Lark and Wren Read online

  "Gifts for doing the job they're supposed to do in the first place?" she replied, aghast.

  "That's the Guild." He shrugged again. "I prefer our way. Honest money, honestly earned."

  Still-A place in a Sire's household, even for just the winter? How is that possible? "I thought only Guild musicians could take positions with a House," she offered.

  He laughed. "Well, that's the way it's supposed to work, but once you're away from the big cities, the fact is that the Sires don't give a fat damn about Guild membership or not. They just want to know if you can sing and play, and if you know some different songs from the last musician they had. And who's going to enforce it? The King? Their Duke? Not likely. The Bardic Guild? With what? There's nothing they can use to enforce the law; out here a Sire is frequently his own law."

  "What about the other Guilds?" she asked. "Aren't they supposed to help enforce the law by refusing to deal with a Sire who breaks it?"

  "That's true, but once again, you're out where the Sire is his own law, and the Guildmasters and Craftsmasters are few. If a Craftsman enforces the law by refusing to deal with the Sire, he's cutting his own throat, by refusing to deal with the one person with a significant amount of money in the area. The Sire can always find someone else willing to deal, but will the Craftsman find another market?" He sighed. "The truth is that the Guildmasters of other Crafts might be able to do something-but half the time they don't give a damn about the Bardic Guild. The fact is, the Bardic Guild isn't half as important out of the cities as they think they are. Their real line of enforcement is their connection with the Church, through the Sacred Musicians and Bards, and the Church is pragmatic about what happens outside the cities."

  "Why is it that the Bardic Guild isn't important to the other Guilds?" she asked, hitching her pack a little higher on her back. There was an itchy spot right between her shoulderblades that she ached to be able to scratch. . . .

  If she could keep him talking a while, she might get her mind off of the itch.

  "Because most of the Crafts don't think of us as being Crafters," he said wryly. "Music isn't something you can eat, or wear, or hold in your hand, and they never think of the ability to play and compose as being nearly as difficult as their own disciplines." He sighed. "And it isn't something that people need, the way they need Smiths or Coopers or Potters. We aren't even rated as highly as a Limner or a Scribe-"

  "Until it's the middle of winter, and people are growling at each other because the snow's kept them pent up for a week," she put in. "And even then they don't think of us as the ones who cheered everyone up. Never mind, Master Wren. I'm used to it. In the tavern back home they valued me more as a barmaid and a floor-scrubber than a musician, and they never once noticed how I kept people at their beer long past the time when they'd ordinarily have gone home. They never noticed how many more people started coming in of a night, even from as far away as Beeford. All they remembered was that I lost the one and only fiddling contest I ever had a chance to enter."

  Silence. Then-"I would imagine they're noticing it now," he said, when the silence became too oppressive. "Yes, I expect they are. And they're probably wondering what it is they've done that's driving their custom away."

  Were they? She wondered. Maybe they were. The one thing that Jeoff had always paid attention to was the state of the cashbox. Not even Stara would be able to get around him if there was less in it than there used to be.

  But then again-habit died hard, and the villagers of Westhaven were in the habit of staying for more than a couple ales now; the villagers of Beeford were in the habit of coming over to the Bear for a drop in the long summer evenings. Maybe they weren't missing her at all. Surely they thought she was crazed to run off the way that she had. And the old women would be muttering about "bad blood," no doubt, and telling their daughters to pay close attention to the Priest and mind they kept to the stony path of Virtue. Not like that Rune; bastard child and troublemaker from the start. Likely off making more trouble for honest folk elsewhere. Up to no good, and she'd never make an honest woman of herself. Dreams of glory, thought she was better than all of them-and she'd die like a dog in a ditch, or starve, or sell herself like her whore of a mother.

  No doubt. . . .

  Talaysen kept an ear out for the sound of a lumber-wagon behind them. The road they followed was cleared of weeds, if still little more than a path through the forest-but this was forested country; the towns were small, and the cleared fields few. Many of the villages hereabouts made their livings off the forest itself. Every other village boasted a sawmill, or a Cooper making barrels, or a craftsman hard at work on some object made of wood. The Carpenter's Guild had many members here, and there were plenty of craftsmen unallied with the Guild who traded in furniture and carvings.

  Allendale was a half-day away, and Talaysen was both relieved and uneasy that their goal was so nearly in sight. The past two weeks had been something of a revelation for him. He'd been forced to look at himself closely, and he hardly recognized what he saw.

  He glanced sideways at his apprentice, who had her hat off and was fanning herself with it. She didn't seem to notice his covert interest, which was just as well. In the first few weeks of the Midsummer Faire, when Rune's arm was still healing, he'd been sorry for her, protective of her, and had no trouble in thinking of her strictly as a student. He'd felt, in fact, rather paternal. She had been badly hurt, and badly frightened; she was terribly vulnerable, and between what she'd told him straight off, and what she'd babbled when she had a little too much belladonna, he had a shrewd idea of all the hurtful things that had been said or done to her as a child. Because of her helplessness, he'd had no difficulty in thinking of her as a child. And his heart had gone out to her; she was so like him as a child, differences in their backgrounds aside. One unwanted, superfluous child is very like another, when it all comes down to it. He had sought solace in music; so had she. It had been easy to see himself in her, and try to soothe her hurts as his father would never soothe his.

