The Eagle And The Nightingales

By now, she was elbow-to-elbow with the Palace servants, none of whom were distinguished by anything like a livery. No one ever saw these people but other servants, after all. She slipped inside the back gate with the others, completely ignored by the fat, bored guard there, whose only real job was to keep things from leaving the Palace, not from entering it.

Now she saw the first real sunlight she'd seen this morning; the cobblestoned courtyard and kitchen garden was open to the sky. Here, the sun had already burned away the mist, and she squinted against its glare as she stared across the courtyard to the great stone bulk of the Palace, dark against the blue sky, with the sun peeking over it.

She had no real idea just how big the Palace was; huge, that was all she knew for certain_at least the size of several Freeholds. From all she had been able to gather, this was only one building of several, all joined by glazed galleries, and all as big as this one was. It made her head swim just to think about it.

She paused just a moment to take in a breath of fresh air before she headed for the back door to the servants' kitchen.

The servants, of course, were never fed out of the same kitchen that conjured up the meals for the lords and ladies. In fact, there were two kitchens that fed the servants: Upper and Lower. Upper Kitchen was the one that fed the pages, the personal maids and valets, the Court Musicians, nannies and nursemaids, tutors and governesses, all those who were not quite 'real' servants, but who were not gentry, either. Lower was for the real servants: anyone who cleaned, cooked, sewed, polished, served food and drink, washed, mended, or tended to animals or plants. Tanager would never have dared intrude on the Upper Servants' Kitchen; Lower was where she fit in, and Lower was where she went.

She needed that breath of fresh air when she got there; as usual, it was as hot as a Priest' Personal Hell in there, with all the ovens going, baking bread for afternoon and evening meals before it got too warm to keep the ovens stoked. Breakfast bread had been baking all night, of course, and Tanager's arrival was greeted right at the door by one of the under-cooks, with enthusiasm and a warm roll that had a scraping of salted lard melting inside it. Tanager got out of the doorway and ate the roll quickly, as would anyone for whom this would be a real breakfast. Then she hurried across the slate floor and took her seat out of the way, off in a corner of the kitchen that seemed to be an architectural accident; a bit of brickwork that might have served as a closet if it had been bigger, and might have served as a cupboard, if it had been smaller, and really wasn't right for either. Before she had come to sing, there had been a small table there. You could put a stack of towels there, or a few of the huge pans needed to cook the enormous meals they prepared here_or Tanager. There were other places for the towels and pans; now the wedge-shaped corner held a stool for her to sit on.

The kitchen was a huge, brick-walled room, lit by open windows and the fires of three enormous fireplaces, where soup and stew cooked in kettles as big around as a beer barrel. There were five big tables, and counters beneath the windows, where the cooks and their helpers worked. No fancy pastry cooks here; the fare dished out to the lower servants was the same, day in, day out: soup and stew made with meat left from yesterday, sent from the Upper Servants' Kitchen, bread, pease-porridge and oat-porridge. On special occasions, leftover sweets came over from the Upper Servants' Kitchen, as well_breakfast sweets came over at noon, lunch-sweets at dinner, and dinner-sweets appeared when all the cleaning up had been accomplished, by way of a treat and a reward for the extra hours. So far, Tanager hadn't seen any of those.

Tanager thought long and hard as she settled herself on her stool. This was the first time she had needed to hear about something specific. Something as odd as the 'Law of Degree' was not going to come up in normal conversation.

And I'm not going to ask about it myself. That leaves only one option; I'll have to use Bardic Magic to coax it out of them.

Tanager was a simple girl; Nightingale was anything but. Easy in her power and comfortable with it, she had been using Bardic Magic for as long as she had been on her own, on the road. Often she had no choice. The use of Bardic Magic to influence the minds of those around her had sometimes been the only way she had gotten out of potentially dangerous situations. Living with the Elves had refined her techniques, since Bardic Magic was similar to one of their own magics. Now she scarcely had to think about tapping into the power; she simply stretched out her mind, and there it was.

I need a song as a vehicle; something that includes nonhumans. But nothing too jarring to start with; something they would enjoy listening to under ordinary circumstances. And it will have to be something with a strong beat as well, since I only have the drum to accompany me. Ah, I know; that song Raven wrote: 'Good Duke Arden.' It has several verses about Arden taking care of nonhumans in his train.

So she began with that, then moved on to other melodies, songs that dealt with nonhumans in a favorable light. And all the while she sang, she concentrated on one thing. Talk about the nonhumans, what the lords and ladies are saying about them.

She sat and sang and drummed until her wrist and voice tired; one of the pot scrubbers, with an empty dishpan and nothing better to do at the moment, brought her a cup of flat ale. Tanager pretended to drink it, but it really went down a crack at her feet. And while she drank, she listened.

There was nothing at all in the gossip about the 'Law of Degree,' but there was something that made her sit up straight in startlement.

'La, Delia, did ye see th' lad wi' all the snow-white hair, him an' his coach with no horses come in yestere'en?' asked one of the under-cooks. 'Faith, 'tis all m'sister, her as is Chambermaid t' Lord Pelham's nannies, can talk about!'

Lad with all the hair? Coach with no horses? Dear Lady, that cant be_oh surely not_