A Parliament of Owls

by Beth Hilgartner

  "By all the wise gods, Owl," Cithanekh said, coming to his friend's side, "how did you stay so calm?"

  Owl clasped Cithanekh's cold hands. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to frighten you. I don't know why I wasn't more afraid."

  "I must have been afraid enough for both of us," Cithanekh said, ruefully. "By all the wise gods, I think I aged five years while she was deciding whether or not to cut your throat. Arre," he added, "how did you guess a pronouncement like that would sway the balance?"

  Arre looked blank, but as Cithanekh drew breath to explain, Owl squeezed his hands warningly. "Never mind," he murmured.

  Arre rose. "I should be going," she said. "Thank you for indulging me."

  "Arre," Cithanekh responded with courtly grace, "your presence adorns my table; you are always welcome."

  "Be careful," she warned laughing. "I've a soldier's appetite."

  "Don't fret," Owl retorted. "Cithanekh has a noble's larder. Good night, Arre."

  ***

  The Rusty Anchor had little to recommend it. The taproom air was redolent of the stench of the fish market's midden next door, the tables were filthy and knife scarred, the barmaid old and toothless, and the ale watered. For all that, the man seated in the corner booth (the tavern's single customer, at this late hour) was a noble—slumming, old Rhynne thought sourly. She couldn't figure it. Catch her in a place like this, did she have the coin to be elsewhere.

  The man had been waiting perhaps half an hour when he was joined by another man. Rhynne knew this one: one of Khorvan Nakhar's sneaks: a rat faced little man who tugged nervously at something he wore on a chain around his neck. She brought him his mug of weak ale and moved off, pretending disinterest. She took a foul rag from behind the bar and proceeded to stir the top layer of grime on the tables, allowing her efforts to bring her close enough to listen. Khorvan Nakhar and his ilk were trouble, for certain, but information was money. Neither man appeared to notice her.

  "...did exactly as you asked, Master—and a rare effort it took me, to be certain," the sneak—his name was Vekh, Rhynne recalled—was saying, the wheedle shrill in his tone. No doubt he was going to try to touch the noble for more than the agreed price.

  "Yes, yes," the lord cut off the whine. "When?"

  "Why, whenever your lordsh— I mean, whenever you give the word, Master. The signal's simple: send a tun of fine Kalledanni wine—with your compliments—for the Admiral's table, and your man will know it's time. Once they're at sea—"

  "I know the rest. And now, I suppose, there is the matter of payment."

  Vekh's smile turned nasty. "Indeed there is, Lord Morekheth. I canna perfectly recall: it was thirty Royals, we agreed, no?"

  Rhynne eased away; she didn't like the cold look in the slumming noble's eyes. She thought Vekh was a fool to push the man—but like most of Khorvan's lot, he was more greed than sense. But the name... Now, that was valuable. Morekheth. It didn't mean anything to her, but one of Sharkbait's lot would know him. It sounded as if this Morekheth was plotting against the Admiral—and the Admiral was respected on the waterfront.

  In the corner booth, a purse changed hands. The slumming noble got up, tossed a handful of coins on the table and went to the door. Vekh followed. As the lord went out, old Rhynne heard a sound like a whistle. An instant later, four men came through the tavern door. They were fast, professionals. Old Rhynne didn't even have time to scream.

  ***

  In the murky dregs of the night, Owl woke with a jolt from a nightmare. He lay still, questing in the silence for the echoes of dream voices: cries, and the hissing language of fire. There was nothing. Owl tried to summon back the scattered fragments of the dream: sometimes there was something of value to the waking world in the visions loosed by his sleeping mind; but this time, he could recall nothing. He exhaled in a nearly soundless sigh. Maybe he could go back to sleep.

  "Owl?"

  Owl could hear the worry in Cithanekh's whisper. "I'm all right," he said. "I was just dreaming. I didn't mean to wake you."

  Cithanekh gathered him in. Owl laid his head on his lover's chest, felt his comforting arm circle his shoulders. "What was it?"

  "Just a dream. I don't remember it. Was I moaning? You should have nudged me. I'm sorry I woke you."

  In the darkness, the young lord smiled and smoothed Owl's hair with his other hand. "Don't be. It's such a joy to wake and find you beside me."

  "But at this hour?" Owl said lightly. "Even joy is better on a full night's sleep."

  "You're wrong," he responded. "Joy is something to be seized whenever it comes to hand." His lips stirred the fine silk of Owl's hair as he went on in the voice he reserved for quoting poetry, "'Clothe me not in contentment, for it is the wool of conventional minds. Drape me in joy, which though it burns, doth taste of ecstasy.'"

