“I think it’d be a nice change,” the man said, “
not
having a Herald on the throne for once.”
The woman agreed, as the voices wandered off.
Lelia went back to the table to find Grier’s conversation with the councilor ended. She leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Going.”
Grier leapt from his seat, looping an arm around her waist.
“I heard something interesting,” Lelia murmured.
“Oh?”
She filled him in as they strolled to the exit, keeping her voice low.
Grier frowned. “Did you happen to see
who
was saying it?”
“No. But if I ever hear them
here
, I’ll point them out to you.”
“You could do that? Just from hearing—oh, wait.” He blushed. “Bard. Right.”
Lelia smiled grimly. “Honestly? Those featherheads should be whipped for treason.” Hastily, she added, “Not that Valdemar has any precedent for doing such to its traitors. Though there was that thing King Theran did to—”
She stopped. Grier’s face had assumed a schooled, patient expression she knew too well.
“I’m boring you,” she said.
“We can’t all be Bards, darling.” Grier kissed her cheek. “I’ll be by later.”
“I’ll be practicing,” she replied, giving him a preemptive punch in the shoulder before he could pose any questions.
“Ow!” he exclaimed. “How do you manage to always hit the
exact same spot?
”
She winked. “Just like plucking a gittern.”
Back at the suite, Lelia opened the window, collected her gittern, and sat down to play.
Her mind settled and her Gift expanded. It grew easier each time; she barely had to concentrate any more. Not that she felt anyone tonight, except for the sleeping guildsman temporarily lodged in the suite next door.
Songs spun out, one by one. Too soon, her wrists began to throb, intruding on her meditation. She set down Bloom and rubbed her arms, trying to massage the fire out of them. She guessed that it had been merely a candlemark since she’d started practice.
No matter. It gave her a chance to try something.
Hands back in her lap, Lelia closed her eyes and settled once more, humming “Meetings” under her breath.
To her surprise, it worked.
A couple strolled by, and she felt the pulse of their activity. Guards made their rounds. The guildsman slept on. Out in the garden beneath her window—
Her eyes flew open in surprise.
Talamir didn’t see her, or if he did he didn’t acknowledge her. He sipped from his glass and gazed up at the frosty stars. Then he wandered away again, winding back toward the center, soft as a ghost.
She’d felt his life in those moments, though. Her stomach twisted like a rag being wrung dry, and tears slipped down her cheeks.
“Lelia?”
She hadn’t heard Grier come in. She started badly, swinging around to find him standing behind her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting down next to her and taking her hands. “You’re freezing!”
“I, ah, the windows. It was too warm.” She closed one with fumbling fingers. This new facet of her Gift was but one of many things she’d never explained to Grier. Truth be told—she hadn’t tried to explain it to anyone, and she wasn’t sure she
could
articulate what she’d felt when she’d brushed against Talamir. His pulse had blazed like a beacon being burned too quickly.
“Why are you crying?” Grier asked.
Lelia took a deep breath and smiled. “Talamir wandered close to the window and I saw his face. He looks . . . sad.”
“Ah.” Grier kissed her cheek. “Well, you know what might cheer him up?”
“No, what?”
“If you married me.”
She bumped her head against his chest like a cat and stood, taking his hand.
“It would cheer
me
up,” Grier added.
She shook her head and led him into the bedchamber.
Lelia spent the morning in the archives, hunting down the first ten volumes of Ostrum’s Cycle and transcribing what she could before her hands started to cramp.
Back at the apartment, two things waited for her: Maresa’s contract and a brief note from Grier stating he would be late at the House of Healing. Lelia entrusted the signed contract to a page, then sat down with her new works spread out about her and let them speak to her.
By dusk, she had the beginnings of an opening set. She lit the fires and the lamps, then sat by the window and practiced her selections. She made it through two candlemarks before the gnawing in her wrists became unbearable.
Afterward, she sat by the window, pondering arrangement and inflection as she waited for the Queen’s Own’s appearance. She watched until her eyes grew heavy, then went to bed without having seen Talamir or Grier.
