The Eagle And The Nightingales

'Why then is it so imperative that Lord Harperus be wakened?' T'fyrr asked, 'when you know that you know nothing of how his body functions, and in waking him you might kill him? Is this on the orders of the King?' He pulled the man a little closer to him, effortlessly, and looked down at him with his beak no more than a few inches from the physicians face.

'It_no_ow!_it's because of the escape, you fool!' The physician was dead-white now, with anger as much as with fear, although fear was swiftly gaining the upper hand.

After all, there is a beak fully capable of biting through his spine less than a hand's-breadth from his nose.

T'fyrr shook the wrist he held, ever so slightly. 'What escape?' he asked urgently, and Nightingale felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, both in reaction to his dangerously icy tone and in premonition. Her stomach knotted with T'fyrr's, both of them with chills of fear running down their backs.

'The man_the man who was caught here,' the physician stammered, unable to look away from T'fyrr's eyes. 'He escaped early this evening. We need to talk to the Envoy to discover if there was anyone he recognized among the rest of his attackers. We need to find more of the perpetrators before they have a chance to get away.'

'What?' T'fyrr dropped the man's wrist; the physician did not even stop to gather up his instruments. He fled the suite, leaving only T'fyrr and the guards. T'fyrr turned toward the guard nearest him, who shrugged.

'I hadn't heard anything, Sire,' the man said. 'We've been here as long as you have. I can send to find out, though.'

'Do that,' T'fyrr ordered brusquely. 'If the man really did escape, there are now at least three people who need to see that Lord Harperus does not get a chance to identify them, all loose in this Palace. Now we don't know who any of them are; they could be among the very servants sent here to serve Lord Harperus. You might consider that when you send your message.'

The guard's grim face grew a bit grimmer, and he himself disappeared for a moment or two, leaving his fellow twice as vigilant. When he returned, it was with his own Captain striding by his side. Nightingale recognized the Captain from the High King's suite; he was one of the ones usually close at Theovere's side.

'I understand you have not heard the latest of our incidents, Sire T'fyrr,' the Captain said with careful courtesy. 'I can tell it to you in brief: the Palace does not normally hold prisoners. Normally we send them elsewhere, within the city, which has better gaols than we. This time, however, it was deemed better to keep the man here, in one of the storage rooms in the cellars, with a guard on his door. Not,' he added, with a wry lift of an eyebrow, 'one of us. This was merely a Palace guard, not one of the Elite.'

T'fyrr nodded, and the Captain went on. 'I am told that at about dinner time, according to the guard left on duty, a woman appeared with whom several of the guards were familiar, he among them. She is ostensibly a maid here, and yet no one will admit now to having her in their service. At any rate, there was supposedly a good reason for her to be in the storage area, and when she saw the guard who knew her, she flirted with him as she has often done in the past. He allowed his caution to slip; she was only a woman after all, and alone.'

'She then incapacitated the guard and let the prisoner escape,' T'fyrr concluded, seeing the obvious direction the tale was heading.

'She didn't bloody incapacitate him; she knocked him cold with a single punch!' the Captain corrected bitterly. 'A single woman, no taller than his chin! It's unnatural! I've never seen nor heard of the like, for a woman half a man's size to take him down with one blow, even if he didn't expect it!'

Nightingale had, of course, but she kept her peace. There was no point in getting suspicion pointed in her own direction. The regular guards by now were smarting with the disgrace; they would be looking for an easy suspect, and she was in no mood to provide them with one. It would be all too easy for someone to claim that she had somehow slipped down to the cellar, perhaps during one of the brief times she had gone to fetch something for T'fyrr from his suite.

Especially since she had been seen in the Lower Kitchen and could have been mistaken for a maid, with a long stretch of the imagination. There were cooks and the like who would be perfectly able to identify her as 'Tanager,' and for a noble, there wasn't a great deal of difference between a 'maid' and a 'street-musician.'

'So the man is gone, and we have no suspects whatsoever.' T'fyrr clacked his beak with anger. 'This is not cheerful news, Captain.'

'Do tell,' the man retorted heatedly. 'At the moment our best hope is that Lord Harperus regains consciousness and can tell us what he saw. That is probably why the physician was sent_I expect it was by the Captain of the Watch.' The Captains tone turned condescending. 'I'm afraid that he hasn't had much experience with injuries. I am certain he thought a head injury was no more serious than a drunken stupor and could be dealt with in much the same way.'

His tone implied that the Watch Captain had no combat experience, which was probably true_and the scars on his own face and hands spoke volumes for his expertise.

'So your best hope is to keep him safe.' T'fyrr turned the full force of his gaze on the Captain. 'I am the nearest you have to an expert on Deliambren medicine_although, if you want a real expert,