Four and Twenty Blackbirds

The heating-unit hummed to itself in the fireplace and blew warm air in a steady stream while the human thought the question over. Visyr spread his wings to absorb the heat.I have not been properly warm except in bed for months now. I fear I shall not until spring arrives again, and with it some of the better effects of spring—ah, Syri. I miss you.

'The last is the easiest—we would like for you to spend the most time over the areas where street-musicians are most likely to play,' Tal Rufen told him. 'You would probably know where those places are better than I would. When—well, obviously you can't fly at night, so it would be during the daylight hours. Butwhat you are to look for—that's the problem.' He shrugged. 'We think that the murderer is controlling the people who are actually committing the murders, as Ithink I told you. We believe that he is using magic to do this, but what kind, we don't know. All that we do know is that in order to be able to see what his tools are doing and what is happening to them, every kind of magic or spell that the Justiciar-Mages know of dictates that he has to be somewhere that he can actually, physically see them. Our best guess is that this means he's going to be up above the street, somewhere.'

'As in—on a rooftop?' Visyr hazarded. That would be easy enough to manage to spot; there are not too many folk scrambling about on their roofs in the dead of winter.

'Possibly; we just don't know anything for certain,' Tal Rufen admitted. 'I wish we did, fervently, but we don't. All I can say is, we want you to look for anything unusual.'

'Unusual? On the rooftops?' Visyr chuckled dryly. 'Well, at least you ask this of me in the winter; it will be much easier to determine what is unusual when there are not people coming out to frolic by twos where they think they will not be seen, or to sit where they can see sun and sky and open air.' He chuckled again, recalling some of the gyrations that humans had been up to during the milder months. 'I have seen many things on the rooftops of the Duke's city, and a goodly share of them could be considered 'unusual,' Tal Rufen.'

'Yes, well, I have seen more than you in the streets of cities, Sirra Visyr,' Tal Rufen replied with a laugh as dry as Visyr's. 'I think I can guess.' He proved that, with a rather mordantly and morbidly humorous anecdote that ended with the line, 'Lady, I think your sign just fell down.'

Perhaps a gentler creature than Visyr might not have found it amusing, but he did, and he felt a little more kinship with Tal Rufen in that moment. Haspur could be more bawdy, in their way, than any non-Haspur would suspect. 'Well, and what if I don't find anything?' he asked.

'If the worst should happen, and this madman kills before either of us catch him, I will send word to you if you have not already reported to me.' The human looked pained. 'Then you may go back to your maps for about a week or so before you need begin watching again. He's obviously planning these killings carefully, and while he's planning them, he probably won't be doing anything where you can see it.'

Visyr nodded soberly. 'I understand.' He thought for a moment, and volunteered something else. 'Before you go, let me tell you what I can that I have already observed.'

He was pleased to see that the human had come prepared with a notebook and a scriber. He spent the better part of an hour relating as many of the incidents that he had witnessed that could be considered 'unusual' that he could recall—and since he was a Haspur and his memory was exceptional, there were a great many of them. Most of them struck him as odd largely because he wasn't familiar with the humans of this land—and some made Tal Rufen laugh out loud when he related them. He was pleased enough to hear the human laugh, for each time it occurred, the man lost some of his tension and came a bit farther away from the edge of breaking. And every time Visyr did describe such an incident, the human very courteously explainedwhy it had made him laugh, which gave Visyr a little more insight into the ways and habits of the odd people who dwelled here.

Finally, when he had come to the end of his tales, something else occurred to him. He sat for a moment, clicking his beak as he thought about it. Wasthat 'unusual' enough for the human? On the surface, it wasn't, but—

I shall err on the side of too much information, he decided.

'There is one final thing, Church Constable,' he said at last. 'In the past few weeks I have seen a very strange new bird in this city. It is as large as I am, quite remarkably ugly, and black—and I have never seen more than the one. It is a bird of no species that I know, and quite frankly, it should not be able to fly.'

'Neither should a bee, or a Blue Parrot,' Tal Rufen observed. 'But go on, please.'

Visyr roused his feathers with a shake, and yawned. 'I have seen it watching what goes on below it for hours. And even when there was noise and activity that frightened away every other bird, it remained. It seems to place itself where it cannot easily be seen from below—but so do many birds. Idid see it watching the square where the murder occurred at the time of the murder, but it didn't do anything, and I didn't see it again that day or the next. In fact, I haven't seen it for several days now.' He shrugged. 'That is all I can tell you. I have never seen it do anything other than watch, but it could be watching for prey, for opportunities to steal human food, or just because it is curious. There are strange species crossing borders all the time, and for flyers it is doubly easy. It could simply be migrating lazily.'

'Well, you've told me quite a bit,' Rufen replied, making a few more notes, then closing the notebook and stowing it in a capacious pocket inside his cloak. 'Believe me, it is appreciated.'

'And I am glad to help you, Tal Rufen. Truly I am. But—' He yawned again, hugely, feeling exhaustion of his own overtake him. The human gazed at him, apparently slightly astonished at the width and depth of a Haspur gape. 'But I had just finished eating, and flying in the cold takes much out of one. I was just going to sleep.'

The human glanced over at the Haspur's unusual bed and blushed a bit. 'Then I will not keep you awake a