Lisa Shearin - Raine Benares 02 (18 page)

“For
the recital tomorrow night,” Cayle said.

“What
. . . ?”

“At
the beginning of each school year, Ronan’s students give a recital for select
alumni and parents, and returning faculty,” Mychael explained.

“It’s
turned into a gala event over the years,” Cayle added. “Only my best students
are invited to perform.” His lips tightened. “Megan Jacobs was one of them.
Master Rivalin may be my newest student, but after what happened here
yesterday, many have expressed an interest in hearing him perform.”

Damn.
I’ll bet they have.

“A
few of them have asked to attend the dress rehearsal.”

And I
was going to be right there with them. I glanced at Mychael, he looked at me,
and the battlelines were drawn. There was no way in hell Piaras was walking
into that without me.

“It’s
a courtesy that I extend to certain choice patrons,” Ronan continued.

“If
you don’t mind, maestro, I’d like to go with Piaras.” I gave him what I’d been
told was a winning smile. “Moral support and all that.”

Ronan
beamed. “I would love for you to hear—”

“Ronan,
it would be safer if Raine remained in the citadel,” Mychael told him, and me.

Piaras
shot me a look. “You’re not safe outside the citadel?”

I
shrugged. “Safe is relative.”

He
knew what I meant. I’d told him the same thing last week when we’d been between
near-death experiences and had about a mile between us and Sarad Nukpana or
anyone with the last name Mal’Salin.

I
turned to Mychael. “With Vegard, Riston, and the boys, I think I’ll be safe in
a concert hall.”

“We
won’t be using my concert hall,” Ronan told me. “It’s being renovated. Tamnais
Nathrach, the proprietor of Sirens, has graciously agreed to host the
festivities. Next to my concert hall, Sirens has the best acoustics on the
island.”

So
that
was Mychael’s real reason. I understood it, but that didn’t mean I was
going to agree to it. Tam had been a busy boy—from possible Khrynsani
conspirator to gracious gala host.

“I’ll
be going to Sirens with Ronan and Piaras,” Mychael told me, his expression
giving nothing away, least of all that he and Tam were going to have a long
talk, and he was determined that talk was going to be without me.

I
smiled at Piaras and Ronan. “Would you gentlemen excuse us for a moment?” I
crooked a finger at Mychael. “Paladin Eiliesor, a moment of your time in
private, please?”

If
Ronan hadn’t resumed putting away music in a rustle of papers, I could have
sworn I heard Mychael growl. He may have growled, but he did follow me to a
corner of his office.

“I
won’t go anywhere near Tam,” I assured Mychael in my most emphatic whisper.
“Hell, I won’t even look at him.” Tam wasn’t important right now; sticking to
Piaras like glue was.

“Good,
because you’re not going to Sirens.”

“Mychael,
somebody slashed those shields while Piaras was practicing. Now there’s
suddenly a lot of interest in hearing him sing. Powerful people kind of
interest. I’d like to see just who these choice patrons are.”

Phaelan’s
opinion of why those shields had been disabled was sounding more like truth
than theory every second. And I’d seen it more times than I’d care to count in
my line of work. Talented magic users kidnapped to be used and exploited by the
rich and powerful. For obvious reasons, alchemists had the top spot on the list
of mages most often kidnapped, but spellsingers ranked right up there. I’d done
more than my share of magic user “seek and rescues.” Piaras was
not
going to be one of them.

I
lowered my voice even further. “What if whoever slashed those shields wasn’t
interested in killing you or me, or getting the Saghred?” I said. “What if they
wanted to see just how much damage Piaras was capable of? You said it yourself
that he’s a weapon; Ronan said he’s lethal. One of those choice patrons might
be in the black market for a spellsinger.” I stared hard at him. “I hear you
were a kick-ass prodigy in your day. Did anyone try to kidnap you?”

Mychael
looked down at me, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “If you take one step
toward Tam, Vegard
will
sit on you.”

