Trapped lop-6

by James Alan Gardner

  Swallowing hard, I walked toward the sound… which is to say I began to clamber around the chairs, drums, and glockenspiels that separated me from the back corner.

  Meanwhile, the music continued — a two-octave scale up and down, then repeated. The second time through was quicker and more even… as if the player had gained confidence after warming up. I, on the other hand, was losing confidence by the moment the closer I got to the harp, the more clearly I could see that the instrument was playing itself. No one sat on the stool; if there were hands moving over the strings, those hands were invisible.

  All right, I thought, it is now time to leave. This wouldn't be fleeing with my tail between my legs; I simply intended to seek advice from someone who understood pseudo-supernatural events better than I. The Caryatid and Myoko weren't close at hand, but surely some don in residence had occult experience. Chen Fai-Hung, for example: he was always boasting how he'd studied at Core Haven for three years, and made it to the second last round for Elemarch of Molybdenum. Fai-Hung might not know as much about uncanny phenomena as a sorcerer or psionic, but he must have learned more on the subject than I did in Differential Geometry 327.

  Therefore I took a step backward, intending to scuttle from the room; but before I could retreat farther, a sob wrenched out of the harpist who wasn't there. A heartbroken, heartbreaking sound. At the same time the music shifted, from scales into a simple melody plucked one note at a time.

  I didn't recognize the tune — something in Dorian mode, which always strikes me as bittersweet: close to a minor key but more melancholy, with just a tiny B natural of wistful hope. When the piece began, it had the same hesitations and unevenness as the first scale I'd heard, some strings plucked too loudly and others too soft. A few strings were also a shade out of tune… almost always the case with an instrument that spends much of its time unused.

  But now, as the playing continued in the darkened room, the hesitations grew fewer and the music flowed more smoothly. Even the tuning got better — the melody never stopped, but I heard the low creak of tuning pegs, as if the harpist possessed a third hand for tuning while the other two hands played. Over the music, the weeping resumed… until gradually, the soft bleak sobs blended with the notes like someone humming through her tears.

  Her tears. Yes: the humming sounded female. When I realized that, I couldn't help speaking again. "What's wrong? Are you hurt? Can I help?"

  The music bloomed in response… losing all amateurish lack of control, the sound swelling in the blackness: melody, harmony, and counterpoint. A sorrowful song played by a virtuoso, something ancient and rare from an aching soul — as if I were hearing the distillation of all the music someone wished she could have played, a lifetime's worth of longing compressed into a single grieving requiem.

  It ended with a minor chord that stretched the full range of the harp, a simultaneous clutch of notes that could never have been played with a mere ten fingers. Then, as the strings continued to echo, a single piercing shriek burst from the emptiness above the harpist's stool — a cry filled with pain and the anger of death. I hurried forward as if there were some way I could help the unseen woman… but when I reached out to where she should be, my hands passed through icy nothingness: a cold so fierce it wracked my fingers and chilblained my arms.

  I jerked back quickly, shivering despite my winter coat. Shoving my bare hands into my armpits, I squeezed them tight, trying to force some heat into my flesh. As I did, I caught movement in the shadows beside me… and though it terrified me to look, I turned my gaze directly at the harp.

  Slowly, very slowly, liquid trickled down a string. In the dark it looked black, but I knew it had to be red. Deep scarlet.

  Blood. How else would a haunting end?

  More beads of black crimson appeared out of nowhere, forming at the top of each string and dribbling down into shadow. Within seconds the whole harp was seeping, blood oozing from the air, flowing freely, pattering onto the floor. I felt a drip splash on the toe of my boot… and that's when I finally ran.

  3: EATING HER CURDS-AND-WHEY

  I stood outside Annah Khan's room, mustering the nerve to knock. Not that I was concerned about disturbing her at one in the morning — our musicmaster Annah was don of Ladies North 3, and in that capacity, she was obliged to accept crises during the wee hours. Heaven knows, I had people banging on my door after midnight several times a month: boys who wanted help with their lessons… boys who'd just had their first wet dream and were sure it was some horrid disease… boys who desperately needed to know if I believed in God (whichever particular God was weighing on their minds)… not to mention the future Duke Simon Westmarch who owned his own stethoscope and woke me at least once a week to listen to his heartbeat because this time he was positive it "had gone all funny." If I had to cope with such nonsense, why should any other don have it easy?

