Council of Blades (9 page)

The bird sat in the bathtub and looked at Miliana; Miliana sat in the bathtub and looked at the bird. Both creatures hit on the same inspiration at the self-same time, leaped madly out of the tub, and frantically ducked behind the nearest door.

Stuck all over from head to foot with plaster dust and insect husks, Miliana gave away her hiding place with a sneeze that almost blew her rib cage out. The girl crammed herself into a corner behind a dressing table, peering blindly out through filthy spectacles as she searched for a sign of the missing bird.

Beak. Big beak! The thing had to be a predator. Miliana flicked an eye toward the bedroom door, planning a very slow, very cautious retreat into the palace halls. Nervously wrapping herself inside a soggy towel, she began to edge her way toward her bedroom door.

"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!"

A great, giddy head-all feathers, dust, and daze, shot out from around the doorframe behind her and gave a hoot of glee. The girl gave a rabbit-squeak of fright, lunged into cover behind the bathtub, and crouched, peer-ing at the intruder across the enamel rim.

Flapping ridiculously stubby wings, the huge bird wad-dled out onto the open floor; the creature seemed to be constructed mostly of tail, which dragged behind it like the train of an empress's wedding gown. It ducked its head up and down, left and right in mindless eagerness to inspect Miliana from all sides.

Entrenched behind her bathtub, Miliana tried her best to keep the beast away.

"I'm a sorceress! Oh boy-a really powerful sorceress!" The girl raised a hand and tried to encourage a blaze of power to swirl about her fingers. Unfortunately, whatev-er small store of magical energy Miliana possessed seemed to have spent itself in ejecting her bathwater.

Delighted by Miliana's feeble sparks, the bird vaulted up onto the edge of the bathtub. Fixing Miliana with a giddy smile, it flapped its wings, hurtled back its head, and set the rafters ringing with a ghastly, raucous cry.

"Tekorii-kii-kii!

"Tekorii-kii-kii!"

Gaping its beak open in joy, the bird beat itself in the chest with one wingtip and proudly struck a pose.

"Tekoriikii!"

Sitting on her rump in a pile of debris, Miliana heaved a weary sigh. She reached out a hand to the bird and solemnly shook the outstretched wing.

"Miliana," said the disheveled princess. "Terribly glad to meet you."

"Lorenzo? Lorenzo, come and see to your toys."

Nothing could be heard except the excited scratching of a pen somewhere in the adjoining room.

"Lorenzo?"

Luccio set aside his parchments and glided bonelessly over to the door.

"Lorenzo-if that contraption explodes and slaughters me, I must warn you that my will names you as inheritor of all my debts."

Lost to the world, Luccio's companion sat at a table covered with pieces of thick yellow paper.

"Lorenzo?"

The youth kissed charcoal across the pages with bold, brilliant sweeps of his hand, outlining curves and shad-ows in an almost random array. Luccio crept closer, watching in fascination as the random lines crept togeth-er into pattern, shape, and form, and finally meshed to make the figure of a slim, exquisite maid combing out great sheets of silken hair.

Sitting quietly on the edge of the table, Luccio gave a wry smile and drew the sketch into his hands.

"Drawn from memory?"

"What?" Lorenzo half-surfaced from his artistic frenzy, drawing with his left hand while scribbling notes mirror-wise with his right. "No no-observed. It's all live-drawn."

"Well she must be most accommodating. Either that or stark raving mad." Luccio held aloft a frontal study and raised an incredulous brow. "Are you sure she's a suitable model?"

"Why?" Lorenzo looked up at his friend in utter incomprehension. "What's wrong with her?"

"Um… she does lack… aaah… That is, she seems to have a certain sparsity of…"

"Of what?"

"Nothing." Luccio let the subject die a hasty death. "I'm sure this look will come into fashion someday soon."

Thrilled by a good afternoon of work, Lorenzo tossed aside his charcoal and began to briskly wipe his hands on a rag, somehow managing to actually make himself dirtier. His eyes never once left the intricate array of fig-ure drawings on his tabletop: sketches of hands, of elbows and ankles, necks and feet, and all the numerous bits of terrain held in between. The youth picked up one heavy sheet and held it up to the light to admire the best, most subtle portraiture he had ever done.

"She's fabulous! If only you knew, Luccio, just how remarkable she is. Look at the cleanliness of that line."

"Quite." Luccio gave a shake of his head and let the drawings slide, mumbling: "It's certainly a rather straight line… Lorenzo, O scholar of mine, my dearest and truest of friends, I must now ask you to leave this paradise of artistic forgiveness, and answer for me four questions. That is-four questions of the simplest kind."

