By the third evening Whistler Lyric had taught the inn at Thornwood Glade how to wait for him.
The first night they had listened because Gran had advertised a bard and because rain had driven half the valley indoors. The second they had returned with cousins, neighbors, hired men, and wives who claimed they had only come to fetch their husbands. By the third, benches were being dragged in from sheds and kitchens before sundown. A cooper sat on an upturned keg near the door. Two orchard girls claimed the stair. Men who made a point of seeming unimpressed began arriving early enough to secure good seats, then behaved as though chance alone had placed them there.
Hattie watched all this with the satisfaction of one whose suspicion had been vindicated. The bard was good. Irritatingly good. Worse, he knew precisely how good he was and wore the knowledge lightly enough that resentment could find no purchase.
He played near the great stone hearth on a platform scarcely high enough to deserve the name. There was no distance in him. That was part of the trick. He did not perform at the room so much as make the room believe it had joined him in performing. A farmer with a cracked voice found himself singing a refrain he had not known an hour before. A widow who had not danced since her husband died allowed herself three measures with a cousin from the north. Even Gran, who mistrusted anything that interfered with the sale of drink, had been seen keeping time with the polishing rag.
Hattie moved among the tables with pewter mugs balanced along one forearm. Every few minutes she felt Whistler find her in the crowd.
Not summon. Not compel.
Find.
She had learned the difference by the second night.
His eyes would meet hers during some ridiculous verse about a magistrate and a goose, and the line would acquire a private indecency no one else in the room could detect. Then she would turn away and discover, to her annoyance, that she was smiling.
Garrik Grimfist sat where he usually sat, near enough to the hearth for his weathered face to catch the fire and far enough from Whistler that no one would mistake him for part of the entertainment. He smoked when the room grew loud. When Whistler sang something quiet, the pipe often went out between his fingers.
Hattie had begun to notice such things.
She had also noticed that Whistler never employed on her the faint pressure he sometimes exerted upon a room. She could not have named the faculty. It was less than compulsion and more than charm, a nearly imperceptible leaning of feeling in the direction he desired. With a difficult drunk it might produce laughter where a quarrel had been forming. With Gran it might turn irritation into indulgence. With Hattie there was nothing.
That interested her more than magic would have done.
On the third night the last song ended after midnight.
The common room emptied by attrition. Men were collected by wives, brothers, and less drunken friends. Gran drove out three lingering carters with a broom whose threats she never needed to carry out. Garrik vanished toward the common sleeping room after giving Whistler one long, unreadable glance.
Whistler remained beside the platform under the pretense of tending his instruments.
Hattie knew the pretense because he tuned the same string three times.
She went to the back room and stayed there long enough to make him wonder.
When she returned she had a towel over one arm.
“You smell like a public house.”
He looked up. “A cruel accusation in a public house.”
“There’s hot water in the bathing room.”
“How providential.”
“It will cease to be providential if you keep talking.”
His smile began, confident and automatic, and then failed him.
Hattie saw the failure. That was the moment she decided.
It was not that he had suddenly become shy. Whistler Lyric was not shy. But desire, when it ceased to be an audience and became a particular woman standing six feet away with a towel over her arm, had somehow deprived him of his profession.
“Well?” she said.
“I was composing an answer.”
“You’ve had three nights.”
“Not to this question.”
“I haven’t asked one.”
“That may be the difficulty.”
She laughed and walked away.
He followed.
The bathing room was small, built against the kitchen chimney so that warmth gathered in the walls. Steam dimmed the leaded panes. Candles stood in saucers on a shelf beside bunches of rosemary hung to dry.
Hattie had arranged the room before the last set.
Whistler understood this only after he had closed the door behind him.
“Ah,” he said.
“Another composition?”
“I seem to have misplaced all my good ones.”
She loosened her hair.
He watched her and made the mistake of trying to recover.
“You know,” he said, “among my people—”
“No.”
“No?”
“Whatever follows ‘among my people’ will make this worse.”
For once in his life he obeyed good advice.
The bath itself was less graceful than either of them might later have claimed. There was a splashed floor, a cup overturned by an elbow, and one moment in which Whistler nearly stepped backward into the tub while attempting to remove a boot without surrendering dignity. Hattie laughed so hard she had to sit down.
He stared at her.
“You are enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
“I had imagined the evening differently.”
“That is because you imagined yourself in charge of it.”
