Lark and Wren (27 page)

They wouldn't teach her for free-for one thing, that could get them in trouble with the Guild-for another, they felt, like Tonno, that
paying
for something tended to make one pay attention to it. But they weren't charging her any more than Tonno had, and she was learning a great deal he simply could not show her.

"I've been wanting to find someone who could teach you composition," Tonno said, his expression still worried, "But the only Bards I knew of in the city were either in a Great Household, or-in the Church."

Rune's mouth formed a silent "O" of understanding. Now all of Tonno's fussing made some sense. If he'd wanted to find her a teacher and she'd gotten herself in trouble with the Church-

But he wasn't finished. "I didn't have the contacts to get you lessons with any of the Church Bards," he continued. "But last week Brother Bryan mentioned that he'd listened to you playing out on the street and that he thought you were amazing. He still thinks you're a boy, you understand-"

Rune nodded. Brother Bryan had never seen her in female garb; she and Tonno had judged that the best idea. Many Church
men
felt very uneasy around females for one thing-and it seemed no bad idea to have her female persona unknown to the Church, after all the ordinances and the snooping Carly was doing. They might not connect the "Rune" that busked with the "Rune" that played at Amber's. And even if they did, they might not know that Rune was really a girl, if Carly hadn't gone out of her way to tell them. Rune didn't think she had; she just reported the activities going on, but because
she
knew Rune's sex, she would probably assume the Church did, too.

"Well, Brother Bryan was very impressed by what he'd heard. He asked if you composed, then before I could say anything, he offered to see if he couldn't get Brother Pell to take you in his class." Tonno was clearly torn between being proud and being concerned at a Church Collector's interest in his pupil. "That's why I wanted to know what your comic songs were about; if you'd done anything to annoy the Church officials, going to that class could be walking you into a trap. The Church has no power outside the cloister, but once they had you inside, they could hold you for as long as they cared to, and the city couldn't send anyone to get you out. Assuming they'd even bother to try, which I doubt. The only people the constables and guards are likely to exert themselves for have more money than you and I put together."

Rune's mouth went dry at the bare thought of being held by the Church for questioning. She recalled the high walls around the cloister all too well-walls that shut out the world. And held in secrets? "They wouldn't-"

He saw her terrified expression, and laughed, easing her fear. "Oh, all they'd do, most likely, is try to frighten you; to bully you and make you promise never to write something like that again." He cocked his head sideways, for a moment, and his expression sobered. "But if they connected you with the musician at Amber's, they could threaten other punishments, and make you promise to spy at Amber's in return for being set free. I doubt Carly is terribly effective."

"I wouldn't do that!" she exclaimed, hotly.

"You might, if you were frightened enough," he admonished her. "I'm not saying you also wouldn't go straight to Amber afterwards and tell her what they'd gotten from you, but don't ever underestimate the power of a skilled Church interrogator. They could make you promise to do almost anything for them, and you'd weep with gratitude because they had forgiven you for what you'd done to them. They are very skilled with words-with innuendo-with making threats they have no intention of carrying out. And they are a force unto themselves on their own ground."

"And maybe they're as skilled with magic as they are with words?" Rune frowned; those were some of the whispered rumors she'd heard. That the Church harbored Priests and Brothers who were powerful magicians, who could make people do what they wanted them to with a few chosen words and a spell to take over their will.

"Possibly," Tonno conceded wearily. "Possibly; I don't know. I've never seen a Church mage, and I don't know of anyone who has, but that doesn't mean anything, does it? Since you haven't angered them, and don't
intend
to, you're unlikely to see one either. Let's face it, Rune, you and I are just too small for them to take much notice of. It's not worth the time they'd spend."

"Something to be said for being insignificant," she commented sardonically.

He nodded. "At any rate, I'm quite confident that you'll be in no danger whatsoever, if you want to take these lessons. Brother Bryan told me that Brother Pell is-well, 'rather difficult to get along with,' is the way he put it. I pressed him for details, but he couldn't tell me much; I gather he has a bad temper and a sour disposition. He doesn't like much of anybody, and even someone as even-tempered as Bryan has a hard time finding good things to say about him."

