The Bards of Bone Plain (23 page)

“Yes,” he said again, resisting the urge to touch her cool ivory cheek, trace her smile with his fingertips. “Declan has been training me,” he explained. “He wants me to win.”

“Ah.” Her eyes darkened in sudden comprehension. “He wants to send you to King Oroh.”

“Yes.”

“How wonderful. Then you might indeed come to play in my father's court.” She laughed again, a peal of lovely notes, a little breathless herself, suddenly. “Oh. I hope so. I do hope so.”

He nodded, swallowing. “It is my greatest wish.”

“I miss those evenings when we talked and played. I miss the smell of the plain, the sounds of the wind blowing the long, long way across it.” Her eyes clung to his a moment, the tender green of new leaves, then flicked over his shoulder. She smiled wryly. “There is Berwin wondering where I've gone.”

“Will I see you again?”

“Yes. Oh, yes. Listening to every song you play tomorrow.” He felt her fingertips, light and warm, an instant on his wrist. “Look for me.”

“I will,” he promised dazedly. “I will.”

He watched her rejoin her company. The fire billowed between them, and he moved away slowly, still hearing the music of her voice, her clear thoughts, and he realized that nothing Declan might have said would have rendered the complex, improbable matter suddenly so simple: he would win for her.

The tavern was full of people, but the only one he saw, as he walked through the doorway, was Welkin.

He sat on a stool beside the hearth, playing softly, big, callused hands wandering dreamily over the strings. His strange, mismatched, smiling eyes followed Nairn across the room, where a chair waited for him between Osprey and Shea.

The deep voice, rattling shards of shale, stopped Nairn before he reached it.

“Play with me.”

Nairn looked at him silently a moment. Then he laughed. “Why? So you can bring me to my knees again with that harp?”

Welkin's eyes narrowed slightly, still smiling. “Best the harp then, as well as the harper,” he suggested. “Break my strings and bring me to my knees.”

There were whistles from the onlookers, tankards drummed against wood, a cheerful cry from Osprey.

“I'll buy the beer.”

Nairn shrugged, preparing for any humiliation; at least, on the final day, he would know what to expect.

He took out his harp, sat down on the bench at the other side of the fire, over which a cauldron of bean and pork and onion stew bubbled richly.

“Supper's on me,” the brewer told them, pleased at the crowd around his tables, which included several of the court bards, who had no doubt followed Welkin in.

“Kind of you,” Welkin murmured and touched a string. Then he launched into a song so old and rarely played that Nairn barely remembered it had come out of the Marches: “The Riddle of Cornith and Corneath.”

Nairn's fingers were riffling down the strings; he heard his own voice answering before he had begun to think.

“Who are you?” he heard in every lilting line. The one question everyone was asking about Welkin, he was giving back to them in his teasing fashion. He was also revealing something, Nairn realized. The question was there, the answer was there, between the beginning and the end of the ancient lines. All that Nairn needed to win was there. The old doggerel sparked to life. Words said what they meant when they were heeded, which was, in the case of hoary verses older than the standing stones, precisely when they were needed.

He settled into the music, passing verses flawlessly back at Welkin, who told him something else before the interminable song came to an end, and even the court bards shouted with amazement.

The fact that they were still playing together after that hour or two or five, that Welkin and his enchanted harp had not blown Nairn out the door and left him too disheartened to bother finishing the competition meant one mysterious thing.

Nairn had something Welkin needed.

Princess Beatrice heard about the Royal Bard's decision from her mother, who summoned her before she could flee the castle in her dungarees. The tide had turned in the river; the work crew would be waiting near Dockers Bridge for her to pick them up. She had hoped for a word with Master Burley before she left about the hen scratches she had seen the evening before, drawn with charcoal on the lounge table at the inn. But no: work crew, hen scratches, and any thought about Phelan had to wait while she attended the queen in her mauve-appointed morning room.

As usual, the sight of her daughter in pants and grubby boots caused Queen Harriet to close her eyes and delicately pinch the bridge of her nose. That, as usual, caused her daughter to wonder why, after so many digs, her mother was not inured by now. It was as though she thought she had two daughters named Beatrice and a vague hope that one of them would disappear entirely.

“Yes, Mother?”

The queen opened her eyes again and frowned. “You never appeared at Lady Phillipa's party for Damen and Daphne's engagement yesterday. It was noticed. You were missed.”

“They have had so many engagement parties. I didn't think they'd care.”

“I was told you went off somewhere with Phelan Cle. And yet no one can tell me where. No one we know, that is. You vanish into dank holes during the day; I feel very strongly, and so does your father, that you should not begin to disappear at night as well.”

“I'm sorry,” Beatrice said penitently, alarmed for her freedom. “It's only—Phelan Cle had a slight accident and—”

“I know. The bill for that ‘slight accident' arrived on Grishold's breakfast tray earlier this morning.” Beatrice's eyes widened; her lips tightened over a startled laugh. Her mother's voice thinned. “The back door and doorframe of an inn, historical though it might be and with period door hinges, in a not entirely reputable quarter of the docks. And his bard blamed for the damage. Your uncle was nearly incoherent. Such details should never have come to his attention. Nor mine. Apparently Jonah Cle offered recompense for all damages, but the innkeeper felt that, in his dissolute state, he wouldn't remember a thing the next morning, and so he sent his claim to my brother. Why were you anywhere near this sordid little scene? Explain to me again?”

“It wasn't really—We were—How did you know I was there?”

“The innkeeper recognized you and named you as a witness.”

“Oh.”

Queen Harriet closed her eyes again, briefly. “I will assume he has seen you on certain public occasions. Beyond that, I don't want to know.”

