faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself. It wasn’t dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost too fast for you to see. But still, you know it’s there, down where you can’t see, kindling.
“Who read you Eld Vintic poetry?” Wil asked. Fela blinked and turned back to the book.
“Puppet,” Sim said. “The first time I met him.”
“Puppet!” Wil looked as if he would tear out his own hair. “God pound me, why haven’t we gone to him about this? If there’s an Aturan translation of this book he’ll know where it is!”
“I’ve thought the same thing a hundred times these last few days,” Simmon said. “But he hasn’t been doing well lately. He wouldn’t be much help.”
“And Puppet knows what’s on the restricted list,” Fela said. “I doubt he’d just hand something like that over.”
“Does everyone know this Puppet person except for me?” I asked.
“Scrivs do,” Wilem said.
“I think I can piece most of this together,” Simmon said, turning to look in my direction. “Does this diagram make any sense to you? It’s perfect nonsense to me.”
“Those are the runes.” I pointed. “Clear as day. And those are metallurgical symbols.” I looked closer. “The rest . . . I don’t know. Maybe abbreviations. We can probably work them out as we go along.”
I smiled and turned to Fela. “Congratulations, you’re still the best scriv ever.”
With Simmon’s help, it took me two days to decipher the diagrams in the
Once I knew how to construct my gram, I began to play a strange sort of hide-and-seek with Ambrose. I needed the entirety of my concentration free while I worked on the sygaldry for the gram. That meant letting my guard down. So I could only work on the gram when I was certain Ambrose was otherwise occupied.
The gram was delicate work, small engraving with no margin for error. And it didn’t help that I was forced to steal the time in bits and pieces. Half an hour while Ambrose was drinking coffee with a young woman in a public café. Forty minutes when he was attending a symbolic logic lecture. A full hour and a half while he was working at the front desk in the Archives.
When I couldn’t work on my gram, I labored on my pet project. In some ways I was fortunate Kilvin had charged me with making something worthy of a Re’lar. It gave me the perfect excuse for all the time I spent in the Fishery.
The rest of the time I spent lounging in the common room of the Golden Pony. I needed to establish myself as a regular customer there. Things would seem less suspicious that way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Stolen
Every night I retired to my tiny garret room in Anker’s. Then I would lock the door, climb out the window, and slip into either Wil or Sim’s room, depending on who was keeping first watch over me that night.
Bad as things were, I knew they would become infinitely worse if Ambrose realized I was the one who had broken into his rooms. While my injuries were healing, they were still more than enough to incriminate me. So I worked hard to keep up the appearance of normality.
Thus it was that late one night, I trudged into Anker’s with all the nimble vigor of a shamble-man. I made a weak attempt at small talk with Anker’s new serving girl, then grabbed half a loaf of bread before disappearing up the stairs.
A minute later I was back in the taproom. I was covered in a panicked sweat, my heart was thundering in my ears.
The girl looked up. “You change your mind about that drink then?” she smiled.
I shook my head so quickly my hair whipped around my face. “Did I leave my lute down here last night after I finished playing?” I asked frantically.
She shook her head. “You carried it off, same as always. Remember I asked if you needed a bit of string to hold the case together?”
I darted back up the steps, quick as a fish. Then was back again in less than a minute. “Are you sure?” I asked, breathing hard. “Could you look behind the bar, just to be sure?”
She looked, but the lute wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the pantry either. Or the kitchen.
I climbed the stairs and opened the door to my tiny room. There weren’t many places a lute case could fit in a room that size. It wasn’t under the bed. It wasn’t leaning on the wall next to my small desk. It wasn’t behind the door.
The lute case was too large to fit in the old trunk by the foot of the bed. But I looked anyway. It wasn’t in the trunk. I looked under the bed again, just to be sure. It wasn’t under the bed.
Then I looked at the window. At the simple latch I kept well-oiled so I could trip it while standing on the roof outside.
I looked behind the door again. The lute wasn’t behind the door. Then I sat on the bed. If I had been weary before, then I was something else entirely now. I felt like I was made of wet paper. I felt like I could barely breathe, like someone had stolen my heart out of my chest.
CHAPTER THIRTY
More Than Salt
“Today,” Elodin said brightly, “we will talk about things that cannot be talked about. Specifically, we will discuss why some things cannot be discussed.”
I sighed and set down my pencil. Every day I hoped this class would be the one where Elodin actually taught us something. Every day I brought a hardback and one of my few precious pieces of paper, ready to take advantage of the moment of clarity. Every day some part of me expected Elodin to laugh and admit he’d just been testing our resolve with his endless nonsense.
And every day I was disappointed.
“The majority of important things cannot be said outright,” Elodin said. “They cannot be made explicit. They can only be implied.” He looked out at his handful of students in the otherwise empty lecture hall. “Name something that cannot be explained.” He pointed at Uresh. “Go.”
Uresh considered for a moment. “Humor. If you explain a joke, it isn’t a joke.”
Elodin nodded, then pointed at Fenton.
“Naming?” Fenton asked.
“That is a cheap answer, Re’lar,” Elodin said with a hint of reproach. “But you correctly anticipate the theme of my lecture, so we will let it slide.” He pointed at me.
“There isn’t anything that can’t be explained,” I said firmly. “If something can be understood, it can be explained. A person might not be able to do a good job of explaining it. But that just means it’s hard, not that it’s impossible.”
Elodin held up a finger. “Not hard or impossible. Merely pointless. Some things can only be inferred.” He gave me an infuriating smile. “By the way, your answer should have been ‘music.’ ”
“Music explains itself,” I said. “It is the road, and it is the map that shows the road. It is both together.”
“But can you explain how music works?” Elodin asked.
“Of course,” I said. Though I wasn’t sure of any such thing.
“Can you explain how music works without using music?”
That brought me up short. While I was trying to think of a response, Elodin turned to Fela.
“Love?” she asked.
