Till the Mountains Turn to Dust (The Chronicles of Eridia)

by J. S. Volpe

In the belly of his black carriage, Reynard slouched bored on a red velvet seat as Saffron, his fuck-of-the-moment, blathered on about some unseeable stain on her taffeta dress.

  Outside, the Amara Theater, their destination, rolled into view. Like a lot of postwar architecture here in Den Demestrion, Röthimar’s capitol, the theater’s ornamentation was extravagant enough to make Reynard’s eyes ache: The façade was one gigantic floral frieze dominated by roses and tulips the size of boulders; the doorframes, windowframes, railings, and cresting were choked with intricately curling viny designs; and crowning the whole mess was a series of slender decorative towers that Reynard thought resembled giant rococo birthday candles. After the privations and horrors of the War of Unification, life was re-expressing itself in a burst of fecundity both literal and figurative, from the record birthrate to outpourings of song and poetry to architectural abominations like this.

  Reynard heaved a silent sigh. Though this wearisome coach ride was nearly over, the evening’s tediousness had only just begun. Saffron would no doubt keep babbling all throughout the concert, and in any case, he didn’t give a squirt of jizz about this ridiculous symphony anyway. He would rather be out carousing or gambling or finding this bitch’s replacement, but his social standing demanded his attendance.

  Fortunately his social standing—a synonym for obscene wealth, really—granted him a private box in the top tier, which meant he could sleep through the damn symphony if he wished. Other possibilities suggested themselves as well: He entertained the notion of banging Saffron the whole show through, commemorating the long-anticipated first performance of the already sacrosanct Unity Symphony with a little unity of a different sort. Alas, even that wouldn’t shut the cunt up, as he well knew. Nothing could.

  As the carriage rattled past the front of the theater, he smirked at the teeming mass of less well-connected and less wealthy attendees bottlenecked at the main entrance. At least he could be glad he wasn’t trapped amid that crush of bodies. He had risen high in the world, higher than ever before, thanks in large part to his shrewd dealings during the war (some of which, admittedly, would get him hanged should they become public knowledge, especially his little wartime arrangement with the orcs).

  At the north end of the building, the carriage turned left down a wide alley that led to the theater’s side door, an entrance reserved for box owners. An instant before the crowd vanished from sight around the corner, Reynard caught a glimpse of a light-brown face topped with black hair that shone bluish in the glow from the solarite street lamps lining Grand Avenue.

  “Stop!”

  Before Metaturk, the coachman, could slow the horses to any appreciable degree, before Saffron could do more than screech, “The fuck?” Reynard threw open the door and leaped out. He raced toward the front of the theater, heedless of the water splashing his silk leggings as his black troll-hide boots pounded through puddles left over from the rain earlier in the evening.

  He rounded the corner and scanned the crowd as he slowed to a trot. There was no sign of her. Could he have imagined it?

  And then several people moved at once, opening an avenue in the throng, and at the end of that avenue stood Solace.

  She was clad in a simple black dress that hugged her body from clavicles to calves. Her hair, long once again, was pinned back from her face with silver clips shaped like open hands, a popular motif since the war. She wore high-heeled black leather boots, a small emerald pendant on a silver chain, and a pair of elbow-length black gloves. A white leather purse hung from her shoulder.

  Clasped in one of her black-gloved hands was the hand of a girl about eight years old with black hair, skin a slightly lighter brown than Solace’s, and a dress the bright green of budding leaves.

  The girl saw Reynard before Solace did, saw him slow then stop at the edge of the crowd with his mouth hanging open in a way that must have been especially comical, for the girl giggled and tugged the woman’s hand.

  “Look!” she said.

  Solace looked, but by then, by the time it had taken her to swivel her eyes from the back of the head of the man in front of her to the girl at her side, then up to what the girl was smiling at, Reynard had composed himself and was walking calmly toward them.

  Solace watched his approach with both a faint frown and a faint smile, the expression of someone trying hard to puzzle out the identity of someone maddeningly familiar. Then the smile faded while the frown briefly deepened as a memory stirred. She stiffened with recognition.

  “Well, hello,” she said as he stopped in front of her. “This is a surprise.”

