Текст книги "Fortress in the Eye of Time"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 38 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

He could not send a leaderless army into a battle on the scale this required. The King had to be on a horse and on that field.

“My lord,” Ninévrisé said, delaying on the steps, in her ascent to the floor above. “My lord?”

The air was cold on his face. Ninévrisé was concerned, as if he should not be trusted to carry himself down the hall. Ninévrisé —whose plans-whose life and welfare—relied on him, as everyone’s did.

“Climbing steps,” he said, out of breath. “Not the easiest.”

“You changed what you said you would do,” Ninévrisé said. It might accuse him. It might be a question. It was uncertain. He took it in the most charitable light.

“I believe Tristen,” he said, leaning on the stick. “I have not entirely changed what I plan. We will still deal with the whole riverside. But if Tristen is certain enough to insist—I believe him. He knows things.” It sounded foolish. He did not know how to explain.

“I think he does know,” Ninévrisé said, and added, in a quiet, diffident voice: “And he is truly your friend. I see that. I have no doubt o you, now.”

Upon which saying, she was up the stairs in a quick patter of steps with her guards hurrying to catch up.

He was staring. He knew that his own guards were waiting, Idrys among them witnessing his drift of thought, and he bit his lip and limped off the stairs and on toward his own door.

And toward his ill-assorted guard, the disposition of whom had entered his mind this morning, but he had not wanted to give warning of his intentions.

Now he stopped and looked at the two in question, the Ivanim Erion Netha and the Olmern lad, Denyn Kei’s-son. “You were given to my service,” he said in a low voice. “You’ve paid for your trespass. I’ve given your lords orders to prepare for war. Ivanor is bound for a brief sojourn at home and Olmern has its boats to see to. If you will rejoin your lords, go and do so. Or remain in my service and take the field with the Dragon Guard or the Prince’s Guard, at your will. I give pardon. It is without condition. Commission I also grant.”

And he passed into his apartment, walked to his own fireside.., not alone, never quite alone; he heard Idrys behind him.

I have loosed everything, he thought. I have let go all the power I gathered. Gods hope they think of no excuses and I get them back, or I am no King, and this kingdom will fall.

He looked around into Idrys’ disapproving frown.

“What, Idrys? Speechless? Have I finally amazed you?”

“Leaving yourself only a few Guelen, the Olmernmen and the Amefin to guard you? I find nothing left against which to warn my lord King.

You have done it all.”

That angered him, so that for a moment he did not speak. Then reason came back to him and he nodded. “As you say. But occasionally I do as pleases me, Idrys.”

“I am well aware.”

“It is good, is it not—for a king to be generous.., while he has a good man to watch the recipients of his generosity?”

“You have given me many causes to watch, my lord King, and in too many places for your safety or the realm’s?’

“I shall mend my ways hereafter. Will you leave me? You may, without prejudice. I could well use your talents in the capital.”

“My lord.” Idrys shook his head, with contrition in his dark eyes.

“Leave you in this—I will not. Did I not swear?”

“I need you. Gods help me, you are my other nature, Idrys. What would you advise me, granted I am committed to war and have done what I have done—for very good reasons?”

“That you be very thorough in your dealing with your enemies, lord, domestic and foreign. That if you pursue this war, you leave no half measures to haunt you, however prettily your bride asks. That you beware of your brother’s priest and beware most of Orien Aswydd and her sister.”

“And Sovrag?”

“Cannot safely negotiate Marna now. He will take orders.”

“Pelumer?”

“Has never committed himself to a quarrel; smiles on all; fights for none; in the wars against the Sihhé his father sat snug in Lanfarnesse and fought by withholding forces from a Sihhé ally. Pelumer has a poor memory, m’lord.”

“I did mark that.”

“Otherwise, take it that Lanfarnesse is loyal as a rock is solid, —and, like a rock, will prefer to sit. Lanfarnesse rangers are another matter.

They are not for battle in the field: Pelumer objects very wisely there, and did you ask him to lend you those men even to venture Marna, you might obtain a fair number of them. But Pelumer says this time he will commit archers in a pitched battle. I have found no reason to doubt his given word, m’lord King, and they will be well drilled.”

“You confess there is one honest man in council? You confess that Tristen is telling the truth?”

“As he knows it,” Idrys said, as if the irony of that were wasted on him. Likely it was not. Cefwyn waved a dismissal, sank wearily into a chair.

He had left himself nothing but war, from the time he had accepted the lady Regent’s hand.

