Without Rhythm (The Lament)

by P. S. Power

  Instead she took a few deep breaths and tried to focus on the world around her, listening to what everyone else said, even if it wasn't about her or her little problems.

  That was something she knew for a fact too. Her problems were nothing. She hadn't been raped the day before and even if she had, Pran was leaving on an airship with important people, not staying in the same town to be judged and pitied by her friends and people on the street like poor Meridith. No matter how bad things felt, they weren't that bad. She had a chance and something that Bard Ben had said got her attention after a few minutes.

  "Wait, I can play places? I thought you had to be a full Bard to get any of the good jobs..."

  That got everyone else in the dining room to look at each other, the Doctor looking particularly puzzled.

  "I'm not sure I know what you mean dear..."

  Ben grinned and shook his head slowly.

  "But I do. At the art school the kids are told that they can't do anything in the world if they don't graduate. To an extent that's even true. Pran is a very good sculptor for instance, but the only group hiring regularly for statues is the state. If you aren't a full Bard it's hard to get work like that no matter how skilled you are." He placed his hands over the strings, making them silent, leaving the room with an empty feeling then.

  "That doesn't mean there isn't work, just that you don't get the big money from doing it. No full Bard will play taverns or street corners for instance. You can make a living doing that, especially if you have real talent. No one keeps you from doing it, but it's a rougher crowd than what you get at the large city players' halls. Acting is the same way. You can join the smaller companies of actors and make a living at it, if the troop is good. There's a lot that can be done, but it isn't what the art students are told to expect. The dream is to be Bard Clarice and play four concerts a year for the High Council. I was kind of wondering why you'd jump straight to whoring yourself, even if you are cute. You could probably have simply sung and gotten people to pay you for it. Worked from there. Made some simple instruments and build a client base."

  The news was kind of heartening, if true. Very different from what the school had taught her. It made her a little upset for a minute, until she forced herself to let that go too.

  "That's good. I won't have to starve then, once I get kicked off the ship?"

  That line got Mara to shrug.

  "Probably not. Still, so far you've done well. You should at least give this a try for a few more days, maybe do some laundry, that sort of thing, before you just jump ship. It can't hurt to get a few extra skills anyway. Right? Maybe you could turn it into a story or something someday when you're famous." The words were pretty hopeful, which got Pran to stand up, staggering a little as the floor slowly tilted. not too much since it was moving back toward flat.

  Clark noticed it and gestured.

  "Leveling off. Then straight north until morning."

  Pran sighed and tried to stretch which hurt a lot more than it should from just a little jogging. She hadn't gone far at all, but her legs burned inside. It was all she could do not to groan.

  "Fine. Can we do laundry in the air? I might as well get to it now, if I can, before bed." She looked at Mara who looked pretty hopeful for a few seconds, then stood and chuckled.

  "Ah... What a good apprentice you are. Let me just go and collect that. I'll show you to the room for it." She jumped up like she was getting a new home with a pony or something.

  It got everyone else to do it too, including Claire and Doctor Millis. Ben was the first one out the door though, practically running.

  Clark didn't, he just sat, looking down his nose at the other Guardian.

  "Mara." It was a single word, flat and almost bored sounding. It didn't work to stop the woman though, as she grabbed Pran by the arm laughing and tried to drag her out.

  "Don't worry about him. I'll get his clothes too. We'll just get this set right up and..."

  Somehow that Pran didn't understand at all the large muscular man had moved in front of them in the hallway and stood hands out as if to catch them.

  "Don't you think she's had enough to do so far today? By morning she'll probably have trouble walking. It seems a bit much to have her slaving away at our wash too."

  Mara stopped and then put her right arm around Pran's shoulders protectively.

  "I know what I'm doing Clark. It's a new meditative exercise. Mindful clothes washing. Think of it as a compliment to the rest of the training. Besides, I'm running out of things to wear and if it doesn't get done tonight, I'll have to do it myself. We can't have that, can we?"

  Both of them were in black, but neither seemed to blend into the shadows all that well in the dimly lit corridor. Instead they stood out against the light gray of the walls, like she did. It would have been hard to vanish like they had the night before. Of course the black of the world outside was intense. The inside was lit with lamps of some kind that cast a strange light blue glow. It wasn't oil pod or anything she was familiar with. Not even electric.

  Mara was still acting way too giddy over laundry when she opened the door to the room Pran was supposed to work in. It was just big enough for one person to be in at a time, with complex racks for hanging everything on. Fresh air, from outside most likely, blew in hard from vents in the ceiling right along the back wall. The floor was a grating, one of sturdy metal at least, which was good, since she was pretty sure that under that was open sky. She could make out black and nothing else, but what were the odds that was just the room below them? After all, it was the bottom floor.

  The set up was pretty normal other than that, a wash tub next to one for rinsing. Then a set of rollers on the wall to help speed the drying. Not a big problem, except the fact that seeing the pitch black below them was intimidating. She didn't want to die, but it wasn't that bad, she decided, focusing on what she was doing instead of the chance of falling. Metal was strong. It would hold her.

  Mara giggled, a young sound that got Pran to make a face at her.