  “It sure is,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Likewise.”

  He looked down at the girl. “And who is this?” he asked, squatting before her, already knowing the answer.

  “This is my daughter,” Solace said. “Cara.”

  He smiled at the girl, masking his annoyance. The presence of children always hindered seduction.

  “Hello, Cara.”

  “Hello,” the girl said, eyes probing his face with sober care.

  “She’s beautiful,” Reynard said. He meant it, too. She was a very beautiful girl indeed. She would be quite a tasty treat in about ten years’ time.

  “She is,” Solace said.

  “And that’s a very beautiful dress, too.” As he said this, he shifted his gaze from Cara to Solace, covering both ladies with the compliment.

  Solace gave him a small, bland smile. Above it, her eyes were reserved and a little chilly.

  He stood up, stealing a look at Solace’s fingers as he did so in search of a wedding ring. Her black gloves made it impossible to tell.

  “So how have you been?” she asked. She surveyed his finery, eyes lingering longest on the grape-colored vest woven from Lampardian giant-spider silk and embroidered with mithril thread. It was worth lingering over; it cost more than his carriage. “Pretty good from the look of it.”

  “Yeah. I certainly can’t complain. What about you?”

  “I’m doing just fine, thanks.”

  “Good. You here with anyone else?”

  “Um, no. It’s just Cara and me.”

  He nodded, hiding his glee. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder where the girl’s dad was. Did he die in the war? Had they separated? Did he simply hate music?

  Reynard gestured at the theater. “What do you have? General admission seats?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why don’t you share my box with me? The two of you.”

  “Oh, thanks, but we—”

  “A box?” Cara exclaimed, eyes huge with excitement. She pumped her mother’s arm. “Can we? Please?”

  Solace’s gaze bounced between her daughter and Reynard. For a moment Reynard was sure she would refuse, but then she sighed and said to Cara, “All right. As long as you behave yourself.” To Reynard she said, “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all. I’m here by myself, so there’re plenty of extra seats in the box. Just…hold on a minute. Wait here. I have to check on something first.”

  He walked quickly back to the alley. His carriage sat next to the side entrance. Through the rear window, Saffron’s blonde hair bobbed and shook as she bitched him out in absentia. He thanked every star in the sky she had been her usual lazy self and stayed put.

  “Take her home,” he called to Metaturk, who was twisting around on his perch to look at Reynard over the carriage’s roof. “Then come back.”

  “Yes, sir.” Metaturk bowed his bald head and turned back around to pick up the reins.

  Saffron stuck her head out the side window.

  “There you are! Where the fuck did you get to? I mean, I’ve been waiting for, like, ever. The performance probably—”

  “Drive!” Reynard shouted.

  Metaturk snapped the reins. The carriage shot away.

  “What the fucking fuck!” Saffron cried. She whisked her head back inside so it wouldn’t get lopped off by one of the other carriages
in the alley. A moment later her face appeared in the rear window, eyes aflame with outrage, mouth huge and black, an ugly hole. The carriage clattered out of the alley, turned right on Woomar Lane, and was gone.

  Reynard returned to the front of the building. Solace and Cara had stepped out of the crowd and stood off to one side, examining the coming attractions posters in the theater’s display windows. Solace was pointing at the foot-high name of Mendheina, who the poster revealed was slated to give a speech in the theater in a month’s time.

  “Your daddy met her during the War, you know,” Solace was telling Cara as Reynard neared. “In fact, it’s because of her we got the tickets. She—” Then she spotted Reynard approaching and fell silent.

  “Everything’s good to go,” he said. “Follow me.”

  He led them to the side entrance, where a doorman opened the door for them with a brisk salute.

  “They’re with me,” Reynard told him as they strode inside, even though the doorman had given no sign he found the woman and the girl’s presence in any way untoward.

  After the dim, cloudy evening outside, the theater’s large, crowded east lobby was so bright they had to squint until their eyes adjusted. Rows of crystal chandeliers blazed overhead, and gilt-framed mirrors had been strategically placed around the room to reflect and amplify the light. The wallpaper was periwinkle with repeating lily motifs. The white marble floor gleamed like milk. A ribbon of carpet the color of goldenrod ran the length of the room from the entrance to a white marble staircase that curved away to the theater’s upper levels.

