The Eagle And The Nightingales bv-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  Besides, the worst that happened if a hoist failed was the loss of a little food and profit. The worst that could happen if a lift full of customers failed was not to be contemplated.

  That was why the most popular acts were all on the first floor, where everyone could see them that wanted to.

  Can I do it? she asked herself, and forced herself to think about it dispassionately. Yes, she decided, on sober contemplation. I think that I can.

  But she had to stop on the way up and bespeak a pot of very hot water from one of the tea vendors. Mingled excitement, anticipation, and stage-fright were beginning to build inside her at the prospect of facing the largest audience at the greatest rate of pay she had ever, in her life, warranted. If she was going to be able to do anything tomorrow, she was going to need to get some sleep tonight, as Tyladen had pointed out. Fortunately, she had packed a number of herbal remedies in her panniers, and one of them was for sleeplessness.

  And tonight she was going to need it.

  The excitement was almost enough to drive her real reason for being here out of her mind.

  Almost.

  As she reached her room again, shut and locked the door behind her, and began to prepare for bed, her mind went back to what Tanager had heard at the Palace today. The Haspur_and if the mysterious new Court Musician wasn't a Haspur, he was of some race so like them that it made no difference_was the sensation of the Court and had inspired some of the most envious hatred in the King's musicians she had ever heard of. Some of them were threatening to pack up and leave the King's service; others swore they would "get rid of" the interloper. Nightingale was not particularly worried about the ability of the Court Musicians as individuals to "get rid of" their rival; they were Guild Bards after all, and as a group, Guild Bards were singularly ineffectual at doing anything of a practical nature. The trouble was that they all had been placed where they were by someone; they must have powerful allies, and those allies might decide to take an interest. Allies and patrons of that sort had access to all manner of unpleasant things, from simple thugs to sophisticated poisons. They might consider the new Court Musician to be too trivial a problem to bother with_but in a Court ruled by a High King with an obsession for musicians, that was not as likely as it would otherwise have been. In fact, the new musician might be considered as deadly a potential rival as any of the Grand Dukes and Court Barons_and one with fewer protections.

  Did the Haspur know this?

  I hope so, she thought, slipping into her nightshift and preparing her pot of soporific tea. Oh, I hope so. I hope he is finding himself some equally powerful allies. Because if he doesn't_he's going to find himself wing-clipped and surrounded, and that lovely position he has earned himself will be no more than a beautifully gilded trap....

  Like most of the other performance rooms in Freehold, the Rainbow Room lived up to its name, but not in the way that anyone who had not seen it would have expected. It was not decorated in many colors, nor worse, festooned with painted rainbows like a child's nursery. The Rainbow Room was the plainest, simplest performance room in the building, its walls and ceiling painted a soft white, the floor and tables some seamless substance of a textured, matte black, the booths and chairs upholstered in black as well, something as soft and supple as black suede leather, although Nightingale was fairly certain that was not what it was. It would have cost a fortune to cover that much furniture in black leather, and not even a Deliambren had that much to spare on furnishings in a performance room.

  No, it was when the lights were dimmed and the special performance lighting lit that the Rainbow Room lived up to its name.

  For there were crystal prisms hidden everywhere: in the ceiling fixtures, in the pillars supporting the ceiling, set into the leaded glass windows that divided the room itself from the dance floor. When the performance lighting was illuminated, those prisms caught and refracted it into a hundred thousand tiny rainbows that flung themselves everywhere, and since many of the prisms were free to move with air currents, the rainbows moved as well in a gentle dance of color. With that as a backdrop, no performer needed anything else.

  Silas had shown himself to advantage here, and Nightingale hoped to emulate him. To that end she had chosen her black Elven silks for this first performance in the new room.

  And in fact, she was beginning to think farther ahead than just the next few days or even weeks. If she could sustain her popularity here_why go anywhere else? Why go back on the road, once she had collected the information that the Deliambrens, the Free Bards, and the Elves all wanted? She didn't particularly have a sense of wanderlust the way some Gypsies did; she simply had never found a place she wanted to stay for more than a few months at a time.

  Why not stay here?

  Granted, she hated cities, but she couldn't avoid them altogether, and if she was going to have to endure them, why not do so where she was guaranteed a level of comfort that she would never get anywhere else? Where else would she have her own room with her own bathroom, heated and cooled to perfection? Where else would she get her choice of foodstuffs, so that she could go all month and never eat the same meal twice? And where else would she find a performance venue like this one?

  And to that end_if she stayed, she would need new costumes, many new costumes, all of the same quality as her silks. The Elves would owe her once she got their information back to them; she could send word back with her own messages that she needed new dresses, and ask for specific colors and designs....

  She shook herself out of her reverie as the doors of the room opened and people began to make their way in. Concentrate on what's going on right now, foolish woman, she scolded herself. Deal with what you have before you. Worry about far into the future when you know you will have that kind of future.

