The Singers of Nevya (70 page)

Berk sat back heavily against his own chair, and glared at Cho.

“Um, well,” Zakri stammered. “Um—Houseman Cho—Singer Cho?”

“Not Singer,” Cho said, very quietly. “Carver.” He took his arm from the chair back and leaned forward, angling his body menacingly across the table at Berk. “I wasn’t good enough for Conservatory, you see,” he went on. “My Gift was only good enough for the carvery!” Louder, he added, “And good enough to gather every itinerant on the Continent into my service!”

Berk still stared, his arms folded. Zakri cleared his throat.

“Well, then, Carver . . . Cho. You see, I really need to get Houseman Berk, here, back to Amric. How else will he go? And my family, you know . . . they’ll be expecting me.” He shrugged, and shuffled his feet like a boy of three summers.

“Ah.” Cho’s black eyes measured Zakri, up and down. Klas, standing beside him, drew a sharp breath and took a sudden step back, as if trying to get out of the way. Again, and without warning, Zakri felt the bludgeon of Cho’s psi, the crude attack against his shields. He had never felt a mind like it. There was an animal essence about it, a brute aggressive force like that of a hunting beast. Even in the early days, when his own psi had been out of control, Zakri felt certain it had never been so ugly, so—vulgar, was the word that came to his mind. At another time, he could have laughed at himself, the upstart itinerant who had become Cantor! Was he now as refined as any Conservatory-trained Singer? But Cho was trying to force him to reveal who and what he was, and such an invasion of uncontrolled psi could be lethal. Turning it aside took all his attention.

Thank the Spirit, Sira’s instruction had been thorough. Zakri thickened the fog in the forepart of his mind, and hid behind it. It was difficult. The trickle of perspiration became a flood, but he held his silly grin in place, and endured. Behind him he heard Klas groan slightly, and he knew the itinerant felt the effects of Cho’s psi. He remembered well the nauseating sensation inadequate shielding could cause, and he marveled at the strength of Cho’s mind.

Then, suddenly, it seemed that his disguised shields had done their job. Cho lost interest all at once. He glanced around the room at the others, then back at Zakri. “If you know what’s good for you,” Cho said lazily, his lip-curling smile returning. “You’ll stay right here. This is where it’s going to happen.”

“Um . . . what would that be, that’s going to happen?”

“Never mind!” Berk ordered. He stood suddenly, towering over everyone in the room. The two at the table, the unGifted ones, had watched everything in tense silence, and Zakri was sharply aware, through his shields, of their fear. Berk stamped to the door and pulled it open. “Let’s go, Singer,” he said.

Zakri turned obediently to the doorway. The heavy door, as if it had taken on life of its own, flew abruptly from Berk’s hand and slammed into its frame with a bang that echoed in the high-ceilinged room. Zakri whirled to look at Cho.

Cho still held his negligent pose, but his effort had brought beads of sweat to his forehead. “That’s a taste, Houseman,” he sneered. “No one leaves until I permit it.”

Berk said deliberately, “Would that be the room, or the House?”

Cho said, “Both,” and laughed.

Zakri said innocently to Berk, “Houseman, I don’t understand. What’s happening here?”

Berk lifted his hand, palm up, toward Cho. It was an elegant, very upper-level gesture. “Perhaps, Carver, you’d like to explain to Zakri,” he said. “And while you’re at it, you can tell him what’s going to happen when Lamdon gets word of all this!” This time he succeeded in making his exit. Klas stood pale and sweating by the door, looking longingly at it as it closed behind Berk.

Zakri turned slowly to face Cho once more. The cold knot of anger under his breastbone had drawn painfully tight. His Gift raged within him, and he concentrated on his control as he never had before. His back felt as stiff and unyielding as Glacier ice.

“You won’t be leaving here just now,” Cho said. His tone was casual. “If I let you go, it spoils the effect.”

“Effect?”

Cho’s lips lifted, just the outer corners. The Housewoman at the table began, “Cho . . .” but he silenced her with a hand.

“All the itinerants have banded together,” he said, “right here at Soren. This is a new day for Nevya, a new day for Singers. We have more of the Gift under this roof than any House on the Continent—even Conservatory!”

Zakri looked about him, keeping his eyes wide and his expression naive. He could not resist. “Then why is the
quiru
such a mess?” he asked.