  Some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in this part of Eridia strolled about or stood in quietly chatting clusters. As the trio crossed the room, Reynard nodded in greeting to all whose eyes he could catch, regardless of how well he knew them, a performance calculated to impress Solace and Cara. It seemed to work.

  “Was that Jamet Carchlarret I saw?” Solace whispered once they had reached the stairs and were well away from overhearing ears.

  “Yep,” Reynard said, voice as nonchalant as he could contrive.

  “Wow. You’re traveling in some pretty rarefied circles these days, aren’t you?”

  “Eh,” he shrugged with faux modesty. “Success equals a lot of stress, actually. The more successful you are, the more responsibilities there are to deal with. I mean, I’ve got my shipping company, warehouses in six different Realms, various estates to maintain. It doesn’t help that my mansion here in Röthimar is right next to the royal palace, and those damn animals in the King’s private zoo sometimes make enough noise to deafen a goom. Keeps me awake half the night.”

  “Sounds rough.”

  The congenial sarcasm in her voice compelled him to smile. “Yeah, I know: I shouldn’t complain. It could be a lot worse. I always try to remember how fortunate I am to have all this.”

  “That’s a very healthy attitude to have.”

  At the third landing, he led them down a long, curving corridor that sported rich purple carpeting and elaborate pastoral murals. At regular intervals along the right-hand wall were the curtained entrances to the boxes, many of whose occupants milled and mingled in the hallway.

  Cara’s head swiveled this way and that as she took in every detail—the silver-handled scimitar on the jeweled belt of a bodyguard, the brown bumbler stole worn by a tall middle-aged woman with a nose like a parrot’s beak and hair dyed lemon yellow, the herd of cattle crossing a field of lilacs in the mural on the wall. Solace, for her part, examined things more casually, with a small placid smile. Reynard noticed she never looked at him once.

  Halfway down the corridor they passed Thayla, the wife of Obsissimant, the king’s chancellor. She stood chatting with a tall cadaverous man Reynard didn’t know. Though they had never done more than nod at each other in passing a few times at social events, Reynard smiled warmly at her and said, “Hello, Thayla,” as if they had known each other all their lives.

  Thayla gave him a thin, barely polite smile.

  Once they were out of earshot, Reynard told Solace: “She’s still a little sore about an argument we had over foreign policy with Grimbar.”

  “Ah,” Solace said.

  Reynard’s box was the fourth from the end. At their approach, Reynard’s box-man, an old, white-haired halfling named Predegar Fellowes, stepped forward and held open the red Cennomacan hemp curtain that separated the box from the corridor. As they passed through, Reynard smiled and thanked Predegar, hiding, as always, the unease he felt around the twerpy bastard. Though one would never guess it from Predegar’s serene, cherubic countenance, he was a survivor of the Genocide, and Reynard always had the irrational and unnerving feeling that the halfling’s survival of such horrors had somehow granted him a wisdom so deep it could see right through Reynard’s every prevarication. Alas Predegar came with the box and was not Reynard’s to dismiss.

  The semicircular balcony beyond the curtain contained three ebony tables inlaid with white gold, and eight ebony chairs upholstered in green silk damask.

  Ignoring all this, Solace and Cara headed straight to the black titanwood railing. Reynard followed, amused to watch mother and daughter thrill to the view that familiarity had made quite dull to him.

  Fifty feet below was the theater’s floor, over half its seats already full. Far to the right, the double doors from the main lobby disgorged a steady stream of new arrivals whom yellow-robed ushers led down the aisles and directed along the curving rows to their seats. The chatting of the waiting crowd filled the vast room with a steady, excited murmur.

