The Eagle And The Nightingales

sight. This equipment was probably reliable, but, to Nightingale's eyes at least, was very clearly cobbled together from several other mismatched pieces of heavy equipment, and likely there was no place else for those wires to go.

The bathroom, stuck off one corner of the main room, was in keeping with the general feeling of 'making do.' A tiny box, tiled on all surfaces with some shiny white substance that might be ceramic, it had a small sink, one of the Deliambren-designed privies, and an oblong object in one corner that she was certain must puzzle the life out of ordinary folk. She had been inside the Fortress-City any number of times; the Deliambrens used these things in places of bathtubs. At a touch, water cascaded from the nozzle in the wall, and although one could not soak in this contrivance, it was the best thing in all the world for washing hair. To her delight, her employers provided soap and towels_probably, she thought cynically, because so few of their new employees had more than a nodding acquaintance with either. That was fine with her; those were two more things she was not going to have to provide.

It isn't a tenth as luxurious as the baths in their guest quarters at home, though, she thought smugly. And if you look closely, those tiles show some chips and scratch marks, which means they have been reused. Probably all of the fixtures are reused. They probably believe that these rooms are as austere as a Church Cloister, and feel guilty over putting their employees through such hardship!

A rectangular opening high on the wall with a screen over it allowed warm air_or cool, as now_to flow into the main room, while another on the opposite side removed it. There was a similar arrangement in the bathroom.

All of the furnishings were built into the walls, meaning that they could not be moved_which was a minor annoyance. There was a wardrobe on the same wall as the bathroom, a chest which doubled as a seat, and a bed that folded up into the wall if she needed more floor space. A tiny shelf folded down, next to the bed. It was a very nice bed, though_and typically Deliambren. It bore very little resemblance to the kind of beds that she would find in other inns here. Wide enough for two, the bed was a platform that dropped down on a hinge at the head of it to within an inch or two of the floor and perched, on a pair of tiny legs that popped out of the foot. The mattress was made of some soft substance she simply could not identify. The same followed for the sheets, towels and pillows. They weren't woven; that was the only thing she could have said for certain. A single light, small but bright enough to read by, was built into the cavity at the head of the bed; it too was controlled by a palm-plate.

Other than that, the room itself was unremarkable, and as she knew quite well, unlike the kinds of quarters that Deliambrens reserved for their guests.

Oh, I imagine that my good host, knowing that the rooms for staff among humankind are very simple, opted for this as being 'typical.' Trust a Deliambren never to ask advice on something like this!

The fact was, by most human standards, between the heating and cooling and the bathroom, this place was palatial. Her panniers, covered with road dust and shabby with use as they were, looked as out of place here as a jackdaw's nest in a porcelain vase. Though this 'vase' had a few cracks in it, there was no doubt what it was.

She put the bed back up into the wall in order to have more room to work, then set about unpacking her things and putting them away. The harps she left in their cases for the moment, but set beside the cushioned chest-seat. Her costumes were next, and she quietly blessed her instincts as she unpacked them, one by one, and shook them out thoroughly before putting them away in the wardrobe. She had been tempted to get rid of the more flamboyant of them, relics of her first days on the road and ill-suited to her current life. There were three of them, all made of ribbons and scarves sewn into skirts; seamed together from the waistband to the knee, then left to flutter in streamers from the knee to the ground. With them went patchwork bodices made to match the skirts, and shirts with a May-dance worth of rainbow-ribbons fluttering from each sleeve. One was made up in shades of green (from forest-green to the pale of new leaves), one in shades of red (a scarlet that was nearly black to a deep rose), and one in shades of blue (from the sky at midnight to the sky at noon).

I was so proud of being a Free Bard, then, that I thought every bit of clothing I owned should shout to the world what I was. They were my flags of defiance, I suppose, and fortunately, at the time, no one who might have taken exception actually recognized them for what they were! Now I hardly ever wear them except at Kingsford Faire.

She hung those at the front of the wardrobe; they would do very nicely for Lyrebird in a casual mood. The majority of her clothing, sensible enough skirts_three of them, of linen and wool_bodices to match of linen, leather and more wool, and six good shirts with only a modest knot of ribbon on each sleeve, she hung in the rear. They were clearly worn and had seen much travel, the wool skirt and bodice were carefully mended, and three of the shirts plainly showed their origin as secondhand clothing to the experienced eye. Those she would use on the street; she could even add a patch or two for effect. She had done so before.

Then came underthings and a nightshift, stockings and a pair of sandals, her winter cloak and a pair of shawls for weather too cold for shirtsleeves but not chill enough for the heavy cloak.

Then, at the bottom of the pannier, the other clothing that would_oh, most definitely!_be suited to the exotic Lyrebird. These costumes would virtually guarantee that she was seen and remembered.

The packet she removed from the bottom of the pannier was hardly larger than one of her sensible skirts folded into a square. She had never worn these garments in human company before_not that anyone had ever forbidden her to, but she had never felt safe in doing so. Some would have considered them to be a screaming invitation to the kind of activity the proprietor of the Muleteer assumed she would be open to. Others would have considered their mere possession to qualify her for burning at the stake.

She unfolded the outer covering of black, a square of that same, soft black velvet that the Elven messenger had worn, and shook out the garments, one by one.