A Parliament of Owls

  "Not yet," Mouse said. "This is Owl and some of his friends."

  The two Free Schoolers looked startled and awed. "Lord Owl," the boy said, "can you tell if Arre is conscious? Can you touch her mind?"

  Owl extended a cautious tendril. Arre?

  Owl! Her response was immediate and forceful. I think this is a trap. I'm bound to a chair in an old Slum tenement—

  I'm outside, with reinforcements. How many of them are there?

  That's just it, she responded acerbically. They have, apparently, abandoned me. Don't come in; no doubt they're watching from the neighboring roofs and will torch the place when we're all inside.

  When Owl related this to the others, Cezhar said, "I'll go. We must get her out."

  "Wait," Owl said as premonition swept over him. Then images, bright and rapid, filled his mind: the black armbanded woman, a crumpled letter in her fist and tears streaking her face; a man, his eyes narrowed in anger or suspicion, while he toyed with the lash of a riding whip; the face of a beautiful youth —which, with a small shift of the light, became a woman's face; a dim and noisome alley, with armed men at both ends; the woman with the armband, again, smiling faintly. "Damn," he whispered; then, he added in a much louder voice: "Do you mean to slaughter us, or talk to us, Rhyazhe Dhenykhare?"

  Owl heard Cezhar's stifled exclamation; he felt Cithanekh's protective arm around his shoulders; he sensed Lynx, tensing for a fight; and he heard Mouse say, calmly, "Whatever you do to the rest of us, don't hurt the children."

  "Go inside," a woman's voice answered, "and find the Kalledanni Bard. I don't need your blood on my hands—but if you cross me, I'm not afraid to kill."

  "Do it," Owl whispered; and they did.

  Arre was on the second floor; she was bound to a sturdy chair, her new lute beside her. When she saw them, she swore softly but passionately in her native tongue. "Those scum-sucking, bottom feeding leeches: sons of scrofulous jackals, with maggot-ridden hearts and the morals of a cockroach! And me, for a lackwitted, fluffy-headed dreamer to be suckered like a fainting maiden. My mother curses from the other side of death that she raised her only daughter to used as bait by a pack of flea-bitten, plague-blasted, mange-blighted, trash-eating wharf-rat scoundrels—"

  Owl managed a smile at her creative invective. "So much for the language of poets," he said wryly. "Arre, it's all right—I think. Stop blaming yourself." As he spoke, Lynx had gone to Arre's chair and cut her free. The bard got up stiffly, picked up her new lute and froze as she saw Rhyazhe Dhenykhare and her men in the doorway.

  "It's all right, he tells me," she said. "Owl, do you know what followed you in?"

  "Rhyazhe Dhenykhare," he said calmly; "and a goodly number of her crew. But I believe she wants to talk. If she meant us harm we would, I suspect, already be dead."

  The young woman pushed into the room and faced them, her hands on her hips. "Owl Ghytteve. I was told you were blind. How is it that you see so clearly?"

  Owl heard grief and rage behind the brittle irony in her tone. "You loved Adythe," he said softly. "Did she tell you why she killed herself?"

  Rhyazhe Dhenykhare's hissing inhalation was loud in the stillness. "Why should I tell you that?" she whispered finally. "Why should I tell you anything, Owl Ghytteve?"

  Cithanekh shut his eyes, to hide his thoughts and fears, while Arre, concern on her face, looked from the young woman to the Seer and back.

  Owl shrugged. "Why else take the risk of coming here? You must have wanted to talk to Arre, or to me, or—gods know—to the Emperor. So. What do you want to say? I guessed it might be about Adythe Dhenykhare; I believe you were fond of her, and her apparent suicide is a mystery to us all."

  There was a short, tense silence; then Rhyazhe said passionately, "I want my uncle Dhyrakh Dhenykhare's head on a plate; and I don't much care how I get it. I did love her—Adythe." She paused; when she spoke, her voice was tight with unshed tears. "Though she turned the knife on herself, she was driven to it—and for that, I lay the blame solidly upon my uncle's head. Adythe tried—so hard—to play her father's game; but in the end, she lacked both the ruthlessness to obey him, and the courage to defy him. My so dear Uncle Dhyrakh told her to murder Morekheth; and when she would not—or could not—he arranged for her to be disgraced."

