Four and Twenty Blackbirds

by Mercedes Lackey

  She might also know a few inconvenient secrets about the other Bishops herself; most people in power did.

  Still, she was a remarkable woman; she would have stood out in any setting, and in this one—

  She's amazing. Nothing short of amazing.

  Attractive, too. At least, to him. That vixen-grin she'd flashed him, full or humor and what almost looked like mischief; she could charm the boots off a man with that one, if she ever used it as a weapon. Another prejudice; he'd always thought of female Priests as being unattractive, waspish, something like young Kayne, but more so. It was odd to think of a physically attractive woman in a Priest's robes. Very odd, actually.

  Why had she become a Priest in the first place? She didn't seem the type to have been pulled in by religion. She just didn't have that glassy-eyed sort of devotion he expected out of someone dedicating their life to religion.

  But maybe that's another prejudice on my part. I just don't know that many Priests, I suppose.

  Still, she was well connected, probably money or titles or both, attractive, intelligent—why had she become a Priest?

  Might have been the traditional thing. I've heard some of the noble families do that—firstborn inherits the estate, second-born goes into the military, third goes to the Church, whether they like it or not.

  But he couldn't picture Ardis being coerced into anything, so she must have had some reason to go. A disappointment in love? No, she didn't seem like the type to moon tragically around because someone she wanted didn't want her. More than that—a tragedy? The man she loved had died?

  She wouldn't dive into the Church unless she thought she could exorcise the grief in work. But she doesn't seem at all grief-ridden; there's usually a shadow over people who lose a loved one.

  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she was a mage. He didn't know of too many places that could train a person in magic, and most of them wouldn't be the sorts of places that would appeal to someone as well-bred as Ardis. And the rest were all in nonhuman lands.

  I certainly can't picture her marching up to an Elf Hill and demanding to be let in. The Elves would drive her mad with their ways.

  But he also couldn't picture Ardis ever letting a talent go to waste. Maybe that was the reason; it made more sense than anything else.

  Except— Maybe she went into the Church because the Church was the only place where she would be expected to exercise all of her intellect.

  This was all sheer speculation. He didn't know enough about the Church, the lives of the nobles, or Ardis herself to make a really intelligent guess.

  That was part of the trouble; he knew nothing about the High Bishop, except the little that she had told him herself. He had nothing to make judgments on, and that left him at a disadvantage.

  I'm going to have to make it my business to learn everything I can about her, he decided. This clearly wasn't going to be the kind of situation he'd had back in Haldene, where he was just one constable among many. He was the only Special Inquisitor; he and she were going to be working closely together. It wasn't even the equivalent position to the other Abbey Guards.

  In a sense, she's going to be both my superior and my partner. Or—maybe a little more like when I first came into the force, and I was attached to a senior constable. I had to learn as much about him to work smoothly with him as I was learning about being a constable.

  It was a long time since he'd been in that kind of position; it was going to take some getting used to. Still—why not? The only trouble was that it meant he was going to be working on two investigations, not one. The murder chase, and the investigation of Ardis.

  What the hell. I work better under pressure.

  And with that thought, his exhaustion finally overcame his nerves, and he slept.

  Chapter Six

  Visyr hovered, wings pumping furiously to keep him in place, roughly a hundred wingspans above Archer Lane. Hovering was harder than any other kind of flying, but Visyr was used to it, and his chest- and wing-muscles were stronger and heavier than any of the Haspur who specialized in fancy flying and aerobatics. He kept taking deep breaths of the icy air to bring new fuel to those muscles as he made notes on his pressure-sensitive Deliambren dryboard with the tip of a needle-sharp talon, notes too small for mere human eyes to read. After each entry, he glanced down at the street below and concentrated on the next building on the north side of the street, measuring it by eye and noting its position relative to its neighbors. This was his special talent; any Haspur could hover above a street, and any Haspur could make a rough map that would show the placement of buildings and their sizes relative to one another, but very few could gauge the dimensions so precisely that a physical measurement would be off by no more than a fraction of an inch. It was a peculiarly Haspur talent, this ability to create accurate maps from memory—a useful talent in a race that flew—but Visyr was an artist among the talented.

  When he had filled his dryboard—a flat, white board sensitive to pressure, used by the Deliambrens as a note-pad—he would fly back to his drafting room at the Ducal Palace and transform the notes into an actual city block on the new map he was making for the Grand Duke. When he was done, Duke Arden would have a map of Kingsford that showed not only every tiny lane and back-alley, he would have one that showed every structure that existed at the time the map was finished, including sheds and fences. His constables wouldn't have to guess where miscreants might be hiding to ambush the unwary, they would know where every blind-alley, dead-end street, and cul-de-sac lay. This was making Captain Fenris very happy; in fact, the Captain had a page checking on Visyr's maps and making copies of them as Visyr completed each section. He could hardly wait for the whole thing to be done. With the rebuilding of Kingsford proceeding rather chaotically in some sections, Fenris's people were at a distinct disadvantage when they had to pursue a footpad into an area that might have changed since the last time they were there.

