Redwing (2 page)

First things first. Jago's men would not be on his heels—they might not even realize he had fled the country. Surely he had a few days, at least, to take his bearings and make a plan.

A room, a bath and a meal. That was a good plan. But he would make his way a little farther into town, away from the docks, even if the price of lodging was higher. If Jago's men did come later and ask around, he didn't want anyone to remember him.

THREE DAYS LATER, Samik was feeling much steadier, and not just on his legs. His ear was becoming attuned to the language, and he had found a comfortable room with a kindly widow amusingly named Missus Broadbeam. While the landlord of the first lodging house he had tried had taken one look at K'waaf, muttered “no dogs” and hastily closed the door, Missus Broadbeam had fawned over the huge beast as though he were a baby. She had taken a shine to Samik too-her grandson, she said, had the same long white-blond hair, and that seemed to make Samik an honorary relative. So when she asked about his plans at breakfast on the third day, he decided to confide something of his plight.

“Oh, my dear!” Missus Broadbeam pressed her hand to her ample bosom and cast her eyes to heaven. “Oh, you poor lamb. All on your own, and with a price on your head? And your mother must be that worried about you!”

It was Missus Broadbeam who declared he must change his name. “Otherwise, you might just as well tell everyone you meet you're a Tarzine foreigner!” And so Aydin was born.

In fact, Missus Broadbeam was a fountain of good advice. She had asked Samik about his viol, and he confessed that he hoped to earn some money with his playing, since what he had come with would not last long. “Oh, that's grand. Musicians are very well regarded here,” she enthused. “Would you do me a favor, dearie, and play me a little something? It would do my heart good.”

But Samik—Aydin, now, and he'd best start getting used to it—hadn't played long before Missus Broadbeam scrunched up her face. “Now, no offense to your music, my dear, it's very lovely I'm sure,” she said, “but you can't be pretending to be one of us and play that outlandish stuff. And once you're away from the port towns, you won't make much coin at it either. The country folk are not like us in Shiphaven, who are used to all sorts. They like what they know.”

Missus Broadbeam had directed Samik to a shop where he could buy music for popular Prosperian tunes, and to a market where he might be able to find cheap passage inland with a farmer or merchant. She had even pressed a half-dallion into his hand when he said goodbye the next day. “A little off the rent, to help your travels,” she said.

Riding in the back of a farm wagon was a bone-jarring experience, and Samik was grateful when, a good half-day later, the farmer pulled his mule to a halt and pointed down the road that branched off to the right. “There's a town that way. Greenway. 'Bout three miles.”

Three miles. Samik didn't relish the hike, but at least he should reach the town before dark. He climbed out the back of the wagon, shouldered his pack and his viol, and started walking. He would find a place to stay the night and keep traveling in the morning.

THREE

R
owan clip-clopped the mules into the little town's market square and sized up his prospects. Fair to middling, he judged, especially for this time of year—busy enough to have plenty of customers, not so crowded that it would be hard for him to get noticed.

He found a spot for the caravan and climbed down to coax the girls backward into place. What was the name of this town, he wondered, annoyed that he had forgotten. Not that it mattered. Middleton, Waterford, Longview, Oak Ridge-they were all much the same, a string of nondescript settlements with unimaginative names. Cedar Glen—that was it.

The sound of a fiddle stopped him in his tracks.
Damn
. Rowan scanned the square again, searching for his competitor.

A tall boy, a little older than Rowan, stood in the gap between a wagon filled with chicken crates and a table of wizened root vegetables. A gust of wind lifted his long pale hair like a flag as he drew the bow across the strings of his instrument and then adjusted the tuning.

The dog that stood watchfully just behind the fiddler was the biggest Rowan had ever seen. Easily as tall as the shaggy little ponies they bred in the highlands, the wiry gray hound was clearly on guard.

Rowan considered. The next town was too far to reach in time for market; he'd have to hope for an inn that would let him play. That meant no food till nightfall, and then only if he was lucky.