  As Reynard surveyed the room, he realized the view wasn’t what he was used to after all, for the crowd below consisted of far more than the usual jaded Röthimaran aristocrats. Not only were there representatives from several dozen realms, including one man whose blue-and-yellow uniform identified him as a general from Uquar, Röthimar’s ancient enemy, but there were representatives of other species, as well. Three whole rows were filled with figures about Cara’s size whose wildly differing hair colors—from simple black to shocking orange—demarked them as gnomes. Not far from them was a section of slightly shorter, stockier individuals with long braided beards. These beings called themselves djoren in their own tongue, but since the sound represented by the “dj” was unpronounceable to most other sentient species, they were more widely known as dwarves. In the back row sat a dozen nyow-ha, tall bipedal cat people, who stared with stereotypical feline patience at the dark green curtain veiling the stage. And here and there were others: a pair of black-cloaked umalai, a small cluster of wochobüshkans, a few of the smaller Opalorians, even a robot that Reynard thought resembled a giant bucket on legs. The variety of entities on display didn’t even come close to matching the spectacle of the Grand Assembly which had convened during the War, but it was still quite breathtaking.

  When Cara began to complain of achy legs, Reynard arranged three chairs in a row facing the stage, and the trio sat down. Despite Reynard’s intentions, Cara wound up in the middle, separating him from Solace. He suspected Solace had orchestrated it that way, but if so, she had done it so deftly that even he with his millennia of tricksiness wasn’t sure how.

  “When’s the music start?” Cara asked.

  “I don’t know,” Solace said. “Not long.”

  Cara slumped in her chair as if she were sure “not long” meant “three hours.”

  “Can I play my game?” she asked.

  “Okay, but you have to put it away the moment the concert starts.” Solace picked her purse up off the floor, set it in her lap, and began to rummage through it.

  While she was thus distracted, Reynard studied her profile. She hadn’t changed at all. She looked just as trim and sexy as she had the last two times they met. He suddenly felt keenly aware of the way his waistband bit into his distended gut. Why had he let himself go so much? It was stupid, sloppy. It made him soft and slow, and a man like him needed to be ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

  Solac
e pulled a small wooden box from her purse and handed it to Cara. The box’s lid flipped up to reveal a wooden game board covered with alternating white and black squares, each with a small hole in the center. In some of those holes were pegs, half of them black, the others white. Cara studied the layout, then moved a white peg to a square across the board. After a moment’s more scrutiny, she moved a black peg three squares forward. Then she opened a compartment to the right of the board, took out a black peg, and stuck it in the hole in which the white peg had initially sat. Reynard watched a few more moves, but couldn’t grasp the logic guiding them. The fact that Cara always added pieces to the board but never removed them particularly perplexed him; it was the opposite of how most games were played.

  When he finally tore his gaze from the game, he found Solace smiling at him over her daughter’s head.

  “Thank you,” she said. He must have looked puzzled because she quickly clarified: “For the seats.”

  He shrugged. “It was my pleasure.”

  A sudden loudening of the susurrus of voices below compelled Reynard, Solace, and a somewhat reluctant Cara to peer over the railing. Striding down the main aisle were two dozen robed figures, twelve males and twelve females, all of whom had pointed ears, calm smiles, and slim, petit physiques, the tallest male being only five-foot-two. Elves. Most likely from the Kolmakendi tribe, who occupied the Kol Forest to the north.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” Solace said as the elves took their seats directly below Reynard’s box. “I mean, who’d have ever thought we’d see the day when all the sentient species were working together? All those years of conflict and suffering, all the hate and war and distrust, and now…” She gestured vaguely, at the world apparently. “Here we are.”

  “Yeah. Though when you think about what it took to get us here…”

  Her ebullience dimmed a little. “True. But at least we’re here. And at least all the bad stuff that happened wasn’t in vain.”

  They returned to their seats. Reynard watched Cara resume her game, then looked up at Solace over the girl’s head.

  “Things’ve changed quite a bit indeed,” he said. He let his eyes drop meaningfully to the top of Cara’s head.

  Solace laughed softly. “Indeed.”

  “Married?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Her voice was flat and even. There was no inflection to the word, no hint of any emotion or valuation. It was a simple statement of fact.

  “I take it he’s not a music fan?”

  Solace hesitated. Her eyes remained fixed on his. “He’s…busy.”

  “Huh.”

  “You?” she asked.

  “Me?”

  “Married.”

  “Oh. No.”