There it was again: the disconcerting precision with which she found the seam in him.
He could have leaned upon the faculty he used in crowded rooms. A nudge. Nothing crude. An easing of laughter into admiration, amusement into tenderness. He felt the possibility as instinctively as another man might feel for a weapon at his belt.
He let it pass.
Hattie saw something change in his face, though she could not have said what.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“A very small nothing.”
“Those are the worst kind.”
Later, in the room with the hearth, she would remember that exchange and understand only that some choice had been made in her favor without her knowing its terms.
• • •
The room with the hearth had become Whistler’s that afternoon.
Gran had announced the promotion as though granting a military command. The third night’s receipts, she said, justified the extravagance. Whistler had accepted with suitable humility and one flicker of amusement Hattie had filed away for later consideration.
Now the hearth was low and the bed narrower than its reputation.
Hattie lay beside him beneath a quilt smelling of lavender and woodsmoke. The first urgency had passed. The room had grown quiet enough that she could hear rain beginning again against the shutters.
Whistler had one arm behind his head. His other hand traced the back of hers without apparent thought.
“Garrik,” she said.
The hand stopped.
“A formidable subject for this hour.”
“You make everything formidable when you don’t want to answer.”
“Not everything.”
“You owe him.”
Whistler turned his head.
“That sounded less like a question.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You’ve known him three days.”
“I’ve known men longer and noticed less.”
He considered her for a moment. “What exactly have you noticed?”
“That he watches the doors before you enter a room. That he knows when you’re lying but rarely embarrasses you by saying so. That he sits where he can see you and then makes a point of looking elsewhere.”
Whistler’s expression lost a measure of amusement.
“And,” Hattie continued, “that when Gran called him your servant yesterday, he did not object. You did.”
“Did I?”
“Immediately.”
He looked toward the hearth.
“You really are inconvenient.”
“Tell me the story.”
“Which story?”
“The one you’ve been avoiding since I said his name.”
Whistler was silent long enough that she thought he might refuse.
Then he sighed.
“Very well. But if I am to disgrace myself, I reserve the right to arrange the lighting.”
“The fire is nearly out.”
“Perfect.”
He shifted onto his side to face her.
“You want Garrik,” he said. “Then you must begin underground.”
“I do not mean beneath a charming hill with mushrooms and helpful roots. I mean the Underdark. The true dark. The sort in which a man begins to suspect that daylight was a story invented to give children solace.
“I had been alone for—well. Long enough that time had become a poor instrument. I was hungry, filthy, half delirious, and carrying an injury I had decided not to examine because I was afraid it might deserve attention.
“You escaped someone,” Hattie said.
Whistler’s eyes moved to hers.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“That is another story.”
“Convenient.”
“It was extremely inconvenient at the time.”
She waited.
He smiled faintly. “No. Not tonight. Tonight you asked for Garrik.”
Hattie accepted the boundary because she could hear its weight.
Whistler continued.
“I should correct one detail before I improve it beyond recognition. I did not walk into Garrik’s patrol. I was unconscious.”
Hattie lifted an eyebrow. “Less heroic.”
“Infinitely. The dwarves found me beside a worked wall in one of their outer passages. Garrik led them. I know this because he has repeated the story whenever I have grown unbearable.”
“So often, then.”
“Constantly.”
He settled deeper into the pillow.
“Apparently I was face down, filthy enough to pass for geology, and breathing so shallowly that one of the others thought I was dead. Garrik disagreed.”
“Why?”
“He says corpses are usually quieter.”
Hattie smiled. “That sounds like him.”
“The others wanted to mark the place and report me. Garrik said, ‘Pick him up.’ That was the whole speech.”
“And they did?”
“He was already the sort of man people obeyed while pretending they had reached the same conclusion themselves.”
“Did he carry you?”
“He would like the record to show that he delegated intelligently.”
“Of course.”
“When I woke, I was in a stone room with a door thick enough to withstand theology.”
“A cell.”
“Guest quarters.”
“A cell.”
“The dwarves called it a holding room.”
“A cell.”
“You and Garrik would get along.”
He smiled at that, but the smile altered quickly.
“I had been awake perhaps an hour when he came in. Red hair. Enormous forehead. Beard not yet ruined by weather. He carried bread, broth, and a basin. I assumed he was a gaoler.”
“Was he?”
