“Daerth filled me in on parts of it,” said Eany quietly, leaning on his elbows as the plush nobleman's carriage bumped and jostled along the forest path. Metcenzerin had chosen to sit inside with the others instead of with Kedalimen so they could talk, and yet both Daerth and Eany seemed hesitant to make any kind of plan just yet.

Now, Eany was taking over the conversation. Metcenzerin sighed, but permitted the hijacking to continue.

“I don't remember what happened, except nightmares that turned into blackness. Was it Kwanai? All that muttering... was she casting a spell on us?”

Daerth shifted uncomfortable, her hip still obviously paining her, but said nothing. Metcenzerin hesitated, then replied carefully, “She claims it wasn't her, but I suppose there's no knowing what's going on behind a swamper's eyes. I'm continuing under the assumption it wasn't her doing, but she certainly hasn't gained any trust points.”

“Trust points?”

“Yeah, you know... how much you trust a person? You and Raceel should certainly give Daerth a few after this, right, Dary?”

The huntress glared sideways at her, but understood enough of what was going on not to complain about the nickname. Somehow, that wasn't as satisfying as if she had, but Metcenzerin took the small victory. One step at a time...

“Listen, we'll be at the manor in just a few moments,” she insisted, dragging the failure of a conversation back around to their new, strange hosts. “What is the plan if they try something? Should we insist on sharing a room so we can keep watch throughout the night?”

“Not a chance,” groused Eany. “I finally get a chance to sleep inside again, and I'm not sharing with a lot of crazy people who want to kill me.”

“Only Kwanai and Raceel want to kill you,” Metcenzerin corrected optimistically, “and that's an inactive desire. If these siblings and their mistress want to kill us, that would be an active threat.”

“All the same, I want a bed, not to share a floor with you lot. My mind hurts and my bones ache.”

The trees cleared slightly, and when Metcenzerin glanced out the window, she saw the manor. “Fine, no plans,” she grumbled, “but I'm telling you I don't like this. I'm pretty sure these siblings are the sirens we were hearing, and despite the fact that they look, sound, and are named like Northern Mountain folk, I just don't trust them. So keep your eyes sharp, alright?”

“My leg is broken,” Daerth grumbled. “I'm not going to be much help if we get ambushed.”

“Just... try.”

The carriage slowed, the horses stomped, and then their driver jumped down from her perch. She opened the door with an odd little smile, revealing the steps and the ivy-framed front doors of the manor right beyond her sweeping hand.

“Welcome to The Manor of Music,” she declared majestically, and bowed like a man at his curtain call. “Home of Nelz and the Siblings of Highmark, and, now, your humble inn for the night. Dinner awaits.”

She held out her hand to help Daerth out (though the huntress refused it and insisted on hobbling up the steps herself) and then helped Eany get Raceel out of the slumped-over slouch the unconscious paladin had slid into during the ride. Whatever the Stitchdoctor had done to knock them both out, she'd obviously gone a bit overboard with the larger black paladin.

“Curses below, this armor is heavy,” Kedalimen grunted as they hauled Raceel out of the carriage. “Curse these scrawny arms...”

“You Northerners seem to like cursing things very vaguely,” Eany commented mildly, also straining to lift the near-giant. “Is that a... cultural thing? You don't like calling on the gods directly?”

“Ask Metcenzerin'n,” Kedalimen replied shortly, and refused to comment further.

Kwanai and the Stitchdoctor were waiting just inside on opposite ends of a finely-carved couch, a carafe of wine and glasses sitting, untouched, at each of their elbows. Kwanai looked up as they entered, but her face was, as always, a set and stony neutral with a touch of I'm looking down on you.

“Lay her down there,” managed Kedalimen, gesturing with her head to another empty couch in the entry hall. Eany complied, and with sighs of relief they set Raceel's limp body down again. “She can sleep off whatever happened to her there, then find her own way to bed,” Kedalimen continued, a little less then graciously. “Hey, you two, where's Arin?”

Kwanai redirected her blank stare at the northern woman. “Not here.”

Kedalimen raised her eyes in frustration, but before she could make any move the man in question appeared from a side door. He had a platter of sliced bread and cheese in his hands and a far more welcoming smile on his lips.

“Ah, good, you found them safely. I just spoke to Nelz a few moments ago, and she's planning on making an appearance briefly before dinner, which is almost ready to be served. Give us a few minutes more. Kedal, help me.”

“Fine, but you're helping with the horses afterwards.”

The two siblings vanished into the side room, though Arinimen left the platter of snacks with them. With the group all together again, Metcenzerin considered prompting another hasty strategy meeting, but the distant echo of strings singing stopped her mid-breath.

The humming strings drew their notes out lightly as they came steadily closer, a bright and cheery melody designed to set feet tapping. Metcenzerin didn't hesitate; she drew her lute, plucked the strings and smiled in satisfaction, and joined in with the sharper, shorter strings of her own preferred instrument. Eany immediately began to bob his head at the music, and Daerth's ever-present scowl lightened as lute and fiddle became more and more confident with one another.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The fiddle-player appeared at the top of the stairs from the hall, a woman clad in dark green with pale yet reddish hair curling neatly around her ears. Her fiddle was perched confidently beneath her chin, and yet her eyes focused everywhere but on her strings. Her gaze glided over Metcenzerin with her lute, over Eany bobbing to the tune, over Daerth sitting awkwardly and grimacing in pain, over Kwanai and the Stitchdoctor, over Raceel... and then back to Metcenzerin. The fiddler's playing gained speed, and Metcenzerin slowed, then stopped completely to stare in awe as the woman's bow seemed to take flight, her fingers a blur as she poured out a dramatically complex re-imagining of the fairly common tavern-jig.

When she finished, lifting her bow from string with a flourish, Metcenzerin's applause was pure genuine reaction.

