The Eagle And The Nightingales

There was no longer a background of music to the brawl; Silas and the rest had probably deserted their stage before the fighting engulfed it.

She moved around the periphery of the fight, looking for T'fyrr, and finally spotted him again as his wings waved above the crowd momentarily. She worked her way in toward him.

But as she got within touching distance of him, she saw that another of the bully-boys was moving in on him, and the weapon he carried was like nothing Nightingale had ever seen before. In fact, she wouldn't have known he had a weapon at all if she hadn't seen the 'blade' glint briefly in the light. It was needlelike, probably very sharp_and poisoned? Dear Lady, who knew? It might very well be!

She was too far away to do anything!

She opened her mouth to shout a futile warning as the man lunged toward the Haspur.

But T'fyrr was not as helpless as he looked; somehow he spotted his attacker, coming from an angle where no human would have seen him moving. He grabbed a chair, whirled with the speed of a striking goshawk, and intercepted the weapon as the man brought it down toward the point where his back had been a heartbeat before. With all the noise, there was no sound as the man drove it into the chair-back, but he staggered as he hit the unyielding wood instead of the flesh and feathers he had been aiming for.

It must have embedded too deeply in the wood of the chair to pull free, for he abandoned the weapon and leapt back, looking around for help.

But there wasn't any help to be had. The third man had either seen Nightingale fell his partner, or simply had noticed that he was down. Instead of dealing with his part of the attack, the third man was helping the semiconscious net-wielder to his feet and dragging him out of the fight toward the door. There was no doorkeeper at this point, and he was not the only person helping an injured friend out.

They're going to get away, and I can't stop them, damn it!

The man with the stiletto took another look at T'fyrr, who had tossed the chair aside, and with wings mantling in rage, was advancing on him.

He gave up. Faster than Nightingale would have believed possible, he had eeled his way into the brawl and out of T'fyrr's sight and reach. While T'fyrr looked for him, futilely, Nightingale saw him reappear at the side of his two companions, taking the unconscious mans free arm, draping it over his shoulder, and hustling both of the others toward the entrance and out before she could alert anyone to stop them.

She cursed them with the vilest Gypsy curses she could think of_but she couldn't follow them with anything more potent than that.

With the peace-keepers converging on the fight wholesale, and no one around trying to keep it going, the battle ended shortly after that. Peace-keepers didn't even try to sort out who started what; they simply separated combatants and steered them toward the entrance, suggesting that if there was still a grievance after the cool air hit them, they could resume their discussions outside. There didn't seem to be anyone with any injuries worse than a blackened eye, either, and a good three-fourths of the people involved had only been trying to keep themselves from getting hurt by the few folk actually fighting.

Nightingale had seen it all before; people who, either drunk or simply worked up over something, would take any excuse to fight with anyone who wanted to fight back. The three bravos must have known something like this would happen, too, and had counted on it.

Which, unfortunately, argued very strongly that they were professionals in the pay of someone with enough money to hire them.

While the peace-keepers dealt with the mess, Nightingale picked her way through the overturned tables and chairs toward T'fyrr. There was an uncanny silence beneath the dance lights_as she had thought, Silas and his crew had decided that discretion was better than foolhardiness and had abandoned their platform for the safety of one of the performance rooms. She saw them across the empty dance floor, with Silas in the lead, making their way cautiously back toward their stage.

But at the moment, she had someone else she wanted to talk to.

The Haspur stood so quietly that he might have been frozen in place_but there was a faint trembling of his wing feathers that told her he was locked in some kind of emotional overload.

Better break him out of it.

'Hello T'fyrr,' she said calmly, touching his arm lightly, and projecting peace and a sense of security at him.

He jumped in startlement, and she saw, still floating in that strange, detached calm that exercising her power brought her, that he extended his talons for a moment before he recognized her. And he did recognize her; that tiny touch was all she needed to read the recognition and dismay flooding through his mind and heart.