Three
“There she is, Majesty, the Starfarer.”
Jelena stared up at the ship, gaze sweeping along the curved side, out the bow, and alighting momentarily on each of the three masts. “She looks so bare.”
“She’ll look less bare once we’ve got her yards and sheets up,” the master of the Elbasan shipyards told her reassuringly. “We’re concerned right now about making her watertight, and we can’t know that for certain unless she’s in the water.”
“She’s not very…” Otavas paused but was unable to think of a tactful finish. “She’s not very big.”
“No, Highness, she’s not,” the master shipwright agreed. “Including her castles, she’s only seventy-three feet long. The castles are those bits that rise above the main deck,” he added, when both queen and consort turned confused expressions toward him. “She’s got a twenty-one-inch beam over all and an air draft of seventy-one feet including her topsail. But she’ll carry 2,360 square feet of sail when she’s fully rigged, and you won’t find a better bark in these yards.”
Head swimming with nautical terms he barely understood, Otavas glanced down at Jelena. Although he suspected she understood no more of the description than he did, she was staring at the Starfarer with shining eyes, one hand stretched out as though to close the distance between them. He quickly suppressed a disquieting hint of jealousy, reminding himself that this visit had been his idea.
“I think she’s beautiful.”
“Thank you, Majesty.” The master shipwright beamed proudly up at the hull, one scarred hand holding blowing hair back off his face. “I think so, too.”
* * * *
“So you’ve decided on a captain?”
“Lija i’ Ales a’Berngards.”
Otavas rested a thigh on the corner of the queen’s desk and leaned across it until he could read the papers spread in front of her. “The merchant captain?”
Jelena studied his profile, a little confused by the smile in his voice. “That’s right.”
“Lord Dumin will be disappointed.” Otavas and Dumin i’Janina a’Vasil, Lord High Commander of the Shkoden Navy had disliked each other on sight. Fully aware that Dumin considered him not only feckless but dangerously foreign, the prince thought the Lord High Commander a self-righteous, pompous, old harnivatayger—which had no direct Shkoden translation although a number of the younger bards were cheerfully working on it. While he wouldn’t go so far as to wish the older man an injury, he wasn’t above enjoying his disappointment. “He wanted you to chose a navy captain.”
It suddenly became clear why Otavas found her choice amusing. “Yes, well, I wanted a captain who actually wanted to go on this voyage; not one encouraged to volunteer by Lord Dumin.” Leaning back in her chair, Jelena twisted the royal signet around her finger. It had been sized to fit her just after her mother’s death, but she’d lost so much weight during those dark quarters that only her knuckle kept her from losing it with every movement of her hand. “I didn’t expect hundreds of volunteers—successful captains are seldom reckless captains—but neither did I expect to have so few to choose from. Fewer still after subtracting Dumin’s politically motivated suggestions. And do you know why?”
Although he did know—at least he knew what Jelena believed—Otavas obediently shook his head, realizing that she was going to say it again regardless.
“Kovar,” she declared, eyes narrowing. “There’ve been no songs wondering what might be over the next wave, no songs extolling the adventure of discovery. There’ve been no songs about this voyage at all, and the people of Shkoder know very well what that means. Kovar is against the idea, and the bards take their cue from him.”
“And you can’t tell the bards what to sing…”
“Or I’ll be spending the rest of my life wondering about every new piece of information—is it the truth or is it what the bards think I want to hear?” Shoving back her chair, she surged to her feet and brandished a sheaf of maps at her grinning consort. “I don’t care what that narrow-minded old man thinks, the Starfarer will find the homeland of the dark sailor, and when she comes back with proof, I hope he’ll enjoy eating his words. And if she doesn’t find the dark sailor’s homeland, then she’ll just keep going west until she lands in the silklands in the east, giving the Fienian traders the surprise of their lives and proving once and for all that the world is round. And Kovar can eat that, too.” Pausing for breath, she finally noticed Otavas’ expression. “What are you smiling about?”
He swung himself over the desk and scooped her into his arms. “I’m just happy to see you like this. Alive. Questioning. It’s exciting.” Pushing the maps aside, he drew her close. “I’m thinking,” he murmured against her ear, “that maybe we should go on our own voyage of discovery.”
Her eyes widened, then slid nearly closed as he took her earlobe between his teeth. “And discover what?” she sighed.
“Why not the center of the Circle?”
“Tavas!” But her protest at his irreligious comment carried little force. She arched her back as he unfastened the bottom three buttons on her tunic and slid a hand in under the outer layer of wool. “Now?”
“Now.”
“Here?”
“Why not?”
The maps fell unheeded to the floor.
A familiar knock froze them in place.
One hand fumbling with Otavas’ belt, the other entwined in his hair, Jelena turned scarlet and forced her voice into something resembling normal tones. “I’m busy, Nikki.”
“Begging Your Majesty’s pardon,” the page’s voice came muffled but audible through the heavy door, “but you asked me to remind you about that meeting with Lord Brencis and Lady Hermina. They’re waiting for you in the small audience chamber.”
“Tavas…”
“I know.” He released her and stepped back so she could fix her clothing. “But it’s lucky for you,” he added, with a leer, “that I was raised to recognize the responsibilities of royalty.”