It felt like she’d only just fallen asleep when something roused her. Lelia sat up in bed, heart thundering.
Gong. Gong. Gong.
The Death Bell.
She jumped from the empty bed and sprinted for the door. Clothes were an afterthought; she pulled on a tunic and breeches, dashing barefoot into the gardens and angling toward the Grove.
A figure rushed to intercept her.
“Lelia!” Grier called.
She staggered to a stop. He still wore his working robes. He looked exhausted, but he
knew
. She saw it in his eyes.
“Who?” she asked, hands curled into tight fists.
Grier hesitated, then said the name softly. “Talamir.”
She stood agape, words failing.
Over in the Palace and the Heralds Wing, fires and lamps were being kindled, windows filling with golden illumination. Grier put his arms around her as she shivered in the cold, and the Bell’s somber lament tolled on.
There was no Court dinner that night.
Lelia spent the day in the archives again, removing herself from the bleak atmosphere of the Palace. She sifted through the last of Ostrum’s Cycle, taking transcriptions and writing notes until her hands burned.
Dusk crept across the horizon when she returned to the empty suite. She ate alone, working her way through a bottle of wine and a pile of firewood, shuffling and weighing the pages with a growing sense of melancholy. She’d promised Maresa something lighthearted, but it felt all wrong right now.
As if the Queen didn’t have enough trouble,
Lelia thought.
As if Talamir isn’t needed
right now.
She randomly chose a song—one of the last from the Cycle—and began to sing, picking out progressions as she found them appropriate.
Who are we?
What are we?
In the end, lost causes
Death holds to no promises
And Life does not love me
As much as I love her
She heard Grier coming this time. When he spoke, it didn’t surprise her.
“That’s . . . cheerful,” he said, sitting down in a chair.
After a moment, she cleared her throat and said, “Ostrum was a Master Bard, oh, during your great-grandfather’s rule. He wrote a song a day, starting after his fifth year graduation. After three years without missing a day, he turned in the material and made Master Bard. But he didn’t stop.”
Grier said nothing. If she bored him, she couldn’t tell; the shifting shadows of the fire made a mask of his face. She stirred the sheets of vellum with one finger. “He wrote over two thousand songs. Some were ridiculous.” She smiled, thinking of the four-line ditty she’d found in honor of summer’s first sprays of Maiden’s Hope (“Oh pure white blooms / The perfume of hope! / Pray you aren’t / Eaten by goats”).
“Some were profound. He fell head over heels in love with another Bard, and there are at least three months where he writes about nothing but her. He set their vows to music.” He’d done the same with the proposal, too, but she didn’t mention it; she didn’t want to give Grier any ideas.
“Five years into the project, he writes about a passing fever. Then a passing ache. Then he realized neither were passing.” She swallowed hard, imagining how Ostrum must have felt. The slowly dawning realization. The comprehension of mortality and how little time he had left. “It was insidious, you see. Took years to manifest, and more to kill him. The Healers told him there was nothing to be done, that whatever he had was a wasting ailment, and incurable.
“His body betrayed him, but his mind stayed sharp. His wife, Lirian, started transcribing for him. Right up to the last.”
Grier cleared his throat. “Is that what you were playing? The last one?”
She shook her head. “He wrote that when he . . . knew. He thought he was disappointing Lirian by dying.” Her lips quirked. “No, his last song is . . . quite peaceful.”
A pause. Then Grier said, “Show me?”
She didn’t need to find the page.
How shall I haunt you
So you do not know?
After I am gone,
I pray you move on
Depart from my fond shadow
And show me, love,
Show me that you live
Grier said nothing. Taking a deep breath, Lelia finally spoke.
“I do love you, Grier. But not enough.”
“I know,” he said automatically.
“You’ll go back to your estates,” she said. “I’ll miss you, and you’ll miss me. You’ll inherit, and you’ll be expected to have a wife who runs your home and has your children.” She tapped her chest, over her heart. “I am not her.”
He said nothing.