  “Mm.” A faint nod, as if it were the answer she expected. “Have you ever been married?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Never? Not in…” She glanced at Cara. “Not in…all this time? Never? Ever?”

  Interesting. Her reaction suggested Cara didn’t know about her mother’s extended lifespan. He wondered if hubby did. Reynard was starting to suspect that all was not well in her marriage. Which meant opportunity for him.

  “Really,” he said. “Never.”

  “Wow. And you’ve never had any kids?”

  “Well, not that I’m aware of.”

  “Uh!” She rolled her eyes.

  “So, your husband…” Reynard said. “Is he…” A quick glance at Cara showed she was still absorbed in her game. “You know, like us?”

  Solace likewise glanced at Cara, her expression carefully neutral.

  “No,” she said in a soft voice. After a pause she shook her head as if to underscore the negative for some reason.

  She looked away, down at the crowd, then immediately turned back to Reynard and said, “We met during the war.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I was in Carladea, a bit northwest of Nioedo, helping out in a field hospital—doing chores, helping prep food, transporting supplies, stuff like that. He was one of the injured they were treating there. At first I thought he was a soldier.” She smiled, eyes distant, not seeing Reynard, seeing only her past, perhaps some jokey moment she had shared with her husband. “But it turned out to be a miscommunication. He was really a teacher who’d been helping refugees flee the war zones. We…” She paused, and then her eyes refocused and fixed on Reynard’s. “We fell in love. It happened so fast.” She frowned slightly, as if still baffled by the turn of events. “We got married later that month. I never imagined that anything like that would ever happen to me, that I’d ever find my soulmate.”

  “That’s nice,” he said, swallowing back his groan at the word “soulmate.” Ridiculous. Teenage fantasyland pap. As evidenced, he suspected, by the fact that her husband wasn’t here. “I’m happy for you.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a small, pleased smile. She looked down at the audience below.

  Reynard followed her gaze. The theater was nearly full now. The stream coming through the double doors had dwindled to sporadic drops. The show should start soon.

  When he raised his eyes again, he noticed a fat lady in the box directly across from his giving him a wide, enchanted smile, the sort of smile women give babies and puppies and other darling things, the smile of a heart that’s been warmed and won. What the fuck?

  Seeing that he had seen her, she gave him a nod, then fell to chatting with her fat husband and her four fat children.

  And that was when it dawned on Reynard that the fat lady assumed Solace was his wife or partner, Cara their child, the three of them forming one adorable family. Probably everyone was assuming that.

  Surprised by the idea for some reason, he regarded Solace—still watching the audience—and then Cara—still playing her strange little game. Just as he was about to turn away, Cara looked up. She blinked at him a moment, then smiled.

  Chimes sounded, three high glassy notes, each one higher than the last, the signal that the curtain was about to rise.

  Glad to break gaze with the girl, Reynard turned his attention to the stage, while beside him there were clacks and whispers and a put-upon sigh as Solace took the game from Cara and put it away.

  With a rattle of pulleys, the curtain rose. The murmuring below was replaced by applause.

  Onstage were three wooden chairs with cushioned seats. Behind them was a plain green backdrop. That was all. The stage’s barrenness was a startling contrast to the baroque decor of most modern concerts.

  After a pause for the applause to abate a bit, Muden do Korka do Djoteth, the famed dwarven drummer, walked out from stage right. He had left his long white beard unbraided, and its shaggy mass stood out starkly against his dressy black tunic. He carried a double-headed kumbo drum, its convex wooden sides carved with ridges and swirls that purportedly affected the drum’s acoustics and helped produce its amazing range of tones.

  After Muden had bowed and taken his seat, the next performer took the stage. This was Hathendomonia, a pale, long-faced Kolmakendi, regarded as the finest living player of the deisan, a type of end-blown flute fashioned from oak. He wore a tavilda, a white robe the Kolmakendi reserved for formal interactions with other sentient species. His black hair was tied back in a ponytail that extended to his waist.

  He bowed. He sat. And then the third and final performer in the concert appeared. This was Cali Mwa, a human, her hefty body draped in a dress patterned with typically colorful Zumaran designs. She carried nothing, for her instrument was her voice, said to be beautiful enough to thaw the iciest heart and moisten the driest eye. Smiling and waving at the audience, she sat down between the other two.

