Dari pulled at the braids Deliatus had plaited into her hair. They felt strange, tugging as they did on her scalp, but Deliatus had insisted braids were not only more sanitary, but “quite fetching”.
“It’s all pretty easy, girlie,” Sam said, handing Dari a wooden spoon as long as her arm. “Just keep stirring that, so it don’t go and burn. Dole out a bowl for folks when they ask. ‘Latus and Jie figure you stir to remind people there’s stew in the first place, which is why ‘Latus insisted you get all dressed up. Personally, I think your job is a bit easier tonight, with Jie’s sage and onions and ‘Latus’ beef doing pretty good advertisement on their own. Color me glad we’re not in the business of,” she shuddered, “pig tonight.”
Dari nodded, taking the wooden spoon. She held it near her head, listening . It did not speak, like the floorboards had, but hummed in her hands, content with what it was.
“Ok, so you got the spoon,” Sam said, all patience, “now, you just gotta stir, right? Just stick it in the pot, and wave it around, see?” Sam demonstrated as Dari watched, eyes narrowed in concentration. Perhaps Dari had been turned out of some noble house, where things were stirred well out of her sight, Sam reasoned. Watching the girl smile at the spoon moving around the pot, she doubted her own theory. “See? Nothing to it. Just got to stir and look pretty,” Sam laughed.
“Look pretty,” Dari tilted her head up with a laugh.
“Oh, Dari, dear, you do tidy up exceptionally well, if I might say so myself,” Deliatus cooed, leaning against the bar. “Nearly as well as the tavern itself.”
More than one patron had taken a step in and looked at the floor with confusion, as if they had accidentally walked into the wrong building when Sam opened for the evening. It happened again as Dari took her place; a mass of gray-brown hair poked in the door, then back out, before setting a cautious foot through the door frame.
“Oh, for the Mothers’ sakes, Whiskers, we just cleaned up a bit, it doesn't look that different!” Sam exclaimed.
The mass of hair was attached to a weathered, scrawny man with a hurdy-gurdy tucked under his arm. His wild eyebrows drew together in confusion.
“Looks a lot different, to me. All shiny-like. And a shiny new face, too! Who’s this?” he asked, smiling and lifting his hat to Dari.
“Dari. Pot-girl,” she replied, tapping her chest.
“Ah. Whiskers,” he said, tapping his own chest, “Music man. Play anything with strings on.”
“Anything with strings on?” Deliatus teased, fingering the bow of her bodice lacings.
“Depends on how generous folks are feeling, don’t it?” the older man jibed.
“You know these folks about as well as I do,” Sam laughed, “they aren’t near that generous.”
“Ah, Sam, you got to let an old music man dream. Whereabouts you comin’ from, Dari? Are you a traveler like me, or you settlin’ down here in Pickaway?”
Dari opened her mouth, only for Deliatus to interrupt.
“Dear Dari is Sam’s cousin, from Amissopolis,” Deliatus explained, “terribly sad, she got on the wrong end of some bad magic. She’s not altogether able to speak properly again, but she’s working on it, aren’t you, Dari?” Deliatus raised an eyebrow.
Dari frowned, confused.
“Working on it,” she echoed.
“Well, you come to the right place,” Whiskers said, “Sam here is as kind and trusty a host as you could ask for.”
“Don’t go flattering me,” Sam said, giving Whiskers a playful push. “You’re just like a cat. We can’t get rid of you, now that we’ve fed you. He plays for us some nights, Dari.”
“Just like a cat,” Whiskers laughed, rubbing his beard, “don’t have to bother with me much, and I keep the pests under control.” He took a seat near a window and plucked at a few strings, tuning his hurdy-gurdy.
Dari turned to Deliatus, cocking her head.
“I do apologize, Dari, my dear, but a cover story for you is absolutely necessary. I ought to have consulted you about it, but it quite slipped my mind in the process of helping you prepare for the night. While the good people of Pickaway really are tremendously kind, they can also be more than a little--”
“Ignorant. ‘Latus wants to say ignorant, but she’s too fine a lady,'' Sam said. “You not speaking properly, with no family to speak for you, with that pretty hair and those eyes of yours; next thing you know they’ll be saying you’re some kind of lure from the Lich. But, if you’re Sam the Tavernkeep’s cousin, woe betide the fool who chooses to be anything less than gracious to you.”
Dari smiled.
“Dari, Sam the Tavernkeep’s cousin,” she declared with a look of pride.
Sam gave her a nudge with an affectionate elbow.
“There’s a girl. Mayhap jewel-colored hair runs in our family, huh?”
Dari giggled.