Smiling distractedly, Jelena tucked her shirt back into her waistband. “Lord Brencis and Lady Hermina were instrumental in convincing the Council to agree to fund the Starfarer and her crew.”
“Were they?” he asked softly, reaching out to fasten the buttons he’d undone. “In my opinion, the Council was so happy you’d found yourself again, they’d have agreed to almost anything you asked.”
“Perhaps.” Her fingers closed over his for a moment then she hurried toward the door. “But Lord Brencis and Lady Hermina were perceived as being instrumental, and you know as well as I do that needs a perceived response.”
Laughing at her sudden descent into politics, Otavas blew her a kiss and began to fasten various buttons and ties of his own. He’d always known she’d be a wonderful queen, and now that they’d gotten through those four horrible quarters of grief and guilt, he was relieved to see he’d been right all along.
He only hoped she could come to an understanding with the Bardic Hall. Eight years in his adopted country had taught him that, eventually, everything in Shkoder came back to the bards.
* * * *
Benedikt was at the Bardic Hall in Vidor before he heard the details about his captain’s disagreement with the queen.
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a disagreement,” murmured Edite, the new lieutenant, leading the way into her office and motioning for Benedikt to sit. “Of course Kovar disapproves of this voyage, but he’d never go so far as to disagree publicly with the queen.”
Arms folded over his quintara case—held shieldlike on his lap—Benedikt frowned. “What do you mean, of course?”
“We’re a small country,” she told him sharply, “surrounded by larger countries. Our attention must remain focused on the situation here at home, not on chasing some wild melody out over the sea.”
“What situation here at home?” This was just one of the many reasons why he hated not being able to Sing air. Every bard in the country knew what he didn’t. There certainly hadn’t been a situation back when he’d left Pjazef. Unless Pjazef knew something he wasn’t telling. There had been a guarded tone to the older bard’s voice.
“Benedikt?”
Jerked out of memory, he focused on Edite’s face only to see an expression of impatient disapproval.
“When you ask a question, you should, at least, attempt to pay attention to the answer.”
“Sorry.”
“Yes, well. I said, the situation in Shkoder is the same as it has always been.” She leaned back, hands clasped under the prominent shelf of her breasts. “If we allow our strength to be bled away…”
“I hardly think one ship will bleed much of anything away,” Benedikt protested.
“One ship is where it starts. Where does it end?” Her dark eyes narrowed. “One bard lost is one bard too many; we’re all part of the pattern that keeps the country strong.”
Pjazef had used that exact line and, his memory prodded by repetition, Benedikt now knew where it came from. As Bardic Captain, Kovar had taught every fledgling since Liene had passed over the title a dozen years ago. Although Benedikt now remembered the lesson, it seemed to have had less effect on him than on the others. He could think of only one reason, only one way he was different. “Do all the bards think like you do?”
“Well, I certainly can’t say that I know what all the bards think, but those who’ve Walked out of Vidor since First Quarter Festival have no intention of supporting the queen’s fancy.”
“Isn’t that treason?” Behind what he hoped was an expressionless mask, Benedikt worked at pulling all the bits and pieces into a recognizable tune. Edite had been appointed to her position by Kovar. Although his choice for the lieutenant’s position in Vidor had been limited to those bards who Sang all four quarters, would he have chosen Edite if she hadn’t supported his views?
“I hardly think it’s treason to have a different opinion than the queen.”
“What about acting opposite to the queen’s desires?”
“We do not act opposite to the queen’s desires. We merely keep our mouths shut.”
Edite’s tone suggested that the discussion was over and she backed it up by rising and nodding toward the door.
Too angry for caution, Benedikt paused, half over the threshold and without turning, threw one last protest back over his shoulder. “When bards keep their mouths shut, it is an action.”
* * * *
Later that evening, in the largest ale house in Vidor, Benedikt took his quintara out of her case, wiped damp palms against his thighs, tried not to think of how many eyes, how many ears, were on him, and sang “The Dark Sailor.”
The queen had remembered him, had acknowledged his work, had put her trust, her life in his Song.
He would not join this conspiracy of silence against her.
By the time he sought his bed, he’d sung the haunting ballad in three more ale houses and to a group of Riverfolk down by the docks. Although he couldn’t see the air kigh swooping around his head, the night had become distinctly breezy by the final chorus.
The next morning, fingers white around the handle of his instrument case, he managed to look Edite in the eye and calmly say, “Am I not as entitled to have a different opinion to the Bardic Captain as he is to have a different opinion to the queen?”
“You don’t Sing air,” Edite told him sharply. “You don’t know what other bards are thinking.”
It was the first time any of them had ever come right out and said it. He only Sang water. He wasn’t as good as the rest of them. Well, bugger them, too.
“I don’t Sing air,” he snarled, “so I think for myself.”
He carried the look on Edite’s face with him from the room—eyes wide, mouth opening and closing, she looked like a fish out of water. And if he’d alienated the people he had to spend the rest of his life with, well, he didn’t Sing air, did he, so how would he know?
The anger prodded him to sing “The Dark Sailor” in every inn along the River Road.
