“He’s going to save Vic’s people, Ashel. He’s going to save us all.”
Anger lanced the moment like a boil, and he pushed away from her.
Lips quivering, she dropped her eyes to the carpet.
He sighed, wishing he could spare her. “I’ve heard you rehearsing Arpeggio in D. Is that what you’re going to play?”
“No, that one’s just for practice. I think it’s too esoteric for a general audience, don’t you?”
He couldn’t help but smile. “I do. What will you play?”
She listed several popular tunes and asked his opinion on some others. Offering suggestions, he paced past a window and noticed Samson of Cairo standing across the street, scribbling in a notebook. “Shrinejump,” Ashel muttered. “I’d forgotten I’d told him to come by today.”
“Who’s that?” Wineyll studied the Oreseeker. “He’s . . . he’s someone from Vic’s homeland, isn’t he?”
His eyebrows rose. “You didn’t Hear that from me, did you?”
“No. I snagged a lot of Vic’s memories when—well, you know. It’s not the same as you and Geram. I can’t talk to her or feel her feelings, but sometimes I have these odd sensations, or one of her memories will pop into my head. I guess it’s my punishment.”
“No one blames you.”
She blinked fast, her bottom lip folded under her teeth. “I need to go.”
He glanced down at the inventor. “I suppose I should go down and invite him in.”
Wineyll wrinkled her nose. “You should wash. I’ll bring him inside to wait for you.”
After he bathed, he found Samson in the parlor with Kelmair, their heads bent together over his notes, talking in hushed but excited tones. Combed silk, thin as smoke, glided off Kelmair’s shoulders. Gold links hid the scars round her neck and wrists.
“Do you two know each other?” Ashel asked.
“His mother was from Sect Dameron,” Kelmair said. Her lip curled. “You cleaned up.”
Ashel ignored her. “What’s in the book?”
“Plans for my re-inventions.” Samson handed over the little volume. “I thought you might like to see them.”
He sank into a chair as he leafed through schematics and musings, awe growing with each turn of the page. “Impressive, truly. You’re like DaVinci.”
Samson smiled. “You know your Ancient history.”
“History that was ancient to the Ancients was a particular indulgence of mine. Do you want to get a drink?”
“I’ll come with you.” Kelmair linked arms with Samson, and they walked out the palazzo and downhill. Her dress rippled like rain, flowing over her breasts, swishing over her hips—shaking himself, Ashel directed his gaze at the city’s spires, glowing mauve and orange against a lavender sky. Samson jested, and Kelmair laughed, a low, throaty sound. Her hips swayed like a dancer’s. Swearing silently, Ashel looked at cornices, sidewalk flags, other passersby, anything but her, and the small, taut nipples that were all too obvious beneath the thin, supple fabric of the damn dress.
“Where would you like to go?” Samson asked as they left the Circle.
“The Piper’s Reel,” Ashel said. “I know some people playing there tonight.”
The music hall dominated a prosperous block halfway between the Circle and Commissar’s Square. Patrons filled all the tables but the ones closest to the stage, where jugglers flung flaming torches at each other. Judging the performers sufficiently adept, Ashel took a table that abutted the boards, and Samson signaled for ale and food.
“How much do you owe?” Ashel asked as they tucked into sandwiches of roasted meat and vegetables.
“What the Commissar owes me—a Ruler’s ransom. I should never have taken the job, at least not until the Concordance had passed.”
“Do you really believe that nonsense?”
“It isn’t nonsense, Shemen,” Kelmair snapped. “Your wife is in Direiellene, a thousand years ago, with Gustave. Samson and I want them home just as badly as you.”
“Why, who’s Gustave to you?”
“He’s my cousin, and he helped me escape bondage.” She flicked the gold necklace covering her scars.
“He freed me too,” Samson said, the color in his cheeks high. Kelmair squeezed his shoulder, whispered that they’d see each other again.
“You’re lovers?” Ashel asked.
Samson nodded.
“See—you’re not the only one missing someone,” Kelmair hissed. “For months you’ve done nothing but bang your head against the mast, while the ship sailed on, its course unchanged. It’s time you realize there is nothing you can do to help your wife except prepare the world to receive her when she comes home. You have no idea what Victoria means to us, the ones who have been in bondage. She escaped and rose to heights we cannot imagine. The mistresses revere her. The Citizens revile her. The songs of her are forbidden, so they’re sung everywhere. Every slave, every servant, every stevedore and Buzzard knows her name, and they know that name means victory.”
