrous fire a little more than two years ago. The fire itself was not natural; it had been set by conspirators hoping to murder Duke Arden who had joined forces (or so Ardis suspected) with members of Ardis's own Order in an attempt to usurp control of the Cloister and Cathedral of the Justiciars, and then take full control of all of the Church holdings in Kingsford and put the lot in the hands of a group of closed-minded fanatics.

  Ardis only suspected that the two groups had been in league with each other, even though there was nothing but rumor to link them—the fires had certainly been started magically, in the rafters of the Duke's Theater while the Duke was attending a performance. So far as Ardis knew, the only humans in Kingsford and the surrounding area who could use magic were Priests of the Order of Justiciars. There had been any number of the fanatical faction preaching and stirring up trouble before the Fire, and there were a few witnesses among the actors and musicians who had seen a figure in the robes of a Priest loitering about the theater in a suspicious manner just before the fire. And the uprising within the Cloister walls had occurred so simultaneously with the fires in the theater that even the most skeptical were convinced that it could not be a coincidence. But a hot, high wind combined with the driest summer on record had contributed to spreading the fire out of control, while the uprising within the Cloister walls had ensured that there were no mages to spare to fight those fires, and when it was all over, the greater part of Kingsford lay in ruins. It was only the personal effort of Arden himself that kept the disaster from being worse than it was. The Duke had led the battle against the fire himself, working side by side with the lowest citizens of the city. His actions had earned him the undying loyalty of all of Kingsford, and the title "Good Duke Arden."

  Two years later, the city was still partly in ruins, and Ardis felt very sorry for the Grand Duke. He had beggared himself to help pay for the rebuilding, with the intentions of creating an ideal city out of the ashes, a city with no slums, a city that was planned from the beginning, a city where residential districts would not sit cheek-by-jowl with tanneries, and sewers would not dump their noisome contents upstream from places where people drew out their water.

  But the best-laid plans of men and Grand Dukes were subject to the whims of fate, and fate had decreed otherwise. Unwilling or unable to wait on the Duke's plans to rebuild their homes and businesses, those who had money of their own proceeded to put those homes and businesses wherever they pleased—usually building on what was left of their old property.

  The result was that half of the rebuilt city was laid out along Duke Arden's plans, and the other half was laid out the same way it had been—in as haphazard a fashion as could be expected. The only real change was that he had been able to decree that streets would be laid out on a grid, so there were no more dead ends and cul-de-sacs, or meandering alleys that went nowhere.

  "Arden finally got the fireboats he ordered," Kayne reported. "They arrived today. Whether they work or not—" She shrugged.

  "If they don't, I'll make a point of assigning someone to get those pumps working by magic, providing Arden doesn't browbeat a Deliambren to come up with something better," Ardis replied. She still suffered from twitches of mingled guilt and anger when she thought of how easy it would have been for Church mages to halt the fire before it had spread more than a block or two. Not that she was responsible for the fact that they hadn't, but still—

  I am a mage and a Justiciar, and what happened to the people of Kingsford was a gross miscarriage of Justice.

  "He probably will; he already has them working on a system to pump water to every part of the city," Kayne observed. "What's a little thing like fixing the pumps on a fireboat, compared to that?"

  Ardis nodded absently. If the idiots that started those fires didn't perish in the conflagration, they had better be so far from Kingsford that humans are an oddity. Because if I ever get hold of them, they'll pray to be handed over to the Duke for punishment. He'll only hang them. She had already taken care of those she had been able to catch. Recalling a magic transformation discovered and abused by another renegade Priest-Mage, she had put his discovery to better use. The miscreants were serving out life sentences, toiling under baskets of rubble and ashes, and wearing the forms of donkeys. Titularly the property of the Abbey, they were under long-term loan to the city. And when all the rubble was cleared away, they would be hitched to the carts that carried away the dead. They were well cared for, housed in their own stable in the city, where a special Priest of one of the Service Orders—a close, personal friend of both Ardis and the Duke—who knew what they were had been assigned to their physical and spiritual needs. They were awakened every morning at dawn with prayer, put to bed in their stalls with prayer, and prayed over while they worked. They would have ample opportunity for repentance, redemption, and contemplation.

  They were also performing the hardest physical labor they ever had in their lives, seven days a week, from dawn to dusk, in pouring rain, burning sun, or blinding blizzard. They would never be human again, for Ardis had locked the spell on them herself. No one knew of their fate except Ardis, the Grand Duke, and the young Priest assigned to their care, who was far more concerned with the state of their souls than the discomfort of their bodies. Even Duke Arden agreed that the punishment was sufficient. Ardis had similar fates planned for any more miscreants that turned up.

  "As for the rest, Arden has given up on the Carpenters, and now he's trying with the Weavers and Dyers." Kayne looked thoughtful. "I think he'll have a bit more luck with them; they need water for their work more than the Carpenters do."

