* * *
DARIEN had told Rianna that there were no female poets, but that didn’t explain the woman who stood at the center of the room and sang as her companion strummed a harp. Her sharp face was upturned to the lamplight, her eyes focused somewhere past them, past all the people there. The voice that rose from her frail frame was surprisingly powerful. It was a song of lost love.
Darien had sung a love song, too, a masculine rendition that Rianna was certain he had written for her. Marlen had stood at a respectful distance behind him, contributing only melodies with the harp and his voice. The words still echoed in her head:
Snow Queen of my heart
a dark night slowly falls
and if I lose you in shadow
I will ever sing alone.
His eyes had never met hers, but the music strummed her bones as if she were a harp, or her nerves were the strings. She was by now expert at keeping her face impassive.
Now this poet, Lin—she gave no other name—was singing, with her strong voice and the dress that was too big for her. The song was wistful, as if it were sung by an older woman looking back from the end of life. It brought tears to Rianna’s eyes, though those had probably not been far off.
At the conclusion of her song, Lin was met with silence—and then, slowly, a flurry of gracious applause that almost immediately petered out, like a brief drizzle of rain. It occurred to Rianna that while she was fascinated by the idea of a female poet, others in that room might feel differently.
Lin and her partner took a graceful bow. Rianna’s father came forward to shake their hands, then announced, “Thanks to all our esteemed performers—and good luck in the contest!”
More clapping, just as controlled as before. Rianna felt proud of her father, for he cut a fine figure tonight, and she knew many women were watching. She had decided that her best course was simply to ask him about his and Callum’s strange behavior. No doubt there was a reasonable explanation.
Likely she had occupied herself with the business of Master Beylint so she would be distracted from her own deception, and Ned.
“Now for a surprise,” Master Gelvan was saying. “We have here a guest of honor, returned from long travels abroad, who has agreed to sing for us tonight. Words cannot express how deeply honored we are to have him with us in our home. I present to you Eivar’s greatest Seer—the one and only Valanir Ocune.”
A greying man in green came forward with a bow to Master Gelvan. Rianna barely had time to register her shock—both that the great man was here, after so many years abroad, and that her father had concealed the fact from her. More secrets, she thought. She looked at Ned and saw that he was grinning. When their eyes met, they both nearly laughed aloud. How often had they talked of their longing to see Valanir Ocune perform, just once? And now, without any warning, he was here.
Yet as Valanir Ocune unslung his harp and adjusted the instrument in his arms, the applause that greeted him was just as measured and careful as before. Rianna wondered why.
* * *
“THE old bastard,” Marlen muttered. “So he’s back.”
“That old bastard is only one of the most famous men in the world,” Darien said dryly. He was feeling pleasantly warmed by the success of their performance, however weak the applause had been. A strange aura hung about the room tonight.
And now Valanir Ocune was here. It wasn’t fair—it was just the sort of thing that could eclipse their hard work altogether—but Darien was pleased that he would get to hear the master perform. During Darien’s years at the Academy, Valanir had been little more than a legend to the students. For more than a decade he wandered in foreign lands … performing for the sultan of Kahishi, it was said; vanishing for months at a time into the desert.
“Yes, but…” Marlen’s color was high, and he spoke with a rare excitement. “Valanir Ocune and Court Poet Gerrard are rivals. Sworn enemies. And both here.”
Darien thought that was a little dramatic, but didn’t have a chance to say so: a hush was flooding the room. Valanir, eyes alight, had begun to speak.
“It is good to be home.” Each word, shaped with the precision of a rock carving, falling into a breathless silence. “This will be my first performance on this side of the mountain pass. The first, and perhaps my last. Who can say?”
Darien raised an eyebrow. He and Marlen exchanged glances. His last?
“I give thanks to Master Gelvan for hosting me here tonight,” Valanir went on. “Here in this graceful home, which has so much of Tamryllin in it. The art, the music … and tonight, royalty and the Court Poet himself.”
