Chapter Seven
The long-awaited summer was beginning at last. The distant speck of the Visitor, the wandering sun, glimmered above the southern horizon. Children who had never been out of doors in their lives scrambled over each other to peer through the rippled window glass, hoping for a glimpse. The firn began to diminish on the lower slopes of the Mariks, and the snow that seemed eternal now dropped from the trees in large, mushy chunks.
Sira, who had seen only three summers herself, was no less excited than the little ones at the coming season. She came into the great room before Cantoris hours and watched them at the window for a few moments before sitting down to her meal. Several House members bowed to her from a distance.
Sira would have liked to crowd into the window seat with the children to watch the changes outside, but she knew if she did, they would pull back, keep their distance, be careful not to touch her. If they didn’t, their parents would speak to them sharply, even fearfully. As Cantrix of Bariken, Sira had only her senior for real company.
She looked around the great room as she drank her tea. By now she could distinguish between the House members and their guests. Some were here to trade for limeglass, bringing worked leather goods from Amric or obis-carved ironwood implements from Tarus. In the far corner of the great room, two itinerants sat negotiating with the Housekeeper for work. Summertimes could be difficult for itinerants. For a few short weeks, Nevyans could move between Houses without hiring Singers to protect them. Itinerants had to find some other work to do while both the suns shone.
Sira leaned her head on her hand, remembering the visit her family had made to Conservatory last summer, five years before. Her mother had been silent and worn-looking. Her father was awkward and formal. Though Sira had not yet reached the status of full Cantrix, they did not touch her. They held themselves apart, as if she had become something alien, something awesome. She had been relieved when they departed, leaving her to her music and her friends. Since then, as before, she had received one message a year, carried by some traveler for the price of a small bit of metal, on the anniversary of her entrance to Conservatory.
Sira was not sure how many children her mother had. When she left, there were already three older than herself, and two younger. Of all her family only her father seemed vivid in her memory, full of energy after a hunt, striding into the family’s apartment with a joy in life her mother had never shown. Sira had not liked the rough-and-tumble of her siblings, and once her mother had accused her of thinking herself better than her brothers and sisters because of the Gift. That memory stung, partly because there was a substantial amount of truth in the criticism.
Good morning, Sira, Magret sent, sitting down opposite her.
Good morning, Cantrix. Sira welcomed the interruption of her dark thoughts.
Summer at last. Magret and Sira had fallen into the habit of sending everyday pleasantries. Less trivial thoughts they spoke aloud.
Sira looked again at the children crowding against the big windows. She now knew a few of them by name. Denis was among them.
Magret followed her gaze. In a few days, they will be playing outside. Magret sipped her tea, and spoke aloud. “Last summer,” she said softly, “Denis ran off into the woods, and Trude had the whole House looking for him.” She shook her head. “The Magister treated it as a joke, but Rhia was furious. None of the children were allowed out again the rest of the summer.”
“That was hardly fair.”
“Certainly not. And it still did not change Denis’s behavior.”
Sira finished her meal, but waited politely for her senior. It was burdensome to speak aloud with another Gifted one, but Trude sat at the Magister’s table, reminding her of the need.
The quirunha went on as usual, since the thick stone of the House walls shed the warmth of summer as effectively as it did the more cold of the winter. The daily ceremony was Sira’s chief pleasure, the more so as she and Magret grew to know each other’s musical inclinations.
Cantrix Magret seemed to be almost without ego. She allowed Sira to dominate the quirunha, enjoying the freshness of her ideas and the effortlessness of her technique. Sira enjoyed each opportunity to perform, though the sparse attendance was still a disappointment.
Magret, one day, saw her searching the listeners when the music was over. “You know, Cantrix Sira, it is only important to sing; it is not so important for whom you sing.”
“I am sorry, Cantrix,” Sira said, abashed. “Of course you are right.” It was not wasted on her that Magret had spoken her rebuke aloud, so that Trude should not hear.
