The Lyre Thief

by Jennifer Fallon

  A little bemused by Marla’s change of heart, Adrina took a seat as Cadella opened the door and entered the room wheeling a small silver cart with a selection of fruit and pasties laid out, as if she’d been waiting for her mistress’s signal.

  Marla saw Adrina’s doubtful look and smiled. “In this house, if I ring the bell three times, Cadella knows to bring the gold cart. That is the one with the poisoned supper on it.”

  For a moment, Adrina feared Marla was serious, until she caught the smirk on the old slave’s face as she parked the cart beside Marla.

  “Silver cart good, gold cart poison,” Adrina noted. “I’ll remember that.”

  Marla smiled again, a much more genuine smile than Adrina was used to seeing from her mother-in-law, and then she turned to Cadella. “Have some refreshments sent out to the High Princess’s coachman and guards. Let them know we’ll be a while yet, so they might as well relax.”

  “Of course, your highness.”

  Cadella shuffled off, leaving Adrina alone with Marla, a little stunned by the fact that for the first time she could recall, Marla had referred to Adrina as “the High Princess” without lacing the title with enough scorn and sarcasm to smother a small child.

  Chapter

  28

  “IF YOU COULD wish for anything, Aja,” the minstrel asked, “what would it be?”

  Still not used to her assumed name, it took a moment before Rakaia realized Mica was talking to her. She turned from looking out over the moonlit stillness of the mighty Glass River to study the minstrel in the darkness. Out here on the barge the world was silent, but for the soft grunting of the ferryman as he pulled on the rope that spanned the broad expanse of water between Testra and Vanahiem on the southern side. Rakaia still wasn’t sure how Mica had convinced him to cross the river at night, or why he’d offered to do it free of charge.

  All she knew was that Mica had a knack for getting people to do things for him that she would not have believed possible had she not seen it for herself.

  “I don’t really know,” she said, unable to think of any single particular item she wanted for, right at this moment.

  “Then you must be the happiest person alive,” Mica told her.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because you want for nothing.”

  “I have nothing.”

  “And that is why you’re so happy. When you have nothing, you have nothing to fret over losing, either.”

  Rakaia wasn’t sure she agreed with Mica’s latest, somewhat simplistic philosophy—and he had plenty of them, she’d discovered these past few days.

  “I’ll have my wish now,” Irma announced, coming up behind them. She was one of the dancing girls.

  The other one, Olena, was her daughter, something Rakaia was shocked to discover. She couldn’t imagine being a traveling whore with a child you’d then recruit into the business, but neither woman seemed unduly bothered by their career choice. Perhaps it was because they were Medalonian, where a whore was just another profession like any other, taxed and regulated the same way a baker or fishmonger might be.

  Rakaia had thought the women were permanent members of the troupe, but apparently they had joined Mica at the Citadel only a few weeks ago, for the promise that he would grant them a wish whenever they wanted it. Rakaia had no idea why the women would agree to such a ludicrous arrangement, but in the week she’d been a part of Mica’s Marvelous Minstrels, she learned that people came and went in Mica’s life, never staying longer than a few weeks, always leaving—so Mica claimed—happier than when they arrived.

  As if to prove his point, Norn, the juggler, was already on his way back to the Citadel with plans to put together his own juggling troupe. Mica had promised it would happen, and that his new venture would be wildly successful, although how he knew that, or why Norn believed him, Rakaia could not fathom.

  They’d all had a drink to celebrate Norn’s departure, Mica had sung a special song he composed for the occasion, and they had all parted the best of friends several hours ago. It was then that Mica had announced, unaccountably, they would be leaving for Vanahiem tonight, and he was sure, if he offered to sing for them, the ferrymen would agree to launch their barge, despite the late hour.

  “What is your wish, Irma?” Rakaia asked.