  But Annah wasn't just any other don: she was a don who'd nursed a crush on me since we both arrived at the school ten years ago. A crush of operatic proportions, but conducted pianissimo. I'd catch her staring across the study hall with her huge brown eyes, wearing an expression so intense it seemed she might devour me… but when I talked to her, she barely answered. The few times I'd asked if she'd like to go for a walk — because she was certainly worth the attention, thirty-two years old and delicately lovely, like porcelain the color of coffee — she'd invented awkward excuses and practically fled the room. My psychic friend Myoko contended Annah didn't want me as a man at all; Annah wanted me as an object of Tragic Yearning, someone she could pine over from a distance while writing torrid sonatas for unaccompanied violin.

  Therefore, knocking on Annah's door in the middle of the night was fraught with implications. In my then mental state (muddled with drink, and a touch hysterical over what I'd seen in the music room), I imagined she might react to my arrival in some extravagant way: screaming in terror perhaps… or shouting, "At long last, darling!" and throwing herself into my arms… or even letting the clothes drop from her body in naked surrender, a tear trickling down her cheek as she waited for me to slake my bestial appetites.

  Or, I told myself, she could react like a real human being instead of some drunk's sexual fantasy — which meant she'd glare and say, "What the hell do you want at this hour?"

  I knocked.

  There was no noise within. All the rooms in the school's dormitories were moderately soundproof and the dons' suites deliberately more so — when a student and don had a heart-to-heart chat/sob/confession, it was best if such confidences weren't overheard by prying ears in the hall. The extra soundproofing was also useful when a don wanted to entertain company of a romantic nature without providing an audible show for snickering teenagers; and the teenagers liked the soundproofing too, since it meant they could sneak around after hours without the dons hearing. (Feliss Academy discreetly indulged interstudent liaisons. These were, after all, children of privilege; as education for later life, they were expected to dally with one another, provided they kept such affairs clandestine and Took Sensible Precautions.)

  Ten seconds after I knocked, a light came to life on the other side of the door. I could see it through the peephole — not that the peephole was designed to let visitors see into the room, but I was standing in pitch blackness so it was easy to notice any illumination coming through the fish-eye lens. Annah had lit a candle or lamp. I composed myself in front of the peephole, trying to look sober and respectable… but I gave that up as soon as I realized the hall was too dark for Annah to see me, no matter how much she peeped through the viewer. All she could do was open the door; and a few seconds later, that's what she did, holding a rose-glassed kerosene lamp in her hand.

  She'd been sleeping in a long white nightgown — not excessively sheer, but modest white cotton simply isn't equipped to hide warm dark skin completely. Over the top of the nightie, she'd donned a thicker brown robe but hadn't bothered to tie the belt; no doubt she'd assumed the knock came from one of her girls, some fi
fteen-year-old with a sore throat or a broken heart. Why would Annah fret about modesty under such circumstances?

  When she saw it was me, she froze. Like a stage actor doing a double take: eyes going wide, body turning rigid. It almost made me laugh… but my nerves were so strained from the ghost-harp concerto, the laugh would have come out shrill. I swallowed the hysteria and simply said, "Annah."

  My voice seemed to break the spell. Annah's hand flew to the lapel of her robe, ready to pull her clothes hastily shut; but then she let go, as if there was no point in covering up: as if some irredeemable damage had already been done. Instead, she moved the lamp toward my face, peering intently into my eyes. She said nothing. Just waiting.

  "Annah," I said again. "I saw… I was coming back tonight and I heard… in the music room…"

  Bollixed and tongue-tied. Wondering what thoughts were going through Annah's mind. She surely smelled the ale on my breath, not to mention on my coat and hair. I had the galling apprehension she saw me as a drunk turned amorous, on the prowl for some slap-and-tickle; I pictured her previous infatuation with me twisting into disdain, and though I'd been exasperated by her puppy-eyed glances, I didn't want to lose them this way. "Someone was playing the harp," I said. "A ghost. And there was blood. On my boot."