There was an unwritten code for street performers: you don't impinge on another man's space. But it was a good-sized square; Rowan could barely hear the other instrument from where he stood. Likely, neither of them would make as much as they would without the competition, but Rowan could live with that.

He climbed into the caravan and emerged with a small stool and a large case. He settled himself down, drew out the button box and wrapped the whole contraption inside his jacket, trying to get enough warmth into the pleated leather bellows to ensure they wouldn't crack when he stretched them out.

“Get out of here!” The voice was an angry hiss right next to his head. Startled, Rowan looked up to find the fiddler looming over him. Two high spots of color burned in his narrow face. The pale blue eyes were cold and angry.

“I…” Rowan cleared his throat. His voice had long since dropped, but it still had a tendency to betray him in heated moments. “I beg your pardon?”

The older boy straightened and waved a peremptory arm. “Clear out. I was here first. You'll drown me out with that thing.”

That thing?
Now Rowan was angry. “There's plenty of room for both of us, and what you are calling
that thing
is a premium brass-tongued button box, made by the master, Reed Blackbird himself!” His button box was the most valuable thing his family owned, and other musicians, at least, should recognize its quality.

This one was unimpressed. “Yes, yes, I heard one before. Sounds like a dying seagull.” He pointed a threatening finger. “Pack up your little squawk box and move on.” He turned and stalked, storklike, back to his spot with his fiddle tucked under one arm.

Rowan watched, seething with anger and indecision, while the young man set out his open case and began to play. He wasn't afraid of a fight, not really. Though taller, the fiddler was slightly built and didn't look that strong. But the dog gave Rowan pause, and now the moment for defending his claim seemed to have passed. Reluctantly, he laid the button box back in its case.

Heska's teeth, he thought with disgust, the guy wasn't even any good. He was dogging through a basic reel now in a way that set Rowan's teeth on edge. There was something weird about his playing, something he couldn't quite put his finger on…

Rowan made a sudden decision, stowed his box in the caravan and began to sidle through the edges of the crowd until he was close enough to get a good look at—and earful of—his rival.

The more he watched, the more curious he became. Lately, Rowan hadn't cared much about anything except eating and staying warm, but this boy…he was a mystery.

He was dressed well, or had been once. The style was odd, brighter and more dramatically cut than Rowan was used to, but well tailored. His coat, Rowan thought enviously, looked really warm. But it was dirty too, and the boy's pants were muddied at the hems.

His playing was full of contradictions as well. He wasn't a hack, as Rowan had first assumed. You could tell by the light, loose way he held the bow, its smooth draw across the strings and the sweet tone he got from his instrument. He'd had training, all right. Yet something was seriously wrong. He had moved on to a jig, another standard that any pub player could manage. What was wrong with it? The notes were all there, but the tune had no movement, no rhythm, nothing to make you want to tap your toe or nod your head.

Well, he wouldn't be making much money with that, especially with his haughty manner. He didn't even acknowledge the few coppers that people tossed in his fiddle case but just stared into space as he played. Rowan had no qualms about setting up in his own corner with some real music.

He was halfway across the square when a new sound stopped him. It pricked up the hair on the back on his neck and brought the gooseflesh out on his arms.

Eyes wide, every ounce of his attention claimed, he turned back to the blond stranger.

He had never heard such music. Jigs and reels and shuffles—toe-tapping, foot-stomping dance music—those he knew. And the slow airs—beautiful, keening melodies for love won and lost, laments and longings—he knew those as well. But he had never heard a fiddle sob and wail like this.

The fiddle swooped up and held a long, tremulous note. And then, with a rhythmic sway like a woman's hips rolling, it prowled down the minor scale and landed with a wild discord that was heartbreak and rage all at once. It was as though the mute pain that lay trapped in Rowan's chest had at last been given a voice, and for a moment he was horrified to find himself giving way to tears.

He pulled himself back into the music—gods above, it was mesmerizing. The tall blond musician was transformed in Rowan's eyes, the hostility and bad manners forgotten. Rowan listened, motionless, through two long compositions, until his ear began to understand the unfamiliar sound.