  Irma jerked her head in the direction of the burly ferryman pulling on the rope. He was a large young man with a body toned and tanned by long hours hauling the barge across the wide expanse of the Glass River across the current. “Him.”

  Mica smiled. “You want a ferryman?”

  “Not any ferryman,” she said, lowering her voice. “That one.”

  Rakaia looked across at the man, who was chatting to Olena as he worked. The younger woman was leaning against the railing, her hands grasping the polished rail behind her, which thrust her bosom forward, almost as if by accident. The ferryman on the rope couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Good thing the barge is attached to that rope taking us to the other side, Rakaia thought. If he’s meant to be watching where he’s going, we’ll be in Bordertown before he notices.

  “Isn’t he a bit young for you, Irma?” Mica asked. He seemed just as bemused by the request as Rakaia was.

  “I don’t want him for me. I want him for Olena.”

  “Why would you waste your wish on something for your daughter?”

  “Because that’s what mothers do,” Rakaia said, with a sudden flash of insight. She’d never really considered, until now, what risks Sophany might have taken to get her daughter safely out of the harem before the king learned the truth about Rakaia’s paternity. What deal had she done with Naveen Raveve that would make him put her daughter’s name forward to marry a Hythrun border lord over all the other harem mothers jostling for the same privilege? She pulled her shawl around her shoulders, not at all certain it was simply the cold breeze that gave her chills.

  Oh, Mama, what did you do?

  “The Fardohnyan is right,” Irma said. “Olena wants a husband, and she likes that one.”

  “But you don’t know anything about him,” Mica pointed out.

  “He has a job,” Irma said. “And a good heart.”

  “You don’t know that. He might beat her senseless every night as soon as they’re married and throw you out into the street.”

  “That’s Olena’s part of the wish. You have to make sure he’ll be good to her.”

  Appalled by the naïve superstition of the Medalonian woman, Rakaia opened her mouth to scoff at the very suggestion, but Mica seemed to take the request quite seriously. “Do you mind if we wait until we’ve docked on the other side?”

  “Just do your thing, little man,” she said, “and we’ll be even.”

  Irma turned and walked back to where Olena was leaning against the railing and began chatting to the ferryman again, who seemed in no need of any wish-granting to be utterly enchanted by the young whore.

  That wasn’t what intrigued Rakaia, though. She was far more interested in what Irma had said to Mica. “What did she mean about being even?”

  “Irma did me a favor at the Citadel.”

  “And she really believes you’re going to repay her for this favor by granting her a wish?”

  “I will grant her wish. And Olena’s.” He studied the ferryman in the moonlight for a moment as the man leaned forward and pulled the rope, hand over hand, to inch them ever closer to the lights of the dock on the other side, and then he shrugged. “I’d aim a little higher, if it were my choice, but to each his own.”

  “How?” Rakaia asked. “You can’t grant wishes. You’re not Harshini.”

  Mica smiled, looking quite smug. “I will sing to him in such a persuasive fashion, he will have no choice but to propose to Olena on the spot and offer his new mother-in-law a home with them for as long as she wants it.”

  Rakaia laughed aloud at that. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You’ll see,” Mica said, supremely confident he was right.
“Would you like to accompany me?”

  “What?”

  “You said you played the lyre passably well.”

  “I lied,” she said. “In truth, I’m not very good at all. I used to threaten to have my instructor whipped if he didn’t give my mother glowing reports of my progress.”

  “Ah, another crack in the veil.”

  “What veil?”

  “The veil behind which you hide, Aja. The veil behind which lies the reason someone like you, who acts like she is a noblewoman born and bred, finds herself penniless and on the road with someone like me for company. The reason someone like you, who counts the demon child among her acquaintances, has nowhere to go and no one to watch over her.”

  “How would you even know what a noblewoman acts like?” Rakaia asked, hoping to divert Mica’s questions with questions of her own. She hadn’t told Mica anything about who she was—or had been—because she really wasn’t sure she could trust him. She liked him well enough. She liked being around him. But, sweet as he was, pretty as he was, she suspected he was simply a clever con-man, swindling his way through the world on the promise of wishes he couldn’t deliver. She wasn’t about to entrust someone like that with her life story.