  But once she stopped taking the medicines that fogged her thoughts; and even more, once her arm was out of the sling and she began playing again, all that changed. Drastically. Overnight, the child grew up.

  He strode through the ankle-high weeds at the walking pace that was second-nature to him now, paying scant attention to the world about him except to listen for odd silences that might signal something or someone hidden beside the road ahead-and the steady clop-clopping of the hooves of draft-horses pulling timber-wagons; this was the right stretch of road for them, which was why the weeds were kept down along here.

  Bandits wouldn't bother with a timber-wagon, but he and Rune would make a tempting target. Highwaymen knew the Faire schedule as well as he did, and would be setting up about now to try to take unwary travelers with their pouches of coin on the way to the Faire. They wouldn't be averse to plucking a couple of singing birds like himself and his apprentice if the opportunity presented itself.

  And if Talaysen didn't anticipate them. He'd been accused of working magic, he was so adept at anticipating ambushes. Funny, really. Too bad he wasn't truly a mage; he could transform his wayward heart back to the way it had been. . . .

  It was as hot today as it had been for the past two weeks, and the dog-days of summer showed no sign of breaking. Now was haying season for the farmers, which meant that every hot, sunny day was a boon to them. Same for the lumberjacks, harvesting and replanting trees in the forest. He was glad for them, for a good season meant more coin for them-and certainly it was easier traveling in weather like this-but a short storm to cool the air would have been welcome at this point.

  A short storm . . . Summer thunderstorms were something he particularly enjoyed, even when he was caught out in the open by them. The way the air was fresh, brisk, and sharp with life afterwards-the way everything seemed clearer and brighter when the storm had passed. He wished there was a similar way to clear the miasma in his head about his apprentice.

&nbs
p; He'd hoped that being on the road with her would put things back on the student-teacher basis; she didn't have real experience of life on the road, and for all that she was from the country, she'd never spent a night camped under the open sky before she ran away from home. This new way of life should have had her reverting to a kind of dependence that would have reawakened his protective self and pushed the other under for good and all.

  But it didn't. She acted as if it had never occurred to her that she should be feeling helpless and out of her depth out here. Instead of submissively following his lead, she held her own with him, insisting on doing her share of everything, however difficult or dirty. When she didn't know how to do something, she didn't make a fuss about it, she simply asked him-then followed his directions, slowly but with confidence. She took to camping as if she was born to it, as if she had Gypsy blood somewhere in her. She never complained any more about the discomforts of the road than he did, and she was better at bartering with the farm-wives to augment their provisions than he was.

  Then there was music, God help them both. She was a full partner there, though oddly that was the only place her confidence faltered. She was even challenging him in some areas, musically speaking; she wanted to know why some things worked and some didn't, and he was often unable to come up with an explanation. And her fiddling was improving day by day; both because she was getting regular practice and because she'd had a chance to hear some of the best fiddlers in the country at the Faire. Soon she'd be second to none in that area; he was as certain of that as he was of his own ability.

  Not that he minded, not in the least! He enjoyed the novelty of having a full partner to the hilt. He liked the challenge of a student of her ability even more. No, that wasn't the problem at all.

  This was all very exciting, but he couldn't help but notice that his feelings towards her were changing, more so every day. It was no longer that he was simply attracted to her-nor that he found her stimulating in other areas than the intellectual.

  It was far worse than that. He'd noticed back at the last Faire that when they'd sung a love duet, he was putting more feeling into the words than he ever had before. It wasn't acting; it was real. And therein lay the problem.

  When they camped after dark, he was pleased to settle the camp with her doing her half of the chores out there in the darkness, even if she didn't do things quite the way he would have. When he woke up in the middle of the night, he found himself looking over at the dark lump rolled in blankets across the fire, and smiled. When he traded sleepy quips over the morning fire, he found himself not only enjoying her company-he found himself unable to imagine life without her.

  And that, frankly, frightened him. Frightened him more than anything he'd ever encountered, from bandits to Guild Bards.

  He watched her matching him stride-for-stride out of the corner of his eye, and wanted to reach out to take her hand in his. They suited each other, there was no doubt of it; they had from the first moment they'd met. Even Ardis noticed it, and had said as much; she'd told him they were two of a kind, then had given him an odd sort of smile. She'd told him over and over, that his affair with Lyssandra wouldn't work, that they were too different, and she'd been right. By the time her father had broken off the engagement because he'd fled the Guild, they were both relieved that it was over. That little smile said without words that Ardis reckoned that this would be different.

  Even the way they conversed was similar. Neither of them felt any great need to fill a silence with unnecessary talk, but when they did talk, it was always enjoyable, stimulating. He could, with no effort at all, see himself sharing the rest of his life with this young woman.

  That frightened him even more.

