Four and Twenty Blackbirds (52 page)

"Ardis!" he croaked. "Ardis, something's turned me loose! For a moment!"

She stopped what she was doing and held perfectly still.

"I'm in the spell, the magic—" Each word came out as a harsh whisper, but at least they were coming out now! "It's like a shell around me, forcing me to do whatever it wants. I think it's using the pen—not the knife, but my pen—I think that's how it got hold of me!"

She nodded—then moved, but not to run. She closed the few steps between them faster than he had ever thought she could move and began taking things away from him, virtually stripping him of anything that might be considered a weapon, starting with his belt-knife and the pen. As her fingers touched the pen, he felt something like a shock; as she pulled it away, he felt for a moment as if he'd been dropped into boiling lead. He screamed, the focus of the worst pain he had ever experienced in his life.

Visyr was a hunter; more than that, he was an angry, focused hunter, one who had pursued difficult game through the twisting caverns of the Serstyll Range. And he was not going to let this particular piece of game get away from him again.

He narrowed the gap between them, until he was close enough to snatch a feather from the tail of the Black Bird. It wasn't squawking now, as it tried desperately to shake him off its track. It was saving its breath to fly.

But Visyr the hunter was used to watching ahead of his prey as well as watching the prey itself, and he saw what it did not yet notice.

It was about to run out of places to hide.

A moment later, it burst out of a maze of gables into the open air above the river.

It realized its mistake too late. Before it could turn and duck back into cover, Visyr was on it.

Two hard wing-pumps, so hard he felt his muscles cry out, and he had his hand-talons buried in its rump. He executed a calculated tumble, which swung it under, then over him, and brought its head within reach of his foot-talons. One seized its skull; the other seized its chest.

He squeezed.

And a moment later, he landed safely on the docks amid a crowd of shouting, excited humans, with his prey safely dead, twitching, beneath his talons!

Of all of Orm's calculations, these events had not entered into them.

He had been watching from the safety of the recessed doorway of his own rented warehouse, figuring that Orm the spice-merchant had a perfect right to be in his own property, and a perfect right to investigate anyone rattling about in the alley. From here he could not see the pile of bodies, so he wouldn't "know" there was anything wrong. This was a good place to watch for the moment when Rand took over the Church constable; when Rand was completely occupied, Orm would have a chance to flee.

But then everything went wrong.

The constable got taken over, all right—but before he could do anything but chase the High Bishop around a bit, there was a flash of black overhead, followed closely by a flash of red, blue, black, and gray. Orm had seen
that
particular combination before.

It was the bird-man, and it was after Rand. Rand, who could
not
duck down alleys too narrow to fly in, Rand who was subject to exactly the same limitations as the creature who was chasing him, and who did not have that creature's sets of finger-long talons to defend himself with. Oh, he had that long, spearlike beak, but the bird-man had a better reach, and besides, Rand wasn't used to defending himself physically. The only things he'd ever used that beak on were helpless human women, not six-foot-tall predators.

The two Church officials were out of sight in the cul-de-sac, but Orm knew what was happening: Tal Rufen was no longer being controlled by Rand. The High Bishop would free him in a moment—and she would have the pen in her possession in another. Nothing he could do or say would take away the fact that
he
still had Rufen's pen in his room, and traces of
his
essence would be on the pen in Rufen's hand. Ardis was famed for being able to dig the true facts of a matter out of people who might not remember them. None of Orm's alibis would hold up against her investigation. Once she began unraveling his web of deceptions, it would fall completely to pieces. Rand might die by the talons of the bird-man, but Orm would be taken by the Church constables, and—

And he'd heard rumors about what they did to prisoners. Look what they'd done to Rand!

Nothing he had planned had included the High Bishop surviving Rand's attack.

His luck had run completely out. He could not run far or fast enough to escape the Church's justice with Ardis in charge.

But for a little while longer, at least, Rufen would not be able to move. Until Rand was actually
dead,
Rufen would be frozen in place. There was only one hope for Orm, only one way he could buy himself enough time to flee.