“Did I see Whiskers come in?” Jie asked, walking through the kitchen, “I wanted to check with him about some of the songs Dari has been singing.” Jie startled at the sight of Dari, who stood stirring in one of Deliatus’ more professional dresses: a heather-gray bodice laced to her shape, long, white sleeves off her ochre shoulders, a flowing skirt the color of raspberries. Her rough, stained apron did little to dampen the overall effect of the garment.
“Your pot-girl hypothesis proven?” Sam laughed.
“Yes. I mean, of course, as I’d said before, Dari is lovely, of course she’ll be,” he stammered.
“Love-ly,” Dari repeated with a grin.
“You know well that you are,” Jie retorted, “it’s just I wasn’t expecting to see you dressed quite like--”
“Like what?” Deliatus asked, a dangerous smile creeping across her face.
“Forgive me, ladies, my lady-lord, a tray, if you please, before I choke on my foot,” Jie said, escaping with a tray of tankards to carry around the room.
“You working tonight?” Sam asked Deliatus.
Deliatus stretched her arms over her head, eyes closed.
“Perchance. I am dressed, but I feel a bit worn from all the excitement. Since Whiskers is here, I was thinking I might do tenpiece dances. They’re quite good for business. For interested parties unable to part with my going rate, you understand.”
“Good for us, too. Something about seeing such a beautiful lady in motion seems to inspire the menfolk to pay in something other than pig parts,” Sam smiled. “What’ll a tenpiece get a fella?”
“With the possible exception of some of the elves, the men are simply hopeless at proper dancing. A cozy two-step, or, as is more often the case, a poor fellow trying his best to not step on my feet in time to the music,” Deliatus said.
“Sounds reasonable,” Sam nodded. “How about me? What could I get for ten pieces?”
Deliatus motioned Sam closer, cupping a hand over her ear. Sam grinned, her cheeks going rosy.
“You’ll put yourself out of business that way, my lady.”
Deliatus leaned forward, arms folded beneath her breasts.
“Too right. Gratis, then,” she agreed with a demure smile, tweaking Sam’s nose. “But only for you, sweet Sammy. An operating fee, we’ll call it.” Deliatus sauntered away, hips swinging.
“A dancing night?” Jie asked, startling Sam from her daydreaming.
Sam jumped.
“Sisters, Jie! You sneak up on a person!”
“I’d hardly call it sneaking, my lady-lord, when your attentions are so keenly focused elsewhere,” said Jie.
“I’m not keenly focused on anything,” she snapped. “I should set you to...”
“Scrubbing floors?” Jie offered.
Sam scowled, then smiled, mussing Jie’s hair.
“You’re lucky I need your smart mouth about the place, Jie,” Sam said, turning for the kitchen, where a fresh keg of her ale waited.
“Smart mouth,” Dari repeated, nodding at Jie.
“Am I to take this as a compliment, dear Dari?”
Dari wobbled her head, yes-no, maybe.
“You wound me, dear lady,” Jie said, sliding onto his stool at the end of the bar, near Dari’s pot. “After we shared in the toil of bringing the Bough to the gleam of its true nature together.”
Dari reached for Jie’s hand. Taking it, she felt a thrum of energy, like the air before a summer storm, ripple on her skin. A pleasant feeling, Dari thought, warm and bubbly.
“Sorries,” she said, touching her forehead to his hand, as the buzz grew stronger, “you have very a lot of the smartness, I have meaning to say, not only to your mouth.”
Jie stared.
“Dari, did you hear yourself just now?”
“I have the thought I did,” she said. “I always have the hearing to myself.”
“Tell me about the stew, and listen carefully to the words you say.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Dari dropped his hand, casting him cross glare.
“Indulge me, please. I know you must feel I am treating you as some manner of research, but please, be assured, my concern is for you,” Jie begged.
Dari babbled a string of Middle Kanglais, Old Dwarvish and what Jie was reasonably sure was Mori, along with more he could not parse.
He frowned, concentrating.
“Dari, if I didn’t know better, you said not one thing about the stew, but instead delivered a rather cutting insult.”
“Cutting insult,” she repeated.
“Might you be so patient and good as to give me your hand again?”
She offered Jie her hand, which he clasped between both of his.
“Please, insult me again,” he said, “but this time, listen to yourself.”
“You are not being to the alchemist, Jie, or to the other profession to experiment to the animals with very a lot of cuteness.”
Dari dropped the spoon.
“Are you hearing to me to speak Kanglais?”
“Your syntax is quite unusual,” Jie said, “but yes, you are definitely speaking Kanglais. Modern Kanglais, at that. Well, technically post-modern…Kanglais as it is currently spoken in the common parlance, let's say."
