The Eagle And The Nightingales

protections, clasp your hand about the band of Silver, and call me.' He regarded her with an unwinking gaze, and then added, 'I am Fioreth.'

She bowed slightly, acknowledging the fact that he had given her part of his Name, enough to call him with. It was a tremendous act of trust on the part of an Elf. He bowed in return, then the room hummed a four-fold chord of power once more, and he was gone.

Now there was only one thing left to do.

Find him.

The pain in her heart had a direction: north, and a little east. She needed to follow that_

Someone pounded at her door, and before she could answer it, the door flew open.

'Lady!' gasped one of the younger serving boys, panting with the effort of running up four flights of stairs. 'Lady, there are guards at the door, and they want you! They say they have a warrant_'

'What colors are they wearing?' she asked instantly.

The boy blinked at her for a moment, obviously thinking that she was crazy. 'Green and blue, but_'

'Then they aren't the High King's men; they're someone's private guards,' she replied. 'They can't have a warrant; they probably just have a piece of paper to wave, counting on the rest of us not to know it has to be signed and sealed. Since I'm T'fyrr's Second, they would have to have a warrant signed by Theovere directly, and he would have sent his own bodyguards. Tell Tyladen to demand the warrant and if it isn't signed and sealed with Theovere's seal, it isn't valid. That should delay them. And tell him to tell Harperus!'

Before the boy's scandalized eyes, she stripped off her skirts. 'Give me your breeches!' she ordered.

'What?' he gasped.

'Your breeches! I can't climb in skirts! Now!' She put enough of the power in her order that he obeyed her, blushing to the roots of his hair, and she pulled his breeches on, leaving him to look frantically for something to cover himself with.

Which is ridiculous; he's wearing more now than some of the male dancers wear on stage.

'Go!' she snapped at him, running for the stairs to the roof. 'Tell Tyladen what I just told you!'

She didn't wait to see how he solved his embarrassing quandary; time was not on her side.

The King can't know about this; that means that this arrest is on a trumped-up charge at worst. That means I won't have to dodge every guard in the city, only the ones in blue-and-green livery.

They would probably bully their way inside, and might even get as far as her room before Tyladen called in enough help to throw them out again.

And I left my harps!

But T'fyrr was worth all the harps in the world. The Elves could make her a new pair of harps; all the universe could not make her a new T'fyrr.

She scampered across the roof in a bent-over crouch, in case someone was watching from one of the other rooftops. When she got to the edge, she scanned the area for a lookout.

There was one, but he wasn't very good; she spotted him before he saw her, and commotion down on the street caught his attention long enough for her to get over the side away from him and down onto one of the walkways. She paused just long enough to coil up her hair and knot it on top of her head_then, from a distance, she was just a gangly boy, not a woman at all.

She stood up and shoved her hands in her pockets, and strolled in a leisurely manner along the walkway until she got to the building across the street. No shouts followed her, and she did not sense any eyes on her for more than a disinterested few heartbeats.

She took care not to seem to be in any hurry; she even stopped once to look down with interest at the milling knot of guards at the side door of Freehold. One or two of them looked up, then ignored her.

Then she reached the haven of the next building and threw her leg over the side of the roof there, climbing up onto it, rather than going down to street level. Just as if she had been sent on an errand over to Freehold and was returning.