Her flash of intuition solidified into certainty as she spotted them widely separated in the crowd. There they were, all right, converging on the Haspur from three directions as he tried to extricate himself from the brawl without getting involved himself.
And as for the Haspur's identity_there was no glass between her and him now, and she had a good look at his head and face, at the way he moved. It was T'fyrr; it had to be. If it had been a stranger, she might have been tempted to let the peace-keepers handle it.
Well, it wasn't. And damned if I am going to let these ruffians go after a friend!
Her harp was safe in the Rainbow Room; she was no bar-brawler, but she hadn't been playing the roads for all these years without learning a few tricks. She jumped down off the table and began slithering through the crowd of struggling, fighting customers. As long as you knew what you were doing and what to watch out for, it was actually fairly easy to wade through a fight without getting involved_or at least, without suffering more than an occasional shove or stepped-on toe. She made her way to the spot in the milling mob where she'd last seen T'fyrr fairly quickly_but she actually got within sight of one of the men that were after him before she saw the Haspur.
That was when she knew that T'fyrr was in danger, real danger, and that these men weren't just planning on roughing him up. After all, if these people weren't after him, why would this one be carrying a net_why carry a net into a place like Freehold at all? Lyonarie was not a seaport_Freehold might offer a lot of entertainment, but fishing wasn't part of it_and this lad didn't look anything like a fisherman!
She looked around frantically for something to make his life difficult before he got a chance to use that net. If he caught T'fyrr in it, he could entangle the Haspur and_
No, best not think about that. Find a way to stop him!
There! She darted out of the fight long enough to seize a spiky piece of wrought-iron sculpture_or, at least, Tyladen alleged that it was sculpture_from an alcove in the wall. It wasn't heavy, but it was just what she needed. She slid back into the crowd nearest the fellow with the net, just in time to see him back out of the crowd a little himself and spread the net out to toss it.
She heaved her bit of statuary into the half-open folds just as he started to throw it.
He lurched backward, unbalanced for the moment by the sudden weight of iron in the net. He was quick, though; he whipped around to see if someone had stepped on the net, and when he saw how the spikes of the sculpture had tangled everything up, his mouth moved in what was probably a curse. He pulled the mess to him, since no one seemed to be paying any attention to him, and began to untangle it, moving out of the crowd completely for just a moment.
That was when Nightingale slipped up behind him and delivered an invitation to slumber with a wine bottle she'd purloined from an overturned table.
He dropped like a felled ox: net, statue, and all. Nightingale dropped the bottle beside him after giving him a second love-tap to ensure that he stayed out of the conflict for a while.
There was no longer a background of music to the brawl; Silas and the rest had probably deserted their stage before the fighting engulfed it.
She moved around the periphery of the fight, looking for T'fyrr, and finally spotted him again as his wings waved above the crowd momentarily. She worked her way in toward him.
But as she got within touching distance of him, she saw that another of the bully-boys was moving in on him, and the weapon he carried was like nothing Nightingale had ever seen before. In fact, she wouldn't have known he had a weapon at all if she hadn't seen the "blade" glint briefly in the light. It was needlelike, probably very sharp_and poisoned? Dear Lady, who knew? It might very well be!
She was too far away to do anything!
She opened her mouth to shout a futile warning as the man lunged toward the Haspur.
But T'fyrr was not as helpless as he looked; somehow he spotted his attacker, coming from an angle where no human would have seen him moving. He grabbed a chair, whirled with the speed of a striking goshawk, and intercepted the weapon as the man brought it down toward the point where his back had been a heartbeat before. With all the noise, there was no sound as the man drove it into the chair-back, but he staggered as he hit the unyielding wood instead of the flesh and feathers he had been aiming for.
It must have embedded too deeply in the wood of the chair to pull free, for he abandoned the weapon and leapt back, looking around for help.
But there wasn't any help to be had. The third man had either seen Nightingale fell his partner, or simply had noticed that he was down. Instead of dealing with his part of the attack, the third man was helping the semiconscious net-wielder to his feet and dragging him out of the fight toward the door. There was no doorkeeper at this point, and he was not the only person helping an injured friend out.
They're going to get away, and I can't stop them, damn it!
The man with the stiletto took another look at T'fyrr, who had tossed the chair aside, and with wings mantling in rage, was advancing on him.
He gave up. Faster than Nightingale would have believed possible, he had eeled his way into the brawl and out of T'fyrr's sight and reach. While T'fyrr looked for him, futilely, Nightingale saw him reappear at the side of his two companions, taking the unconscious mans free arm, draping it over his shoulder, and hustling both of the others toward the entrance and out before she could alert anyone to stop them.
She cursed them with the vilest Gypsy curses she could think of_but she couldn't follow them with anything more potent than that.
With the peace-keepers converging on the fight wholesale, and no one around trying to keep it going, the battle ended shortly after that. Peace-keepers didn't even try to sort out who started what; they simply separated combatants and steered them toward the entrance, suggesting that if there was still a grievance after the cool air hit them, they could resume their discussions outside. There didn't seem to be anyone with any injuries worse than a blackened eye, either, and a good three-fourths of the people involved had only been trying to keep themselves from getting hurt by the few folk actually fighting.
Nightingale had seen it all before; people who, either drunk or simply worked up over something, would take any excuse to fight with anyone who wanted to fight back. The three bravos must have known something like this would happen, too, and had counted on it.
Which, unfortunately, argued very strongly that they were professionals in the pay of someone with enough money to hire them.
While the peace-keepers dealt with the mess, Nightingale picked her way through the overturned tables and chairs toward T'fyrr. There was an uncanny silence beneath the dance lights_as she had thought, Silas and his crew had decided that discretion was better than foolhardiness and had abandoned their platform for the safety of one of the performance rooms. She saw them across the empty dance floor, with Silas in the lead, making their way cautiously back toward their stage.
But at the moment, she had someone else she wanted to talk to.