Her smile burst out again making her look closer to eight than eighteen. “Nobody sees me. Besides, he was busy listening to the wind.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and made a hooting noise. “There was good wind for listening last night,” she added confidentially.
While I was trying to make sense of what she’d said, Auri finished the last of her bread and clapped her hands excitedly. “Now play!” she said breathlessly. “Play! Play!”
Grinning, I pulled my lute out of its case. I couldn’t hope for a more enthusiastic audience than Auri.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
A Place to Burn
“You look different today,” Simmon observed. Wilem grunted in agreement.
“I feel different,” I admitted. “Good, but different.”
The three of us were kicking up dust on the road to Imre. The day was warm and sunny, and we were in no particular hurry.
“You look … calm,” Simmon continued, brushing his hand through his hair. “I wish I felt as calm as you look.”
“I wish I felt as calm as I looked,” I mumbled.
Simmon refused to give up. “You look more solid.” He grimaced. “No. You look … tight.”
“Tight?” Tension forced laughter out of me, leaving me more relaxed. “How can someone look tight?”
“Just tight.” He shrugged. “Like a coiled spring.”
“It’s the way he’s holding himself,” Wilem said, breaking his usual thoughtful silence. “Standing straight, neck unbent, shoulders back.” He gestured vaguely to illustrate his points. “When he steps, his whole foot treads the ground. Not just the ball, as if he would run, or the heel, as if he would hesitate. He steps solidly down, claiming the piece of ground for his own.”
I felt a momentary awkwardness as I tried to watch myself, always a futile thing to attempt.
Simmon gave him a sideways look. “Someone’s been spending time with Puppet, haven’t they?”
Wilem shrugged a vague agreement and threw a stone into the trees by the side of the road.
“Who is this Puppet you two keep mentioning?” I asked, partly to draw the attention away from myself. “I’m about to die of terminal curiosity, you know.”
“If anyone could, it would be you,” Wilem said.
“He spends most of his time in the Archives,” Sim said hesitantly, knowing that he was touching on a sore subject. “It would be hard to introduce you since … you know… .”
We came to Stonebridge, the ancient arch of grey stone that spanned the Omethi River between the University and Imre. Over two hundred feet from one bank to another, and arching more than sixty feet at its peak, Stonebridge had more stories and legends surrounding it than any other University landmark.
“Spit for luck,” Wilem urged, as we began to climb one side, and followed his own advice. Simmon followed suit, spitting over the side with a childlike exuberance.
I almost said, “Luck has nothing to do with it.” Master Arwyl’s words, repeated sternly a thousand times in the Medica. I tasted them on the tip of my tongue for a minute, hesitated, then spat instead.
The Eolian lay at the heart of Imre, its front doors facing out onto the city’s central cobblestone courtyard. There were benches, a few flowering trees, and a marble fountain misting water over a statue of a satyr chasing a group of half-clothed nymphs whose attempt at flight seemed token at best. Well-dressed people milled around, nearly a third carrying some sort of musical instrument or another. I counted at least seven lutes.
As we approached the Eolian the doorman tugged at the front of a wide-brimmed hat and made a nodding bow. He was at least six and a half feet tall, deeply tanned and muscular. “That will be one jot, young master,” he smiled as Wilem handed over a coin.
He turned to me next with the same sunny smile. Looking at the lute case I carried he cocked an eyebrow at me. “Good to see a new face. You know the rules?”
I nodded and handed him a jot.
He turned to point inside. “You see the bar?” It was hard to miss fifty feet of winding mahogany that curved through the far end of the room. “See where the far end turns toward the stage?” I nodded. “See him on the stool? If you decide to try for your pipes, he’s the one you want to talk to. Name’s Stanchion.”
We both turned away from the room at the same time. I shrugged my lute higher onto my shoulder. “Thank you—” I paused, not knowing his name.
“Deoch.” He smiled again in his relaxed way.
A sudden impulse seized me, and I held out my hand. “Deoch means ‘to drink.’ Will you let me buy you one later?”
