As the flute warmed beneath her tuning, the shrieking true notes lowered, and the sharp harmonics softened. It was as if the flute were a living creature, settling with her breath and touch. She played a set of scales and then a short sea shanty before settling on a quartet of notes that had haunted her since she first learned of her husband’s death a few years earlier and stood on the shore, contemplating the vast and merciless expanse of the Gray at night.
A sound had rolled off the water then, rising above the surf’s low thunder, a tuneless song built on the trough of loss and the crest of hope. It arrowed straight through her soul. She had wept then, for Talmai who had drowned in the Gray’s depths, the doomed ship and the men who died alongside him, his eternal companions. Somewhere within the solemn waves, something wept with her.
No other flute she’d ever played could reproduce those four notes exactly. Only this one, strengthening Brida’s belief in its mysterious power. She played the notes several times in a row, noting from the corner of her eye the way the other players slowed and finally halted their own tuning to listen. Magic, she thought. There was magic here. She stopped when Janen raised a hand to signal enough.
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, another more strident voice interrupted him. “Where did you learn to play that?”
Brida pivoted to face the newcomer. A man, clothed in the finery of monarchs, his hands bedecked in gold rings, strode into the room. Brida’s eyes widened as she backed away to keep him from treading on her feet. He reached for her flute. Only her quick reflexes stopped him from snatching it out of her hands. Janen and the harpist Arpath closed ranks in front of her, creating a living wall to block the stranger.
“Where did you get that flute?” He almost snarled the words, face bloodless with shock, mouth thinned with rage. “Where did you learn those notes?”
Behind Janen’s and Arpath’s shoulders, Brida gaped, clutching her flute even tighter. Stunned by the unwarranted attack, she struggled to give a coherent reply.
Another, deeper voice joined the fray. “Ospodine, I didn’t invite you here to assault the musicians.” Andras Frantisek, new lord and tenant of Castle Banat, stood behind the man he called Ospodine, his own sun-kissed features set in grim lines. “What are you doing here?” His tone warned he wouldn’t suffer any blather.
Ospodine half turned to answer, still glaring at Brida. “I want to know where she learned to play the song and where she got the flute.” His words were accusatory, and in them, she heard the unspoken charge of “thief.”
Her indignation overrode her initial surprise. She pushed her way past Janen and Arpath, careful to keep the flute out of reach. Ignoring her accuser, she sought out his lordship’s gaze. “My lord, the flute was given to me by my father on my wedding day nearly a decade ago. He fashioned it himself from a bone he found on the beach.” Uncaring that she, a village woman of no standing and little import, challenged one of his lordship’s guests, she glared at the scowling Ospodine and said “The flute is mine and has always been mine.” It was no business of his when and where she’d heard the four-note tune.
Lord Frantisek watched her for a moment, silent, before he raised an eyebrow at Ospodine. “I believe you have your answer, friend. No reason to linger now. Allow me to escort you back to the other guests.” Again the implied warning that if Ospodine didn’t leave of his own accord, things wouldn’t go well for him.
The other man’s features, made memorable by his strangely pale eyes, stiffened into lines of contempt before smoothing out to an expressionless mask. He nodded to Brida and bowed to Lord Frantisek. “My apologies for the disturbance, my lord. The flute and its music seemed familiar and startled me. I beg your forgiveness.” At Frantisek’s head tilt of acknowledgement, Ospodine melted back into the swirling crowd of guests, a dark figure that made Brida think of smoke and water entwined.
Janen bowed, and Brida and the others followed suit. “Thank you for the honor of your invitation, my lord,” he said.
His lordship’s mouth quirked at the corners, his gaze taking in the instruments in their hands, settling for just a moment longer on Brida’s flute before moving on. “The gratitude is mine, especially with the promise of foul weather later. You’re welcome to stay overnight if the road is too dangerous to travel home. You’ll have to sleep in the kitchens or possibly the stables as we’re packed to the rafters with guests, but it’ll be dry and safe from lightning.”
Brida hoped the weather would hold. This was her first time at Castle Banat, and while she was awed by the structure and its rich trappings, she didn’t fancy spending a night under the same roof as the hostile Ospodine.