Reluctantly, Dari wriggled her hand away from Jie’s. She prattled another mixed sentence, intoned like a question and frowned.
“I think I understood some of that,” Jie said. “Something about storms? And something about speaking to me,” he pushed his glasses up. “You felt a charge, when you touched me, didn’t you?”
Recovering her spoon, Dari nodded.
“I did, too,” he said. “I thought it was because,” he saw Dari’s grin and shook his head. “Never mind my initial reasoning. But it appears you can speak an unusual, but reasonably understandable mode of Kanglais if in contact with someone. How peculiar.”
“Someone?” Dari asked.
“It would stand to reason,” Jie said. “There’s nothing particularly special about me. I make charms, which is only magic handling by the loosest of definitions. This has the scent of magic about it, does it not?”
Dari looked at her feet.
“Particularly special,” she said, turning to stir the pot as a patron approached.
Jie watched her doling out stew with a shaking hand, his reverie broken by Deliatus tugging at his wrist.
“Come, now, Jie, it’s a dancing night! You will show these fellows how to move with a bit of class, won’t you?”
Jie stole one more quick look at Dari before letting himself be led away. He was, despite appearances, an excellent dancer. He had to be. A swift, brutal snowfall when he was seventeen had left him vulnerable to Deliatus’ insistent dance lessons for nearly a month--he’d been as surprised as everyone else to find he had a natural talent for movement.
“Square up, Jie, darling,” Deliatus chided. “And swing me towards those Vandalians, won’t you? That's rather pricey leatherwork they're wearing.”
Jie nodded, his feet following the patterns of Whiskers’ notes by rote.
“I do appreciate your help, Jie, darling, but you are advertising me, here,” Deliatus said with a frown. “How about it? A few good spins and I’ll sweet-talk Sammy into allowing you a song to dance to with the girl of your fancy.”
“My apologies. My mind was elsewhere,” he took a step forward, clasped Deliatus’ waist and turned, sharp, her skirts billowing around her just enough to show a sliver of the smooth, dark skin beneath. “And while I appreciate your magnanimous wheedling, you needn’t. I’ve no one to fancy, girl or otherwise.”
“Oh, Jie, darling” Deliatus teased. “If you could only learn to lie, you’d be a nobleman in a trice, dancing as you do.” Her eyes darted over his shoulder before she released him, stepping away to take a Vandalian’s coin in hand.
Sam had returned with her keg to a contemplative Jie, which was nothing new, and a clumsy pot-girl spilling stew over bowls, which was.
“Just bit by bit, Dari,” she said, wiping spatters from the bar. “Don’t get all nervous, we aren’t at court.”
Dari nodded, returning to the stew pot, not fully able to take her eyes off of Deliatus’ dancing or her mind from Whiskers’ playing. There was something familiar in the movement, in the music, though she could not lay her finger to it.
“Pray, Whiskers, for love of the Mothers and Sisters all, do play something a bit slower,” Deliatus complained, dropping next to the musician, rubbing her right foot. “These poor men, they get over excited playing at impressing me. I ask you, must men wear such heavy boots all of the time? Certainly, if they are so painful when they collide with my feet, they must be no treat to wear, either.”
“Wouldn’t know, miss,” Whiskers said, “I tend toward slippers, myself. You’ve got laborers and dwarves, besides, dancing tonight.”
“Ah, to dance with a musician! Sisters above, I’d settle for a dancer I hadn’t had to teach myself,” she sighed.
“One problem with your wish,” said Whiskers, “musicians and the like don’t haven’t the coin to spend on dances, no matter how alluring the partner.”
“Flattery will not get you a dance. You are what I dance to, besides,” Deliatus said.
“No flattery, girl, simple facts. A nice old folk ballad, how does that sound? It looks like you’ve got an interested party,” he tilted his head down.
“Orm!” Deliatus cried, “When did you get in? Why aren’t you at the bar?”
“Dancin' night, I’m tol’,” he said. “Got two pieces and a right nice penknife, delicate as you please, suited for a fine lady,” the dwarf said, offering his coins and a folding knife small enough to fit in Deliatus’ breast band. She turned her head, scanning for witnesses.
“You're really too good,” she agreed, leaning down, “but only for you,Orm. Only because you’re a dear friend. I simply can't bear bartering. Whiskers?”
Catching sight of the dwarf’s heavy boots, the musician smiled.
“It’s only the fifth of the month, isn’t it? Something sad and sweet, then.”