  Arden was trying to persuade those who had built according to their own plans to tear down what they had put up, and rebuild according to his. He was having mixed success, and often it depended on the season and whether or not he had alternatives available while those who were displaced waited for the new construction to be completed. People who might not mind spending a month or two in a well-appointed tent in the
summer, would get decidedly testy about the idea in midwinter, and those whose businesses required that their materials stay dry were not likely to give up a roof for the sky.

  Ardis chuckled. "Poor Arden! He'll never give up, not as long as there is a single crooked street in Kingsford."

  "Perhaps. Or perhaps he will find other things to occupy him," Kayne observed. "He can't stay out of politics forever, as you have pointed out in the past. Speaking of politics, have you anything you'd like me to take care of for you, since you haven't got anything to dictate to me?"

  "Here—" Ardis handed the young woman a small packet of invitations. "Accept the invitation to Duke Arden's musical entertainment, give permission for the Novice's Choir to sing at the opening of the new Wool Guild Hall with the stipulation that no more than half the repertory be hymns mentioning sheep, shepherds, spinners, weavers, or wool, and decline everything else with my sincere regrets." She shook her head. "I never got this many invitations to dinners and parties when I was a maiden looking for a husband; I can't conceive of why I'm getting them now."

  Kayne accepted the packet with a shrug. "I haven't the background to tell you," she said with callous frankness. "Maybe they hope God will judge their entertaining with charity when they die if you attend."

  Ardis stretched, the heavy sleeves of her scarlet robe falling down around her elbows. "That's as good a theory as any," she replied. "Now, I'll just write a brief letter to my cousin, and you can pick it off my desk and address it in the morning."

  Taking that properly as her dismissal, Kayne rose and made the ritual bows: a brief nod of respect to Ardis, and a deeper genuflection to the small altar in the corner of the room. When she was gone, Ardis picked up her pen and took a clean sheet of paper. It never took long to write to Talaysen; words flowed as easily as if she was talking to him rather than writing. No matter how long it had been since they last saw each other, or how many leagues lay between them, they were still closer than many siblings.

  When she had finished, she sanded the letter to dry the ink, then set it aside in the tray for Kayne to take in the morning. There were more records to deal with, for record-keeping had not been a priority when there were people who were going to die of injuries or exposure if something wasn't done about their needs right that moment.

  Ardis had never minded record-keeping or paperwork, unlike some of her colleagues. These days it gave her some time to herself, time when she was not the High Bishop. Even now, it still gave her a twinge when she realized that the title and all that went with it were hers. It was an honor and a responsibility she had not expected to attain before her hair was totally white, if ever.

  She had known all along that the position would be as much trouble as honor, and she was resigned to dealing with the former. These records were a part of that; extremely sensitive information that she did not want in the hands even of her loyal secretary. These were the Abbey records that dealt with crime and punishment.

  Priests who "failed the Faith"—the euphemism for criminals—were seldom turned over to secular authorities, and were never punished publicly. Every Abbey had a section of cells with locks on the outside of the doors—effectively a gaol—and some even referred to that section by that name. Others, like the Justiciars' Kingsford Abbey, were more discreet, and called the section by the term "repentance retreat." Those who stole, committed fraud, or violated Church canon law ended up there until they truly, sincerely repented. Sometimes, however, there were cases that were more serious and required a solution that went beyond simple incarceration. There had been four such cases locked in the cells at the time of the rebellion and Fire, three of whom had been mages, and like the others who had been down there, they had been released by the rebels. One had died in a mage-battle. The one who was not a mage had fled, though not to the rebels, but to Ardis's people and had earned a certain amount of forgiveness by warning them and fighting at their side. Two had vanished completely.

  Since they had last been seen fleeing for the city, it was presumed that they were dead, but Ardis didn't much care for making such presumptions. Especially not where these two were concerned, since both of them, like her little donkeys, had been locked into forms that were not human. One of them was the renegade Priest-Mage named Revaner, who had discovered transformative magic in the first place, and his transformation was public knowledge, since it had occurred very dramatically at the Midsummer Faire.

  It was a tale that had been made into more than one song. Revaner had lusted after a young Free Bard and Gypsy named Robin; she had spurned his advances, and in revenge, he had conspired with a Guild Bard named Betris to catch and confine her. When she was caught, Revaner transformed her into a huge, brightly-colored bird that he displayed as a curiosity and forced to sing for his guests at the Faire. Master Talaysen, his apprentice Rune, and another Free Bard called Heron had discovered what had happened to Robin and appealed to the Justiciars. Ardis had directed them to bring the bird before her; they had stolen the captive and after a long and dramatic chase through the grounds of the Faire, had brought not only the transformed Bard, but had brought Revaner who had been pursuing them. The Priest made the mistake of underestimating Ardis's power and had claimed the bird as his property; Ardis and the other two Justiciar-Mages with her had demonstrated by breaking his spells that the bird was the Gypsy after all.