He looked at me for a long second before he laughed. It was an unrestrained, happy sound that came leaping straight from his chest. He shook my hand warmly. “I just might at that.”
Deoch released my hand, looking behind me. “Simmon, did you bring us this one?”
“He brought me, actually.” Simmon seemed put out by my brief exchange with the doorman, but I couldn’t guess why. “I don’t think anyone can really take him anywhere.” He handed a jot to Deoch.
“I’ll believe that,” Deoch said. “There’s something about him I like. He’s a little fae around the edges. I hope he plays for us tonight.”
“I hope so too,” I said, and we moved inside.
I looked around the Eolian as casually as I could manage. A raised circular stage thrust out from the wall opposite the curving mahogany bar. Several spiraling stairways lead to a second level that was much like a balcony. A smaller, third level was visible above that, more like a high mezzanine circling the room.
Stools and chairs ringed tables throughout around the room. Benches were recessed into niches in the walls. Sympathy lamps were mixed with candles, giving the room a natural light without fouling the air with smoke.
“Well, that was cleverly done,” Simmon’s voice was brittle. “Merciful Tehlu, warn me before you try any more stunts, will you?”
“What?” I asked. “The thing with the doorman? Simmon, you are jittery as a teenage whore. He was friendly. I liked him. What’s the harm in offering him a drink?”
“Deoch owns this place,” Simmon said sharply. “And he absolutely hates it when musicians suck up to him. Two span ago he threw someone out of here for trying to tip him.” He gave me a long look. “Actually threw him. Almost far enough to make it into the fountain.”
“Oh,” I said, properly taken aback. I snuck a look at Deoch as he bantered with someone at the door. I saw the thick muscles in his arm tense and relax as he made a gesture outside. “Did he seem upset to you?” I asked.
“No, he didn’t. That’s the damnedest thing.”
Wilem approached us. “If the two of you will stop fishwiving and come to table, I will buy the first drinks, lhin?” We made our way to the table Wilem had picked out, not too far from where Stanchion sat at the bar. “What do you want to drink?” Wilem asked as Simmon and I sat down and I settled my lutecase into the fourth chair.
“Cinnamon mead,” Simmon said without stopping to think.
“Girl,” Wilem said in a vaguely accusatory way and turned to me.
“Cider,” I said. “Soft cider.”
“Two girls,” he said, and walked off to the bar.
I nodded toward Stanchion. “What about him?” I asked Simmon. “I thought he owned the place?”
“They both do. Stanchion handles the music end of it.”
“Is there anything I should know about him?” I asked, my near catastrophe with Deoch having sharpened my anxiety.
Simmon shook his head. “I hear he’s cheerful enough in his own right, but I’ve never talked with him. Don’t do anything stupid and everything should be fine.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically as I pushed my chair back from the table and stood.
Stanchion had a medium build and was handsomely dressed in deep green and black. He had a round, bearded face and a slight paunch that was probably only noticeable because he was sitting. He smiled and motioned me forward with the hand
that wasn’t holding an impressively tall tankard.
“Ho there,” he said cheerily. “You have the hopeful look about you. Are you here to play for us tonight?” He raised a speculative eyebrow. Now that I was closer, I noticed that Stanchion’s hair was a deep, bashful red that hid if the light struck him the wrong way.
“I hope to, sir,” I said. “Though I was planning to wait for a while.”
“Oh, certainly. We never let anyone try their talent until the sun is down.” He paused to take a drink, and as he turned his head I saw a golden set of pipes hanging from his ear.
Sighing, he wiped his mouth happily across the back of his sleeve. “What do you play then, lute?” I nodded. “Have any idea what you’ll use to woo us?”
“That depends, sir. Has anyone played ‘The Lay of Sir Savien Traliard’ lately?”
Stanchion raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat. Smoothing his beard with his free hand, he said, “Well, no. Someone gave it a whirl a few months ago, but he bit off more than he could swallow whole. Missed a couple fingerings then fell apart.” He shook his head. “Simply said, no. Not lately.”