  “I’ve known a few princesses quite well in my time.”

  “Really?”

  “One, then,” he admitted. “But she was more than enough princess for anybody to deal with.”

  “Who was she?”

  “You tell me your secret, I’ll tell you mine,” he said, his eyes reflecting the moonlight as they fixed on her with an uncomfortable level of scrutiny.

  “Maybe,” she said, looking away. “One day.”

  “Then I shall await that day with great anticipation,” he said, lowering his lyre case from his shoulder. “Here, why don’t you show me something you can play?”

  “Now?” she asked as he opened the case and pulled out his instrument. It was a battered old thing. The sound-chest was made out of turtle shell. The two raised arms appeared to be made from some kind of animal horn that curved both outward and forward, connected near the top by a carved wooden yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, made the bridge, which transmitted the vibrations of the strings and gave the instrument its tone. The strings were yellowed and made of various types of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, to a tailpiece below the bridge where the bone tuning pegs were located. It was nothing like the gilded instrument she had learned to play in the palace, and yet she’d never known any instrument to make such deliciously sweet music.

  But it seemed too old and fragile to loan to an amateur like her. She was almost afraid to touch it, for fear of damaging the instrument beyond repair.

  “Aren’t you worried about the moisture getting to it on the river?”

  Mica shook his head. “This old thing is more robust than you think,” he said, thrusting it at her. “Here. Play me a tune.”

  With some reluctance, Rakaia took the lyre, cradling it in her left arm against her chest so she could pluck the strings with her right hand. Mica’s bone plectrum was tied to the corner of the instrument with a red ribbon. She took it up and cautiously ran it across the strings to see how it sounded.

  Mica applauded her loudly. “Brilliant! A true talent has been discovered here tonight! Bards will sing of this moment! Parents will tell their—”

  “If you’re going to make fun of me, I’ll toss your wretched lyre into the river.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mica said, his apology somewhat negated by the grin on his face. “Play something.”

  “Play what?”

  “I don’t know. What did your instructor at the palace teach you?”

  “I never said I grew up in a palace.”

  “My mistake, Aja. Please, play something your personal lyre instructor taught you while you were scrabbling to stay alive in the slums of Talabar.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at him. But she was suddenly self-conscious about her skill—or lack if it—in front of the minstrel.

  “Do you promise not to laugh?”

  “No.”

  She decided to ignore that. He was baiting her now, however gently, and she didn’t want to disappoint him. He was right about that much. Even though she now counted the demon child among her acquaintances, without Mica and his band of minstrels—what was left of them, at least—she would be on her own. Rakaia was still too unfamiliar with the world outside the sheltered security of the Talabar harem walls to contemplate making her way back to Fardohnya across hundreds of miles and two foreign countries on her own, in the hope that her uncle was still prepared to offer her safe haven.

  She closed her eyes and tried to recall the Fardohnyan folk song her instructor had been trying—with little success—to teach her before she left Talabar. She had only plucked at a few notes before Mica placed his hand over hers, silencing the strings.

  “Try using a second note with the note of the melody,” he suggested. “Add a little strum between phrases, every now and then.”

  “You say that like I know how.”

  “I will teach you,” he offered softly, his head close to hers, his eyes staring into her eyes as if he could see through her lies and into her very soul. And then he straightened up and glanced toward the shore. “We’ll be there soon. Do you know how to play The Moneylender’s Daughter?”

  Rakaia nodded. It was a simple tune most novices—even in Fardohnya—learned in their first lesson.

  “Then that will have to do.” Turning his back on her, Mica addressed the ferryman. “A song for your heroic efforts, my lad,” he announced theatrically.