* * * *
Tadeus ran into an old friend on his way to the River Maiden so, what with one thing and another—mostly another—it was late evening by the time he arrived at the inn. Stomach growling, guided as much by his nose as by the kigh, he hurried across the landward yard toward the closest entrance.
“Fried fish and potatoes. Fresh fiddleheads in butter. And, if I’m lucky,” he told the breeze by his cheek, “stewed pears in custard.”
One foot on the porch step, he stopped and cocked his head, a pair of breezes dancing through the silvered curls above his ears. There was a bard already inside and he was about to sing. When the kigh told him which bard, he whistled softly.
That changed things. The River Maiden had long been one of Tadeus’ favorite inns, and he’d long been a favorite of the inn’s regulars—his sudden appearance would pull attention away from the younger bard. That kind of grandstanding would be rude at the best of times. Tadeus wasn’t sure what it might be called in these particular times.
“In spite of everything I tried during his training, Benedikt has hung on tightly to his feelings of inadequacy.” Magda’s shrug had admitted a weary defeat. “But Benedikt is the queen’s choice and I don’t even want to consider what will happen should Kovar convince him not to go on this voyage.”
Padding noiselessly across the porch, he cracked open one of the double doors and slipped into the broad hall that ran the width of the building. Designed to keep Fourth Quarter winds from blowing in on the paying customers, it held a number of pegs for wet weather gear and a Bard’s Closet tucked under a locked flight of stairs.
The noise from the common room masked any sound he may have made as he crossed the hall and quietly Sang the notes to open the closet door. Sifting the din into its component conversations, he smiled as he shrugged out of his jacket and lifted his harp free of her case. Word had spread that there was a bard at the River Maiden and the room was full. Good. The night’s performances would deserve a full house.
As a quick run of notes from the strings of a quintara commanded something approximating silence, he moved to a shadow just outside the archway leading into the common room—a position that should keep him hidden if the bard by the fire happened to glance his way.
“The Dark Sailor” was a ballad, tied to the rhythms of the sea. Tadeus had never heard it sung as a defiant anthem before, and he wasn’t entirely certain it was suited to the role. Not that it mattered. When a bard sang the way young Benedikt was singing, lyric and melody both were only the framework of the greater Song.
Defiance.
I am as good as any of you.
You can’t tell me what to sing.
I stand by the queen.
So there.
Sifting the room for reaction, Tadeus grinned. Benedikt was young and handsome with a fine, strong, and, more importantly, bardic baritone. He could’ve sung the menu and still gotten an appreciative response from most of this audience—a trick Tadeus himself had tried successfully a time or two in the past. But if Benedikt wanted to do more than merely air personal grievances—if, say, he wanted to influence public opinion, to drum up support for the queen’s voyage—he was going to need a little help.
In the moment between the applause and the next song, Tadeus stepped out into the light.
“Tadeus!”
The weight of the crowd’s attention moving from him was almost a physical sensation, and its sudden absence brought on relief so overwhelming Benedikt felt nauseated. Swallowing convulsively, he stopped fiddling with strings that were already perfectly tuned and looked, with everyone else, toward the back of the room.
In spite of everything, he couldn’t prevent a smile. The old bard certainly knew how to make an entrance. Dressed in spotless black, silver hair above the scarf over his eyes, silver buttons down the front of a velvet vest, one huge silver ring on the first finger of his right hand, he was the epitome of elegance and wouldn’t have looked out of place at Court. Glancing down at his own travel-stained clothing, Benedikt scraped at a bit of mud with his thumbnail and wondered how Tadeus managed to keep so clean on a First Quarter walk when he couldn’t even see the puddles to avoid them.
As the welcome rose to a crescendo, Tadeus bowed and moved slowly toward the fire. Crossing a crowded room was something he enjoyed doing, and he saw no need to hurry—after all, a blind man saw through his fingertips.
Laughing, he turned down several offers of company, one or two gratifyingly explicit, and stopped an arm’s reach from Benedikt, bestowing upon the younger man the full force of his smile.
“May I join you?”
Confused, Benedikt nodded, realized what he was doing and said, “You can’t stop me from singing ‘The Dark Sailor.’”
“Of course I can’t.” Reaching behind him, Tadeus pulled a chair to the fireside and sat, arranging his harp on his lap. “You just sang it.”
With a worried glance at the nearest tables, Benedikt pitched his voice for Tadeus’ ears alone. “Then why are you here?”
“I always stop at the River Maiden on my way to Vidor.” Frowning at the tone of a string, he reached into his vest pocket for his harp key. “You’re causing quite a stir, you know. Most of the other bards think you’ve got a chip on your shoulder the size of the Citadel. That you’re deliberately causing trouble. Unfortunately, this is an opinion shared by bards who would otherwise support your position.”
The younger man stiffened. “I don’t care what most of the other bards think.”
“I know. You haven’t exactly gone out of your way to make friends. Now, personally, I think that a bard, any bard, should be able to sing anything that doesn’t contravene our oaths and that each of us have as much right to an opinion as our illustrious Bardic Captain.”
“That,” Benedikt muttered, “is not what our illustrious Bardic Captain thinks.”