He felt Vic’s fingers, small and trembling, entwined in his the night they married. A fear gripped him that she would never come home, that without his Woern, the parasites would sap her strength. He saw her corpse half-buried in sand, drained of its blood, shorn of its hair and everything else the Kragnashians could recycle and sell. In that vision, she was in the desert, but Lornk and everyone else insisted she had been sent to a rainforest that hadn’t existed for a thousand years. That fate was inconceivable.
The jugglers performed their last trick to cheers and table thumps. Beneath the applause, Ashel Heard Geram, walking alongside the Manor wall with Timny and Gaston, an elderly guard who had joined the Manor’s detail during King Rivern’s reign. “A Ruler’s got to have guts, got to have metal,” the gruff old man said. “Your father didn’t have what it took, boy. Do you?” Geram followed them in silence, living in Ashel’s memories of Uncle Navael’s hatred. Sashal’s brother had always suspected Ashel might be a bastard, but he’d been wrong. By Lathan custom, Bethniel was the bastard.
In the Manor garden, Timny said, “My father was jealous that he didn’t get to be Ruler. I don’t want to be king. You’re not supposed to want it, right?”
Romner’s trio swept onto the stage, apprentices rushing to set up Paeln’s drum kit. Twirling his instrument, the lute master stepped to the edge of the stage and addressed the audience, while Londsaen hopped down to their table. “Ashel, good to see you. Would you join us?”
“I thought I’m not allowed.”
With a wry grin, Londsaen looked around. “I don’t see any Guild monitors. Come on up!”
Ashel sprang on stage and bowed as Romner ceded the center with a twirl of his lute. The first chords signaled “Silly Sounder,” a good tune to warm a cold voice, and to warm an audience, all its energy in Paeln’s drum and Londsaen’s fiddle. At its finish, the crowd cheered.
Ashel turned to Romner. “‘Exploits’ next?”
“That one? Are you sure?”
“Let’s give them something they’ll like. Then let’s do ‘Olmlablaire,’ as something they’ll remember.”
Whither she wanders the Relmans will know.
The crowd slapped the tables as soon as the words hit them, some of them standing and singing along. He laughed, his voice swelling, the fiddle teasing, the lute rippling with defiance and mirth.
She’ll tweak Relman noses and tickle their ribs
And run a blade up their ass, she’s a quick little nib.
When they finished, the audience jumped to their feet, the stomping and cheers deafening. Samson and Kelmair clinked mugs as the masters laughed and bowed. The applause filled him like lifeblood, and the notoriety possessed him like passion. To be known, not as somebody’s brother, son, or husband, but as himself, for himself. Bliss from a pipe was nothing compared to this. This was real.
When the applause died and the audience sat quietly sipping their drinks, Londsaen�
�s fiddle moaned into “Olmlablaire.” Romner strummed out the first mournful bars, and Ashel let the music carry him out of himself, as it always did. When Paeln struck up the martial beat, he sang:
A nellowlem sings a song of joy,
But the son of one learns to sing of sorrow.
A harrier is small, hides in shadow
Until her lover’s in the lupear’s jaws
And pulled into the sunlit fallow.
The high style wasn’t used much anymore. People found the metaphors hard to follow, and if you didn’t know the history behind the song, all you heard was a fable about animals, trees, and monsters. But the history here was fresh, and the allegory glimmered like glass. By the second verse, people sat stunned, hearing the nellowlem’s son himself, and Ashel sucked up their awe like a thirsty traveler at a well. Even the staff edged the walls, the scullions creeping beneath the cooks’ feet. Sometimes when he sang, the notes colored his vision, and tonight he sang in blues, the fiddle in ruddy red moans and leaps of green, the lute like the sun and rain, the drums indigo and violet. Ribbons of color snaked through the crowd, binding audience and performer into one perfect note of resonance.
