Four and Twenty Blackbirds (45 page)

Still, it
was
Ardis who was telling him this, and she said that
she'd
been the one who'd done it, turned the man into the bird. What was more, she'd done it more than once, so it wasn't a fluke.

His beak gaped in surprise, and he had to snap it shut before he looked like a stupid nestling.

"I transformed another couple of excommunicates into donkeys," she continued. "Ones who were indirectly responsible for the Great Fire and were directly responsible for keeping those of us who could have quelled it from doing so. As such, as my fellow Justiciars and I saw it, they were accessories to hundreds of murders. It seemed to us that turning them into beasts of burden was actually a very light punishment—and it gave them the opportunity for repentance."

Visyr shook his head, unable to understand why she should have been concerned that these people repent. Like most Haspurs, he was somewhat incredulous at the concept of omniscience and deities at all, but allowed as how they might be possible, and it was certainly impolite to say nay around anyone who believed in them. Believing that human criminals turned into donkeys would want to repent to an omniscient deity went far past the high clouds of logic, to him, and into very thin air.
Well, that doesn't matter,
he thought.
She's a human; who can understand a human completely? Not even other humans can, and Ardis is a Church power atop that.
"But you can't turn them back into humans?" he asked.

"With time—I might be able to," she said, cautiously. "It would be a bit more difficult than the first transformation, because it would be layering one spell on top of another, but I think I could. The spell as I learned it was never intended to be reversed, even by the death of the mage who cast it, but I think I could work a reversal out. But Revaner—no. No, I couldn't. The circumstances that created him were so complicated and so unpredictable that I doubt I could reverse them. It wasn't just
our
magic that was involved, it was the snapping of the spell that he had cast, and the involvement of Bardic magic from two Bards who were acting on sheer instinct, and Gypsy magic from Revaner's victim. The chances of deducing just what happened are fairly low."

"And you still aren't certain that the bird I've seen and this Revaner fellow are the same." He ground his beak a little. "Still—whatever this creature
is
, I can't see how it could fail to have something to do with the killings. You don't suppose that someone else entirely found out how to change himself into a bird, do you?"

Ardis looked as if she would have ground her beak, if she'd had one. "I can't give you any reason why it
shouldn't
be the case," she admitted. "My main reason for thinking that it's Revaner is that the pattern of the murder-victims matches the kind of women that Revaner would be most likely to want to kill. On the other hand—"

"On the other hand, when you changed him into a bird, he wasn't a murderer." Visyr couldn't help pointing that out.

"No, he wasn't. He was unscrupulous, immoral, utterly self-centered, egotistical, a liar, a thief, and ruthless, but he wasn't a murderer." She wrinkled her brow as if her head pained her. "On the other hand, there is one way to overcome just about any magic, and that is to overpower it. And one sure way to obtain a great deal of power is to kill someone. Now, when you combine
that
fact with the motive of revenge—" She tilted her head in his direction, and he nodded.

"I can see that. Well, I was already going to make a point of looking for that bird, and now you have given me more reasons to do so," he told her. "And you have also given me plenty of reasons to make certain that it doesn't see me!"

Now Ardis rose, full of dignity. "I will not ask you to place yourself in further jeopardy, Visyr," she said solemnly. "If this is Revaner, he is very dangerous. If it is not—well, he may be even more dangerous. Please be careful."

In answer, Visyr flexed his talons, a little surprised at how angry and aggressive he felt. "I am more than a little dangerous myself," he said to her. "And I am also forewarned."

She looked him directly in the eyes for a long moment, then nodded. "Good," was all she said, but it made him feel better than he had since he lost the dagger-thief.

She left him then, and he took his mapping implements and went out to resume his dual duties.

Only to discover that now he couldn't find the damned bird!

