She reached the archway room to find the girls already practicing on their gitars with a journeyman, who told her she was late, to get her instrument and see if she could catch up with the others. She mumbled an apology, found her precious gitar, and took a stool near the others. But the chords were basic and even with her injured hand she had no trouble with the drill. Not so the others. Pona seemed unable to bridge strings with forefinger: the joint kept snapping up; and although the journeyman, Talmor, patiently showed her an alternative chording, she couldn’t get to it fast enough to keep the rhythm of the exercise. Talmor had great patience, Menolly thought, and idly ran silent fingers down the neck of her gitar, doing his alternative placement. Yes, it was a bit awkward if you were after speed, but not as impossible as Pona was making it out to be.
“Since you are so good at it, Menolly, suppose you demonstrate the exercise. In the time…” and Talmor directed the beat. She caught it with her eyes, keeping her head still, for Petiron abhorred a musician who had to use unnecessary body motion to keep a rhythm going. She went through the chords on the scale as directed and then saw Audiva regarding her with fierce intent. Pona and the others glowered.
“Now use the regular fingering,” Talmor said, coming over to stand by Menolly, his eyes intent on her hands. Menolly executed the run. He gave a sharp nod of his head, eyed her inscrutably, and then returned to Pona, asking her to try it again, though he outlined a slower time. Pona mastered the run the third time, smiling with relief at her success.
Talmor gave them another set of scales and then brought out a large copy of a piece of occasional music. Menolly was delighted because the score was completely new to her. Petiron had been, as he phrased it, a teaching Harper, not an entertainer, and though she had learned the one or two occasional pieces of music he had in his possession, he had never acquired more. The Sea Holder, Menolly knew, had preferred to sing, not listen; and most occasional music was instrumental. In the bigger Holds, Petiron had told her, the Lord Holders liked music during the dinner hour and at night when they entertained guests in conversation rather than song.
This was not a difficult piece, Menolly realized, scanning it and silently fingering the one or two transitional chords that might be troublesome.
“All right, Audiva, let’s see what you can make of it today,” Talmor said, smiling at the girl with encouragement.
Audiva gulped, exhibiting a nervousness that puzzled Menolly. As Audiva began to pick out the chords, nodding her head and tapping one foot at a much slower rhythm than the musical notation required, perplexity grew. Well, she thought, charitably, maybe Audiva was a new student. If she was, she was far more competent than Briala, who apparently had trouble just reading the music.
Talmor dismissed Briala to the table to copy the score for later practice. Pona was no improvement on the other two. The sly-faced, fair-haired girl played with great banging against the gitar belly, at time, but with many inaccuracies. When it was finally her own turn, Menolly’s stomach was roiled by frustrated listening.
“Menolly,” said Talmor at the end of a sigh that expressed his own frustration and boredom.
It was such a relief to play the music as it should be that Menolly found herself increasing the time and emphasizing the chords with a variation of her own in the strum.
Talmor just looked at her. Then he blinked and exhaled heavily, pursing his lips together. “Well, yes. You’ve seen it before?”
“Oh, no. We had very little occasional music in Half-Circle. This is lovely!”
“You played that cold?”
Only then did Menolly realize what she’d done: made the other girls look inadequate. She was aware of their cold, chill silence, their hostile stares. But not to play one’s best seemed a dishonesty that she had never practiced and could not. Belatedly she recognized that she could have hedged: with her scarred hand she could have faltered, missed some of the chording. Yet it had been such a relief, after their limping renditions, to play the music as it was meant to be played.
“I was the last to go,” she said in a lame effort to retrieve matters, “I’d more time to study it, and see…” She’d started to say, “see where they went wrong.”
“Yes, well, so you did,” Talmor said, so hastily that Menolly wondered if he’d also realized what a break she’d made. Then he added in a rush of impatience and irritation, “Who told you to join this class? I’d rather thought…” A snigger interrupted his query, and he turned to glare at the girls. ‘Well?” he asked Menolly.
“A journeyman…”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I was in the courtyard, and he asked me why wasn’t I in class. Then he told me to come here.”
Talmor rubbed the side of his jaw. “Too late now, I suppose, but I’ll inquire.” He turned to the other girls.
“Let’s play it in…” The girls were staring pointedly at the doorway, and he looked about. “Yes, Sebell?”
Menolly turned, too, to see the man to whom the other coveted fire lizard egg had gone. Sebell was a slender man, a hand or so taller than herself: a brown man, tanned skin, light brown hair and eyes, dressed in brown with a faded Harper apprentice badge half-hidden in the shoulder fold of his tunic.
“I’ve been looking for Menolly,” he said, gazing steadily at her.
“I thought someone ought to be. She was misdirected here.” Talmor sounded irritated, and he gestured sharply for Menolly to go to Sebell.
Menolly slipped from the stool, but she was uncertain what to do about the gitar and glanced questioningly at Sebell.
“You won’t need it now,” he said so she quietly put it away on the shelf.
She felt the girls staring at her, knew that Talmor was watching and would not continue the lesson until she had gone, so it was with intense relief that she heard the door close behind her and the quiet brown man.
“Where was I supposed to be?” she asked, but he motioned her down the steps.
“You got no message?” His eyes searched her face although his expression gave no hint of his thoughts.
“No.”
“You did breakfast at Dunca’s?”
“Yes…” Menolly couldn’t suppress her distaste for that painful meal. Then she caught her breath and stared at Sebell, comprehension awakening. “Oh, she wouldn’t have…”
Sebell was nodding, his brown eyes registering an understanding of the matter. “And you wouldn’t have known yet to come to me for instructions…”
“You…” Hadn’t Piemur said something about Sebell walking the tables, to become a journeyman? “…sir?” she added. A slow smile spread across the man’s round face.
“I suppose I do rate a ‘sir’ from a mere apprentice, but the Harper is not as strict about such observances as other masters. The tradition here is that the oldest journeyman under the same master is responsible for the newest apprentice. So you are my responsibility. At least while I’m in the Hall and I’m enjoying a respite from my journeyings. I didn’t have the chance to meet you and this morning…you didn’t arrive as planned at Master Domick’s…”