Denna reappeared on the seventh day as I wandered our haunts in Severen-Low. Despite all my searching, she saw me first and ran laughing to my side, excited to tell me about a song she’d heard the day before. We spent the day together as easily as if she’d never left.
I didn’t ask her about her unexplained disappearance. I’d known Denna for more than a year now, and I understood a few of the hidden turnings of her heart. I knew she valued her privacy. I knew she had secrets.
That night, we were in a small garden that ran along the very edge of the Sheer. We sat on a wooden bench looking out over the dark city below: a messy splay of lamplight, streetlight, gaslight, with a few rare sharp points of sympathy light scattered throughout.
“I am sorry, you know,” she said softly.
We’d been sitting, quietly watching the lights of the city for nearly a quarter hour. If she was continuing some previous conversation, I couldn’t remember what it was. “Beg pardon?”
When Denna didn’t say anything immediately, I turned to look at her. There was no moon, and the night was dark. Her face was dimly illuminated by the thousand lights below.
“Sometimes I leave,” she said at last. “Quick and quiet in the night.”
Denna didn’t look at me as she spoke, keeping her dark eyes fixed on the city below. “It’s what I do,” she continued, her voice quiet. “I leave. No word or warning first. No explanation after. Sometimes it’s the only thing that I can do.”
She turned to meet my eyes then, her face serious in the dim light. “I hope you know without my telling you,” she said. “I hope I don’t need to say it. . . .”
Denna turned back to look at the glimmering lights below. “But for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
We sat for a while then, enjoying a comfortable silence. I wanted to say something. I wanted to say it didn’t bother me, but that would be a lie. I wanted to tell her all that really mattered to me was that she came back, but I was worried that might be too much truth.
So rather that risk saying the wrong thing, I said nothing. I knew what happened to the men who clung to her too tightly. That was the difference between me and the others. I did not clutch at her, try to own her. I did not slip my arm around her, murmur in her ear, or kiss her unsuspecting cheek.
Certainly, I thought of it. I still remembered the warmth of her when she had thrown her arms around me near the horse lift. There were times I would have given my right hand to hold her again.
But then I thought of the faces of the other men when they realized Denna was leaving them. I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing.
And if that meant she wasn’t entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game.
But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.
Days passed, and Denna and I explored the streets of Severen. We lounged in cafés, attended plays, went riding. We climbed the face of the Sheer using the low road just to say we’d done it. We visited the dock markets, a traveling menagerie, and several curiosity cabinets.
Some days we did nothing but sit and talk, and on those days, nothing filled our conversations as much as music.
We spent countless hours discussing the craft of it. How songs fit together. How chorus and verse play against each other, about tone and mode and meter.
These were things I’d learned at an early age and thought about often. And though Denna was new to this study, in some ways that worked to her advantage. I’d learned about music since before I could talk. I knew ten thousand rules of melody and verse better than I knew the backs of my own hands.
Denna didn’t. In some ways this hampered her, but in other ways it made her music strange and marvelous. . . .
I’m doing a poor job of explaining this. Think of music as being a great snarl of a city like Tarbean. In the years I spent living there, I came to know its streets. Not just the main streets. Not just the alleys. I knew shortcuts and rooftops and parts of the sewers. Because of this, I could move through the city like a rabbit in a bramble. I was quick and cunning and clever.
Denna, on the other hand, had never been trained. She knew nothing of shortcuts. You’d think she’d be forced to wander the city, lost and helpless, trapped in a twisting maze of mortared stone.
But instead, she simply walked through the walls. She didn’t know any better. Nobody had ever told her she couldn’t. Because of this, she moved through the city like some faerie creature. She walked roads no one else could see, and it made her music wild and strange and free.
In the end it took twenty-three letters, six songs, and, though it shames me to say it, one poem.
There was more to it than that, of course. Letters alone cannot win a woman’s heart. Alveron did a fair piece of his own courting. And after he revealed himself as Meluan’s anonymous suitor, he did the lion’s share of the work, slowly wooing Meluan to his side with the gentle reverence he felt for her.
But my letters caught her attention. My songs brought her close enough for Alveron to work his slow, garrulous charm.
Even so, I can take only a small piece of credit for the letters and songs. And as for the poem, there is only one thing in the world that could move me to such madness.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Clinging
I met Denna outside her inn on Chalker’s Lane, a little place called the Four Tapers. As I turned the corner and saw her standing in the light cast by a lantern hanging above the front door, I felt an upwelling of joy at the simple pleasure of being able to find her when I went looking.
“I got your note,” I said. “Imagine my delight.”
Denna smiled and made a one-handed curtsey. She was wearing a skirt, not a complicated dress of the sort a noblewoman would wear, but a simple sweep of fabric you could wear while bucking hay or going to a barn dance. “I wasn’t sure you would be able to make it,” she said. “It being past the hour most civilized folk have taken to their beds.”
“I’ll admit I was surprised,” I said. “If I was the sort of man to pry, I would wonder what kept you occupied until this most unseemly hour.”
“Business,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “A meeting with my patron.”
“He’s in town again?” I asked.
She nodded.
“And he wanted to meet you at midnight?” I asked. “That’s . . . odd.”
Denna stepped out from under the inn’s sign and we began to walk down the street together. “The hand that holds the purse . . .” she said, giving a helpless shrug. “Odd times and inconvenient places are the rule with Master Ash. Some part of me suspects he might simply be some lonely noble, bored with ordinary patronage. I wonder if it adds some spice for him, pretending he’s meshed in some dark intrigue instead of just commissioning some songs from me.”
“So what do you have planned for tonight?” I asked.
“Only to pass time in your lovely company,” Denna said, reaching out and linking her arm with mine.
“In that case,” I said, “I have something to show you. It’s a surprise. You’ll have to trust me.”
“I’ve heard each of those a dozen times.” Denna’s dark eyes glittered wickedly. “But never all together, and never from you.” She smiled. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and save my world-weary gibes for later. Take me where you will.”
So we made our way to Severen-High by way of the horse lifts, where we both gawked at the lights of the
