This would not be the first time she had built herself such a network. Children were never regarded as threatening by adults, but street-brats were wise beyond their years and knew how to listen for anything that might be of value. The nice thing about children was. that they tended to stay loyal to the person who hired them. They might be wise beyond their years, but they lacked the experience that taught them double-dealing. Children still believed, in their heart of hearts, in playing fair.
Servants, too_they're the other invisibles. I'll show up at the kitchen doors, clean but very shabby. I'll ask to play in return for food. The Courts of Kings might boast the cream of entertainers, but the servants never saw it, and any chance for a little entertainment of their own usually was snatched at. Kitchen gossip often reflected the doings of the great and powerful long before many of their masters knew about it. So long as she pretended not to notice, she would probably get an earful.
Raven never did learn that lesson, silly boy. He would always start asking questions rather than letting servants babble to each other.
She would be just as invisible as a servant or a street urchin; just another common tavern-musician. There weren't many Free Bards who traveled all the way to Lyonarie; it was a long way from Rayden, where the group first came to be organized, and Free Bards had their routines like anyone else. Likely no one would even recognize the knot of multicolored ribbons on her sleeves as anything other than decoration. Even if they did know her for what she was, well, the Guild had made it difficult for a Free Bard to work in Rayden, and the Church had done the same in Gradford, so it made sense for someone to come this far afield for work.
I look like a Gypsy and there is no disguising that, but that might work for me rather than against me. People like things that are a bit exotic; it gives them a taste of places they'll never see, a kind of life they'll never lead.
Gypsies didn't like cities much, which also might mean she would not be recognized as one. Ah, well. It was always a case of playing odds being a Gypsy.
And if she was recognized, and it caused her trouble_well, she would deal with that when she saw what cards were in her hand.
The donkey suddenly gave a frightened bray and reared back against the lead-rope, trying to dig all four hooves into the pavement. The rope scraped her palm and she tightened her grip automatically as she looked around for what danger might have alarmed him_but a sudden whiff of powerful odor told her that he had simply reacted to another aspect of a city that she hated. There was no mistaking that charnel reek as it wafted into her face: blood and feces, urine and fear.
She put her hat back on her head and soothed him with her free hand as she continued to pull his lead, gently but firmly, until he started walking again. His eyes rolled, but he obeyed her. She couldn't blame him for balking; she'd have done the same in his place. He might even have scented a relative in that reek.
Or rather, an ex-relative.
The warehouses gave place to something else, and now she knew why she had seen so many carts laden with smaller beasts on this road. This was the district of slaughterhouses and all that depended on them.
She held the donkeys halter firmly under his chin as he fought to escape, shivered and rolled his eyes. There wasn't anywhere he could go, and the press of traffic on all sides was enough to keep him moving. Nightingale wished she had taken thought to cover her mouth and nose with a neckcloth as so many around her were doing_she needed both hands to control the donkey, and her kerchief was in her pocket.
The reek of the slaughterhouses and holding pens was not all that came drifting by on the breeze. There were other, equally unsavory smells_the stench of the leather-workers' vats, the effluvium of the glue-makers' pots, the pong of garbage- and dung-collectors' heaps. Fortunately there was something of a real current of moving air here, and it ran crossways to the road; as soon as they were out of the immediate area, the worst of the smell faded, diluted by distance.
But now the slaughterhouse odor gave way to new odors, or rather, older ones. Nightingale winced and tried to barricade herself against a stench that was both physical and mental. Her stomach heaved, and she tasted bile in the back of her throat.
Mighty God. Even animals wouldn't live like this. Even flies wouldn't live like this! And why does the Church allow this? There is a question for you!
Only the poorest would live here, so near the slaughterhouses and the dreadful stench, the flies, and the disease_and the tenement houses lining the road bore ample testament to the poverty, both monetary and spiritual, of those living within. The houses themselves leaned against each other, dilapidated constructions that a good wind would surely send tumbling to the street. Drunken men and women both, wrapped in so many layers of rags and dirt it was hard to tell what sex they were, lay in the alleys and leaned against the houses. Filthy children crowded the front stoops, big bellies scarcely covered by the rags they wore, scrawny limbs showing that those bellies were the sign of malnourishment and not of overeating. They, too, lay about listlessly on the steps, or sat and watched the passing traffic, too tired from lack of food to play. The scream of hungry babies joined the sound of commerce on the road; Nightingale resolutely closed her ears to other sounds, of quarrels and blows, of weeping and hopelessness. This was new; poverty was always part of a city, but never starvation, not like this. It was one more evidence of King Theovere's neglect, even here, in the heart of his own land and city.
I can't do anything about this_at least, I can't do more than I'm already planning to do. I can recruit some of my children from these_I can feed as many as my purse will permit. She salved her conscience with that; there was too much here for even every Gypsy of every clan to correct.
She sighed with relief as more and sturdier buildings took the place of the tenements. More warehouses, mills for cloth, flour and lumber_and something that Nightingale had never seen at firsthand among humans before, although she was familiar enough with the Deliambren version, which they called "manufactories."
Here, in enormous buildings, people made things_but not in the way they were accustomed to make them in villages and towns elsewhere. People made things together; each person performed a single task in the many stages of building something, then passed the object on to the next person, who performed another task, and so on until the object was completed. Every example was like every other example; every chair looked like every other chair, for instance, and every pair of trews like every other pair of trews.The system worked very well for the Deliambrens, but Nightingale was of two minds about it. It did mean made-goods were much cheaper; no one needed to be an expert in everything, and almost anyone could afford well-made trews or chairs or tea-mugs. But it felt like there was no heart in such goods, and nothing to show that a tea-mug was special....
Ah, what do I know? I am a crafter of music, not of mugs_and I am sure there is still a demand for trews and chairs and mugs made by individuals. The system did the Deliambrens no harm; they took as much pleasure in life and crafting as any other being. Still_