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blisters to be there. The 'sizzle' came from someone dropping real holy water into one of the incense
burners while everyone was watching the show; I watched him and I saw the steam. And the smoke
when the 'demon' left the body is another one of our tricks! The howl came from someone frightening a
peafowl up in one of the towers either that, or they've trained it to cry on command." She spread her
hands wide, some of the hot rage gone from her expression, replaced by determination and a colder fury.
"Some of that Padrik could learn to do on his own, but most of it was done with accomplices. That
means that not only is someone teaching him, someone ishelping him! And I am going to find out who it
is!"
Kestrel nodded, remembering she had told him that the Gypsies swore never to reveal their tricks to
outsiders. This was an even greater betrayal of thatoath than teaching Gypsy magic tohim would be, by
an order of magnitude. He was, after all, a Gypsy by marriage, and he suspected that if he really needed
to learn the tricks, Gwyna could get permission from the head of her Clan to teach him. But to teach them
to a complete outsider worse, to one who was using those tricks to promote an agenda that would
ultimately be very bad for other Gypsies that was the worst of betrayals.
"N-not only wh-who," he told her, "butwhy . P-Padrik is already hurting n-nonhumans and F-Free
B-Bards; h-how long b-before he s-starts on G-Gypsies?"
"Good point." She straightened her skirts. "We've done enough business already that no one will
question our packing up early in fact, if I drop the right remarks as I pay our tithe as we leave, we
might even be considered very pious for not making too much of a profit from the faithful."
"S-so wh-what are we d-doing?" he asked, opening the back of the wagon again, to let them both out
modestly, through the door, rather than crawling out the window over the bed.
"We're hunting information," she told him, as he took the reins of the mares, and she counted out the tithe
from the bag of coins she'd hidden under her skirt. "Who and what and why."
When they paid the reckoning for the next week in advance, the innkeeper was positively faint with
gratitude. Kestrel felt very sorry for him; apparently he'd lost two more patrons who had simply not been
able to conduct the business they needed. The nonhuman gem-carvers these men wished to patronize
had left in the summer, and the quality of the gems that the humans who had bought theirbusiness
produced was apparently inferior to the original work.
So the innkeeper was only too happy to learn thattheir business was prospering and that they were
prepared to stay some time. But then Robin took him aside for a long discussion in hushed whispers, and
the man looked so alarmed that Kestrel wondered what on earth she could be telling him. When she
returned, she had a set of written directions in her hand and a smug expression on her face.
"I thought with a name like 'The Singing Bird' this place had to have some sort of connection to the Free
Bards or the Gypsies or both," she said, as she took his arm and led him from the inn into the street. "I
said as much and frightened him half to death until he realizedI was both a Free Bard and a Gypsy and
not some sort of informer or blackmailer. Then he was frightened because he thought I was going to
demand something unreasonable from him." Her tone grew a little bleaker. "I'm afraid that there are
already some musicians in gaol here on the charge of 'perverting public morals,' and I think he expected
me to ask for help in getting them out."
"Are th-they F-Free B-B-Bards?" Kestrel asked nervously, keeping a discreet eye out for anyone who
might be following or listening to them.
"No, they can't be," she told him. "They've been in gaol since early fall, and we would have heard
something if they were Free Bards. Someone would have missed them and passed the word. No, I'm
afraid they're just ordinary musicians with bad luck. Or else they simply didn't pay enough attention to
what was going on with the High Bishop. Wylie says they were arrested for singing 'The Saucy Priest'
right at one of the street preachers."
Kestrel shook his head sympathetically.They hadperformed the same song any number of times, and
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