Inevitably, many guests’ eyes shifted to observe the king and queen, the Court Poet beside them. Nickon Gerrard’s face carefully expressionless.
“I wrote this song imagining the roses and the sea winds of Tamryllin, as I took shelter in a tent in the eastern mountains during the journey from Kahishi,” said Valanir Ocune. He had begun to strum his harp, lightly, softly. “This song,” he said, “is dedicated to my home.”
* * *
“DID you know?” Leander hissed in her ear.
“No,” said Lin. It would do no good to explain, and the music was beginning. She wanted to hear every note, every word. Despite the thing he had said which had made songs seem irrelevant. The Red Death is in Sarmanca.
And the ring that she had hastily slid into her pouch, hardly believing it was real. The ring of Valanir Ocune.
Try to think well of me, he’d said, as if her opinion of Eivar’s greatest Seer, the man who had played for kings and sultans on countless occasions, was worth even a drop in the ocean.
The music had begun. Tears welled in Lin’s eyes, and she could not even bring herself to move a hand to wipe them away.
Though the melody had already cut into her, Lin made herself pay attention to the words. It was a love poem written to a city, dazzling white by the sea. Dedicated to my home. She felt a tug of disappointment. The music was all she had imagined, but this banal sentiment was not what she expected of Valanir Ocune.
That, at least, was her thought during the first moments of the song. And then it changed.
* * *
MARLEN may have understood before anyone else in that room what Valanir Ocune was about to do. With the exception of Nickon Gerrard, whom Marlen suspected had known from the start.
It was coded in symbols for anyone versed in such things: white roses, meaning death. Towers stabbing the sky, an echo of a lament for a city destroyed.
But Marlen did not think it was because of his education that he detected the early signs of what would come to be called “Valanir’s crime” in the streets of Tamryllin. It was simply his nature to know the darkness in others. Sometimes, that was all he did know.
So while it might have been shocking when the idyllic summer in a white city darkened, Marlen was ready. He had already stopped watching Valanir Ocune as he sang, focusing his gaze on Nickon Gerrard instead. The Court Poet barely moved a muscle—it was impressive.
Who will sing for my city? sang Valanir. A minor key had crept into the music, almost without warning. A seamless transition.
Where the great ones are gone
and the music a shadow
of what was once our pride.
No matter the color
of the branch—silver, copper or gold,
there is one surety:
It is false. It is false.
It was as far as he got. Marlen would later wonder if there had been more to the song, or if this was meant to be the conclusion, the place where the threads of music and words intersected and knotted together.
It was hard to tell, because the next moment saw Valanir pinioned fast between guards who had advanced through the crowd as onlookers gasped. But it was only when one of the guards punched the Seer’s face with an audible crack that the silence of the room was shattered and people began to flee, crashing into one another in their haste, like horses urged on by a whip.
CHAPTER
5
The room had changed. Quiet reigned where once there had been the harsh ringing of the guards’ swords. Where above the commotion, there had been the exquisite voice of Nickon Gerrard, coiling and rising.
How strange, Rianna thought, that the orders for the capture of Valanir Ocune should come not from the king but from the Court Poet.
But just as abruptly, the chaotic boil died to a simmer. The guards were gone, and so—noticeably—was the Court Poet, the king and queen, and Valanir Ocune. Guests were filing out the door with impressive efficiency and speed. Rianna wondered what it was they feared—they had done nothing wrong. While Valanir … he had gone beyond the already-serious crime of performing a song that had not been approved.
How far beyond, Rianna was not sure.
Ned had at first put an arm around her, as if to shield her from the unpleasantness going on; Rianna had shrugged him off, annoyed. But her father apparently had the same idea, for he emerged then from the crowds of departing guests, ignoring those who tried to bid him a quick, panicked farewell. It was as if all the rules of etiquette had been abandoned.
“Are you all right?” he asked Rianna.
