The Eagle And The Nightingales

That place_somewhere safe from extra ears_turned out to be her own room in Freehold, supplied as part of her wages. T'fyrr examined it while she took a change of outfit into the bathroom and turned from Tanager to Lyrebird.

There probably had not been much supplied with the room other than the furniture_and it was, unmistakably, the Deliambren notion of 'spare.' But Nightingale had put her own touches on the place: the bench and bed were covered with dozens of delicately embroidered and fringed shawls, and there were extra cushions on both. The walls had been draped with more shawls, and she had hung a small collection of jewelry on hooks fastened there, as well. Her harps sat in one corner, out of the way, and a hand-drum hung on the wall above them.

'I'd begun to wonder about something lately,' Nightingale told him, her voice muffled a little by the closed door. 'And what you just told me confirmed it.'

She emerged, gowned in the dark green dress she had taken in with her, and settled herself on the chest, leaving the bed to him. 'Humans are odd creatures,' she said finally. 'We often go out of our way to justify things that we want to do, and do it so successfully that we come to believe the justifications ourselves.'

He nodded, waiting to hear more.

'Take King Theovere,' she said after a pause. 'He was working hard, very hard. He was certainly one of the best High Kings that Alanda has seen for awhile. And he solved four of the most terrible problems the Twenty Kingdoms have seen, all in a very short period of time.' She held up a finger. 'The Bayden- Anders border dispute.' A second finger. 'The Grain Smut and the resulting famine.' A third finger. 'The Kindgode incursion.' And the fourth and final finger. 'The Black Baron's Revolt. All four of those took place within a single decade. Any one of them would have been enough for a single High King to fail at or solve.'

T'fyrr nodded, although he hadn't heard anything about three out of the four problems she mentioned_but then again, he had just begun to scrape the top of the Palace archives, and he didn't imagine there was much about a grain smut that would make a good ballad. 'Your point?' he asked.

'Theovere would have every reason to be tired, bone tired, by the end of that time. And when his Advisors began to tell him that he had done enough, that he should rest, that he deserved to take a rest, he listened to them.' She tilted her head to one side and stared up into his eyes, waiting for him to think about what she had said.

'But he did deserve to take a rest_' T'fyrr pointed out. 'At least, he deserved some rest, if those problems were as weighty to solve as you say.'

'Of course he did!' she exclaimed. 'I'm not saying that he didn't_but the point wasn't that he didn't deserve to rest, the point is that he couldn't rest.' She licked her lips, clearly searching for an explanation. 'He is the High King; he could and probably should have reorganized his duties so that he had some time to recuperate, but he could not abandon his duties! Do you see what I'm saying?'

'I think so_' T'fyrr said hesitantly. 'There really isn't anyone who can do what he can, who can be the ultimate authority. So when his Advisors started telling him to rest, to delegate important business to someone else_'

'They were telling him what he wanted to hear, but not the truth,' she finished for him, when he groped for words. 'He could arrange to take more time in solving those problems that won't get worse with time. He can ask for help from any of the Twenty Kings. He can look to his allies for some help. He cannot tell someone else to solve them for him.'

T'fyrr shook his head. 'It is easy to feel sorry for him,' he said, thinking back to Theovere and realizing that he had seen signs of strain that he had not noticed at the time. Perhaps even those temper tantrums were a sign of that strain. 'It seems like too much of a burden for one man. No one should be expected to bear that much.'

Nightingale spread her hands in a gesture of bafflement. 'There's no good answer,' she admitted. 'There is a reason why the High King has the privileges that he has; why he lives in a place that is second only to the Fortress-City in luxury, why virtually anything he wants is given to him. Since his duties can't be made easier, his life is made easier. But do you see what our answer might be?'

T'fyrr thought it all through before he answered. 'Theovere was tired; his Advisors told him what he wanted to hear_that he needed to stop working so hard, he needed to rest, he needed to give over some of his responsibility to others. So he followed their advice and found that he liked the new life_and his Advisors only reinforced his feelings when they told him that he was doing the right thing. It probably began with very little things, but by now_by now it has built up to the point that Theovere is actually doing very little in the way of his duty, and the Advisors are still telling him what a wonderful leader he is.'

Nightingale nodded emphatically as she put her hair up into a complicated twist. 'Furthermore, since they are not letting anyone in to speak to him who is likely to tell him something that contradicts what they are saying, he believes that everything is exactly as it was when he was in his prime. He wants to believe that, and the sycophants are only too happy to tell him so.'

T'fyrr fanned his wings a little in the breath of moving air from the ventilator grille. 'It will be difficult to turn that trend around,' he offered diffidently. 'I have been trying_I have been inserting songs with a particular theme, that great power demands the acceptance of responsibility, into the performances that the King has asked me to give. But as I told you, I have not seen any evidence that he has paid any more attention to them than to the story ballads or the love songs.'