A Parliament of Owls

by Beth Hilgartner

  "Please." She was crying, now; he could hear it. "You must tell me what you saw."

  The hand with the signet gripping a riding whip; welts on fair skin; Guiding Light caught in the rocks; bodies washed up on the shingle; a chain of office, its emblem spinning in the light.

  "Please," she begged. "Is he even alive? Are we too late?"

  A bird before the snake, paralyzed and despairing; an insect in a spider's web; a lamp in a burst of wind; a dike buckling under the flood tide's onslaught. "I'm sorry," Owl said. "I don't know, for sure. I think—I felt him die."

  "No!" Anguish resonated in the room. "Oh, gods above and below, what will become of me?"

  The images were fast, overwhelming: the hand with the vial; a burning house; the Dhenykhare mourners; the Emperor lifting a chain of office; Rhydev and his lover, smug and knowing; Cithanekh and Cezhar, in the Palace halls; the coiled snake, rearing back to strike; Arre, her face pale as parchment, and her lute slipping out of suddenly nerveless fingers.

  "You must help me," the woman was saying, breathless with panic. "Varykh—the Admiral—gave me something before he left. He said— he said it mustn't fall into the wrong hands. Please, may I give it to you? You can keep it safe. I mustn't have it; it was someone of my kin whom the Admiral feared. Please say you'll guard it."

  Adrift in her panic and the tempest of images, Owl said, "Of course; I'll do my best..."

  She drew her hands out of his; he heard the rustle of cloth as she took something from a pocket. "Here. I don't know why it's significant," she told him as she laid something hard and cool on his open hand. Then, she gripped his hand and the object in it fiercely. Owl felt a blaze of cold pain in his palm. Images: the snake, striking; the weighted net, tangling wings; Arre's lute, falling like a shooting star to dash itself to flinders against the stone floor. He sent his mind after the lute: a desperate cry. Arre! Lynx! And then, he too, was falling through darkness.

  ***

  "I wish I knew what to tell you, Cithanekh," Arre was saying, her hands moving absently on the lute's strings, stirring the barest murmur of music. "My Gift isn't like Owl's; I have neither his strength, nor his control. Things rarely come to me unbidden, and I never have the kind of...premonition...you describe. Either I've been concentrating on a focus stone for hours to get the scrap of a hint, or it comes on me completely unawares."

  "I shouldn't have left him," Cithanekh said.

  Arre shrugged. "The Emperor needed to know, even if it is only Owl's—what did he call it?—'crazy speculation.'"

  "You don't think it is crazy," Cithanekh said.

  "No. I think he's dead, just as Owl said. Poor Varykh. He told me once that he knew he would die by drowning." She assayed a crooked smile. "As I recall, I asked him why he went on sailing, then. But he said, in that gruff way of his: 'Can't really imagine dying any other way, Arre.'" She fell silent, and Cithanekh waited for her to return from her memories.

  Suddenly her face went stiff and white; her eyes widened. It was the look Owl had, in the taloned grip of his Gift. "Arre?"

  "God," she said, and the lute slipped out of her fingers. "Owl." The instrument struck the stone floor with a sickening crunch and jangle. "Owl!" she cried; and then, more calmly, "Kerigden!"

  "Arre?" Cithanekh whispered; but she was distant and focused, her attention trained on some inner vista. "Cezhar, what should we do?"

  "He has to be all right," Cezhar said. "Marhysse and Lynx and Effryn—they weren't going to let him see that woman alone."

  "What woman?" Thantor asked from the shadows; the Emperor's spymaster had made them forget that he was there. "What woman?" he repeated as they gaped.

  "A veiled woman came, demanding to see Owl, just before we left," Cithanekh said. "She gave her name as Dhenykhare—Adythe Dhenykhare."

  "Morekheth's wife," Thantor said softly. "Did she say what she wanted?"

  "No," Cezhar said. "Just Owl."

  "Well, come on, then; let's go see what's happened."

  "What about Arre?" Cithanekh asked, but Thantor had moved to the door, and with a low whistle, summoned a hente of Imperial Guards.

  "Stay with her," he said to two of them. "The rest of you, come with us."

