Instruments and lessons-and a place where she might find somewhere to live. This was the most promising area, at least insofar as her purse was concerned, that she had encountered yet. She opened the door and went inside.
The interior of the shop was darker than the public house had been, and smelled of mildew and dust. When she closed the door behind her, a bell jangled over it, and a voice from the back of the store said, "Be patient a moment, please! I'm up on a ladder!" The voice matched the store; a little tired, old, but with a hint that it had been richer long ago.
Rune waited, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness of the shop. The place was crowded with all sorts of oddments, even more so than the tiny window. Behind and in front of her were floor-to-ceiling shelves; on them were books, stuffed animals, neatly folded clothing, statues of all sorts, not just religious, one or two of which made her avert her eyes in flushed embarrassment. There were dusty crystals, strange implements of glass and metal, lanterns, and cutlery. All of it was used, much of it was old, and some of it looked as if it had sat there for centuries. Every object had a little paper tag on it; she couldn't imagine why.
Suspended from the rafters were cloaks and coats, each with moth-bane festooning the hems. The shop itself was barely large enough for Rune, the shelves, and the tiny counter at the rear of the shop.
After a moment, an old man dressed in a dust-colored shirt and breeches pushed aside the curtain behind the counter and peered at her, then shook his gray, shaggy head.
"I'm sorry, lad," he said regretfully. "I'm not buying today-"
"And I'm not selling, sir," she interrupted, approaching the counter so he could get a better look at her.
He blinked, looked again, and chuckled; a rich, humor-filled sound that made her want to like him. He reminded her of Raven, a little. And a little of that Guild Minstrel. "And you're no lad, either. Forgive me, lass. What can I do for you?"
A little surprised, since no one else had seen her true sex through her purposefully sexless clothing, she took another step forward. "My name is Rune. I'm a player, sir," she said, hesitantly. "I was told that I could find an instrument and lessons here."
"That's true," the old man said, his sharp black eyes watching her so closely she felt as if her skin were off. "You can, as you know if you saw the signs in the windows. But there's more to it than that-the things that brought you to this shop in this city. Now, I like a good tale as well as any man, and it's late and near time to close up. If you'd care to share a cup of tea with me-and tell me your tale?"
Part of her said not to trust this man-here he was a stranger, and offering to share his hospitality with another stranger-
But the rest of her thought-what could he possibly do to her? He was old, he moved slowly; he couldn't possibly out-wrestle her in a bad situation. Where was the harm in indulging him?
And there was more of Raven's advice. If you find yourself with someone who cares for his instruments, no matter how old, or how plain-or even how cheap-you can trust him. He's a man who knows that all value isn't on the surface. And he may have some of that hidden value himself.
"I'd like that, sir," she said, finally. But he had already raised his tiny counter on the hinges at one side, and was motioning her through as if he had never expected she would do anything other than accept. She pushed the curtains aside, hesitantly, and found herself in another narrow room, with a staircase at the farther end leading up to a loft. This room was just as crowded as the shop. There was a stove with a tiny fire in it, with a kettle atop; a broken-down bed that seemed to be in use as seating, since it was covered with worn-out cushions in a rainbow of faded materials. There seemed to be more furniture up in the loft, but the shadows up there were so thick that it was hard to see.
Besides the bed, there was a basin and ewer on a stand, a couple of tables piled with books, two chairs, and a kitchen-cupboard next to the stove. Everything stood within inches of the furniture beside it. There wasn't any possible way one more piece of furniture could have been crammed in here.
Rune took a seat on one of the chairs, placing her pack and Lady Rose at her feet. The only light came from a window at the rear of the room, below the loft, covered in oiled paper; and from a lantern on the table beside her.
There was a thump, as of heavy shutters closing, the door-bell jangled, and then a scraping sound of wood on wood came to her ears as the old man pushed the bar into place across his shutters. A moment later, he pushed aside the curtains and limped into the room.
Instead of speaking, he went straight to the stove at the rear and took a kettle off the top, pouring hot water into a cracked teapot that was missing its lid and stood on the shelf of the kitchen-cupboard beside him. He brought the pot and a pair of mugs with him, on a tarnished tray, which he sat down on the table beside her, next to the lamp, pushing the books onto the floor to make room for the tray.
"Now," he said, taking the other chair, "My name's Tonno. Yours, you said, is Rune, as I believe. While we wait for the herbs to steep, why don't you tell me about yourself? You're obviously not from Nolton, and your accent sounds as if you're from-hmm-Beeford, or thereabouts?"
She nodded, startled.
He chuckled and smiled, a smile that turned his face into a spiderweb of tiny lines, yet made him look immensely cheerful. "So, how is it that a young lady like you finds herself so far from home, and alone?"
She found herself telling him everything, for somehow his questions coaxed it all out of her; from the bare facts, to how she had managed to come here, to her desire for a place in the Guild. As the light beyond the oiled paper dimmed, and her confidence in him grew, she even told him about the Ghost, and her secret hoard of coins. Somehow she felt she could trust him even with that, and he wouldn't betray her trust.
He pursed his lips over that. "Have you told anyone else about this?" he asked sternly. She shook her head. "Good. Don't. The Church would either take a lion's share, or confiscate it all as coming from demons. I'll give you a choice; either you can keep them hidden and safe, or you can give them to me, and I'll provide you with that instrument you want and a year's worth of lessons-and give you whatever's left over, but I'll have it all changed into smaller coins. Smaller coins won't call attention to you the way silver would. I can probably manage that just on what I've saved."
She thought about that; thought about how easy it would be for the money to just trickle away, without her ever getting the lessons or the instrument. If she paid him now-
"This won't be just lessons in learning tunes, mind," Tonno said abruptly. "I'll teach you reading music, and writing it-you'll have the freedom to read any book in this shop, and I'll expect you to read one a week. I'm a hard teacher, but a fair one."
She nodded; this was more than she had expected.
"Can you play me a tune on that little fiddle of yours?" he asked-and once again, Rune took her lady from her case, and tuned her. This time, with care-for Tonno was a fellow musician, and she wanted to give him her very best.
She played him three pieces; a love song, a jig, and one of the strange Gypsy tunes that Nightingale had taught her. The last seemed to fill the shadows of the room with life, and turn them into things not properly of the waking world. It wasn't frightening, but it was certainly uncanny. She finished it with gooseflesh crawling up her arms, despite the fact that she had played the tune herself.