The Singers of Nevya (63 page)

She was fascinated by Zakri’s playing, though, and listened raptly as he raised their
quiru
each night.
Do you play the
filhata
too?
she asked him.

So I do. But not very well yet. Cantrix Sira is teaching me.

She nodded, her curls bouncing against her furs.
I think if she will teach me the
filla
, maybe I can learn it. I have trouble with
Doryu
, and with
Lidya,
the fingerings.
She held up her short-fingered hands and looked at them as if they had a life of their own.
My class was ten students, and only one teacher. She did not like me. I felt all her feelings, when she was angry and when she was afraid. It bothered her.

How were your classmates?

Trisa shrugged.
We were not a good class, that is what they told us. It was hard there, and lonely. You would not like it, Singer Zakri.

Zakri smiled at her.
We will never know about that.

Now they were home, and Trisa had grown quiet and solemn, no doubt thinking of the scenes she would face. Berk went directly to Magister Edrus with the letter from Conservatory, and Zakri led Trisa up the back stairs to Sira’s apartment. Sira had heard them as they aproached the House,and she was standing in her open doorway, waiting. She glared down at Trisa, and then at Zakri, her mouth set in a hard line.
What have you done?

Excuse me, Cantrix Sira,
Trisa sent before Zakri could respond.
It was not Singer Zakri’s fault. It was mine
. She bowed very low, a sadly adult gesture from one so small.
I am sorry to cause trouble, but I will not go back. No one can make me, not even
—she looked up daringly—
not even you.

Sira lifted her eyebrow, but she stepped back, and they passed into the apartment. Trisa stood in the center of the room, and she and Sira stared at each other for a long moment. Zakri hung back, wishing he had stayed in the stables with the
hruss
until this confrontation was over. He shielded his mind for once. This was a conversation he had no wish to hear.

It was enough to watch their faces. Trisa’s lower lip pushed out in a little pink semicircle, and ragged sparks rose around her head. Sira’s features were drawn, but her control, as always, was absolute. At the end, she nodded once, sharply, to Trisa, then turned her back to them both, walking slowly to the window. She leaned on the casement, and gazed out in silence on the white mountains.

Trisa asked aloud, “Can I see my mother now?”

The inevitable protest erupted a few days later in the form of a loud and angry courier from Conservatory. Magister Edrus sat in his apartment, wearily surveying the group assembled around his table.

Sira and Zakri sat together, with Berk standing behind them. Brnwen sat nearby, trembling, and Trisa leaned against her, one arm circling her mother’s neck. Cantor Ovan glowered from one end of the table. At the other end Conservatory’s messenger, a man named Vlad, twitched and shifted in his chair. Singer Iban had brought Vlad to Amric. Iban lounged just inside the door, still in his traveling clothes.

Vlad was shouting. “This is outrageous! There has never been such an offense! The child comes back now, with me, and there will be no more argument!”

Magister Edrus tried to speak, but Vlad ignored him. Ovan’s harsh voice joined his. “The scandal! Amric will never recover from it!” and, “Lamdon will never allow this!”

Trisa and Brnwen were both pale, but Trisa shook her head. “No,” she repeated, her voice small in the tumult. “I will only run away again. No.”

Edrus held up his hand, but Vlad and Ovan persisted until Sira’s ears rang from the din. “You will not—we will see to it you do not! You are going back where you belong! Amric will be punished severely if—” Edrus dropped his hand, despairing of stemming the tirade.

Sira, at the end of her endurance, used her deep voice like a knife to cut through the noise. “Enough!”

Ovan’s mouth snapped shut when she turned her eyes on him. Vlad was silenced by sheer surprise. Sira leaned forward, her forearms on the table, and looked at each of them, one by one. “This is very difficult for Magister Edrus. All these events have been beyond his control. Trisa has made a decision, and it should be evident to everyone that she cannot be forced to rescind it.” Vlad opend his mouth to speak, but Sira held up a commanding finger. “There is nothing you can do, Vlad, and you must tell Magister Mkel this.”

“You have no right—” sputtered the courier.