“Yes, Mother.” She glanced at the antique water clock on the mantelpiece and thought despairingly of the tide. “I really am sorry. Phelan was worried about his father, so I—I went with him to help.”

“Worried with good reason, apparently. Really, Beatrice. You abandoned your friends and went trailing off after the soused Master Cle, who has left a litter of broken things across the entire city of Caerau.”

“He didn't break the door. It was Kelda, escaping out the back—”

“I really don't want to know,” her mother said adamantly. “Bards should make music, not scenes, and now we have another incident, so soon after Quennel's accident with the salmon mousse, and I'm told that the city will very shortly be overrun with bards.”

Beatrice raised her hand, dropped it, resisting a childhood urge to chew on a lock of hair when confused. “It will?”

“It most certainly will if your father can't persuade Quennel not to retire. It's absurd of him, of course—Quennel, I mean—he's perfectly fine now, except for a slight sore throat, and there's no reason for him to inflict such a competition on us all now.”

The hen scratches, the glint in the young bard's eye, the powerful flash of light that had come out of the charcoal scribbles on the table merged suddenly in Beatrice's head. She breathed, illumined, “Kelda.”

The queen regarded her frostily. “Kelda?”

Beatrice wished she could inhale the name back out of the air. “I'm sorry, Mother,” she said yet again. “I didn't mean to interrupt you. I really will try not to be so impulsive.”

“I was going to say—” Queen Harriet paused, inspired by the sight of her daughter's outfit, to bring up another subject now that Beatrice was in a placatory mood. “I think,” she began slowly, “that you should give some serious thought to your own future. Your father allows you to indulge your whims because you have similar interests. With him it's a hobby; with you it's becoming a career. A rather undignified and completely unnecessary one. You've played in the dirt long enough. It's time you followed the example of your sister, Charlotte. Yes, Lucien, I'm just speaking to your daughter. What is it?”

The king, who had appeared in the doorway, said perplexedly, “I've just been handed the most amazing message from your brother.” He broke off, noticing his daughter. “Beatrice! Why are you still here? You'll miss the ebb tide.”

She escaped with relief, before she accidentally committed herself to children, dogs, and endless country garden parties.

Down in the site, helping Campion coax the line of stones out of the wall of dirt into daylight, she was so absent that Ida, sifting through the earth at her feet, asked sympathetically, “Is it getting worse?”

“Is what?”

“Being in love.”

Beatrice stared down at her. “In love. Oh—” She remembered some distant time, when she had met Kelda's gaze and had felt it everywhere, all over her body. She flushed, wondering how she could have ever misread the power in his eyes.

“When love is gone, how little of love—” Campion intoned sonorously.

“I was never in love,” Beatrice said crossly. “It was an accident.” Even she had to smile, reluctantly, as they hooted. “A very silly mistake.”

His face was still on her mind, as she had seen it the previous evening. Phelan had opened the lounge door, and Kelda, standing at the table with students watching him, drawing a pattern on the pale wood with a burned splinter of kindling, had raised his head at the interruption. His eyes had seemed scarcely human then. The eyes of a raven, a wild horse, a toad, they seemed to recognize nothing human. He hadn't touched his harp. The sound had come out of him, or the word he had drawn: a deep string, vibrating until it seemed to shake the floor. And then the streak of light ... When she could see again, the back door hung on its hinges, Phelan lay on the floor, and Jonah Cle had appeared out of nowhere. Everyone else had vanished.

A shadow blocked the sunlight overhead; she started, peered upward, and found Jonah leaning over the site edge, peering back at them.

“Ah, you are here, after all, Princess.”

“Barely,” she told him ruefully, aware of the tools growing quiet around her as everyone listened. “My mother was not happy with me. How is Phelan?”

“I don't know. I haven't been home. Come up a moment?”

She mused a bit darkly, as she climbed the ladder, about the carelessness of parents. Jonah added, as though he read her mind, “You could ask him.” He helped her off the ladder. He smelled like a brewery, and his eyes squinted painfully at the cheerful sunlight. But he seemed sober enough.

“Then how do you know that Phelan made it home?” she asked patiently, stifling an unaccustomed urge to raise her voice. Jonah had put them together into a cab; Phelan was coherent by then, though he kept his eyes shut. Yes, he promised, he would call a physician; no, the princess should not see him home since the cab would pass the castle first. Yes, he would be fine if he could just fall into bed, only he had something extremely important to tell her if he could remember what it was ... He couldn't, not before the cab left her at the castle gates. She watched it roll away with a hiss of steam; that was the last she had seen of Phelan.

“Where else would he have gone?” Jonah asked with annoying unconcern, and added, “I searched all night for Kelda. Did you see him this morning at the castle?”

She shook her head. “No. I wasn't looking, though. Speaking of bards, my mother said something about Quennel wanting to retire, and that the city would soon be overrun by bards. Have you heard anything about that?”

“The bardic competition,” Jonah said grimly. “That's what brought Kelda here.”

“But he didn't—Kelda had no idea Quennel would—” She faltered, staring at him. “Are you suggesting that he planned this? He—he used his magic against Quennel?”

“Quennel choked on a word,” Jonah said harshly, and she blinked, as stray, wordlike objects in her head fit together like broken shards.

“The Circle of Days.”

His eyes narrowed at her; she had managed to astonish the jaded Master Cle. “You know about that?”

“Master Burley told me, when I remembered where I had seen the hooded face on the disk. He said it's an ancient language in which very common words hold enormous powers. So the theory goes. Nobody has ever been able to read into the words, beneath them. I saw the pattern Kelda drew on the table. It was also on the disk. What does it mean?”

“Bread.”

“Bread.”

“Look in any bakery. You see the pattern still used on cottage loaves.”

“Really?” she said, amazed. “How fascinating. But what is its other meaning? Its secret?”