  Her words roused images in Owl's mind: a man's hand carefully placing a dagger with a black gem in its silver hilt among the clutter on a lady's dressing table; the beautiful youth, writing a letter, his face shifting from man's to woman's as the quill moved across the paper; the Admiral and the man with the whip, arguing heatedly; a younger Rhyazhe holding the bridal train of woven flowers for a thin woman; a glimpse of carefully drawn shipbuilding plans, for a vessel very different from the broad merchant galleys of the Dhenykhare; the riding whip, hissing through the air like a nest of adders; Bishop Anakher, flanked by priests, holding the stallion-headed staff of the Horselord; someone crouched in the corner of a dark hold, watching a bobbing lantern approach; the Sleeping Sea, stretching flat around a ship with the coastline a mere blur on the horizon; the thin woman taking the dagger from her dressing table, testing its point against her forefinger; blood swirling into water; a ship on the rocks; a man in mourning, his eyes dry but his face set with pain; the silver and onyx signet threaded on a gold chain and lying against pale skin.

  "So," Owl said evenly. "And where do we fit—Arre and I—in your schemes?"

  Rhyazhe laughed. "If you're so clever, Owl Ghytteve, you tell me."

  Bright and sudden, he saw Rhydev Azhere counting gold into a sack, with the air of one well pleased with a bargain. "Surely," Owl said startled, "you aren't so great a fool as to imagine you can make common cause with Rhydev Azhere? He'll use you like a khacce piece and throw your bones to the fish!"

  She bit back a curse and glared at Owl. After a long moment, she said, "I begin to see why so many people want you dead. I don't want common cause with Azhere; I want his money. I need gold to build my fleet and to take back my people from Dhyrakh. I bear you no personal animosity, you understand; but tell me why I should forego Rhydev's gold."

  "Because," a new voice said from the window, "if you and your men go quietly, now, leaving my friends unharmed, I will let you leave here alive."

  "Ferret," Owl said softly.

  "Ho, Owl." The thief swung in through the window and strode across the floor to his side. "Go on," she said to Rhyazhe Dhenykhare. "Dinna think I'm bluffing; there's a good-sized mob of longshoremen and bravos outside. Go look. I dinna want a fight, but if you push us—or harm my friends—I'll see you pay."

  Rhyazhe looked out the window and paled.

  "Go on," Ferret repeated. "We dinna want trouble. I've told them to let you pass, as long as you offer no violence."

  Without a word, Rhyazhe and her men withdrew. Ferret punched Owl's shoulder gently. "Welcome home, Owl. She's not far off, you know. Word's out in the Slums that you're worth thirty Royals in some quarters."

  Owl smiled crookedly. "What, tempted?"

  She snorted. "I've more money than I can spend, now."

  "Ferret," Cithanekh said seriously, "pass the word in the Slums that—unharmed—Owl is worth far more than thirty Royals to me."

  "Happen you'll tempt me, after all—but I'll see to it." She fixed an assessing eye on Owl's foreign bodyguard. "Are you Lynx?"

  Lynx nodded slowly.

  "I'm Ferret, an old friend of Owl's—and a thief."

  Lynx frowned. "You're proud of it. Bharaghlaf is a strange place."

  "I've reason to be proud," Ferret replied. "I'm good: the youngest Master in the Guild. And—luckily for you!—I have one of the best information nets going. Speaking of going, happen we'd best. I dinna know whether yon Rhyazhe was planning to deliver you to Rhydev, or make him fetch you. Besides," she added. "Sharkbait's outside—and I've a bet on with my journeyman, Vixen, whether or not he'll give you a hug."

  ***

  As the chamber door opened, the Queen looked up; the Royal Hei
r slept in her arms, nestled against her breast. The Emperor paused on the threshold looking down at his wife and son; and the Queen caught the softening of the worried expression on Khethyran's face.

  "May I come it?"

  She smiled faintly. "My Liege knows that he is always welcome here."

  He closed the door softly behind him. "Khethcel's asleep?"

  The Queen nodded as the Emperor approached. He touched the baby fluff on the infant's head with a gentle finger; the tenderness in his sudden smile spilled over onto Celave as he met her eyes. "And you, my lady Queen? Are you resting well?"

