Bard city blues, p.12
Bard City Blues, page 12
“What do I do?”
May drew a bottle from a pocket of her apron. It was flat and square, with a wide mouth, made of cloudy white glass. “Take this. Go to the library and find a book you love. It’s best if you’ve never read it before, but an old favorite will do in a pinch.”
I stared at the bottle. “But what do I actually… do?”
“Just make sure the bottle’s open when you read it.” She pressed it into my hands. “Now, let’s talk payment. Grass, rain, paper, Aelrad will overcharge me for the moonlight, of course… no charge for the story so long as you get the bottle back to me in one piece. Let’s call it two captains and an elty. No, two captains even. I love a challenge.”
“May, I…” I couldn’t think what to say. She had been so kind, but two gold captains was more than I’d brought with me to Lackmore. “I’m sorry, I—Chill, what are you doing?”
Chill had a pile of gold coins in his hand and was sorting through them, muttering, “No, no, possibly, no…”
“He’s looking for the right coins, whatever that means.” May laughed. “He does this every time he pays me. Says he refuses to give me any unlucky ones.”
I smiled. Chill didn’t seem to care which coins he gave Freda. Nonetheless—
“Chill, I can’t let you pay for all this,” I said. “It’ll take me years to pay you back.”
“Not to worry, I came into some money recently—ah, here we go, two lucky captains! May they serve you well.” He dropped the coins into May’s hand. “Er, when shall we come by again?”
“Any time you like,” May said, looking up at him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PLONK
The next evening I made my way to the Lifted Gate, hoping Freda would let me rehearse my upcoming set with a minimum of artistic input. As I shuffled through the snow toward the tavern’s front door, I noticed little footprints ahead of mine. They were about the size of a child’s boots, but led directly to the Gate, and I was perplexed until I decided Nose Cabbage must have arrived early.
I opened the door, whistling. Perhaps I’d have a chance to ask him a few gentle questions about the money he’d spilled all over the floor on Sunday night. It was none of my business if the little goblin was rich—unless it had something to do with the theft of Freda’s painting, in which case it was entirely my business.
I had just set foot on the stairs when a strange thrumming sound made me pause. At first I thought it was a bee. Then an entire hive of bees. Then I realized it was music: the low, buzzy drone of a kithar, the goblin equivalent of the guitar. All at once the sound of my heart pounding was as loud as the music rising from the barroom. Those goblin footprints—were they really Nose Cabbage’s? Or did they belong to some goblin bard?
Had Freda replaced me before I even had a chance to play?
I forced myself to walk down the stairs and duck under the portcullis, and as soon as I did, a smile broke across my face. The footprints were indeed Nose’s: he sat at the bar with his skinny little legs crossed and a kithar as big as he was on his lap, plucking hesitantly at its strings. It was a beautiful instrument, with a fat body of gnarly oak from the forests of Guldon, lacquered and polished until it reflected the torchlight like a mirror. Nose Cabbage was clearly a beginner, placing me in no danger of losing my spot at the Lifted Gate, but it wasn’t that selfish thought that made me smile. I was grinning at the look of absolute rapture on the goblin’s face.
“I know that feeling,” I said, setting my guitar down on the uneven flagstones.
Nose Cabbage startled so hard he almost fell off his stool. He goggled at me with big bloodshot eyes. “A listener is you! For how long doing?”
“Don’t worry, I just got here. It sounds good, though! Is the kithar new?”
“Monday morning shopping…” He smiled wryly. “Monday afternoon, buying.”
I laughed. “Sometimes you fall in love! I remember the day I finally bought my guitar. It took me a year and a half to save up. Nineteen months, actually. And six days. I made extra money cutting mountain herbs for the town healer. His knees couldn’t handle all the climbing about anymore.” I paused, realizing simultaneously that I was rambling and that I ought to seize this opportunity to interview a suspect. I sat somewhat awkwardly on the stool next to his and asked, “But how about you? Was the kithar expensive?”
Nose Cabbage looked at his hands. “Playing is hard. Hardly I’m playing.”