  Stupidly, I held out my foot for her to examine. She never took her eyes off my face. My skin was turning clammy, my tongue stumbling over words. "I came here to ask if you knew about the ghost… or if there's someone in your classes, a girl who plays the harp, and maybe, if she died tonight, cared enough about the music that she'd play one final piece—"

  Annah reached out and put her fingers to my mouth. Touching my lips, silencing me. Then she took my hand… drew me into the room… shut the door… set down the lamp… wrapped her arms around me and pulled my head into the curve of her shoulder where I blubbered into her hair.

  Some time later, I pulled away. "Sorry," I said. I touched her hair where I'd pressed my face against it: the thick dark strands were damp with my ridiculous tears. "Sorry," I said again.

  "Shock," she replied. A soft voice, but controlled. The Caryatid once told me Annah had trained as a singer, until some vocal coach informed her she'd never amount to much because she didn't have enough resonance in her head. Small sinuses or something. It tells you a lot about Annah that she took the coach's word and gave up immediately. It also tells you a lot that she turned straight to the violin instead… and to the oboe, the cello, the sitar, the celeste…

  Music, one way or another. She'd known what she wanted to do with her life — what her calling was. I envied her.

  Annah stepped back and studied me. For a moment, I worried she would revert to her habit of silent staring… but then she said, "Yes. Just shock. Delayed reaction. You think you saw a ghost?"

  "I didn't see it; I heard it. In the music room."

  She took another step back, then sat gracefully in a chair covered with a throw-cloth of red and yellow satin. Her eyes never left my face. "Tell me," Annah said.

  I did… settling into a wooden rocking chair padded with a white wool quilt. It was positioned opposite Annah's seat — probably where girls from the dorm sat when pouring out their hearts. I felt sheepish being there. But she wasn't listening like a don forcing herself to endure the woes of a whiny adolescent; her eyes were bright and glistening, her whole body leaning forward to catch every word. And why not? A ghost in her music room. A man who came babbling to her door. A chance to embrace him and give silent comfort. Deliriously operatic stuff. However soberly she sat, her face shone.

  "So," I finished a few minutes later, "I came to you. Because it's your music room. You'd know if there'd been hauntings before. But I also wanted to ask who played the harp. In your classes. If there's a girl so devoted to the instrument that when she died… that her ghost… not that I believe in ghosts… that some effect would make it look as if her ghost had gone to play all the things she never had time to learn…"

  I stopped because Annah was nodding. "There is such a girl. Who cares deeply. Who has a gift. When she arrived at the school, she already played a number of instruments, so I set her to learning the harp. It's such a lovely instrument; I wanted to hear it played by someone who wouldn't just go by rote. Rosalind's still just starting, but you can tell—"

  "Rosalind?" I interrupted. "Rosalind Tzekich?"

  "Yes. You know her?"

  "She's in my Math C."

  Rosalind Tzekich. Sixteen years old, very quiet, very intense. Perhaps the same sort of girl Musicmaster Annah had been at that age, except that Rosalind had black hair cut in bangs, a Mediterranean complexion, and a plumpish body she hid under shapeless frayed-hem dresses. Compared to the stylish fashion-plates who populated our school, Rosalind stood out like a sack of onions… though she could probably buy and sell the entire families of many of our students.

  Rosalind's mother, Elizabeth Tzekich — known also as Elsbeth the Bloody, Our Lady of Shadows, or Knife-Hand Liz — was the outlaw terror of Southern Europe… or at least one of the terrors, since Hispania, Romana, Hellene, and the Balkans all seemed to cultivate criminal organizations as profusely as olives. (The Black Hand. The Hidden Cry. The Circle of Friends. Each specializing in some form of ugliness, from extortion to smuggling to kidnap.)