  This, however, was not why Visyr had come down out of the mountains. Although the Duke and his people certainly appreciated what the Haspur was doing, and although he was gaining a great deal of support for himself and other nonhumans with this work, this was not what he had intended to do. Eventually, or so Visyr hoped, he would be part of the great Deliambren mapping expedition; that was why he and his beloved, dynamic mate Syri had left their homeland in the first place. But humans were dreadfully short-sighted when it came to permitting nonhumans to do anything in their lands, and the Deliambrens didn't want to mount this project until they had iron-clad agreements of cooperation as well as permission from the rulers of all of the Twenty Kingdoms, agreements that no subsequent monarch could overrule.

  Not that I blame them, Visyr mused, as he noted down the size of the warehouse below him, and the dimensions of the tiny scrap of yard behind it. Taking that ship out is going to be an effort worthy of an epic song, and if they ever have to stop it they may not be able to get it started again. The ship and many of the machines the Deliambrens intended to use were ancient; parts were difficult to duplicate and had to be made one at a time by hand, and the mechanisms themselves were often poorly understood. Intended to be manned by an assortment of races, controls were not always suited to the hands, hooves, or beaks of those who were to operate them. Visyr didn't envy those assigned to tend and use the things. The expedition itself was a massive effort on the part of not only the Deliambrens but of many other nonhuman races, and even of some humans as well. There would be hundreds of people tending and operating the ship and all of its mechanisms, and more working outside it.

  His assignment with the ship would be simpler; basically, what he was doing now. He would be one of a few mapping-scouts, making an aerial survey of heavily inhabited areas where the ship couldn't go; other scouts would roam ahead to find a safe route for the behemoth that contained the bulk of the expedition. Once and for all, the Deliambrens hoped to survey all of Alanda, or this continent, anyway, to locate mineral resources, underground watercourses
, and ancient ruins, as well as mapping the surface accurately.

  This wasn't altruistic, although the Deliambrens would provide copies of the general topographical maps to anyone who wanted them. Besides their mechanical wonders, the Deliambrens trafficked in information—in return for permission to cross their land, the rulers of each kingdom would get copies of any of the surface maps they wanted, but if they wished to know the locations of other things the Deliambrens uncovered, they would have to pay.

  All of which seemed perfectly reasonable to Visyr, but apparently there were those who were incensed by the idea; they felt that information should be given away, no matter how hard someone had worked to obtain or create it. As a result, the expedition was stalled, and he was taking little jobs like this one to prove just how useful those accurate maps would be. If the Deliambrens could point out that even the basic maps would contribute to generating revenue or solving problems, the various rulers who were causing difficulties might see their way clear to removing their objections. They might also find it easier to accept the very moderate fees that the Deliambrens would charge for other information.

  Of course, Visyr thought, noting down the dimensions of another building, they could always go out and look for their treasures themselves.

  This was no bad way to pass the time while he waited; it was useful and needed work, and the Duke was being quite generous in his wages. The Duke had always wanted absolutely accurate maps of his city—and now that Kingsford was being rebuilt, such maps were more important than ever and not just for the constables. People now had the opportunity to build whatever they pleased, wherever they pleased, and many of them were doing just that. Property owners were taking advantage of the situation to move original property lines, stealing inches and even whole feet of property from their neighbors.

  Sadly, there were many who were no longer around to care what their former neighbors did, and their heirs were either children or too wrapped still in grief to realize what was happening. Eventually, though, they might discover what had happened and want some legal redress, and Visyr's maps would give evidence of what had happened.

  The trouble with human, ground-pounding surveyors was that they took more time than Visyr did. They had to lay out measuring tapes, and use other equipment, to do what he did by eye. They often stalled traffic while they were working, and they got in the way of pedestrians. And while they could measure the size of something, they wouldn't necessarily get its placement correct.

  Humans do this very well, when they are measuring out open fields. For a job like this, you need someone like me. That was the long and the short of it, so far as Visyr was concerned.

  Another problem that surveyors encountered was that people were building things behind walls and fences that they wouldn't let the surveyors pass. Without going and getting an authority who would force the owners to let the surveyors inside, there was no way of telling what was or was not in there, and most surveyors simply didn't want to take the chance of angering home and business owners. Walls and fences didn't hinder Visyr, and there would be a number of folk who would be very unhappy with him when this survey was over, and they got tax-bills for outbuildings, workshops, and secondary dwellings that they hadn't reported.

  But by then I'll be gone, so they can be as unhappy as they like. Frankly, I think Arden deserves the extra tax money. If it weren't for the money he is putting into the city, these people wouldn't have public water, covered sewers, or any of the other more pleasant innovations he's building in.

