The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III (3 page)

There was nothing else to do then but finish her porridge, strip off her leather bodice and skirt, and lie down in her bedding. But although she was weary, she stared up into the interlacing branches overhead, listening to the crickets and the breeze in the boughs, tense as an ill-strung harp. This was two: Wren and the Elves. Gypsy lore held that when something came in a repetition of three, it was magical, a geas, meant to bind a person to an unanticipated fate.

Whether or not that person wanted it.

It was a long time before she was able to sleep.

###

She made better time than she had thought she would; she had assumed she would be walking at the same pace unburdened as carrying her own packs, but she found that she could make a mile or two more every day than she had anticipated, with no difficulty whatsoever. She reached the crossroads and the small town of Highlevee three days sooner than she had expected to—

Which only increased the tension she felt. If she went south or north, she would be traveling out of the Kingdom of Rayden and away from the road that would take her to Lyonarie. If, however, she traveled eastward, she would soon strike the King’s Highway, which led to Lyonarie, and there would be no turning back. She’d hoped to have more time to think the problem through.

Though the height of summer was past, the heat had not abated in the least. The sun burned down on her with a power she felt even through her wide-brimmed, pale straw hat; dust hung in the air as a haze, undisturbed by even a hint of breeze. The grasses of the verge were burned brown and lifeless, and would remain that way until the rains of autumn. She had kilted up her skirts to her knees and pushed her sleeves up over her elbows for coolness, but she still felt the heat as heavy as a pack of weights on her back.

Summer would linger in Lyonarie, long past the time when it would be gone here—or so she had heard. At the moment, that did not seem particularly pleasant.

As she led the donkey down the dusty main street of Highlevee, a little after noon, she found herself dragging her feet in the dust, as if by walking slower she could put off her decision longer.

It was with a decidedly sinking feeling that she spotted someone she knew sitting at a table outside the Royal Oak Tavern, just inside the bounds of the town. It wasn’t just any acquaintance, either.

Omens come in threes. So do portents. And so do the bindings of a geas set by Fate and the Lady.
If ever there was an omen, this must surely be it—for there was no reason, no reason at all, for
this
man to be here at
this
time.

Unless, rather than a geas, this is a conspiracy set up among my dear friends . . .

For sitting at his ease, quite as if he belonged there, was a man called “Leverance” by those who knew him well. The trouble was, most of those who knew him well lived within the walls of the fabulous Fortress-City that the Deliambrens called home.

He should not have been here. He
should,
by all rights, have been back there, amid the wonders of Deliambren “technology,” as they called it. Few of the odd half-human folk ever left those comforts—why should they? There they had lighting that did not depend on candles, as bright as the brightest sunlight on a dark winter night. They had heat in the winter and cool in the summer, and a thousand other comforts even the wealthiest human could only dream of. He should not have been sitting calmly at a wooden table, with a wooden mug in one hand, nibbling at a meat pasty and watching the road, his strange features shadowed by a wide hat of something that was
not
straw.

He should definitely not have been watching the road as if he was watching for
her.

She knew that he was going to hail her as soon as she saw him; the scene had that feeling of inevitability about it. She thought about trying to ignore him—but what was the use? If Leverance was not the next person to request her to go to Lyonarie, someone else surely would be.

Omen or conspiracy, it seems that I am caught.

So she led her donkey toward him, feeling weary to the bone, and wondering if for once she might get a real answer to her question of “why me?” After all, the Deliambrens didn’t believe in portents and omens. Their faith was placed on machinery, on curiosity, on discovery, on something they called “science.”

“Don’t tell me,” she said, before he could open his mouth even to greet her. “You want me to go to Lyonarie to find out why the High King has been neglecting his duties.”