The Elwynim lords and their men were saddling up in the stableyard, the afternoon of Cefwyn’s charge to them, and there were horses waiting for Cevulirn at the west door. Sovrag was off to the river, he said, to see to his boats; he had left at noon with two ox-carts loaded with cordage and pitch and another with seasoned wood. The lords of the south were all breaking camp and leaving with the same suddenness with which they had arrived, and Uwen said if one didn’t want to wait forever while master Peygan the armorer took care of the other business that His Majesty had set underway, it was a very good idea to get master Peygan started as soon as possible, the proper outfitting of a young lord for war taking a fair long time.

Uwen had known Peygan for years: Peygan had come from the capital with Cefwyn and had taken over an armory in disarray—so Uwen said on their walk across the yard. “The place was full of rats what ate the leathers, and the old armorer was drunk by day and night, with accounts all in a muddle, gods, ye’d be amazed.”

“What happened to him?” Tristen said.

“Oh, he took out the day we arrived and nobody’s seen ’im since. The old fellow wouldn’t complain, that’s what I guess. That rascal Heryn was making of them books what he liked, and the old armorer knew he should have taken the business to the King, but he drank, instead, being afraid to report the state things was in. The armorers, ye may know, m’lord, is all Crown men, master and ’prentices, alike, so’s ye ain’t dealin’ with anyone of Heryn’s lot, here.”  “They belong to the King?”

“Same as all the arms stored here, m’lord, in name, at least. The lords is to manage it all, and the King’s armorers is to keep accounts. And accounts gets kept, now. They don’t put nothing over on master Peygan.

If something’s broke it don’t go on the rolls.”

They walked up the steps, and into a place which had fascinated him and frightened him from the first day he had seen it, a place with Words echoing of War, and Iron, and Blood, a place with rows and rows of orderly weapons, displayed on the walls and in the racks, banners hanging in still array.

He wished to turn on the step now and rush out of the place, and not to take anything it offered. He disliked the mail shirt he was bidden wear, although it had saved his life. He had no desire to have any armor heavier or more extensive than he did—and most of all he dreaded the dark and metal feeling of this place.

But Uwen was to draw armor of a guard issue better than he had ever worn, which pleased Uwen mightily; Uwen was carrying a paper to that effect, which Idrys himself had given him, commissioning him into the Dragon Guard: and Uwen’s enthusiasm made him think differently from moment to moment, that it was not the armor that threatened to smother him, but the constraints of purpose it imposed—and that it was not the weapons that frightened him, but the skill in his own hands.

“Heavy armor,” Uwen said. “Plate and chain. If happen somebody bashes ye square down on the shoulder, m’lord, as do happen in a close tangle, or if ye catch a lance-point, a lot better you should have plate.

The King,” Uwen added, “wouldn’t be limping about now if he’d had a good Cuisse in that melee, ’stead of them damn light-horse breeches.”

It was a language of its own. The names of the pieces and of the weapons did come to him, and he knew that Uwen was right, for a man who did not look to ride hard or fast.

“But,” he said, while they waited for attendants in the darksome and echoing hall, “are you happier with it, Uwen?”

Uwen laughed. “M’lord, I’m a Guelen man. We was always the center of the line, heavy horse and foot. It ain’t but since I turned gray they sent me to protect young lords who fly off in the dark wi’ naught but a mail shirt and a stolen horse.”

46O

He did not think Uwen should joke about that. He knew he had been rash and he wished that Uwen would not follow him if another such moment came on him—that was the consideration Cefwyn had laid on him, by giving him Uwen.

Peygan came, welcomed them, looked at Uwen’s paper and gave it to a boy who gave it to a clerk who was setting up in the entry. Master Peygan looked him in particular up and down, muttered, “Tall, sir,” and with a well-used piece of cord took various rapid measurements of his limbs and across the back of his shoulders.

“I’ve little that will serve,” Peygan said, then. “At least—that I’d have confidence in. His Majesty gave strict orders, and I must say, it will not be gold or gilt, Lord Warden, nor pretty nor even matched. I cannot swear to that. But quality and a right fit I do swear to.”

“I’ve no objection, sir,” he said. “As best you can, sir—light. I wish to see.” He rarely objected to others’ choices. But this frightened him, despite Uwen’s assurances.

“A challenge, Lord Ynefel.”

“Yes, sir. If you please. And whatever Uwen wants—I’d have him safe.”