  Owl smiled against Cithanekh's chest. "You're paraphrasing—or else it's a bad translation. Kellarres isn't a comfortable poet: 'Clothe me not in contentment, the wool of domesticated lives; I will wear desire's pelt, and taste feral ecstasy.'"

  Cithanekh's stroking hand left Owl's hair, running languidly down the length of his spine. "That, too," he murmured, and kissed him.

  Afterward, they slept, drowsing in each other's arms even as the birds began their first, tentative trilling. Owl stirred when Cithanekh rose, but the young lord's whispered promise to send Effryn in with coffee later was enough to let Owl drift back to sleep.

  Owl woke, suddenly and completely, convinced there was someone else in the room. He sat up, listening. No footsteps; no rustles, no breathing; but the conviction would not leave him and no revealing vision answered his need. His private darkness trapped him; he strained against it, craving the clues that sight would give, tense and alert for any betraying hint. Nothing; but he knew his ears lied. Time unfroze with the sound of the opening door. He heard Effryn's startled exclamation, and movement to his right. Something as visceral as instinct took over, then, as he struck with an outflung arm. His hand touched cloth, a shoulder; he shoved as hard as he could. The effort overbalanced him. He landed on the floor in a sprawl of tangled sheets. There was the crash of falling crockery, the smell of coffee, and Effryn's unprofessional but heartfelt obscenity. Then, strong, thin hands seized his shoulders and hauled him upright. His Gift gave him the face of the foreign woman, white and desperate.

  "I don't mean you any harm. Your servant startled me. I—"

  "Effryn, are you hurt?" Owl demanded.

  "No. She missed. You spoiled her aim." His voice was breathless. He paused to steady himself. "I'm not hurt," he went on, finding a light tone, "but I'm afraid the second best coffee set is a dead loss." He picked his way through the shards of porcelain to Owl's side. The woman's grip loosened. Effryn helped Owl into a dressing gown and steered him to a chair. "Are you all right?"

  He flexed his shoulders carefully, then nodded. "A bit scuffed; a great deal alarmed. Lady, you owe us an explanation, I think."

  "I wanted to talk to you," she said. "You were asleep. Then you woke. I waited to see whether you would know me, but your servant came. He startled me. I reacted—I wasn't thinking. I'm glad you made me miss my throw."

  Effryn's fingers touched Owl's wrist. "So am I," he said.

  Owl squeezed his old friend's hand. "Gods, Squirrel. You might have been killed." He started to get up, but Effryn held him back.

  "There's shattered porcelain all over. Let me clean it up so you don't cut your feet." The steward caught the foreign woman's puzzled expression. "If you want to be useful, you could help."

  Silently, she went with him. When the mess was cleared up, Effryn set a fresh pot of coffee on the table beside Owl and filled two cups. Owl heard the foreign woman take a chair; then Effryn said, "Should I stay? Or may I send Cezhar in?"

  "It's all right, Effryn. If she had meant to kill me, there was ample time before you came in. We'll just have a talk—but you might warn anyone who's looking for me to knock first."

  As the door closed behind
the steward, the woman said, "They are all fond of you. Your steward told me that you had saved his life before, and that he knew you when you were a boy. The lord with the blue eyes says that he loves you, but you are not bound to him; he has no mage-gift, nor mind voice, nor is he a Resonator for you. Such a pairing yields no increase in range or depth. I do not understand. Every other Seer I have known is obsessed with power; there is no room for anything else. Their lives are given over to husbanding their Gift and to amplifying their resonance. You do none of it, but you are strong; your talent radiates like heat."

  "Don't the people of Eschadd understand friendship? Or love?"

  "The people of Eschadd understand," she said. "But the Eschaddan, the Way, recognizes no ties beyond the Yearmate bond."

  "The Yearmate bond," Owl mused. "The phrase sounds as though it should include a kind of friendship. Doesn't it?"

  "No," she scoffed; then, as if the admission were dragged, resisting, across the rough terrain of her experience, she added, "I suppose that in most Yearmate bonds, there are elements of friendship: deep familiarity; shared history; respect, perhaps; interdependence, certainly. But my Yearmates had bonded long before I joined them, and what I felt for them—and they for me—was mostly, I think, mutual resentment. All but two of them were En'adden; and the others were both Eddarre. Then I came, Escha'a and a newcomer, both. It is small wonder we could not run in harness."