  ***

  Kerigden was roused from a sound sleep by Arre's mental cry. It startled him; she wasn't usually so strong. Then, he felt Owl's mind—a corner of some tremendous power and agony, which Arre was redirecting to bolster her own strength. There was another presence, as well, one he did not know.

  Lynx, it told him, a touch like the wave of warning heat from a blast furnace. Owl's been poisoned.

  You are holding his mind, Kerigden stated.

  I am trying. I will need your help. I don't know the word for this poison in your language, but I have seen it before. It will get worse—far worse—before he begins to mend. And though Lynx did not think it, the echo was strong behind her thoughts: if he mends at all.

  I'll send a Healer, Kerigden offered, and with a mindtouch, dispatched one of his priests to the Ghytteve residence.

  Yes. Good. The mind poison was mixed with something else. Whoever did this does not want Owl to survive.

  Beneath their mental contact, Owl's mind surged and flexed like a beast beset with nightmares. They wasted no more time, but set about—as well as they could, given their unequal strengths and disparate training—building a net to hold Owl's embattled mind, and a structure through which they could safely bleed off the tormenting visions the drug would loose.

  ***

  As Owl fell, Effryn caught him and lowered him to the ground. Lynx, with a spring like her namesake, landed beside him, pried the object out of his hand, and quickly tied a tight strip of cloth around his wrist.

  "A knife," she said to Marhysse. "It is poison."

  Marhysse opened the puncture in Owl's palm with two steady slashes and let it bleed; Effryn ran for water. Lynx cursed in her own tongue. "We let the bitch escape!"

  "Save Owl," Effryn suggested shortly, laving his friend's wounded hand. "We'll worry about politics later."

  "We know her name," Marhysse offered, but Effryn shook his head.

  "We know the name she gave us."

  Owl stirred, moaning. Lynx laid a palm on his forehead. "There is a mind poison. I'll do what I can; do not disturb me."

  When Cithanekh, Cezhar, Thantor and the Imperial Guards arrived, Owl was breathing steadily, though his face was pale and clammy, and his pulse raced. Lynx squatted at his head, her hands on his temples, her eyes closed and her face tense with concentration. Cithanekh knelt beside his friend and brushed his cheek with his fingers.

  "Owl," he whispered.

  Lynx's eyes snapped open. "Talyene's priest has sent a Healer. Make sure she arrives. There is body poison and mind poison, both."

  "Should we move him?" Cithanekh asked.

  "No," Lynx said, then caught her breath, as if startled, and shut her eyes.

  Cithanekh gingerly retrieved the object Lynx had pried from Owl's fingers. It was a brooch, its back sticky with blood and some other substance. There was a sharpened point, like a serpent's tooth, affixed below the pin. The face of the brooch was silver and onyx. The flat, black stone was carved with a crowned horse's skull, bearded with ribbons; the silver setting was worked in a pattern of bones and brambles. He set it carefully on the stone mantel. Thantor was watching. The Emperor's spymaster crossed to the mantel, examined the brooch, sniffed it, then set it down again.

  "So now," he said, "the question is: was it really Adythe Dhenykhare, or was it someone bent on incriminating her—and through her, Morekheth?"

  "What do you think?" Cithanekh asked.

  "Lynx thought she recognized her voice," Marhysse offered suddenly. "She told Cezhar: she was one of the Queen's ladies in the garden."

  Thantor raised his eyebrows. "What a risk to take—or was she trusting to the anonymity the veils would give? If she was with the Queen in the garden, she should have guessed Lynx at least would attend Owl." He sh
ot a look at Cithanekh. "So: is she stupid, reckless, or desperate?"

  "She was frightened," Marhysse said. "I'm not sensitive, like Owl, but she was so scared I could practically taste it."

  On the floor, Owl moaned, riveting the Ghytteve Councilor's attention. "I should never have left him," Cithanekh said. "He told me not to."

  "If I were plotting at Court, I should want very much to be rid of Owl Ghytteve. I can think of two approaches I might take: assassinate him; or assassinate you. If our plotters are good enough to be dangerous—which they clearly are—they will have planned for both contingencies."

  "Is this supposed to make me feel better, Thantor?"

  "No. It is intended to make you be careful."

  "Owl was poisoned in his own apartments, in the presence of two bodyguards and Effryn. How much more careful can we be? Are you telling me I should send him back to Kalledann?"

