Lark and Wren Read online

  And what about all those rumors of dark sorceries that some priests practiced, using the mantle of the Church to give them protection?

  She was glad to hear the shop bell, signaling the arrival of one of the two youngsters due for lessons today. Ket was due first; he was late, but that was all right. Her thoughts were all tangled up, and too troubled right now. It would be a relief to think about simpler things, like basic lute lessons.

  She forgot about her uneasiness as she gave Ket his teaching, then drilled Anny in her scales. The children were easier to deal with than they normally were; this kind of weather didn't tempt anyone to want to play outside, not even a child. And Anny was home alone with her governess, a sour old dame who sucked all the joy out of learning and left only the withered husks; she was glad for a chance to get away and do something entirely different. The lute lessons and the sessions she had with her dancing teacher were her only respites from the heavy hand of the old governess.

  So it wasn't until after they'd left that Tonno's words came back to trouble her-and by then she had convinced herself that she had fallen victim to the miserable weather. She made a determined effort to shake off her mood, and by the time she left Tonno curled up in his blankets with bread and toasted cheese beside him and a couple of favorite books to read, she was in as cheerful a mood as possible, given her long walk back to Amber's through the dark and blowing snow.

  And by midnight, she'd forgotten it all entirely.

  But her dreams were haunted by things she could not recall clearly in the morning. Only-the lingering odor of incense.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rune sailed in the door of Tonno's shop singing at the top of her lungs, with a smile as wide and sunny as the day outside, and a bulging belt-pouch.

  "Well!" Tonno greeted her, answering her smile with one of his own. "What's all this?"

  She leaned over the counter and kissed him soundly on the cheek. He actually blushed, but could only repeat, "Well! Welladay!"

  She laughed, pulled her pouch off her belt, and spread her day's takings out on the countertop for him to see. "Look at that! Just look at it! Why, that's almost ten whole silver pennies, and a handful of copper! Can you believe it?"

  "What did you do, rob someone?" Tonno asked, teasingly.

  "No indeed," she said happily. "Do you remember that city ordinance that was passed at Spring Equinox session? The one that was basically about female buskers?"

  He sobered, quickly. "I do, indeed," he replied. The ordinance had troubled him a great deal; he had fretted about it incessantly until it was passed, and he had warned Rune not to go out on the streets as a musician in female garb once it was passed. Not that she ever did, at least, not to busk. The ordinance had been aimed squarely at those females who were using busking to cover their other business; it licensed inspectors who were to watch street and tavern musicians to be certain that their income was derived entirely from music. A similar ordinance, aimed at dancers, had also passed. Rune, of course, had either not come under scrutiny-at least that she was aware of-because of her habit of taking on boy-disguise, or she had passed the scrutiny easily. For some reason it never occurred to the inspectors or to those who had passed the ordinance that males might be operating the same deceptions. But the ordinance had pretty much cleared the streets of those women who had bought cheaper busking licenses and were using them to cover their other activities. The ordinance directed that any such woman be made to tender up not one, but two years' dues in the Whore's Guild, and buy a free-lancer's license as well. The Whore's Guild and the Bardic Guild had backed it; the Whore's Guild since it obviously cut down on women who were practicing outside the rules and restrictions of the Guild, which set prices and ensured the health of its members. Amber hadn't said much, but Rune suspected that she both approved and worried.

  She partially approved of it, obviously, because she felt the same way about those women who were abusing the busker's licenses as Rune felt about amateur musicians who thought they could set up with an instrument they hardly knew how to play and a repertoire of half a dozen songs and call themselves professionals. But Rune knew that Amber and Tonno both worried about this law because the Church had also been behind it-and they feared it might be the opening move in a campaign to end the Whore's Guild altogether, and make the Houses themselves illegal.