Deliambrens resembled humans for the most part, far more than did, say, a Mintak. Leverance wore ordinary enough human garb: a jerkin, trews and boots of leather, and a shirt of what appeared to be silk. She knew better than to assume that the garments were as ordinary as they seemed, however, for nothing about a Deliambren was ever ordinary. Like all Deliambrens, the long, pale hair growing along the line of his cheekbones was immaculately groomed and blended invisibly into the identical shoulder-length hair of his head. His eyebrows were similar to those of an Elfin the way they rose toward his temples, but were thicker and as long as a man’s thumb. Leverance fancied himself as something of an adventurer, so his hair was simply cut off straight rather than being styled into some fantastic shape as many Deliambrens sported. Nightingale sighed, but only to herself, knowing that Leverance was certain he was “blending in” with his surroundings. It would be quite impossible to convince him otherwise.

He stared at her with a flash of surprise, quickly covered. “Whyever do you say that?” he asked innocently. Too innocently.

“Because every other person I know seems to want me to go there,” she replied tartly, and sat down on the wooden bench across from him. The wood of the table was smooth and bleached to grey by sun and rain, and another time she would have been quite pleased for a chance to sit here in the shade on such a broiling day. She had lost what patience she had and decided it was time to show it. “You may order me something to eat and drink, and you may pay for it. If you are going to try to get me to go to Lyonarie, you might as well begin with a bribe.” She kept the tone of her voice tart, to show him she was not going to tolerate any evasions, no matter how clever.

Both of Leverance’s eyebrows twitched, but he summoned the serving girl with a single lifted finger and placed an order for wine, cheese, and sausage pastries. The serving girl, dressed far more neatly than Nightingale in her buff linen skirt, bodice, and white blouse, glanced covertly at the Gypsy, her contemptuous expression saying all too clearly that she could not imagine why this exotic Deliambren would be ordering luncheon for such a scruffy stranger, and a Gypsy to boot.

Nightingale straightened abruptly, gathering all her dignity about her, then caught the girl’s glance and held it, just long enough that the girl flushed, paled, then hurried off. Now, at least, there would be no more covert looks and poorly veiled contempt.

“I wish I knew how you did that,” Leverance said with interest and admiration.

Nightingale shrugged. There was no explaining it to him; he simply wouldn’t understand why spending most of her time with Elves and other nonhumans made Nightingale seem strange and fey to those of her own kind. Most people, if asked why they avoided her after one direct confrontation, would stammer something about her expression—how they were
sure
she saw things that “normal folk” couldn’t, and wouldn’t want to.
Well, and I do, but that is not why I unnerve them.

As long as the impression she left with them caused them to leave her alone, she planned to cultivate the effect. If she had reasons to be fonder of her own company, and of nonhumans, than of her own kind, it was none of their business.

“Well,” Leverance said, when the girl returned with the food and vanished again with unseemly haste, “as it happens, I
was
sent to find you, and to ask you to go to Lyonarie.”

He laid the food out before her: wine in a pottery bottle, beaded with moisture; a thick slice of cheese and crusty rolls, beautifully brown pastries; a small pottery firkin of butter. She took her time; selecting a roll and buttering it, then pouring herself a cup of wine.

“Why?” she asked, then amended her question. “No, never mind. Why
me?”
She bit into the roll; it might just as well have been straw, for she could not taste it.

Now I discover if this is simple mortal conspiracy, or something I cannot escape.

Leverance stroked the hair on his cheekbones thoughtfully. “Several reasons, actually, although you are not the only person being asked to go there. And you
can
refuse.”

Not the only person? That’s new. Or does he mean that it is only his people who are sending more than one person to gather their information?

She snorted delicately. “You still haven’t answered the question.”

He held up a finger. “You are very observant, and yet you are very adept at making yourself unobserved.” He held up a second finger. “You have served as a willing collector of information for your people, for the Elves and for mine in the past.” A third finger joined the other two. “For some reason that my people are unable to fathom, things happen around you, and you are able to influence things through no medium that
we
recognize, and which other people refer to as ‘magic’. We don’t believe in magic, but we do believe you have some kind of power that acts in a way we can’t measure. We think that will help keep you safe and sane where other investigators have failed.”

