The Robin and the Kestrel (27 page)

Her eyes narrowed. "Think a minute. The only one you actually saw 'healed' of anything was the first one. The rest simply showed up on crutches and danced off without them. Here—"

She sat down on the bed and did something with her boots, spreading her skirts over her legs to hide them as the first cripple's trews had hid his. And as soon as she sat down, sure enough,
one of her legs was longer than the other.
The right was longer by far than the left, by a good two inches.

Kestrel felt his eyes goggling. "H-h-how—"

"You'll see in a second. Take my feet in your hands the way Padrik did." He followed her instructions, taking her feet, one in each hand. "Now,
pretend
to pull on the left one, but
push
slowly on the right one."

He did so; as soon as he began he realized what she had done. She had pulled her right boot down, and as he pushed on the right foot, he pushed her foot back into place within the boot.

The skirts hid most of what was going on; distance would take care of the rest. And because attention had been focused on the
short
leg, it would appear that the shorter leg was being straightened, not the other being shortened. "You see?" she said, jumping down onto the floor of the wagon again, and stamping to get her feet back into the boots properly. "You see what he's doing? Tricks and chicanery, and probably every one of the people his miracles cure is someone from the Abbey here! The light that struck the Priest came from a mirror he had hidden in his palm; I saw him get into position to catch a gold-colored sunbeam coming through the stained-glass windows. Remember how he held his hands over his head when he prayed? He must have the location of every sunbeam in the Cathedral charted and timed!"

"Th-the p-prophecies w-were p-pretty vague," Kestrel said, feeling his confidence and conviction returning with a rush of relief.

"And if you get a big enough crowd of people in a place,
someone
is going to match the 'widow who has lost a sum of money' and the 'tradesman searching for the son that ran away.' Gypsy fortune-tellers work that way all the time, when they don't have the true gift of sighting the future." Her expression was still angry, however. Whatever had put her in a rage, it was
not
that he had temporarily been convinced of Padrik's genuineness.

"B-but the d-d-d-demon—" he ventured, wondering at the truly grim set to her mouth.

"That
is what got me so
mad!,"
she said, gritting her teeth in anger. "Someone has been teaching Padrik Gypsy magic! Everything else is the brand of chicanery that professional beggars and false preachers have been doing for hundreds of years, but he could
not
have simulated that possession without the help of Gypsy magic! Spitting fire—that's done with a mouth full of a special liquid in a bladder you keep in your cheek—remember how close the man was to the candles? He even knocked one over, and that was the one that he used to light the liquid as he spit it out. Vomiting pins is something only we know how to do. The first batch of holy water had a secret dye in it that only turns red after it touches another dye, which you paint on the skin; the water droplets left behind looked like blisters because you expected blisters to be there. The 'sizzle' came from someone dropping real holy water into one of the incense burners while everyone was watching the show; I watched him and I saw the steam. And the smoke when the 'demon' left the body is another one of our tricks! The howl came from someone frightening a peafowl up in one of the towers—either that, or they've trained it to cry on command." She spread her hands wide, some of the hot rage gone from her expression, replaced by determination and a colder fury. "Some of that Padrik could learn to do on his own, but most of it was done with accomplices. That means that not only is someone teaching him, someone is
helping
him! And I am going to find out who it is!"

Kestrel nodded, remembering she had told him that the Gypsies swore never to reveal their tricks to outsiders. This was an even greater betrayal of that oath than teaching Gypsy magic to
him
would be, by an order of magnitude. He was, after all, a Gypsy by marriage, and he suspected that if he really needed to learn the tricks, Gwyna could get permission from the head of her Clan to teach him. But to teach them to a complete outsider—worse, to one who was using those tricks to promote an agenda that would ultimately be very bad for other Gypsies—that was the worst of betrayals.

"N-not only wh-who," he told her, "but
why.
P-Padrik is already hurting n-nonhumans and F-Free B-Bards; h-how long b-before he s-starts on G-Gypsies?"