Sira inclined her head to him. “That may be true. I am no longer sure how right is conferred. But I have talked with Trisa, and I can tell you beyond any doubt that her education is not proceeding well. Possibly it is not proceeding at all. I will try to teach her myself, as that is what she wants. I will keep Conservatory informed, if you wish, about her progress.”

Vlad’s face was ugly with frustration and anger. “The Magistral Committee—” he began.

Sira lost her temper. She slapped the table in front of her with the flat of her hand. Vlad and Ovan both jumped, and Brnwen gave a nervous squeak.

“The Committee has even less control of the Gift than Conservatory does!” Sira snapped. “Can you not see that Nevya is in serious trouble? You—that is, we, all of us—cannot go on abusing the Gift and expect it to survive! Here is this child who has spent two years at Conservatory in utter misery, and what do we have to show for that? Nothing! She hardly knows more than she did when she left. Something must change, and now, or we perish!”

Trisa’s color returned with a flood of pink to her cheeks. Brnwen still looked white and shaken. Iban’s eyebrows danced, and Zakri sat with his hand over his mouth, his eyes bright above his fingers. Ovan and Vlad scowled at each other, Vlad obviously expecting assistance from Amric’s senior Cantor, and Ovan afraid to offer it. Thank the Spirit for giving her the weapon to hold over him!

Sira folded her arms, gripping her elbows with her hands, amazed at the depth of her own anger. The air around her was brilliant with it, but she made no attempt to quell the effect. Let them see her strength, her power. Let them fear her!

The silence stretched on, charged with tension like the uneasy quiet that follows a storm. Edrus let it last some moments before he spoke. “Although I would never have foreseen my House in this position,” he began, choosing his words with care, “it appears we must allow these drifts to carry us where they may. Nothing in my experience has prepared me to make these decisions, but then, perhaps nothing could.” He nodded toward Sira. “I intend to encourage Cantrix Sira in her work here, as she sees fit to pursue it. I will so inform Magister Mkel.”

“This is open rebellion,” Vlad opined. “Amric is no better than Soren, with its itinerants! The Committee will see you punished. You need Cantors, do you not? And when you ask, you will be refused!”

Sira gave a bitter laugh. Zakri grinned, and Iban watched them both with twinkling eyes. Vlad’s face reddened.

“It is most interesting to me to hear you speak of rebellion,” Sira said. “I have never ceased working, all my life, to nurture the Gift and guard the well-being of my people.” She sat back in her chair, her anger fading into fatigue. “I have been shot with an arrow and kept prisoner for years at Observatory. I trained a full Cantor there, and I helped keep Amric warm when there was no one else to do it. For all these services, Conservatory calls me traitor.”

She pushed away from the table and stood. “So be it,” she declared. Her voice sounded flat in her ears. “If Conservatory cannot see what must be done, you may all give thanks to the Spirit that someone does.”

She strode from the apartment. Vlad’s voice rose again as she shut the door, and she heard Edrus try to answer, but she no longer cared. She would waste no more of her energy on their wrangling. There was real work to do.

Chapter Thirty-three

The five years of winter on the Continent dragged slowly to their end. Little by little, the air felt warmer to travelers riding through the mountains and the Southern Timberlands. Those in the Houses paused often by the limeglass windows to look out at the sky, searching for signs of the Visitor. The snows that fell were soft, big flakes collecting in loose drifts that formed and re-formed outside Amric’s walls, making graceful shapes like waves of the Frozen Sea caught at their peak. Children began to ask when they would have another summer to boast of, and their parents smiled and promised soon, soon.

When the reticent Visitor showed its face at last, a pale small disc rolling along the eastern horizon, its mild warmth joined with the sun to bring on the thaw and the budding of softwood shoots. Sira’s heart began to warm too, beginning to heal. She had labored long and hard at Amric, but Conservatory was sending a Singer at last.

Her students, Zakri and Trisa, flanked her as she stood with Magister Edrus and his mate, the Housekeeper Cael, Cantor Ovan, and a number of House members on the steps of Amric to receive their new Cantor. Just so had Sira begun at Bariken, and Isbel at Amric. This Singer’s name was Gavn, and he looked hardly older than Trisa when he put back his hood and bowed to them all.

Could I ever have been that young? Sira wondered.

O Spirit
, was Zakri’s reaction to the sight of him.