“No. That was the first oddity. Garrik had already done what he was required to do when he brought me in. He had no obligation to return.”
Whistler’s voice had become quieter.
“He set the food down and said, ‘Eat slowly.’ I asked whether dwarven hospitality always began by dragging guests unconscious through tunnels. He said, ‘Only princes.’”
Hattie laughed.
“That sounds like him.”
“It was the first useful thing anyone had said to me in weeks.”
“Did you trust him?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But you ate.”
“Trust is philosophical. Hunger is practical.”
“And after?”
Whistler looked again toward the failing hearth.
“After, he came back.”
“Why?”
“At the time I thought because I was entertaining.”
“And now?”
He took longer to answer.
“Now I think he saw something that needed carrying and was constitutionally incapable of leaving it on the ground.”
Hattie studied him.
“You mean you.”
“I was trying to be poetic.”
“You were trying not to say it.”
A small smile. “Yes.”
• • •
The next day Thornwood talked about the boar.
It had been ruining gardens along the eastern farms for a month, shouldering through wattle as though fences were a local superstition and tearing rows of turnips out by the roots. It had killed one dog, opened a sow from shoulder to belly, and chased a woodcutter halfway up an alder. By noon half the village had found some errand that happened to lead toward the common ground beyond the mill.
Whistler and Garrik joined the traffic. Whistler because he was curious. Garrik because he distrusted curiosity when it traveled without supervision.
The boar lay on its side beneath a maple, immense even in death. Its black bristles were clotted with mud and blood. One tusk had been broken near the root. The other curved yellow from the jaw like an old knife. A ring of villagers kept a respectful distance while three of Sheriff’s men worked rope around the hind legs.
A boy of eight crept forward for a closer look.
“Back,” one of the posse said.
The boy retreated at once. No wit in it, no threat. Around Sheriff, instructions had acquired the habit of being obeyed.
Billy Bosman, Sheriff’s black gelding, stood nearby in harness. He was a tall, deep-chested animal with clean, dry legs, a narrow intelligent head, and the stillness of a horse that had crossed bad country with the same man for years. Blood, ropes, shouting, the enormous carcass at his feet—none of it earned more than the turn of one ear.
Beside the boar stood Sheriff.
He wore the same battered dark hat he always wore and a coat cut in a fashion Whistler had never seen anywhere else. Dust had dried pale at the hem. The villagers treated him with the peculiar mixture of affection and obedience reserved for men who had proved useful in emergencies and had not made a religion of the fact.
Sheriff was speaking to an orchard farmer whose north fence had been destroyed.
“Put the new posts deeper,” he said.
“I did last time.”
“Deeper than that.”
The farmer considered this, nodded, and went away.
Whistler watched him. “A philosopher.”
“A man with a shovel,” Garrik said.
Garrik crouched beside the carcass.
There was a single wound high behind the shoulder, astonishingly small in proportion to the animal.
He examined it without touching.
“What made this?”
Sheriff shifted the long metal weapon resting against his thigh.
“That.”
Whistler regarded it.
Wooden stock. Iron barrel. Mechanisms too precise to be ornamental and too inelegant to be dwarven. It possessed no rune, jewel, carved word, or other courtesy by which magic usually announced itself.
“A wand?” he asked.
Sheriff looked at him from beneath the brim.
“Close enough.”
Garrik stood.
“No scorch.”
“No.”
“No rune.”
“No.”
“No string.”
“Not much of one.”
Whistler smiled. “He is flirting with your craftsmanship.”
“I’m deciding whether I dislike it,” Garrik said.
Sheriff’s mustache moved at one corner.
Garrik pointed with two fingers toward the breech. “What drives the shot?”
Sheriff took a brass cartridge from a loop on his belt and held it between thumb and forefinger.
“Powder.”
“Blasting powder?”
“Kin to it.”
Garrik took the cartridge only after Sheriff offered it. He weighed it in his palm, turned it once, then handed it back.
“Can you make these?”
Sheriff slipped it into the belt loop.
“No.”
Garrik looked at the remaining cartridges.
“Then every shot matters.”
“Reckon so.”
That was the first thing Sheriff had said that made Whistler stop smiling.
Behind them the posse had finished rigging the rope. Billy Bosman leaned into the harness. The dead boar rose slowly from the ground, hindquarters first, revolving beneath the maple while the crowd murmured and drew back.