She crossed to him and kissed his cheek. “We both know that if you don’t fill the role, one of your cousins will.” He shuddered at the notion. “I’d never ask you to give it up for me. I—”
He put a hand to her lips, stilling her. “Let’s enjoy what’s left of spring,” he said softly. “Let’s pretend for a little longer that Valdemar doesn’t expect anything from me. Let’s pretend I’ll still be here after Midsummer.”
Lelia closed her eyes. Whispering, she said, “I just spoke to Valdemar.”
“Oh?” He wound his arms around her neck. “What does Valdemar say?”
“Duty, sacrifice, no one true way. The usual.”
He chuckled.
“But she agrees. It’s okay for us to do this a little longer. Not much longer, though.” Lelia opened her eyes. “Okay?”
He gave her a firm kiss in answer.
The Fancy Dancer smelled like fresh paint and new thatch. So much so that Lelia had to go out the back door for fresh air during her break.
She stood alone in a corner of the outer courtyard, rubbing her wrists and drinking her way through a cup of icy-cold wine. The tavern was a blessed reprieve from the unhappy Court dinners of the last few days. Meals there had become solemn affairs, with courtiers in mourning attire and the queen scarcely seen. Grier had gone without her tonight, mostly out of a sense of duty to his family’s place at Court. He’d promised to come by and catch the last of her show once dinner wound down.
Lelia gauged her break nearly over and headed back in. The front door had a direct line of sight to the stage, but she decided to circle the tavern first, finishing off the wine as she went. She even poked her head into the kitchen, where the cook was trying not to burn some sort of sweet bubbling away at the hearth. Like most of the staff, the young cook seemed as fresh as the paint.
She smiled fondly at the owner, Corgan, strolling over to where he was drawing drinks.
“Welcome back, milady Bard!” he boomed. “Shall we continue?”
“Oh, that depends,” she replied. “I’m just not sure they’re ready for me yet.”
The crowd gave a weak cheer.
Lelia yawned and leaned against a cask, putting a hand out. Corgan promptly filled it with a mug of something chilly. “Yes, definitely not ready yet.”
A more vigorous cheer followed that.
“Hmm?” Lelia walked toward the tavern’s raised stage, mug in hand. “Did someone say something?”
Now she had
all
eyes on her, and the cheers made her teeth rattle. Grinning, she took her seat and Bloom, launching into one of Ostrum’s bawdier compositions: “Ode to the Innkeeper’s Daughter (and Her Twin Sister).”
The crowd loved it.
She
loved them. They sang along when they could, made noise with feet and hands when they couldn’t, and when the music grew soft they respected the delicate, somber melodies. Despite the pain in her hands, the rush of being on a stage and being surrounded by such sheer delight buoyed her and let her fight the growing agony in her wrists. Her Gift twined through the crowd, enthralling them. She played and sang and felt them all, lively pulses of light in her mind’s eye, enraptured by the songs she wove.
She didn’t notice the tavern was on fire until the flames were climbing up the walls.
The shriek of the cook jolted her back to awareness. He screamed a single word:
“Fire!”
For a dazed moment Lelia thought,
Ah, he’s gone and burned dessert.
A beam crashed to the ground, and a wall of fire leaped up to her right. People turned into indistinct, shrieking figures in the heat and smoke. Screams and crackling wood became the tavern’s new song.
Gripping her gittern, Lelia launched off the stage, knowing the exit lay directly before her. Tears streamed from her eyes as fire clawed at the ceiling. She staggered to the door and into the courtyard. Voices hollered for the fire brigade, for Guards, for water.
Lelia collapsed, gasping at the stars.
Pulse.
Horror rose in her throat. In all that pandemonium, her strange Gift had not shut down. Lives pulsed around her—the ones in the courtyard, and the ones still trapped
inside the tavern
.
Her own words haunted her.
Duty, sacrifice . . .
She hauled herself to her feet again, thinking,
Why couldn’t I have been born in Rethwellan?
The thought drew a hysterical laugh from her lips as she stumbled up to the front door of the inferno, closed her eyes, and did what only she could do.