“If we’re entitled to our opinion, Kovar’s equally entitled to his. No matter how irritating, shortsighted, unimaginative, commonplace, provoking, and tiresome it might be.”
Which was more or less what he’d said to Edite back in Vidor. Minus a bit of description. Benedikt’s heart began to pound so loudly he could barely hear himself speak. He hadn’t realized how good it would feel to have an ally. “We’re entitled?”
Satisfied with his tuning, Tadeus tucked the key away and lightly ran his thumbnail over the strings. “I assume you know ‘Search Beyond Tomorrow’?”
“Well, sure, but it’s…”
“One of those feel-good songs everyone in this room probably knows.” He turned his head, and Benedikt had the strangest feeling that the blind eyes were looking right at him. “It’s a song about being open to new possibilities. When you’re trying to change someone’s mind,” he added with a sudden grin, “it’s always best to begin on common ground.”
* * * *
“It was different under Liene,” Tadeus murmured into the darkness of the loft.
Benedikt turned toward the other bard’s voice. “Different how?”
“You’ve heard it said that Bardic Captains don’t command, they conduct?”
“Of course.”
“Liene encouraged our individual strengths and expected us to do what we thought was right. While she quite often felt she knew best, she never tried to impose her opinions on the whole. She conducted a complex melodic line during her years as Bardic Captain.”
“Are you sure that’s not just wishful thinking about the good old days?” Benedikt muttered, punching his pillow. “All the elders in my village insisted the fish had fewer bones when they were young.” Then he realized how that might be interpreted and winced.
“Age,” Tadeus said dryly, “gives perspective. Kovar sees us as a group and wants to forge a group identity.”
“We’re all part of the pattern.”
“So he keeps saying. But I’m afraid he only sees the pattern, not the parts. He’s always been the cautious type, and now he’s trying to make us all as cautious as he is.”
Benedikt rolled over onto his back and stared up at the night. “Not all of us.”
“No. Not all of us.” Dry became positively desiccated. “If I wasn’t so old…” Tadeus laughed as Benedikt mumbled an apology and went on in a lighter tone. “… and if I Sang water, I’d be going with you. Excitement, adventure, new lands, new people…” He rolled the list off his tongue. “… new songs.”
“I’m not going for a song.” At the other end of the loft, someone began to snore and was quickly silenced by a thrown boot, the tone and timbre of the thud unmistakable to bardic ears. Beside him in the Bard’s Corner, Benedikt could hear only the silken whisper of Tadeus’ breathing, could feel him waiting patiently for the rest of the answer. Before Benedikt could stop it, the past, so long pressed into dark corners, began to spill from his mouth.
“I was nine years younger than my closest brother—there were three of them—Pavel, Dusan, Nikulas—then me. I spent my entire childhood trying to catch up and never being quite good enough. They could do so many things that I couldn’t. They were natural sailors, all three of them, right from the time they could walk, Nikulas a little younger even than that, if the stories were true. And they weren’t just great sailors, they had an amazing affinity for fish. Any boat my brothers crewed came back riding so low in the water a fly landing too heavily would swamp it. You can imagine how popular they were in a village totally at the mercy of the sea.
“By the time I was old enough to go out, Pavel and Dusan had their own boat and there was only Nikulas left to spread the bounty among the fleet. You see, until they’d saved enough to go out on their own, Mother kept them rotating between the boats so no one boat had the advantage. My father was the village factor, and my mother’s planning provided a solid power base for him to work from.
“They all expected to gain as much from me as they had from my bothers, but the first time I crewed, the boat nearly sank beneath me.” He could still remember the gray swells, growing, rising, the fishing boat thrown from crest to trough as though caught between the paws of a watery cat. More confused than afraid, unable to concentrate on the tasks at hand, he’d lost an oar overboard, tangled the anchor line almost beyond salvaging, and had driven a triple hook deep into the ball of his foot. “Subsequent trips were worse, if anything, and finally the entire village decided I was a jinx. After the second time an abnormally high tide wiped out the drying racks, I wasn’t even allowed to work on the beach. My father would’ve taken me with him, but the others were afraid I’d jinx his trading.”
A familiar hand reached out of memory to stroke his hair. “Sorry, son. Do you understand why you can’t go?”
Of course he’d understood. Did understand. His father had sided with the village. Against him. Although they were all very sorry for him, of course, and they always found him work to do far away from the water.
“You do understand why the sea behaved the way it did?” Tadeus asked softly.
Blankets clutched in damp fists, Benedikt realized he didn’t have to answer this new question—the compulsion forcing his disclosure had passed. But once again Tadeus was waiting and, somehow, that seemed to be reason enough. “Karlene explained about the kigh when she tested me, how my talent attracted them.”
“I hope she explained that only a very powerful talent would cause the kigh to show such an interest before your voice changed.”
“Don’t worry, she explained it all and everyone was very impressed.” He paused to enjoy the memory of his moment in the center of the Circle and laughed bitterly at how quickly it passed. “They were impressed until they found out that I could only Sing water.”
“I see.”
“See what?”
“You’re sailing into the unknown in order to prove something to all those people who don’t think you’re good enough.”
“I am not.” Drawing in a deep breath, Benedikt cursed himself for picking the scabs off his past. “If you must know, I volunteered because Her Majesty believes in me.”
