Raven's Shadow (33 page)

He'd have lied for her.

Tier was the most truthful person she knew. He'd have lied to her out of guilt, and she couldn't abide that, so she'd never told him.

Dry-eyed, she stared at the tent ceiling and hoped that she'd get the chance to hear him lie to her.

Phoran nervously caressed the stack of parchment on his
bed. He had already carefully organized it, placing the one that would make his first bid for power fifteenth down. Far enough down that many of the Septs would have relaxed their guard, but not so far that they would have quit listening entirely.

A light tap at his door made him take three quick steps away from the bed. Then he realized that the bed was an odd place for formal documents, so he ran back, snatched them up, and placed them on his writing desk. He wouldn't want anyone to think that he'd spent all day and most of the night going through them. Most of the Septs would think that he was merely tormenting Douver, the council secretary: everyone knew that Phoran couldn't stand the worm.

The quiet tap sounded again. “Your Highness?” said the guard who stood his watch at the door to the Emperor's bedchamber. “My lord, Avar, Sept of Leheigh, begs entrance.”

“Avar?” Phoran said distractedly. Now that he thought of it, the writing desk was an odd choice as well. He couldn't remember ever actually sitting at it—something Avar would have noticed.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Yes, yes, let him in.” It was too late to change anything anyway.

The door opened and Avar made his entrance. “Phoran,” he said as soon as the door was closed behind him. “I've been looking for you since yesterday afternoon. Did you really take all the proposed laws and run off with them?”

Surprisingly, Phoran didn't have a prepared reply. He hadn't even thought about what Avar would say. Not that he didn't care—but it didn't seem as important anymore.

Avar misread his hesitation.

“Not that you didn't have every right to—but you might have warned someone you intended to take a closer look. It wasn't necessary to give poor Douver an anxiety attack.”

Phoran found himself smiling. “Wasn't it? You'll have to forgive me if I've forgotten that I could have just called the things into my review. I suspect everyone else has forgotten as well.”

A frown chased itself across Avar's perfect brow. “What are you up to, my friend?”

“Do you know anything about the Secret Path?” It was an impulsive question born of years of trust, blind trust he was no longer certain he felt. But even after the question left his lips, Phoran didn't regret it.

“The secret,
secret
club that everyone knows about?” asked Avar with a grin. “Where a bunch of young hotheads go to pretend they are villainous Travelers? My brother, Toarsen, and his tagalong, muscle-bound friend, Kissel, belong to it.”

Phoran walked back to his bed and perched on the end, offering a nearby padded bench to Avar with his hand. “Tell me everything you know.”

“Does this have something to do with taking the proposals?” asked Avar as he availed himself of the offered seat and leaned back against the wall.

“I don't know,” said Phoran truthfully.

“Well then.” Avar put his head back and relaxed. “They choose young men of noble blood when they're fifteen or sixteen and induct them in some sort of secret ceremony. They don't pick a lot of boys—no more than five or ten a year. I don't know what they do at the ceremony—but my brother carried bruises from it for a week or more. The people they
choose are usually the ones who are . . . well, problems for their families.”

He looked at Phoran a moment, then sighed. “I know they had something to do with that mess last year when some young thugs destroyed the weavers' market. I saw Toarsen coming home in the wee hours of the morning, dead drunk with a hatchet in his hand. I should have said something, but”—he shrugged ruefully—“he's my brother.”

“Do you know any of the older members?” asked Phoran. “The Raptors?”

“Some,” answered Avar with a quick grin. “The ones my brother gripes the most about. The council leader—the Sept of Gorrish is one of them and Telleridge is another. My father was—I think that's how my brother was selected.”

Phoran closed his eyes and thought. “Didn't the Weavers' Guild file a complaint against Gorrish just before the market was destroyed? They dropped it because he was instrumental in getting funds to help them rebuild it.”

“You're right,” said Avar in an arrested voice. “I never thought to look for a deeper motive. I've always thought of the Secret Path as a game for boys who are at loose ends.”