  Mother Tzekich ran a band of thugs called the Ring of Knives. They made their money through sleazy mod-and-aug operations in back alleys from Gibraltar to Jerusalem. Did you want a poison gland implanted in your tongue so you could murder someone with a single kiss? Did you want a winning smile and a constant halo of pheromones? Or maybe you just fantasized about looking younger, more svelte, better endowed. Your dreams could come true for a price: through surgery, through sorcery, through OldTech procedures that rewrote your genes. A number of patients died on the operating table, a number came out disfigured or blighted, and plenty emptied their purses for no results whatsoever; but a sufficient tally of customers got enough of what they wanted that the Ring of Knives grew and prospered.

  Ambitious Mother Tzekich didn't rest on her laurels. After making a name in the slice'n'dice trade, the Ring branched into other realms of business: forcibly seizing enterprises run by other criminal clans. The resulting gang war shook the Mediterranean. Soon it escalated farther afield, as the Ring fought to expand east into Asia and west to the Americas. In skirmish after skirmish, the Ring never suffered a significant defeat — partly because Tzekich had a genius for choosing the right targets, and partly because the Ring decked out its people with subcutaneous armor, enhanced reflexes, and even (so the rumors went) genes spliced from nonhuman sources. Animals and aliens, plants and ETs.

  So the Ring of Knives gashed its way around the planet. Rival gangs fought back without mercy: dons and capos and czars would stop at nothing to see Elizabeth Tzekich dead. All this time, Rosalind stayed with her mother; but after a close call with a bomb spraying OldTech neurotoxins, the girl had been sent away for her own protection, to a boarding school in Nankeen.

  Then to Alice Springs.

  Then Quito.

  Then Brazzaville.

  Then Port-au-Prince.

  Now it was Feliss. Where the girl was expected to last another month or two before being hustled off in the dead of night, moved to another school on another continent to keep ahead of her mother's enemies. Rosalind's clothes were worn and threadbare because she'd been living out of suitcases since she was thirteen; her soul was worn and threadbare for the same reason.

  As far as I knew, Rosalind had never tried to make friends at our school — why bother when she might be dragged away at any moment? She did her homework as a way to keep busy, but mostly she passed her time staring out the window. In the middle of class I'd glance in Rosalind's direction and she'd be gazing out at bare trees against the winter sky. Perhaps she was wondering if she'd stay long enough to see leaves on those trees; or perhaps she didn't ask such questions anymore: she just disengaged her mind and let minutes or hours roll by. I was glad
to hear she had a passion for music… glad she cared about anything. Rosalind had struck me as a girl who might do nothing but stare out the window her entire life.

  "We should check on her," I told Annah. "To see if she's all right. Do you know which dorm she's in?"

  "Mine," Annah answered. "I asked for her especially. Because she was so good in music. She's just down the hall."

  Annah stood, reaching down the front of her nightgown and pulling out a thin silver necklace. On the end was a pass key, similar to the one in my pocket. (Similar, but not identical — for the sake of propriety, my pass key didn't work on girls' rooms and Annah's didn't work on boys'.) I had to smile at the notion a pass key was so valuable one had to wear it on a chain close to one's heart… but that was just like Annah, going the extra distance to imbue tiny things with dramatic import.

  She ducked her head and lifted off the necklace, squeezing the chain in her fist as she stepped to the door. I rose to follow. Annah turned… and for a moment there was something in the air, something she was going to say or do; I could see it pass through her mind, though I couldn't tell what it was. Maybe she was just going to say she wanted to check on Rosalind alone — to avoid embarrassment if the girl came to the door in her underwear. Or maybe Annah was thinking something quite different. In the end, she simply picked up the rose-glassed lamp and said, "Let's go."

  By the time we knocked on Rosalind's door, tousle-haired heads had appeared up and down the hall. I suppose they'd been wakened a few minutes earlier, by my babbling in Annah's doorway… or perhaps they possessed some instinct for sensing trouble. Whatever the explanation, all the girls on the floor had got up to see what was happening. Now they peered out of their rooms, holding their nighties closed and squinting blearily as if they needed glasses. Most of them did.