“Of course,” she said. “But Valanir—what will happen to him?”
Master Gelvan’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know, Rianna. Maybe nothing.”
“Impossible,” said Ned, who looked pale. “For a crime like this…”
“There is no way we can know what will happen, Ned,” said Master Gelvan, cutting him off.
Rianna understood then that he was protecting her. How much does he hide from me? And now she remembered the note Callum had slipped to him earlier.
“I need some air,” she said, and disengaged herself from Ned, from her father. They watched her worriedly but did not follow. She meant to go to the garden, to lose herself there among the roses until the last of the guests had gone. To think about all that had happened—with Valanir but also with her father.
That was when she saw Lin, the woman who had performed earlier. She had dropped to her knees, her skirts crumpled around her on the floor, her face caught in her hands. As if she had been knocked there, like a doll.
Timidly, Rianna approached her. Other guests were flowing busily around Lin as if she were a stone in a stream as they headed toward the door. Lin showed no signs of moving.
When she thought herself within earshot, Rianna called her name. Nothing. Rianna tried again, and again met with no response. Finally, she touched the other woman’s shoulder and said her name again.
Lin jumped to her feet like a spring, startling Rianna and nearly throwing her backward. Her face was a mask of anger. Then it cleared abruptly, and she said, “It’s you. Mistress Gelvan. I … I am sorry.”
Rianna could see now that Lin’s face was ashen. She thought of how Valanir had complied so calmly with his arrest, how he had departed the Gelvan home surrounded by guards with his head high—almost as if he were their commander. But for the fact that two of them held his arms roughly back from his body, while others shoved him from behind.
No need to be gentle, Nickon Gerrard had said.
“We lost a good man tonight,” said Lin.
“Why?” said Rianna. “What will happen to him?”
It was beginning to frustrate her, this question. And the female poet, who had already intrigued her, struck her as someone who might answer her questions. Who might understand, as the men did not, that she did not need protection.
Lin stared into the distance. “He broke two laws,” she said. “Both serious. But one—one could be considered treason.”
The room around them was growing quiet.
“Treason—how?”
She could sense, more than see, that the other woman was drawing from reserves of patience to supply an answer. “The contest, the Silver Branch, all these were created by the monarchy in centuries past,” Lin said. The rhythm of her words called up a memory of her recitation, earlier that same evening. “Any power a poet has in this land must ultimately have been bestowed by the Court Poet, who is himself an agent of the king.”
“And Valanir Ocune was saying that poets must find the real Branch—instead of settling for the contest prize,” Rianna said, trying to understand. This world, which had so abruptly entered her home, was Darien’s world.
“The Branch of Edrien, borne from the Path of the Otherworld,” Lin said solemnly. “Yet surely … surely that was a metaphor. He can’t mean…” she stopped.
“The metaphor will destroy him,” said a new voice. Marlen had come swaggering up to them, a glass of wine in his hand. He was smiling crookedly, as if this were all a joke.
Rianna fell back a little, not liking this new incarnation of the man she had thought of as Darien’s polite, retiring friend. Why is he smiling?
As if he sensed her revulsion, Marlen suddenly became serious. “This will be seen as rebellion,” he said. “An attack on the way things are done. Lin, you know what that means.”
The look that passed between them was unreadable to Rianna. A long pause, and then Lin said, “For me, it was always about the music. Not winning.”
“How like a woman to say something of that sort,” said Marlen, the unpleasant smile returning. “Everything we do is about winning. How would Valanir have become who he is, without that?”
Something cold overtook Lin’s eyes. She straightened. “Is that so, great lord?” Her voice musical with contempt. “Tell us, then: what will you become?”
His smile too fixed, Marlen responded with a violent flick of his wrist, upturning his glass of wine on the floor. A sunburst of red splashed the pale floor tiles. Without even glancing down at his handiwork, he loped off and away from them.
Now Ned spoke. Rianna had not even sensed him coming up beside her. “What was that?”