“When no one else did?”
“No!” The silence reminded him that bards can hear a lie. But he’d heard it himself, he didn’t actually need reminding. “If I Sang air…” And then he remembered. “If I Sang air,” he repeated smugly, “I’d be just another one of Kovar’s drones.”
“What are you talking about?”
It was the first time he’d ever heard Tadeus sound unsure. He wondered if it was the first time anyone had ever heard Tadeus sound unsure. “You said that Kovar’s trying to make us all as cautious as he is. He teaches caution to the fledglings, and after they start Walking, he keeps at it with the air kigh. I don’t Sing air, so I didn’t get the reinforcement. He hasn’t conditioned me to sing the same song as the rest of you.
Bedding whispered as Tadeus shifted on his pallet. “Do you have proof of this?”
“You Sing air. How often does he tell you to be careful? How many of the bards he trained have volunteered for this voyage? Only me. Because I don’t Sing air.”
“I think that’s a tad simplistic….”
“You would. You Sing air.”
“Do try to remember who your friends are.”
The edge beneath Tadeus’ gently chiding tone cut through his confidence and Benedikt felt himself deflate. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Yes, you did, but I accept your apology. And I admit you may have a point.”
“Well, thank you very much,” Benedikt muttered.
“Don’t sulk, Benedikt. It’s quite unattractive.” After a moment, he added, “Are you sure you’re not going on this voyage to prove to Kovar he can’t push you around?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Benedikt sighed and laced his fingers behind his head. “You’re beginning to sound like Magda.”
“Which reminds me, she wants to see you as soon as you get back to the Citadel. She wants to impress on you how important your going on this expedition is to the queen, and, given Her Majesty’s recent state of mind, how important it is you don’t allow Kovar to talk you out of going.”
He’d been trying not to think of what would happen when he got back to the Citadel. “The queen believes in me. I won’t let her down.”
“It might be better if you believed more in yourself.”
“It might be better if you two shut up!” growled a voice from the other end of the loft.
Tadeus rose up on his elbows, head cocked to pinpoint the speaker. “Loomic? You shouldn’t be able to hear us.”
“Yeah? Then you oughta pay more unenclosed attention ’cause I can hear about one word in ten. Buzz, buzz, buzz; voyage. Murmur, murmur, murmur; prove. Mutter, mutter, mutter; might be better. It’s driving me nuts!”
“I’ve always said you had a touch of bardic talent….”
“I don’t give a crap about bardic talent, Tadeus. Not now. It’s the middle of the unenclosed night, and I’ve got to do a full day’s work tomorrow, unlike some decorative bits of fluff.”
“Perhaps we’d best call it a night,” Tadeus admitted, dropping his voice directly into Benedikt’s ear. “Good night, Benedikt. Good dreams.”
“It might be better if you believed more in yourself.” Did he want to continue the argument past that point? “Good dreams, Tadeus.” A few minutes later, he frowned. “Tadeus? Did Magda send you all the way out here to find me?”
“She might have.”
“Pushy.”
“Tell me about it. She gets it from her mother.”
The boot bounced twice on the floor between them.
“What part of shut up do you two not understand?”
* * * *
Next morning, the two bards walked together to the road and paused. Tadeus was heading east to Vidor, Benedikt west to Elbasan.
“I doubt I’ll see you again before Starfarer sails,” Tadeus said, rain beading on the waxed leather mask tied over his eyes, “so I’m going to gift you with my advice. Keep singing The Dark Sailor’ if you want to, but remember that when you do, you’re invoking a desperate desire for home, not a sense of adventure. If you’re trying to change people’s opinions about this voyage, you’ll have more luck if you engage their hearts, if you get them to wonder about what’s over the horizon.” He grinned suddenly. “If, however, you’re just trying to overwind Kovar’s strings, then carry on as you were.”
Benedikt protected his eyes with a hand as Tadeus’ hood billowed out against the direction of the wind and the rain began to fall every way but down. “He seems angry enough now.”
“What, this?” A quick four notes and the air around them stilled. “That wasn’t Kovar. I’m heading for Ohrid and Annice seems to think I’m part packhorse. At least once a day she comes up with new lists of things I should bring with me. I’d ignore her, but I have no real desire to have her change the weather patterns over half the country.” As a light breeze touched Benedikt’s worried frown, Tadeus sighed. “I’m kidding. And now, as we’ve both got a long, wet walk before us, I suggest we say good-bye and get started.” Reaching out, he gripped the younger man by the shoulders. “One last bit of advice; you’re a bard now, Benedikt, let the past go.”
“Concentrate on what I can do, not on what I can’t.” Benedikt snorted and stepped back. “Easy to say when you can do what I can’t.”
One ebony brow rose above the mask. “I was under the impression that, at the moment, you were proud of not Singing air, proud to stand apart from Kovar’s caution.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“No buts.” He held out his fist. “Good journey, Benedikt. Bring me back something nice.”
“Bring you back…? Oh. Right. Sure. Good journey, Tadeus.”