  Celave studied him for a moment without speaking. He was so clearly proud of his son—and his tenderness for her seemed like rain after drought. She put a tiny furrow between her brows and said, with understated plaintiveness, "Well enough, my Liege, though—" She broke off with a deprecatory smile. "I've no real complaints."

  Khethyran searched her face; he never felt that he knew what went on behind her eyes, and it made him uneasy when she grew suddenly transparent. She was leaving something unsaid; and he suspected that she wanted him to press her on the matter. "No real complaints," he repeated finally, and left the statement dangling in the silence.

  Celave looked back at him, allowing none of her annoyance to show. Her aunt had warned her—many, many times—that clever men were a challenge to manage. He always did this: sniffed at the bait, but didn't take it. She weighed possibilities: push ahead and sound shrewish; hold her tongue and lose the moment. The baby stirred. She looked down, shifting him carefully in her arms.

  To her astonishment, the Emperor lifted her chin gently. "Celave," he said quietly, "must it be this endless dance of hints and silences between us? Can't you ask me plainly for what you want?"

  Her reaction startled them both. "I want you to love me," she whispered passionately; and her eyes filled with sudden, scalding tears.

  The Emperor watched her cry for a moment; then he wiped her face carefully with his handkerchief. "Why?" he asked her, without heat or bitterness.

  "Why?" she repeated furiously. "How can you ask me that?"

  "Because I need to know. Why do you want me to love you, Celave? Will it make you more secure, or me easier to control? What fuels your passion—and your pain? Need? Loneliness? Greed? Pride? You've never given me cause to think you wanted anything of me beyond the prestige my rank grants you. I thought we had a contractual marriage: I make you Queen and you give me children; I never imagined you wanted or needed more than that. Have I misunderstood you, all this time?"

  Her dark eyes blazed in her white face. "Don't you ever get tired of endlessly calculating motivation and loyalties?" she demanded shrilly. "For the love of the wise gods, can't you ever stop being Emperor?"

  Khethyran spun away from her and went to the window. He leaned his palms on the sill as though the unyielding stone could somehow lend him its strength and patience. Behind him, the baby began to fret and Celave murmured soothingly. When he felt he had regained his control he said quietly, "I would like nothing more, my Queen, than to stop being Emperor. If my conscience would allow it—and if I thought I would survive the inevitable assassins—there is nothing I would rather do than abdicate and go back to the Kellande School. But that would mean civil war; and I could not bear to have so much blood on my hands. And if I am to survive as Emperor, then I must be Emperor, even when it means asking uncomfortable questions of my lady wife."

  She glared at his uncommunicative back. "It sounds so noble, put like that; your motives are all pure and selfless. Poor Khethyran: a martyr for the sake of conscience. But tell me this: if you're so concerned about the possibility of civil war, why do you flaunt your Kalledanni mistress? Can't you see the dangers? Someday, her children may feel they have a claim to the Emperor's coronet. And won't that, also, be civil war—with all the deaths laid at your door?"

  The sun played in the garden fountains; he watched the gilded water leaping through the greenery, as he tried to build its serenity into his heart. "Arre doesn't have any children," he said patiently.

  "Yet," Celave snapped. "So there is still time to avert the disaster: send her away."

  "Celave," he protested, but she cut him off.

  "For my sake and the sake of your son, my Liege, send her away."

  Her words rang harshly in the silence which stretched, brittle as temper, between them. When the angry echoes had subsided, Khethyran spoke without looking at her. "Who put this notion into your mind?"

  "Damn you," she snarled. "I was born to intrigue; why do you imagine someone had to plant the idea in my mind?"

  "I know you were born to intrigue, Celave," he retorted. "It's one of the things which makes me leery of this apparent attack of jealousy. Arre is a valuable ally; she has saved my life and realm. Why do you really want me to send her away? Is it your idea—or your cousin Rhydev's?"

  The Queen did not answer. Khethyran scanned the garden while he listened to the tenor of the stillness. The infant began to fret again, then quieted as she soothed him. "Look at me," she said finally, low and intense.

  He turned away from the garden.

  "Do you mean to accuse me of treason?"

  "I will make no formal charges without solid evidence," he told her evenly.