  The ferryman didn’t answer him. He was too busy trying to impress Olena.

  Amused, Mica turned to Rakaia and nodded. She began to pluck out the notes of the simple melody as Mica’s honey-sweet voice rang out over the water, singing of love, of hearth and home and family, in a way that brought tears to Rakaia’s eyes. The words he sang were not the words of the bawdy song she knew, but something Mica must have composed himself. They left her longing for someone to love so badly there was a physical ache in her belly at the thought of it.

  As his voice faded away, Rakaia brushed the tears from her eyes in time to see the ferryman let the rope go and drop to one knee in front of Olena, who nodded happily in response to a question Rakaia was too far away to hear, and then the young whore threw her arms around the ferryman and began kissing him furiously.

  Irma watched the young couple for a moment and then turned and nodded to Mica; a simple thank-you for a promise delivered.

  “No,” Rakaia said, shaking her head.

  “I told you so.”

  “You staged this. You’re playing a prank on me.”

  “If you say so,” Mica said, taking the lyre from her. He carefully placed it back into its case and then slung it over his shoulder again before making his way across the barge to congratulate the lucky couple . . . and perhaps remind the ferryman that his hands belonged on the rope and not on Olena as they neared the Vanahiem dock.

  Rakaia watched them, almost as if she were caught in a rising fog, not sure where she was or what had just happened, only certain that if what she had just witnessed wasn’t a prank staged by the minstrels to amuse themselves at her expense, there was something far deeper, and darker, about Mica the Minstrel. If she had any brains at all, Rakaia suspected, she’d get far, far away from him while she still could.

  But then Mica turned and smiled at her and beckoned her forward to join him and Irma congratulating Olena and the ferryman on their betrothal and all thought of leaving Mica or running away from him faded from her mind.

  Chapter

  29

  THE SANCTUARY MOUNTAINS were named for the hidden Harshini fortress they had protected for several thousand years. Located on the border of Karien and Medalon, they were home to a number of scattered settlements of woodcutters and fur trappers on the Medalonian side, and a few hardy souls who preferred to live far fr
om the trappings of civilization.

  The closest settlement to Sanctuary used to be a village named Haven, where R’shiel té Ortyn—daughter of the Harshini king, Lorandranek, and the Medalonian peasant girl, J’nel—was born. The village no longer existed. As the demon-melded dragon she rode swooped down over the remains of the village, R’shiel could see nothing but snow-covered shapes that might once have been houses, with the occasional charred skeleton of a stone chimney poking through.

  The destruction of the village pained her. It had been destroyed to hide the secret of her birth from those seeking to find the demon child. She had no memory of the place. She was only days old when Joyhinia Tenragan offered to take her off the villagers’ hands after her mother died giving birth to her.

  Fly on, Dranymire, she told the demon controlling the dragon meld. There is nothing for us down there.

  As you wish, the demon replied, banking left and upward toward the mountain’s peak. R’shiel watched the small village clearing disappear behind them. It wouldn’t be long, she knew, before the forest reclaimed the site completely and there would be no trace left of her birthplace.

  Maybe that was a good thing. She didn’t want people finding it and turning it into a shrine to something they thought she was—a burden of being the demon child she loathed. R’shiel had come to accept who she was these past ten years or so, but she had never been happy about it. It wasn’t her fault the gods had decided the only way to deal with Xaphista was to create a being capable of destroying the demon who had managed to elevate himself to the status of a god. And having achieved her divine purpose before she turned twenty-one, she was quite certain the gods had not given much thought to what she was meant to do for the rest of her unnaturally long Harshini lifetime.

  So she’d kept her head down and stayed as inconspicuous as she could while she sought out Death. She had completed the quest the gods created her for, and now she had one of her own. R’shiel had traveled the world, had seen wonders most people had only heard about in stories, as she tried to force Death to face her. It was ironic that it was here, only a few miles from where she was born, that she would finally find what she was looking for.