I’d
been inside Sirens in Mermeia, so I knew what to expect. Piaras
had never seen the inside of either one of Tam’s
nightclubs. His brown eyes were wide as he took it all in.

The
Sirens nightclub in Mermeia was mainly a gambling parlor. The Sirens on the
Isle of Mid offered spellsinging as the featured specialty. So far there were
only two links in what Tam planned to become a chain of Sirens nightclubs.

On
the outside, Sirens looked less like what one would expect of a nightclub, and
more like an expensive manor house. The diamond-shaped, lead-paned windows
belonged to the restaurant part of the establishment. We were in the interior theatre
where the shows took place.

On
the main floor of the theatre were small tables, each covered in a crisp white
cloth and set with a single pale lightglobe in its center. There were either
two or four chairs at each table, with enough room between each for servers to
discreetly fill drink orders—and to give Sirens’s guests privacy to enjoy the
show. The second-floor dining suites were like private boxes in a fine theatre.
Columns stretched from the floor to the high, vaulted ceiling, carved with mermaids
and mermen—sirens that could sing men or women to their doom—or somewhere much
more enjoyable. From what I could see, “frolicsome” didn’t even begin to
describe the activities the carvings were engaged in. I steered Piaras around
the columns.

The
stage wasn’t large; it didn’t need to be. Sirens was about spellsingers, and
what they could do to an audience. Spellsingers didn’t need space, just
flawless acoustics, so that a whispered word sounded like it was being
whispered directly into the ear of a patron at the farthest table from the
stage.

Mychael
had gone to Tam’s office. I stayed with Piaras.

Close
to two dozen people were seated at various tables near the stage. When Ronan
had said “choice patrons,” what I saw was pretty much what I’d expected. The mixture
of elves, goblins, and humans had the air of privilege that only came with
obscene wealth. Not surprisingly, the elves sat on one side of the theatre, the
goblins on the other. The humans had arranged themselves more or less in the
middle. Some of the patrons were magically talented; most were just rich. Of
the talents, I didn’t sense any nefarious purpose, but that didn’t mean it
wasn’t there.

Ronan
was conferring with one of his students onstage. She’d just finished a love
song that quite frankly hadn’t done a thing for me. There were shields at the
base of the stage that would prevent spellsongs from having their full effect.
They could be strengthened or lowered as needed. They could have turned them
off for this girl. Maybe it was just me she left cold, but I didn’t think so.
With spellsinging, the sex of the singer and the listener shouldn’t matter. A
truly gifted spellsinger could make you forget that you even had a sexual
preference. Ronan’s student was a regally beautiful goblin who came complete
with her own entourage. Two armed and leather-armored bodyguards stood nearby,
their eyes alert to her and everyone else in the room. The goblin girl was
dressed in the height of fashion, and wore more jewelry than was tasteful. I
thought one piece was particularly tasteless. A mirror pendant hung from a rope
of diamonds around the girl’s neck. A mirror mage. Figures. A human hairstylist
fussed with elaborately jeweled clips holding back the girl’s waist-length
blue-black hair. One of the clips pulled the goblin’s hair and the girl spun
and hissed something, the back of her hand stopping just short of the human’s
face.

“Countess
Sanura Mal’Salin,” Piaras told me as if that explained everything.

It
did.

Apparently
Ronan invited his best students—or the most politically advantageous. For years
the goblin royal family had snubbed the Conclave college, until about ten years
ago when goblin aristocrats started filtering into the college classrooms—and
their gold started flooding into the college coffers. I wondered if Mal’Salin
gold was paying for Ronan’s recital hall renovation.

Six
students lounged at a cluster of tables at the base of the stage: three elves,
two humans, and another goblin. None of them had entourages. I chuckled. It
looked like Piaras had a small platoon in his wake. The platoon was for me, but
no one here knew that. Vegard and Riston hung back a few feet to give Piaras
and me the semblance of privacy. The others deployed themselves around the
theatre. I saw a familiar young goblin leaning casually against one of the
siren-covered columns, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the countess
with amusement.