The crowd, he noticed, did not share his reaction. Their faces were startled or bemused, not transported. No one was rushing to fill the fiddle case. An idea—an idea that quickly grew as compelling as the music—came to him.

Rowan hurried to the caravan and pulled out the skin drum. No time to check the tension—it would have to do. Grabbing the stool, he scurried back around the edge of the square, approaching the stranger from behind. Intent on his strange music, he didn't notice Rowan until the smiles and pointing fingers of the passersby drew his attention.

Rowan expected—and got—an indignant glare, but he just nodded and smiled and motioned to the other boy to continue. “Perhaps we can make a little more coin together,” he suggested. “You aren't doing so well on your own.”

It was like watching the ruff on a rooster rise and then smooth as the truth of Rowan's words hit home. With a quick, surly nod, the fiddler returned to his playing. A few bars later, once he was sure of the rhythm, Rowan joined in.

FOUR

R
owan had wondered what he would do if his new partner refused to share their earnings, but the blond stranger divided up the coins scrupulously, waving away Rowan's suggestion that he first take out those he had earned alone.

“You were right. I did better this way.” He passed Rowan a handful of coins and curtly offered his name along with them. “I am Aydin.”

“Rowan.”

Aydin acknowledged the introduction with a nod and a smile that verged on a sneer.

“Something funny about my name?” Aydin's manners grated on Rowan as badly as his jigs.

But the tall boy was shaking his head, waving his hand back and forth to smooth over Rowan's annoyance.

“No, no. I just find it odd—how you people name things after other things.”

“What's so odd about that?” Rowan had been named for a tree said in olden times to dance when a master musician played. It was a favored name in musical families, and Rowan had always been proud to bear it.

“It's not a proper name, is it? It's something else's name! Even your country—Prosper. It's not a name, it's just some childish wish that if you call a place a certain thing, then it will be so.”

Irritated and strangely tongue-tied—how do you even argue whether a name is a name?—Rowan was about to retreat into surly silence when something Aydin had said wakened his curiosity, dormant these long lonely months.

“Wait a minute. You said Prosper was
my
country. So where are
you
from?”

Rowan had not noticed any particular accent in Aydin's speech, but other observations were falling into place—his clothing, the golden tone to his skin that made him look like he'd just spent a summer outdoors. He was not especially surprised, then, at the reply.

“I am Tarzine.” The tall boy grinned, looked conspiratorially up and down the square, and bent close to Rowan, his white-blond hair falling forward and screening his face. “Don't tell anyone.”

CURIOSITY AND LONELINESS made Rowan reluctant to part company, even with someone as abrasive as Aydin. And so he found himself suggesting that they pool their money and buy some food at the market for a shared dinner in the caravan.

“So you live here?” asked Aydin as Rowan struggled with the rusty padlock at the door. The tone of cool disdain made Rowan regret his invitation.

“I do now.” Rowan suppressed the urge to boast about how spacious and comfortable his family's lodgings at Five Oaks, the estate of the Earl of East Brockwood, had been. In truth, that seemed a lifetime ago, or maybe only a wistful dream. He pushed open the door and turned to the older boy. “You don't have to come in if it's beneath you.”

Aydin paid no mind to Rowan's sharp reply. He stepped in, glanced up and down the length of the caravan and nodded slowly. “It's better lodgings than I've had lately,” he said and flashed Rowan another of those disarming grins. “Last night I gave the scullery maid at the inn a copper to sneak me into the root cellar.”

Rowan didn't know what to make of the man. He sneered at everything, and then just when you were ready to plug him upside the head, you'd get that grin, as if it was all just a friendly joke. Not knowing what to say, he said nothing and instead busied himself with the stove and pots.

Aydin had not been impressed with Rowan's frugal market purchases of lentils, barley and onions, insisting on adding a hefty chunk of bacon, but he did not stint in the eating of it. Between Aydin and his huge dog, a stew that would have fed Rowan's entire family and a couple of guests besides was soon reduced to an empty dog-licked pot. Blessedly, all that intense eating meant that Rowan was spared the inevitable questions until after.