That was when she sent Maddy to Tyladen for one of the devices she had asked for. She herself had not gone back to Freehold since the guards arrived. Freehold would be watched_but she had a secure hiding place in Father Ruthvere's steeple, and others scattered elsewhere across the city. She had money sewn into the money belt she never took off except to sleep, and then kept beneath her pillow. She could look like whatever kind of woman she chose, and she was familiar with the "bad" parts of Lyonarie. No guard or militia from the Palace could find her here if she did not want to be found.
The child returned with this, a set of closely written instructions, and the other child that Nightingale had asked her to find.
That was all she had been waiting for. She had waited until dark, then began scaling the walls and getting onto the rooftops of every likely building in the area_with help. She was not a thief, and she could not have done this alone, but she had the help of someone who was more at home on the rooftops of Lyonarie than beneath them. It was safer to operate this thing from above than from below. There was less chance of being seen, for one, and she really didn't want to be caught loitering out in the street with this bizarre-looking thing in her hands.
I don't believe I can claim it is a musical instrument.
Thanks to the fact that even here there was very little space between the buildings, and to the fact that her accomplice had some quite remarkable climbing and bridging devices at his disposal, she had mostly been able to scramble from roof to roof. That further limited her time on the ground; a good thing, even if it was hair-raisingly risky to pick her way across strange rooftops in the middle of the night.
She put the device away, and considered her options.
He is in the middle of the building, probably in a closet, as far as possible from a window. Now, how do I tell what room that closet belongs to?
A scrabbling of tiny hands and feet across the slates signaled the arrival of her partner in crime and guide across these heights. " 'E 'ere?" whispered Tam, the chimney-sweep, a boy about thirteen years old, but as thin as one of his brushes and with the stature of a nine-year-old.
"Right below me, just about," she whispered back. "I'm certain they're keeping him in a closet, but how do I tell which room it's in?"
He chuckled. "Easy, mum. By chimbleys. This 'un like drops down inter th' room ye want." He patted it fondly, the way a driver would pat the neck of his horse. "These big ol 'ouses, they got fireplaces fer ever' room. Wants I should go look?"
Before she could stop him, he had clambered nimbly up the side of the chimney, and slid down inside it.
She waited, numb with shock, expecting at any moment to hear the commotion from below that meant he'd been spotted and seized.
Nothing.
Then, off to the side, a faint whistle, the song of a nightingale.
She eased her way over to the edge of the roof where the whistle had come from, and looked cautiously down.
Tam's sooty face looked up at her impudently, his teeth and the whites of his eyes startlingly bright in the moonlight. "Empty room, lots uv scratches on the floor. Got a locked closet 'ere, mum. Be a mort uv them scratches there, goes to 'tother side uv door. Mebbe some blood, too."
She didn't hesitate a moment longer; she lowered herself down over the edge of the roof, feeling for the window ledge with her feet as her arms screamed with outraged pain. Tam caught her ankles deftly and guided her feet to secure places; she caught hold of decorative woodwork and eased herself down to the window itself. She wanted to fling herself inside, but she didn't dare make that much noise_but she nearly wept with relief when she was safe on the floor inside.
I am not a thief. I am not a hero. I am only a musician; I am not supposed to be crawling about on rooftops! And we are leaving this place by the stairs, and no other way!
The room itself was completely empty; not even a single stick of furniture, just as Tam said. The moonlight coming in the windows revealed that there were traces of painted diagrams on the wooden floor, though, and she guessed that it was sometimes used for magical ceremonies.
All the more reason to get him out of here!
She went straight to the closet door that Tam pointed to, and saw that what he had mistaken for blood was nothing of the sort. It was only spilled paint. The scratches could have come from anything_dragging a heavy piece of furniture to the closet for storage.
For a moment, her heart sank; then she heard the faint scraping of talons beyond the door, and the whimpering keen of a bird of prey, exhausted and near death.
"I'm gone, mum," Tam declared, and slipped back up the chimney. That was fine; she'd already paid him for his help, and she had told him that she didn't want him around if things began to get dangerous. Since that had suited the boy just perfectly, the bargain had been easy to strike.
It had been much harder to persuade Maddy and her little army of partisans to stay behind. The loyalty of children ran deep, and somehow she had earned it. Only promising them that they could stand guard over the Chapel when she and T'fyrr were safely inside had kept most of them from following her and Tam over the rooftops.
She turned back toward the door, expecting a complicated lock_perhaps even a mage-made lock_and strained her senses for the music that magic-touched things held within them.
Silence.
Nor was there any other sign of a lock, complicated or otherwise.
In stunned surprise, she tried the doorknob automatically.
It turned easily, and swung open without so much as a creak.
There wasn't much light, but there was enough for her to see the crumpled, feather-covered figure lying on the floor of the closet, head enveloped in a giant, scuffed hood.
A surge of grief and rage enveloped her, and she flung herself down on her knees beside him, fearing she was too late.
The head turned blindly toward her as she reached for him. "I-ale?" came a whisper, a mangled version of her name as spoken from around the cruel device they had clamped on his beak. "I_a_oo?"
"Its me; I've come to get you out of here." The fastenings on the gag and the hood weren't even complicated; she had the former off and flung into a corner. The hood followed it, and she gathered him into her arms with her throat constricted with tears. He was so weak! He had no primaries at all, and few secondaries; he wouldn't have been able to fly out of here even if he'd had the strength.
I'll worry about how to get him out of here after I get him under protection. And to do that, she needed his permission. "T'fyrr," she said urgently, "I need to put barriers against any more magical attacks on you. May I?"
He wrapped his own arms weakly around her and nodded, too spent to even ask her what in the world she thought she was doing. She reached both arms around behind his back and clasped her silver bracelet with her free hand under cover of the embrace, and concentrated hard for a moment.
With a silvery glissando, the Elven protections she wore slithered over him as well, wrapping him in a cocoon of power, identical to hers.