  Outside on the dance floor, Silas and the other musicians were setting up; she saw them clearly through the window. He must have sensed her watching, for he turned toward the Rainbow Room and waved, grinning broadly, then gave her the Gypsy sign for well-wishing. She smiled back and did the same, knowing that he could see her as easily as she saw him. He looked particularly wonderful and outrageous tonight, and his tight leather costume would give most Church Priests heart failure. It was cut out in unexpected patterns that allowed his golden-tan skin to show through, and unless she was very much mistaken, he was wearing a leather codpiece with a red leather rose appliqued on the front.

  Showoff. But she smiled as she thought it. It was impossible not to like Silas; he went out of his way to be kind to even the lowliest of the waiters and cleaners and encouraging to the worst of his fellow entertainers. There wasn't an unkind bone in Silas' body.

  Unfortunately, there wasn't a chaste bone in there, either. "Promiscuous" did not begin to describe him, and Nightingale feared he would meet an early end, either torn to pieces among a dozen jealous lovers, each of whom was sure he or she was Silas' only true love, or worn away to nothing by the exertion of all his love affairs. Silas' one fault_and it was a bad one_was that he had a habit of telling his lovers whatever they wanted to hear. That had gotten him into trouble in the past, and he had never learned better. Perhaps Silas unconsciously feared the same early end that she suspected for him; he seemed to be trying to pack a lifetime's worth of experience into months rather than years.

  But for now, at least, he's having a fine time as far as I can tell. Still, it wouldn't be my choice to burn up like a falling star for the sake of a single spectacular bout of fireworks. I would rather leave a carefully crafted and large legacy of music behind me.

  This new venue was only going to give him more trouble in the popularity department; now he was free to move about the stage as he sang, instead of being pinned to a stool behind a guitar. That was only going to make him more attractive so far as his admirers were concerned. Up until now they'd had no reason to suspect Silas danced as well as he sang.

  Well, this wasn't the time to worry about Silas and his troubles; her harps were in perfect tune, and the place
was about as full as it was going to get until and unless word spread tonight that her performances were not to be missed. So_

  So it's time to start creating a performance that is not to be missed, foolish wench!

  She ran her hands over her harp strings, and the quiet murmur of talk died away as the lights above the stage brightened and the ones out in the room dimmed slightly. She took a deep breath, mentally ran over all of her options, and decided to begin with something she hoped would impress even the most difficult critic. She chose an Elven piece, and backed it with the appropriate Bardic Magic meant to enhance the moods called up by the song.

  After that, all of her attention was bound up in her music and the reactions of her audience. It seemed to her that the listeners were impressed; they were quiet when she wanted them to be, nodded or tapped along in time when she played or sang something lively, and responded to the subtle textures she added with the Bardic Magic she wove into the fabric of her songs. In this incarnation, the magic was only meant to enhance an experience, not to manipulate anyone's thoughts. That was how the Elves generally used it among themselves. The room continued to fill as she played, until at the end of her first set, there were not too many tables or booths empty. And this was at supper_once people were finished eating, the audiences should grow larger.

  The lights came back up as she signaled the end of her set; she stepped off the stage and went into the back of the room, where a cleverly concealed door led into a small closet-like affair. This was where another of the nonhumans, a fellow whose race she didn't even know, sat doing arcane things with a board of sliding bits and buttons. Xarax was a likable fellow, though he didn't speak much to anyone; he looked as human as Nightingale until you got close to him and saw that his eyes were exactly like a goat's, with an odd, sideways, kidney-shaped pupil, and his skin was covered with tiny hexagonal scales. She didn't know if he was completely hairless, but his "eyebrows" were nothing more than a darker pattern of scales, he had no sign of a beard, and he always wore a shirt with a hood and kept the hood up. He was the one in charge of the lighting here; he worked this room for Nightingale now as he had worked it for Silas before.

  "That was perfect," she told him warmly. "I couldn't have asked for anything better."

  His thin, lipless mouth stretched in a smile. "Excellent," he replied, with no hiss at all to his words. "You are a more subtle performer than Silas; I hoped I would match that subtlety. The audience likes you. The exquisite Violetta actually came here to listen to you before she went off to the dance floor. That is a good omen and proves that the customers like you."

  "They do?" she replied, knowing she sounded pathetically eager, as eager as any green child in her first appearance, and knowing it would not matter to Xarax. "Oh, I hope so_"

  "Tyladen did not choose you wrongly to take Silas' place," the nonhuman assured her, even reaching out with one three-fingered hand to pat her on the shoulder in an awkward gesture of reassurance. "He was half minded to choose another exactly like Silas, but I told him that would be a mistake, for such a choice would only invite comparison and unwelcome rivalry. I said to him to choose someone as unlike Silas as possible; someone whose emphasis was on the music rather than the performer_and here you are, and you prove me right. And Tyladen, who chose you."

  That was the longest speech she had ever heard out of Xarax, and he abruptly turned back to his buttons and boards, as if embarrassed by the outpouring of words. She knew better than to be offended at his abruptness; she thanked him again and left him alone with his beloved machinery.

