Just after dawn the next day, Felix dressed himself and made his way to the dining hall while Janus and everyone else in the dorm was still asleep. A plan of how to get out of being assaulted by Madina’s sneezing song had come to him in a dream, and it began in the Dining Hall on the other side of the complex.

Said Dining Hall was not a proper hall at all, but something like a tavern built against the intersection of the South and East walls of the Barracks. The interior walls were simple plaster and brick with wooden beams crisscrossing above a floor of polished wooden planks. There were rows of long tables with stools like in a tradition dining hall in the back, but the front had smaller, circular tables ringed with chairs where one could eat a quick meal and go, just like a tavern. There was even a long counter like a bar next to the tables, though they served nothing stronger than wine and small beer. Felix had no idea why they built it this way, but he felt strangely at home. Maybe Bards were naturally drawn to taverns.

Mathilda, an older Frankish woman with a round face and a swirl of gray hair poking out from her bonnet, was standing over a huge black cauldron behind the counter and stirring a soup of leftovers from last night’s dinner. Felix took a bowl from the stack on the end of the bar and handed it over for his breakfast.

“My, aren’t we up early today, young man?” she said warmly, taking his bowl and filling it with a white, creamy broth.

Felix nodded politely and took the bowl back to his seat, taking a piece of bread from a basket in the middle. He sopped up the soup with bread, then targeted the vegetables with a spoon until there was nothing left but the little scraps of fish, which he wrapped in the handkerchief Madina had given him and shoved in his tunic pouch.

From here, he went to the courtyard where he had first entered the Fortress of Song, as he thought of the Barracks at the time. It was just starting to warm up after the post-dawn chill and he could feel the cold dew on the grass brush against his ankles. He walked up to one of the few buildings that had a thatched roof and searched for a small figure in the dim light. Sure enough, there was the gray cat lying on the one corner of the roof the sun was hitting from over the wall.

Felix removed the fish from his pouch, unwrapped it, and held it up so the cat could smell it. “Here cat, here. Come and get the fish. Come and get it.”

The cat perked up and jumped onto the wet grass. Felix broke off a small piece of fish and placed it in front of the cat. While it ate, he produced a pair of parchment scissors he had “borrowed” from the library on his way to the Dining Hall and trimmed some hair off its hind end. By the time the cat had eaten all the fish, Felix had a decent handful of cat hair and wrapped it in the handkerchief where the fish had been.

As Felix left, the cat rubbed up against his leg. Its hair had been getting long, so maybe it appreciated the trim. He gave it a grateful scratch behind the ear before departing. It had certainly been more accommodating than he would have expected from any cat he knew.

When he reached the north courtyard, Felix went to the spot where he and Madina trained the day before. She wasn’t there yet, as expected, and he hid behind a nearby bush where she wouldn’t be able to see him when she came.

Within ten minutes, Madina walked into view. Felix had already taken his lute off his back, so he only needed to take the cat hair out and empty it into his palm. If this worked, he would finally be rid of her; if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be any repercussions unless she turned around at the wrong moment and he was caught in the act. He waited until she was close enough that he could hear her breathing, held the hair near his lips, and blew as gently as he could while still getting fur the dander airborne. He quietly picked up his lute and put his fingers in the right positions. All that was left was to time the song correctly. One second. Two seconds. Three…

He began to play the sneezing song, targeting Madina as hard as he could.

It was true that he was trying to cheat, but he didn’t really know that she would have a phlegmatic reaction to cat hair—it was just an informed guess. His family was one of the few in his village that kept cats, and Felix could recognize the usual signs. First, he had seen Madina give the cat a look of disdain when they first came in, a look she spared for no other person or creature. Then yesterday, when the cat had come prowling around during their lessons, she had conspicuously avoided it.

But those could easily be coincidences. All he was doing with the cat hair was weighing the dice in his favor, just in case. If she sneezed now, he would be able to convince her, and maybe even himself, that had all come from him. Besides, it's not like he would be putting it to practical use anytime soon.

“Ah-achoo! Achoo!” Madina sneezed as he reached the midpoint of the first phrase. Success! It was only two sneezes, but her eyes were watering…well, maybe—it was kind of hard to see in this light. But anyway, he thought—

Before he could finish the thought, he was on his knees. This time, she had contorted his pinkie finger into what should have been an impossible angle. The pain was much worse than yesterday, enough to completely drown out his feeling of triumph.

“You! I saw that!” she screamed, enraged. His heart sank. It wasn’t like they could kick him out, but he had heard there were prison cells underneath the library. Or maybe she would just break his finger off.

“I’m sorry, I’m so so so sorry! I promise I’ll never do it again! Just let me go, you’re going to break my finger off!”

Taking Felix by the arm, she threw him hard into the trunk of an oak tree. He grunted as his head hit the bark and he slumped to the ground. It was much worse than losing a finger, she was going to kill him right there.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Did you really think you could get away with that? Did you think I was that stupid?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking…please, please forgive me. I’ll do it right, I will!”

“If you start a song when your target is that close,” she said, her tone still sharp, but somewhat softer, “or you expose yourself like that, it won’t matter if the effect works—you’ll still end up getting killed.

“W-What?” Felix croaked, confused.

“Still,” she said, and her look turned indulgent, “You figured out that you needed to try to take me unawares to make it work.” She held out her hand to him. “So I’ll congratulate you on that.”

Madina’s attitude had completely reversed. As she helped him up, Felix detected the faintest hint of a smile. For a moment, he felt embarrassed, even ashamed. Then he realized something.