"Good point." She straightened her skirts. "We've done enough business already that no one will question our packing up early—in fact, if I drop the right remarks as I pay our tithe as we leave, we might even be considered very pious for not making too much of a profit from the faithful."

"S-so wh-what are we d-doing?" he asked, opening the back of the wagon again, to let them both out modestly, through the door, rather than crawling out the window over the bed.

"We're hunting information," she told him, as he took the reins of the mares, and she counted out the tithe from the bag of coins she'd hidden under her skirt. "Who and what and why."

When they paid the reckoning for the next week in advance, the innkeeper was positively faint with gratitude. Kestrel felt very sorry for him; apparently he'd lost two more patrons who had simply not been able to conduct the business they needed. The nonhuman gem-carvers these men wished to patronize had left in the summer, and the quality of the gems that the humans who had bought their business produced was apparently inferior to the original work.

So the innkeeper was only too happy to learn that
their
business was prospering and that they were prepared to stay some time. But then Robin took him aside for a long discussion in hushed whispers, and the man looked so alarmed that Kestrel wondered what on earth she could be telling him. When she returned, she had a set of written directions in her hand and a smug expression on her face.

"I thought with a name like The Singing Bird' this place had to have some sort of connection to the Free Bards or the Gypsies or both," she said, as she took his arm and led him from the inn into the street. "I said as much and frightened him half to death until he realized
I
was both a Free Bard and a Gypsy and not some sort of informer or blackmailer. Then he was frightened because he thought I was going to demand something unreasonable from him." Her tone grew a little bleaker. "I'm afraid that there are already some musicians in gaol here on the charge of 'perverting public morals,' and I think he expected me to ask for help in getting them out."

"Are th-they F-Free B-B-Bards?" Kestrel asked nervously, keeping a discreet eye out for anyone who might be following or listening to them.

"No, they can't be," she told him. "They've been in gaol since early fall, and we would have heard something if they were Free Bards. Someone would have missed them and passed the word. No, I'm afraid they're just ordinary musicians with bad luck. Or else they simply didn't pay enough attention to what was going on with the High Bishop. Wylie says they were arrested for singing 'The Saucy Priest' right at one of the street preachers."

Kestrel shook his head sympathetically.
They
had performed the same song any number of times, and quite often when there was a clergyman who clearly deserved to hear it nearby. Bad luck, bad timing, and worse ability to observe the situation around them, that was all it was.

"Wh-what's the c-connection t-to the Free B-Bards?" he asked, out of sheer curiosity.

Gwyna chuckled. "Dear old Master Wren again. When Wylie tried to start this inn, he was in a bad case, bills piling up and no customers coming in. Wren offered to play for room and board alone all one winter if he always gave Free Bards the best venue thereafter. He filled the inn every night within the first week and kept it filled all winter. So Wylie renamed his place The Singing bird' in Talaysen's honor, and he's always kept the bargain."

It was a little past midday, and the street preachers were already out in force. But there were none of the 'dangerous' type, the trained clerics. That confirmed Kestrel's notion that they
were
real Priests; or at least it did in his own mind. Real Priests would have duties during the day that they could not avoid; teaching, performing holy offices, attending to the business of the Church. Only after the workday was done would they be free to come down to the street to pretend to be one of the common folk, and spread Padrik's word to those who might not come to the Cathedral to hear it.

"S-so what d-did you ask him f-for?" Kestrel asked, grateful that everyone on the street at the moment apparently had somewhere to go. The street preachers were pouring their exhortations out to the empty air. None of them had an audience, except perhaps a few idle children with nothing else to do at the moment.

"Directions. Turn here." She nodded at a sidestreet that cut away from the main street.

He followed her direction, obediently. "D-directions to wh-where?"

"Well, I asked him for directions to a place where I could buy information, and just let it go at that," she told him. "I told him I had a former friend who'd been in the Whore's Guild here and I wanted to find out where she was.
He
was the one who told me what I really wanted. Directions to the worst part of town."

