Four and Twenty Blackbirds

by Mercedes Lackey

  The two Church officials were out of sight in the cul-de-sac, but Orm knew what was happening: Tal Rufen was no longer being controlled by Rand. The High Bishop would free him in a moment—and she would have the pen in her possession in another. Nothing he could do or say would take away the fact that he still had Rufen's pen in his room, and traces of his essence would be on the pen in Rufen's hand. Ardis was famed for being able to dig the true facts of a matter out of people who might not remember them. None of Orm's alibis would hold up against her investigation. Once she began unraveling his web of deceptions, it would fall completely to pieces. Rand might die by the talons of the bird-man, but Orm would be taken by the Church constables, and—

  And he'd heard rumors about what they did to prisoners. Look what they'd done to Rand!

  Nothing he had planned had included the High Bishop surviving Rand's attack.

  His luck had run completely out. He could not run far or fast enough to escape the Church's justice with Ardis in charge.

  But for a little while longer, at least, Rufen would not be able to move. Until Rand was actually dead, Rufen would be frozen in place. There was only one hope for Orm, only one way he could buy himself enough time to flee.

  Kill them both. Now.

  He had learned a lot from Rand. It would be easy. First the woman, then the man—she, while she was held in frightened shock, he, while the spell still imprisoned him. Humans died so very easily; a single moment of work, and he would be safe.

  Lightly as a cat, quickly as a rat, he dashed from shelter, his knives already in his hands.

  Just as the spell broke and freed him, Tal heard the sound of running footsteps behind him; he did not wait to see what it was or who it was.

  He could move; that was all that counted. Freed from the force that held him, he flung himself between Ardis and whatever was coming. His body answered his commands slowly, clumsily, but he got himself in front of her just barely in time, and turned to face what was attacking them.

  That was all he had time to do; he wasn't even able to get his hands up to fend the attacker away.

  He felt the knife more as a shock than pain—the attacker plunged it into the upper part of his chest, in a shallow but climbing uppercut through his chest muscles, glancing off bone, too high to do any mortal damage. Tal had been through too many knife-fights to let that stop him.

  He thought he heard shouting; he ignored it, as everything slowed for him and his focus narrowed to just the man in front of him. The attacker—a thin, supple, ferretlike man—still had another knife. Ardis was still in danger. He had to deal with the attacker; he was the only one who could.

  Cold calm, as chill as an ice-floe, descended over him.

  The wound began to hurt; the pain spread outwards through his body like an expanding circle of fire. Hot blood trickled down his arm and side. None of that mattered; what mattered was the other man. He pushed the pain away, pushed everything away, except his opponent.

  As time slowed further, Tal watched the attacker's eyes flick this way, that way, then focus over Tal's shoulder. Ardis. He was going after Ardis. His shoulder twitched. His upper arm twitched. He flipped the knife in his hand, so that he held the point. He was going to throw that second knife.

  There was more shouting. Tal ignored it.

  Tal distracted him for a crucial second by making a feint with his good hand, then lunged for the attacker, knocking him to the ground and landing on top of him. Tal grappled him while he was still stunned, keeping him from using the knife, then used the advantage of his greater weight to keep his attacker pinned. Then Tal shoved a knee into his chest, seized him by the chin with his good hand, and began pounding his head into the ground.

  Now anger took over, and the red rage completely overcame him. He continued pounding the man's head into the dirty ice, over and over, until he stopped struggling, until the body beneath his grew limp. There was a growing red smear on the frozen ground of the alley, when he realized that there was no more resistance or movement from the body beneath him.

  It was over.

  There was more shouting, but suddenly Tal was too tired to pay any attention to it.

  Time resumed its normal course.

  Tal fell off their attacker's chest and rolled over onto his back, and stared up into the gray slit of sky above the alley.

  He was tired, so very tired.

  His shoulder and chest hurt, along with most of his body, and he rather thought that he ought to close his eyes now. . . .