“Is
the goblin next to the column one of Ronan’s students?” I asked Piaras.

Piaras
nodded. “Talon Tandu. He also works here.”

“Do
you know if he’s any good?” I asked.

“I
heard him briefly in the maestro’s tower yesterday. I thought he was very
good.” Piaras was silent for a moment. “Paladin Eiliesor didn’t want you to
come here.”

“He
didn’t want me to leave the citadel,” I corrected.

Piaras’s
lips turned up in a brief smile. “No, I distinctly heard the words ‘Tam’ and
‘Sirens.’ I also heard my name more than once. You don’t go into a corner to
argue about giving someone moral support.”

Crap.
The kid’s got elf ears, Raine. You’ve got a pair yourself. They’re not just
there to look good.

“Sounds
like we should have left the room,” I told him. “Eavesdropping is rude.”

“I’m
sorry, but when I heard my name, I thought it might be something I needed to
know.” He hesitated. “And when Paladin Eiliesor said it wasn’t safe for you to
leave the citadel, he looked like he meant it. I needed to hear why. I can’t do
a good job of worrying about you unless I know what I’m supposed to be worried
about.”

“The
only thing you need to be worried about is singing. And you don’t need to worry
about that. You’ll be splendid as usual.”

“You’re
avoiding my question.”

“You’re
ignoring my avoiding.”

“How
else am I supposed to find out what’s going on? Whenever I walk by, everyone
stops talking. I walk down the halls at the citadel, and the Guardians stare. I
think some of them are afraid of me. They don’t need to be.” He looked down. “I
don’t want them to be,” he said quietly.

Crap
again.

Piaras
wanted to be a Guardian more than anything. It looked like yesterday’s damage
wasn’t only to sabotaged shields. Nothing stomped on a teenager’s already
fragile self-esteem like being ostracized from day one by the men you most
admired.

“Now
everyone knows what I did to those Guardians.” A muscle twitched in his jaw.
“All this is just the maestro displaying the freak.”

I
looked directly into those liquid brown eyes. “You are
not
a freak. Just
because you didn’t mean to put those Guardians to sleep doesn’t change what you
accomplished. And yes, I said ‘accomplished.’ If you were on a battlefield
aiming at the enemy, what you did would get you called a hero, not a freak. You
have a rare and powerful gift, and that can intimidate people, because they
only see the gift and not the person behind it. You are
not
a freak—and
don’t you dare let anyone tell you otherwise.”

I saw
a flicker of what may have been belief in his dark eyes. “Thank you.”

“You’re
welcome, but I was just telling the truth. No thanks needed for that.”

“You’re
not a freak, either,” Piaras said solemnly.

“The
jury’s still out on that one.”

“
I
know you’re not a freak.”

I
exhaled slowly. “Thank you, sweetie. You can’t know how much I needed to hear
that today.”

One
of the other spellsingers—a pretty, dark-haired human girl—was stealing shy
glances at Piaras.

I
gave him a lopsided smile. “Who’s that?”

Piaras
looked where I was looking, blushed, and quickly looked away.

“Katelyn,”
he said so softly I barely heard him.

My
smile broadened into a grin. I bit my lip to make myself stop. “Katelyn who?”

“Valerian,”
he whispered.

“
That
Valerian?”

Piaras
nodded. “The archmagus’s granddaughter.” He glanced at her, and she caught him
looking. She smiled and gave him a shy wave. The tips of Piaras’s ears flushed
pink.

“Have
you heard her sing?” I asked.

He
looked at Katelyn and kept looking. The kid was enraptured. “It was beautiful.”

I
nudged him playfully. “Has she heard you sing?” Piaras nodded. “Yesterday in
the maestro’s tower. Her lesson was after mine.”

“And
. . . ?”

“And
what?”

“What
did she think?”