  An expression bitter as disappointment contorted her features for an instant, before she rearranged her face into polite interest. "Don't you ever get tired of being so circumspect?" she asked him sweetly. "You are always so prudent and judicious—never an ill-considered word, nor anything as harsh as a threat. You have such astonishing control over your temper, it makes me wonder if you are even human, Liege."

  "Indeed, my Queen," he said with a small, ironic bow. "Instead of a heart, I have scales in my breast upon which I weigh the costs and benefits of everything I do or say. It hurt somewhat, when Bharaghlaf cut out my heart; but on the whole, it makes it so much easier to rule, that I'm grateful it was done."

  She regarded him, her eyes bright in a beautiful mask; after a moment, she asked him, "Why did you marry me?"

  "My advisors convinced me I needed a wife."

  "No. Why did you marry me? You could have had anyone."

  "Almost anyone," he corrected her gently. "Arre wouldn't have me."

  Queen Celave's mouth opened in soundless shock. "She refused you?" she whispered when she found her voice. "Why?"

  "She gave three reasons: first, she detests wearing dresses; second, she thought it likely the Lords of the Council Houses would poison her (we both realize that this may happen anyway); and third, she didn't want Bharaghlaf to eat her children."

  The Emperor bore her scrutiny patiently. When she finally spoke, there was more animation—and far more uncertainty—in her voice and expression than he ever remembered. "Khethyran, would you mind—Would it bother you if I had Arre visit me?"

  "Are you planning to poison her?"

  "No. I want to talk to her. Would you mind?"

  He considered, then he shrugged. "Lady Azhine will have hysterics."

  The impish glint in Celave's eyes and her dry tone startled him as she responded, "Frankly, it's part of the appeal. May I have your permission?"

  He shrugged again. "For what it's worth, as long as I have your word you mean Arre no harm, you have my permission to invite her; I can't say whether she'll accept."

  "You have my word," she promised gravely. "Would she dare to refuse?"

  "Yes—but curiosity is one of her besetting sins, so I think it's likely she'll accept. Celave, may I ask you something?"

  "Of course, my Liege."

  "When Owl Ghytteve came to visit you, whose fortunes did he tell?"

  The Queen's head lifted like a deer scenting danger. "Let's see: Pakhrielle Ykhave; Yverri Ambhere; Centyffe Azhere; Azhine; and Klarhynne Dhenykhare. Why do you ask?"

  "He wanted to know their names. It isn't easy for him to place people he's never seen. Thank you."

  "But they told him who they were; I distinctly recall it.
" Then, speculation shaded her expression. "Except Klarhynne; she only told him she was Dhenykhare." Her eyes narrowed. "I heard a rumor about an attempt on the Seer's life. You can't imagine that Klarhynne had anything to do with it. She's entirely harmless."

  "I'm not accusing Klarhynne—or anyone else—of anything, Celave," he told her.

  "No. I remember," she retorted bitterly. "You will make no formal charges without solid evidence. But no doubt you'll set your ferrets after her, and I shall have to send her away to keep her safe." In her arms, the baby stirred uneasily.

  "Celave, don't leap to conclusions. If Klarhynne Dhenykhare is entirely harmless, you have nothing to fear. No one is looking for someone to blame."

  "Of course not," she scoffed. "'Solid evidence' you say; but how solid—in your view—is the evidence of your pet Seer? He's a charlatan, Liege, who trades on intuition and guesses. He's blind; you mustn't let him lead you." Suddenly, Khethcel's vague restlessness broke into full-fledged wailing. "Now look what you've done," she snapped, almost tearful herself. "Go away! You've upset the baby—and me."

  And after an instant's hesitation, Khethyran went.

  ***

  "Marhysse?"

  Marhysse turned at the sound of her name. Somewhat to her surprise, it was Lynx who stood in the doorway to the bodyguards' staff room. "What is it, Lynx?"

  "I want very much to talk with the thief Ferret, Owl's friend. Do you know where I would find her?"

  "She uses a Slum tavern called the Beaten Cur as her headquarters. You might direct a message to her there, suggesting a meeting place."

  "Thank you," Lynx replied. "I'll just go and see if I can find her."

  "No; wait. Do you know where the Cur is? Have you been in the Slums?"

  "I'll find it."