The branch bowed under the weight.
Whistler looked from the boar to Billy. “That thing is nearly the size of your horse.”
Sheriff glanced at Billy.
“Horse would object to the comparison.”
Billy flicked an ear.
“Sensibly,” Whistler said.
Sheriff watched the boar turn once in the air, then looked north.
The change in him was slight. The villagers nearest him did not appear to notice it. Garrik did.
“What?” the dwarf asked.
Sheriff rubbed one thumb along the edge of his belt.
“Road’s been wrong lately.”
Whistler followed his gaze toward the dark shoulder of the hills.
“Roads have moral character here?”
Sheriff did not smile.
“Everything does if you live with it long enough.”
That answer Whistler liked less than the joke invited.
Sheriff continued. “Wild Folk moving where they don’t usually move. More than there ought to be. Deer coming down early. Cats leaving country they’ve held for years. Two shepherds west of here found their flock bunched against a stone wall before dawn and nothing behind them they could see.”
Garrik’s eyes narrowed.
“Tracks?”
“Some.”
“What kind?”
“Too many kinds.”
The dwarf waited.
Sheriff looked at him. “That’s all I got.”
The simplicity of it made the warning harder to dismiss.
A posseman approached with the spent brass casing Sheriff had fired into the boar. He held it out.
Sheriff took it and slipped it into a separate pocket rather than throwing it away.
Whistler noticed.
So did Garrik.
Neither asked.
Sheriff looked between them. “You two heading west when the music’s done?”
“Eventually,” Whistler said.
“Watch the timber.”
“We generally do.”
“Watch it harder.”
Whistler opened his mouth.
Sheriff continued before he could speak. “Don’t camp in a hollow. Don’t sleep beside running water if the animals have gone quiet. And if something feels wrong, don’t spend time making it interesting.”
Whistler inclined his head. “You wound me.”
“Not yet.”
Garrik barked a laugh so sudden that the nearest posseman turned.
Sheriff looked at the dwarf. “He always like this?”
“Worse when fed.”
“I heard that,” Whistler said.
“Aye.”
Sheriff settled the rifle into the crook of his arm.
“Then I’ve done what I can.”
On the walk back Whistler said, “I like him.”
“A poor sign.”
“You laughed.”
“At you.”
“You see? Already he improves the country.”
• • •
Night Four was quieter only by comparison.
The room still filled, but the rain had ended and some of the farmers stayed home to mend what the weather had delayed. Whistler sang fewer comic songs. Hattie suspected the Sheriff’s warning had lodged somewhere beneath his practiced ease.
Afterward she found him in the hearth room with two cups and Garrik’s story waiting where they had left it.
“You said he came back,” she said.
“He did.”
“How many times?”
“Enough that eventually I stopped counting the visits and began counting the intervals.”
“That is almost sweet.”
“I was starving and imprisoned.”
“You can be sweet under poor conditions.”
“A dangerous principle.”
He gave her one cup and settled beside her.
“The dwarves were trying to decide what to do with me. Stranger in the deep. Elf blood. No clan. No convincing explanation for how I had arrived. Garrik, meanwhile, had decided that I was not to die of boredom before the tribunal settled the matter.”
“He brought me books first. Terrible things. Mining accounts. Genealogies. A treatise on ventilation shafts. I told him if he meant to execute me he could simply say so.”
“And he?”
“Brought an edda the next night.”
Whistler’s voice warmed at the memory.
“I could not read half of it. Old dwarvish. Compound words that could kill livestock. Garrik sat on the floor outside the bars and translated while pretending not to enjoy himself.”
“Why outside?”
“Because he was not supposed to be inside.”
“And why was he not supposed to be there at all?”
Whistler looked at her.
“You are very persistent.”
“I have mugs to carry all day. Conversation is my revenge.”
He laughed.
“His family had standing. Not royal, but near enough to power to make rules feel negotiable. Garrik was the troublesome son. Too much fist, too little diplomacy. His eldest brother had inherited the family’s dignity. His other brother had inherited the family’s talent for locating wounds.”
“And Garrik?”
“Inherited Garrik.”
Hattie smiled. “That sounds expensive.”
“Very.”
Whistler took a drink.
“The edda had music attached to it. Or rather, music implied by meter and notation. I asked for an instrument. Three days later Garrik appeared with a lyre.”
“He bought it?”