“I have heard that you cannot be an heir to a Sept and belong to the Path,” said Phoran.

“Gorrish's father and three older brothers died in the plague that hit the Empire about twenty years ago,” said Avar. “He's not the only younger son who has inherited.” He smiled. “My own father was a second son.”

Phoran had a terrible thought. Maybe it was because he'd just spent the night talking to a bard that he'd thought of the old story of the Shadowed. How the first magic the Shadowed had loosed was plague. Maybe it was all the talk of magic—or maybe it was his current affliction of Memory. “How many of those second and third sons, or cousins who inherited a Sept were members of the Path?” he asked.

“I don't know exactly—I was about four at the time, Phoran. The younger sons who inherited unexpectedly . . . oh, Seal Hold, Telleridge, Jenne, and a few others. You aren't going to tell me that the Secret Path is responsible for the plague, are you?” Avar shook his head. “A lot of people died, Phoran.
Most of them weren't Septs with heirs who happened to be members of the Secret Club.”

“Doubtless, you're right.” Phoran smiled and changed the subject. “I am calling a Council Seating for tomorrow,” he said.

“
You
are?” asked Avar, surprised into insult.

Phoran smiled at him grimly. “It may have become usual, since my uncle died, for Gorrish to call the Seat, but it is the imperial prerogative he uses. I am calling it, and I'd like you to deliver the messages. See if you can convince them that it's just a silly whim of mine—that I said something about being bored.”

Avar stared at him for a long time, then nodded his head. “I'll do that. Tell me what time you'd like to meet.”

 

The Memory came again that night. Phoran waited impatiently for it to finish. At last the cold tongue licked the puncture wounds clean and the Memory gave him the usual offer.

“Were you a Traveler held by the Secret Path?” Phoran asked.

“Yes,” it said and was gone with its usual abruptness.

Pale and a little dizzy, the Emperor went to his closet and pulled on a robe. With only a little caution—because the Path's rooms were in an obscure corner of the palace—Phoran made it back to the bard's cell with little trouble. He found Tier's door unlocked, but when he went in, Tier lay unmoving on his bed and nothing Phoran could do would awaken him.

Phoran took up a seat on the end of the bed and stared at Tier's face—but other than being a little pale, he seemed healthy enough. At last Phoran arose unhappily and returned to his suite.

 

When Tier awoke, he knew they'd come for him again, though his last memory was of settling in to play a bit of music after leaving the party in the Eyrie. He moved and the lute tucked beside him dug into his ribs.

He sat up with sudden anxiety and inspected it for any damage it might have taken. He found something that could have been a new scratch on the finish, but nothing that would
impair its use. He settled back against the wall with a sigh of relief. His head throbbed, his body ached, and his mouth was uncomfortably dry—but the lute could not heal itself.

He hugged the lute against his body.

What was it that they did to him?

Someone knocked on the door. Tier gathered himself together and stood up.

“It's dinnertime, sir,” Myrceria explained after he'd opened the door to her. “I can have food brought to you, or you can eat in the Eyrie with the Passerines.” She hesitated, then said, “You might have noticed that your movements have been restricted unless you have an escort. I was told to inform you that you now can move freely around most of the rooms used by the Passerines. If you'd like to wait and go alone, you may do that also. Food will be provided at any time upon your request.”

He stood up slowly, but the movement seemed to help some of his aches and pains. “By all means,” he said with as much charm as he could muster over his fading headache. “Let us go to the Eyrie.”

The room was almost full to bursting. When Tier stepped inside, the dull roar quieted as the young men all watched him. Like a duck who had the ill luck to drop to earth in the midst of a pack of wolves, Tier thought with amusement.

Food of every description was spread out on the bar for the taking. Tier, following Myrceria's example, took a wooden platter and began filling it. When she led the way to an unoccupied table he followed her.

He ate without seeming to look up, but his peripheral vision was very good. He saw the boys' cautious approach.