  "No," Thantor said. "This shows us all that the danger is real, and the stakes are appallingly high. However careful you think you have been to this point, you must redouble your wariness."

  "Owl will hate it," Cezhar remarked unexpectedly. "Already, he resents the care we take of him. He insists that, though he's blind, he's not helpless. Rhan said he threatened to go into the market by himself. He'll not take kindly to stronger precautions."

  "If he survives," Cithanekh said bleakly, "he'll have to get used to it. People can come to him, here."

  "No," Thantor said suddenly. "That's not my point at all. No precautions will work unless Owl embraces them. Don't clip his wings or put him in a cage. If you do, he'll waste his strength fighting the bars. Let him do what he must, go where he wishes; just make sure he takes someone competent with him."

  "Somebody competent won't save him if an assassin on the street gets close enough to put a blade between his ribs because he can't see to stop him."

  "Even you wouldn't see a competent assassin, Cithanekh," Thantor said maddeningly. "That's Cezhar's job—or Rhan, Marhysse, or whomever. Do you know what the poisons are on that brooch? Haceth—no surprise, that; the other one, the 'body poison'? Thekheth. If Owl survives, it will be entirely due to the tourniquet around his wrist. Was it Lynx?"

  "Yes," Marhysse said. "She told me it was venom, too, so I made cuts to take the poison out."

  Thantor nodded. "She's fast; she keeps her head in a crisis. You could do worse than to turn Owl's safety over to her."

  "She threw a knife at Effryn," Cithanekh said.

  "And missed?" Thantor said. "That surprises me."

  "Owl hit her and spoiled her aim," Effryn explained. "Donkey, isn't thekheth always fatal?"

  "Almost always. But it usually kills in the first five minutes; after that, every minute the victim lives increases the odds of survival. Ah. Here's the Healer."

  ***

  It was too much: the visions poured through Owl; the roiling turmoil battered him against solid terrors, whelming fears; it dragged him into despair and madness. More than anything, he wanted to lose himself, to let his spark of awareness be quenched; but he was constrained. Each time he nearly escaped into extinction, he was caught and held; and a face—a dear, familiar face; someone he could not bear to disappoint—was held out to his memory. So though he fought the holding presence, he could not prevail because he did not entirely wish to be nothing. He struggled in the surf of visions, but they were too powerful, too pounding: he could not contain them. He despaired, but even surrender yielded no ease. At the end, he endured, because the visions and his love gave him no choice.

  ***

  "He'll live," the Windbringer's Healer assured Cithanekh, finally. "He's past the crisis point with the thekheth. What the haceth has done to his mind, I am not qualified to judge, but I know of no one more skilled in such matters than the High Priest and Arre. I believe you have cause for hope."

  Cithanekh studied the woman, as if her face would yield the future to his scrutiny. "Thank you," he said, his voice frayed. "Was it, as Thantor thought, the tourniquet which made the difference?"

  She nodded. "And Owl's own toughness." She hesitated then added, "In the forests of the Ythande, they hunt with thekheth-tipped darts; it is rumored that the hunters develop immunity to the poison. You might ask the Ythande Councilor about it, if you thought she might be helpful."

  At the Healer's words Cithanekh pictured the Lady Khycalle Ynghorezh-Ythande: an exotic figure, with her tattooed face, and the kestrel which sat always on her shoulder like a guardian familiar. Cithanekh shook his head. "I have no idea how she would react. She rarely speaks in Council. For all I can judge, she would be as likely to poison Owl outright as to help him develop immunity. It troubles me that thekheth was used; it is difficult to obtain, without Ythande help."

  "Difficult," the Healer agreed, "but not impossible. Councilor Cithanekh, I don't know how to advise you, except to caution you not to leap to conclusions." As she spoke, she replaced her medicines in her satchel and tied it closed. "Keep him quiet, today, even after the haceth wears off. Thekheth places an enormous strain on the heart; don't let him exert himself."

  Cithanekh bowed to her as she departed. Owl did look better; he no longer thrashed or cried out, but seemed to be sleeping. Lynx, still as an effigy at his head, looked serene. Cithanekh stretched the tension out of his neck and shoulders and tried to find some of the foreign woman's serenity. When he turned back to Owl, he found Lynx was watching him. He said nothing, calmly submitting to her silent appraisal. Finally, she spoke.