“Stole it, probably.”
“Did he?”
“No. But I accused him because gratitude made me uncomfortable.”
“You do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn kindness into comedy until it cannot reach you.”
He became very still.
Hattie regretted nothing.
At last Whistler said, “Yes. I did that too.”
Then he resumed.
“The lyre changed matters. Not magically. Do not give me that look. Music gave the dwarves a category for me other than trespasser. Garrik persuaded one of the wardens to let me play in the lower hall. Then the lower hall became the guild hall. The guild hall became a supper. Eventually some fool mentioned me where the King could hear.”
“You were the fool.”
“There is no evidence.”
“Whistler.”
“There is little evidence.”
“And you played for the King?”
“Eventually.”
For the first time that night the performance vanished from his voice. What replaced it was simpler.
“I played the edda back to them. Their own old songs, but altered just enough to make them hear the grief again. They had carried those verses so long they had become furniture. Sometimes an outsider can see the bloodstain on a chair everyone else calls an heirloom.”
Hattie said, “What did they do?”
Whistler’s mouth curved, but the expression held little mischief.
“Nothing. At first.”
“Nothing?”
“Dwarves consider applause suitable for jugglers and successful masonry.”
She waited.
“The last note went away and the whole hall stayed still. Hundreds of them. You could hear the braziers. One old thane in the lower benches put both fists into his beard and pulled until two silver clasps came free. Another rent one of his braids nearly loose and sat there holding it in his hand as though surprised to find it belonged to him.”
“They tore their own beards?”
“You must understand, Hattie, that this was extravagant.”
“I had gathered.”
“Then the King stood.”
Something in Whistler’s voice made her stop smiling.
“Only stood?”
“Dwarves do not stand for singers.”
He looked down into his cup.
“He came down from the dais and called me keldvar. Old court-word. I did not know it then.”
“And now?”
“Hall-Friend, more or less. Not dwarf. Not guest either. Someone permitted beneath the roof without having to explain why he belongs there.”
Hattie considered him.
“You liked that.”
Whistler was quiet for a moment.
“More than was prudent.”
Hattie said nothing.
“They listened.”
“Garrik?”
Whistler looked down at his cup.
“He listened most carefully.”
“To the song?”
A pause.
“At the time,” Whistler said, “I thought so.”
• • •
By the fifth night the inn had ceased to belong to Gran.
It remained her ale, her tables, her firewood, her roof and accounts, but for the span of Whistler’s last performance the room submitted to another government.
People came from beyond Thornwood. Farmers stood shoulder to shoulder with woodsmen and tradesmen. Someone had opened both shutters despite the cold so those outside could hear. Candle smoke hung beneath the beams. The stone hearth gave off enough heat to redden faces three tables away.
Whistler sat on the low platform with the lute across his knee and made a hundred people feel privately addressed.
Hattie worked the room.
Near the middle of his last set Whistler let the tune narrow to a lilting figure Hattie had not heard on any of the preceding nights. By the second line she suspected it had not existed an hour before.
“Your apron guards what ale cannot conceal,
Your smile has made a drunkard of the wise;
I’d wager all the songs I know by feel
To lose one night beneath those laughing eyes.”
The room caught the bawdiness before it caught the address and answered with whistles, laughter, and several raised mugs. Hattie finished setting down a tray, looked directly at him, and lifted one eyebrow. Whistler bowed over the lute as though the verse had been composed for no one in particular.
Their glances no longer contained uncertainty. That had been spent. What passed between them now was recognition made more intimate by concealment. She could tell by the slight change in his mouth when a lyric was meant for her. He could tell by the way she set down a mug whether she had approved the alteration.
Garrik sat to one side of the hearth with his pipe and watched the fire.
Once only, during a song Whistler had learned in the dwarven hold, Garrik looked up.
Hattie saw him.
He saw that she had seen.
Neither acknowledged it.
The last patrons were gone after midnight.
Hattie found Whistler upstairs before he could pretend to linger below.
“You’re improving,” she said.
“At music?”
“At being where you intend to be.”
“I have had an excellent teacher.”
“Flattery.”
“Gratitude.”
“Worse.”
She kissed him before he could answer.
Later they lay facing one another beneath the quilts, the fire reduced to a low red seam.
Hattie said, “You stopped at the King.”
“I had hoped you’d forgotten.”
“You know better.”