It was as tidy a deflection as I had ever heard, meaning he didn’t want to talk about money. I ought to have guessed, considering he walked around with an earl’s ransom in the pockets of a potato sack. And my question had been a leading one—that was one costly instrument in his hands, no doubt about it. I needed a different approach.
“Can I give you a tip?” I asked.
Nose looked up, hope gleaming in his big eyes. “A helping? Please to!”
“The bottom string of a kithar is meant to play a drone, pretty much constantly. The goblin players I’ve seen always keep the thumb there, and use their other four—er, three—fingers to pluck the rest of the strings.”
Nose Cabbage settled his thumb on the lowest string of his kithar, which was much fatter than the others and produced its infamous droning sound, and gave it a tentative plonk. A wobbly buzz rose from the soundhole and filled the tavern. He grinned, and I had to admit, it sounded quite like the kithars I had heard before.
“Now impressed will Tosspig be!”
“Toss… pig?” I repeated a bit dumbly, before my brain caught up and parsed his sentence: Tosspig was the name of someone important to him. “Does Tosspig like music?”
“Music she loves. Nose Cabbage…” He looked away, his long ears drooping. “Maybe not?”
“How could she not love you?” I said impulsively. I barely knew Nose, but he looked so miserable I couldn’t help but try to offer comfort. “You’re so… green. And small? I’m sorry, I don’t know very much about goblins. But I like you.”
I meant it, too. Nose Cabbage had supported me enthusiastically since our first meeting, but it was more than that. There was something sincere about him, something genuine, that made him impossible not to like (except, apparently, for Born-with-a-Bow).
He must have sensed my sincerity, because he looked up at me with a toothy grin spreading across his face. “Yes! A liker is you. Thanking you, thanking you. No, Tosspig’s liking is no problem. She likes. I like.” He plonked distractedly at the kithar’s bass string.
“Then what’s the matter?” I prompted.
“Questions.”
“Questions?”
“Questions!”
“Questions.”
“Always she is asking them. Why are you quit your job? she asks. To spend time with Tosspig, says me. Then where do you going? she asks. Working, says me. Quitn’t you your job? she asks, and we are a circle.”
Recognizing an opening, I said, “That’s right, you were helping Brother Tappleblatt at the archives, weren’t you? He’s not exactly a fountain of wealth.”
Nose plonked his kithar again. “Payings he didn’t, and my helpings he needn’t. He found another goblin to make translates, so I was quit.”
“I’m sorry to be blunt, but it sounds as though Tosspig has a right to be curious about your finances. You had a job that didn’t pay, which you quit to spend more time with her, but, well… you seem to have plenty of money rolling around.”
I winced at my accidental phrasing, but Nose Cabbage didn’t seem to notice. He tapped his fingernails on the strings of his kithar, a range of emotions playing across his face. Clearly he was working through some internal struggle over how to answer me, and as I watched his eyebrows work, his ears waggle, and his mouth flex up and down, I wondered if perhaps he’d gotten rich in an acting troupe, doing comedy for kings.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Thousands.”
I felt my eyebrows rise. “Of gold?”
“Of thousands.”
Now I was staring openly. “That’s… quite a lot of money. How?”
A voice from the portcullis nearly made me jump off my barstool, just as I’d done to Nose earlier. “Hello? I’m here for the ashes?”
I turned to see a scrawny, doe-eyed girl in ill-fitting gray clothing staring around the tavern. An empty sack dangled from one hand. Her gaze landed on me and she smiled uncertainly. “Are you the owner? I’m here to clean out the hearth.”
I smiled back, trying to look friendly. “It’s right over there. But where’s Ash—the boy, he’s twelve or thirteen, who usually cleans the grate?”
The girl shook her head and scurried to the hearth so timorously I began to doubt the kindliness of my smile. I pushed my glasses up and turned back to Nose Cabbage. “You were saying? About your, ah, riches?”
