"Mama doesn't want me."
"Your mother's sick. In her heart. Emils is trying to heal her, but the sickness makes her fight against his help."
"Tell me again about being a bard."
"Well, bards are the eyes and ears and voice of the country. We bring the mountains to the coast and the coast to the river and the river to the forest and the forest to the cities. We're what keeps all the little bits of Shkoder together and…"
"No." He twisted indignantly until he could stare up into her face. "Tell me the good stuff. About Walking and the kigh."
So she told him while they waited.
Petrelis' answer came just as the cold had begun to seep through layers of clothing and Annice was about to suggest they go back to the village to warm up.
Overjoyed to have a child was putting it mildly.
The kigh who brought the news that he was on his way if he had to bring all three fledglings with him, wove ecstatic circles in the sky.
Watching Jurgis running about, laughing and Singing and trying to catch kigh that whirled just out of reach, Annice shook off a mitten and slid her hand beneath her jacket.
Suddenly, for an instant, it felt as though a butterfly were dancing just under her heart. Her eyes welling with tears, she pressed her fingers against the smooth, soft ball of her belly. The baby, her baby, had moved.
"A man should be told when his seed bears fruit."
"Well, he's mine! Mine, no one else's."
"It isn't like that," she whispered.
Jurgis leaped into the air, Singing his father's name.
"Your Grace!" The teenage boy skidded into the stable, his eyes wide. "There's a fire!"
"Where?" Pjerin was already moving when he asked.
"Lukas a'Tynek's house," the boy panted, scrambling to keep up with his due's longer stride. "It flared up so fast!"
They could see the smoke rising over the wall as they raced to the gate, Pjerin gathering people as he ran. The greasy black column served as both guide and goad as the inhabitants of the keep threw themselves down the short, steep hill to the village. By the time they reached the house, flames were shooting through the thatch. Men and women threw shovelfuls of snow onto the roof in a desperate but losing race against time.
The melting snow hissed and steamed. The fire leaped past it.
"My little girl!" Bundled into a fur overcoat not her own, an ugly blister across one cheek and her eyebrows all but gone, Lukas' partner, Hanicka, strained against her sister's grip. "Your Grace, my little girl is still in there!"
The door into the front half of the house, into the living quarters, belched flame.
Heart pounding, Pjerin raced around to the back. The double doors were open, the barn empty, not yet on fire but filled with smoke. He stomped through the ice in the outside trough and soaked his scarf in the little bit of water that remained.
"Pjerin!" Olina's voice seemed to come from a great distance. "What do you think you're doing?"
He wasn't thinking because thinking would stop him. Eyes squinted nearly shut, he plunged into the barn. The scarf helped but not much. Bent almost double, coughing and choking, he ran for the inside door. His foot came down on the body of a chicken, dead or stunned he had no idea, and without breaking stride he kicked it behind him.
The wooden wall between the barn and family quarters felt hot, even through the palm of his leather mitt. He could hear the fire crackling on the other side as it ate at the logs. Gasping for breath, he stood so that the angle of the door would offer at least a minimum of shelter and then yanked it open. A solid wall of flame burst forth, igniting the straw and driving him back. Twice he tried to get through it, but finally, his clothing smoldering, had to stagger outside and admit defeat.
A heartbeat later, the roof caved in with a roar that almost sounded triumphant.
Dragged to a safe distance by Olina and a villager he couldn't recognize, Pjerin watched with streaming eyes as the beast devoured everything but the thick stone walls. His snarl became lost in the snarl of the fire. Han-icka's keening rose with the smoke.
"Our thanks for the attempt, Your Grace."
He turned, saw it was Lukas a'Tynek, and didn't know what to say. The man had just lost his only child.
Rubbing at the ice-encrusted ends of his beard with a cracked and bleeding hand, Lukas stared into the inferno. "But perhaps it was for the best."
Confused, Pjerin hacked a mouthful of black mucus onto the snow and asked, "What was?"
"That she died. She did this. She was singing to the fire, making it dance. Leaving the Circle even as I watched." His fingers flicked outward in the old Cemandian sign against the kigh. "I couldn't have that happen, not in my house."
"What did you do?"
Standing a few feet away, Olina jerked around, drawn by the heat in Pjerin's voice.
Lukas didn't seem to hear it. "I hit her. Not hard. Just to stop her. I'm her father. I couldn't just stand by and let her leave the Circle. She went over backward and the fire… the fire…" His voice cracked. "Better she die than live outside the Circle."
Pjerin took a step forward, his fingers closing on the other man's shoulder and yanking him around. He caught a bare glimpse of Lukas' terrified expression through the red sheen of rage then he drove his fists, one, two, into stomach and jaw. Hearing nothing over the fury howling inside his skull, he spun on his heel and strode off toward the keep.
Olina looked down at the sprawled body, now surrounded by babbling family, and then at the disappearing back of her nephew. He makes it so easy, she thought, careful not to let the satisfaction show. The people's loyalty to their hereditary due had loomed as a potential problem, yet that could be undermined when, with a subtle twist or two, she blew this incident completely out of proportion.
Finally breaking free of his nurse's grip, Gerek raced down from the gate of the keep to meet Pjerin on the way up. Skidding to a stop, he stared up at his father eyes wide. "Papa! You're all scorched!"
Pjerin shuddered and dropped to his knees, gathering Gerek up into his arms, pushing the boy's hat off so he could lay his cheek against the soft cap of hair.
His face screwed up from the smell of the smoke, Gerek struggled to get free. "Papa!" he protested. "You're holding me too tight!"
Tadeus basked in the warmth of the fire like a contented cat, fingers lightly strumming the lute on his lap. He hadn't played in this particular inn for some time and he wondered why he'd stayed away for so long. He'd had an appreciative audience for his songs, an apparently bottomless ale cup, and enough offers of bed-mates to get him through the quarter.
What more could a bard desire?
Head slightly to one side so that thick black curls cascaded forward over his shoulder—a pose practiced and calculated to open both purses and hearts—he listened to the sounds of the inn. Behind him he could hear the distinctive crackles that said a kigh danced in the grate, called and confined by his Song. Before him, he could hear the rise and fall of maybe thirty voices. The news that he'd returned to the River Maiden had filled the small common room—the dull roar would've told him that, even if the innkeeper hadn't.
While he appreciated a full house as much as the next bard—All right, maybe more than the next bard—it wasn't going to make his job any easier.
Continuing to strum, he began to separate out the individual voices.
"… don't worry, I can pay for it. I've got plenty of silver…"