Magret put a soft hand on Sira’s arm. Sira started, and realized it had been many weeks since she had felt someone’s touch. “I am not angry with you, Sira,” Magret said. “It has not been so long since I was a junior Cantrix, you remember.”
“So I do, Cantrix,” Sira said. “And you are generous with me.”
Magret shook her head, as if that were not important. Sira marveled at the older Singer’s ease with her Gift. She appeared tranquil, content, while in Sira’s own breast the fire of ambition burned hotly. Sira wanted applause; she wanted to be presented in concert, as Maestra Lu so often had been, simply for the sake of her beautiful music. She cared what her listeners thought of her work. Cantrix Magret evidently cared only for the work itself.
From the first hint of the Visitor’s arrival, the summer came on quickly. In a very few days, Magret’s prediction came true, and the children were playing outside in the courtyard, with a few Housemen and women watching over them, and enjoying the suns on their own faces.
Sira was lingering over the morning meal, watching the courtyard, when she saw a man she recognized ride up, two long-legged boys on hruss beside him. It was Devid, the man her traveling party had encountered on the last day of her journey to Bariken. The boys were so like him, hair and eyes and build, that she had no doubt they were his sons. She pressed against the casement to watch them, putting her forehead to the cool glass. They all dismounted, and Devid sent the taller boy around back to the stables with the hruss while he and the other boy turned into the entrance.
After the quirunha that day, Sira saw the younger son once again. He sat in the back of Cantoris, on the bench furthest from the dais. His eyes were intent on the two Cantrixes as they stepped down. Sira tucked her filhata under her arm and strolled toward him.
He rose as she approached, brown eyes shining up at her in awe.
“You are Devid’s son?” Sira asked.
He nodded, and a flood of feeling swept out of him and over Sira as he stammered his compliments. “It was a beautiful quirunha, Cantrix. Wonderful! Your voice—and your melodies— Do you change them? I don’t know that many modes, but—”
Sira, almost laughing, put up her hand to hush him. His thin cheeks flushed red and he stopped talking, but the tides of emotion did not recede. There was elation, and pleasure, and a spate of longing that was unmistakable.
“What is your name?”
“Zakri, Cantrix.” He ran nervous fingers through his brush of brown hair, and made her a clumsy bow.
“Your father did not mention to me that one of his sons is Gifted.”
He gaped at her. “Can you tell? How did you know?”
“Zakri, your thoughts flow out of you like spilled water, going in all directions at once.”
He blushed again. “I’m sorry, Cantrix! My mother was trying to help me with that—but she died. She was a Singer.” The last he said with youthful pride and sorrow.
“Yes. I am very sorry about your mother.” Sira looked about her. The Cantoris had emptied. “Zakri, how old are you?”
“This summer makes three.”
“But in years, how old?”
He frowned, concentrating. “I—I think I am twelve.”
“You should have been at Conservatory long ago!” Sira spoke without thinking, and she knew she had blundered when tears welled in the boy’s eyes. He dropped his head, not answering, and Sira wished her words unspoken.
Devid’s bulky form appeared behind him. “Zakri, your brother needs your help in the stables.” The boy looked up at his father, and his eyes flashed. Devid stepped back suddenly, holding up a warning hand.
Zakri took a ragged breath, then bowed stiffly to Sira and rushed out of the Cantoris. It made Sira’s heart ache to watch his thin back as he hurried away. Undisciplined emotions poured from him, even after he was out of her sight.
She turned to Devid. He bowed, and was on the point of leaving.
“Your son needs training.” She spoke as a full Cantrix, with the authority of her position.
“His mother was teaching him,” Devid said. “Now I must find someone else.”
“Why did you not send him to Conservatory?”
“There was no need for that.” Devid’s gaze was hard, and his mouth looked stubborn. “His mother was a Singer. And we didn’t want to part with him. We needed him at home.”
“But he longs to be a true Singer.”