  How could he even think something like that? The very idea was appalling! She was younger than he was; much younger. He was not exaggerating when he had told Ardis that he was twice her age. He was, and a bit more; on the shady side of thirty-five, to her seventeen or eighteen. How many songs were there about young women cuckolding older lovers? Enough to make him look like a fool if he took up with her. Enough to make her look like a woman after only his fame and fortune if she took up with him. There was nothing romantic about an old man pairing with a young woman, and much that was the stuff of ribald comedy.

  Furthermore, she was his apprentice. That alone should place her out of bounds. He was appalled at himself for even considering it in his all-too-vivid dreams.

  He'd always had the greatest contempt for those teachers who took advantage of a youngster's eagerness to please, of their inexperience, to use them. There were plenty of ways to take advantage of an apprentice, from extracting gifts of money from a wealthy parent, to employing them as unpaid servants. But the worst was to take a child, sexually inexperienced but ripe and ready to learn, and twist that readiness and enthusiasm, that willingness to accommodate the Master in every way, and pervert it into the crude slaking of the Master's own desires with no regard for how the child felt, or what such a betrayal would do to it.

  And he had seen that, more than once, even in the all-male Guild. If the Church thundered against the ways of a man and a maid, this was the sin the Priests did not even whisper aloud-but that didn't mean it didn't occur. Especially in the hothouse forcing-ground of the Guild. That was one of the many reasons why he'd left in a rage, so long ago. Not that men sought comfort in other men-while he did not share that attraction, he could at least understand it. The Church called a great many things "sins" that were nothing of the sort; this was just another example. No, what drove him into a red rage was that there were Masters who abused their charges in body and spirit, and were never, ever punished for it. The last straw was when two poor young boys had to be sent away to one of the Church healers in a state of hysterical half-madness after one of the most notorious lechers in the Guild seduced them both, then insisted both of them share his bed at the same time. The exact details of what he had asked them to do had been mercifully withheld-but the boys had been pitiful, and he would not blame either of them if they had chosen to seek the cloisters and live out their lives as hermits. In the space of six months, that evil man had changed two carefree, happy children into frightened, whimpering rabbits. He'd broken their music, and it was even odds that it could be mended.

  Talaysen still boiled with rage. It was wrong to take advantage of the trust that a student put in a teacher he respected-it was worse when that violation of trust included a violation of their young bodies. He'd gone to the Master of the Guild when he'd learned of the incident, demanding that the offending teacher be thrown out of the Guild in disgrace. Insisting that he be turned over to the Justiciars. Quite ready to take a horsewhip to him and flay the skin from his body.

  He'd been shaking, physically shaking, from the need to rein in his temper. And the Master of the Guild had simply looked down his nose at him and suggested he was overreacting to a minor incident. "After all," Master Jordain had said scornfully, "they were only unproven boys. Master Larant is a full Bard. His ability is a proven fact. The Guild can do without them; it cannot do without him. Besides, if they couldn't handle themselves in a minor situation like that, they probably would not have passed their Journeyman period; they were just too unstable. It's just as well Master Larant weeded them out early. Now his valuable time won't be wasted in teaching boys who would never reach full status."

  He had restrained himself from climbing over the Master's desk and throttling him with his bare hands by the thinnest of margins. He still wasn't certain how he'd done it. He had stalked out of the office, headed straight to his own quarters, packed his things and left that afternoon, seeking shelter with some Gypsies he'd met as a young man and had kept contact with, renouncing the Guild and all that it meant, changing his name, and his entire way of life.

  But there it was; he'd seen how pressure of that nature could ruin a young life. How could he put Rune in the untenable position those poor boys had been in? Especially if he'd been misreading her, and what he'd bee
n thinking was flirtation was simple country friendliness.

  And there was one other thing; the stigma associated with "female musicians." Rune didn't deserve that, and if they remained obviously student and teacher, all would be well. Or at least, as "well" as it could be if she wore skirts. But he wouldn't ever want her to bear that stigma, which she would, if she were ever associated with him as his lover. Assuming she was willing . . . which might be a major assumption on his part.

  Oh, if he wasn't misreading her, if she was interested in him as a lover, he could wed her. He'd be only too happy to wed her. . . .

  Dear gods, why would she ever want to actually wed him? Him, twice her age? She'd be nursing a frail old man while she was still in the prime of her life, bound to him, and cursing herself and him both.

  Furthermore, there would always be the assumption by those who knew nothing about music that she'd become his apprentice only because she was his lover; that she was gaining her fame by borrowing the shine of his.

  No, he told himself, every time his eyes strayed to her, and his thoughts wandered where they shouldn't. No, and no, and no. It's impossible. I won't have it. It's wrong.

  But that didn't keep his eyes from straying.

  Or-his heart.

  Rain fell unceasingly down from a flat gray sky, plopping on her rain-cape, her hat, and into the puddles along the road. Rune wondered what on Earth was wrong with Talaysen. Besides the weather, of course. He'd been out of sorts about something from the moment they'd left the Allendale Faire. Not that he showed it-much. He didn't snap, rail about anything, or break into arguments over little nothings. No, he brooded. He answered questions civily enough, but neither his heart nor his thoughts were involved in the answer.