Four and Twenty Blackbirds

He walked through the bedroom without a sidelong glance, and into the second room of his suite, which had been converted into his workroom.

Four large drawing-tables, tables built with surfaces that could be tilted upwards, stood against the walls, with maps in progress on all of them. The first was a general view of the city, river, and surroundings, showing only the major streets and no buildings. The second was a closer view, adding the minor streets, but still showing no buildings. The third was more detailed, with all possible thoroughfares shown, but still with no buildings displayed except for the largest or public structures. The last was the completely detailed map, made in sections, with the current one pinned to the board. That was the table Visyr went to, taking up a set of drafting implements made for taloned Haspur hands, and setting to work translating his notes into deft patterns of streets and structures.

The Duke was often surprised at how unexact those buildings and streets were when drawn out as measured. The streets themselves, even when laid out by the Duke's surveyors and engineers, often meandered a foot or two at a time, so that they were never perfectly straight. The buildings tended to be more trapezoidal than square or rectangular, though the odd angles were more obvious to Visyr than to a human. This was nothing like the Deliambren strongholds, which looked like patterns of crystals from above, so exact were their angles. Then again, these people had none of the advantages the Deliambrens had. No clever machines to give them the advantage of Haspur eyes, no devices to measure without the need for tapes or cords, no machines that flew.

And in a Haspur Aerie, there is scarcely a right angle to be seen.Haspur tended to build curves rather than straight lines, and avoided right angles as much as possible. A Haspur Aerie looked like a patch of strange plants clinging to the cliff-side.

All of which only proves that there's no one way to build a house.He finished the last of his drawings, put down his instruments in their tray, and looked around for a pitcher of water. Although a Haspur beak was a bit more flexible than a bird's, it was still more comfortable for him to drink from a pitcher, with its pouring spout, than from a human cup.

The page had evidently been and gone; the water-pitcher was on a sideboard rather than the table Visyr had left it on. He got a quick drink of water while he stretched his wings as wide as they would go, then put the pitcher down and roused all his feathers with a brisk shake.

He looked back over his shoulder at his progress so far. Had he done enough for the day?

Well, yes—but there's still plenty of daylight, and I'm not particularly tired. I can do another trip easily, then quit flying for the day and add this section to the larger maps.

He picked up the dryboard, took the cleaning-rod out of its pouch on his belt and passed it over the surface of the board, leaving it pristine and white. He stowed the rod back in the pouch and hung the board from his belt, then trotted out to the balcony again.

With no hesitation, he leapt up onto the balcony rail and out onto the back of the wind, returning to the river and the section of taverns, inns, and businesses that catered to river-men whom he had left behind.

It was just about time for the midday meal as he kited to his next position, and it was a pleasant enough day that there were street-musicians setting up all over the city to play for the crowds coming out to find a bite to eat. He was pleased to hear the strains of music drifting up from below, as he approached the next area to be charted, and when he glanced down, he saw that a street-musician had set up on one corner with a stringed instrument that she played with a set of hammers. From the multicolored streamers fluttering from each shoulder, Visyr gathered that she was either one of the humans known as a 'Free Bard,' or was at least pretending to that status. She was probably the real thing; she was a good enough player to qualify. Visyr relaxed and listened with one ear to her music, habitually filtering out the rushes of wind noise from his own wings, as he went into a hover and took out his dryboard again.

Now that the noon hour had come, the streets were full of people; there was a knot of them around the musician and traffic flowed around them like river-water around a rock. Human surveyors would have had a terrible time with the crowd; Visyr, of course, was unaffected, and felt rather smug about it.

People would be tripping all over a human, all over his equipment—it just goes to show that humans don't have all the answers. Even Deliambrens would be having trouble with people interfering with their measurements! Sometimes there's no substitute for an expert.

This was an interesting block, one with buildings that were all different in style, as if every property-owner on the block had gone to a different builder for his construction. Proportions were all different, and he began to suspect that there were some nonhuman merchants operating here, for some of the buildings had proportions more suited to, say, a Mintak than a human. That made his job even more interesting. As was often the case, he soon became so absorbed in his measuring that he was very like a hunter at hover over prey; he lost sight of everything but the work, ignoring the people and the traffic entirely.

Right up until the moment that movement on the street below snapped him out of his hover-trance and into instant awareness that something was wrong.

Nothing alerts a predator like the movement of another, and in the moment that the young, well-dressed man on the street began his rush towards the musician, that movement broke straight through Visyr's concentration.

What?He glanced down, thinking perhaps it was another purse-snatcher who had caught his attention; he had caught one in the act a week ago, and had pinned the urchin in an alley until the constables could come get him. The child would likely have nightmares for ages of giant scarlet hawks dispensing vengeance.