T'fyrr would never have known how long he slept if Father Ruthvere hadn't told him.
"Three days?" he said incredulously. "Three days?"
The Priest nodded, and T'fyrr shook his head. "I believe you, but_"
"Well, you woke up long enough to eat and_ahem," Father Ruthvere said, blushing. "But other than that, you slept. Nightingale, too," he added as an afterthought. "Though she stayed awake a bit longer than you did."
Probably healing me. That would account for how well I feel and the memories of music in my dreams.
T'fyrr sighed and roused his feathers. "Well, what has been happening? Are we still under siege?" he asked. "Or are our enemies satisfied to have us bottled up and out of the way?"
Father Ruthvere played with his prayer beads. "The latter, I suspect," he said after a moment. "You obviously cannot press charges against your captors since you are a fugitive yourself, and as for Nightingale_" He shrugged. "The nonhumans are in an uproar, but there is no one to lead them and Theovere_"
"And Theovere is near death."
They all turned as one, T'fyrr feeling the blood draining from his skin and leaving him cold everywhere there were no feathers.
Harperus stood in the door to the tiring room, face drawn and as pale as his hair, his costume little more than a pair of plain trews and an embroidered shirt. "Thank the Stars you're awake at last," he said without preamble, as both Nightingale and T'fyrr stared at him, trying to make some sort of sense out of his first statement. "Theovere was attacked and is in a coma, his physicians are baffled_" He held up his hands as T'fyrr mantled what was left of his wings in anger. "Wait, let me tell this from the beginning."
T'fyrr subsided. "Make it short, Old Owl," he rumbled. "None of your damned Deliambren meanderings!"
Harperus nodded. "Shortly, then. The marvelous music box broke down completely this morning, and no amount of fiddling by Lord Levan would get it working again. The High King sent pages looking for you, and found me instead, and I gave him an earful."
The Deliambren crossed his arms over his chest, his dour expression reflecting a smoldering anger beneath the stoic surface. "I told him about your vanishing, the warrants that he had signed, the attacks and the kidnapping. I told him that now that the warrants had been signed, by his hand, neither you nor Nightingale had any protection or rights under the law. He was very_stunned."
T'fyrr only growled; he had lost all patience with the once-great High King about the time his captors had pulled out his third primary.
I am not entirely certain I even want to help him now....
"I told him the Church had you in sanctuary," Harperus continued, "convinced that both of you were innocent of any wrongdoing. And I showed him how all those things that you had been hinting at were true, all the abuses of nonhumans, all the things that had been happening to human and nonhumans alike. I guessed that he might have been so thoroughly shaken up that he might actually listen instead of dismissing it all."
"Well, was he?" T'fyrr asked. It would take a miracle_
But evidently that miracle had occurred. "Enough to issue orders immediately revoking the warrants on you two, and to take the Seneschal and a gaggle of secretaries into a corner and start drafting interkingdom edicts granting basic rights to all peoples of all species," Harperus said with a note of triumph. But his triumph faded immediately. "That was when, according to the Seneschal, that mysterious woman struck. He called for breakfast; it arrived, and with it a lace handkerchief and a message. Theovere picked it up, opened it, and read it before any of the bodyguards even thought to look at it first_and he collapsed on the spot." Harperus shook his head. "I looked at him, and I'm baffled. There's no contact poison I know of that would work that way, and he shows no other signs of poisoning other than being in a coma no one can wake him from."
T'fyrr looked aghast at Nightingale, who only nodded, her lips compressed into a thin line. "If our enemy can hire mages to pluck T'fyrr from the sky, she can certainly hire a mage to write a note-spell to try to disable or kill Theovere. There was nothing on the note when they looked at it, right?"
"Right," Harperus replied, looking at Nightingale with respect and a little awe. "But it didn't kill him_"
"It doesn't have to," she pointed out. "If he is in a coma, he could stay that way indefinitely. The Advisors can reign as joint Regents on the pretense that someday he might wake up. This could go on for years. Come to think of it, that's better than killing him for their purposes. If a new High King was selected, they'd all be out of their positions."
"But what can we do?" T'fyrr asked, puzzlement overlaid with despair. Now_we have no choice. Nightingale and I may have a day or so to escape while our enemies obtain new warrants for us, but what of all the nonhumans in the Twenty Kingdoms? What is there left for them but to gather what they can and flee? "We are not physicians, and even if we were, surely the King's own doctors know best what is good for him."
"The King's doctors are as baffled as I am," Harperus replied. "And I am baffled by the message I received less than an hour ago." He raised his eyebrows and looked straight at Nightingale as if he suspected her of some duplicity. "The messenger seemed human or Deliambren, but had_unusual eyes and ears. And he spoke in riddles."
The corner of Nightingale's mouth twitched. "Go on," she said. "That sounds like an Elf to me. I happen to know there's one_ah_in the area."