The Housewoman’s eyes slid up to his face, then away. The Houseman sat with his shoulders rigid, his gaze locked on the paper before him. There was a small thump behind Zakri as Klas stepped right against the wall, as far away as he could get.

Cho stood and leaned forward, fists on the table, eyes black and cold. “Do you see anyone freezing?” he hissed. “Anyone suffering? There is more than one way, more than Conservatory’s way, to keep a House warm! We’ll teach it to you.” He waved a hand at the door. “Now go. Klas will find you a room. Might as well be comfortable. You’ll be here a while.”

“But . . .” Zakri began.

The blow of psi came again, but Zakri was prepared this time. He turned it away with a parry of his own, a reactive feint of energy. He stopped short of actually striking at the other man’s mind, but just the same Cho frowned, sensing the resistance. Zakri smiled and shrugged, as if it was little matter to him if he stayed or not, and as if he had not felt Cho’s psi at all.

Cho raised his long arm and pointed at the door. Klas hastened to throw it open and make his escape.

Zakri followed, but he looked back over his shoulder to see Cho snatch the account book from the Housewoman’s hands with unnecessary roughness. The Houseman slumped over his piece of paper, his pen idle in his hand.

Zakri reached back with his psi and tugged at the chair behind Cho just as the carver was about to resume his seat. The heavy chair crashed satisfyingly against the floor, and a spate of curses rang out as Zakri closed the door. The players squatting in the corridor raised their heads at the noise. Zakri grinned cheerfully down at them. “Did you hear something?” he asked brightly. They looked from his foolish grin to the closed door, but they kept a prudent silence.

By the time Zakri reached the staircase, though, the pleasure of his small prank faded. As he followed Klas downstairs he had to repress a shower of sparks that bloomed about him like little rebellious flowers.

Klas showed him to a room already crowded with three other itinerants and their possessions. Before he left, Klas asked, “Didn’t you feel that, feel Cho’s psi? It just about knocked me over, and it wasn’t even me he was after!”

Zakri turned away the question with one of his own. “Why would you want to work for a man like that? What is . . . what’s the point?”

Klas shrugged, and his pale eyes shifted from side to side. “It’s because we’re tired of being used, of having nothing. Why should the Cantors and Cantrixes have all the privileges? We’re Gifted, too!”

Zakri stared at him, wanting to argue, to dispute such idiocy. He sensed the other’s resentment, but it seemed compounded as much of fear and confusion as real indignation. He reflected that any discussion with such a person would be pointless, and would only arouse suspicion. He answered Klas’s shrug with one of his own, and another boyish grin, and carried his pack into the overcrowded room.

Cho sat in the Magister’s seat at the evening meal, at the center of the great room, with several itinerant Singers about him. The Singers were noisy, talking and laughing, all but one. That one sat limply in his carved chair, his head lolling against the shoulder of the woman next to him. His mouth was slack, his hands useless on the table. A woman spooned
keftet
into his mouth. Most of it fell back out, and patiently she scooped it up and tried again, over and over. Zakri remembered Clive’s horror as he described this man, the drooling mindless man that was Cho’s example. Clive had not exaggerated. The man’s empty eyes made Zakri’s skin crawl.

Cho leaned against the arm of his chair, toying with his braid, looking about the room and eating little. Several upper-level House members, in their dark tunics, sat at a corner table. The working Housemen and women clustered near them, avoiding the tables dominated by Singers. Zakri would rather have sat with the Housemen, but he was squeezed between Klas’s wiry frame and Shiro’s large one. Berk was at the corner table.

Berk raised his brows, but Zakri shook his head. Tomorrow he would find a safer time. Tonight, he dared not open his mind to listen to others’ thoughts. Cho’s psi was too dangerous, and it was possible that there might be others willing, and able, to misuse the Gift as he did.

Shiro elbowed Zakri and pointed with his spoon to a quiet group near the windows, perhaps eight men and women. They looked somber, even grim, but with none of the sinister intensity of Cho. “Those are the other carvers,” he said, through a mouthful of
keftet
. “They keep to themselves, even now.”

Zakri said, “I would—I’d sure like to see the carvery.”

Shiro made a grandiose gesture. “I could show you—after the morning meal. Been there a hundred times.” He dug his spoon into his bowl again, shaking his head. “Right now it’s the warmest place in the House.”