“Adventurings.” The little goblin squirmed and tugged at an ear as though the answer embarrassed him. “Delvings of dungeons and pickings of locks. These things did I do and many more.”
“But why—”
Nose Cabbage plucked at his burlap tunic. “The poor dressing? The grubbing and pretending?” He looked at me, his eyes huge. “When you are money, people are smiling, hugging, rubbing your ears, doing the friendship always. And they are asking. For a sheep, a shoe, a sailing ship, and you think—you know—the liking is false. It is the riches only.”
So Nose Cabbage truly was rich, but he had hidden it from the world. Apparently even from Tosspig.
“Miss?” called the girl at the hearth.
I turned and tried my best to give her an even friendlier smile. “Yes?”
“I’m all done here, miss.” Her sack was full and her face was smudged with soot. “Can you pay today, or…?”
“Oh, er—” I looked helplessly at Nose Cabbage. “Is Freda around?”
He smiled wryly. “Not when paying is for doing.”
I felt in the pocket of my shearling coat. There were a few jacks in there, but as Freda hadn’t paid me yet, either, I didn’t have a comfortable margin in case she balked at reimbursing me for the ash cleaner. “How much is it?” I asked the girl.
“Not worrying,” Nose said. He set his kithar on the bar, slipped off his stool, and dug in his burlap tunic as he crossed to the girl. When he reached her he murmured something I couldn’t hear and slipped her a coin or two.
Her eyes widened and she threw her arms around Nose in a hug so tight it made him squeak. “Thank you, mister! The Lords Above must’ve sent you! Thank you!”
She scurried under the portcullis and up the stairs, leaving her bag behind.
“You’re a true gentleman, Nose Cabbage,” I said as the little goblin resumed his seat.
He pulled his kithar onto his lap. “Thanking you, thanking you.”
“Can I give you one more piece of advice?”
“Anythings, friend.” He grinned at me.
“You need to tell Tosspig your secret.”
A long moment passed, during which Nose stared at me with the smile wilting on his face. At last he just shook his head, ears wobbling miserably.
“You love her?” I prompted.
He nodded, just as miserable.
“You have to tell her.”
“Shan’t,” he said, plonking at his kithar.
“I’m sorry, but you have to. If you love her and you want her to love you back, there has to be honesty. You can’t build a life on lies and evasions.”
“Won’t.” Plonk.
I put my hand over his kithar strings, silencing them. There’s no better way to get a musician’s attention. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to open up to?”
“Opening to you,” he said. “And Tails asks many of questions about my adventurings, perhaps him I will telling also.”
“Tails? Why—” I waved the distraction away. “No, I don’t mean acquaintances at a bar. I mean a partner, a companion in life, a—” I shut my mouth. Whom did I mean? I had been thinking of Alix… “Well, consider it. Actually, don’t consider it, do it.”
Nose Cabbage nodded. “Yes… Yes, you are correctness. Maybe someday also you will doing, and not just considering.”
I finally saw Alix and Chill again the day of my show.
I arrived early to the Gate as usual, and sat at the bar, watching Freda bring up wine casks. The tavern was unusually peaceful for a Saturday evening, though it had only just opened. In the kitchen, Thromli was hacking away at stew meat and Xolgoth was resting under his lid. Skotleivo was asleep in the corner, inexplicably snoring.
I reached into my coat, which I’d hung over the bartop, and pulled out the metal flask I found the night of the theft. I turned it over, looking for identifying marks or anything unusual, but saw nothing. Just like the last ten times I had examined the thing.
I couldn’t even say why I had brought it with me, except that it was the only physical clue I had. I felt better with it in my pocket… and I was finally beginning to admit why.
Investigating Freda’s painting had bought me my gig at the Lifted Gate, but that couldn’t explain my initial objection when she accused Alix. In the moment, I had thought I was speaking up because her poor reasoning offended my judge investigator’s training. But just as I had grown familiar with every nick and blemish on the mysterious flask, I was achieving a certain comfort with why, really, I had defended Alix that night.
It had less to do with justice than with eyes the color of rosewood.