Other investigators? This was the first time Nightingale had heard about others—and the chill now filled her, body, soul and heart. She put down the roll, all appetite gone. The still, hot air could not reach that chill to warm her.

“How, failed?” she asked in a small voice.

He correctly interpreted her frozen expression. “Nothing serious—no one
died,
for Hadron’s sake! They were just found out, somehow, and they were discredited in ways that forced them to leave the city. We think we failed by choosing someone too high in rank.
You
know how to extract information of all kinds—Harperus says that you have the ability to sieve gold out of the gutters. That is why you.” He scratched his head, then added, “Besides, the roads north and south of here are closed. North the bridge is out, and south Sire Yori has put up a roadblock and he’s taking all beasts of burden as ‘army taxes.’ You could only go on to the King’s Highway or retrace your steps.”

Nightingale flushed, and mentally levied a few choice Gypsy curses on the Deliambren for choosing the precise words guaranteed to make her go on. Gypsy lore held that to retrace one’s steps was to unmake part of one’s life—and you had better be very sure that was something you wanted and needed to do before you tried it.

Leverance blinked benignly at her as she muttered imprecations, just as if he didn’t know the implications of his words. “Well,” he asked. “Can you go? Will you help?”

Signs and portents, omens and forebodings. I do not want to go, but it seems I have no choice.
But she was not going to
tell
him that. For one thing, if they had sent others on this path, others who had been found out, that argued for someone
knowing
in advance that they had been sent. She trusted those Deliambrens that she personally knew, but within very strict limits—just as she trusted, within limits, those Elves she knew. But there were Gypsies that she would
not
trust, so why should every Elf, every Deliambren, or even every Free Bard be entirely trustworthy?

Talaysen probably didn’t know about the others. The Elves might not have thought it worth stooping to ask help of mere mortals until now. Only the Deliambrens know the whole of this; but if there was someone acting as an informant against their agents, there is no reason why it could not have been an Elf, a Deliambren, or even one of us. Everyone has a price; it is only that most honest folk have prices that could never be met.

“I will think about it,” she temporized, giving him the same answer she had given Master Wren. “My road goes in that direction; I cannot promise that I will end up there.”

If there is an informant, damned if I will give you the assurance that I will be the next one to play victim! It is too easy for a lone woman, Gypsy or no, to simply disappear.

She smiled sweetly and ate a bite of tasteless roll, as if she had not a care in the world. “I am alone and afoot, and who knows what could happen between here and there? I make no promises I cannot keep.”

Leverance made a sour face. “You’ll think about it, though?” he persisted. “At least keep the option open?”

She frowned; she really did not want to give him even that much, but—she had a certain debt to his people. “Did I not say that I would?”

Leverance only shrugged. “You hedge your promises as carefully as if you were dealing with Elves,” he told her sourly, as she packed up the rest of the uneaten lunch in a napkin to take with her. “Don’t you know by now that you can trust us?”

The suns heat faded again, although no clouds passed before it, and she took in a sharp breath as she steadied herself, looking down at the rough wood of the table, grey and lifeless, unlike the silver of her bracelet.

Trust them. He wants me to trust them, the Elves want me to trust them, and Talaysen, damn his eyes, trusts
me.
There is too much asking and giving of trust in this.
Her right hand clenched on the knot of the napkin; her left made a sign against ill-wishing, hidden in her lap.

“I only pay heed to what my own eyes and ears tell me,” she said lightly, forcing herself to ignore her chill. “You should know that by now, since it is probably one of the
other
reasons why you picked me. Thank you for the meal.”

She rose from the bench and untied her donkey from the handrail beside the road without a backward glance for him.

“Are you sure you won’t—” Leverance began plaintively.

Now she leveled a severe look at him, one that even he could read. “I gave you what I could promise, Deliambren. A nightingale cannot sing in a cage, or tethered by a foot to a perch. You would do well to remember that.”