Peygan rubbed his chin, scratched his unruly hair—it was liberally grayed, like Uwen’s; and Tristen stood watching while Peygan measured Uwen, too.

“Hmm,” Peygan said, and walked off.

So he sat down to wait with Uwen for most of the next two hours, while the master armorer, clearly working on a number of requests at once, fussed and marked this and that strap his assistants would bring him, and a man Uwen said was Peygan’s son sat at a bench using an array of curious implements and mallets on the fittings Peygan had marked.

In time, Peygan came back bringing an armload of pieces, and cast them on a nearby bench.

“It’s old,” Peygan said, of a fine piece of brigandine. “Still solid, though they say—” Peygan seemed hesitant. “They say it’s Sihhé work, Lord Warden.”

His fingers did not tingle when he touched it. It was black, and showed wear, and was not like what the Guelenfolk wore. But it felt right.

“M’lord,” Uwen said dubiously. “She’s pretty, but a lot’s come and changed. She ain’t modern.”

“Neither am I,” Tristen said. “Isn’t that what they say?” He liked weapons no better, but this was the only piece that made him feel safer.

“Mostly,” said master Peygan, “there’s no such silk these days. They say it came from oversea. There’s some as is afraid of the piece, truth to tell.”

He did look, in that gray place, but it showed not at all.

“There is no harm in it,” he said. “Though such things seem to come and go.” It felt comfortable to the touch. He could not say the same of the mail shirt he wore. “I’d try it.”

Uwen was less pleased. But he said, “I am very sure, Uwen.”

Uwen gave a tilt and a shake of his head. “Might be, then, m’lord.”

The straps and laces of the silk-woven brigandine were worn, and wanted work. And Uwen was still to fit out. So they waited. The armory was echoing with the comings and goings of Peygan’s boys, who were, by now, with the afternoon’s work in full clatter and bustle about them, counting out to Guelen and Amefin sergeants and attendants the equipment they requested, and counting in what tents and wagons and other such things the departing lords were leaving behind.

At a table near the door, master Peygan’s clerks kept careful account of what went out and what went in. Carts pulled up at the door and bundles of pikes went in, long arrows by the score, as well as buckles, girths, bits, harness, pennons and odder items of equipage: all of it came in from the armory storage, and from the armory’s outlying storage, and the whole flowed in past the clerk, who kept a painstaking and amazingly rapid account in various codices stacked on the table by him, while stacks of requests accumulated beside him, and a junior clerk, reading the requests, sent a score of stout armorer’s boys running with apprentice clerks to read the orders.

It was a tangle, lords’ pages demanding their equipment be taken to shelter immediately, since there were clouds overhead, threatening a shower, and master Peygan’s clerk informing said pages that nothing would go into or out of storage without it being written fair and wide in request, which went on the stack.

Meanwhile Amefin companies were being equipped for weapons-drill, and someone was complaining about a box of buckles that had gotten set down and swept up with someone’s equipment.

A clerkish young man came out lugging an armful of odd plate up to them, then, and said they were to have bards for two horses, and would he approve what he had found so he could put it with their gear.

Tristen had no idea. He had never handled horse armor, but Uwen said that it was very fine, he was sure, but they were mistaken in the number of horses unless they wanted a spare.

Meanwhile another boy came with a tablet and said he had to draw the arms for the man who was going to paint the shield, and was the device correctly displayed?

That, Tristen could answer, and had the Star set a little larger and the Tower a little smaller above it; so the youth went off busily to inform the painter. Uwen said that likely they would stitch up a caparison for his horse and all—the horse Cefwyn had given him being still on his way in from the country, from what they knew. But the standard he would have carried before him would be the one they had unfurled in hall.

It was an amazing amount of activity, and they were often crowded upon, where they sat, so Tristen took the notion to tell the clerks where they were, and go out to the smithy which stood next door.

So they went out into the cool air and in again to the heat and smoke.

He liked to watch the smiths work: he was always entranced by the sparks and most of all by the metal when it was hot and all but transparent. He hung about as long as he had an excuse, but the smiths and the wheelwrights were as harried as the armorer, since several of the lords, independently, it seemed, had been postponing work on various transport in the thought it would last until they got home. Now they were leaving the wagons here in the care of the drivers and the Crown would not count them in unless they were received in good order, so the drivers were frustrated, and felt they were put upon by someone.