There were footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later, she and Chill ducked under the portcullis.
“With friends like me, who needs a library?” Alix was dressed in a tight jacket-and-trousers combo of red leather, the yellow bandana tied around her upper arm. It was simpler than she usually wore but no less striking, especially given the look of schoolboy delight animating her face. “Chill, show her.”
Chill smiled his little half-smile. “Oughtn’t it to be your moment? You turned it up, after all.”
“La, one did no such thing.” Alix waved away his objection. “One merely popped by one’s book guy. Give it over before she dies of waiting.”
Chill handed me a fat parcel wrapped in blue paper, which I unfolded with only a half measure of concentration. Alix was practically glowing in her excitement and it was hard to look away. But when I realized what I was holding, it instantly had my full attention. “It’s a book!”
“Not just any old,” Alix said.
It was a proper tome, saddle-stitched and hardbound in green cloth, with the title stamped on the front in gold leaf: A Guide to the Languages, Customs, and Cultures of the Orcish Peoples. It looked fairly new, but the cover was worn and the top corner was a bit dog-eared. I opened it and held it close to my face, hoping to catch the scent of the paper without being too obvious. It smelled just how I hoped.
“Alix, thank you,” I said with feeling, setting the book on the bar. So that was where she had gone when she left the soap shop—I mentioned needing a book, and she set off to find it. But was it a true act of kindness, or was she simply speeding her exoneration along?
Their chatter faded into the background as I began flipping through the pages at random, looking for any reference to night swimming. The book was precisely what I needed, I simply didn’t know where in it to look. There was no index, and while the table of contents appeared thorough, it lacked a convenient section on nocturnal aquatics for me to turn to.
A few minutes later, I heard Alix saying my name. “Gally? You there, Gally girl?”
I looked up and adjusted my glasses. “Sorry, what were you saying? I get somewhat distracted when books are around.”
“I noticed.” Alix laughed and gestured at me with the metal flask, which she was holding. “I was asking if that potent bean of yours sussed out what potion’s in this.”
“Oh, no, I still have no clue.”
“Rummy, let’s learn!” She unscrewed the top and flipped it open.
“Alix, don’t! It could be—”
But she was already raising the flask to her lips. She threw her head back, made a face, and tapped the bottom with her hand. Nothing came out, and I felt a rush of relief as she moved it away from her mouth.
She stuck her tongue in.
“Alix!”
We all stood frozen: me still holding the book, Alix with her tongue in the mouth of the flask, and Chill with one hand half outstretched, too late to stop her. The moment lingered just long enough to grow absurd.
“Well,” Alix said. “It’s just water.”
“Please never do that again!” I pushed my glasses up so hard they bumped my forehead. “You could have died.”
“Of what, drowning?” She squinted into the flask. “There ain’t nearly enough.”
Inspiration hit like a blast of horns, so powerful it almost knocked me from my feet. I flipped my book shut, reopened it to the table of contents, and ran a finger down the page. When I found what I needed I tapped it twice. Then it was just a matter of paging to the proper section…
“Yes!”
“Yes indeed,” said Alix. “Yes what?”
I talked as I scanned, my eyes locked on the book. “Drowning. In traditional orcish religions, the realm of the dead is conceived of as a pitch-black underground lake. The spirits of the wicked drown, but the righteous… Here it is!” I tapped the page. “From the Stones of Graal: ‘and of the righteous it is said, dark waters shall bear them up under dark vaults, like swimmers in the night.’”
“Night swimming,” Chill said.
“It’s a reference to the underworld.” I blew out a breath. “Which doesn’t clarify things at all.”
“Unless you’ve got a chum who knows Lackmore nightlife like the back of her glove,” said Alix. “Loads of orcs go to a place down by the river called—I’ll show you how to thank me later—Underworld.”
“Alix, you’re a genius!” I said.
She clapped me on the shoulder. “All in a day’s. Well, what are you waiting for? Strap into that shearling of yours and let’s away. Or no, wait a tick, you’re on stage tonight!”