“I have never heard that song played so beautifully!” she cried, eyes gleaming with excitement. “We must play another if you could possibly slow down for my lute.”

The fiddler smiled, slightly condescending but not cruelly so. “Perhaps we shall, lutenist, but first, introductions. They call me Nelz, with a Z. Nelz the Songbird.”

“Metcenzerin of the Three Voices. These are my companions.” She went around, briefly introducing the others in as flowery a way as she could come up with on short notice. The Stitchdoctor was hardest, so she just slipped the words “our doctor” in-between the far more impressive “Eanith, Paladin of Cereth” and “Raceel Shatterblade, the Black Paladin.”

“You are, of course, all welcome to spend the night,” Nelz declared once the introductions were over. “Arin is doubtless thrilled to have someone to show off to again, and I have plenty of spare rooms. Just be aware that I am prone to playing through the night, and the entire manor is my stage.”

“Don't you sleep?” asked Daerth, though Metcenzerin tried, too late, to shush her. A flash of impatience crossed Nelz's face, irritation audible in her sharp reply.

“An artist paints when he has an idea, and I play when the music strikes me. Often, that is in the silence of the night.” She muttered something under her breath and shot Daerth a dirty look, then turned away and went back up the stairs. Metcenzerin gave Daerth a second helping of the musician's glare.

“What?” the huntress protested. “Seems a fair question to me.”

“She's a musician,” Metcenzerin snapped. “Great musicians don't sleep like normal people do.”

“You do.”

“I do now, because we're on a quest to save the world and I have to cooperate with you all!”

A clanging bell interrupted the budding argument. Arinimen appeared in the doorway again. “Dinner is served,” he said with the same flare of proud yet playful theatrics his sister had expressed in front of the manor.

The evening passed pleasantly for those who could naturally wear a smile they didn't fully believe. Metcenzerin and Eany hit it off well with the singing siblings, and after the hot dinner and a glass of splendid wine, Daerth loosened up a bit as well. The Stitchdoctor did not. She took a plate of food, stood, and walked out of the room right at the beginning of the meal. When Metcenzerin, curious, followed, she saw the Stitchdoctor simply sitting in the entry hall, watching Raceel sleep, plate untouched.

Arinimen was clearly the talkative one, leading the charge on conversation topics. He asked about Metcenzerin's career, compared notes with the siblings' own, far less traveled experiences.

“We came south looking for cheap bardic work, of course, but very quickly fell in with Nelz. Never needed to find our own stages after that. When she got this place, it was essentially a forgone conclusion that we were coming with her.”

He tried to ask Eany about his work next, but Eany just smiled and deflected. Not like Kwanai (who responded to everything with a wordless glower) but easily and charmingly, redirecting back into topics that would get Arinimen talking again.

Kwanai rose first, abruptly. Without missing a beat, Arinimen gestured at Kedalimen to show the plaguemancer to the guestroom they had set up for her. When Kedalimen returned to the table, she revealed that Raceel had regained consciousness and that she and the Stitchdoctor had retreated to the guestrooms as well.

Daerth, Eany, and Metcenzerin lingered for a while longer, enjoying the time to relax especially after Arinimen brought some warm cinnamon rolls to the table, but the day had been long and tiring. Eany left with Daerth after an hour to help her up the stairs, leaving Metcenzerin alone with Arinimen.

“Your company is very odd,” the latter commented, pouring himself more wine. Metcenzerin waved the wine away with a smile when Arinimen offered. “A Northerner,” the singer continued, “a swamper, a female paladin, and a... what is that masked woman? I never got her name.”

Metcenzerin shrugged lightly. “A doctor from the city. Have you ever been to the King's Circle?”

“No, and I frankly don't want to. I don't know how you can bear to befriend kingdom swords like that.”

“Necessity.” Metcenzerin paused, then added thoughtfully. “I've learned the necessity of gambling a little in life, even with the people I befriend. If you seek to gain anything in life – money, friends, anything – then you have to be willing to risk losing something else. It forces you to weigh the risks, carefully consider the value of what you seek to gain. Teruites taught me that, and for all their oddities, the practice has served me well.”

Arinimen made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “Teru is a joke of a god. Kingdomers will let anything in their Circle.”

Metcenzerin merely smiled.

That night, the six companions settled down in their own individual rooms, scattered around a curved hall of unused guest bedrooms. Raceel, restless after her extended unconsciousness, paced the corridor outside, armorless so she would not clank outside the sleepers' doors all night, but she wore her greatsword on her back and her black cloak trailed on the ground behind her.

She was on watch for people trying to get into locked doors, not out. When her back was turned, a small shadow slipped out of one of the rooms, disappearing around the corner before Raceel turned around to pace back again.

Then, as midnight drew near, Raceel heard the first faint traces of a low and mournful fiddle. And, with it, the faint whisper of a voice within her head. She drew her sword and followed the sound.

Daerth woke suddenly, whatever nightmare she'd been having merging into the waking darkness. The Stitchdoctor crouched over her, the big glass eyes staring darkly into Daerth's from mere inches away, but what had awakened Daerth was the suffocating cloth clamped over her mouth and nose.

She tried to move, to fight, but her limbs had already gone heavy and limp. She tried to bite at the Stitchdoctor's hands, but the cloth between them dulled an already dull effort. Finally, Daerth could only groan, weak and muffled, and stare at the Stitchdoctor with disappointment and fear.

Then, then, the Stitchdoctor relaxed her grip, but it was too late. The world was fading again. The last thing Daerth saw was the Stitchdoctor, sitting back up, raising a finger to her masked lips.

“Shhh, Daerth,” said the familiar raspy voice, but now in a gentle, close whisper that seemed to lessen the roughness. “I am just fixing problems.”