“You’re telling me that I spent all day trying to use that song on you even though I really couldn’t?”

“Of course not. I never said that a song was completely ineffective against someone who knows it is coming, just much less effective. You simply needed to realize how much less effective.”

“But you made…” Felix tried to remember the name of the boy who Madina had been watching the pond yesterday but drew a blank. “That one guy, you almost made him choke on his own spit, and he was prepared!”

“That is because I have been practicing that song all my life. As I told you, that was a difference in power.”

Felix made a sound that was half a grunt and half a sigh. His uncle had tried to give him the same sort of roundabout lesson, and it had always pissed him off.“You needed to figure it out on your own. I don’t remember telling you you had to play right in front of me.”

Felix clenched his fists and took a deep breath. What he needed to focus on was the fact that he wouldn't have to spend the rest of the morning being forced the sneeze and cough until he nearly passed out.

“Right, now I want you to try it on Joshua.” She put particular emphasis on the name Felix had forgotten. “He usually comes around here in the morning, so you can set an ambush.”

Felix had been going through a whirlwind of emotions from joy to fear to relief to anger, and now he went back to fear. He had never considered that she would try to make him do it again, and he had no idea if he had really even done it in the first place. If he failed as miserably as yesterday, would she figure it out? And what position would she contort his body into if she did?

But before he could panic further, he was saved by the familiar face of the man from the forest named Bruno.

“Sorry dear, asked me to bring him to the library. The lad wants to learn to read, so we have to find someone to teach him.”

This time, Madina showed no reaction to being called “dear” by the man who Felix had heard from Chretien was her husband. Now that Felix thought about it, their relationship should have been obvious from how tender she had been with his unconscious body back in the woods, not to mention the way she had refused to let Janus help get him in the cart.

“Oh, I see,” said Madina. Was that disappointment? Did she enjoy teaching him? Or maybe just torturing him? Or maybe…did she want to go on because she was proud of him?

For the first time in months, Felix felt a familiar hollowness in his stomach. There’s no reason to feel ashamed, he thought. I barely know this lady. But the feeling didn't go away.

“Well, Felix, you have managed the most difficult part.” Felix was shocked to hear her use his name for the first time but tried to hide it. “You can practice on your own from here on out. I’m going to tend to…some matters now,” she said, trying to resume her usual aloof posture as she walked in the opposite direction he and Bruno were headed.

"She can be a little harsh,” Bruno said as they walked, “But she has a very good heart. I can tell she’s proud of you, in her way.”

“Oh, really?” Felix said quietly, not looking at him. “Well, I’m glad, I guess.”

“That’s why I’m not going to tell her what you did.”

Felix stopped dead. “What?” His voice quivered. “What do you mean?”

“You should remember from the woods that I can control animals with my song. Do you remember what I looked like when you snuck up on me?”

“You were staring straight forward, like you were somewhere else…”

“Because I wasn’t just controlling the boar, I was seeing through its eyes. I can do that with any animal.”

Oh God, Felix thought. The cat was him?

“I’ve been using Tinberry to keep an eye on, well, everyone, since one of our friends was killed in the field the other day. His eyes can catch people trying to sneak in at night better than a human’s. Imagine my surprise when I thought I had met a fellow animal lover, only to get half of the hair on my—or his—back clipped off.

You really ought to apologize to our clerk Lucemo—Tinberry is his cat and he wasn’t due for a trim.”

“I—I don’t know what to say. I just didn’t want to get ‘demonstrated’ on anymore.”

“Lad, using songs properly is how we Bards survive, even the ones who don't use Crafting. You know just the other day one of us, a fellow by the name of Jonathan…”

“I already know about that,” Felix snapped, suddenly irritated, “That Jonathan guy only got killed in the first place because he was doing the Guild’s dirty work, right? And I guess I’ve been roped into doing the same since I took the test without knowing what I was getting into. Maybe I should be taking this very seriously so I don’t end up like him. The thing is, I don't have any choice in the matter—now that they know I’m a ‘True Bard’ or whatever, I can’t even walk away from this place without you lot chasing me down for it. So it shouldn't be surprising if I was cutting corners learning the damn song when I never wanted to learn it in the first place.”

For a long, awkward moment, neither of them said anything. Then Bruno sighed out loud, a whimsical sigh full of understanding and good humor.

“Did Yew tell you that? Aye, there might be something like that on the books, but I doubt it was ever seriously enforced. We don’t have the manpower to go chasing down a kid like you just ‘cause you know a few things about us. Besides, without training, there’s not much you can do, whatever Yew’s told you. If you want to leave, you can go right now. Hell, I’ll even take you back to the ante-City.”

Felix bit his lip. When he thought about it, that made quite a bit of sense. He was barely able to make an animal take a single misstep, let alone doom a whole army with a song like Yew had said. Then what was the point of lying to him? Did he really take that much pleasure in messing with people?

“Well?” Bruno asked with mock impatience.

There was really no question of him leaving this place. Even without them chasing him down, he was a foreigner with no practical skills, and trying to get back to Castile with no money would certainly be more dangerous than whatever they were going to have him do. He might as well get used to the idea of being a Bard and risking his life for the sake of dead poets.

At least, for the time being.

“No, I—I want to stay,” he said, adding inwardly, But I won’t say I’m sorry.

“Excellent! Glad to have you aboard,” said Bruno, clasping him by the hand like they were meeting for the first time. As he started to walk again, he added, “Incidentally, cats don’t make Madina sneeze. She glares at Tinberry because she sees how spoiled he is and thinks he should shape up.”