An old anger sparked in Devid’s eyes. “He will be! I will apprentice him to an itinerant Singer and he’ll learn all he needs to know, just like his mother did.”
Sira frowned. “It is very late for him, but you could still send him to Conservatory. I can send a message to Magister Mkel.”
Sira was so intent on her purpose that she was caught by surprise when Devid punched one big fist into his other palm. She jumped. She had not realized he was losing his temper.
“Why do you Cantors always think yours is the only way?” he thundered.
Sira had no answer. He was right. For a Conservatory-trained Singer, there was only one way. She stood tall, keeping her gaze steady. For a frozen moment they stared at one another, until Devid suddenly remembered himself.
He looked down at his furred boots. “Forgive me, Cantrix,” he mumbled. “You saved my life, and now I’ve offended you.”
Sira looked away, up at the dais where she had so recently sat and played. She tried to soften her own voice. “Nevya needs every Gifted person to be fully trained and capable. My class at Conservatory had barely one Singer for each House. We cannot afford to waste any.”
“We love our children,” Devid said, and there was fresh misery in his voice. “To send one away so young—we couldn’t do it.”
“But a Gifted child suffers without training,” Sira said, turning back to him. “If he hears other thoughts, sense other feelings, and cannot direct his own, he will go mad. He will be dangerous to those around him.”
“It’s been hard on him since his mother died. But I’ll find someone. He’ll be all right.”
Sira had no further argument to offer. She bowed to Devid in grim silence, and left the Cantoris. Poor, unhappy Zakri. If his father could feel his emotions as she did, he would know the child wanted nothing more than to go to Conservatory to train, late or not.
Sad and thoughtful, she went to her room and spent her emotions in long, painstaking practice with her filhata. Later she heard from Magret that young Zakri had stood in the hall outside her room for an hour, listening.
The brief weeks of summer fled by. The children grew brown and strong with running in the woods around Bariken. They laughed and chattered at dinner, and ate prodigiously, making the adults smile. The hunters ranged far, bringing back many caeru to be skinned and dressed, preserved for leaner times. One trip netted them a tkir pelt, and the entire House gathered to exclaim over its tawny, speckled richness, and to praise the hunters who had brought it down. They saved its great serrated teeth to be made into cutting tools valued in the abattoir. The children clamored to touch them, and when they were allowed to do so, cautiously, they put one finger to the yellowish points and then ran away, shrieking with mock fear.
In the forest around the House, the softwood shoots sprang up, growing visibly every day. Even the children were careful with them, never stepping on them or pulling them. Every Nevyan knew how much they were needed.
Sira had time to spare after the quirunha each day. She took to spending it in the courtyard, enjoying the suns, and playing little tunes on her filla for the children. Zakri sat near her one afternoon, and she smiled at him. She offered him her filla to play, but he shook his head, embarrassed. A leather ball lying near his feet suddenly rolled away over the cobblestones to smack against the side of a bench. Sira watched, trying not to show her surprise.
Zakri possessed a powerful Gift. It would cause serious problems if not harnessed soon. She tried to open her mind to him, but he didn’t know how to respond.
Sira remembered her first days at Conservatory, when the dormitory grew quieter and quieter as the young Gifted ones, surrounded by their own kind, began to speak with their minds and not their voices. She wondered if Zakri’s mother would have taught him how.
The next day Zakri and his father and brother were gone, in search of the mother’s body to take home for burial. The softer ground of summer always meant burials, but it meant more sadness for Zakri. Sira sent up a prayer to the Spirit for him. It was all she could think of to do.
Another day, when the summer had passed its zenith, Sira sat in the courtyard in the long afternoon playing a lively melody for a little girl who danced, laughing, on the cobblestones. Denis and several other children were watching and applauding, in accord for once. Sira was startled when a shadow fell over her. Still playing, she glanced up above her filla.
Rhia was standing over her, frowning. “Must you play here?”
