Four and Twenty Blackbirds (19 page)

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 his 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.

He pumped his wings through full power-strokes, angling the surfaces to gain altitude rather than speed. Soon, if there was anyone watching him from below, he would be just another dot in the overcast heavens, no different from a crow or a sparrow. He had to go around to the back of the palace in order to reach his balcony from here.

He came around the building and made a wide turn. Sideslipping, he angled in towards his room. The Ducal Palace stood in one of the districts that had been mostly spared by the Great Fire, but if the Church mages hadn't come when they had, it too would have gone up in flames, and the façade still showed the marks of flame and smoke in places. Arden wouldn't have them removed; he wanted those marks as a constant reminder of what the city had endured. The gardens had been destroyed, though, and only steady work by the gardeners for two years had brought them back to their former beauty. Even in winter, under a blanket of snow, they were lovely. Although there were no longer any of the trees and bushes sculpted into fanciful shapes, the gardeners had replaced them with trellises that would be covered from spring to fall with flowering vines, and which in winter formed the basis for snow sculptures.

Visyr was above the palace now, and he folded his wings and dropped in a dive that ended as he backwinged with his taloned feet outstretched to catch the railing of his balcony. It was a pity there was no one in the balcony below to see him; it was a particularly good landing.

Ah, well. They wouldn't appreciate it, anyway. 
 

He balanced for a moment, then hopped down onto the surface of the balcony itself and let himself in through the door. Made of dozens of little square panes of thick and wavering glass set in a wooden frame, it let in welcome sunlight, but a somewhat distorted view. Still, it was better than nothing, and without it, Visyr would have felt rather claustrophobic.

This was his bedroom, with the bed replaced by a peculiar couch shaped to be comfortable for a sleeping avian, and many padded, backless stools. Searching for an alternative to a human bed, he had found the couch in a used-furniture store the first week he had been living here, and had bought it immediately. The servants had all sniggered when they saw it; he wasn't sure why, and he didn't think he really wanted to ask. Whatever it had been used for before, it was comfortable for him, and that was all he cared about, and the odd little stirrups made a nice place to tuck his elbows or knees. Beside the couch was a pile of light but warm down comforters; one of the Duke's people asked him once if it made him feel odd to be sleeping under something made from dead birds, and in answer, he snapped his decidedly raptoral beak. And in case the fellow hadn't gotten the message, he had added, "Only in that I didn't get to eat any of those birds."

The only other furniture was a chest that contained the body-wrappings that Haspur used in lieu of clothing. There was no point in wearing clothing with open legs or arms; such garments would get tangled up when a Haspur flew. And the idea of wearing a shirt or a long robe was ludicrous, possibly even dangerous. A Haspur wore as little as possible, something that clung as closely to the body as possible, and was as lightweight as possible. Hence, "clothing" that was essentially wrapped bandages.

He walked through the bedroom without a sidelong glance, and into the second room of his suite, which had been converted into his workroom.

Four large drawing-tables, tables built with surfaces that could be tilted upwards, stood against the walls, with maps in progress on all of them. The first was a general view of the city, river, and surroundings, showing only the major streets and no buildings. The second was a closer view, adding the minor streets, but still showing no buildings. The third was more detailed, with all possible thoroughfares shown, but still with no buildings displayed except for the largest or public structures. The last was the completely detailed map, made in sections, with the current one pinned to the board. That was the table Visyr went to, taking up a set of drafting implements made for taloned Haspur hands, and setting to work translating his notes into deft patterns of streets and structures.

The Duke was often surprised at how unexact those buildings and streets were when drawn out as measured. The streets themselves, even when laid out by the Duke's surveyors and engineers, often meandered a foot or two at a time, so that they were never perfectly straight. The buildings tended to be more trapezoidal than square or rectangular, though the odd angles were more obvious to Visyr than to a human. This was nothing like the Deliambren strongholds, which looked like patterns of crystals from above, so exact were their angles. Then again, these people had none of the advantages the Deliambrens had. No clever machines to give them the advantage of Haspur eyes, no devices to measure without the need for tapes or cords, no machines that flew.

And in a Haspur Aerie, there is scarcely a right angle to be seen.
Haspur tended to build curves rather than straight lines, and avoided right angles as much as possible. A Haspur Aerie looked like a patch of strange plants clinging to the cliff-side.

All of which only proves that there's no one way to build a house.
He finished the last of his drawings, put down his instruments in their tray, and looked around for a pitcher of water. Although a Haspur beak was a bit more flexible than a bird's, it was still more comfortable for him to drink from a pitcher, with its pouring spout, than from a human cup.

The page had evidently been and gone; the water-pitcher was on a sideboard rather than the table Visyr had left it on. He got a quick drink of water while he stretched his wings as wide as they would go, then put the pitcher down and roused all his feathers with a brisk shake.

He looked back over his shoulder at his progress so far. Had he done enough for the day?

Well, yes—but there's still plenty of daylight, and I'm not particularly tired. I can do another trip easily, then quit flying for the day and add this section to the larger maps. 
 

He picked up the dryboard, took the cleaning-rod out of its pouch on his belt and passed it over the surface of the board, leaving it pristine and white. He stowed the rod back in the pouch and hung the board from his belt, then trotted out to the balcony again.

With no hesitation, he leapt up onto the balcony rail and out onto the back of the wind, returning to the river and the section of taverns, inns, and businesses that catered to river-men whom he had left behind.

It was just about time for the midday meal as he kited to his next position, and it was a pleasant enough day that there were street-musicians setting up all over the city to play for the crowds coming out to find a bite to eat. He was pleased to hear the strains of music drifting up from below, as he approached the next area to be charted, and when he glanced down, he saw that a street-musician had set up on one corner with a stringed instrument that she played with a set of hammers. From the multicolored streamers fluttering from each shoulder, Visyr gathered that she was either one of the humans known as a "Free Bard," or was at least pretending to that status. She was probably the real thing; she was a good enough player to qualify. Visyr relaxed and listened with one ear to her music, habitually filtering out the rushes of wind noise from his own wings, as he went into a hover and took out his dryboard again.

Now that the noon hour had come, the streets were full of people; there was a knot of them around the musician and traffic flowed around them like river-water around a rock. Human surveyors would have had a terrible time with the crowd; Visyr, of course, was unaffected, and felt rather smug about it.