Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett [89]
“I wa—want to be certain,” he said. “Are you…are you a vampire?”
Granny Weatherwax appeared not to hear the question.
“Where’s Hodgesaargh with that tea?” she said.
The falconer came in with a tray.
“Nice to see you up and about, Mistress Weatherwax.”
“Not before time.”
The tea slopped as she took the proffered cup. Her hand was shaking.
“Hodgesaargh?”
“Yes, mistress?”
“So you’ve got a firebird here, have you?”
“No, mistress.”
“I saw you out huntin’ it.”
“And I found it, miss. But it had been killed. There was nothing but burnt ground, miss.”
“You’d better tell me all about it.”
“Is this the right time?” said Oats.
“Yes,” said Granny Weatherwax.
Oats sat and listened. Hodgesaargh was an original storyteller and quite good in a very specific way. If he’d had to recount the saga of the Tsortean War, for example, it would have been in terms of the birds observed, every cormorant noted, every pelican listed, every battlefield raven taxonomically placed, no tern unturned. Some men in armor would have been involved at some stage, but only because the ravens were perching on them.
“The phoenix doesn’t lay eggs,” said Oats at one point. This was a point a few points after the point where he asked the falconer if he’d been drinking.
“She’s a bird,” said Hodgesaargh. “That’s what birds do. I’ve never seen a bird that doesn’t lay eggs. I collected the eggshell.”
He scuttled off into the mews. Oats smiled nervously at Granny Weatherwax.
“Probably a bit of chicken shell,” he said. “I’ve read about the phoenix. It’s a mythical creature, a symbol, it—”
“Can’t say for sure,” said Granny. “I’ve never seen one that close to.”
The falconer returned, clutching a small box. It was full of tufts of fleece, in the middle of which was a pile of shell fragments. Oats picked up a couple. They were a silvery gray and very light.
“I found them in the ashes.”
“No one’s ever claimed to have found phoenix eggshell before,” said Oats accusingly.
“Didn’t know that, sir,” said Hodgesaargh innocently. “Other-wise I wouldn’t have looked.”
“Did anyone else ever look, I wonder?” said Granny. She poked at the fragments. “Ah…” she said.
“I thought p’raps the phoenixes used to live somewhere very dangerous—” Hodgesaargh began.
“Everywhere’s like that when you’re newborn,” said Granny. “I can see you’ve been thinking, Hodgesaargh.”
“Thank you, Mistress Weatherwax.”
“Shame you didn’t think further,” Granny went on.
“Mistress?”
“There’s the bits of more than one egg here.”
“Mistress?”
“Hodgesaargh,” said Granny patiently, “this phoenix laid more than one egg.”
“What? But it can’t! According to mythology—” Oats began.
“Oh, mythology,” said Granny. “Mythology’s just the folktales of people who won ’cos they had bigger swords. They’re just the people to spot the finer points of ornithology, are they? Anyway, one of anything ain’t going to last for very long, is it? Firebirds have got enemies, same as everything else. Give me a hand up, Mister Oats. How many birds in the mews, Hodgesaargh?”
The falconer looked at his fingers for a moment.
“Fifty.”
“Counted ’em lately?”
They stood and watched while he walked from post to post. Then they stood and watched while he walked back and counted them again. Then he spent some time looking at his fingers.
“Fifty-one?” said Granny, helpfully.
“I don’t understand it, mistress.”
“You’d better count them by types, then.”
This produced a count of nineteen lappet-faced worriers where there should have been eighteen.
“Perhaps one flew in because it saw the others,” said Oats. “Like pigeons.”
“It doesn’t work like that, sir,” said the falconer.
“One of ’em won’t be tethered,” said Granny. “Trust me.”
They found it at the back, slightly smaller that the other worriers, hanging meekly from its perch.
Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wow-hawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. It spent most of its time asleep in any case, but when forced to find food it tended to