It was the most amazing lot of racket, not alone the hammering, but the shouting and the arguing. And things growing hot there, and the wind shifting and carrying smoke into their eyes, they went back to the relative quiet of the armory, to sit and wait again on the bench against the wall, where at least they would not be impeding the traffic coming in and out the door.

It was a lot of standing and sitting and waiting, it was now toward supper, and he had hoped to have it over and done long since. He thought of asking Uwen to go for a book—but watching him read was dull for Uwen, so he sighed and thought otherwise.

“I’ve seen a lot of odd doings,” someone near them was saying, “but I never thought I’d see the Elwynim for allies.”

“In the winter.” He knew that voice. It was Lord Pelumer. He had, Tristen thought, come in while they were gone. Pelumer was talking to someone behind a rack of equipment. “I make no secret I don’t like it at all,” Pelumer said.

“Wizardry, is what it is—grave-dust and cobwebs for an ally. Give me a man that has somewhat more natural in his veins, to my preferences.

Ghosts and now this Elwynim bride? You have the King’s ear. Urge him against this folly.”

“Oh, this is the man that has the King’s ear. I’m certain I don’t, nowadays, sad to say.”

Uwen had started to get up. Tristen prevented him with a touch on his arm. And he recognized the first voice, now, as Sulriggan’s.

“If we deal with the old man of the tower, even dead, what can we look for?” Sulriggan was asking. “This Tristen is Sihhé. There’s Sihhé blood all through Elwynor. Gods know what they’ll do. Did you mark the bride’s eyes, Lanfarnesse? Gray. Gray as I stand here.”

“I confess I mislike the turn things are taking,” said Pelumer. “We were neighbors to Althalen, we in Lanfarnesse. Marna Wood covers a great deal that the east has forgotten. But we remember. Some things there are that cannot be made friendly, even by their own will. I count the new lord of Ynefel as one of them.”

It stung. He knew not what to do or say. Clearly they did not know he was present. Clearly they had said things they would not have said to his face and could not be comfortable with if they knew he had heard them.

Then someone said, a whisper that sounded like one of the boys that ran errands, “He’s here, m’lords. Be careful what you say.”

“Here?” He imagined them looking around, and he knew nothing now that would help matters, except to indicate to them that, indeed, he did know. So he rose from the bench, which was along a rack of axes, and confronted them with, he hoped, a mild if not friendly expression.

“Sirs,” he said. “Good day.”

“Spying on a body,” Pelumer said indignantly.

“Hardly by intent, sir.”

“I make no secret I don’t like the plan you advanced, sir. I’ll say that in polite discourse. I don’t like assuming it will be Emwy and I don’t like to start a campaign in this season.”

“It will be by the new moon, sir. I might be wrong. But I believe that will be the time.”

“He believes that will be the time,” Sulriggan said. “Do you hunt?”

Sulriggan asked. “Do you gamble? D’ ye have any common pleasures, lord of the cobwebby tower? Or do you spend all your time chasing up and down the roads and making mysterious predictions?”

“I read, sir. I feed the pigeons. Such things as that.” He knew that he was being baited. He saw no reason to hunt or to gamble or to be like Lord Sulriggan, which seemed to be all that Sulriggan approved.

But for some reason Sulriggan failed to seize up what he said and mock him in those terms as he expected Sulriggan to do. Sulriggan’s face went quite angry and red.

And abruptly Lord Sulriggan stalked out of the armory.

“Ynefel,” Pelumer said, “he had that for his due. Accept my apology, if for nothing else than indiscretion. I am sure we may differ on a question of tactics without anger.”

“I am not angry, sir. I am sorry he is.”

“Ynefel, you will not win that man. I listened because for His Majesty’s sake I would know what he is about. Believe it or not, as you have learned me to be.”

“Sir, I find no reason to doubt what you say.”

The old man bit his lip and gnawed at his white mustaches, seeming unhappy, but thinking, too.

“Well, well,” Pelumer said then. “He would have been mistaken to attack you at arms. I think he thought you an easier mark than that. I think he had expected to entrap you into a challenge—which is not lawful, under the King’s roof, as you may recall. You possess the field, sir. I congratulate you.”

Pelumer went away then, out the door, pausing to pick up some paper of the clerk at the door.

“I fail to understand,” Tristen said.

“I think Lord Pelumer meant you scairt His Grace who left,” Uwen said. “Meanin’ Sulriggan ain’t the fool altogether. That ’un wasn’t on the field at Emwy. That ’un come in after all was done, and settled in wi’

Prince Efanor. He ain’t seen you fight, m’lord. But I think he knows now he was in deep waters.”