  The Unity Symphony began with Muden on the drum. For a while there was more silence than sound, the deep resounding beats coming at long intervals like the pulse of a god. Gradually the beats sped up and developed a rhythm that grew increasingly complex, especially once Muden brought the drum’s
treble end into play. Before long, his hands were a blur as they slapped, tapped, and skimmed the drum’s variable-thickness skins, producing such a wide selection of sounds that no other instrument seemed necessary.

  After several minutes, Hathendomonia proved this untrue. Rather than start off slowly as Muden had done, he unleashed a stream of notes on his deisan that flawlessly matched the drum’s rapid and complicated beat before spinning away to craft its own complementary melody.

  The two instruments played together for a time, then the drum’s output deepened and slowed, while the deisan’s higher, faster tune whirled around it like a mammal gamboling about the feet of a trudging dinosaur. Finally the drum returned to its original sporadic beats before dying off completely.

  Solo now, Hathendomonia wove an elaborate melody that swooped and spiraled in dizzyingly intricate patterns. At times the music’s complexity thinned just enough to reveal that the backbone of the melody was a lighter, cheerier version of the tune played by Muden’s drum.

  After a while, however, the music slowed and lost its buoyancy. The notes wavered, sank, assumed lower and more somber tones. When it had grown quite mournful and torpid, Cali Mwa stood up and belted out a string of high, clear sounds that pierced the deisan’s gloom like a shaft of light. The sounds weren’t words or even nonsense syllables. They were cries and howls and other abstract vocalisms, artfully and melodically arranged. She had transformed her voice into an instrument and was using it to convey emotions in ways no mere words ever could.

  For a while, voice and deisan competed, each playing variations of the same melody, but tugging in opposite directions: the instrument trending lower and sadder, the voice striving to rise. Eventually Cali Mwa’s voice won, drawing the deisan a little higher, then higher still, onward, upward, bit by bit.

  When the deisan had regained its initial cheer, it ceased its tune, and Cali Mwa’s voice continued on alone. She began to sing an actual song now, its words a paean to unity that drew heavily upon the works of gnomish poet Mogo Lobilozo, particularly the now-famous phrase “All one flesh, all one blood” that referred to the commonality of all beings. The song began in Eridian—a human language that seemed well on its way to becoming the common tongue—then shifted into a different language with each verse. Reynard identified a few other human languages, plus Kolmakendi, Olokendi, Dwarvish, both Eastern and Western Gnomish, Wochobüshkan, Alantri, Nyow-Ha, Gargoyle, and several languages he didn’t recognize. As good as the drum and deisan had been, Cali Mwa’s voice carried emotional resonance no instrument could hope to match. At times she sang with such passion, such intensity, she looked as if she were coming or giving birth, her face sheened with sweat, her body stiff and trembling, her fisted hands quivering.

  After the final verse, this one again in Eridian, she resumed her wordless vocalizations, and Muden’s kumbo drum rejoined the Symphony, providing a sturdy rhythmic framework along which Cali’s trills unfurled and blossomed.

  And then the deisan joined the mix, and together the trio ascended to the climax, an irrepressible outpouring of harmony and joy that even Reynard found somewhat moving.

  As the final strains of the Symphony resounded through the theater, Reynard glanced over and saw tears spilling down Solace’s cheeks. Cara’s eyes were huge, her mouth parted, as if she were stunned by some divine revelation.

  The moment the last echo died, the audience sprang to its feet, roaring, applauding. The performers bowed, then bowed again as the shouts and claps continued. And continued. And continued.

  When Reynard felt his palms growing numb, he leaned toward Solace and said, “We should probably think about getting going, before the rush.”

  She hesitated, glancing from him to the stage and back again, obviously unwilling to leave just yet. The box was his, though, so in the end she felt obliged to comply.

  As it turned out, they weren’t the only ones leaving early, and they joined a thin stream of people heading down the corridor while the applause thundered on and on in the theater proper.