As he turned into the angle of the rain, he tried to decide how he felt about having Tadeus’ company in his rebellion. He was defying Kovar to go on this voyage because the queen believed in him; Tadeus would have gone for a song. It’s easy for Tadeus, he Sings air. He doesn’t know what it’s like not to be able to do something every other bard takes for granted.
* * * *
Three days later, with the smoke from Elbasan’s chimneys smudging the evening sky behind him, Benedikt stood in the shipyard and stared at the Starfarer. She’d been painted pale blue and cream, the castles trimmed in a darker blue, and it seemed as though half a hundred pennants flew from every line.
“Beauty, ain’t she?” said an admiring voice.
Shifting his pack, Benedikt turned.
“She’s the best we ever built, I’m tellin’ ya.” Hands on her hips, the woman beside him kept her gaze locked on Starfarer. “Rides them waves so pretty you’d almost think she were Singin’ the kigh.”
There was a certain music in the way the water lapped against the painted wood, in the shump, shump of the heavy rope bumpers rubbed between the ship and the pier, in the dance of the pennants in the evening breeze. For the first time since Vidor, he felt a touch of the joy that had come with the news he’d been chosen.
“Yer sailin’ on her, ain’t ya?”
Surprised, he took a closer look at his companion. The leather apron streaked with tar and the sawdust in her close-cropped hair supported her statement that she worked at the shipyard. As far as he could recall, he’d never seen her before. “How could you tell?”
She smiled broadly enough to show a missing molar. “I know the look. You know ‘When the Work is Done,’ bard?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then we should get along just fine.” A callused fist thrust toward him. “Emilka i’Dasa. Call me Mila. I’ve signed on as ship’s carpenter. I helped build her, so I figured I’d best make sure she makes it home.”
“Benedikt.” He touched his fist to the top of hers. “What look?”
“Say again?”
“You said you knew I was going because you knew the look. What look?”
Mila laughed. “We get a lot down here lookin’ at her. Some of ’em, they look all disapprovin’, faces scrunched up like an old apple, like they think we’re wastin’ time and money even buildin’ her. Some of ’em, usually them that’s too old or too young, look kinda wistful, like they can see the adventure but they know it’s not for them. And a very few folk, the ones that’re goin’, they smile and their eyebrows kinda dip down in the middle like they’re thinking’…” She paused, caught Benedikt’s eye, and turned his gaze back toward the ship. “They’re thinkin’ about all that water out there and they’re thinkin’, I thought she’d be bigger.”
* * * *
Benedikt slipped into the Citadel through the Bard’s Door and rolled his eyes as the notes of his name activated the message Kovar had left for him. All bards saw the Bardic Captain as soon as possible after returning from a Walk; did Kovar think that he’d rebelled so thoroughly he wouldn’t bother?
With good weather sending every able-bodied bard out into the country, the Hall was nearly empty. Even the year’s two fledglings were gone, no doubt taking a short Walk up coast with Petrolis who thoroughly enjoyed teaching starry-eyed teenagers the more mundane aspects of their new lives. In Benedikt’s opinion, for a bard who didn’t Sing earth, Petrolis was just a little fanatical about latrine pits.
He saw no one as he made his way up to the second floor although he could hear the faint sound of a flute from somewhere up above. When the same three or four bars were repeated with minor variations, he suspected the song was a work in progress. It was a catchy tune and he hummed it softly as he went into his room.
In an effort to fight off the cold and damp, servers lit fires in the unoccupied rooms at the new moon and the full. Unfortunately, neither the occasional fire nor the bowls of dried mint could keep a place from smelling musty when it had remained essentially empty for a full quarter. Nose wrinkled, moving carefully in the near dark, Benedikt crossed to the window and opened the inner shutters.
Somehow, the room looked as abandoned as it smelled even though it looked very little different from when he was actually living in it. Shrugging out of his pack, he unbuckled his instrument case and paused, about to lift it up onto the small table. There was a slate propped up on the shell he used as a catchall dish. Someone had come into his room while he was gone and left him a note.
In case Tadeus missed you, it read, please see me before you speak to Kovar. It was signed, Magda.
“Does a healer outrank a Bardic Captain?” Benedikt wondered, smudging the chalk lines with his thumb. As a fledgling, he’d had significantly more long talks with Magda than the others. The talks had been intended to convince him that his lack of air made him no less a bard than the rest, but the mere fact that they’d singled him out for reassurance had shown him what they really thought.
Magda could only want to talk to him now about the queen’s voyage. He knew what Kovar was likely to say, and he had no real desire to test his resolve against the full orchestration of the captain’s opinion; therefore, it only made sense to begin defending his decision at the Healers’ Hall.
Besides, from what Tadeus had said, Magda was likely to be on his side.
A quick wash and a change of clothes later, he started across the Citadel’s outer courtyard. It seemed unlikely that Kovar would have the kigh watching for him, but since something as simple as a glance out a window could still give him away, he moved quickly.
“Benedikt!”
Not quickly enough. He turned to see Kovar hurrying across the cobblestones, looking distinctly displeased. Unfortunately, in direct confrontation, a healer did not outrank a Bardic Captain. He waited, shifting his weight from foot to foot as Kovar closed the distance between them, quartered robes whipping around his ankles like angry, multicolored cats.