  "Ardis!" Fenris shouted, pounding into the cul-de-sac ahead of his men. "High Bishop!"

  "I'm all right," she managed, getting to her feet and stumbling in the direction she'd last seen Tal. "There's been some trouble—"

  By that time, she had seen where Tal and the assassin had ended up their battle.

  Oh, no—

  She ran the last few paces, and knelt quickly at Tal's side, feeling the cold and wet of the melting ice seeping through the thick wool of her robe where her knees met the pavement. He was unconscious, but nowhere nearly as hurt as she'd first thought. She made a quick assessment of his only obvious injury, his shoulder and chest. He's still bleeding, but he'll be all right, she judged. He remained unconscious, but it was because of shock, not from any significant damage or blood-loss.

  But as her hands touched him, she braced herself, expecting a shock to the heart. There should have been such a shock.

  There was the sick sensation she always had when she encountered a wound created by human hands—there was concern, and relief that the injury wasn't life-threatening—

  But no shock. No heart-shattering moment that screamed, The man I love is wounded at my feet! Just the same feelings she would have had if it had been Talaysen who lay there, or Kayne.

  And that was as much a shock in its way.

  She rose, wet robes clinging to her ankles, as Fenris reached her side.

  "Someone take care of Rufen, he's hurt," she ordered and, striding through the mud, turned her attention to their attacker. Once again, she knelt beside an injured man, but this time it was with a feeling of grim satisfaction that she should probably do penance for when she returned to the Abbey. It was obvious without much examination that he wasn't going to be doing anything more; Tal had managed to cave in the back of his skull. He was still breathing, but Ardis didn't think he'd live for much longer.

  Fenris had already gotten four of his men to rig an improvised litter out of two spears and two coats; they were lifting Tal into it as Ardis straightened.

  "Take him to the Abbey," she said, her mind already calculating where and what to look for to trace the foul magics back to their caster. "Keep a compress on that wound, and keep him warm."

  "Stop at the inn at the corner and requisition a warming-pan full of coals," Fenris elaborated. "Get one of their cots for a litter, and borrow the dead-cart to carry him."

  The four men carried Tal off, and as soon as they were out of sight, Tal was out of her thoughts as well as out of her hands.

  Ardis turned her attention and her concentration back to the scene of the attack. Fenris didn't ask what had happened, but Ardis wasn't going to leave him in suspense any longer.

  "Help me gather up some evidence before it disappears," she said in a low voice. He took the hint, and followed her to the back of the cul-de-sac where she had been tossing items she'd taken off of Tal when he froze in place.

  "Something back here was carrying that same spell we talked about," she said quietly, as he picked up items using a silk glove she supplied and dropped them into a silk bag she held out for him. "It took over Tal, and he started after me. Then—for some reason, he got out a warning, then froze. I don't know whether he managed to fight the magic successfully, or whether something else happened, but he got control of his voice enough to tell me what was going on, and I started stripping him of anything that could have carried the magic. He said, and I think—" she said, fishing the pen out of a pile of refuse and holding it
up "—that this is it."

  Fenris frowned at it. "Visyr came tearing overhead chasing something black," he told her as she dropped the pen into a separate bag. "I sent men off after him."

  She nodded. "Right after I pulled these things off Tal, that man came out of the alley with knives. You'll want to ask Visyr, but it looks to me as if he bears a pretty strong resemblance to the fellow he saw." She smiled humorlessly. "It's a good thing that Tal was pounding the back of his head into the ground, or we wouldn't be able to make that identification. Anyway, Tal got between me and him, and he wounded Tal. Then Tal fought him off and got him down, and took care of him."

  She didn't have to add anything; Fenris saw the results for himself. More footsteps out in the alley heralded the arrival of one of Fenris's men.

  "Sir!" he shouted as he came. "The bird-man wants you, quick! The High Bishop, too! He's killed something!"

  Fenris gave her a quick glance that asked without words if she was fit to go. She smiled, crookedly.