A tone, dire gray, arose. It began as a nagging at the ears, crept into a whining din, like the roar of a distant machine. Ashel glanced at Romner; the lutist’s brows knitted. Londsaen’s fiddle screeched. The singer’s line paused, and while Ashel caught his breath, the noise grew. Patrons’ eyes left the stage to fix on one another. The colors gone, the roar swelled. As Ashel sang the next phrase, his throat sour, his voice went ragged. But going on like this, when it had gone bad and the audience was lost and you had to fight to bring them back—that too was a kind of bliss, better than the sort that came in a toke.
The roar outside loud as thunder, the theater doors burst open, and the tumult drowned the minstrels. Outside, a mob hustled down the street, screaming, threatening the night with torches and clubs. Londsaen faltered, lowered his fiddle. Romner stopped strumming. Paeln kept beating her drum, madly accompanying the crowd. A youth broke from the marchers and stamped into the hall, screaming slogans, greasy hair casting a spiky shadow on the floor. Theater patrons scrambled up. Chairs toppled over, the lines of class sharp as the wealthy clustered away from the poor, and everyone tried to jam through the side exits.
Ashel jumped down from the stage. “What’s happening? Why is there a mob?”
Kelmair folded her arms, smiling like a cat. “The coup, Shemen.”
“You swore to Vic,” he grated. “You swore to her.”
Pupils dilating, Kelmair nodded.
“Then for her, tell me why there’s a mob outside.”
“They’re going to take the palace. How did you think we were going to do it, especially since Victoria cannot help us?”
Wineyll. The truth of what was happening hit him like a sledge. He had been so obsessed with his own loss, he couldn’t see Wineyll’s danger, even when she’d come to his room to say a Shrinejumping farewell. “We need to get down there, stop them from . . . from hurting the wrong people.”
“We’re nearly a mile from the palace,” Samson said. “The mob’s well ahead of us.”
“There are Dameron men in the crowd; we’ll get you to the front,” Kelmair said. Her face took on the glow she’d worn for Vic. “After tonight, Ashel, as the Commissar’s son, you can get anything you want from the Caleisbahnin and the Kragnashians.”
Gall clogged his throat, and his eyes lingered on the lute, sitting forlorn in a spotlight. Music, not politics, had been his mantra all his life. Scowling, he strode toward the door and the crowd streaming toward the Commissar’s palace.
* * *
Wheels clattering, the Korng carriage clove through teeming crowds, beneath flapping banners and past steaming sewer grates. Nestled in the crook of Lornk’s arm, Wineyll kept her breathing steady, trying to quell the nervous thumping of her heart while he chatted with Elsa, Thiellin, and Etien. His remarks were confident and cool, but she Heard his misgivings. He had bribed guards and rallied supporters, but he had not anticipated the Kragnashians would abduct Vic. She wasn’t ready, and now his uncertainty about the outcome in the past left him unsure of the outcome in the present. When Vic was bringing Olmlablaire down around their ears, he was less worried.
“Perhaps you should call it off tonight,” Wineyll whispered as they passed the Commissar’s gate.
He waved at the iron grills closing behind them. “It’s too late, Songbird. Stay alert for me.”
When the carriage stopped in front of the palace, Wineyll gazed up at the marble portico, drawing calming breaths. She should be thrilled to mount these steps and enter the grandest building in Knownearth, but dread squashed relish.
Inside, a chandelier cast a clean, steady light on the entry hall, and she realized the globes held not flames but glowing bulbs. Thiellin whistled softly and muttered with Etien about tungsten and copper. The light fuzzed dimmer, then brighter, hardly steadier than a good oil lamp but a wonder nonetheless. Despite the foreboding in her belly, Wineyll absorbed the moment with all her senses—the glimmering of the light, the faint buzzing of the bulbs, the crisp, naked freshness of air unclouded by oil scent.
“I won’t hoard this like he does,” Lornk said so only she could Hear it. “Do you believe in me?”
“Yes.” She laced her fingers into his. “If things don’t go well, trust me.”
He squeezed her hand as Major Demsch emerged from the lift. “Welcome, Citizen,” she said to Elsa. “Minstrel Wineyll. Captain. Elder Etien.” She ignored Lornk, turning back to Elsa. “Where is Prince Ashel?”
“He’s been ill and was unable to join us.”
