The Eagle And The Nightingales bv-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  She took her own drink to a table nearby, where she could see both the corridor leading to the offices and the table holding the three men. She watched them out of the corner of her eye, feeling rather put out; this was one of Silas' better performances, and she wasn't able to give it more than a fraction of her attention. Silas always needed one set to warm up, and by the fourth or fifth of the night he was beginning to tire, making his second and third sets perfect for someone who really appreciated seeing him at his best. And tonight was his first night with the dance group, making him doubly eager to do his finest. Nightingale would have liked to be able to sit back a little and enjoy it. Although Silas wasn't really her type, the sensuality he radiated tonight was enough to stir a corpse, and that skintight leather outfit of his made it very clear that however else Silas indulged himself, he did not neglect his physical health.

  What was even more annoying was the simple fact that she couldn't sit here forever; she had her third set to do shortly, and she would have to leave. She was debating whether or not she should ask one of the peace-keepers to keep an eye on the three for her when the Haspur finally emerged from the office corridor, and one of the three men caught sight of him and sat straight up, as if someone had stuck a pin in him.

  Then he quickly slumped back down, but not before Nightingale had seen his sudden interest. And not before she saw him lean over and say something quickly to his two companions.

  No more than a heartbeat later, one of his companions calmly got to his feet and reached out onto the dance floor for one of the dancers.

  He just seized whoever was nearest; it happened to be a human male, dressed, as many of Silas' followers did, in a carefully crafted imitation of one of Silas' outfits.

  The dancer turned toward the man who had grabbed him in bewilderment_he started to say something, and the stranger calmly slung him around toward the tables and punched him in the face hard enough to knock him backward. He knocked over two tables as he fell and landed on a third, collapsing it. Those tables overturned, and their occupants scattered, more than a few of them getting to their feet and looking for the cause of the trouble with fire in their eyes.

  Another heartbeat later, and that entire corner of the room was involved in a free-for-all_which quickly spread in the Haspur's direction.

  Peace-keepers converged on the brawl from every part of Freehold; Nightingale spotted them making for the stairs and pushing their way through the dancers, most of whom were not yet aware that there was anything wrong.

  But more violence erupted along a line between the strangers' table and the Haspur, with fighting breaking out spontaneously and spreading like wildfire.

  Soon an entire quarter of the room was involved in the brawl, and fists were flying indiscriminately.

  Fights were not all that usual here, especially not one of this magnitude. It was almost as if there was someone going through the crowd provoking more violence, instigating trouble and moving on before it could touch him_

  Nightingale was still outside of the fighting, though many people around her had abandoned the dancing or their tables and were peering in the direction of the altercation. She jumped up onto her chair, then stood on her table and scanned the crowd as the fight converged on the openly startled Haspur and engulfed him.

  Intuition and a feeling of danger warned her that the strangers must be in there, somewhere_and if the Haspur was their target, they would be moving in on him now.

  Her flash of intuition solidified into certainty as she spotted them widely separated in the crowd. There they were, all right, converging on the Haspur from three directions as he tried to extricate himself from the brawl without getting involved himself.

  And as for the Haspur's identity_there was no glass between her and him now, and she had a good look at his head and face, at the way he moved. It was T'fyrr; it had to be. If it had been a stranger, she might have been tempted to let the peace-keepers handle it.

  Well, it wasn't. And damned if I am going to let these ruffians go after a friend!

  Her harp was safe in the Rainbow Room; she was no bar-brawler, but she hadn't been playing the roads for all these years without learning a few tricks. She jumped down off the table and began slithering through the crowd of struggling, fighting customers. As long as you knew what you were doing and what to watch out for, it was actually fairly easy to wade through a fight without getting involved_or at least, without suffering more than an occasional shove or stepped-on toe. She made her way to the spot in the milling mob where she'd last seen T'fyrr fairly quickly_but she actually got within sight of one of the men that were after him before she saw the Haspur.

  That was when she knew that T'fyrr was in danger, real danger, and that these men weren't just planning on roughing him up. After all, if these people weren't after him, why would this one be carrying a net_why carry a net into a place like Freehold at all? Lyonarie was not a seaport_Freehold might offer a lot of entertainment, but fishing wasn't part of it_and this lad didn't look anything like a fisherman!

  She looked around frantically for something to make his life difficult before he got a chance to use that net. If he caught T'fyrr in it, he could entangle the Haspur and_

  No, best not think about that. Find a way to stop him!

  There! She darted out of the fight long enough to seize a spiky piece of wrought-iron sculpture_or, at least, Tyladen alleged that it was sculpture_from an alcove in the wall. It wasn't heavy, but it was just what she needed. She slid back into the crowd nearest the fellow with the net, just in time to see him back out of the crowd a little himself and spread the net out to toss it.

