Mercedes Lackey - Four and Twenty Blackbirds

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.

Had he imagined that there had ever been anything else there?

If there had been, it was gone now.

Ardis went on, oblivious to the tumult in his heart. "We got the mage—and there won't be any more murders. If it hadn't been for you, I would probably be dead, and the murders would still be going on, because I rather doubt that Revaner would have stopped with me—"

A low voice Tal couldn't quite hear interrupted her; she looked up, listened for a moment, and nodded. He tried to turn his head to see who it was that had spoken to her, but it was too much of an effort.

"The Infirmarian tells me," she said, with a quirk of her mouth, "that if I don't leave you alone to rest, he'll bar me from the Infirmary. He told me that you'll be well enough in a day or so to make your report, and that until then I'm not to bother you."

"It's—no bother—" he began thickly.

She reached out again, and laid her hand on his. "Rest," she commanded. "You saved my life, Tal Rufen. The least I can do is let you have a little peace."

Once again, he looked deeply into her eyes—but what he hoped to see was not there.

If it ever had been.

Then, she was gone, and it was too much effort to keep his eyes open anymore.

"—and that, more or less, is when I fell over," Tal concluded.

Ardis nodded. It was very good to be sitting in her chair, knowing that there would be no more dead women to deal with. Across from her sat Kayne and Tal, both of them much the better for an uninterrupted night's sleep, Tal bandaged and a little pale, but in good spirits. Ardis wrote down the final word of Tal's statement in her case-book, and leaned back with a sigh. "So," she said, closing it, "that's the last that we'll ever know."