Scowling, the major led them up the stairs. Wineyll Listened, sifting through the woman’s thoughts, but Demsch was as skilled at baffling secrets as a Lathan royal.
On the second floor, the major led them past doors plated in gold, silver, steel, bronze—the value increasing the further they went, a grotesque and breathtaking extravagance. Opening a copper door, the woman announced them: “Citizen Elsa Korng. Lornk Korng, her cousin, deposed Lord of Relm. The former Minstrel Wineyll of Narath. Captain Thiellin of the Sect Dameron of the Caleisbahn Archipelago. The Elder Etien of Dameron.”
Reclining on a sofa, Parnden sucked a bellowfruit dry and delicately licked long-nailed fingers. A circlet decorated his scalp, sapphires and rubies hanging around a pair of large ears. Aside from the jewels, he was dressed simply, like a Lathan gentleman in leather breeches and a linen shirt with its laces untied. He greeted Elsa curtly but took Wineyll’s hand. His grasp was moist and light, and revulsion swelled her throat. “The magician! Did you bring your wand, my dear?”
“I did, sir.”
“You’re Winder’s daughter, yes? During my Academy days, your father curated my education in music and other delights. Do you remember, Lornk?”
“Indeed, Commissar.”
“Although as I recall my old schoolchum here was too busy wooing Elekia to follow Winder on romps through Narath’s hidden brothels.” He chuckled cruelly as Wineyll snatched her hand back. “And where is the prince, old friend?”
“Ashel felt unwell and sends his regrets.”
“I regret to hear it, although I’m not surprised. I understand the wayward young man has lately spent most of his time in taverns on the wharves, and even made an excursion into the Roost last week. That sort of revelry does take its toll. Let’s have a drink.”
Servants emerged from a screened doorway and set trays of canapes and cream-colored Eldanion on the table, then disappeared. When everyone had taken a glass, Parnden raised his. “A toast, to my old friend and the prince he’d make heir to the Korng fortune.”
His eyes glacial blue, Lornk lounged on the chaise. “Elsa holds the Citizenry and will designate its heirs.”
“Sadly, she will not, my friend.”
Guards banged through hidden doors, crossbows cocked. Caleisbahn sw
ords rang out of scabbards. The major ordered everyone to drop their weapons, and three of the soldiers took a step closer, motioning with their crossbows.
Lornk stood slowly, palms up. “Major Demsch, I’m pleasantly surprised to find an officer with unwavering loyalty to the Commissar.”
The woman glared, and Parnden chuckled. “You thought Demsch was in your pocket, but mine are bigger.”
Lornk’s lips curled upward. “Now I’m certain Ashel will be sorry he missed this.”
Parnden cackled. “Indeed yes. Major Demsch, take them all into custody.”
Etien leapt toward the soldiers. Crossbows thunked, and the Elder crashed onto the table. Wine and crystal sprayed everywhere.
Lornk snatched Etien’s sword. More bolts flew, and he pulled Wineyll down behind an overturned table. Blades clashed, steel slathered and scraped as Thiellin engaged the guards. Elsa shrieked, and Wineyll peeked out and glimpsed a guard dragging her away.
“I need to get out of this room,” Lornk said, eyes darting between a stone bust and a window.
“You need to appear to get out of this room,” she whispered.
“A ruse. Well done, Songbird.” His eyes glinting with dark humor, he sprang up, grabbed the bust, and hurled it. Glass shattered, and a furious roar, thousands of voices strong, poured into the palace. A trio of guards converged on Lornk, and his sword slashed and jabbed like a steel whip, driving them back.
Drop, she said to his mind alone. He hit the floor, but every eye in the room saw him whirl and dive through the broken pane, arms crossed over his face.
“After him,” Demsch shouted, her sword tangled with Thiellen’s.
A guard looked out the window. “Where’d he go?”
“Find him, fools!” Hilt to hilt, Demsch and Thiellin wrestled while guards rushed out.
Stay near me; they won’t see you, Wineyll said, and Lornk wrapped his arms around his knees, making himself as small as he could. She Heard no shame or chagrin from him, having to curl up and hide in plain sight of his enemy. His trust strengthened her resolve. It was like her father’s absolute confidence in her abilities, and she fought a smile that threatened to disrupt the terror stretching her features.
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