  They had been not only his judges, but the instrument of his punishment; in breaking his spells, they turned his magic back on him, and he was the one who was transformed. Ardis was senior enough to decree that this was fit punishment, and transformed he had remained until the day of the Fire.

  There were two more rebellious priests who were among the unaccounted-for, although they were not mages. Ardis had spent the last several days going over the records of the unidentified dead from the Fire, hoping to find matches for her missing miscreants. She frowned as she came up empty-handed.

  This is not good. I would rather not contemplate the consequences of renegade Priest-Mages wandering about, feeding their own mad agendas. Granted, they had been stripped of their powers, but it hadn't been their magic powers that were the cause of their incarceration. They could still do harm.

  They could set themselves up as Priests of some other Order out in the back of beyond, and go back to abusing those who are in their care. And we wouldn't know unless someone reported them, or the local Priest got curious because they stopped attending services in his chapel. Even then, we wouldn't know unless he made an inquiry—

  She shook her head. The only thing that she could think to do was to send letters to the Clerks of the Records of all the other Orders, describing the runaways, advising that they might try to set themselves up in their own parishes, and asking that copies of any suspicious inquiries be sent to Kingsford Abbey.

  If they dare try that and we catch them— She gritted her teeth. They would be made very unhappy.

  I wonder how they would like serving the Church as oxen at one of the hermitage farms? That would be particularly appropriate in the case of Revaner.

  She did what she could among the records, made a first draft of the letter she was going to have to send to the other Orders, and locked it in a drawer. She'd have to make some special preparations tomorrow, but this was one time when it made more sense to make copies magically than by hand. Someday, perhaps, she could allow Kayne to know this particular secret, but for now it was best kept as private as possible.

  She turned back to the letter from her cousin, for the final paragraph troubled her. Talaysen very seldom asked her for anything, and the request he had for her this time was a disturbing one.

  I have been receiving reports from Rayden of the murders of several Free Bards and Gypsies, he wrote. Ardis, I will be the very first to admit that my people tend to get themselves into trouble of their own accord, and occasionally some of them do end up on the wrong end of a knife. But these have all been violent, senseless, horrible murders by absolute strangers; no one understands wh
y or how they happened, and all the victims have been women. Some of my people are becoming very alarmed; they don't know how to explain it, but the ones with magic think that there is some power that is deliberately seeking them out to slay them. I don't know what you can do—but you are a Priest, a mage, and a Justiciar. Can you try to find out what is going on and put a stop to it?

  She smoothed her short hair back with both hands and stared at that last paragraph, cursing Talaysen for not sending her all the facts.

  But that assumed that he had them; he might know nothing more than what he had told her. Still, if she had names, dates, places—she might have been able to start an investigation. It would be a great deal more difficult to do so with "information" that was this vague.

  She had already told him, though, in an equally vague sentence at the end of her letter, that she would do everything she could to "help him with his problem."

  She folded up his letter and locked it away with the other sensitive material in her special desk drawer. I'll put it in the back of my mind and sleep on it, she told herself, knowing that she often came up with solutions to difficult situations that way. Right now, more than anything, I need a little time to myself. My mind feels as bloated and stiff as a cow-gut balloon.

  Now—now was her one hour of indulgence, the hour she kept solely for herself, when she could read in silence and peace, and not have to think of anything but the words on the page before her.

  She'd only begun taking this hour for herself in the last few weeks; until now, things had been too hectic even to steal a single hour for herself. This was the quiet time she had been hoping for since the Great Fire; in the months that had followed the conflagration, she had been forced to do the work of four people. There had been the situation in her own Order to consolidate, by making certain that her allies in the Order were placed in every position of importance and those whose loyalties were in doubt were put in positions of equal stature, but where they could do her no harm—such as Father Leod. Occasionally, she had been forced to manufacture such positions, to avoid making an outright enemy by demoting him. Then there had been the relief effort in the city—the number of deaths had been appalling, and as the days passed, more and more of the missing had to be added to the rolls of the "presumed dead." The number of burned and injured was even worse than the number of dead, for at least the dead no longer suffered. The injured suffered terribly, for fatal burns made for a long, drawn-out, agonizing death when there were not enough painkillers to treat more than a fraction of those hurt. For those who were most likely to die anyway, she had had to make the unpleasant decision to give them the painkillers with the worst long-term side effects—since after all, they would not survive long enough to suffer them—but while they still breathed they could have less agony. Then there were the homeless . . . and the illnesses that followed exposure to the elements, food and water that could not be kept clean, and of course the overwhelming shock and grief.