  "Let's go, Captain, there's work to be done," she told him firmly. "This case isn't over yet, although I think . . . the killings are."

  Tal had been hurt before, and it wasn't the first time he'd come to in an Infirmary. He knew the sounds, and more importantly, the smells, pretty well. He stirred a little, trying to assess the extent of the damage this time, and apparently gave himself away.

  "Well, the sleeper awakes."

  The voice was amused, and quite familiar. He opened his eyes, expecting a headache to commence as soon as light struck the back of his eyeballs, and was pleasantly surprised when one didn't.

  "Hello, Ardis," he croaked. "Sorry, but I seem to have rendered myself unfit for duty for a while."

  "It happens to the best of us," she replied, and reached over to pat his hand.

  The touch sent a shock through his body, despite weakness, dizziness, and the fog of pain-killers. But no sooner had the shock passed, then a chill followed.

  That had not been the gesture of a woman to the man she loved. A caring sister, a mother even—but not a lover.

  And when he looked into her eyes he saw only the serenity of the High Bishop, and the concern of a friend. Nothing more. Nothing less, but nothing more.

  Had he imagined that there had ever been anything else there?

  If there had been, it was gone now.

  Ardis went on, oblivious to the tumult in his heart. "We got the mage—and there won't be any more murders. If it hadn't been for you, I would probably be dead, and the murders would still be going on, because I rather doubt that Revaner would have stopped with me—"

  A low voice Tal couldn't quite hear interrupted her; she looked up, listened for a moment, and nodded. He tried to turn his head to see who it was that had spoken to her, but it was too much of an effort.

  "The Infirmarian tells me," she said, with a quirk of her mouth, "that if I don't leave you alone to rest, he'll bar me from the Infirmary. He told me that you'll be well enough in a day or so to make your report, and that until then I'm not to bother you."

  "It's—no bother—" he began thickly.

  She reached out again, and laid her hand on his. "Rest," she commanded. "You saved my life, Tal Rufen. The least I can do is let you have a little peace."

  Once again, he looked deeply into her eyes—but what he hoped to see was not there.

  If it ever had been.

  Then, she was gone, and it was too much effort to keep his eyes open anymore.

  "—and that, more or less, is when I fell over," Tal concluded.

  Ardis nodded. It was very good to be sitting in her chair, knowing that there would be no more dead women to deal with. Across from her sat Kayne and Tal, both of them much the better for an uninterrupted night's sleep, Tal bandaged and a little pale, but in good spirits. Ardis wrote down the final word of Tal's statement in her case-book, and leaned back with a sigh. "So," she said, closing it, "that's the last that we'll ever know."

  "I wish we knew more," Kayne said fretfully. Tal said at the same time, "That's more than enough."

  She smiled wryly at both of them. "From now on, between the two of you, I ought to have a completely balanced set of opinions on everything."

  Kayne made a face. "All we know is that Revaner didn't die, he escaped. We don't know how. We don't know how he got where he was when he started killing people. We don't know why he was killing people, we only guess that he needed the energies for magic. We don't know how he met that other fellow, or even who that other fellow is, really. We don't know how he persuaded the man to help him!"

  "But we do know that he was the one behind the killings," Tal pointed out quietly. "And we do know why he was doing them, and why he chose the targets he did. We know he was building up to take revenge on the people he felt had gotten him into the situation he was in; nothing else explains behavior that was completely irrational. The fellow he chose for his accomplice was probably a criminal, and there was plenty of money on him; the easiest way to persuade a criminal is to offer him a great deal of money." He turned to Ardis. "I also think that if he'd had access to female Priests, he'd have murdered them the way he murdered female musicians; in my opinion, gathering magical energy was secondary to him, and what he really wanted was revenge."

  "I suspect you're right," Ardis agreed, as Kayne shuddered.

  "I'm just glad I never leave the Abbey," the novice said. "I could have been one of his victims!"