Kill them both.
Now.

He had learned a lot from Rand. It would be easy. First the woman, then the man—she, while she was held in frightened shock, he, while the spell still imprisoned him. Humans died so very easily; a single moment of work, and he would be safe.

Lightly as a cat, quickly as a rat, he dashed from shelter, his knives already in his hands.

Just as the spell broke and freed him, Tal heard the sound of running footsteps behind him; he did not wait to see what it was or who it was.

He could move; that was all that counted. Freed from the force that held him, he flung himself between Ardis and whatever was coming. His body answered his commands slowly, clumsily, but he got himself in front of her just barely in time, and turned to face what was attacking them.

That was all he had time to do; he wasn't even able to get his hands up to fend the attacker away.

He felt the knife more as a shock than pain—the attacker plunged it into the upper part of his chest, in a shallow but climbing uppercut through his chest muscles, glancing off bone, too high to do any mortal damage. Tal had been through too many knife-fights to let that stop him.

He thought he heard shouting; he ignored it, as everything slowed for him and his focus narrowed to just the man in front of him. The attacker—a thin, supple, ferretlike man—still had another knife. Ardis was still in danger. He had to deal with the attacker; he was the only one who could.

Cold calm, as chill as an ice-floe, descended over him.

The wound began to hurt; the pain spread outwards through his body like an expanding circle of fire. Hot blood trickled down his arm and side. None of that mattered; what mattered was the other man. He pushed the pain away, pushed everything away, except his opponent.

As time slowed further, Tal watched the attacker's eyes flick this way, that way, then focus over Tal's shoulder. Ardis. He was going after Ardis. His shoulder twitched. His upper arm twitched. He flipped the knife in his hand, so that he held the point. He was going to throw that second knife.

There was more shouting. Tal ignored it.

Tal distracted him for a crucial second by making a feint with his good hand, then lunged for the attacker, knocking him to the ground and landing on top of him. Tal grappled him while he was still stunned, keeping him from using the knife, then used the advantage of his greater weight to keep his attacker pinned. Then Tal shoved a knee into his chest, seized him by the chin with his good hand, and began pounding his head into the ground.

Now
anger took over, and the red rage completely overcame him. He continued pounding the man's head into the dirty ice, over and over, until he stopped struggling, until the body beneath his grew limp. There was a growing red smear on the frozen ground of the alley, when he realized that there was no more resistance
or
movement from the body beneath him.

It was over.

There was more shouting, but suddenly Tal was too tired to pay any attention to it.

Time resumed its normal course.

Tal fell off their attacker's chest and rolled over onto his back, and stared up into the gray slit of sky above the alley.

He was tired, so very tired.

His shoulder and chest hurt, along with most of his body, and he rather thought that he ought to close his eyes now. . . .

"Ardis!" Fenris shouted, pounding into the cul-de-sac ahead of his men. "High Bishop!"

"I'm all right," she managed, getting to her feet and stumbling in the direction she'd last seen Tal. "There's been some trouble—"

By that time, she had seen where Tal and the assassin had ended up their battle.

Oh, no— 
 

She ran the last few paces, and knelt quickly at Tal's side, feeling the cold and wet of the melting ice seeping through the thick wool of her robe where her knees met the pavement. He was unconscious, but nowhere nearly as hurt as she'd first thought. She made a quick assessment of his only obvious injury, his shoulder and chest.
He's still bleeding, but he'll be all right,
she judged. He remained unconscious, but it was because of shock, not from any significant damage or blood-loss.

But as her hands touched him, she braced herself, expecting a shock to the heart. There should have been such a shock.

There was the sick sensation she always had when she encountered a wound created by human hands—there was concern, and relief that the injury wasn't life-threatening—

But no shock. No heart-shattering moment that screamed,
The man I love is wounded at my feet!
Just the same feelings she would have had if it had been Talaysen who lay there, or Kayne.