Magister Edrus welcomed Cantor Gavn aloud, and Cantor Ovan sent a few words. Sira also sent her greetings.

Are you . . . are you the Cantrix Sira?
he asked. When she nodded, he bowed again to her, very low, making Ovan mutter to himself. Zakri put his head to one side and pursed his lips, and Sira was afraid he would laugh aloud.

When the ceremonies were completed, and they all trooped indoors, Sira sent to Zakri,
Stay with him, and watch.
Zakri would understand that she meant for him to watch Ovan’s behavior. They had worrried about it, and Cantor Gavn’s appearance was not reassuring. His face was soft and smooth, unformed by experience, vulnerable as a child’s. He had to have at least four summers, but he looked as if he had less than three.

Sira’s own six summers felt like ten. She could hardly wait to be away, to put her grief and her loneliness behind her. She drew out Theo’s bit of metal from her tunic, and held it up in the
quiru
light to study its strange markings. They were so like those on Observatory’s large piece of metal, meaningless to her, to all of them, but still compelling. Now they seemed to call to her, to pull her back to Observatory.

Trisa interrupted her thoughts, bowing politely. Conservatory manners had made their imprint on her, and Sira was glad. Trisa was now nine years old, and she behaved very much like all the Conservatory-trained, with formal courtesy and mature bearing. Sira wished she knew some way to inspire similar manners in Zakri.

“Cantrix Sira, will we have lessons today?” Trisa spoke aloud, as was proper until Sira opened her mind. Zakri observed no such niceties.

Sira dropped her necklace back inside her tunic.
Yes. At least for a time. Then we need to talk, you and I, and I need to speak to your parents.

Thank you, Cantrix.
Trisa showed no curiosity. Doubtless she already had a good idea what Sira was planning. Even now she carefully dropped her eyes, shielding her mind, but she was sure to have sensed the brightening of Sira’s mood, the growing lightness of her heart. She would have guessed Sira was preparing to leave.

Well, good, Sira thought. That will make it easier to explain.

In the apartment, Trisa took up the
filhata
and played through the tuning exercise and the first mode, slowly, but accurately. Sira nodded approval. Since her return, Trisa’s skills had grown in great leaps, as if doors that had been locked to her were now flung open. Her hands were small, but nimble. Sira had spent hours coaching her fingerings on the
filla
until they were second nature, just as Maestra Lu had done with her years before. Trisa had mastered all the modes on the
filla
at last, and had made a good beginning with the
filhata
. It would be difficult for her until her fingers lengthened a bit, but she had reached second-level standards, as she should have done with her Conservatory class. The problem was what to do with her now.

For a time Sira listened, adjusted Trisa’s hand position, then listened again. She made her straighten her back and lower her shoulders. It was as all lessons were, and more than once Trisa sighed with effort as she began an exercise a second or a third time. At the end of an hour Sira leaned back in her chair.
Very good, Trisa. That is enough for now. Have you spoken to your mother?

Yes, Cantrix, she is waiting outside.

All this time? With your father?

Trisa shook her head, and pushed out her lower lip. Sira had come to know the look well.
My father will not come here. He is still angry.

Sira understood. The honors and privileges accorded the family of one of the Gifted must have been hard to relinquish. She wondered how things stood now between Brnwen, who had wept with joy when Trisa came home to Amric, and her mate. Sira remembered Niel v’Arren’s face when he had told her, his daughter, that she must return to the Cantoris. Her refusal had made him angry, too, despite everything that had happened to her.

Call your mother in, please,
she told Trisa. She got up and went to stand by the window, rubbing the muscles in the back of her neck. She could not see the Visitor from this perspective, but she knew it was there. Soon, she told herself, as everyone said to the children.

Brnwen followed Trisa into the apartment, bowing shyly to Sira and seating herself only when Sira waved her to a chair. As usual, Trisa stood protectively by her mother, a hand on her shoulder. Did she try to protect her in their own apartment as well? Sira wondered. The last years could not have been easy ones for the family.

She sat down in a chair near Brnwen’s. “Now that Amric has another Cantor, I will be leaving this House. But Trisa needs to continue her studies.”

Brnwen’s eyes were wide, waiting. Trisa looked utterly calm.