  "En'adden? Eddarre? Escha'a?" Owl repeated.

  "Ah. You would perhaps call them castes: the divisions among the people of Eschadd. En'adden; Re'eddan; Eddarre; Re'adderre; Escha'a; and Eschaddan. Time was when the—" she hesitated, fishing for a word— "designation one was entitled to put before one's clanname determined what work one was allowed to do, and whether one would prosper in it. Rivalries survive, though the divisions are less clear than in ancient times. I was Escha'a—schooled in music, poetry, languages, and the customs of foreigners; to En'adden and Eddarre effete and useless pursuits. Worse yet, I regretted my lost life and resented our Masters in the Way, while they were fiercely grateful for the chance to become Eschaddan—and respected.

  "At first, they expected me to fail—and die. The folklore all insists that eyes, mind and hands must be trained from infancy, if one is to survive the many testings of the Way. But for me, it came easily; and that, too, became a source of tension." She sighed. "It is hard to hide truth, mind to mind; I was aware of their dislike as they knew of my resentment—and the knowledge fed the feelings. I used to wonder why the Masters did not intervene; but I think, now, that they were only waiting for me to die or be broken."

  "What happened?" Owl asked finally, gently, but his question fell into a silence deep and secret as a bog. It was a strange sensation; even knowing she was across from him, Owl lost the sense of her presence. He remembered her silent, deadly movements and the feel of steel against his throat, and he wondered whether she had left—but surely he would have heard the door?

  Long after he had given up on an answer, she said, in a flat, toneless voice, "They died, and I did not. The Masters held me responsible. They cast me out. They stripped me of clan, name and caste, and sold me into slavery."

  "How long were you with the Eschaddan?"

  "Twelve years."

  Owl sifted her words. Questions crowded around as he felt the bleak vista of her experience. "What made you cling so fiercely to such a bitter life?" he asked at last. Then, before she could answer, the harp's image streaked his inner vision. "Music."

  "Music, and poetry. And though I resented the Eschaddan, the body disciplines became important." Owl heard the shrug in her voice. "It wasn't what I had chosen for my life, but the gods do not always lay our roads upon the heights."

  "And what will you choose, now?" Owl asked at last. "What new life will you seek to build for yourself?"

  "You are hoping, doubtless, that I will choose to serve you."

  Owl shook his head vehemently at the bitter edge that crept back into her voice. "No. You must choose according to your needs, not mine."

  She said nothing; but suddenly, her vivid mental presence overwhelmed Owl's mind. She fingered his memories like a buyer in the market, sifted thoughts and wishes, peered curiously into fears and secrets. Outrage flared, and he fought like a rabbit in a snare. It made no difference; she went where she chose, touching and knowing whatever she wanted. As she prodded old wounds, exhumed archaic hatreds, and stirred the past so that forgotten scraps fluttered to the surface, she woke a memory of Torres, lecturing: "...and though we have lost the mindwork teachings which allowed us to strive mind to mind, there is a section of Pyranthelan's Treatises in which he writes about mind-evasions. Roughly paraphrased: 'Ignore ire, eschew rage; to elude the inner pursuit, disdain the pursuer. Nothing is vulnerable when it is cloaked in unconcern.'" Owl remembered other teachings, then: calming techniques; ways to still inner voices; he made his mind turn nebulous as fog. The cocooning unconcern muted the bright, sharp-edged memories; the thoughts and wishes grew inchoate. The foreign woman drew back, leaving only a bright thread of her mind touching his.

  Why do you bother with speech at all? he thought, when his mind could again form words. Why not simply take whatever you want?

  Speech is necessary. Most people are walled up in their own minds.

  I wish I could wall you out, he thought—the words free before he could censor them.

  She snapped the thread away. "Forgive me. I had no right to invade."

  "It's hard to lie, mind to mind?" Owl asked sourly. "Well, I hope that answered whatever you didn't trust me to tell you."

  "Enough," she replied. He heard the chair scrape as she rose. "I think I will ask Effryn to find one of those green and silver uniforms for me."

  "Wait," Owl said.

  "I am taking service with you," she explained. "You need a bodyguard. Or a harper. Or possibly a translator. Did I tell you I speak five languages?"

  "No. You didn't. In fact, you haven't even told me your name."

  "I don't have a name; I told you that. My Masters in the Way stripped me of it."

  "Your Eschaddan masters have surely forfeited their right to order your life. Why not simply take back your name?"