Whiskers turned his hurdy-gurdy, fingering strings to a song Dari could feel reverberating in her bones. She stared across the room. The hurdy-gurdy was joyful to be a hurdy-gurdy. Its wood reveled in the vibrations of the music Whiskers drew from it, warming in his calloused hands. Long ago, it had been a stocky, burled pear tree near Sugar Mountain--it had caught fireblight in a drought and was felled, but the hurdy gurdy had waited in a log to be discovered, carved out. Not by the man who played it; they had been together only a few decades. The hurdy gurdy recalled different hands bearing different magic turning it, marrying it with string and crank and hammers before the music man. It was a different life than bearing pears, but a good life. The hurdy gurdy turned, it called Dari, and from the hidden depths of memory, she called back:
Will you meet with me by the Amaranthine
My love’s truest desire?
I’ll wait there, with flowers in my hair
My heart’s wildest fire
I could your fill life with secrets that
None other could ever know
Seek me, seek me, I will let you see
My soul all aglow
Was it you I heard singing on the path?
None answered, though I called back
Did you pass by me, waiting ‘neath the trees
As the shadows turned to black?
I would your fill mind with secrets that
None other could ever know
Seek me, seek me, I will let you see
My soul all aglow
Do you know the ages I would wait?
As my flowers start to die?
Will you come join me, by the Amaranthine?
Or leave me here to lie?
I would your fill heart with secrets that
None other could ever know
Seek me, seek me, I will let you see
My soul all aglow
The tavern stared as one, spare Whiskers, who smiled down at the hurdy-gurdy as if it were his clever child charming a new friend. Deliatus shielded a teary-eyed Orm with the veil of her curly hair, holding back tears of her own as his boots flattened her toes. Sam, as prone to shock as rubber, idly wiped the bar.
As Dari opened her mouth to speak, she felt Jie’s slim fingers slide into her hand, just out of sight.
“It is being the song I have very a lot of liking to,” she said, relieved. “Give to Whiskers the coins.”
With a smattering of applause and the clink of coin, the patrons returned to their arguments and flirtations and clumsy dances.
“Thanking to you,” Dari said, just above a whisper.
“I might say the same,” Jie replied, threading his fingers between hers. “‘The Lonesome Sage’ is a favorite of mine, but Deliatus can’t make it through dry-eyed.”
Dari leaned against the bar, her fingers still interlocked with Jie’s.
“The song is having a very lot of beauty to it, and I can to remember to the words to it, but I am not having tothe memory to learning to it.”
“Does this trouble you?”
Dari considered his question.
“I am not having the feeling to the troubles. I had the feeling to the singing to it in me, only.”
“Music of the bone,” Jie said with a wistful sigh, shaking his head. “I apologize, I don’t mean to lecture. It’s an old Dwarvish proverb which translates poorly. It refers to songs so fundamental to one's identity they exist in a person's very bones. It rhymes, in Dwarvish.”
“Oh,” Dari chirruped. In Dwarvish so old Jie struggled to catch a single word, Dari recited a short, sing-song rhyme. “Songs to the stone, also, I am having the thought?”
“
Yes,” Jie agreed, shaken, but intrigued. “They’re a bit different, though. In pre-imperial belief systems, songs of stone were songs which made the world, which continue making the world.”
“I have very a lot of liking liking to this idea,” Dari grinned.
“Do you recall how you learned this proverb? You are rather tall for Dwarvish.”
“This is the being to the obvious fact,” Dari said. “You can to hear to it, even now.”
Jie considered the delicate, pleasant prickling of Dari’s hand in his.
“Perhaps your ears are sharper than mine,” he replied. “I believe I may feel it.”
“To feel to it has very a lot of usefulness,” Dari grinned. “Ask to me can you to dance?”
"Honestly, Dari, you're full of surprises. I shouldn't doubt that you're a fine dancer, as well."
Dari tilted her head.
Jie pondered Dari’s odd grammar, the puzzled arc of her brow a long, uncomprehending moment. The concept of dancing with a woman who had not kicked the steps into his ankles herself was far more foreign to him than any of Dari's languages. She tugged his wrist and pointed to the couples dancing in the tavern.
“Oh,” he said, following her out from behind the bar. “With me?”
The night rolled on as dancing nights usually did. Patrons who had emptied their pockets on Deliatus, or had only come to watch, took the floor themselves, allowing Deliatus to take her leave. More exhausted than after an ordinary night's work, she flopped into a tall chair behind the bar, her money belt heavy and tinkling like a troop of Baladian dancing girls’ bells.
“You know, I never thought I’d see a worse dancer than me, but I think Dari might be,” Sam chuckled.