He spent several days criss-crossing the city on every possible excuse. He thought perhaps that the Black Bird might have decided to lurk in places he had already mapped in order to avoid him—then he thought it might be in places he
hadn't
mapped yet. But no matter where he looked for it, there was not so much as an oversized black feather. It was as if the creature knew he was trying to find it and had gone into hiding. On the other hand, if all of their suppositions were true, and it was in league with the knife-thief, perhaps it had the suspicion that he was hunting it. At the very least, it now knew that there was danger in being spotted from above, and might be taking steps to avoid that eventuality.

Frustrated, he spent all of one evening trying to reason the way
he
thought a crazed human in bird form might.

It made him a little less queasy to think of it as a hunter as he tried to ignore the type of quarry it was taking; he came from a race of hunters himself, and it wasn't all that difficult to put himself in that mindset.

When one hunts a prey that is clever, particularly if one is hunting a specific individual, one studies that individual, of course. He'd done that himself, actually; the trophy-ringhorn that he'd wanted to take to Syri as a courting-gift had been a very canny creature, wily and practiced in avoiding Haspur hunters. It knew all of the usual tricks of an airborne hunter, and it would race into cover at the hint of a shadow on the ground. He'd had to spend time each day for months tracking it down, in learning all of its usual haunts and patterns, and in finding the times and places where it was most vulnerable.

Now, the Black Bird was probably not that clever a hunter itself. This creature was hunting prey that was not aware it was being hunted, nor were humans as versed as that ringhorn in avoiding a hunter, but the Black Bird still needed to find the moment that its prey was most vulnerable. It couldn't hunt inside buildings, and if it was going to hunt again but didn't want to be seen, it had to come out on the rooftops eventually. There was no other possible hunting ground for it.

That was how a Haspur would hunt in the same situation. But unlike a Haspur, the Black Bird might well have decided that there was another hunter that might be stalking
it.
So it was torn between two courses of action: don't hunt at all, or find another way to hunt.

It still has to find prey. It still has to find the prey's most vulnerable moments. But somehow it is managing to do so when I won't see it. 
 

That would be very difficult to do, unless—

Unless it is hunting at night. 
 

It
was
black, and perfectly well camouflaged by darkness. And if the records were to be trusted, there had been plenty of killings at night, including at least one possible killing here in Kingsford, between the first one he'd witnessed and the second. That meant it had hunted by night before, which meant it could probably see just fine at night.

Which, unfortunately, I cannot. But I am not limited to my own unaided eyes, which is something that I doubt it has thought of. 
 

He
could
fly at night, he just didn't like doing so, because unlike T'fyrr, his own night-vision was rather inferior by Haspur standards. Once night fell, all of his advantage of superior vision vanished; he couldn't even see as well as some humans he knew. That was why he always got back to the palace before dusk, and never went out at night if he could help it. It was a weakness he had never liked about himself, so when the opportunity had arisen for him to compensate for it, he had. He had something in his possession that he hadn't had occasion to use yet, something that would render the best of camouflage irrelevant at night.

He chuckled to himself as he thought of it. There hadn't been any need to use it in Duke Arden's service, because it wasn't at all suited for his mapping duties. No one here knew he had it. And he rather doubted that anyone in all of this Kingdom had ever even
seen
this particular device.

He reached immediately for a bell-pull and summoned one of his little attendant pages. Talons were not particularly well suited to unpacking, but clever little human hands were.

At his direction, the boy who answered his summons dug into the stack of packing-boxes put away in a storage closet attached to his suite. The boxes were neither large nor heavy; the few that were beyond the boy's strength, Visyr was able to help with. In less than an hour, the page emerged from the back of the closet with an oddly-shaped, hard, shiny black carrying-case.

The page looked at it quizzically as he turned it in his hands. "What is this?" he asked, looking up into Visyr's face. "What is it made of? It's not leather, it's not pottery, it's not stone or fabric—what is it?"

