But she had just spent all night and part of the morning working the magics of music and the heart, and she had scant resources to spend on herself. She sighed with relief when Freehold loomed into view, and she had seldom been so glad to see a place as she was to see that deceptively plain door.
She took herself straight upstairs; fortunately, word had not yet spread of her Royal Command Performance, and she did not have to fend off any questioners. Only one of the Mintak peace-keepers appeared, silent as a shadow, to take her harp from her_and one of the little errand boys, with a tray of food and drink beside him. Neither asked any questions; they simply followed her to her room, put their burdens down, and left her.
She ate and drank quickly, without tasting any of it; she stripped off her gown and lay down in her bed, still rumpled and bearing the impression of her body and T'fyrr's, and the faint, spicy scent of his feathers. And then, she fell asleep, and slept like one dead until an hour before her first set of the evening.
She woke with the feeling that she had dreamed, but with no memory of what her dreams had been about. She woke, in fact, a little confused about where she was, until her mind began to function again. Then she lay staring up at the ceiling, trying to sort herself out.
There was a difference, a profound and yet subtle difference, in the way everything felt, but she had known that there would be.
Some of the magic_had not precisely left her, but it had changed. If she sang alone, she would still command the same power_but if she performed with T'fyrr, it was another story altogether. Together they would command more than the magic of two people; their abilities would work together as warp and weft, and the magic they wove would be stronger and firmer than anything she had ever dreamed of. So T'fyrr shares the Bardic Magic now_or else, I have awakened the magic that was already there. Not entirely unexpected, but certainly welcome, for as long as the two of them remained partnered.
She shoved that last niggling thought away, with a hint of desperation. She would not think of that. The pain would come soon enough, she did not need to worry at it until it did come, and T'fyrr went on his way again without her.
Or until she was forced by circumstance to leave him. The road traveled in both directions, after all.
The other changes within her were precisely as she had expected_except for the depth to which they ran. She did not particularly want to think about that, either.
But she wouldn't have to; there was a performance to give. T'fyrr would probably not be able to come_he could seldom manage two nights in a row. A brief stab of loneliness touched her, but she had expected it, and absorbed it.
I have been lonely for most of my life; I do not expect this to change. That was what she told herself, anyway. Being lonely has never killed anyone yet, no matter what the foolish ballads say.
And with that thought to fortify her, she finally rose from her bed and prepared to face another night of audiences.
She made her way across the city with far less of a stir this morning than she and T'fyrr had caused yesterday. No one would look twice at her, in fact, in her sober and honest clothing. The bundle at her back could be anything; unless you knew what a harp case looked like, there was no reason even to think she was a musician.
She presented herself and her safe-conduct at the Bronze Gate; the guard there scarcely glanced at it or her, except to note the size and shape of the bundle she carried and to order her to show what it was she had. When he saw it was only a musical instrument and a small bundle of cloth, he became bored again and passed her through.
She found a page to show her to T'fyrr's rooms, in plenty of time to use his bathroom and change into the gown she had brought with her. He was pacing the floor when she arrived, and turned to greet her with relief and disappointment.
Another sign of how we are bound, now; I know his feelings without needing to try to interpret his expression. The relief was because she was early; the disappointment he made clear enough.
"Theovere hasn't changed," he said as she asked him how they had been received yesterday. "He still hasn't done anything any differently. I don't understand_"
Before he could say anything any further, she seized his hand and drew him into the bedroom, away from the odd devices she recognized as Deliambren listening devices. She did not want the Deliambrens to know about the Bardic magic_at least, she did not want them to know that she was exercising it. They already knew there was something like it, of course, and they knew, from the results she got, that she used it. They might put "magic" and "harpist" together and come up with "Nightingale."
"Don't be impatient," she told him as his tail-feathers twitched a little from side to side and he shook his wings out. "Even with the magic, this is going to take time. For one thing, we didn't have the chance to select songs that would channel his mind in the direction we wanted it to go. For another, we are trying to change something that took several years to establish; we aren't going to do that overnight."
He opened his beak, then shut it abruptly, as if he had suddenly seen what she was talking about.
"Besides, you aren't in the special Council sessions," she continued. "You have no access to the one place where he actually gets things done and issues real orders. You have no idea how he is speaking or acting within them. If I were the King_"
She let the nebulous thought take a more concrete form, then spoke. "If I were the King, and I began to take up the reins of my duty again_I would know that I would have to be careful about it. The Advisors aren't going to like the changes we're trying to bring about in him, and they are powerful people. He can oppose them in small things successfully, but_" She shook her head. "He was a very clever man, and I don't think that cleverness is gone. He was also a very observant man, and he must realize what has been going on. If I were the King, with my sense of duty reawakened, I would start working my will in very small things, taking back my power gradually, and hopefully by the time they realized what I was doing, it would be too late. And I would be very, very careful that I didn't seem to act any differently."
T'fyrr nodded then. "In a way, since he has let the power slip from his hands, Theovere has less power than any of them. Is that what you are saying?"
"More or less." She moved back into the other room with its insidious little listening devices. "Well, more to the point, what are we performing today? If you have anything that I don't know, I can probably pick it up with a little rehearsal."
"Which you have cleverly provided time for by arriving early." His beak opened in that Haspur equivalent of a smile, and she warmed with his pleasure in her company and her cleverness. "Well, here is the list I had thought we might perform."
He brought out a written list, which was thoughtful of him, and was what she would have done in his place. Armed with that, she was able to suggest alternatives to several of the songs she did not yet know, which left them enough time for her to pick up the melodies to the most important of the rest.
This time, she was no longer so tired that the white marble corridors blurred, one into the other, like the halls in a nightmare. She had a chance to make some mental notes as she walked beside him, his talons clicking oddly on the marble floor.