The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers Page 2

  Chapter 2. The Minstrel

  The minstrels of Wefrivain are quasi-religious figures, schooled in the old stories. Their role in society is not only to entertain, but also to encourage religious devotion.

  —Gwain, The Truth About Wyverns

  Gerard found his friend and mount, a griffin named Alsair, waiting for him outside the Priestess’s Sanctum. Wordlessly, they walked through the Temple complex and then out into the streets of Dragon’s Eye.

  “Well?” demanded Alsair as they started into the press of shelts coming and going in the late afternoon rush.

  Gerard shook his head.

  “What did she say? What was it about?” Alsair butted Gerard playfully with his beak. Their heads came to the same height when they were both standing. “You can’t say nothing, not after an audience like that.” They had been together since childhood. Gerard’s silences were legendary, but Alsair had always been good at making him talk, and when that failed, Alsair could always fill the silences.

  Gerard shook his head. “Not now.”

  They were coming to the market. Throngs of shelts hurried home as the day ended. They were mostly grishnards. A few shavier fauns—pegasus shelts—moved furtively in the press. They were probably the slaves of great houses. All the shelts—both grishnard and faun—had long, tufted ears that flicked back against their heads at the flies and the noise.

  As Gerard and Alsair drew closer to the docks, the numbers of non-grishnard shelts increased. A filthy urchin, probably a pickpocket, darted across the road, and they saw the flash of his red fox tail. “There goes a long-lost relative of our dear admiral,” muttered Alsair nastily. “Shall we invite him to the ship and ask their relation?”

  Gerard did not honor this with a reply. Silveo Lamire was a fox shelt. Rumor had it he’d risen to his post from the slums around the docks.

  “Did he do you a favor by trying to kill you?” asked Alsair. “Was the priestess impressed with what you could do with one row boat and a few rowers? Especially when you’d been intentionally stranded among enemies?”

  “We don’t know Lamire intentionally stranded me,” said Gerard. He strongly suspected it, but he did not know.

  “Well I do,” said Alsair. “He locked me in the hold.”

  “Anyone could have done it, perhaps even by accident.”

  “You know as well as I do that Lamire ordered it,” growled Alsair, “and someday, I’ll pay him back.” He made a sharp clicking noise with his beak.

  Gerard frowned. “Stay away from him, Alsair. He’s afraid of griffins, and Lamire is the sort of shelt who gets vicious when he’s frightened.”

  They stopped in front of an inn—the grandest on the waterfront, with high, arched ceilings reminiscent of some noble’s audience hall. Two hulking grishnards loitered near the entrance, making sure that none of the dock’s riffraff bothered the patrons. Every shelt within was almost certainly a grishnard. Alsair snickered. “Do you think they’d toss Lamire off the dock if he came here without his insignia and bodyguard?”

  “Probably.” Gerard pushed open the door. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

  “But you haven’t,” complained Alsair. “Only I have.”

  “Hush.”

  At the far end of the long, elegant common room, someone was singing to the music of a harp. Her voice had the haunting quality of doves at dawn or the high and lonely cry of a falcon. She sang one of the temple songs about wyverns and their coming to the islands of Wefrivain. She sang all the verses—the very old ones, unfamiliar to most shelts. She sang of the terrible wizards—shape-shifters, mind-parasites, slavers. They had come upon the islands in ages past, and they brought fear and pain and death. She sang of how the Firebird had sent the wyverns to free the shelts of Wefrivain. The song might have been dry as dust in the mouth of some temple harpist, but for her the song opened like a flower.

  “Go stretch your wings, friend,” Gerard told Alsair. “Hunt on the ocean. I’ll envy you.”

  Alsair snorted. “You won’t even think of me.”

  But Gerard was already gone. He forced his way through the crowd around the singer, using his height and broad shoulders to muscle them aside.

  She was a grishnard with glossy golden fur and hair so pale it looked almost white in the lamplight. Her eyes, too, were white, and they shone as though she saw visions and not the crowd around her. In truth, she did not see them, for she was blind.