"Sounds like taking lessons from Carly," she said, with a wry twist to her mouth.

"Perhaps," Tonno replied thoughtfully. "But there is this; Bryan said that by all reports, even of those who don't like him at all, Pell is the best composition teacher in all of Nolton."

"Huh," Rune said thoughtfully. "I'd be willing to take lessons even from Carly if she was that good. Am I supposed to be a boy or a girl?"

"Boy," Tonno told her firmly. "Women have very little power in the Church, at least here in Nolton, and I gather that Pell in particular despises the sex. Go as a girl, and he'll probably refuse to teach you on the grounds that you'll just go off and get married and waste his teaching." He gave her a long, level look, as he realized exactly what she'd said. "I take it that you want the lessons, then?"

"I said I'd even take lessons from Carly if she had anything worth learning," Rune replied firmly. "When can I start?"

She didn't feel quite so bold a few days later, as she meekly showed her pass to the Brother on watch at the cloister gate. In the year she'd been here, she'd never once been inside the huge cathedral in the center of Nolton, big enough to hold several thousand worshipers at once. In fact, she avoided it as much as possible. That wasn't too difficult, since there was no use in busking anywhere near it; the Priests and Brothers made a busker feel so uncomfortable by simply standing and staring with disapproval that it was easier to find somewhere else to play.

It was an imposing, forbidding edifice, carved of dark stone, with thousands of sculptures all over its surface; there wasn't a single square inch that didn't hold a carving of something. Down near the base, it was ordinary people doing Good Works, and the temptations of the Evil One trying to waylay them. Farther up, there were carvings of the lives of the saints and all the temptations that they had overcome. The next level held the bliss of Paradise. The uppermost level was carved with all the varied kinds of angels, from the finger-length Etherials, to the Archangels that were three times the height of a man.

There was a sky-piercing tower in the middle of it, carved with abstract water and cloud shapes, that held the bells that signaled the changes of the hours for everyone in the city. Inside, she had been told, it was different; not dark and foreboding at all, full of light and space-those carved walls held hundreds of tiny windows filled with glass, and most of the ones near the ground were of precious colored glass. Every saint's shrine, every statue inside had been gilded or silvered; places where the light couldn't reach were covered with banks of prayer candles. When the sun shone, or so Tonno claimed, the eye was dazzled. Even when it didn't, there were lights and reflective surfaces enough to make the interior bright as day in an open meadow.

She hadn't cared enough to want to see it, although it was quite an attraction for visitors just to come and gawk at. Behind the cathedral was the cloister; a complex of buildings including convents for men and for women, a school, and the Church administrative offices. All that was held behind a high wall pierced with tiny gates, each guarded day and night by a Brother. Rune had never been inside those walls, and didn't know anyone who had.

Plenty of people had been inside the cathedral though. The High Priest of Nolton was said to be a marvelous speaker, although, again, Rune couldn't have said one way or another. She hadn't cared to see
him,
either, though Carly went to the service he preached at as faithfully as the bells rang.

From the little she saw outside the walls, the cloister was twice as forbidding as the cathedral, because it had none of the cathedral's ornamentation. Now that she was
inside
the walls, it was worse, much worse. The place looked like a prison. The buildings were carved of the same dark stone, with tiny slits for windows. It looked as if it was a place designed to keep people from escaping; Rune hoped she'd never have occasion to discover that her impression was true.

The Brother at the gate, anonymous in his dark gray robe, directed her to go past the building immediately in front of her and take the first door she saw after that. She walked slowly across the silent, paved courtyard; nothing behind her but the wall with its small postern gate, nothing on either side of her or before her but tall, oblong buildings with tiny passages between them. Nothing green or growing anywhere, not even a weed springing up between the cobblestones. It seemed unnatural. A few robed figures crossed the courtyard ahead of her; none looked at her, no one spoke. In their dark, androgynous robes, she couldn't even tell if they were men or women.