An arm’s reach away, closer than Benedikt would have liked, he stopped. “Are you unwell?”
“Unwell?” Benedikt repeated, confused. Expecting some kind of accusation, the question took him by surprise. Then he realized—in another three strides he’d be climbing the steps to the Healers’ Hall. “No, I’m fine.”
“I see.” Kovar’s tone suggested this answer came as no surprise. “Did you not get my message?”
Benedikt stiffened. “Of course I did.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you wouldn’t understand it, Benedikt, I was wondering why you chose to ignore it.”
“I’m not ignoring it.”
The silence wondered why, then, he was going to the Healers’ Hall.
“Magda wanted to see me.” He hated how defensive he sounded and struggled for the voice control that should be second nature to a bard.
“Your responsibilities to the Bardic Hall should have brought you immediately to me. If you aren’t sick, Magda can wait.”
“Are you accusing me of ignoring my responsibilities?”
“Not out here,” Kovar said pointedly and Benedikt suddenly became aware of the half-dozen guards over by the stable and the multitude of windows overhead. “Whatever our differences, we will not end up brawling like a couple of riverboat pilots out in public.”
If he became recognized as the bard going on the queen’s voyage, any argument would begin to attract attention. One or two of the guards were already looking their way. The thought of attracting a crowd, of a face staring down at him from every one of those windows, from the Bardic Hall, from the Healers’ Hall, from the Palace, made Benedikt’s palms itch.
Stepping to one side, Kovar half turned back the way he’d come. “Shall we discuss this in my office?”
He could say no. Say no and walk right into the Healers’ Hall. But as much as he despised himself for it, he didn’t have the courage. To walk away from Kovar now would turn a difference of opinion into something much more significant.
He nodded and fell into step beside the Bardic Captain. It was likely to be an unpleasant interview and he couldn’t blame himself for trying to postpone it. If Magda’s as concerned about the queen as Tadeus thinks, why isn’t she out here supporting me?
“Benedikt?”
The high-pitched voice turned both bards around.
The page slid to a stop and grinned up at Benedikt, panting slightly. “Her Majesty would like to see you.”
“Tell Her Majesty he’ll be up momentarily.”
An indignant gaze lifted to Kovar’s face and thin arms crossed over royal livery. “Her Majesty wants to see him now.”
* * * *
“Her Majesty hasn’t seen the Bardic Captain in ever so long,” the page confided as they entered the Palace through one of the smaller, private doors. “She sees other bards and reads all the recalls and stuff, but she doesn’t see him. She saw you cross the courtyard from upstairs and sent me to get you.”
The queen herself had come to his rescue. Benedikt felt his mouth curve up into an idiotic smile he couldn’t seem to stop.
“This way, follow me.” Racing up the stairs, the page turned on the landing and stared mournfully down at Benedikt. “I wish I was going on the Starfarer but they say I’m too young. I’m not.”
“Of course you aren’t.”
Benedikt jumped, but the page merely turned as though Bannon appeared silently behind her all the time. Perhaps he did.
“Hi, Bannon. Where’s His Highness?”
“You tell me.”
Ignored for the moment, Benedikt realized that, in spite of an imposing presence, the Southerner wasn’t significantly taller than the page he quizzed.
“Um, it’s late afternoon, you’re not with him…” Her face lit up. “He must still be meeting with Chancellor Cecilie.”
“About?”
“The new Fienian ambassador.”
“Correct.” The minimal movement of his head was clearly a dismissal. “I’ll take the bard from here.”
“Her Majesty told me to get him.” She folded her arms. “Did Her Majesty send you?”
Bannon smiled. “No.”
After studying him for a moment—and Benedikt would’ve much to know if she saw threat or promise—she returned the ex-assassin’s smile. “Okay, you can walk with him, and I’ll go on ahead so I can announce you when you arrive, and if I get in trouble with the Page Master, you’ve got to get me out of it.”
“Deal.”
“Bard?”
It took a moment for Benedikt to realize what she wanted. “Oh. Witnessed.”
As the page raced up the remaining stairs two at a time, Bannon motioned for Benedikt to join him on the landing. They took half a dozen steps in silence.
Benedikt could feel himself wanting to babble, to fill the stairwell with nonsense just to cover the drumming of his heart. He only wished he knew why. Perhaps it should have been fear, but it wasn’t.
“This voyage is very important to Her Majesty.”
Only a bardic ear could have detected the difference in Bannon’s voice. To anyone else he would have sounded the same as when he’d been speaking with the page—friendly, unconcerned. Benedikt could hear the warning, but he couldn’t think of a safe response.
“His Highness has said that the Starfarer has given Her Majesty back the self she lost in grief.”
They climbed another three steps.
“Do you understand why I’m telling you this?”
“I think so.” A step apart, they were eye to eye. Benedikt tried to look away and couldn’t.
“Your captain has made his feelings on this clear—he disapproves of the trip but if the ship sails without his approval, he doesn’t want a bard on board.”
“I’ve already agreed to go.”
“What happens if your captain gives you a direct order to stay?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Then what if he tells you that your going will split the bards, make them less able to do their work, that you must respect his opinion, keep a united front for the sake of everything that makes a bard?”