Visyr didn't blame the boy for being puzzled; the material of the case resembled nothing so much as the shiny carapace of a beetle, and the case itself was not shaped like anything the boy would ever have seen in his life. "I'll show you what it is," he said to the youngster, taking the case from him and inserting a talon-tip into the lock-release. "Or rather, I'll show you what's inside it. The outside is a Deliambren carry-case for delicate equipment; what I wanted is inside. But you have to promise that you won't laugh at me when I put it on. It looks very silly."

"I won't," the boy pledged, and watched with curiosity as Visyr took out his prize. Indeed, prize it was, for arguing with the Deliambrens for its design and manufacture had fallen upon Visyr himself, and it was with no small amount of pride that he knew these very same devices would be in use by Guardians and rescuers, thanks to him.

A pair of bulging lenses with horizontal lines, made of something much like glass but very dark, formed the front of the apparatus. The device itself had been formed to fit the peculiar head-shape of a Haspur, and the hard leathery helmetlike structure that held it in place had been added in place of the straps that Deliambrens used so that no feathers would be broken or mussed when he wore it. That "helmet" was based on a very old and successful design, and the page recognized it immediately.

"It looks like a falcon's hood!" the boy exclaimed, and so it did, except that where the hood was "eyeless," this was not meant to restrict vision, but rather the opposite. With its special lenses in the front and the mechanism that made them work built in a strip across the top curve of the head, rather like one of those center-strip, crestlike hairstyles some Deliambrens wore, it almost looked fashionable, and certainly sleek.

That was so that Visyr would be able to fly with the thing properly balanced; in the Deliambren version, the mechanisms were all arranged around the front of the head, which would have made him beak-heavy. It would be very hard to fly that way.

"These are Deliambren heat-lenses," Visyr explained to the boy. "They let me see at night. If you'd like, I'll show you how."

The boy needed no second invitation; Visyr lowered the "hood" over his head and turned the device on, then turned the lights of the suite off one by one.

The page held the hood steady with both hands, as it was much too large for his head, and looked around curiously. "Everything's green," he said, dubiously, then exclaimed when he turned the lenses in Visyr's direction. "Sir! You're glowing!"

"No, it's just that you only see what is warm," Visyr told him. "It is a different way of seeing. The warmer something is, the brighter it seems to be through the lenses. I am very warm, and it looks as if I am glowing. Come to the balcony and look down."

The boy did so, picking his way unerringly across the pitch-dark room. He passed through the second room, came out on the balcony with Visyr, and spent some time exclaiming over what he saw through the lenses of the device. Even though it was broad daylight, the lenses worked extremely well, for things that were warm stood out beautifully against the cold and snowy background. The boy chattered on as he picked out a sun-warmed stone, courtiers strolling in the gardens, birds in the trees near him, and even a sly cat slinking along under the cover of evergreen bushes.

Finally, though, the cold became too much for him. They went back into the room, and Visyr took the "hood" from him and turned the lights back on.

He satisfied the page's curiosity then by donning the device himself. The youngster looked at him quizzically for a moment as Visyr adjusted the device for the sharpest images. "I wouldn't have laughed," the page said finally. "You just look like a hooded falcon."

"Well, fortunately, I can see
much
better than a hooded falcon," Visyr said. "And now that I've found this, you can go. Thank you."

The page was nothing if not discreet. Although he might be very curious why Visyr wanted this particular device brought out, he knew better than to ask, just as he knew better than to tell anyone about it.

Deliambren heat-vision goggles, Visyr thought with satisfaction. Not even the cleverest of hunters can avoid being seen when I have these on—not even if he decides to take to the ground and walk. The only way he can avoid me is to stay inside buildings. And a man-sized black bird strolling through the inns and taverns of Kingsford, even at night, is going to be noticed! 

The Deliambrens had included this device in his equipment for the Overflight mapping, and he had simply brought all of his equipment with him when he'd taken the Duke's commission. It was easier than trying to unpack and repack again, or trust it to be sent from another location. Now he was glad that he had hauled it all with him. The goggles were so good, he could see things the size of a mouse on a summer day, and on a winter day, he could do better than that.