"The—what?" He felt his eyes boggling again.

"The worst part of town." She patted his hand reassuringly. "Dearest, it's broad daylight, and once people there know I'm a Gypsy they'll leave us alone, unless we're really, really stupid. That's where you find things out; and that's where the Whore's Guild moved, after Padrik shut down the Houses. That's where we'll find out who's helping him, if there's anyone in this town who knows outside of the Cathedral."

He felt sweat start up along his back, in spite of the chilly wind that cut right through his coat. Why did she do things like this?

But it was too late to back out now.

Robin knew that Jonny was nervous; all the signs were there for anyone to read, from the way he clutched her hand to the utter lack of expression on his face. And she didn't really blame him; despite her cavalier attitude, she was not particularly comfortable here either.

This district, tucked away between the tanners' and the dyers' quarters, was called "the Warren." It merited the name, for it was a maze of narrow streets too small for any size of cart to travel along, with buildings that leaned over the streets until they nearly touched, blocking out the sun. They hadn't been built that way, either; the Warren had been built over ground that had once been a refuse dump, and was now in the process of collapsing, and as it sank, the buildings leaned, coming closer and closer to falling down with every passing year. Constables never ventured in here; there were not enough of them. It would take a small army to clean out the Warren, and no one wanted to bother.

Sound echoed in here, and it was impossible to tell where a particular sound came from. This early in the afternoon, though, it was very quiet in the Warren. Somewhere there were children playing a counting game, a man coughed and could not seem to stop, babies wailed, and there were two people having a screaming argument. That was nothing compared with the noise and clamor in the inn district. The streets here were always damp, and slimy with things Robin didn't care to think about. The stench was not quite appalling; the horrible odors from both the tanner's and the dyer's district overwhelmed the local effluvia. A few undernourished, wiry children played in the streets—not the source of the childish voices, for these children were playing an odd and utterly silent game involving stones and chalk. But they were the exception here; most children in the Warren were hard at work—at a variety of jobs, some legal, most not. As soon as a child was able to hold something and take directions, it was generally put to work in a district like this one.

She was looking for a particular tavern; one of the few "reputable" establishments down here, and probably the only one boasting a sign. This was where—so Wylie had told her—musicians were wise to come, and where he would have sent them if they had come to Gradford as Free Bards and not as traders.

Finally she spotted what passed for a sign; an empty barrel suspended over a tiny door. It looked nothing like a tavern on the outside, but when they opened the unlatched door and stood at the top of a short set of stone stairs, it was clear they had come to the right place.

Although the enormous room—a converted cellar—was very dark, it was also clean. A few good lanterns placed high on the wall where they would not be broken in a fight gave a reasonable amount of light. The furniture was simple, massive seats and tables built into the walls or bolted to the floor, so that
they
would not be broken up in a fight, or used as weapons. A huge fireplace in one wall with ovens built to either side—an ancient stone structure as old as the building—betrayed that this had once been a bakery.

Wylie's directions included a name—"Donnar"—and when the bold-eyed, short-skirted serving wench sauntered up to them with hips swaying, that was who Robin asked for.

Fortunately they had chosen the middle of the day for this little visit, for "Donnar," a remarkably well-spoken and entirely ordinary-looking man with nothing villainous about him, proved to be the owner of the Empty Keg.

"If ye'd come past supper, I'd'a given ye short words," he said, as he sat down at their table and wiped his hands on his apron. "An" those'd been curses, I well reckon. So, m'friend Wylie sent ye?"

Robin nodded. Kestrel looked as if he felt a little more secure, with a wall to his back, and a fellow who could have been a perfectly ordinary citizen sitting across from them. Come to think of it, she felt a lot more relaxed, herself. "We're Free Bards," she said shortly.

Donnar raised an eyebrow. "Thas more dangerous these days than bein' anythin' but a Buggie," he said, using the rude term for a nonhuman. It came from the term "Bug-eyed Monster," notwithstanding the fact that most nonhumans were neither bug-eyed nor monsters.