  It had been hard for Rune to feel much concern about that, when the immediate result had been to free up half the corners in Nolton to honest musicians and dancers, and to send even more clients to Amber's than there had been before. Amber had been forced to add a fifth and sixth lady; both of whom had passed their trial periods with highest marks-which had made Carly even more sour than before. Carly now stalked the hall of the private wing with a copy of the Holy Book poking ostentatiously out of her pocket. And she spent most of her time off at the Church, at interminable "Women's Prayer Meetings." She had even tried to drag the boys off to a "Group Prayer Meeting," but both of them had told her to her face that they'd rather scrub chamber pots.

  The two new ladies, Amethyst and Diamond, got along perfectly well with the other four; Rune liked them both very much, especially Diamond, who had the most abrasive and caustic sense of humor she'd ever encountered. It was Diamond who had suggested her current project.

  Diamond was an incredibly slender woman with pure white hair-naturally white, claimed Maddie, who often helped Diamond with the elaborate, though revealing, costumes she favored. Diamond had been in the common room one night (dressed-so to speak-mostly in strings of tiny glass beads made into a semblance of a dress) when Rune had played a common song called "Two Fair Maids" at a client's request. Diamond had politely waited until that client had gone upstairs before she said anything, but then she had them all in stitches.

  "Just once-" she'd said vehemently, "just once I'd like to hear a song about that situation that makes some sense!"

  One of the gentlemen with her, who Rune had suspected for some time really was nobly born, had said, ingenuously, "What situation?" That had pretty much confirmed Rune's suspicions, since it would have been hard to be a commoner and not have heard "Two Fair Maids" often enough to know every word of every variant.

  Diamond, however, had simply explained it to him without betraying that. "It's about two sisters in love with the same man," she told him. "He's been sleeping with the older one, who thinks he's going to have to marry her-but he proposes to the younger one, who accepts. When the older one finds out, she shoves the younger one in the river." She turned to Rune, then, and included her in the conversation. "Rune, what are all the various versions of it after that?"

  "Well," Rune had answered, thinking, "There's three variations on how she dies. One, the older girl holds her under; two, she gets carried off by the current and pulled under the millrace; three, that the miller sees her, wants her gold ring, and drowns her. But in all of the versions, a wandering harpist-Bard finds her-or rather, what's left of her after the fish get done-and makes a harp of her bones and strings it with her long, gold hair."

  "Dear God!" the gentleman exclaimed. "That's certainly gruesome!"

  "And pretty stupid," Rune added, to Diamond's great delight. "I can't imagine why any musician would go making an instrument out of human bone when there are perfectly good pieces of wood around that are much better suited to the purpose! And I can't imagine why anyone would want to play such a thing!" She shivered. "I should think you'd drive customers into the next kingdom the first time they caught sight of it! But anyway, that's what this fool does, and he takes it to court and plays it for the Sire. And, of course, the moment the older sister shows up, the harp begins to play by itself, and sing about how the little idiot got herself drowned. And of course, the sister is burned, and the miller is hung, and the bastard that started it in the first place by seducing the first sister gets off free." She curled her lip a little. "In fact, in one of the versions he gets all kinds of sympathy from other stupid women because his syrupy little true love drowned."


  "And that's what I mean by I wish that someone would write a sensible version," Diamond said, taking up where Rune left off. "I mean, if I was the wronged sister, I wouldn't blame my brainless sib, I'd go after the motherless wretch that betrayed me! And if I was the younger sister, if I found out about it, I'd help her!" She turned to Rune, then, with a mischievous look on her face that made her pale blue eyes sparkle like the stone she was named for. "You're a musician," she said, gleefully. "Why don't you do it?"

  At first Rune could only think of all the reasons why it wouldn't work-that people were used to the old song and would hate the new version, that the Bardic Guild would hate it because their members had written a great many of the variants, and that it wasn't properly romantic.

  But then she thought of all the reasons why, if she chose her audience properly, picking mostly young people who were in a mood to laugh, it would work. There were not a great many comic songs out in the world, and she could, if she managed this successfully, get quite a following for herself based on the fact that she had written one. In fact, there were a great many really stupid, sentimental ballads like "Two Fair Maids" in existence; if she wrote parodies of them, she could have an entire repertory of comic songs.

