Humans do this very well, when they are measuring out open fields. For a job like this, you need someone like me. That was the long and the short of it, so far as Visyr was concerned.
Another problem that surveyors encountered was that people were building things behind walls and fences that they wouldn't let the surveyors pass. Without going and getting an authority who would force the owners to let the surveyors inside, there was no way of telling what was or was not in there, and most surveyors simply didn't want to take the chance of angering home and business owners. Walls and fences didn't hinder Visyr, and there would be a number of folk who would be very unhappy with him when this survey was over, and they got tax-bills for outbuildings, workshops, and secondary dwellings that they hadn't reported.
But by then I'll be gone, so they can be as unhappy as they like. Frankly, I think Arden deserves the extra tax money. If it weren't for the money he is putting into the city, these people wouldn't have public water, covered sewers, or any of the other more pleasant innovations he's building in.
Visyr liked Duke Arden; most people did, he suspected. It wasn't difficult to like the Duke, as Arden was personable, persuasive, and really did have the welfare of his people first and foremost in his mind. He had made some very sensible laws about the rebuilding in Kingsford that were being violated every day. There would be some unhappy people when the Duke's men appeared to levy fines or tear down illegal constructions that Visyr had uncovered, but some of those structures were fire hazards and others were clearly not supposed to be where they were. It was one thing to keep pigs and goats in the country, but putting them in a tiny scrap of yard in the middle of a residential district was going to makesomeone sick eventually. Visyr had even spotted a man keeping cows in a shed barely large enough to hold them!
Unfortunately, it will probably not be the fellow who is keeping the livestock who pays the price of their being there.Visyr didn't want to think about what all those little goat- and pig-yards would smell like when summer came. Hopefully by then, the Duke's inspectors would have most of them cleared out. Dove-cots and rabbit-hutches, fine. Those created manageable waste. Not farm stock.
Not to mention the possibility of the damage a large animal could do if it got out.Horses and donkeys were necessary evils, and were properly kept in stables in areas meant for them, but even so, Visyr distrusted such large and unpredictable creatures. He was just glad that he spent the largest part of his time that he was outside the palace in the air.
It might have seemed odd to conduct this survey in the dead of winter, but cold didn't particularly bother Visyr, and he would much rather fly in a snowstorm than in a rainstorm. Besides, in winter no one was doing any exterior construction; any building going on was all interior work. That meant that if he could finish this work before spring (and he certainly should be able to!) he wouldn't have to backtrack to add new buildings.
So far no one but the Duke and a few of his people were aware of what Visyr was up to. Plenty of people knew that the Duke had a Haspur at his Court, but after the great to-do caused by another Haspur at the Court of the High King, the masterful musician and singer T'fyrr, they probably all assumed he was a musician, too. And he was, but not a professional like T'fyrr; all Haspur could sing, and any Haspur would probably impress a human who'd never heard one before, but anyone who had heard T'fyrr would never mistake Visyr for a professional.
I'm not even a really talented amateur, but then, T'fyrr can't make maps either. He'd probably even get lost in the High King's palace.
But as long as people thought he was a musician, no one would wonder why he was hovering over their houses. If they asked, he had a standard—and quite truthful—reply.
Research. A delightful word that covers any number of circumstances. They'll assume I'm making up some epic about the rise of Kingsford from the ashes of the Great Fire, and ignore me. At the worst, they'll want to tell me the story of how they survived the Fire, which might be entertaining.
Actually, very few people seemed to notice him; the humans here in the Twenty Kingdoms were remarkably unobservant creatures, especially when it came to scanning the sky.
Maybe because their eyes are so bad. Humans, poor things, are remarkably deficient in that area.
Hardly anyone ever looked up at him, not even when his large shadow passed over him. Curious, really; a Haspur noted every little floating seed and tiny wren in the sky, and never went more than a few heartbeats without taking a glance upward. The humans who lived in partnership with the Haspur were the same, glancing up at even a hint of a shadow or a moving mote in the sky.
I suppose it's all in what you're used to.
The dryboard was almost full; Visyr made a few more notations about a building with an extension hidden behind a tall fence, cupped his wings a bit and dropped, losing a few dozen feet of height to get some forward momentum. It was a good trade; shortly he was well on the way to the Ducal Palace where it rose above the rest of the city, rivaling even the Kingsford Cathedral. He reveled in the feel of free flight, in the force of the wind through his nares, in the powerful beats of his own wings. It was a lovely day in spite of being overcast; a recent snowfall covered the raw places in the earth that surrounded new construction, hiding signs of dilapidation and shoddy building, and softened the lines of roofs and fences. With clean, white snow everywhere, this really looked like the model city the Duke had dreamed of.
And straight ahead rose the palace, a fine piece of architecture in its own right. He had his own separate entrance into the tower that served him as workroom and private quarters; an aerial entrance, of course. Humans would probably refer to it as a balcony, but the railing was just the right size to land on, the wood sturdy enough to hold up under his talons, and the servants who tended the room had orders to keep the railing and the balcony ice-free. The room had an unparalleled view, too; right over the city and across the river, where the Abbey and Cathedral of the Justiciars presided over Faire Field. He hadn't been there yet; there wasn't much to survey in that direction, so he was leaving it until the last.
At the moment, he was working his way along the Kanar River, at the point farthest from the high, stone bridge that crossed over to Faire Field. He had an idea that the bridge itself was older than Kingsford—it was so tall in the center that virtually any ship that could navigate the river could sail beneath it, and certainly the river barges had no difficulty getting between its massive white piers. The only damage time had done to it was cosmetic, and although it was commonly thought of as being made of stone, the material didn't resemble any stone Visyr was familiar with. The only "improvement" that humans had made to it was a toll booth on the Kingsford side. The road leading to the bridge was unpaved, but that didn't mean anything; the paving could have been pried up by the people who'd built the Abbey and Cathedral to use for construction materials. This sort of destruction drove the Deliambrens crazy. Visyr thought it was rather amusing. It certainly proved the humans were resourceful devils, ant-like in their ingenuity for picking things up and carrying them away.
He pumped his wings through full power-strokes, angling the surfaces to gain altitude rather than speed. Soon, if there was anyone watching him from below, he would be just another dot in the overcast heavens, no different from a crow or a sparrow. He had to go around to the back of the palace in order to reach his balcony from here.