  Ardis put her hand on top of the book, glad to have it all over and done with. "Tal is right," she said. "We know enough. We know who, how, and why. We might even know enough now to catch someone else who follows the same path. We mustn't let this knowledge be lost; though may God protect us from another one such as Revaner."

  "May God help us to prevent another one such as Revaner." Tal rubbed his shoulder, and nodded. Ardis wondered if it was hurting him, or if the gesture was only habit. Well, if it is, he's bright enough to take himself to the Infirmarian and have it dealt with, she thought dismissively.

  And that was not the reaction of a woman in love.

  Her peace of mind and heart was back, as surely as if it had never deserted her. After she had gotten back to the Abbey, with the body of the Black Bird and all of the evidence in hand, she had not thought of anything else until she had the bones of her solution in place. After that, she had assigned the rest of the investigation to other Justiciar-Mages, so that all of the loose ends could be neatly packaged up with the appropriate evidence. She looked in on Tal long enough to assure him that the long quest for the killer was over. Then she sent word to the other Orders in Kingsford to begin ministering to the souls of the murdered dead and the bereaved living, and had gone to bed to sleep deeply nearly twice her normal hours.

  When she awoke again she worked like a fiend to catch up on some of the work she'd neglected all these months, and only when she had done a full day's work did she look in again on Tal. It was at that moment that she had realized her work, her vocation, and her duty were more important to her than Tal was—and that what she had felt for him might well have been attraction, but it wasn't a passionate love.

  One could be attracted to a colleague, or a friend, but that didn't mean one had to go and make a lover out of him.

  I am as I thought I was, and what we have been through has not changed that. I am still Ardis, High Bishop of Kingsford, and true daughter of the Church. And that is good. There will be no more sleepless nights. If he felt any different from that—well, she could feel sympathy, even pity for him, but that was nothing she had any control over. He would not die of an unrequited passion, and if it went unrequited long enough, it would surely fade. Meanwhile the surest relief for it would be work.

  "I hope that the end of this hasn't made you reconsider, and that you plan to stay on as my Special Inquisitor, Tal Rufen," she continued. "I won't hesitate to tell you that I'm counting on your help from here on. There will still be more than enough work for you—as Kayne can tell you."

&n
bsp; "Work!" Kayne rolled her eyes. "There's work enough here for ten Special Inquisitors, and it's only going to get worse as Kingsford grows."

  Ardis spread her hands wide. "There you have it."

  Tal looked at Ardis solemnly and searchingly, and evidently was satisfied by what he saw in her eyes.

  "Thank you," he said simply. "I would like to stay."

  Since his shoulder was still bothering him, Tal Rufen returned to his bed in the Infirmary at the Infirmarian's orders, and drank the potion he was given as obediently as even that worthy could have asked.

  "Well?" Infirmarian Nord Hathon asked. "Is everything tied up to everyone's satisfaction?"

  "Everyone but Kayne," Tal told him, as he lay back down into the soft embrace of the bed with a sigh. "Revaner is rightly tied into all the murders and the names of his tools are cleared of any wrongdoing. She's arranged for special services to be held for their souls, and the souls of the more obvious victims. So now we can all go back to normal routine."

  "You aren't satisfied?" the Priest asked shrewdly.

  "It's somewhat bitter justice, but Ardis claims that the families get some comfort out of it." That was true, so far as it went; Tal did not intend to confess the rest of his mixed feelings to this particular friend of Ardis's.

  I must have been mistaken when I thought I saw some sign of attraction. No—no, I couldn't have. After all, she's a Priest; her first and deepest love is for her service to the Church. It is the way things are, and should be. I was deluding myself. Or it was the stress of the case that made me see things that weren't there? Were my eyes tired or my mind distracted, making me see expressions and glances that weren't what I thought they were? No, this is for the best, I think.

  When he'd looked into Ardis's eyes, he hadn't seen anything there except confidence in him, and simple regard. When he'd come to himself for the second time in the Infirmary, she hadn't been there, and hadn't made any inquiries about him for a whole day.