Lorenzo squared a velvet cap across his brows, and adjusted the rapier that fashion dictated he wear at all times.

"Do ask. You know I am ever at your disposal."

"In which case…" Luccio opened up the connecting door and waved a languid hand in the direction of the tables with their maze of liquids, tubes, and spheres. "At what point in your ancestry was a gnome involved? Should this device be leaking? Is it dangerous? And why does it smell of cherry fondue?"

Lorenzo gave a sharp wail of dismay. He flung himself through the door and frantically began twirling valves and beating out braziers with his hat. Luccio watched the process from the safety of the door and drew his brows into a genteel frown.

"Well?"

"Well what?" Lorenzo burned fingertips as he rescued a pot of foaming liquid from the top of an oil burner.

"What are the answers to my four questions?"

"To the first-none of your business. No, it should not be leaking. And no, it isn't dangerous."

A metal sphere burst with a thunderous bang; chemi-cals lashed across the room, chewing into the stonework wherever they chanced to land. Luccio shook pieces of smoking shrapnel from the crown of his hat, and used a rapier blade to clear himself space upon a chair.

"I see. And the cherry smell?"

Emerging from the wreckage with a heavy sigh, Lorenzo glumly contemplated the ruin of his pipes and tubes, vats and valves.

"It's from over there. The igniter chemicals for the experiment." The young scientist propped his cheek on his chin. "They don't want me using chemicals in the guest rooms, so I disguised the volatiles with the essence of cherry."

Luccio leaned back in his chair with comprehension dawning in his eyes.

"Aaaaah. And might local vermin have… eaten this concoction?"

"I suppose they may have." Lorenzo swept broken plumbing from his tabletop with a great, almighty clang. "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious."

There was a brisk rap at the door and Luccio, stepping through smoldering debris, swept the portal open with a bow.

"The volcanology emporium… may we help you?"

Bent almost in two, Luccio found himself eye to eye with a petite, freckle-spattered girl. She replied with a hurried little curtsy and a nervous glance left and right along the empty palace hall.

"Greetings, my lord." The girl's spectacles were blank sheets of reflected window light. "I'm looking for a Lomatran."

"Faith, then you have found one." Luccio made his most elaborate of genuflections. "Did madam have any-thing particular in mind?"

"An idiot with a big drawing pad?"

"Madam, I do believe we can help you." The lanky nobleman ushered his guest in through the door.

"Lorenzo-it's for you!"

Stalking into the ruined apartment, Miliana spared a glance at the steaming scars gouged into the fine wood paneling and declined to make a comment. She lifted up her hems, stepped across a tangle of broken pipes, and went in search of a fool.

She found him on the floor, frenziedly decanting a vile cherry-colored liquid into a big glass jar. Lorenzo caught sight of her, instantly tried to leap to his feet, and banged his head painfully on the underside of the table.

"It's you!"

"So I'm told." There were times when Miliana's specta-cles gave her a stare like a basilisk. "Does Lady Ulia know you're brewing cherry fondant in her good guest rooms?"

"Um… well… yes…" Lorenzo's skills at falsehood would have done discredit to a wingless fruit fly. "It all comes off with water!"

Miliana inspected a decayed patch of marble panel-ing. "It's eating into the walls!"

"Only a bit…" Lorenzo tried to buff a scorched table-top, which began crumbling to pieces in his hands.

"No one minds. We all make a little mess from time to time."

Catching her foot on a piece of shrapnel, Miliana yelped and fell, only to be caught in Lorenzo's arms.

The girl readjusted her pointy hat and scowled down at the debris in scorn.

"What is all this?"

"A light projector! It's going to be an engraving machine-or maybe a lathe." Lorenzo tried to kick bro-ken pieces of steel tankage out of sight. "I'm having trouble with the right mix of chemicals."

"So I see." Briskly straightening her damp robes, Miliana let the subject drop like an overripe haddock.

"Anyway-I came to ask you for some help. Do you know anything about birds?"

Lorenzo blinked in absolute incomprehension. "Birds?"

"Yes, birds. Birds?" Miliana stuck out her fingertips and wagged them frenziedly in the air. "Feathers, beaks, claws- birds!"

"Oh, as in avians." The young scholar puffed himself up in pride. "Actually, as it so happens, I am an expert on the subject."

"Truly?"

"I am conducting a close survey of wing structures as a basis for designing my flying machine." Lorenzo reached for a thick leather-bound volume lying on a rapidly disintegrating shelf. "My lady-you have a spec-imen you wish me to identify?"

"If it's no trouble." Miliana watched Lorenzo as he tried to tuck debris out of the way behind the drapes.

