She sighed and pulled her empty mug back toward her. The heavy man huffed something under his breath and trundled away. Once he was gone, Divad ordered a glass of Kuren wheat bitter and set to explaining about acoustic attunement, and the parts he was struggling to understand. All the while Jemma nodded and smiled patiently. And though she seemed quite weary, she listened and asked questions. Later, they spoke of small things as only a brother and sister can.
Divad couldn’t recall what, beyond attunement, he’d jabbered about that night with Jemma. The details were lost to him. But he remembered how it had felt to slip back into that unself-conscious kind of chat that didn’t have to be about anything. Just talk for its own sake.
It had felt rather like the rain tonight. Soft, lulling. And yet, his hands continued to shake. It was the memory itself that unsettled him. A memory marked by this scar in the wood. To try and settle his nerves, he began to hum. He recalled a particular tune Jemma had been fond of. Then he picked up the taper punch again, holding it firmly but not too tightly.
Before he could begin, he heard the sound of steps behind him in the shop. “Maesteri?”
Divad remained poised, irritated yet also grateful for the intrusion. “Back here.”
A third year Lyren stepped into the light of his lamps. There was a long moment, while Sedri, a woman gifted with a powerful alto voice, surveyed the tabletop. “Are you gouging a new soundboard?”
He let out a sigh, realizing she wouldn’t be simply shooed away. Sedri was nigh onto fifty, coming to Descant after decades in the performance taverns. Despite her age, she could be as trusting as a child. But her many years had made her rather fearless, an important quality for someone doing the kind of singing he’d been teaching her.
He nodded for her to sit beside him. Then he gathered in her inquisitive stare, her original need of him apparently forgotten. “If you could go back,” he began, fixing an instructive metaphor in his mind, “if you could back and do it again, would you spend those thirty years singing in smoke-filled taverns?”
She never averted her eyes, which, far from being sleepy at this forsaken hour, burned with the shrewdness of age. “You mean would I trade the smoke that has gotten into my vocal timbre.”
Divad nodded. “You came by your craft a hard way. And those long nights airing out your songs through tabaccom haze has surely damaged your vocal chords. Given you some lovely alto tones, to be sure, but mostly given you a smoky sound.”
She gave him a questioning look.
“That’s not criticism,” he added. “Your control and vocal strength are equal to or better than Lyren half your age. But . . .” he trailed off, forming his question more accurately, “if you could have the same facility in your voice, but have back the clarity, would you take it?”
After a moment, her face bloomed into a thoughtful smile. “No. I earned this tone.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “Just so. For my viola here, I’m doing my damnedest to be sure she has all the smoke and haze in her voice that she had before she was broken. Now, you get some sleep. You’ve a lesson on vocal dynamics tomorrow, and the regimen is an athletic one.”
Sedri stood up.
“By the way, what was it you wanted when you came in?” Divad asked.
She smiled down at him. “I had a question about attunement. But I think I’ll hold onto it for now.”
When her footsteps had completely receded, Divad turned back to the new soundboard—his hands steady as wrought iron—and continued to scar the viola.
The smell of pine resin was strong in his parents’ home. His father took in a plug every cycle for hauling away the carpenter scraps, which they’d always burned in their fireplace. The scent might have been a perfect welcome if Divad hadn’t returned for Jemma’s wake.
Six mourners—three of them unfamiliar to him—sat with his father and mother in the foreroom of their home. On the floor in front of the hearth lay a simple casket. The wood shape held an awful finality. Seeing it, Divad gasped. He hadn’t been home in four years. Hadn’t seen Jemma in . . . was it a year? More?
Time got away from him while he was concentrating on his studies. And until now, he’d given little thought to what he’d left behind.
He put down the viola case he carried, and went to his father. He struggled to find the right words. Really, his best response to this would be found in his music. He settled on, “I’m sorry.” The words were entirely too small for the feeling inside him, inside this room. His mother reached up, still holding a kerchief, and grasped his wrist. Tortured eyes pleaded with him to do something.
“Oh Divad . . .” Her voice quavered. “We had no idea. We thought she took a laundry job. Her few coins . . .” She couldn’t continue.
He looked at his father. “What happened to Jemma?”
The shame Divad saw rise on his father’s face was terrible to see. Such a look of helpless failure. The man’s own skin looked heavy on his bones.
His father softly cleared his throat. “Jemma took to beds to earn coin, Divad. The kind of man that would pay her . . . liked to use his fists. It’s my fault, son. I should have been able . . .”
Divad began to feel a cascade of grief overwhelming him. Grief for Jemma; for his mother’s broken heart; for his father’s feelings of shame and failure; for his own absence during it all. He looked down at the top of the casket. Pine.
Before he realized what he was doing, he retreated to his instrument, unclasped the case, drew out the viola, and began to play without bothering to resin his bow or tune. He escaped into the only song that came to mind, “If I’m Reminded.”
The sweet sound of his viola filled