After a few more pleasantries exchanged between them, his lordship left them to tend to his hosting duties. The steward returned to lead them upstairs to the balcony where stools had been placed in preparation for their arrival. Brida claimed one placed where she could look over the balcony without standing up. The view from above turned the great hall into a sea of flickering lamplight, glittering jewels, and colorful skirts as guests mingled, conversed, and laughed.
Janen moved his seat to face the other four. “Let’s start with something slow and soft. Background as they talk and eat. We’ll play something livelier if and when they choose to dance.”
He struck up the first chord to the first song, and Brida and her companions joined in. They played through the evening, until the candles melted low, the oil lamps burned dry, and the guests emptied the casks of wine manned by a pair of servants who refilled cups as fast as people drained them.
During the brief respites between sets, Brida dabbed at her perspiring brow and wet her lips from the cup of water a servant had brought her while she played. She was tired and on edge, the weight of one man’s relentless scrutiny heavy on her skin as she played.
What about those notes had elicited such aggression from a complete stranger? Ospodine had glared at her as if he’d just discovered the thief who’d stolen all the silver from his house. Brida bristled inwardly, even as her fingers danced down the length of the flute and her breath teased music from the hollow bone.
By the time the steward called a halt to their playing, their quintet was exhausted. Janen stood to follow the steward down the stairs. “Pack up,” he instructed the group. “I’ll be back with our pay.”
Rejuvenated by the prospect of returning home and falling into her own bed, Brida put away her flute, tying it under her skirts as a precaution. Better it not be seen should she be unlucky enough to cross paths with Ospodine a second time this night.
Janen returned to distribute the payment they’d received, and Brida kissed the small purse of money she held before tucking it into her bodice. Despite her encounter with one of Lord Frantisek’s unpleasant guests and the prospect of a wet ride home, she was glad she came. She’d made enough to repair the leak in her roof and help her brother’s family with their ever-depleted larder, at least until the seaweed harvest started in earnest, and they could sell what they gathered to the farmers of adjacent towns.
A quick peek outside assured them that while the moonlit squall line in the distance still threatened, the troupe had a little longer before the line made landfall. At Odon Imre’s impatient gesturing, the five settled into the dray for the trip back down the bluff. Imre’s mare, Voreg stamped her hoof, splattering mud, as if to echo Odon’s silent encouragement that they hurry it along. Soon they rolled out of the bailey and through the barbican, leaving behind the dark castle.
Brida turned for a last look at the majestic keep, searching for the source that created a prickling itch between her shoulder blades, the same sensation she’d experienced all evening under Ospodine’s unwavering stare. Only stone stared back at her, along with a pair of guttering torches. Still, she shivered and turned away, certain down to her bones the nobleman watched her leavetaking from somewhere in the castle.
“It won’t be worth going to bed if I have to be back up before the sun’s rise,” Haniss groused, breaking into Brida’s thoughts.
Like the Imres, Haniss and her husband owned a pair of the big draught horses that trawled the Gray for shrimp during summer. With the arrival of autumn, rakes replaced nets, and they put the horses to work harvesting the seaweed that choked the shallows and shrouded the rocks in the aftermath of storms. Heavy clouds and distant lightning hanging over the Gray earlier in the evening prophesied a tempest guaranteed to hurl a rich bounty of seaweed onto the beaches by morning.
Brida patted her shoulder. “I’ll meet you on the beach. I may even beat you there.” She yawned. “Norinn told me Laylam plans to sleep in his boots, in the stables, with the dog beside him so all he has to do is hitch the horse to the cart and be on the road as soon as the storm has passed. I’ve volunteered to accompany him while Norinn gets the children ready.”
Haniss laughed. “No one will ever accuse your brother of being a lay-about, that’s for certain.”
The sky was the color of cold ink by the time Odon Imre let Brida off at her front door. She was his last passenger, and she waved from her doorway until the dray turned a corner and disappeared from her sight. She yawned repeatedly now, and her eyelids felt scratchy, but she didn’t dare lie down. If she did, she’d slip so far into slumber, she’d miss her brother’s arrival, and he’d go on without her. She’d never hear the end of it from him or Norinn later.
