Seraphina(3)

I was too drained to find him embarrassing. I bowed my head and retreated from view.





I was the new assistant to the court composer and had beaten out twenty-seven other musicians for the job, from itinerant troubadours to acclaimed masters. I was a surprise; no one at the conservatory had paid me any heed as Orma’s protégée. Orma was a lowly music theory teacher, not a real musician. He played harpsichord competently, but then the instrument played itself if he hit the right keys. He lacked passion and musicality. Nobody expected a full-time student of his to amount to anything.

My anonymity was by design. Papa had forbidden me to fraternize with the other students and teachers; I saw the sense in that, however lonely I was. He had not explicitly forbidden me to audition for jobs, but I knew perfectly well he wouldn’t like it. This was our usual progression: he set narrow limits and I complied until I couldn’t anymore. It was always music that pushed me beyond what he considered safe. Still, I hadn’t foreseen the depth and breadth of his rage when he learned I was leaving home. I knew his anger was really fear for me, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.

Now I worked for Viridius, the court composer, who was in poor health and desperately needed an assistant. The fortieth anniversary of the treaty between Goredd and dragonkind was rapidly approaching, and Ardmagar Comonot himself, the great dragon general, would be here for the celebrations in just ten days. Concerts, balls, and other musical entertainments were Viridius’s responsibility. I was to help audition performers and organize programs, and to give Princess Glisselda her harpsichord lesson, which Viridius found tedious.

That had kept me busy for my first two weeks, but the unexpected interruption of this funeral had piled on additional work. Viridius’s gout had put him out of commission, so the entire musical program had been left up to me.

Prince Rufus’s body was removed to the crypt, accompanied only by the royal family, the clergy, and the most important guests. The cathedral choir sang the Departure, and the crowd began to dissipate. I staggered back into the apse. I had never performed for an audience of more than one or two; I had not anticipated the anxiety beforehand and the exhaustion afterward.

Saints in Heaven, it was like standing up naked in front of the entire world.

I stumbled about, congratulating my musicians and supervising their removal. Guntard, my self-appointed assistant, trotted up behind me and clapped an unwelcome hand upon my shoulder. “Music Mistress! That was beyond beautiful!”

I nodded weary thanks, twisting out of his reach.

“There’s an old man here to see you,” Guntard continued. “He showed up during your solo, but we put him off.” He gestured up the apse toward a chapel, where an elderly man loitered. His dark complexion meant he’d come from distant Porphyry. His graying hair was done in tidy plaits; his face crinkled in a smile.

“Who is he?” I asked.

Guntard tossed his bowl-cut locks disdainfully. “He’s got a mess of pygegyria dancers, and some daft notion that we’d want them dancing at the funeral.” Guntard’s lips curled into that sneer, both judgmental and envious, that Goreddis get when they speak of decadent foreigners.

I would never have considered pygegyria for the program; we Goreddis don’t dance at funerals. However, I couldn’t let Guntard’s sneering pass. “Pygegyria is an ancient and respected dance form in Porphyry.”

Guntard snorted. “Pygegyria literally translates as ‘bum-waggling’!” He glanced nervously at the Saints in their alcoves, noticed several of them frowning, and kissed his knuckle piously. “Anyway, his troupe’s in the cloister, befuddling the monks.”

My head was beginning to hurt. I handed Guntard the flute. “Return this to its owner. And send away this dance troupe—politely, please.”

“You’re going back already?” asked Guntard. “A bunch of us are going to the Sunny Monkey.” He laid a hand upon my left forearm.

I froze, fighting the impulse to shove him or run away. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “Thank you, but I can’t,” I said, peeling his hand off me, hoping he wouldn’t be offended.

His expression said he was, a little.

It wasn’t his fault; he assumed I was a normal person, whose arm might be touched with impunity. I wanted so much to make friends at this job, but a reminder always followed, like night after day: I could never let my guard down completely.

I turned toward the quire to fetch my cloak; Guntard shuffled off to do my bidding. Behind me, the old man cried, “Lady, wait! Abdo has to coming all this way, just for meeting you!”

I kept my eyes straight ahead, ducking up the steps and out of his line of sight.

The monks had finished singing the Departure and begun it again, but the nave was still half full; no one seemed to want to leave. Prince Rufus had been popular. I had barely known him, but he had spoken kindly, a sparkle in his eyes, when Viridius introduced me. He’d sparkled at half the city, to gauge by the loitering citizens, speaking in hushed voices and shaking their heads in disbelief.

Rufus had been murdered while hunting, and the Queen’s Guard had found no clues as to who’d done it. The missing head would suggest dragons, to some. I imagined the saarantrai who attended the funeral were only too aware of this. We had only ten days before the Ardmagar arrived, and fourteen days until the anniversary of the treaty. If a dragon had killed Prince Rufus, that was some spectacularly unfortunate timing. Our citizens were jumpy enough about dragonkind already.