CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Slow Circles
THE EOLIAN IS WHERE our long-sought player is waiting in the wings.
I have not forgotten that she is what I am moving toward. If I seem to be caught in a slow circling of the subject, it is only appropriate, as she and I have always moved toward each other in slow circles.
Luckily, Wilem and Simmon had both been to the Eolian. Together they told me what little I didn’t already know.
There were a lot of places you could go in Imre to listen to music. In fact, nearly every inn, tavern, and boarding house had some manner of musician strumming, singing, or piping in the background. But the Eolian was different. It hosted the best musicians in the city. If you knew good music from bad, you knew the Eolian had the best.
To get in the front door of the Eolian cost you a whole copper jot. Once you were inside you could stay as long as you wished, and listen to as much music as you liked.
But paying at the door did not give a musician the right to play at the Eolian. A musician who wished to set foot upon the Eolian’s stage had to pay for the privilege: one silver talent. That’s right, folk paid to play at the Eolian, not the other way around.
Why would anyone pay such an outrageous amount of money simply to play music? Well, some of those who gave their silver were simply the self-indulgent rich. To them, a talent was not a great price to set themselves on such proud display.
But serious musicians paid too. If your performance impressed the audience and the owners enough, you were given a token: a tiny set of silver pipes that could be mounted on a pin or necklace. Talent pipes were recognized as clear marks of distinction at most sizable inns within two hundred miles of Imre.
If you had your set of talent pipes, you were admitted to the Eolian for free and could play whenever the fancy took you.
The only responsibility the talent pipes carried was that of performance. If you had earned your pipes, you could be called upon to play. This was usually not a heavy burden, as the nobility who frequented the Eolian usually gave money or gifts to performers who pleased them. It was the upper class version of buying drinks for the fiddler.
Some musicians played with little hope of actually gaining their pipes. They paid to play because you never knew who might be in the Eolian that night, listening. A good performance of a single song might not get you your pipes, but it might earn you a wealthy patron instead.
A patron.
“You’ll never guess what I heard,” Simmon said one evening as we sat on our usual bench in the pennant square. We were alone, as Wilem was off making eyes at a serving girl at Anker’s. “Students have been hearing all manner of odd things from Mains at night.”
“Really,” I feigned disinterest.
Simmon pressed on. “Yes. Some say that it’s the ghost of a student who got lost in the building and starved to death.” He tapped the side of his nose with a finger like an old gaffer telling a story. “They say he wanders the halls even to this day, never able to find his way outside.”
“Ah.”
“Other opinions suggest it’s an angry spirit. They say it tortures animals, especially cats. That’s the sound the students hear, late at night: tortured cat’s guts. Quite a terrifying sound, I understand.”
I looked at him. He seemed almost ready to burst with laughing. “Oh let it out,” I told him with mock severity. “Go on. You deserve it for being so terribly clever. Despite the fact that no one uses gut strings in this day and age.”
He chortled delightedly to himself. I picked up one of his sweetcakes and began to eat it, hoping to teach him a valuable lesson in humility.
“So you’re still going at it?”
I nodded.
Simmon looked relieved. “I thought you might have changed your plans. I hadn’t seen you carrying your lute around lately.”
“Not necessary,” I explained. “Now that I have time to practice I don’t have to worry about sneaking in a few minutes whenever I can grab them.”
A group of students passed by, one of them waved to Simmon. “When are you going to do it?”
“This Mourning,” I said.
“So soon?” Sim asked. “It was only two span ago that you were worried about being rusty. Has it all come back so quickly?”
“Not all of it,” I admitted. “It’ll take years for it to all come back.” I shrugged and popped the last of the sweetcake into my mouth. “But it’s easy again. The music doesn’t stop in my hands any more, it just—” I struggled to explain, then shrugged. “I’m ready.”
Honestly, I would have liked another month’s practice, another year’s practice before gambling away an entire talent. But there was no time. The term was nearly over. I needed money to stave off my debt to Devi and pay my upcoming tuition. I couldn’t wait any longer.
“You sure?” Sim asked. “I’ve heard people try for their talent that were really good. Early this term an old man sang a song about…about this woman whose husband had gone off to war.”
“‘In the Village Smithy,’” I said.
“Whatever,” Simmon said dismissively. “What I’m saying is that he was really good. I laughed and cried and just hurt all over.” He gave me an anxious look. “But he didn’t get his pipes.”
I covered my own anxiety with a smile. “You still haven’t heard me play, have you?”
“You know damn well I haven’t,” he said crossly.
I smiled. I had refused to play for Wilem and Simmon while I was out of practice. Their opinions were nearly as important as those at the Eolian.
“Well, you’ll get your chance this Mourning,” I teased. “Will you come?”
Simmon nodded. “Wilem too. Barring earthquakes or a rain of blood.”
I looked up at the sunset. “I should go,” I said, getting to my feet. “Practice makes the master.”
Sim waved and I headed to the Mess, where I sat down long enough to spoon up my beans and chew through a flat piece of tough grey meat. I took my small loaf of bread with me, drawing a few odd looks from the nearby students.