  "I see, so this is some kind of joke? Put the new girl in the room with no floor and see if she can hack it? Well, I don't care. Bring on the clothes." She sounded perfectly relaxed, which she wasn't, but this fear was a lot smaller than a lot of things she'd been facing lately. Pran knew she could manage it.

  Clark grinned then, or smiled really, his white teeth shining in the dim light.

  "Now that we know we don't have to listen to painful girlish shrieking I guess we should see to that." He patted her on the back, which was firmer than she expected, like it was conveying a message of some kind. Probably about not letting the others see how freaked out she actually was.

  "I want you in bed by midnight. I don't care if you have to leave all the clothes on the floor in a sodden heap. You're training tomorrow and we have work after that. You need rest."

  That statement actually got a nod from the other Guardian.

  "That's a real point Pran. So if you could do my things first?"

  Everyone started coming then, with baskets of clothes. Not the whole ship, just the people she knew, but Bard Benjamin and the Doctor both had some things they could use cleaned. Ben offered to bribe her.

  "Oh? With what?" Pran was more than a little tired but she didn't want to seem like a bitch. It was hard not to sound irritated though, since Mara and Claire both brought baskets of things too. Then Roy came by carrying his own. It didn't look overly full at least.

  "Just leave it in the hall. I don't promise to get to it, but the faster I get to work, the better the odds are."

  He just shook his big shaggy monkey like head and looked confused. "I can do my own. I just came to use the room."

  That was nice at least, except there was no way he was going to get to, unless she let him work in somehow, and the space really wasn't big enough for that.

  "No problem. I'll just work with superhuman speed and..." She couldn't do that. The best she could manage would be fast.

  After a whi
le she got lost in the work, a familiar task, since everyone did laundry at school. Even the professors did their own most of the time, unless someone pulled that duty as a punishment.

  Roy left, saying that he could do it the next day, eyes a little big, staring at the different kinds of baskets of things laid out for her to work on. The next few hours were exhausting, but she managed to set the final basket to soaking as the first finished drying, the fast air from outside whipping over it all. It was cold air, but it still seemed to work well enough. It wouldn't take all night at least.

  When she turned around it was at a large hand on her shoulder. At first she figured that it would be Clark, there to tell her to get that sleep, though she should have a little more time left, Pran thought. It wasn't him though, but Dovish, who gave her one of his happy, puppy dog looks.

  "Could I have something to eat? Please?"

  She blinked for a second and then shrugged.

  "I don't know, did you ask in the kitchen? The galley I mean?" For all she knew he didn't know anything but the ship terms, so she needed to try and use them.

  He shook his head.

  "I have to have permission to get food at night. The Captain said. So if you say I can have something to eat, I can." The expression looked nearly sly, if in an innocent fashion. The smile was a little loopy, but pleasant enough.

  "I see. So you figured to get the new girl, who doesn't know any better, to say you can have some, so that when you get in trouble for it you can blame me. I shouldn't get into much trouble, being new and not knowing any better, right?" It was really kind of clever, in a diabolical fashion.

  Sweetly enough the man nodded hugely.

  "Please?" As if to illustrate the whole thing his stomach growled. Loudly enough for her to hear it over the wind from the vents over head.

  "Um. Well, don't make a mess and put everything back where you found it and leave a note... Can you write?" It was, she realized, a rude thing to ask. Not everyone could, or needed too, but in the supply room Roy had filled out what he'd taken and why.

  Oddly enough the big man smiled.

  "I can sign my name and write the alphabet all by myself. Little words too, like cat, bat and rat. That and coffee. If we see coffee in the market we're supposed to buy all we can. Everyone, all the time. First Mate Paul taught me that." He seemed pretty proud of it too.

  "OK, well, when you finish eating you need to leave a note, so they know what's gone. Come and find me and I'll help you write the big words. You know, if you need the help." If he could learn to spell coffee he might know enough for whatever else he got.

  "Not too much though. If I end up having to pay for it I don't want to be in for weeks of extra service." She smiled at his back as he scurried away, a lot faster than she figured he could move in the small hallway.

  He actually came back about twenty minutes later, a bit of jam ringing his mouth. Strawberry by the look. In his right hand he had a very official looking list. After a second she got the idea, people could take what they wanted, but they really did have to sign for it.

  He'd had four big slices of bread and six big spoons of preserves, he informed her proudly.

  "I counted it all."

  "Good. This time I'll write them down for you, but from now on you have to learn to do it for yourself. I'll help you learn the words if I can. For now work on this one, since it's a good one. Bread. See what it looks like? Jam is an easier thing to write than preserves too. I think that the cook will understand it. Then, next to the words and the amounts, you sign your name on each line..." She pointed as he stuck his tongue out and wrote Dovish in readably clear print.

  "Now just make sure the list goes back to the right spot. Hopefully I won't be beaten too hard for helping you get that food."

  Dovish smiled and nodded.

  "The Captain never hits anyone. She's a good person. She let me have a job here for... two years I think. She doesn't let anyone hurt me or make fun of me. Lots of rules. I can't remember them all. I can take the paper back. Thank you." The last bit was added a bit after the rest, as if he had to make himself remember to say it.

