"I can see that. Well, I was already going to make a point of looking for that bird, and now you have given me more reasons to do so," he told her. "And you have also given me plenty of reasons to make certain that it doesn't see me!"
Now Ardis rose, full of dignity. "I will not ask you to place yourself in further jeopardy, Visyr," she said solemnly. "If this is Revaner, he is very dangerous. If it is not—well, he may be even more dangerous. Please be careful."
In answer, Visyr flexed his talons, a little surprised at how angry and aggressive he felt. "I am more than a little dangerous myself," he said to her. "And I am also forewarned."
She looked him directly in the eyes for a long moment, then nodded. "Good," was all she said, but it made him feel better than he had since he lost the dagger-thief.
She left him then, and he took his mapping implements and went out to resume his dual duties.
Only to discover that now he couldn't find the damned bird!
He spent several days criss-crossing the city on every possible excuse. He thought perhaps that the Black Bird might have decided to lurk in places he had already mapped in order to avoid him—then he thought it might be in places hehadn't mapped yet. But no matter where he looked for it, there was not so much as an oversized black feather. It was as if the creature knew he was trying to find it and had gone into hiding. On the other hand, if all of their suppositions were true, and it was in league with the knife-thief, perhaps it had the suspicion that he was hunting it. At the very least, it now knew that there was danger in being spotted from above, and might be taking steps to avoid that eventuality.
Frustrated, he spent all of one evening trying to reason the wayhe thought a crazed human in bird form might.
It made him a little less queasy to think of it as a hunter as he tried to ignore the type of quarry it was taking; he came from a race of hunters himself, and it wasn't all that difficult to put himself in that mindset.
When one hunts a prey that is clever, particularly if one is hunting a specific individual, one studies that individual, of course. He'd done that himself, actually; the trophy-ringhorn that he'd wanted to take to Syri as a courting-gift had been a very canny creature, wily and practiced in avoiding Haspur hunters. It knew all of the usual tricks of an airborne hunter, and it would race into cover at the hint of a shadow on the ground. He'd had to spend time each day for months tracking it down, in learning all of its usual haunts and patterns, and in finding the times and places where it was most vulnerable.
Now, the Black Bird was probably not that clever a hunter itself. This creature was hunting prey that was not aware it was being hunted, nor were humans as versed as that ringhorn in avoiding a hunter, but the Black Bird still needed to find the moment that its prey was most vulnerable. It couldn't hunt inside buildings, and if it was going to hunt again but didn't want to be seen, it had to come out on the rooftops eventually. There was no other possible hunting ground for it.
That was how a Haspur would hunt in the same situation. But unlike a Haspur, the Black Bird might well have decided that there was another hunter that might be stalkingit. So it was torn between two courses of action: don't hunt at all, or find another way to hunt.
It still has to find prey. It still has to find the prey's most vulnerable moments. But somehow it is managing to do so when I won't see it.
That would be very difficult to do, unless—
Unless it is hunting at night.
Itwas black, and perfectly well camouflaged by darkness. And if the records were to be trusted, there had been plenty of killings at night, including at least one possible killing here in Kingsford, between the first one he'd witnessed and the second. That meant it had hunted by night before, which meant it could probably see just fine at night.
Which, unfortunately, I cannot. But I am not limited to my own unaided eyes, which is something that I doubt it has thought of.
Hecould fly at night, he just didn't like doing so, because unlike T'fyrr, his own night-vision was rather inferior by Haspur standards. Once night fell, all of his advantage of superior vision vanished; he couldn't even see as well as some humans he knew. That was why he always got back to the palace before dusk, and never went out at night if he could help it. It was a weakness he had never liked about himself, so when the opportunity had arisen for him to compensate for it, he had. He had something in his possession that he hadn't had occasion to use yet, something that would render the best of camouflage irrelevant at night.
He chuckled to himself as he thought of it. There hadn't been any need to use it in Duke Arden's service, because it wasn't at all suited for his mapping duties. No one here knew he had it. And he rather doubted that anyone in all of this Kingdom had ever evenseen this particular device.
He reached immediately for a bell-pull and summoned one of his little attendant pages. Talons were not particularly well suited to unpacking, but clever little human hands were.
At his direction, the boy who answered his summons dug into the stack of packing-boxes put away in a storage closet attached to his suite. The boxes were neither large nor heavy; the few that were beyond the boy's strength, Visyr was able to help with. In less than an hour, the page emerged from the back of the closet with an oddly-shaped, hard, shiny black carrying-case.
The page looked at it quizzically as he turned it in his hands. "What is this?" he asked, looking up into Visyr's face. "What is it made of? It's not leather, it's not pottery, it's not stone or fabric—what is it?"
Visyr didn't blame the boy for being puzzled; the material of the case resembled nothing so much as the shiny carapace of a beetle, and the case itself was not shaped like anything the boy would ever have seen in his life. "I'll show you what it is," he said to the youngster, taking the case from him and inserting a talon-tip into the lock-release. "Or rather, I'll show you what's inside it. The outside is a Deliambren carry-case for delicate equipment; what I wanted is inside. But you have to promise that you won't laugh at me when I put it on. It looks very silly."
"I won't," the boy pledged, and watched with curiosity as Visyr took out his prize. Indeed, prize it was, for arguing with the Deliambrens for its design and manufacture had fallen upon Visyr himself, and it was with no small amount of pride that he knew these very same devices would be in use by Guardians and rescuers, thanks to him.