He took another drink from his tankard, and swallowed thoughtfully before he spoke again. “Most people find that a song of more moderate difficulty allows them to showcase their talent,” he said carefully.
I sensed his unspoken advice and was not offended. “Sir Savien” is the most difficult song I had ever heard. My father had been the only one in the troupe with the skill to perform it, and I had only heard him do it perhaps four or five times in front of an audience. It was only about fifteen minutes long, but those fifteen minutes required quick, precise fingering that, if done properly, would set two voices singing out of the lute at once, both a melody and a harmony.
That was tricky, but nothing any skilled lutist couldn’t accomplish. However, “Sir Savien” was a ballad, and the vocal part was a counter melody that ran against the timing of the lute. Difficult. If the song was being done properly, with both a man and a woman alternating the verses, the song was further complicated by the female’s counter harmony in the refrains. If it is done well, it is enough to cut a heart. Unfortunately, few musicians could perform calmly in the center of such a storm of song.
Stanchion drank off another solid swallow from his tankard and wiped his beard on his sleeve. “You singing alone?” he asked, seeming a bit excited in spite of his half-spoken warning. “Or have you brought someone to sing opposite you? Is one of the boys you came in with a castrati?”
I fought down laughter at the thought of Wilem as a soprano and shook my head. “I don’t have any friends that can sing it. I was going to double the third refrain to give someone the chance to come in as Aloine.”
“Trouper style, eh?” He gave me a serious look. “Son, it’s really not my place to say this, but do you really want to try for your pipes with someone you’ve never even practiced with?”
It reassured me that he realized how hard it was going to be. “How many pipes will be here tonight, roughly?”
He thought briefly. “Roughly? Eight. Maybe a dozen.”
“So in all likelihood there will be at least three women who have earned their talents?”
Stanchion nodded, watching me curiously.
“Well,” I said slowly. “If what everyone has told me is true, if only real excellence can win the pipes, then one of those women will know Aloine’s part.”
Stanchion took another long, slow drink, watching me over the top of his tankard. When he finally set it down he forgot to wipe his beard. “You’re a proud one, aren’t you?” he said frankly.
I looked around the room. “Isn’t this the Eolian? I had heard that this is where pride pays silver and plays golden.”
“I like that,” Stanchion said, almost to himself. “Plays golden.” He slammed his tankard down onto the bar, causing a small geyser of something frothy to erupt from the top. “Dammit boy, I hope you’re as good as you seem to think you are. I could use someone else around here with Illien’s fire.” He ran a hand through his own red hair to clarify his double meaning.
“I hope this place is as good as everyone seems to think it is,” I said earnestly. “I need a place to burn.”
“He didn’t throw you out,” Simmon quipped as I returned to the table. “So I’m guessing it didn’t go as badly as it could have.”
“I think it went well,” I said distractedly. “But I’m not sure.”
“How can you not know?” Simmon objected. “I saw him laugh. That must mean something good.”
“Not necessarily,” Wilem said.
“I’m trying to remember everything I said to him,” I admitted. “Sometimes my mouth just starts talking and it takes my mind a little bit to catch up.”
“This happens often, does it?” asked Wilem with one of his rare, quiet smiles.
Their banter began to relax me. “More and more often,” I confessed, grinning.
We drank and joked about small things, rumors of the masters and the rare female students who caught our attention. We talked about who we liked in the University, but more time was spent mulling over who we didn’t like, and why, and what we would do about it given the chance. Such is human nature.
So time passed and the Eolian slowly filled. Simmon gave in to Wilem’s taunting and began to drink scutten, a powerful black wine from the foothills of the Shalda mountains, more commonly called cut-tail.