Sira abruptly broke off her music and stood, deeply offended. The little girl who had been dancing dashed away. Denis and the others stepped back, watching.
Rhia’s jaw was set and she was pinching the material of her tunic, over and over. As Sira searched for some response, Rhia turned and called to one of the Housemen who had been nearby a moment before. “Bors! Bors! Come here!” Her voice was harsh in the bright air.
Sira was both fascinated and repelled. Rhia was angry about something, and clearly the other House members were afraid of her.
“Bors!” The Houseman appeared from around the corner, and bowed quickly to Rhia. “Where is the Magister?” she snapped.
“I believe he is away from the House,” the man offered. He looked as nervous as a caeru being pursued through the forest. “There was a report of a caeru den—”
“Hunting. Just when he is needed, naturally!” Rhia said bitterly. Waves of her deep and helpless anger swept over Sira.
Deciding this situation had nothing to do with her, Sira started to walk away.
“Cantrix.” Sira stopped. Rhia’s eyes glittered, and Sira knew that her anger was out of control. “Don’t play out here again,” she said.
Sira stood tall, looking down at the older woman for a moment as she secured her own composure. “I see no reason not to entertain the House members with my music.”
Sira? Do not argue with her. Come in, please.
It was Magret, sending clearly and strongly to her junior.
Sira, of course, obeyed immediately, but her cheeks burned with shame at being called away like a child. With her back arrow-straight, she spun about, and stalked into the House.
Cantrix Magret was waiting just inside the door. She gestured to Sira, drawing her toward their apartments. Sira, I am sorry, but . . . Magret looked up quickly, and Sira saw Trude leaning against the door of the great room
“Did Rhia find the Magister?” she asked lazily. “The Committee member is waiting.”
“I do not know,” Magret answered quickly. Sira was lost in the currents of anger, fear, and envy swirling through the atmosphere.
“Don’t mind Rhia, young Cantrix,” Trude went on, straightening, turning toward the stairs. “It’s hard for her. She can’t win either way.” Trude did not bother to shield her enjoyment of the conflict.
As Trude’s generous figure disappeared up the stairs, Sira turned to her senior. What is happening here?
“It is better we speak aloud,” Magret said softly. “The mind’s ear extends far beyond the physical one. Come to my room, and I will explain as best I can.”
Sira followed Magret, but fresh anger made the air glisten around her. By the time she sat down in Magret’s apartment, her jaw ached from clenching it.
“A member of the Magistral Committee is making the rounds of the Houses to arrange a congress,” Magret told her. “She expected to talk to Magister Shen, and Rhia is embarrassed that she cannot find him.”
“What does that have to do with my playing in the courtyard?”
“Nothing, Sira. Nothing. But Rhia is not kindly disposed toward Singers in general. Trude and Denis constantly try her patience. It is one reason the House members avoid the quirunha. She was angry, and you were there—that is all. But she can be dangerous. When she loses her temper, she abuses her power.” Magret whispered her last remark.
“In what way?” Sira asked.
Magret kept her voice very low and her eyes averted. “She banished one or two Housemen who crossed her, and they and their families had to go begging for another House. And through the Housekeeper, she controls privileges certain families receive. Some of them are essential, and families suffer.”
“But what could she do to me?”
“I do not know. But she is a clever and determined woman. And not a forgiving one.”
Sira looked down at the fists she had made in her lap, and released them, stretching her long fingers. “This is a strange House.”
“All Houses have their strangenesses. You will become accustomed to it.”
Sira brought her gaze up to her senior’s. “We have trained and worked all our lives to serve our Houses. I do not think I will become accustomed to disrespect.”
“We have no choice, my dear. Where Conservatory sends us, we go. And serve.” Magret sighed. “Choice is a luxury beyond a Cantrix’s reach.”
Sira said nothing more, but she could not accept Magret’s statement. There would be more to her life than compliance and obedience. There had to be, or she would be as frustrated as young Zakri.