The Eagle And The Nightingales

But the very smoothness of her travel had made her suspicious, or rather, apprehensive. It felt as if someone or something was making quite sure she would get to Lyonarie, and seeing to it that she would be ready for just about anything when she arrived there.

A geas? The hand of God or the Gypsy's Lady of the Night?

Or just a string of unprecedented good luck? And did it matter?

Not really. What did matter was coming up with a course of immediate action that would keep her inconspicuous. If I were truly in the 'service' of any of my so-needful friends, what would I do first? she asked herself. The answer seemed obvious: find a tavern or an inn at the heart of the city and take up lodging there. If she was expected to gather information, that would be all that she would do; there would be no time for anything like taking on a regular job as a musician. And that would make her conspicuous_someone who carried musical instruments, yet did not try to find a position; someone who spent money but did nothing to earn more. It would be 'logical' to devote all of her time and energy into collecting information, but it would not be wise.

So, since that is what is predictable and logical, it is what I will not do.

She considered her options further as she also pondered the question of High-King Theovere. The two were inextricably linked. How to gain information on the High and Exalted without venturing out of her persona as Low and Insignificant?

At least, now that she wasn't moving, she didn't seem to be quite as warm.

As Talaysen had pointed out, the King should have been overseeing the business of his twenty vassals_but they had been left, more and more, at loose ends, without a guide or an overseer. As often as not, though the King of Birnam was an exception, they had been making use of this laxness to enrich themselves, or simply to amuse themselves.

The King of Birnam thought more of his people and their lands than himself; he was a good ruler, and as a result, his kingdom prospered in good times and survived the bad in reasonable shape. But those lands whose rulers were not out of Rolend's mold were showing all the signs of a careless hand on the reins. The signs were everywhere, and touching everything. In Rayden, for instance, there was little or no upkeep on the public roads: bridges were out, roads were rutted and full of potholes, signs were missing or illegible. In some remoter parts of Rayden and in other lands, the neglect was far more serious, as rivalry between Sires and even Dukes had been permitted to escalate into armed feuding.

The High King was supposed to represent the central unifying power in the Twenty Kingdoms. Now the Church was well on the way to taking over that function.

As if her thought of the Church had summoned a further reminder of its power, the tolling of bells rang out over the rumble of cart wheels on pavement and the babble of thousands of voices. Nightingale lifted her eyes from the road to see the spire of the Chapel housing those bells rising above the warehouse roofs.

And that represented another interest in the dance. There were perhaps hundreds of Chapels in Lyonarie, ranging in size from a single room to huge Cathedrals. The Church was an all-pervasive presence here, and there was no way to escape it. The Church might also have an interest in keeping Theovere weak and ineffectual.

She swallowed in sour distaste. There was no love lost between herself and most representatives of the Church. Too often of late she had been the subject of attempts by Churchmen to lay the blame for perfectly ordinary accidents at her door, because she was a Gypsy, a Free Bard, and presumably a wielder of arcane and darksome powers. In some places, at least, it seemed that the Church was trying to incite people against Gypsies, nonconformists, nonhumans_indeed, against anything that did not obviously and directly benefit the Church itself as much as a flock of sheep would benefit the herdsman.

Well, one advantage of being in a large city was that there were too many people for the Church to play at the kinds of games some Churchmen were able to foment in less populous places. It was harder to find an individual to use as a target and a scapegoat_harder to incite people against a stranger in a town when so many people were strangers, and in fact, people living on the same street might not even know or recognize each other.

Still, it behooved her to find a venue that was not too near a Chapel, if she could. Not near the prosperous, either; they have the leisure to notice things. All things considered, although this was probably the worst part of town, this district would be a good one to try to find a tavern that might have need of a musician.

Another good thing about a city this large_not all the Guild Bards in the world could take all the positions available here. Really, most of them are going to be positions no Guild Bard in his right mind would ever want!

Now that she had gotten her mind moving, and had managed a little rest, she felt ready to rejoin the mob. She pulled the donkey into the stream of traffic again, and scanned the fronts of the buildings she passed for tavern signs. I'll look for information from two sources, she decided as she walked, letting the traffic carry her along rather than trying to force a faster pace. Once I get established, I'll build myself a little army of street-children and pay them to go listen for me. No one ever pays attention to them, and they can get into the most amazing places....

This would not be the first time she had built herself such a network. Children were never regarded as threatening by adults, but street-brats were wise beyond their years and knew how to listen for anything that might