  When her break was over, most of the people from her first performance were still in the room, sipping drinks they had ordered from waiters during the interval, and many more had arrived to fill up the rest of the seats. As the lights dimmed again, she saw the dance group had ended its first performance, and the dance floor had emptied. Silas and his group would be taking a longer break than she did_their work was physically more demanding. For a while, at least, the music in here would penetrate onto the open dance floor, and might attract more people here.

  And even as she began her first song of the second set, she caught sight of someone who startled her so much that for a moment she faltered_

  Then she recovered, so quickly that she doubted anyone in her audience noticed, or thought the break was more than a dramatic pause. But out there, striding across the empty dance floor, wings swept dramatically back behind his shoulders, was_

  T'fyrr!

  It had to be him! It was not just the wings, the feathered body, the raptorial head_it was the costume, the way that closely wrapped fabric fell in particular folds that she remembered, the color of the fabric itself. It was also the color of his feathers, a rich grey-brown with touches of scarlet on the edges of his primaries and tail feathers. Nightingale had a peculiarly good color memory; she was able to match even greys and beiges without having a swatch of the fabric in question with her. She knew, from all of her years as an observer of nature, that no two birds were exactly colored alike; there were subtle shadings of tone that enabled someone who watched them a great deal to tell them apart. Surely that was the same with the Haspur_

  And yet he looked through the window of the Rainbow Room, straight into her eyes, and showed no sign of recognition. Her hands played on, a peculiar, haunting Gypsy song; it was one she was certain that T'fyrr could never have heard, and it had been a Gypsy melody that had brought him to her in their first meeting. Surely he could not have resisted a second such song_

  But although he must have heard the music, he paid no attention to it or to her. He was looking for someone, however, and in a few moments, as Kyran brought Tyladen to him, it was obvious just who he was looking for. The two nonhumans strolled together in the direction of Tyladen's office and were soon out of sight, leaving Nightingale puzzled and a bit confused.

  It can't have been T'fyrr. T'fyrr would never have gone past without at least greeting me. It must have been some other Haspur.

  But how many Haspur were there? And how could another Haspur look so exactly like T'fyrr?

  The lighting is odd out there. Maybe I mistook his coloring. I saw T'fyrr in shadowed daylight under trees; the light out on the dance floor is a lot dimmer than that, and there are all those colored lights to confuse things.

  Maybe so_but in every other way, this Haspur looked enough like T'fyrr to have been his twin....

  And I only saw him for a day or two. I could be wrong. It feels as if his image has been branded into my memory, but I could be wrong.

  All she really knew, if it came down to it, was this. There was a Haspur in this building who had come looking for a Deliambren. There was a bird-man with a Deliambren who had arrived at the High King's Palace. These two might even be the same as that pair. In a way she hoped so. This city was no place for someone like T'fyrr right now, and the position that Haspur held at Court was no position for T'fyrr to be in. If there had to be a Haspur in danger, she would really prefer it wasn't one she knew, one she cared for.

  So why, she asked herself, as she started on her next song, am I still so certain it is him_both here and there, and probably in danger in both places?

  Nob's directions were exact to the last detail, and he had not been at all surprised that T'fyrr wanted to visit the tavern called Freehold. "Pages aren't allowed to go there," he'd said wistfully. "But as soon as I'm old enough_"

  "As soon as it is possible, I will take you there," T'fyrr promised, and the boy's eyes lit up. "If it is as wondrous as I have heard, it would be a crime not to let you see it."

  And with that, armed only with directions and a bit of money secreted in his body-wrappings, he ventured into the city. He was not particularly worried about being attacked; not in broad daylight, at any rate. He had trodden the streets of worse neighborhoods than Freehold was in with perfect safety. Most would-be attackers took one look at his foot-talons, his hand-talons, and his beak, and realized that he was better armed than the worst bravo. He wa
nted to reach Freehold now, before he needed to go, so that he knew the way. If Nob's directions proved misleading or erroneous in any way, he wanted to know now, when he had the leisure to ask for better directions.

  Still, there was always the chance that he would be followed_and he really didn't want to walk the entire way.

  So once he was out of the Palace and onto the grounds, he did the obvious; he took to the air.

  His shadow passed over the guards at the gate and they gaped up at him as he flew overhead. They had heard of him by now, of course, but hearing about him and seeing him in the air were obviously two different things. His eyesight was good enough to see that their hands tightened on their weapons as he passed them, but they did not make any kind of threatening gesture. But_probably when he returned, he should come in on foot and show them his proper safe-conduct from the King.

  No point in giving them a target for arrow practice.

  He was quite glad that he had decided to fly when he saw how crowded the streets below him were. It would be hot down there, too; another reason to put off landing until he had to.

  On the other hand, I'm not exactly inconspicuous. Anyone who wanted to know where I'm going need only climb into the nearest Church tower and watch me to see where I land.