“He wouldn’t…” But looking into the gold-flecked eyes, Benedikt knew that Bannon was right. That was exactly what Kovar would do. Announcing a threat to the good of the many was his greatest power. “I don’t know what I’d do.”
Bannon cupped Benedikt’s chin in his hand, fingers and thumb indenting the flesh along the jaw just on the edge of pain. “I do.”
“You’re not a bard.” To disagree with Kovar was one thing. To place himself in opposition to what it meant to be a bard, that was something else entirely. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
“And I don’t care what it’s like. If your captain shoves at you from one side, remember that I’m here, on the other.”
His breathing a little ragged, Benedikt pulled away. “You can’t threaten me.”
Bannon’s gaze followed him, expression unreadable. “Then call it support, you fool.”
* * * *
Bannon handed the bard back to the page outside the door to the queen’s solar and continued on his way without a backward glance. Shoring up another’s insecurities was a new experience for him but, with any luck, he’d managed to exert a force equal to that of the Bardic Captain, enough to keep Benedikt from collapsing under the weight of being a bard.
Bards. Everything in Shkoder came back to the bards. Right now, everything in Shkoder came back to Benedikt.
Absently rubbing the lingering warmth of Benedikt’s skin on his fingertips, he sighed. All he could do was see to it that Her Majesty’s choice got onto the boat. The rest of the slaughtering country would just have to work things out on its own.
* * * *
“You’ve seen the Starfarer?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“What did you think?”
Remembering Mila, Benedikt smiled. I thought she’d be bigger was not the answer the queen was looking for, so he told her another truth. “I think she’s beautiful, Majesty.”
“Isn’t she.” Eyes gleaming, Jelena smiled down at her secretary. “Taska, have I got time to take the new Fienian ambassador down to see her tomorrow?”
“I’m sorry, Majesty, but no.”
“Majesty, please…” Her tailor muttered his plea through a mouthful of pins. “If you keep moving, your hem…”
“My apologies.” She stilled, and the tailor’s assistant draped another piece of fabric over her shoulder. “What about after Council?”
“You’re meeting with the Duc of Vidor, Majesty.”
“Oh, well.” Sighing philosophically, she turned her attention back to Benedikt. “You’ll just have to sing him a song describing it.”
“Yes, Majesty.” But that wasn’t the song he wanted to sing.
“This voyage has given her back the self she lost in grief.”
The difference between this Jelena and the Jelena he’d Sung across the strait was like the difference between a running river and a stagnant pool. If he was all that stood between her and the loss of her joy, then Kovar could do his worst. He was insulted that everyone seemed to think he wouldn’t be up to the responsibility.
“What is it, Benedikt? You’re frowning.”
“Am I? I beg your pardon, Majesty.”
Risking another reprimand from her tailor, Jelena moved farther into the room. She liked the way he looked at her. He’d done it at Fort Kazpar and he was doing it again now. He made her feel worthy of the risk the Starfarer’s crew was about to take in her name. There were those on the Council who suggested it might be better if the Starfarer carried a bard able to Sing more than one quarter but, for the sake of that look, Jelena would not, could not, imagine any other bard in Benedikt’s place. “His Highness and I will be going with you as far as the Broken Islands.”
His Highness meant Bannon, and Bannon meant… Actually, Benedikt didn’t know what Bannon meant; figuratively and literally most of the time. He resisted the urge to rub his jaw. “You honor us all, Majesty.”
She laughed. “Carrying crowned ballast is hardly an honor.” Her outstretched hand was a symbolic gesture, given tailors and secretaries and tailor’s assistants there was no way to physically bridge the distance between them. “Thank you for volunteering, Benedikt. If I could have chosen any bard, I’d have chosen you.”
Bards could hear the truth. At this moment, and he couldn’t insist on any more than this moment, she meant what she said.
“Majesty, please…”
Murmuring apologies, Jelena allowed the tailor to place her back in the center of the low pedestal. “Could you sing me something, Benedikt? Something to keep me from moving and destroying Edgard’s work.”
He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that he wouldn’t let her down, so he sang her “The Dark Sailor.” Not the way he’d been singing it, as a protest, but as a gift. When he finished, she smiled down at him and said softly, “I don’t want you to worry about anything Kovar says to you.”
* * * *
Later, in the Bardic Captain’s office, during an interview that was just as unpleasant as he’d anticipated, where all the possibilities Bannon had suggested were thrown at him, Benedikt held on to the memory of the queen’s smile, so almost everything Kovar said made no impression at all.
Almost.
“All right, Benedikt. If you won’t consider the good of the bards, then consider the good of the Starfarer. You only Sing water! Think man! What if a storm comes up or you need to send a kigh for help?”
“Then I’ll Sing water. Or do you think they’ll be worse off with me than with no bard at all?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You didn’t have to.” Benedikt stood and stared down at the captain through narrowed eyes. “You want me to consider the bards? Well, how about this; by sending a bard on Starfarer, we support the queen and by sending me, we send the bard you can most afford to lose. As far as I can see, the bards win either way.” Heart pounding, triumph making him feel like throwing up, he made it out of the office before Kovar could voice a protest.
Or agreement.