The first to arrive and sit at Tier's table was a tall boy, too thin for his height. Before he opened his mouth, Tier knew a few things about him. The first was that he was a loner. The Passerines, he noticed, tended to travel in packs, and there was no one moving with this boy. The pads of his fingers were calloused from instrument strings and in one of those calloused hands was a large case.

He sat down beside Myrceria and put the case on their table in the place of the food dishes that an efficient servant had just whisked away.

“You said last night that a Bard could play any instrument,” he said. “Try this one.”

“What's your name?” asked Tier. He ignored the shuffle as a number of young men pulled up stools and benches to listen in on their conversation; instead, he kept his eyes on the case as he undid the various hooks that kept it closed.

“Collarn,” said the boy. “I am an assistant at the Imperial College of Music. What do you think?”

The challenge in Collarn's voice was such that Tier wasn't surprised to discover that the case held an instrument he'd never seen before. He coaxed the thing out of its close-fitting case and scooted his stool back so that he could rest it on his lap for a closer look.

It looked somewhat like a lute, he decided, but it was squarer and deeper-bodied. There were tuning pegs, but the strings were hidden inside the body. Below the pegs it had two rows of buttons on the side.

On the side was a—“A handle?” Tier said, and turned it. At once an odd, penetrating, grinding sound issued from the bowels of the instrument. He grinned in delight.

Tier tilted his head and closed his eyes, turning the handle again. “It's like a violin,” he said. “Or pipes. What do you call it, Collarn of the College of Music?”

“It's a symphonia. There's a wheel-bow inside that turns with the handle.”

Collarn had obviously come to flummox the Bard—probably for usurping his place as the Passerine's musical entertainment, but he shared Tier's love of music too deeply not to fall into a discussion with someone willing to explore the possibilities of his obscure instrument.

Tier hid his smile—he liked Collarn, and the boy obviously took himself too seriously to enjoy a laugh at his own expense. After trying several positions, Tier shifted the symphonia until he could turn the handle with his right hand and touch the buttons on the side with his left.

After a moment he managed a simple melody—but he heard the possibilities of much greater things. The instrument was louder than his lute, making it a good choice for performing outdoors or before a large audience. A pair of strings played the same note continuously like a bagpipe's drones,
lending a sonorously eerie accompaniment to the rest of the notes that changed at the touch of his fingers on the buttons.

Tier stood up and handed the instrument to Collarn. “Would you play something for me?” he asked. “I'd like to hear it played by someone who knows what it can do.”

The boy was talented—though his grandfather's old friend Ciro could have taught him something about softening the straight rhythm Collarn held to when the song wanted to fly.

Finished, the boy looked up, his face a little bright. “That's the only song I know on it. We have no music written directly for it. The masters at the college don't think much of the instrument—it's an odd thing someone brought to the college a dozen years ago.”

“May I try it again?” asked Tier, and the boy handed the symphonia over.

“The piece you played”—Tier played a bit, deliberately more hesitant than Collarn had played so that he didn't rob the boy of his performance—“is something written for violin. It's a good choice, and plays to the instrument's strengths.”

“I can do it better on a violin,” said Collarn. “There's no dynamic range to the symphonia.” He grinned and the sweetness of the unexpected expression reminded Tier of Jes. “It just doesn't do quiet.”

“Bagpipes are like that,” said Tier. “You might try piping music.”

He fell silent and searched the instrument for range and effect. When he turned the handle at just the right speed and the instrument added a buzz to its already odd sound, Tier stopped and laughed outright.

“I can see why your college masters have a problem. It's just a bit brash, eh? A little boldness isn't necessarily a bad thing.” He hummed a little tune under his breath. “Let me try this . . .”

He knew he had it right when the toes of the boys nearest him started moving. When Collarn took a small silver penny-whistle out of his pocket and added a few runs, it made Tier think of playing with the old men in the afternoons at the tavern in Redern. He played through the song twice—the second time his fingers found their own way as he looked around the room at all the young faces.

He'd come here this afternoon to gather information, and instead he'd gained a friend. Speculatively, Tier's eyes fell on a promising young man who was using the haft of his knife to tap out a rhythm on a tabletop.