He wished he understood, all the same. That the man did not like him hardly surprised him. But that the man wanted to fight him did not make sense. That the man wanted to entrap him and to discourage Cefwyn from friendship with him—that, he did see. He didn’t know if it was fair to warn Cefwyn. It seemed to him that there were intricate Rules to govern men’s behavior, and to govern what they told authority about and what they did not and settled unto themselves.

He did not know those Rules. He only saw they existed. He was quite, quite stunned by Sulriggan’s kind of malevolence. But Hasufin’s sort of harm and this man’s seemed to have tactics in common, and he found it worrisome this was the man who stood closest to Efanor, except only Efanor’s priest.

Efanor did not, over all, like him, and at least this one man, possibly with Efanor’s knowledge, possibly without it, was going about quietly trying to turn Pelumer to their side, too.

He was not certain where Fairness lay, in this—whether it was Fair for him to tell Emuin, who would surely tell Cefwyn, and that would make trouble with Efanor, which would make Cefwyn unhappy, when Cefwyn had enough pain.

It seemed something he could deal with. It seemed at least the man had gone in retreat.

So it was not something he chose to tell Cefwyn, in the meeting they had.

And Cefwyn was not angry with him. Tristen was very glad of that. He had gone to Cefwyn’s door specifically to apologize for interrupting him in council, but Cefwyn took his hand and said it was very well, he had been right to speak out under the circumstances. And Cefwyn had asked him in and shared a cup of tea with him, and directly asked him about the armor, which he said was very fine.

Then Cefwyn told him he had ordered Haman to make a choice of horses for Uwen as well, since, as Cefwyn said, for the King’s pride he could not have the chief of personal guard of a lord of Ylesuin drawing his mounts at random from the stables. He gave Uwen the horses and their upkeep, the written order said, as long as Ynefel stabled horses at Henas’amef.

It was a very handsome gift, Tristen had no difficulty in recognizing that. It was another in the succession of gifts Cefwyn had poured out on him in the context of his betrothal to the lady, and he did not know altogether what it meant. “If I had any means,” he said to Cefwyn, troubled and embarrassed, “I would provide for him. I understand what I should do, and I cannot, and I am very grateful.”

“If I had any desire to weigh you down with the administration of a province,” Cefwyn said, “I swear I would bestow Amefel on you and send Orien Aswydd packing. As it is, I find it a very modest upkeep for an entire province of Ylesuin. The horses have come in, Haman advises me. You will need, of course, grooms, standard-bearers, their horses and upkeep. And upkeep for your servants.”

He could scarcely conceive of it—or understand what Cefwyn was doing to him: pushing him out on his own, perhaps, which was not unkind, and perhaps even timely; but he still had the suspicion that gifts and generosity came before bad news and parting.

“I am not a lord in any useful sense. I hardly need more than Uwen.”

“Oh, you are far more useful and far less expensive than, say, Amefel.

How did you find Orien? Civil? Or otherwise?”  “Idrys told you.”

“Oh, my dear friend, Idrys indeed told me. And I wish to know if you have any complaint against her.”

“I know that I shouldn’t have gone there. I was there before I knew that. But her guards were wiser than I was: they told Idrys and he came for me.’

“Idrys says you made it out on your own,” Cefwyn said. “Which is far more sense than I had.”

That was a joke, but Cefwyn did not laugh, and Tristen did not. He did not think of anything to report that Cefwyn did not know, but he did not think he could as freely forgive Orien the way he had forgiven the gate-guards and Idrys and all the people who had done him harm of one kind and another. Orien’s action seemed somehow more mindful and of a purpose he did not wholly guess, nor wish to. But he tried to guess.

“I have no idea what she wanted,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn looked at him oddly.

“I believe I know,” Cefwyn said, as if he were being a little foolish, even for him. But beyond the evident conclusion, he thought it far more than a ploy to lure him to—what he only dimly visualized. Still, he did not wish to launch into that discussion tonight, for Cefwyn seemed very tired, certainly in pain, and should go to bed. “I’ll deal with Orien,”

Cefwyn promised him. “I am very aware of her displeasure.”

“You should rest,” Tristen said.

“I fully intend to,” Cefwyn said, and declared his intent to go to bed like a good betrothed husband, after which Tristen made his excuses and withdrew across the hall to his own apartment.

