I play it through twice. Sit with the third run for a moment and then let it finish.
I know it came from her, from the creek and the workshop and the way she hands you things without making a ceremony of it. What I don’t know is what it means, what it’s actually about, underneath the melody, in the place where a song either has something to say or it doesn’t.
What matters is that she doesn’t know. And at some point she’s going to need to.
I play the melody one more time and put the dulcimer back on its stand.
The apartment is too small for what I’m feeling. I grab my keys.
The compound is twenty minutes outside of town, built on enough acres that orcs can wander without prying eyes.
The communal hall is empty at this hour. Most of the compound is asleep or just moving toward breakfast. What isn’t quiet is the kitchen, because Rhazgar is in it, and he operates on a schedulethat has nothing to do with the sun or social convention and everything to do with when the broth needs to come off the heat.
He’s WarmHearth clan. Quiet, but not the way I’m quiet. His is the quiet of someone who has decided what matters and isn’t interested in anything else. I’ve known him for four years, yet I’m not sure I know him at all. He doesn’t seem to mind.
He doesn’t look up when I come in.
“There’s bread,” he says. “Sit.”
I sit. The bread is on a board in the center of the table, warm from the oven; the kind of dense dark loaf he makes from a recipe he’s never written down. There’s butter beside it. I cut a piece and eat it standing up, and then sit down properly because the bread earns that much respect.
Rhazgar moves around the kitchen the way he always moves: economical, deliberate, nothing wasted. He’s got a pot simmering that smells like it’s been going since before I woke up. He checks it, adjusts the heat, doesn’t speak.
After a while he says, without turning around, “You drove twenty minutes for bread.”
“The bread is good.”
He makes a sound that is not agreement and not disagreement. He ladles something into a bowl and sets it in front of me: grain porridge, thick, with what I think are dried berries from the bushes along the compound’s east fence. I eat it. It’s the kindof food that makes you aware you were hungry before you knew you were hungry.
“There’s a woman,” I say. I don’t mean to say it.
Rhazgar doesn’t respond. He ladles a second bowl of porridge, brings it to the table, and sits across from me. Not close. Just… across. He cups his hands around his own mug, gazes over my left shoulder, and doesn’t ask anything at all.
I don’t say more. He doesn’t ask. The broth simmers. Somewhere outside, a door opens and closes, someone else is up early, moving across the compound. The breadboard sits between us. I cut another piece without thinking about it.
After a while, I eat the second bowl.
When I stand to go, he remains at the table, mug in both hands, giving no indication that the conversation was anything other than complete.
“Rhazgar.”
He looks at me.
“The bread,” I say. “It’s good.”
Something moves at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Close enough. “I know,” he says.
I drive back into town. Come in through the Taproom’s side door just after two, which is later than I’ve arrived in eight years,and Walt is behind the bar going through the delivery manifest. Doesn’t look up.
“The Grim Dark came in short,” he says. “Six cases instead of eight. Grulk’s going to have opinions.”
“Nothing new. Grulk has opinions about everything.”
“More than usual this time.” Walt sets the manifest down and picks up his coffee. He’s somewhere in his late sixties, and he has the look of a man who has already decided what matters. He doesn’t miss much, and he doesn’t say more than he means.
“You look like a male who didn’t sleep,” he says.
“Four hours.”
