The Robin And The Kestrel

the year. We haven't found a single wintering-over job, and we've been looking since the first Harvest Faire.'

Robin blinked in surprise at that, as Gannet carefully poured the last of the tea-water over the fire, putting it out. Steam hissed up from the coals and blew away in the light breeze. 'That's odd,' she said carefully.

'Odd? It's a disaster!' Blackbird never had been one to mince words. 'No one will take us. There's Guild musicians in every one of the taverns we've wintered over in before. The innkeepers just shrug and wish us well_elsewhere. They won't tell us why they hired Guild when they couldn't afford Guild before, and they won't tell us why they don't want us, when the Guild musicians aren't as good as we are.'

But Gannet looked up with shadows in his dark eyes. 'Got a guess,' he offered. 'Just now put it together_been a lot of Priests around, preaching on morality. We're a trio.'

Robin shook her head, baffled, but Linnet put her hand to her mouth. 'Oh!' she exclaimed, looking stricken. 'I never thought of that! We're _' she blushed, a startling crimson. 'We've always shared a room, you see _'

Robin grimaced. 'If the Church Priests are going around the inns, threatening to cause trouble if there are 'immoral people' there, you three would be right at the top of their list, wouldn't you?'

'I never thought it necessary to announce that we're siblings every time we ask for a job,' Blackbird said, with icy anger. 'It doesn't exactly have anything to do with music.'

'Well, maybe it does now,' Gannet said, his jaw clenched. 'Church's poking its nose into our lives, time we went on the defensive, maybe _'

'Or time we went into Birnam, where we don't have to make excuses, just music,' Linnet said firmly. 'No, I don't like running away any more than anyone else, but the Church scares me. It's too big to fight, and too big to hide from.'

She stood up and shook out her skirts decisively. 'If they decide not to believe that we're siblings, we have no way of proving that we are!' she continued. 'And for that matter, a nasty-minded Churchman can make nasty assumptions even if they accept our word! Call me a coward, but there it is.'

Gannet rose, nodding, as Robin and Kestrel got to their feet, leaving only Blackbird sitting. He stared up at them, stubbornly, for a long moment. Then he finally sighed and rose to his feet as well.

'We're too good a trio to break up,' he said, with an unhappy shake of his head. 'I think you're overreacting, but if it makes the two of you happy to head for Birnam, then that's where we'll go.'

Robin let out the breath she had been holding. 'I think you're being wise,' she said. 'It's just a feeling I have, but_well, incest is punishable, too, and the punishments are pretty horrible. It might be worse for Church Priests to know you are related, and sharing a room.'

'Better to be safe,' Linnet said, with a twitch of her skirts that told Robin that she was not just nervous, she was actually a little afraid, and had been the moment that Gannet mentioned the Church.

And that was not like Linnet.

Not at all.

Something had frightened her, something she hadn't even told her brothers. Threats from some representative of the Church?

Or some Priest deciding he liked her looks and promising trouble if she wouldn't become his mistress. It had happened to Robin, and the trouble had come. Small wonder Linnet would rather leave the country than come under Church scrutiny again. Robin would make the same choice, in her place.

She and Kestrel found several more Gypsies, and two more Free Bards, besides a round dozen wandering players who were not associated with either the Guild or the Free Bards. To all of them she passed the news that any musician was welcome to play wherever he could find work in the Kingdom of Birnam. Some of the ordinary musicians were interested, most were not_but they were folk who had a regular circuit of tiny inns, local dances and festivals, and very small Faires. They had places to play that no Guild musician would touch with a barge-pole, and while the living that they eked out was bare by her standards, it was enough for them.

The Free Bards were, like Linnet, very interested in her news, and had similar tales of finding Guild musicians_or, at least, musicians in Guild badges_playing in the venues where no Guildsman had ever played before.

But it was not until they found another musician who was both a Gypsy and a Free Bard that they had anything like an answer to the question of why this was happening.