  "He is sleeping normally; the drug has run its course."

  "He'll be all right, then?" He heard the ragged hope in his voice.

  She nodded. After a moment she added, "I have always believed myself strong, but I could not have survived what your Owl endured."

  "He's the toughest, most stubborn person I know," Cithanekh said fondly. "Try arguing with him, sometime. Lynx, should I send him away to safety?"

  She shook her head. At the unvoiced protest she read in the young lord's eyes, she said, "What makes you think danger will not follow him?"

  "What makes you think," Owl said from the bed, "I would go?"

  "The Healer said you should sleep," Cithanekh said taking Owl's hand.

  "And wake up in Kalledann? No thank you. Cithanekh, please stop trying to get rid of me."

  "Get rid of you? Owl, you nearly died!"

  He lifted Cithanekh's hand to his cheek. "But I didn't die—partly because I want so much to live. If you send me away, when next the assassins come, I won't be nearly so well armored."

  "So. You won't let me do the noble thing, and buy your safety with my happiness?"

  "Our happiness. And no, I won't, especially not for a safety in which I no longer believe. Besides, why should I indulge your fondness for third rate romanticism, especially when such so-called noble gestures have always seemed to me both condescending and arrogant?"

  Cithanekh caught Lynx watching them, and he smiled ruefully at her.

  "Instead, Cithanekh," Lynx said softly, "you have the chance to do the truly difficult, truly noble thing: to let him take his own risks and make his own choices. I see what you mean about arguing with Owl."

  "Whose side are you on?" Owl demanded testily, and Lynx laughed.

  "Go back to sleep, Owl," Cithanekh said. "I promise to try not to be—what did you say?—condescending and arrogant. Choose your own course; but if you get in too deep, just keep swimming, because I'll be right behind you."

  Owl was still smiling when he drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Eight—Feint and Thrust

  Lady Adythe Dhenykhare was found dead in her bath, her wrists slit, shortly after the Amartan courier ship arrived in port with official word of the wreck of Guiding Light. In the face of this double tragedy the Dhenykhare at Court seemed to draw together; old rivalries were forgotten while they mourned their losses. No one seemed more affected than Morekheth Dhenykhare, though Duke Dhyrakh wore public mourning for his uncle and his daughter. Since at the Emperor'
s insistence, the attempt on Owl's life had been kept secret, no one seemed able to account for Lady Adythe's suicide. She had left no explanation, and according to her kin and friends, had seemed her serene and cheerful self, up until the tragedy. No one would admit to seeing signs of distress or unhappiness in her; no one had had any hints; she and Lord Morekheth had been in perfect accord. None of Thantor's careful probing found any trace of the black and silver ring, nor—in fact—of the tiniest inconsistency in the wall of bafflement and grief which surrounded the deaths.

  Word, in the shape of one of Thantor's agents, filtered down to Ferret; was there anything she knew, or could find out? The Slums and the waterfront were often rife with rumor. Information—and even speculation—were trading commodities in her world.

  When the agent had finished his report, Ferret eyed him a moment in silence. "Lord Owl's well?" she asked finally, which startled him, since he had not told her of the attempt on the Seer's life.

  "He seems to be," the agent admitted cautiously; then, covering his position, added, "He was terribly thin when he first returned from Kalledann. He looks a bit better, now, I would say."

  Ferret considered again, her mask of polite attention perfectly unrevealing. "I've not heard aught," she told him. "Happen I'll listen more carefully, now."

  The agent, recognizing the completion of a successful transaction, took himself off. When he was gone, Ferret said quietly, "Sharkbait, what do you know of this?"

  The master of the controversial Longshoremen's Guild stepped out of the shadows and took a seat beside the thief. At first glance, Sharkbait looked like a longshoreman. His hands were callused, his skin roughened by sun and work; and the scar which ran from temple to jaw masked the clean lines of his bones and camouflaged the keen intelligence of his eyes. "I've heard," he began in a voice at odds with his appearance, carrying as it did the unmistakable inflection of education, "that Vekh was snooping for...someone; I haven't heard for whom. Also," he raised an eyebrow at her, "I've heard that no one has seen Vekh since before the Rusty Anchor burned, and that his may have been the other bones in the rubble."