And that was as much a shock in its way.

She rose, wet robes clinging to her ankles, as Fenris reached her side.

"Someone take care of Rufen, he's hurt," she ordered and, striding through the mud, turned her attention to their attacker. Once again, she knelt beside an injured man, but this time it was with a feeling of grim satisfaction that she should probably do penance for when she returned to the Abbey. It was obvious without much examination that
he
wasn't going to be doing anything more; Tal had managed to cave in the back of his skull. He was still breathing, but Ardis didn't think he'd live for much longer.

Fenris had already gotten four of his men to rig an improvised litter out of two spears and two coats; they were lifting Tal into it as Ardis straightened.

"Take him to the Abbey," she said, her mind already calculating where and what to look for to trace the foul magics back to their caster. "Keep a compress on that wound, and keep him warm."

"Stop at the inn at the corner and requisition a warming-pan full of coals," Fenris elaborated. "Get one of their cots for a litter, and borrow the dead-cart to carry him."

The four men carried Tal off, and as soon as they were out of sight, Tal was out of her thoughts as well as out of her hands.

Ardis turned her attention and her concentration back to the scene of the attack. Fenris didn't ask what had happened, but Ardis wasn't going to leave him in suspense any longer.

"Help me gather up some evidence before it disappears," she said in a low voice. He took the hint, and followed her to the back of the cul-de-sac where she had been tossing items she'd taken off of Tal when he froze in place.

"Something back here was carrying that same spell we talked about," she said quietly, as he picked up items using a silk glove she supplied and dropped them into a silk bag she held out for him. "It took over Tal, and he started after me. Then—for some reason, he got out a warning, then froze. I don't know whether he managed to fight the magic successfully, or whether something else happened, but he got control of his voice enough to tell me what was going on, and I started stripping him of anything that could have carried the magic. He said, and I think—" she said, fishing the pen out of a pile of refuse and holding it up "—that this is it."

Fenris frowned at it. "Visyr came tearing overhead chasing something black," he told her as she dropped the pen into a separate bag. "I sent men off after him."

She nodded. "Right after I pulled these things off Tal,
that
man came out of the alley with knives. You'll want to ask Visyr, but it looks to me as if he bears a pretty strong resemblance to the fellow
he
saw." She smiled humorlessly. "It's a good thing that Tal was pounding the
back
of his head into the ground, or we wouldn't be able to make that identification. Anyway, Tal got between me and him, and he wounded Tal. Then Tal fought him off and got him down, and took care of him."

She didn't have to add anything; Fenris saw the results for himself. More footsteps out in the alley heralded the arrival of one of Fenris's men.

"Sir!" he shouted as he came. "The bird-man wants you, quick! The High Bishop, too! He's killed something!"

Fenris gave her a quick glance that asked without words if she was fit to go. She smiled, crookedly.

"Let's go, Captain, there's work to be done," she told him firmly. "This case isn't over yet, although I think . . . the killings are."

Tal had been hurt before, and it wasn't the first time he'd come to in an Infirmary. He knew the sounds, and more importantly, the smells, pretty well. He stirred a little, trying to assess the extent of the damage
this
time, and apparently gave himself away.

"Well, the sleeper awakes."

The voice was amused, and quite familiar. He opened his eyes, expecting a headache to commence as soon as light struck the back of his eyeballs, and was pleasantly surprised when one didn't.

"Hello, Ardis," he croaked. "Sorry, but I seem to have rendered myself unfit for duty for a while."

"It happens to the best of us," she replied, and reached over to pat his hand.

The touch sent a shock through his body, despite weakness, dizziness, and the fog of pain-killers. But no sooner had the shock passed, then a chill followed.

That had
not
been the gesture of a woman to the man she loved. A caring sister, a mother even—but not a lover.

And when he looked into her eyes he saw only the serenity of the High Bishop, and the concern of a friend. Nothing more. Nothing
less,
but nothing more.