Whistler closed his eyes briefly.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
When he began again there was less ornament in his voice.
“The King liked me. That was dangerous in ways I did not understand.”
“Because of Garrik’s family?”
“Because courts convert affection into arithmetic. If the King smiled at me, someone else lost a fraction of something. Attention. Position. Certainty. Garrik’s elder brother understood this perfectly. His other brother understood only that I had become difficult to despise publicly.”
“The one who located wounds.”
“Yes.”
Whistler stared at the canopy above them.
“He began with jokes. Garrik was loyal to strays. Garrik preferred pretty singers to women. Garrik had discovered at last a master worthy of obedience. Nothing direct enough to challenge without confirming the insult.”
Hattie’s expression changed.
“Did you understand what he was saying?”
“Not at first.”
“Whistler.”
“Not fully.”
“That is different.”
He looked at her.
“Yes.”
“And Garrik?”
“Understood every syllable.”
The room seemed quieter after that.
Whistler continued.
“I made jokes back. Clever ones, naturally. I thought I was defending him because the brother usually stopped when I entered. What I was really doing was making Garrik endure the thing in public with better entertainment.”
Hattie said nothing.
“One night in the library the brother found him alone. I came in halfway through. There had been drink. There had been words before I arrived. Garrik told me later there had been many words over many years.”
“What happened?”
“The brother said something about me.”
“What?”
Whistler’s mouth tightened.
“It does not improve in repetition.”
“Then don’t.”
He nodded.
“Garrik struck him. The brother drew steel. Garrik drew too. It should have ended with furniture broken and both of them ashamed.”
His voice flattened.
“It did not.”
Hattie waited.
“The brother slipped. Garrik turned. The blade went in under the ribs.”
The fire cracked softly.
“He died quickly,” Whistler said. “People say that as though speed absolves the event of duration.”
“Were you there?”
“For all of it that mattered.”
“And Garrik?”
“Held him.”
Whistler swallowed.
“He held the man who had tormented him and begged him not to die.”
Hattie’s hand found his.
He did not make a joke of it.
“There was a tribunal. The family wanted blood. The King did not. Garrik had witnesses to the long provocation, but the dead remain persuasive in court. I spoke for him.”
“You performed.”
The word was gentle, not accusing.
Whistler looked at her with something like gratitude.
“Yes. I performed. I told the truth as beautifully as I could.”
“Did it help?”
“Enough.”
“What was the sentence?”
“Service. Minimum five years under bond to the injured party whose presence had helped create the circumstances.”
Hattie frowned. “You.”
“Me.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Dwarven justice sometimes mistakes symmetry for wisdom.”
“And Garrik accepted?”
“Before I did.”
“You objected.”
“Violently.”
“I believe that.”
“He told me to shut up.”
“I believe that more.”
Whistler almost smiled.
“We left three weeks later.”
Hattie was quiet for a while.
“Five years.”
“Minimum.”
“How long has it been?”
Whistler met her eyes.
“Seven years.”
“Then why is he still with you?”
“Habit.”
“No.”
“Debt.”
“No.”
“A profound admiration for my music.”
“Whistler.”
He sighed.
“I don’t know.”
Hattie watched him long enough to make the answer uncomfortable.
“You do,” she said.
“I know several possibilities.”
“And there is one you will not say.”
Whistler turned his face toward the dying fire.
“There is one I will not presume.”
That answer was better. It was also sadder.
Hattie lay back.
“You love him.”
“Of course.”
“Not the question I asked.”
He looked at her again.
She let him escape this time.
Outside, a night wind moved through the eaves.
After a while Hattie said, “You tell stories for a living.”
“So I am accused.”
“That one cost you.”
Whistler’s expression softened.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Cruel woman.”
“You trust applause too much. It’s healthy for you to pay admission occasionally.”
He laughed then, quietly, and drew her closer.
• • •
The dream came near morning.
Hattie stood beneath an oak in a clearing washed with moonlight. The leaves were wet though no rain fell. Mist lay low over the grass.
A nightingale sat on a branch above her.
It sang with a joy so complete that joy became frightening.
The sound entered the clearing without echo. Hattie had the strange certainty that the bird was not singing to her and yet had waited for her to arrive.
Beyond the oak she saw a road disappearing between dark trees. Far down that road lanterns burned among painted wagons, though she had never seen such wagons and did not know how she knew them for what they were.