Simmon showed the effects almost immediately, laughing louder, grinning wider, and fidgeting in his seat. Wilem remained his same taciturn self. I bought the next round of drinks, making it large mugs of straight cider for each of us. I responded to Wilem’s scowl by telling him that if I made my talent tonight, I would float him home in cut-tail, but if either of them got drunk on me before then, I would personally thrash them and drop them in the river. They settled down an appreciable amount, and began inventing obscene verses to “Tinker Tanner.”
I left them to it, retreating into my own thoughts. At the forefront of my mind was the fact that Stanchion’s unspoken advice might be worth listening to. I tried to think of other songs I could perform that were difficult enough to show my skill, but easy enough to allow me room for artistry.
Simmon’s voice drew me back to the here and now. “C’mon, you’re good at rhymes …” he urged me.
I replayed the last bit of their conversation that I’d been half listening to. “Try ‘in the Tehlin’s cassock,’ ” I suggested disinterestedly I was too nervous to bother explaining that one of my father’s vices had been his propensity for dirty limericks.
They chortled delightedly to themselves while I tried to come up with a different song to sing. I hadn’t had much luck when Wilem distracted me again.
“What!” I demanded angrily. Then I saw the flat look in Wilem’s eyes that he only gets when he sees something he really doesn’t like. “What?” I repeated, more reasonably this time.
“Someone we all know and love,” he said darkly, nodding in the direction of the door.
I couldn’t see anyone I recognized. The Eolian was nearly full, and over a hundred people milled about on the ground floor alone. I saw through the open door that night had settled outside.
“His back is to us. He’s working his oily charm on a lovely young lady who must not know him … to the right of the round gentleman in red.” Wilem directed my attention.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, too stunned for proper profanity.
“I’ve always figured him for porcine parentage myself,” Wilem said dryly.
Simmon looked around, blinking owlishly. “What? Who’s here?”
“Ambrose.”
“God’s balls,” Simmon said and hunched over the tabletop. “That’s all I need. Haven’t you two made nice yet?”
“I’m willing to leave him be,” I protested. “But every time he sees me he can’t help but make another jab in my direction.”
“It takes two to argue,” Simmon said.
“Li
ke hell,” I retorted. “I don’t care whose son he is. I won’t go belly-up like some timid pup. If he’s fool enough to take a poke at me, I’ll snap the finger clean off that does the poking.” I took a breath to calm myself, and tried to sound rational. “Eventually, he’ll learn to leave me well enough alone.”
“You could just ignore him,” Simmon said, sounding surprisingly sober. “Just don’t rise to his baiting and he’ll tire of it soon enough.”
“No,” I said seriously, looking Simmon in the eye. “No, he won’t.” I liked Simmon, but he was terribly innocent at times. “Once he thinks I’m weak he’ll be on me twice as thick as the day before. I know his type.”
“Here he comes,” Wilem observed, looking casually away.
Ambrose saw me before he made it to our side of the room. Our eyes met, and it was obvious that he hadn’t expected to see me there. He said something to one of his ever-present group of bootlickers and they moved off through the crowd in a different direction to claim a table. His eyes moved from me, to Wilem, to Simmon, to my lute, and back to me. Then he turned and walked to the table his friends had claimed. He looked in my direction before he took his seat.
I found it unnerving that he didn’t smile. He had always smiled at me before, an over-sad pantomime smile, with mockery in his eyes.
Then I saw something that unnerved me even more. He was carrying a sturdy squared case. “Ambrose plays lyre?” I demanded of the world in general.
Wilem shrugged. Simmon looked uncomfortable. “I thought you knew,” he said weakly.
“You’ve seen him here before?” I asked. Sim nodded. “Did he play?”
“Recited, actually. Poetry. He recited and kind of plucked at the lyre.” Simmon looked like a rabbit about to run.
“Does he have his talent?” I said darkly. I decided then that if Ambrose was a member of this group, I didn’t want anything to do with it.
“No,” Simmon squeaked. “He tried for it, but …” He trailed off, looking a little wild around the eyes.
Wilem lay a hand on my arm and made a calming gesture. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to relax.
The Name of the Wind tkc-1 Page 42