  "You're welcome. You should wash up, then go get some sleep. I know I plan to soon."

  "That's good. I'll do that. Um, what's your name?" He seemed suddenly shy for some reason.

  "Pran."

  "Good. Pran. I can remember that. If I don't, please don't get mad at me. It can take a long time for me to learn new things." Then he walked away, toward the galley. For all the world it looked like he was busily reading the list. That would have been hard for him, especially in the dim ship light that was used at night.

  Mara and Clark had folded clothing by midnight and by waiting just a few minutes past that the Doctor and Bard Benjamin did too. Claire's finished drying last having several heavy robes. It took several trips, but she had all the baskets set outside their doors by fifteen after and went almost straight to bed after that. Not perfectly following what her new master had said, but hopefully it was close enough that no one would complain. For that matter she wasn't totally certain she had the time right at all. There had to be clocks on the ship and there were bells every now and then, but they all seemed to mean different things and Pran just had no clue what they were.

  One rang about fifteen minutes later, a single chime that wasn't all that loud. If she was lucky that would actually be midnight, meaning she might actually be in bed on time. Thinking that relatively happy thought she slept. It wasn't easy to do, Roy's breathing unfamiliar to her at first, but she managed fairly quickly to get some rest. Until she started dreaming.

  Then there was Yarl and one of his brothers trying to rape her in an alley. She shot them both with a tiny rifle that turned out to be a Kinetic pistol, which blasted them both back into the stone wall behind them. They didn't get up after that at all.

  The night was just filled with wonderful variations on that theme. First Yarl came for her, then the people she'd shot, then... Ricards and his family. That one got her to wake in the darkness, eyes wide open and panting, hoping she didn't cry out loudly enough to wake her new roommate up. It probably wasn't possible, since it wasn't a big space.

  "Sorry." The word was mumbled and soft.

  "Are you alright?" The voice sounded a lot more concerned than she liked coming from someone she didn't really know, but it wasn't filled with pity at least.

  "Yes. I shot a man yesterday. Two of them. One might die, if he hasn't already. I haven't really talked to anyone about it." She didn't intend to now either. Not in the middle of the night.

  There was no sound for a long time from the other bunk, but finally there was a low sound of relaxed and heavy breathing. It was an odd thing to say to someone, admitting something like that, wasn't it? He probably figured he was dreaming. That or he already knew the story. It wasn't like he would be lying there in a panic, sleeping five feet away from a murderer.

  The idea should have kept her awake, but she was too tired for that, even with the dreams haunting her. She woke up twice more, the last time showing her that light was coming through the round window in the wall. She stood and looked out for just a second, realizing that they were still well up in the air. It was amazing of course. The feeling was slow and tranquil, almost like flying in a dream. She just watched the ground crawl under them for a while, then decided that she needed a shower.

  That meant getting some other clothes, which she signed out from the same place Roy had taken her the day before. It was empty of people, but she found some black clothing that should fit and a couple pair of new socks as well. She'd want those, if every day was going to have running in it. The hard part came in the shower, because the warm water was actually hot for some reason and she badly wanted to soak her sore muscles for a while, but didn't, knowing that her water allowance might just be needed later in the day.

  After cleaning up she went to the dining room, to find Roy sitting with his bowl of oatmeal and dried fruit, just eating alone. No one else was
there yet.

  "Hey, Pran. Come sit by me." He said it as if she'd pick someplace else just out of spite or something.

  "Morning!" She tried for cheerful and smiled about her own stiffness, making sure she didn't complain. She realized that she wasn't really focusing on everything like she was supposed to and gave it a try, noticing how the smooth heavy bowl held warmth under her fingers and how the wooden table didn't shift even a little as she sat on the immobile chair. The hard seat uncomfortable, the pain of sitting jarring her attention a bit.

  Roy just ate for a while, munching absently on some dried pears. Pran tried one herself, focused on the texture of it as completely as she could while not letting go of everything else.

  "We should be in Danning at about ten or so. I've never been to it before, so that should be interesting. They have an outdoor market, if it's still open this late in the year. Would you like to go with me? To look at it I mean?" He was clearly trying to make it sound like he didn't care about what she said, but even she could tell he wanted her to go along with him.

  "I don't think I get time off yet. If I do that would be fun. I don't have any money, but just looking at things would be interesting." She didn't want to misrepresent herself after all, if he figured she was going to go half in on buying treats or something.

  He just shrugged.

  "Captain Mina always tells us not to take money into town anyway. If you have it with you, you'll spend it. I just go and look myself. Most of my funds are being saved anyway. If you want a berth on a good ship you generally have to buy in and I only have another year on The Lament. After that I'll have to make my own way. Danning is just an off port, since they don't make anything of note, but we also ship goods, not just Judges and Guardians. It's how we make money to keep it all going. The High Council gives the Captain a tax break for taking Judge Claire with us and traveling mainly on a specific route. We can't always, because of the weather." He grinned and finished his oatmeal with a big bite.

  "Which is all probably boring to you. Anyway, it looks clear for today, which will make the landing easier. Do you have a job for that?"