The nightingale stopped.
It turned one bright eye toward her.
When it sang again, the notes resolved themselves into words. Not a human voice exactly, but language nevertheless, impossible and perfectly understood.
“When three sons meet by the lanterned tree,
the wandering song shall return to thee.”
The words seemed to remain in the air after the bird closed its beak.
Then the road, the lanterns, and the oak went dark at once.
She woke with tears on her face.
The room was gray with first light.
Whistler was awake beside her.
“Bad dream?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’re crying.”
Hattie touched her cheek.
“It was beautiful. The dream.”
“Those are often worse.”
She told him.
At first he listened with the indulgent attention one gives dreams. At the mention of painted wagons his expression sharpened. When she repeated the rhyme, he sat upright.
“Again.”
Hattie repeated it.
“When three sons meet by the lanterned tree, the wandering song shall return to thee.”
Whistler stared at her.
“Did I ever tell you I have two brothers?”
“No.”
“Did Garrik?”
“Not to me.”
“Have you ever seen the Enchanters’ wagons?”
“I don’t know what an Enchanter’s wagon is.”
That answer unsettled him more than anything else she had said.
“Who are you?”
She blinked.
“A woman who carries ale in a country inn.”
“That answer was more satisfactory yesterday.”
“It remains true.”
“Truth and sufficiency are not married.”
“Neither are we.”
That checked him.
Hattie smiled, though not unkindly.
“There. You see? The world survives.”
She dressed.
The small domestic acts acquired an intimacy greater than undressing had possessed: stockings drawn on, hair gathered, bodice fastened, a pin searched for beneath the bed and found under Whistler’s discarded shirt.
He watched her.
Whatever had passed between them had been real enough. That did not mean it would survive morning in the forms for which girls were taught to hope.
Hattie had no wish to cheapen it by demanding they pretend otherwise.
At the door she turned.
“You’ll leave today.”
“Yes.”
“Home?”
Whistler hesitated.
“Toward it.”
“That sounds like you.”
“You make it sound disreputable.”
“Only unfinished.”
She kissed him once and left.
Garrik entered several minutes later without knocking.
He carried kindling.
Whistler, still in bed, watched him kneel before the dead hearth with exaggerated concentration.
“Good morning.”
“Is it?”
“Apparently.”
Garrik arranged two sticks as though the fate of kingdoms depended upon their angle.
Whistler said, “She asked why you stayed.”
The dwarf’s hands stopped for less than a second.
“And what did you tell her?”
“Habit.”
“Sensible.”
“She didn’t believe me.”
“Sensible woman.”
Whistler smiled despite himself.
Garrik struck flint.
The spark took.
Neither said anything more.
• • •
By late morning Thornwood had returned to itself.
The platform near the hearth was only planks again. The crowd existed as sticky tables, empty casks, and coins Gran counted twice with the solemnity of a priestess inspecting relics.
Whistler packed his lute. Garrik secured their belongings to the mule.
Hattie worked.
That was important.
She did not stand waiting in the yard as though life had narrowed to departure. There were cups to wash and bread to cut and a trader complaining that his room had smelled of onions. She answered him that the onions had complained as well.
Only when Whistler was ready did she go outside.
He stood in the road with Garrik a little way behind him.
For several seconds neither found anything worth saying.
“I shall remember you,” Whistler said at last.
“You’d best.”
“I remember selectively.”
“Then select wisely.”
He lifted a hand toward her cheek and stopped before touching it.
Hattie closed the remaining inch herself.
There was no kiss. That pleased her. A kiss would have turned the farewell into something they had already done better.
“Go,” she said.
“Commanding to the last.”
“You like me that way.”
“I like you in several ways.”
“Go.”
He laughed and obeyed.
The half-elf and the dwarf set off together, the mule between them. Within fifty yards they had resumed some argument Hattie could not hear. Garrik gestured once in irritation. Whistler spread his hands in innocence so extravagant it could only signify guilt.
Hattie watched until the road bent among the trees.
Something had entered her life and withdrawn from it without asking permission of either.
She stood a little longer.
Then, from somewhere in the thornwood beyond the inn, a nightingale began to sing.
Hattie looked up.
The branches nearest her were empty. Yet for an instant she heard again the final line from the dream: the wandering song shall return to thee.
To be continued...
Previous episode: Tracks in the Hills, Smoke in the Valley