  "By now, my clan will have done the mourning rites for the one I was. What crosses to the Graylands never comes back. Do not grieve, Owl; there are worse fates than being nameless."

  "Perhaps, but surely it's avoidable," Owl said. "May I give you a name? Something for us to call you?"

  "I suppose." He heard ambiguous overtones in her reply. "What do you have in mind?"

  "I would call you Lynx, for you have the lynx's grace and deadliness."

  "Rhekkhe," she repeated; the Bharaghlafi word sounded strange in her mouth. "I do not know the word."

  "The lynx is a predator," he elucidated. "One of the big cats: a fierce hunter, very beautiful."

  "Well." The dubious note vanished; she sounded pleased. "Since you wish it, then, I shall be Lynx." The door opened and shut, and she was gone.

  ***

  The fire, which completely destroyed a squalid wharf tavern and the warehouse adjacent to it, aroused little notice. Everyone knew the old barmaid was senile; it would have been a small matter for her to forget to care properly for her fire. There were only two casualties: the old woman, and an unidentified man—and the warehouse was, providentially, nearly empty. Despite the lack of public outcry, the incident worried Ferret. For one thing, she knew old Rhynne hadn't been as vague as she acted; that calculating old miser would never have been careless with her fire. In addition, the Rusty Anchor had been a tavern where longshoremen congregated; the ale was terrible, but old Rhynne never allowed the shipmasters' toughs to set an ambush; and there was the small matter (unknown to most) that the old woman had been in the habit of selling information to Sharkbait's lot. Add to that the fact that the warehouse had been full of costly silks until, two days before the fire, the silks had been moved. Ferret's digging revealed that the silks had been mo
ved to another warehouse, not laden on a ship and sent to distant markets.

  Ferret chewed her lip; the bustle of the Beaten Cur—her headquarters in the Slums—receded as she concentrated. It was a tidy little disaster: not enough material loss to sting the shipmasters—or the silk clans—and only two people. She wondered about the man; she was inwardly certain that he was a key to the matter, but it would take some work to learn more about him. She had put some of her people on it. The fire had left nothing but bones and rubble, and as of this morning, no rumors of mysterious disappearances had come to her ears.

  She looked up suddenly. One of her people had come in to report: Vixen; easily the most promising of her journeymen. Ferret extended a hand. Vixen dropped a small, copper object into her palm. Ferret examined it. It was a medallion, crudely stamped with the rearing stallion of the Horselord temple. She raised an eyebrow.

  "Found it in the rubble, near where the man's bones were," Vixen explained. "Seemed odd."

  Ferret raised an eyebrow. "Dinna tell me you combed through all the rubble looking for oddities."

  Vixen shook her head. "With the waterfront toughs and the Watch on the prowl? Nah. Just where the bones were found—his and old Rhynne's, but I didn't find anything near her."

  Ferret nodded dismissal as she fingered the medallion. It was odd. For all that the Horselord's worship had come from the nomads of the Khyghafe, the Temple in Yrkhaffe was a place for the rich. Bishop Anakher, the High Priest of the sect, was the Temple District's representative to Council and up to his earlobes in Council politics. More than either of the other sects with holy places in the Temple District, the Horselord Temple discouraged the participation of any but the well born, and this rough, copper token was a poor man's ornament, not the silver or gold emblem of the devout aristocrat. So who—of the clientele likely to frequent the Rusty Anchor—would wear the Horselord's medallion?

  She turned the question over in her mind. A fleeting smile brushed her thin features; if only she had Donkey's—Thantor, now—memory for faces and detail. He would look vague as he sifted memories until, unerringly, the one he needed would answer his probing. Ferret gazed into shadows. She remembered someone—a man with a weasel's face and the nervous habit of fingering something he wore around his neck. She narrowed her eyes, pursuing the memory: a copper medal in stained fingers; the hint of an accent underlying his habitual wheedle. She clicked the medal down on the table as the memory snapped into place. "Vekh! " He was one of Khorvan Nakhar's less savory sneaks, from (rumor had it) the territory bordering the plains. It was an awkward leap, she thought, from Vekh's nervous habit to the bones in the rubble; but it was possible. She could have her bravos check: find Vekh, or, failing that, discover when he had last been seen, if he couldn't now be found. But even if—unlikely though it was—he were the other skeleton in the rubble, what had he been doing, there? As a rule, shipmasters' goons stayed away from established longshoremen haunts—unless they were looking for trouble. But Vekh was a sneak, not a tough; he would never have gone looking for trouble all alone.