  “Thank you so much,” Solace told Reynard as they descended the stairs. “It wouldn’t have been half as good with floor seats.”

  He nodded. “It was my pleasure.”

  “That was an incredible concert. And I don’t just mean the social significance, although that’s certainly important. The music alone was worth it. I’d never heard a kutukten dyaba before.”

  “A what?”

  “That’s what the piece was structured on, musically. It’s a dwarven form, where they play through every possible combination of instruments. If there’re more than five or six instruments, it can take all day.”

  “Huh. I’ve never heard of it. But then, I never spent a lot of time among the dwarves.” Which was true; he had always found that the rational and materialistic dwarves were a lot harder to con than most species and were thus best avoided.

  “Oh, I haven’t either. I just did a little reading on the background of the Symphony before we came. I hadn’t realized this was the first time different species worked together on a major musical composition for a mass audience.” She shook her head. “This was historic. They’ll probably be talking about this for millennia.”

  “Well,” he said with a smile, his voice just a touch too low for Cara to hear, “I guess we’ll find out, eh?”

  She breathed out a soft laugh.

  They exited via the side door they had entered through. It had rained again during the concert, and the bricks that paved the alley were dark and gleaming. Here and there puddles quivered in the warm breeze.

  Reynard’s carriage sat waiting amid a dozen others. The trio—man and woman and girl—stopped beside it.

  “Well…thanks once more,” Solace said. She sounded nervous, like someone who’s about to say or do something they’re afraid will make them disliked. Was she planning to bolt on him?

  “So,” Reynard said, hiding his suspicions behind a mask of good cheer. “Think we can manage to keep in touch this time around?”

  Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. Her gaze flicked back and forth between his eyes as if unable to fix on one spot for long.

  “Look,” he said, “if you’re upset about…before, then I’m sorry about that. I really didn’t mean to disappear on you like that in Drell. I just—”

  “It’s not that, Reynard…”

  “Then what is it?”

  Another hesitation, followed by a quick glance down at Cara. Fortunately the girl was too absorbed in examining the carriage horses to pay any heed to the adults’ boring blather.

  “Reynard, it’s just…I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

  “Can I at least know why?”

  She stared at him in silence for a moment, then her eyes slid away from his as if in embarrassment. “It’s just not a good idea, okay?”

  “All I’m asking is that we keep in touch. Is that wrong?”

  She opened her mouth, shut it, sighed. “It wouldn’t be…appropriate.”

  He had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. “Look, if it’s your husband—”

  “Reynard, it’s—it’s complicated, okay? Let’s just drop it. I’m sorry, but I don’t think keeping in touch is a good idea. Not…right now.”

  The implication of these final three words seemed pretty clear: One day not very long from now in the grand scheme of things, her mortal husband would cease to be, and maybe at that time, things once inappropriate would become appropriate.

  He was sure this was just a sop, a way to shut him up. After all, if they didn’t stay in touch, how would he know when that time had come? Clearly, he wouldn’t. He would have to wait until their next chance meeting, whenever that might be. At the rate things had been going, it wouldn’t be for another thousand years.

  With a mix of frustration and annoyance, he realized he was checkmated. No matter what tactics he employed, she wasn’t going to acquiesce, not with her child standing right next to her and the theater crowd now starting to ex
it the building in full force.

  He considered tailing her, learning where she lived, who she lived with. But given her age and experience, she would likely spot him, and she seemed the sort that if he lost her trust it would take a lot longer than a millennium to win it back.

  So in the end he smiled and gave her a small bow. No sense alienating her. After all, they would meet again. And he would be ready.

  “Till next time, then,” he said.

  She smiled, relieved. “I look forward to it.”

  He started to turn away. In doing so, he saw Cara staring up at him, her face expressionless.

  “Take care of your mom,” he told her. She gave a single sharp nod.

  He climbed into his carriage and told Metaturk to take him home. He didn’t look back.

  Half an hour later, as the carriage pulled up in front of his mansion, he spotted Saffron’s face glaring down from the bedroom window on the second floor. His head started to pound in anticipation of the impending confrontation.

  “Cunt,” he muttered, then wondered which woman he meant.

  4

  Colbon

  3388 A.C.