  And songs like that were much more suited to the casual atmosphere of street-busking than the maudlin ones were.

  She'd started on the project in late spring; she already had four. She'd moved to a new corner, vacated by one of the buskers-that-weren't, on a very busy crossroads. It wasn't a venue usually suited to busking, but she'd made a bargain with one of the Gypsy-dancers who had reappeared at the fountain in Flower Street with the spring birds. Rune would play the fiddle for her to dance from exactly midday until second bell and split the take, if the Gypsies would hold the corner for her to play from two hours before midday till the dancer showed up. No one wanted to argue with the Gypsies, who were known to have tempers and be very quick with their knives, so the corner was Rune's without dispute.

  Now what she had planned to do, was to alternate lively fiddling with comic songs, to see how well they did, and if she could hold a rowdy crowd with them.

  She had discovered this afternoon that not only could she hold the crowd, she now had a reputation for knowing the funny songs, and there were people coming to her corner at lunch just to hear them.

  And furthermore, they were willing to pay to hear them. Every time she'd tried to go back to the fiddle today, someone had called out for one of her songs. And when she'd demurred, protesting that she'd already done it, or that people must be getting tired of it, at least three coins were tossed into her hat as an incentive. In the end, she had made as much during her stint alone as she and the dancer had together.

  She explained all that to Tonno, who looked pleased at first, then troubled. "You didn't write anything-satiric, did you?" he asked, worriedly. "These were just silly parodies of common songs, am I understanding you correctly?"

  She sighed, exasperated. He was beating around the bush again, rather than asking her directly what he wanted to know, and she was tired of it. "Tonno, just what, exactly, are you asking me? Get to the point, will you? I'm not one of your Scholar customers, that you have to build a tower of logic for before you get a straight answer."

  He blinked in surprise. "I suppose-did you make fun of anyone high-ranking enough to cause you trouble? Or did you sing anything satirical about the Church?"

  "If anybody in one of those songs resembles someone in Nolton, I don't know about it," she told him in complete honesty. "And I must admit that I had considered doing something about a corrupt Priest, but I decided against it, after seeing Carly leaving my room. It would be just like her to take a copy to the Church with her, when she goes to one of her stupid Prayer Meetings, and find a way to get me in trouble."

  Tonno let out a deep sigh of relief. "I'd advise you to keep to that decision," he said, passing his hand over his hair. "At least for now, when you have no one to protect you. Later, perhaps, when you have Guild status and protection, you can write whatever you choose." He smiled, weakly. "Who knows; with the force of a Guild Bard behind a satiric song, you might become an influence for good within the Church."

  "What are you so worried about, really?" she asked, putting her instruments down on the counter. "Did Brother Bryan tell you something? Is the Church planning on backing more of those ordinances you don't like?"

  He shook his head. "No-no, it's that I've been debating doing something for a while, and I've been putting it off because I didn't have the connections. Remember when I started sending you to other people for lessons this spring?"

  She nodded. "Mandar Cray for lute, and Geor Baker for voice. You told me you weren't going to be useful for anything with me except for reading and writing." Mandar and Geor were two of the people she had considered as teachers when she first came to Nolton, as it turned out. Both of them were Guild musicians; both had very wealthy students. Had she approached them on her own, she probably would have gotten brushed off.

  But both were clients and friends of both Tonno and Amber, and both had heard her sing and play. They were two very different men; Mandar tall and ascetic, Geor short and muscular; Mandar hardly every ate, at least at Amber's, and Geor ate everything in sight. Mandar fainted at the thought of bloodshed, let alone the sight of blood, and Geor was a champion swordsman. But they had one other thing in common besides being clients and friends of Amber and Tonno-they both adored music. For the opportunity to teach someone who loved it as much as they did, and had talent, as opposed to the rich, bored children who were enduring their lessons, both of them cut their lesson-rates to next-to-nothing.

  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 we
nt 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.