Cefwyn had seemed in increasing pain since last night, and that was hard to watch as well as disheartening for their preparations. He could not imagine of his own experience how acute the pain of such a deep wound was, but Cefwyn’s face had been quite pale, at the last, and damp with sweat. Tristen wished—desperately wished—that he had Mauryl’s ability to take the pain away and to heal the hurt; but he did not.

And worry over Cefwyn might have put him out of the mood to have supper, except Uwen was so entirely delighted and overcome when he heard about the horses and the King taking a personal interest in him, it was hard to remain glum.

So he took supper in his sitting room with Uwen and the four servants, who were, since he had come back from Althalen, very willing to linger by the table and gossip. He learned, this evening, for one thing, that Lord Sulriggan’s personal cook had had a dish turn up very, very salty at the betrothal feast, and Lord Sulriggan called it witches, but the servants thought it likelier the scullery-lads.

Tristen found himself laughing, in far better humor than he had begun. He felt a little guilt, because it was a misbehavior, but not harmful; and by now the servants and Uwen probably had traded stories, so Lord Sulriggan’s discomfiture in the armory would probably make the rounds, too—and find especial appreciation in the kitchens.

Opinions about Ninévrisé were also making the rounds of the staff: there was a deep curiosity about a woman who would be, if not queen, still, the next thing to it. The general opinion the servants gave—far more cautiously—was that she was a very kind, a very gracious lady, who, moreover, politely had not complained of a wool coverlet, though her skin could not bear anything but lambs wool: it came of being a princess, the staff said, and the servants had had to send after more linens to case all the blankets until they could find proper ones.

Tristen was duly appalled that such information was a matter of common gossip, but Uwen reminded him what he had said to him from the beginning, that a lord’s reputation among the servants was just as important as that he achieved among his peers—because it rapidly was among his peers. So Nin6vrisi3 was well begun, at least with the staff, who thought her very proper and very accepting of the staff’s good intentions.

There was a muttering of thunder as they finished supper. The clouds today had gone over with no more than a spit of rain, and would shed their burden on Guelessar. The farmers of the south and west were doubtless happy, and so, doubtless, would be the lords and their men who, leaving their tents with the baggage, had started home to their own lands.

Tristen for his part thought it a good night to sit by the fire, and in that comfort, still thinking of Cefwyn’s misery, he took it in mind to try just a little magic, foolish as the attempt might be, to see if it worked for him at all. Cefwyn’s well-being was something he wanted very much-and that might help. Mauryl had said it was easiest to make things what they wanted to be.

So he lit the candles in his room—he always thought of his bedchamber that way, his room, as opposed to the outer room where the servants came and went and where Uwen sat and talked with them, or talked with the off-duty guards. Usually the doors stayed open between the rooms, but he shut his tonight, saying that he would retire early and manage for himself, so the servants and Uwen could play dice or whatever they pleased.

He took his Book from the shelf and sat down to read by firelight, the page canted toward the warm glow, and after a little, he looked into the fire as sometimes Mauryl had done, and made pictures to himself in the fire as he had used to do. He saw mostly faces, that suddenly seemed to him like the faces of Ynefel, which was not at all what he wanted to conjure.

He tried to think of Cefwyn, instead, and of Cefwyn’s wound being well. Mauryl had done it so effortlessly, and he wanted so much, just, for a beginning, for Cefwyn to be able to rest without pain, and to walk without pain.

A wind gusted up, and came down the chimney, fluttering the fire. He did not like that.

Then he heard a rattle at the window-latch.

He liked that far less.

He shut the Book. Then came a tapping at the glass, which he had never heard, and could not imagine what it was in the middle of the night, on the upper floors, until he thought, as he had not thought in some number of nights, about Owl.

He rose from the fireside, Book in hand, and went over to the window.

The tapping kept up, in a curious pattern, and in the light coming from inside the room, he could see a pigeon on the narrow, slanted window ledge.

He had left the bread out earlier. But it was an odd time for pigeons to be after it. He could not think that it was natural behavior, and the bread was, he saw in that same outflow of light, gone from the ledge.

Tap. The bird pecked the windowpane, perhaps attracted by the light.

Tap-tap. It lost its balance on the narrow ledge and used its wings to recover.

Tap. Tap-tap.

It sounded more frantic. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. It wanted in. It was a bird he knew. Perhaps for some strange reason it had decided to take his offerings of food from his hand and wanted him to feed it. But he would have to open the little windowpane, and he hesitated to do that.