  She heaved her bit of statuary into the half-open folds just as he started to throw it.

  He lurched backward, unbalanced for the moment by the sudden weight of iron in the net. He was quick, though; he whipped around to see if someone had stepped on the net, and when he saw how the spikes of the sculpture had tangled everything up, his mouth moved in what was probably a curse. He pulled the mess to him, since no one seemed to be paying any attention to him, and began to untangle it, moving out of the crowd completely for just a moment.

  That was when Nightingale slipped up behind him and delivered an invitation to slumber with a wine bottle she'd purloined from an overturned table.

  He dropped like a felled ox: net, statue, and all. Nightingale dropped the bottle beside him after giving him a second love-tap to ensure that he stayed out of the conflict for a while.

  There was no longer a background of music to the brawl; Silas and the rest had probably deserted their stage before the fighting engulfed it.

  She moved around the periphery of the fight, looking for T'fyrr, and finally spotted him again as his wings waved above the crowd momentarily. She worked her way in toward him.

  But as she got within touching distance of him, she saw that another of the bully-boys was moving in on him, and the weapon he carried was like nothing Nightingale had ever seen before. In fact, she wouldn't have known he had a weapon at all if she hadn't seen the "blade" glint briefly in the light. It was needlelike, probably very sharp_and poisoned? Dear Lady, who knew? It might very well be!

  She was too far away to do anything!

  She opened her mouth to shout a futile warning as the man lunged toward the Haspur.

  But T'fyrr was not as helpless as he looked; somehow he spotted his attacker, coming from an angle where no human would have seen him moving. He grabbed a chair, whirled with the speed of a striking goshawk, and intercepted the weapon as the man brought it down toward the point where his back had been a heartbeat before. With all the noise, there was no sound as the man drove it into the chair-back, but he staggered as he hit the unyielding wood instead of the flesh and feathers he had been aiming for.

  It must have embedded too deeply in the wood of the chair to pull free, for he abandoned the weapon and leapt back, looking around for help.

  But there wasn't any help to be had. The third man had either seen Nighti
ngale fell his partner, or simply had noticed that he was down. Instead of dealing with his part of the attack, the third man was helping the semiconscious net-wielder to his feet and dragging him out of the fight toward the door. There was no doorkeeper at this point, and he was not the only person helping an injured friend out.

  They're going to get away, and I can't stop them, damn it!

  The man with the stiletto took another look at T'fyrr, who had tossed the chair aside, and with wings mantling in rage, was advancing on him.

  He gave up. Faster than Nightingale would have believed possible, he had eeled his way into the brawl and out of T'fyrr's sight and reach. While T'fyrr looked for him, futilely, Nightingale saw him reappear at the side of his two companions, taking the unconscious mans free arm, draping it over his shoulder, and hustling both of the others toward the entrance and out before she could alert anyone to stop them.

  She cursed them with the vilest Gypsy curses she could think of_but she couldn't follow them with anything more potent than that.

  With the peace-keepers converging on the fight wholesale, and no one around trying to keep it going, the battle ended shortly after that. Peace-keepers didn't even try to sort out who started what; they simply separated combatants and steered them toward the entrance, suggesting that if there was still a grievance after the cool air hit them, they could resume their discussions outside. There didn't seem to be anyone with any injuries worse than a blackened eye, either, and a good three-fourths of the people involved had only been trying to keep themselves from getting hurt by the few folk actually fighting.

  Nightingale had seen it all before; people who, either drunk or simply worked up over something, would take any excuse to fight with anyone who wanted to fight back. The three bravos must have known something like this would happen, too, and had counted on it.

  Which, unfortunately, argued very strongly that they were professionals in the pay of someone with enough money to hire them.

  While the peace-keepers dealt with the mess, Nightingale picked her way through the overturned tables and chairs toward T'fyrr. There was an uncanny silence beneath the dance lights_as she had thought, Silas and his crew had decided that discretion was better than foolhardiness and had abandoned their platform for the safety of one of the performance rooms. She saw them across the empty dance floor, with Silas in the lead, making their way cautiously back toward their stage.

  But at the moment, she had someone else she wanted to talk to.

  The Haspur stood so quietly that he might have been frozen in place_but there was a faint trembling of his wing feathers that told her he was locked in some kind of emotional overload.

  Better break him out of it.

  "Hello T'fyrr," she said calmly, touching his arm lightly, and projecting peace and a sense of security at him.

  He jumped in startlement, and she saw, still floating in that strange, detached calm that exercising her power brought her, that he extended his talons for a moment before he recognized her. And he did recognize her; that tiny touch was all she needed to read the recognition and dismay flooding through his mind and heart.