“Oh, the poor love only just regained use of her legs! If they ache half as bad as my feet, she’s a first-born of Sister Ginger, herself,” Deliatus complained.
“Give ‘em here,” Sam said, pulling a stool to sit on, leaning over to snag one of Deliatus’ ankles.
“You are too kind, Sammy, but it’s hardly sanitary,” Deliatus’ protest died on her lips, watching an elf pick his ears and teeth with the same pocket knife blade.
“The other one?” Sam asked, catching Deliatus' heel as her leg swung up. Sam bore down on the sole of her right foot with strong thumbs. Deliatus stifled a moan, leaning limp against the back of her chair, drawing a smile to Sam’s lips.
“You were saying?”
“Hm?” Deliatus stirred. "Nothing, sweet Sammy. Sanitation is a relative thing, really."
Jie was holding a hand out to Dari, who had somehow managed to trip over her own arm.
Sam stifled a laugh.
“She’s trying, though, more than I ever did. I’ll grant Dari that much.”
“Oh, my. But who knows what dances are fashionable where she came from? Perhaps that,” Deliatus nodded to Dari, who wobbled like a penguin, “is simply all the rage there. Oh, Dari, dear, do be careful!”
“Nice catch, Jie!” Sam called. “But hands where the Mothers can see them!”
“She is the one who requested a dance, my lady-lord, and do believers not hold the Mothers are all-seeing?"
“You know what I mean! No taking advantage of her clumsiness, unless you’ve got ten piece on you."
“Never mind the hecklers, Dari,” Jie said, clapping her arm. “If you’re interested, I’d be more than pleased to teach you a few steps with a smaller audience. Or a less suspicious one, at least.”
Dari shook her head.
“I can to dance,” she insisted. “The way has the difference to this.”
Dari gripped Jie’s wrist and set her chin on his shoulder. For a long moment, she was silent, her breath slowing.
“Dari?”
“I am having the need to the the quietness, please,” she whispered, tilting her head to brush her cheek against his. “Have listening to the music, but have the listening to me, first.”
Jie stilled, listening to Dari breathing, to the subtle thrum of her skin against his. A building rhythm emerged, a sweet back and forth, unrelated to the music in the air, it drew him in, like a leaf swirling in a storm, like magic.
Dari pressed her cheek against his and took a delicate half-step backward. Jie followed. Dari rounded him, the rhythm drawing him to her, a series of tiny, complex steps always keeping their bodies scarce inches apart.
Entranced, Jie did not notice the moment when Whiskers’ music changed. He did not play for them, he played them. The swish of Dari’s skirts, the soft squeak of Jie’s boots across the floorboards, the simple, subtle beat that Jie could not hear, but felt down to his marrow--Whiskers plucked note for note. The hurdy-gurdy wound to a slow halt only a few moments after Dari's steps stopped.
Dari wiggled her fingers at a stunned Jie, who took them.
“I told to you I could to do the dancing,” Dari whispered to him, her head at just the right angle so that no one could see her lips move.
“I stand thoroughly corrected,” Jie smiled. “Though the offer to teach you more standard steps stands, as well.”
Dari only grinned and returned to her pot.
The smattering of patrons still upright applauded, tossing whatever coin they had left into the dish at Whiskers' feet.
“Last call,” Sam’s voice, cracking and hoarse, cut through the applause. “It’d be tough to top that one, friend,” she nodded at Whiskers. Distracted, she reached for Deliatus’ feet, but at some point, unheard, unfelt, she had moved. She stood behind Sam, arms wrapped about her shoulders in a crushing hug.
“Marvelous, sweet Sammy, simply marvelous.”
“Stay tonight,” Sam said, too entranced to invent a clever invitation.
“Oh, as if you could stop me,” Deliatus teased, kissing her cheek.
“Last call!” Sam shouted, snapping the remaining dazed patrons to attention and out the door.
"Keep each other," Whiskers nodded at Deliatus and Sam, ducking a little bow to Jie and Dari.
The tune would affect Whiskers until his dying day. Ever elusive, he played his fingers bloody, through a half century of old calluses, but could not recreate it. The song was different from songs of stone, or songs of bone, and though he would never admit it aloud, he knew, deep in his musician’s soul, it was not a song a person--that is to say a sapient, a mortal--should be able to play. At least, not more than once. Something he couldn’t quite understand gripped him, watching Dari move, watching Jie follow after. The tune had been as effortless as breathing, his fingers moved on their own, plucking the sound of a moment. He arranged a song about the song instead, Heart of the Bough. It was a good song; people who danced to it tended to leave together or buy a room by the end of the night. A real love song.