The rage seemed to have drained from Lin; she now looked weary. Once again, she was small, her figure lost in a dress that did not quite fit. “I’m not even sure.”
Master Gelvan had reached them, too. Rianna wondered what he thought of the crimson puddle that was spreading on the floor. How carelessly it had been flung—a mark of disrespect to this house.
Yet her father seemed unconcerned, did not even glance down, though she knew it was in his fastidious nature to care very much about the state of the tiles. Instead his attention was focused on the poet who remained. “My lady,” he said, addressing Lin. “I am not well versed in Academy matters, but if I understand correctly, your career might have been unfairly cut short tonight. The shock must be great. You are welcome to stay the night here, in our home, if that would please you.”
Rianna glanced at her father in surprise. Cut short?
Lin looked grave. “You are kind,” she said. “So kind, and have already done so much for me by allowing me to perform in your home.” She straightened again. “I will not impose upon you any longer, and in any case, I must find my partner.”
“Very well,” said the merchant gravely. “Please consider this, however: my daughter Rianna is now at the age where some tutoring in poetry and music would be of great benefit. And I noticed her interest in it tonight. Would you be so kind as to return in the morning, and we will discuss your availability, and your fee?”
So he had noticed her interest in the performances, Rianna thought. Often it was easy to think her father was too involved in his business affairs to observe details like that.
Lin bowed low, and her eyes looked now as they had when she sung earlier that night. Warm, wistful. “It would be an honor.”
“Thank you,” Rianna cut in, and herself bowed, though she was unaccustomed to the gesture.
Lin nodded, looking preoccupied. Letting the hem of her skirts drag in the wine that Marlen had spilled, she drifted away toward the door. “Now where is that drunkard,” Rianna thought she heard the other woman mutter, before she was out of earshot. Leaving the three of them. The family.
She had a sudden conviction that she was not meant to b
e here.
“Avan, thank you for thinking of me,” she said, and hugged her father. “Tonight has been … upsetting. May I have a few moments in the garden alone? Please?”
Though she had not addressed him directly, Ned bowed his head. “Whatever you need, always.”
He looked so solemn and unhappy. Impulsively, she hugged him, too. The pain she felt on his behalf transmuted, for now, into a kind of excitement. It was the events of the night, she decided. And seeing Darien sing a love song that he had written specially for her, and watch her in her green dress from across the room.
* * *
MARLEN felt a pang of regret that he had spilled out his wine: the merchant’s servants had cleared away the decanters from all the tables, and he was left with an empty glass. When really—despite his dedicated efforts in the course of the evening—he was simply not drunk enough. His gait was positively steady as he made his way to the front door.
Most of the guests had departed, but not quite all; and there were enough alcoves and shadowed corners in this room in which people might take shelter, hold conference with one another. Events of such magnitude must be mulled, made sense of, even on a sweetly scented midsummer night. Particularly because for some, they might present an opportunity.
Marlen’s first thought was to find Darien, but it had since occurred to him that his friend, in his accustomed fashion, had probably chosen to take advantage of the chaos. Seeing his own opportunity there.
With one song, Valanir Ocune had upset the balance of everything for the poets of Tamryllin in this year of the contest. Marlen knew it, even without his father there to point it out, as he would undoubtedly have done.
Wine was not enough, in truth.
“Ah, my lord Marlen. The one. The only.” It was a voice that had been trained, though was unmistakably dulled with drink. Marlen turned and saw that Leander was slumping, his harp banging ungracefully against his thighs. Posture was important for a poet: in bearing a harp, and in song.
“I can’t argue with that, I suppose,” said Marlen, though the “lord” reference was uncomfortably near to Lin’s ringing contempt. Enviously, he noted that the other man still had some wine, a white-gold vintage of the north. Leander was familiar to him, and Marlen had sensed in him a weakness even as a student. He was someone who could easily be manipulated, thought Marlen, because he was never sure who he was.
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