  He looked for one short moment as if he might still try to pretend that he didn't know her, but she kept her eyes fastened on his, and he finally shook his head.

  "Hello, Nightingale," he replied in that deep, rumbling voice she knew so well. The tension in the arm beneath her hand told her he was still caught up in the fighting rage the attack had stirred up in him. But he spoke to her calmly enough to have fooled anyone but her, or someone like her. "I_I am sorry I did not greet you, but I was afraid that something like this might happen. I did not want anyone following me to know that I knew you."

  She nodded; it would be time enough later to find out why he was being followed, and what in the world had brought him to Lyonarie_presumably with Old Owl, since that was the last Deliambren she had seen him with. Right now, there were other things she needed to do.

  Bring him calm, for one thing, and help him convince himself that the danger is over for now.

  "I saw them; there were three of them. One never got close to you, one had that stiletto knife, and one had a net."

  His eyes widened at the mention of the word "net."

  Well, that certainly touched a nerve.

  "Whoever they are, they're gone now," she pointed out quickly. "I saw them leave_unfortunately, I wasn't in a position where I could get someone to intercept them."

  He took a deep breath. "I would rather that they escaped than you got yourself involved in my troubles," he replied.

  She only shook her head. "I have to start my next set," she said instead, changing the subject completely. "Why don't you join me?"

  He blinked at her slowly, as if he didn't quite understand what she had just said. "Do you mean to listen," he asked, "or to participate?"

  "Either," she told him. "Both. It will do you good to think about something else for a little until your thoughts get organized and you have a chance to calm yourself down. I know how good your memory is; surely we both know enough of the same music to fill a set. I also know how good you are_and there is no one else I would rather share a stage with. I would love to have you join me, unless you'd rather not."

  But he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if her reply had answered some need of his own. "There is nothing I would like better," he said, his voice now a bit more relaxed. "If you would care to lead the way_?"

  By the time the two of them reached her little stage, Nightingale noticed that Xarax had altered the lighting to suit both of them. She gave T'fyrr her stool and took a chair for herself; after a brief consultation to determine some mutually acceptable music, they began.

  The Rainbow Room had emptied as the brawl began, now it slowly filled up again with customers who were shaken by what had just happened. While fights were not unheard of in Freehold, there had never been one of this magnitude, and the regular customers were still asking themselves how and why the violence of the outside world had intruded on this place they had considered immune to it. Nightingale could have told them, of course.

  When powerful people are determined that something will happen, no place is safe that has not been warned and has not created specific defenses against the weapons that they can bring to bear. Powerful people have the means to make things happen, no matter what anyone else might want.

  But that was not what these people wanted to hear, and at the moment, that was not what they needed to hear, either. They needed to be soothed, and since that need matched T'fyrr's, that was what Nightingale gave them all.

  As she played and sang, and wove a web of magic to hold them all in a feeling of safety and security, she opened herself cautiously to T'fyrr. "Reading" a nonhuman was always a matter for uncertainty, but she thought that she knew him well enough to have a solid chance at getting a little beneath his surface.

  Do I? It is an intrusion. But he is in need_it's like the ache of an unhealed wound. Could I see him wounded physically and not help? No, this is something I must at least try to help with.

  She closed her eyes, set part of herself to the simple task of playing, and the rest to weaving herself into the magic web, opening herself further to him, letting herself slide into his heart.

  There is fear; that is the surface. Singing seemed to ease him somewhat, but beneath the obvious concerns_anxiety over being followed, remnants of fear from the moment when he had seen an attacker targeting him, more fear for what the attack really meant_there was some very deep emotional wounding, something that went back much farther than the past few hours, or even weeks.

  She sensed that, but she did not touch it. Not yet.

  We are too much alike, more than I knew. If I go deeper_he will have me. She felt that old, unhealed ache of her own, the scars from all of those others that she had given herself to, who had in the end only seen that she knew them too well, and fled. If I had known he would be another_But she had not known.

  She could pull
herself back and not give what he needed to him. There was still time to retreat.

  I cannot retreat. He is my friend. He was trying to protect me by pretending he did not know me; I owe him enough to venture deeper.

  So she did, slipping past the fear, the anger_

  Ah. The fear and the anger are related. He fears the anger.

  There was pain, dreadful pain both physical and spiritual; more fear, and with it a residue of self-hate, deep and abiding doubt, and a soul-wounding that called out to her. There was nothing to tell her what had caused all this, what had changed the confident, happy creature she had met in the Waymeet to the T'fyrr who doubted, even despised himself and sought some kind of redemption here in Lyonarie. She could only read the emotions, not what caused them.

  But being Nightingale, now that she knew the hurt existed, now that it was a part of her, there was no choice for her, either. She had to find out what it was that troubled him, and why, and help him if she could.