‘I see what you mean. What’s the attraction then?’
‘Well, it’s great music. Really. Lots of noise and what they do on stage is pretty erotic. He wears something that looks sort of like a Tripsinger robe, only fancier, open down the front practically to his downspout.’ Jamieson leapt up, gestured as though unzipping himself from a spraddled stance, at once potent and aggressive, making Tasmin see what he was talking about. ‘The orchestral stuff is wild, too. Loads of percussion and heavy power assists.’ He collapsed into the chair again, legs over the arm.
‘Which couldn’t be used on a real trip.’
‘Not unless you had a trip wagon the size of a coastal broubarge to hold the power source.’
‘So, how’s he going to do a concert here? He’d never get that power by the Presences. And even if the Presences would let it past, which they won’t, the widest trail on Riddance Ridge barely passes a standard brou wagon.’
‘Most of it’ll probably be holo. He’ll be live against his own recorded setup with maybe one or two live backup musicians along.’
‘Why would he bother? If things are so great in the Deepsoil Coast, why come inland?’
The acolyte shrugged, a minimal shoulder twitch. ‘I can’t figure it. Too much exposure, maybe? I read the fanstats sometimes. There’s a lot of competition among what they call the Big Six. Terree’s oh, about number three, down from one or two a year ago. This new kid Chantry is a favourite with the Governor’s crowd, and he’s gone up like a balloon. Maybe Terree figures he’ll be more of a novelty after he comes back from an inland trip.’
‘Tripsinger Lim Terree,’ Tasmin quoted from an imaginary poster. ‘Back from a six-month tour of duty leading desperate caravans in the interior….’
Jamieson grinned. ‘Something like that, yeah. Why all the interest, Master Ferrence?’
‘Oh,’ Tasmin fell silent. ‘I knew him once, years ago. He came from around here.’
‘No joke! Really? Well, I guess it’ll be old friends at the bar then.’
‘Not really. I didn’t know him that well.’
‘I wonder why he didn’t let me know he was coming?’ Tasmin’s mother stared toward him in wonder, though for years Thalia Ferrence had seen nothing but blurred outlines through those wide eyes. ‘It seems odd he wouldn’t let me know.’ Her voice was aching and lost, with an agonizing resurgence of familiar pain, made strange only by renewed intensity.
He probably didn’t know you were still alive, Tasmin thought, not saying it. ‘Lim was probably too embarrassed, Mother. Or, maybe he didn’t know Dad was gone and thought he might not be welcome.’
‘His father would have forgiven him. Miles knew it was nothing that serious.’ She shook her head, smiling. She seemed determined to reform Miles Ferrence in memory, determined to create a loving and forgiving father where Tasmin could remember only hostility and harsh judgment.
Not only her eyes that can’t see, Tasmin reflected. Her heart can’t see either. Maybe that’s part of being a wife and mother, having a blind heart. If she’s blind to Lim’s faults, well, she’s blind to mine as well. He tried to feel generous about her warmth to Lim but couldn’t. Something about it sickened him. Sibling rivalry? That would be Celcy’s easy answer to everything. No, it was the senseless expenditure of emotion on someone unworthy of it that offended him.
Or jealousy. It could be that. He could be jealous of Lim. It would be nice to have only oneself to worry about instead of juggling three or four sets of responsibilities. Celcy. Work. His mother, whose blindness could be helped at one of the ’Soilcoast medical centers if he could only get her there and pay the bills. Since Miles Ferrence had died, BDL provided no more medical care for her.
Not that she ever reproached him. ‘Your wife has to come first, Tas. Just come see me when you can. I love it when you do.’
Now she leaned forward to take his hand and stroke it. ‘Are you going out on a trip soon?’
‘First New Moon, Mom. First trip for some recently robed singers. Be gone two days is all. I don’t like to leave Celcy alone very long, not in her condition.’
‘She’s not still pregnant, is she?’
‘Why –’ He had started to say ‘of course, she is’ and found the words sticking in his throat. ‘Why did you think she wasn’t?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ That perceptive stare again, as though the mind saw what the eyes could not. ‘It just seemed sort of unlikely. Tell her she’s welcome to stay with me while you’re away.’
He patted his mother’s hand, knowing that she knew he would tell Celcy and Celcy wouldn’t care. Sibling rivalry wasn’t the only kind of rivalry she knew about.
On the first of New Moon he led a small caravan out of the ceremonial gate of the citadel, itchily anticipating the transition from reality to marvel. Deepsoil Five was reality. Celcy, who had been entirely marvelous at one time, was mostly reality these days. Work was entirely reality. Though the citadel tried to evoke a sense of exaltation and mystery, its ornamented ritualism had become increasingly matter-of-fact over the years. Chad Jaconi called the constant ceremonies ‘painfully baroque’ compared to the sense of the marvelous that had permeated Tripsinging when he was young. Maybe it was something you could feel only when you were young. Tasmin didn’t feel it at all when he was in the citadel.
The marvel, the mystery – and almost always the exaltation – came when he left deepsoil. He anticipated the moment with a kind of hunger, never knowing exactly when it would happen, always sure it would.
He led the group through the sparsely populated area to the west of the citadel, past heavily planted fields of euphoric brou, Jubal’s only export crop. Behind them lay the citadel, the food crop fields, the dwellings, the nondenominational chapel, the service
