Four and Twenty Blackbirds

been, scavengers even had sifted those and carried away any bits of metal they'd found.'

All this had the ring of truth about it—furthermore, it would probably be very easy to verify all these facts. 'What happened then?' Tal asked.

'Well, the Great Fire destroyed Loren Bertram's fortune and business—but—' He smiled. 'I suppose it's my training as a Priest that makes me value things of the spirit and heart more than of the material world. My minimal ability in magic saved our lives, and when Bertram was deepest in despair, I was ready to fight. He gave up, but I was just beginning, and determined to prove that I could be his friend and restore what he'd lost. Between Loyse and myself, we scraped together enough for a tiny slice of a shop. The good will we had built among the traders got us raw goods on credit. My considerable talent in the business has brought us back to where we are now. We have a level of comfort, if not luxury. It's been a difficult time, but the results of our efforts have been well worth it. But best of all, Bertram saw how I stood by him as well as Loyse, and now heis my friend, not my enemy.'

A very short version of what must have been a difficult twenty years, but all of it was verifiable now that Tal knew the facts behind the simple resignation. And if Torney had been trying to rebuild a business out of the ashes of the Fire, there was no way he could have been out of Kingsford to commit the earlier murders.

And there must be a world of things that had been left out of that simple story—Tal could only wonder at a love that was powerful enough to defy Church and parent, and still emerge radiating joy.

'I knew when I saw her that your wife was a remarkable woman,' Tal said. 'She must be far more than that —'

'I wish I were a poet or a musician,' Torney replied softly, turning a half-carved candle in his hands. 'I cannot begin to tell you what she means to me. I would have given up everything simply to be in her presence—and if they had locked me away in a solitary cell for a lifetime of penance, I would never have repented a moment of the time I spent with her. And she feels exactly the same towards me.' He looked up. 'I suppose that's remarkable. To us, though, it is as natural as breathing, and as necessary.'

If a man's soul could be said to shine from his eyes, Tal saw Torney's at that moment—and felt a little in awe.

Of all of the things that he could have uncovered in the course of this investigation, this was the most unexpected.

'Haveyou any idea who this might be?' he asked after a moment. 'Is there anyone among the Priests or the Priest-Mages that you knew who could be doing these things?'

'That's what has me troubled and puzzled,' Torney replied, picking up a knife and gently carving petals of wax out of the side of the candle in his hands. 'I'm older than Ardis—she wasn't the High Bishop at the time I was dismissed, she was nothing more than the most promising of the young Justiciar-Mages. There is one man whocould very easily be doing these things, but the last time I saw him, he wasn't a man anymore.'

Wellthat certainly made Tal sit up straight. Torney didn't chuckle, but it was clear that he was amused—he'd obviously intended that his statement would startle Tal, perhaps as a gentle sort of revenge. Without any prompting, he told Tal the tale of Priest-Mage Revaner, Guild Bard Beltren, and the Gypsy Free Bard called Robin.

'I've heard something like this before—' Tal said, uncertainly, when Torney was through.

'Likely enough; the Free Bards made a ballad out of it, though they changed the names to protect their own hides,' Torney replied. 'Now, the part that didn't make it into the ballad was that Ardis doesn't know how to reverse that particular effect, since it was all tangled up with Revaner's original dark sorcery, the Bards' magics, and her own. As far as any Priest-Mage I ever spoke to knew, Revaner was going to be a bird for the rest of his life. And the part that no more than a handful of people know is that during the Great Fire, the Black Bird disappeared.'

'Could he have changed back, somehow?' Tal asked eagerly. 'I've heard that there was a lot of magic going on during the Fire—could he have gotten caught in some of it and changed back?'

Torney spread his hands wide. 'If you're asking could more tangled and confused magic undo what tangled and confused magic did to him in the first place?—well, I can't tell you. I was never that good, and the theory up at that level of things just goes clean over my head. But if there was ever a man likely to want revenge on the Church, it was Revaner. And if there was ever a man convinced that the world should run to his pleasure, it was Revaner.Could he have escaped? Could he have survived on his own? Does that make him a man evil enough to do these horrible deeds?' He looked helpless. 'I don't know. I couldn't judge my own heart, how can I presume to judge my fellow man's?'

'You're a charitable fellow, Dasel Torney,' Tal said at last.

But Torney shook his head. 'Not as charitable as I should be. It's easy enough for me to say that I can't judge Revaner, or the man who's done these things—but I haven't suffered harm from either one of them, either. If it had been Loyse who'd been seduced and left by Revaner—or slain, like that poor girl—' He dropped his eyes, and put the candle and the knife carefully down. 'Let me just say that I mightrepent what I did to the man, but I wouldn't hesitate to do it.'

'If you had seen what I have,' Tal said softly, 'you wouldn't repent of it, either.'