"Just leave that. I'll have someone clean it up and repair the walls."

Lorenzo balked at this airy indication of Miliana's hidden powers.

"You can do that?"

Miliana turned about and looked at the young schol-ar in confusion.

"Well, of course I can do that." The girl looked at the damaged room and shrugged. "Anyway-it happens to me all the time."

"Oh."

"Yes-now come on. I don't want this 'specimen' run-ning loose about my room unattended!"

Lorenzo gathered up his books, a butterfly net and a small magnifying glass, then struggled out into the cor-ridors in hot pursuit of the girl.

He observed his companion as she walked, fascinated by the interplay of wistful expression, subtle line, and seething irritation. Passing by the kitchen door, Miliana stole one of Lady Ulia's fruit carts, trundling the collec-tion of oranges, melon slices and cheese off along the halls to her tower. Keeping an eye out for passing step-mothers, Miliana opened her locks and hastily crammed Lorenzo through the open door.

"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!''

A raucous screech joyfully heralded their entry. Lorenzo hefted his butterfly net and moved to the fore, ready to snare Miliana's wild bird. Behind him, Miliana rolled in the fruit cart and nudged the door shut.

"I'm back!" Miliana whirred her cart past the startled Lorenzo and moved out into her room. "I brought you fruit-you know, to eat? Mmmmmmm! Yummy yummy!"

Lorenzo heard the flap of wings from deep inside the girl's boudoir. With a heroic flourish of his net, he stepped into the doorway, saw the creature sitting on Miliana's worktable, and froze as stiff as if he had walked in on a medusa in her bath.

Flapping happy wings in greeting, the titanic, silly bird rose from the table and floundered forward toward Miliana. A mixture of bright orange, golden yellows and rich flame reds, the creature's plumage smote the eyes. Cooing and cawing to itself, the bird strode waggishly forward to inspect the fruit cart with avid, hungry eyes.

In essence, the bird consisted of a long length of neck, a stubby body, and acres of glorious tail. This magnifi-cence had then been garnished by adding a beak thick enough to sever a man's hand, and great hooked talons at the ends of cheery yellow feet. Lorenzo stared at the creature, felt the blood drain from his head; then drew his rapier and took an instinctive step to place himself between the fair damsel and the great carnivorous bird.

The movement took the feathery being all aback. The bird looked from Miliana to Lorenzo, flapped its wings in indignation, and suddenly seemed to swell up to enormous size. Feathers fluffed and neck arching high above Lorenzo, the bird shuddered with appalling rage and hissed its way across the floor.

Faced with a monster, Lorenzo crouched, desperately trying to decide whether to flee or fight. Seeing its rival cowed, the bird halted its rush and loomed above the young man, beak agape and wings shaking to and fro as it strutted back and forth in glorious majesty. Finally con-tent with its display, the bird flattened down its feathers and waddled back to Miliana.

Lorenzo recovered slowly, like a garden snail emerging cautiously from its shell. The bird gave itself very superi-or airs, lowering its eyelids to look back across its shoul-ders in scorn.

Miliana watched the whole affair in wry silence, and then planted a fist upon her hip as she addressed the giant bird.

"Finished?"

"Nonk nonk!" The bird settled its feathers.

Without the slightest trace of malice, the bird happily sidled over to Lorenzo and inspected him from head to toe, seeming to approve of everything he saw. Lorenzo returned the creature look for look, studying it in speech-less amazement. Bird and nobleman circled one another in a dizzy parade until Lorenzo pulled away and fixed his hostess with an incredulous eye.

"Where in the name of the Binder of What is Known did you find it?"

"Oh, it found me." Miliana busied herself peeling an apple, using a ridiculous amount of concentration and crinkling up her freckled, upturned nose. "Or rather he found me. He dropped in through the ceiling, just over there." The girl pointed with her fruit knife at a chaotic wreck of plaster, ceiling boards, and dirt. "I think he's been living up there in the attic for quite a while."

Lorenzo picked his way through the rubble, cautiously climbed onto the rim of Miliana's filthy bathtub, and used the perch to see up into the attic. The filtered light showed the conical space to be largely empty, except for a great pile of wrack and rags which Lorenzo took to be the creature's nest.

"Well, there doesn't seem to be any more of them."

"One's quite enough, thank you." Miliana passed each of her companions a slice of apple. The bird held the fruit delicately in his beak and rotated it around and around with flicks of a hard, horny tongue. "I've never heard of anything like him, have you?"

"No. No, not at all." Lorenzo hoisted his reference book onto his hip and opened the cover, jamming his apple in his mouth. "'Ot do 'ou call 'im?"

The bird replied with a great, eager flapping of wings.