“Better watch what you say,” Klas muttered. “He hears more every day.”

Shiro scraped the spoon against the bowl, gathering every bit of grain that was left. “Ship! I didn’t say anything everybody doesn’t already know,” he complained.

“Just warning our young friend here,” Klas said.

Zakri finished his
keftet
and pushed his bowl away. It was Sook who saw, and came to his table to take it from him.

“More
keftet
, Singer?” she asked.

He shook his head, and she smiled down at him as she picked up the bowl. Shiro asked loudly, “No bread tonight, Housewoman?”

“Not tonight,” she answered, and turned to leave.

Shiro shocked Zakri by reaching out to pinch the girl’s arm between a meaty thumb and forefinger. She snatched her arm away with a little gasp. Zakri was sure the pinch had hurt.

“Are you sure, little Sook? Just a bite of bread for one of the Gifted?”

Her face flushed, and she rubbed at her arm with her free hand. With asperity she said, “No bread for the Gifted or the unGifted!” As she spoke she moved back, putting distance between herself and Shiro. The Singers at the next table noticed the exchange, and one of them reached over and tweaked her tunic, just above her slender hips.

“So, why not, little Housewoman?” that one cried, and laughed when she jumped.

“You explain it, why don’t you?” she snapped. “The grain hardly grows anymore!”

“Ship and stars, she’s a nice little piece!” Shiro said, and he reached for her arm again.

Zakri took a deep breath to control his seething temper, but somehow one small fibril of psi escaped him. It nipped out, just one lash of energy that collided with Shiro’s teacup and flipped it, spilling steaming tea into his lap. Shiro cried out in pain and leaped to his feet to hold his hot trousers away from his skin. The Singers hooted with joy at this new target, pointing and calling out insults. Sook seized her opportunity and fled the great room.

Zakri dared not speak. He thrust back his chair and stalked away from the table, struggling to manage the energy that welled from him like a fountain, cold and hot at the same time. Berk followed, and caught up with him in the corridor beyond the kitchens.

Zakri relaxed somewhat when they were alone, but the air around him glimmered.

“They may not let us go, in truth,” Berk told him quietly. They walked with a casual manner toward the stables, as if going to check on their
hruss
, but they kept a sharp eye.

“When we are ready, we will go,” Zakri answered through tight lips. “But I want to know exactly what is happening here first. Will you be safe, Berk?”

“I’m more worried about you,” Berk said. “No one’s saying much, but the Gift has been used in some terrible ways in this House. And to top it all off, there is a Gifted child, ready and wishing to go to Conservatory. Cho has refused to allow it.”

“But that is outrageous! How can he stop it?”

Berk’s face was bleak. Zakri was sure the big man was no less angry than he. “Everyone in this House is terrified of Cho. Did you see the man in the great room, at the center table?”

“I did.”

“It’s revolting.”

“He has already tried his psi on me,” Zakri said. “But I can handle it.”

“Are you sure?”

Zakri rubbed his hand over the soft wisps of his brown hair. His shoulders prickled again, and he took a deep breath and released. “I will be all right, Berk. Let us pretend that we are resigned to staying for a time. But it will be a short time!”

“Be on your guard at every moment, Cantor Zakri.”

“I will, Berk. By the Spirit, I will!”

Chapter Five

Zakri, having been for some time used to sleeping alone, spent a poor night listening to the chatter and then the snores of the three itinerant Singers whose room he had to share. He gave up trying to sleep eventually, and left his bed long before the morning meal to wander the corridors of Soren, feeling the sting of the cold floor even through his fur boots. After a time, the sounds and smells of cooking drew him to the kitchens. At Amric, his Houseman brought tea to Cantor Zakri before he was even awake. No such luxury for an itinerant, and most certainly not at Soren! Cautiously, he put his head around the kitchen door, wary of Mura’s sharp tongue.

Mura was frowning over a younger Housewoman as she stirred the
caeru
stew that bubbled on the huge stove. Sook, her cheeks pink with the heat of the cookfire, was slicing loaves of hot nutbread at the table, stopping occasionally to blow on her fingertips. The scarlet of her tunic made her the brightest spot in the room, and Zakri smiled to see her. Behind her, the big kettle steamed gently on the hob. It was a shame, he thought, that those who dwelled in the upper levels of the House—any House-should so rarely come upon this charming scene.