Once past the first building, she felt even more hemmed in and confined.
How can anyone bear to live like this?
she wondered. No need to look for a reason why Brother Pell was so sour; if she had to live here, she'd be just as bitter as he was.

There was another Brother at the door of the building, sitting behind a tiny desk; once again, she showed her pass, and was directed to a second-floor room. She looked back over her shoulder for a moment as she climbed the stair; the Brother was watching her-to be certain she went where she was told? Possibly. That might be simple courtesy on the part of the Brothers. It might be something else. There was no point in speculating; she was just here for composition lessons, not anything sinister. She didn't want to stay here a moment longer than she had to. Let the Brother watch; he'd see only a young boy obeying, doing exactly what he was told.

She opened the designated doorway and went inside. There was no one there, and nothing but one large desk and six smaller ones. She discovered that she was the first to arrive of a class of six, including her. The classroom was a tiny cubicle, narrow, with enough space for their six desks arranged two by two, with Brother Pell's large desk facing them, and behind that, a wall covered in slate.

Brother Pell appeared last, a perfectly average man, balding slightly, with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his gray robe and a frown so firmly a part of his face that Rune could not imagine what he would look like if he ever smiled. If he had been anything other than a Brother, she would have guessed at Scholar or clerk; he had that kind of tight-lipped look.

There was a nagging sense of familiarity about him; after a moment, she knew what it was. She had seen this man often, out on the street, ever since the ordinance against pseudo-buskers had been passed. Presumably he was one of the inspectors. And now that she thought about it, she realized that there were a great many more Brothers and Sisters out on the street since the ordinance had been passed. Interesting; she had never thought of
them
as being inspectors, but it made sense. The inspectors were being paid very little, about the same as a lamp-lighter or a dung-sweeper. Unless you had no other job, it wasn't one you'd think of taking. A few of the real buskers had become inspectors by day, and did their busking at night. But Church clerics-well, it wouldn't matter to them how small the fee was. It was very probable that, since everyone in the Church took a vow to own nothing, their fees as inspectors went to the Church itself.

Very interesting, and not very comforting, that the Church who had backed the law should send its people out into the streets as an army of enforcers of that law. She'd have to tell Tonno about her suspicion and see what he said.

Brother Pell did not seem to recognize her, however, although she recognized him; his eyes flitted over her as they did the other five boys in the class without a flicker of recognition. He consulted a list in his hand.

"Terr Capston of Nolton," he said, and looked up. His voice, at least, was pleasant, although cold. A good, strong trained tenor.

"Here, sir," said a sturdy brown-haired boy, who looked back at the Brother quite fearlessly. Of all of them, he seemed the most used to being in the tutelage of Brothers.

"And why are you here, Terr Capston?" Brother Pell asked, without any expression at all.

Terr seemed to have been ready for this question. "Brother Rylan wants me to find out if I have Bardic material in me," the boy said. "I'm for the Church either way, but Brother wants to know if it will be as just a player or-"

"Stop right there, boy," Brother Pell said fiercely, and his cold face wore a forbidding frown. "There is no such thing as 'just' a player, and Brother Rylan is sadly to blame if that's the way he's taught you. Or is that
your
notion?"

The boy hung his head, and Brother Pell grimaced. "I thought so. I
should
send you back to him until you learn humility. Consider yourself on probation. Lenerd Cattlan of Nolton."

"Here-sir." The timid dark-haired boy right in front of Rune raised his hand.

"And why are you here?" the Brother asked, glaring at him with hawk-fierce eyes. The boy shrank into his seat and shook his head.

"You don't know?" Pell said, biting off each word. He cast his eyes upward. "Lord, give me patience. Rune of Westhaven."

"Sir," she said, nodding, and matching his stare with a stare of her own. You don't frighten me one bit. And I'm not going to back down to you, either. 

She had expected the same question, but he surprised her. "No last name? Why not?"