  Visyr liked Duke Arden; most people did, he suspected. It wasn't difficult to like the Duke, as Arden was personable, persuasive, and really did have the welfare of his people first and foremost in his mind. He had made some very sensible laws about the rebuilding in Kingsford that were being violated every day. There would be some unhappy people when the Duke's men appeared to levy fines or tear down illegal constructions that Visyr had uncovered, but some of those structures were fire hazards and others were clearly not supposed to be where they were. It was one thing to keep pigs and goats in the country, but putting them in a tiny scrap of yard in the middle of a residential district was going to make someone sick eventually. Visyr had even spotted a man keeping cows in a shed barely large enough to hold them!

  Unfortunately, it will probably not be the fellow who is keeping the livestock who pays the price of their being there. Visyr didn't want to think about what all those little goat- and pig-yards would smell like when summer came. Hopefully by then, the Duke's inspectors would have most of them cleared out. Dove-cots and rabbit-hutches, fine. Those created manageable waste. Not farm stock.

  Not to mention the possibility of the damage a large animal could do if it got out. Horses and donkeys were necessary evils, and were properly kept in stables in areas meant for them, but even so, Visyr distrusted such large and unpredictable creatures. He was just glad that he spent the largest part of his time that he was outside the palace in the air.

  It might have seemed odd to conduct this survey in the dead of winter, but cold didn't particularly bother Visyr, and he would much rather fly in a snowstorm than in a rainstorm. Besides, in winter no one was doing any exterior construction; any building going on was all interior work. That meant that if he could finish this work before spring (and he certainly should be able to!) he wouldn't have to backtrack to add new buildings.

  So far no one but the Duke and a few of his people were aware of what Visyr was up to. Plenty of people knew that the Duke had a Haspur at his Court, but after the great to-do caused by another Haspur at the Court of the High King, the masterful musician and singer T'fyrr, they probably all assumed he was a musician, too. And he was, but not a professional like T'fyrr; all Haspur could sing, and any Haspur would probably impress a human who'd never heard one before, but anyone who had heard T'fyrr would never mistake Visyr for a professional.

  I'm not even a really talented amateur, but then, T'fyrr can't make maps either. He'd probably even get lost in the High King's palace.

  But as long as people thought he was a musician, no one would wonder why he was hovering over their houses. If they asked, he had a standard—and quite truthful—reply.

  Research. A delightful word that covers any number of circumstances. They'll assume I'm making up some epic about the rise of Kingsford from the ashes of the Great Fire, and ignore me. At the worst, they'll want to tell me the story of how they survived the Fire, which might be entertaining.

  Actually, very few people seemed to notice him; the humans here in the Twenty Kingdoms were remarkably unobservant creatures, especially when it came to scanning the sky.

  Maybe because their eyes are so bad. Humans, poor things, are remarkably deficient in that area.

  Hardly anyone ever looked up at him, not even when his large shadow passed over him. Curious, really; a Haspur noted every little floating seed and tiny wren in the sky, and never went more than a few heartbeats without taking a glance upward. The humans who lived in partnership with the Haspur were the same, glancing up at even a hint of a shadow or a moving mote in the sky.

  I suppose it's all in what you're used to.

  The dryboard was almost full; Visyr made a few more notations about a building with an extension hidden behind a tall fence, cupped his wings a bit and dropped, losing a few dozen feet of height to get some forward momentum. It was a good trade; shortly he was well on the way to the Ducal Palace where it rose above the rest of the city, rivaling even the Kingsford Cathedral. He reveled in the feel of free flight, in the force of the wind through his nares, in the powerful beats of his own wings. It was a lovely day in spite of being overcast; a recent snowfall covered the raw places in the earth that surrounded new construction, hiding signs of dilapidation and shoddy building, and softened the lines of roofs and fences. With clean, white snow everywhere, this really looked like the model city the Duke had dreamed of.

  And straight ahead rose the palace, a fine piece of architecture in its own right. He had h
is own separate entrance into the tower that served him as workroom and private quarters; an aerial entrance, of course. Humans would probably refer to it as a balcony, but the railing was just the right size to land on, the wood sturdy enough to hold up under his talons, and the servants who tended the room had orders to keep the railing and the balcony ice-free. The room had an unparalleled view, too; right over the city and across the river, where the Abbey and Cathedral of the Justiciars presided over Faire Field. He hadn't been there yet; there wasn't much to survey in that direction, so he was leaving it until the last.

  At the moment, he was working his way along the Kanar River, at the point farthest from the high, stone bridge that crossed over to Faire Field. He had an idea that the bridge itself was older than Kingsford—it was so tall in the center that virtually any ship that could navigate the river could sail beneath it, and certainly the river barges had no difficulty getting between its massive white piers. The only damage time had done to it was cosmetic, and although it was commonly thought of as being made of stone, the material didn't resemble any stone Visyr was familiar with. The only "improvement" that humans had made to it was a toll booth on the Kingsford side. The road leading to the bridge was unpaved, but that didn't mean anything; the paving could have been pried up by the people who'd built the Abbey and Cathedral to use for construction materials. This sort of destruction drove the Deliambrens crazy. Visyr thought it was rather amusing. It certainly proved the humans were resourceful devils, ant-like in their ingenuity for picking things up and carrying them away.