  As the last notes of the song faded, Gerard reached her and scooped her up in his arms, catching the harp with one hand. Several shelts in the crowd protested, but Gerard ignored them and carried her away. At the foot of the stairs, the innkeeper met him with more protests. “My wife,” said Gerard, “has more than filled your hall. She’s paid for our room ten times over. Good night.”

  Thessalyn nestled against his chest. “Did you see her?” she whispered. “Did you see the Priestess?”

  “I saw her,” said Gerard. He did not speak again until he’d reached their room and unlocked the door. “I saw her and I spoke to her. She is beautiful and terrible, as they say, but she was not as beautiful as you.”

  Thessalyn smiled and shook her head. She had never seen her own beauty, for she had come sightless into the world. Gerard had always found that a great paradox. “No one sees like you do,” he’d told her once. “I think sometimes you have the gift of prophesy.” She denied that, but she did not deny she had the gift of song. Thessalyn had been born to one of the tenet farmers on a little island holding of Holovarus. Many farmers would have drowned a blind baby girl—a useless mouth in their world of labor—but her father was gentle and soft-hearted, and music ran in his blood.

  By the age of five, it was apparent that she had a great gift, and the family had struggled to save enough to send her to the prestigious school of minstrels on Mance. They found the money, but a recommendation was required from a reputable source. The family boldly petitioned their lord, Gerard’s father, to listen to the child and recommend her to the school. He did both. He even paid for her books and supplies and finally for her tuition when her family fell on hard times two years later.

  Thessalyn charmed everyone, including her teachers. She made her debut tour at fourteen and soon had a throng of potential patrons, but she chose to return to her family seat. Holovarus welcomed her as court minstrel. Her beauty, her blindness, her imagination, and her splendid voice had made her one of the most famous minstrels in Wefrivain, and little Holovarus basked in the prestige she brought with her.

  Her success made her a great asset to the court and a worthy investment to the King. However, it did not make her a suitable mate for the prince. If Gerard had been content to dally with her, his father might have taken no notice, but marriage was different. Thessalyn might be beautiful and talented, but she worked for her living, and she brought no dowry. Gerard did not like to think about that last year, so full of darkness and grief. Thessalyn might be able to forgive the gods, and he did not begrudge her the peace her faith brought her. She might talk of higher purposes, but Gerard could never forgive what had happened in the temple on Holovarus.

  We’ve come far since that night, he reminded himself. It was ironic that he’d retreated into the Temple Sea Watch, but Gerard thought of himself as a servant of the Priestess, not of the wyverns. The Sea Watch offered an honorable, if humble, escape from his family. His problems with his commanding officer, Silveo Lamire, were nothing to the churning sea of troubles he’d left on Holovarus.

  Gerard set aside Thessalyn’s harp—a confection of dark, curling wood, half as big as the girl who played it. She nipped at his ear and he kissed her, but then set her down gently on the bed and stretched out beside her. “You’re tired,” she said, stroking his ink-black hair. “And worried. What’s wrong, Gerard?”

  He spoke in a near whisper. “Sing to me, Thess. Please.”

  So she sang, in a very soft voice, an achingly sad lullaby for the child they had lost. (Thessalyn had the
gift of knowing when he did not wish to be cheered.) Yet, like most of the songs she composed herself, the end was full of light and distant shores and coming home. Gerard made her stop at last. “I have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “To the dungeons. I have to help Silveo Lamire interrogate prisoners.”

  She stroked his cheek. “Why, love?”

  “Because I am her Highness’s new captain of Police.”

  Thessalyn’s fingers stopped moving. A long silence, then, “It is work that someone must do. The Police protect us.”

  “The Police drag shelts from their homes in the middle of the night to pull out their fingernails in basements,” snapped Gerard. He felt her tremble and regretted it at once. “Forgive me. I didn’t come here to make you sad.”

  “You are good,” said Thessalyn softly. “Good things cannot be evil.”

  Gerard sighed. “I don’t know about good. I certainly am what I am, and I cannot seem to be otherwise. I will do what I am able. Perhaps I can make the Police into something more than an ugly threat. It’s no wonder their captains keep disappearing.”

  He stood and kissed her fingertips. “Thank you, my dear.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” said Thessalyn. “However late you come.”

  “Or whatever I’ve done in the meantime?”

  “Or whatever you’ve done in your lifetime.”