I headed to my bunk and retrieved my lute from the trunk at the foot of the bed. Then, given the rumors Sim had mentioned, I took one of the trickier ways onto the roof of Mains, shimmying up a series of drainpipes in a sheltered box alley. I didn’t want to draw any extra attention to my nighttime activities there.
It was fully dark by the time I made it to the isolated courtyard with the apple tree. All the windows were dark. I looked down from the edge of the roof, seeing nothing but shadows.
“Auri,” I called. “Are you there?”
“You’re late,” came the vaguely petulant reply.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you want to come up tonight?”
A slight pause. “No. Come down.”
“There’s not much moon tonight,” I said in my best encouraging tones. “Are you sure you don’t want to come up?”
I heard a rustle from the hedges below and then saw Auri scamper up the tree like a squirrel. She ran around the edge of the roof, then pulled up short a few dozen feet away.
At my best guess, Auri was only a few years older than me, certainly no more than twenty. She dressed in tattered clothes that left her arms and legs bare, was shorter than me by almost a foot. She was thin. Part of this was simply her tiny frame, but there was more to it than that. Her cheeks were hollow and her bare arms waifishly narrow. Her long hair was so fine that it trailed her, floating in the air like a cloud.
It had taken me a long while to draw her out of hiding. I’d suspected someone was listening to me practice from the courtyard, but it had been nearly two span before I caught a glimpse of her. Seeing that she was half-starved, I began bringing whatever food I could carry away from the Mess and leaving it for her. Even so, it was another span before she had joined me on the roof as I practiced my lute.
The last few days, she’d even started talking. I’d expected her to be sullen and suspicious, but nothing could be further from the truth. She was bright-eyed and enthusiastic. Though I couldn’t help but be reminded of myself in Tarbean when I saw her, there was little real resemblance. Auri was scrupulously clean and full of joy.
She didn’t like the open sky, or bright lights, or people. I guessed she was some student who had gone cracked and run underground before she could be confined to Haven. I hadn’t learned much about her, as she was still shy and skittish. When I’d asked her name, she bolted back underground and didn’t return for days.
So I picked a name for her, Auri. Though in my heart I thought of her as my little moon-fey.
Auri came a few steps closer, stopped, waited, then darted forward again. She did this several times until she stood in front of me. Standing still, her hair spread in the air around her like a halo. She held both her hands in front of her, just under her chin. She reached out and tugged my sleeve, then pulled her hand back. “What did you bring me?” She asked excitedly.
I smiled. “What did you bring me?” I teased gently.
She smiled and thrust her hand forward. Something gleamed in the moonlight. “A key,” she said proudly, pressing it on me.
I took it. It had a pleasing weight in my hand. “It’s very nice,” I said. “What does it unlock?”
“The moon,” she said, her expression grave.
“That should be useful,” I said, looking it over.
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “That way, if there’s a door in the moon you can open it.” She sat cross-legged on the roof and grinned up at me. “Not that I would encourage that sort of reckless behavior.”
I squatted down and opened my lute case. “I brought you some bread.” I handed her the loaf of brown barley bread wrapped in a piece of cloth. “And a bottle of water.”
“This is very nice as well,” she said graciously. The bottle seemed very large in her hands. “What’s in the water?” she asked as she pulled out the cork and peered down into it.
“Flowers,” I said. “And the part of the moon that isn’t in the sky tonight. I put that in there too.”
She looked back up. “I already said the moon,” she said with a hint of reproach.
“Just flowers then. And the shine off the back of a dragonfly. I wanted a piece of the moon, but blue-dragonfly-shine was as close as I could get.”
She tipped the bottle up and took a sip. “It’s lovely,” she said, brushing back several strands of hair that were drifting in front of her face.
Auri spread out the cloth and began to eat. She tore small pieces from the loaf and chewed them delicately, somehow making the whole process look genteel.
“I like white bread,” she said conversationally between mouthfuls.
“Me too,” I said as I lowered myself into a sitting position. “When I can get it.”
She nodded and looked around at the starry night sky and the crescent moon. “I like it when it’s cloudy, too. But this is okay. It’s cozy. Like the Underthing.”
“Underthing?” I asked. She was rarely this talkative.
“I live in the Underthing,” Auri said easily. “It goes all over.”
“Do you like it down there?”
Auri’s eyes lit up. “Holy God yes, it’s marvelous. You can just look forever.” She turned to look at me. “I have news,” she said teasingly.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She took another bite and finished chewing before she spoke. “I went out last night.” A sly smile. “On top of things.”
“Really?” I said, not bothering to hide my surprise. “How did you like it?”
“It was lovely. I went looking around,” she said, obviously pleased with herself. “I saw Elodin.”
“Master Elodin?” I asked. She nodded. “Was he on top of things, too?”
She nodded again, chewing.
“Did he see you?”
Her smile burst out again making her look closer to eight than eighteen. “Nobody sees me. Besides, he was busy listening to the wind.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and made a hooting noise. “There was good wind for listening last night,” she added confidentially.
While I was trying to make sense of what she’d said, Auri finished the last of her bread and clapped her hands excitedly. “Now play!” she said breathlessly. “Play! Play!”
Grinning, I pulled my lute out of its case. I couldn’t hope for a more enthusiastic audience than Auri.