"I cannot believe this!" Talaysen fumed, testing the bonds about his wrists and giving the effort up after a few moments. A good thing, too; since they were roped together at the wrists, his efforts had been wrenching Rune's shoulders out of their sockets. "First the damn Guild gets all free-lance musicians barred from the last three Faires-and now this-"
Rune didn't say anything, which was just as well. There wasn't much she could say-and certainly none of it would have made their guards vanish, eased his temper, or gotten them free of their bonds.
There were three major Faires up here in the north of the kingdom, all within a week of each other: the Wool Faire at Naneford, the Cattle Faire at Overton, and the Faire of Saint Jewel at Hyne's Crossing. Talaysen had planned to make all of them, for all three of them were good places to make contacts for wintering-over.
All three were held within the cathedral grounds inside each city-and at all three, when Talaysen and Rune had tried to gain entrance, they had been turned back by guards at the gates. Church guards, even though the Faires were supposed to be secular undertakings.
Each guard looked down his nose at them as he explained why they had been barred. There were to be no musicians allowed within except those with Guild badges. That was the beginning and the end of it. The Guild had petitioned the City Council and the Church, and they had so ruled; the Council on the grounds that licensing money was being lost, the Church on the grounds that musicians encouraged revelry and revelry encouraged licentiousness. If Rune and Talaysen wished to play in the streets of the city, or within one of the inns, they could purchase a busking permit and do so, but only Guild musicians and their apprentices would be playing inside the Faire. They found out later that there was no "free" entertainment in the Faires this year; anyone who wished to hear music could pay up a copper to listen to apprentices perform within a Guild tent, or a silver to hear Journeymen. That was the entertainment by day-anyone who sought music after dark could part with three silvers to listen to a single Master at night. There were no dancers in the "streets" or otherwise. In fact, there was nothing within the Faire grounds but commerce and Church rituals. Rune would not have been overly surprised to learn that the Guild had even succeeded in banning shepherds from playing to their herds within the Faire bounds.
It was Rune's private opinion that there would be so many complaints that this particular experiment would be doomed after this year, and Talaysen agreed-but that didn't help them now.
Talaysen had been angry at the first Faire, furious at the second, and incoherent with rage at the third. Rune had actually thought that he might brain the third gate-guard-who besides his Church-hireling uniform had worn Guild colors and had been particularly nasty-with his own two hands. But he had managed to get control of his temper, and had walked away without doing the man any damage.
But by then, of course, their coin-reserve was seriously low, and their efforts to find an inn that did not already have a resident musician had been completely without result. So rather than risk a worse depletion of their reserves, they headed out into the countryside, where, with judicious use of fish-hook and rabbit snare, they could at least extend their supplies.
In a few days they had gotten as far as Sire Brador Jofferey's lands. And that was where they ran into a trouble they had never anticipated.
Sire Brador, it seemed, was involved in a border dispute with his neighbor, Sire Harlan Dettol. By the time they entered Sire Brador's lands, the dispute had devolved into warfare. Under the circumstances, strangers were automatically suspect. A company of Sire Brador's men-at-arms had surrounded them as they camped-and Rune thanked God that they had not put out any rabbit snares!-and took them prisoner with hardly more than a dozen words exchanged.
A thin and nervous-looking man guarded them now, as they sat, wrists bound behind their backs and feet hobbled, in the shade of an enormous oak. At least they gave us that much, Rune thought wearily; they could have been left in the full sun easily enough. The Sire's men were not very happy about the way things were going; she had picked that up from listening to some of the conversations going on around them. Exchanging of insults and stealing or wrecking anything on the disputed land was one thing-but so far six men had been killed in this little enterprise, and the common soldiers were, Rune thought, justifiably upset. They had signed on with the Sire to be guards and deal with bandits-and to harass their neighboring Sire now and again. No one had told them they were going to go to war over a silly piece of land.
Another man-at-arms approached on heavy feet, walking towards them like a clumsy young bull, and the nervous fellow perked up. Rune reckoned that their captivity was at an end-or that, at least, they were going somewhere else.
Good. There's pebbles digging into my behind.
"The cap'n 'll see the prisoners now," the burly fellow told their guard, who heaved a visible sigh of relief and wandered off without any warning at all. That left the burly man to stare at them doubtfully, as if he wasn't quite certain what to do with them.
"You got t' get t'yer feet," he said, tentatively. "You got t' come with me."
Talaysen heaved a sigh of pure exasperation. "That's going to be a bit difficult on both counts," he replied angrily. "We can't get to our feet, because you've got us tied back to back. And we can't walk because you've got us hobbled like a couple of horses. Now unless you're going to do something about that, we're going to be sitting right here until Harvest."
The man scratched his beard and looked even more uncertain. "I don't got no authority to do nothin' about that," he said. "I just was told I gotta bring you t' the cap'n. So you gotta get t'yer feet."
Talaysen groaned. Rune sighed. This would be funny if it weren't so stupid. And if they weren't trussed up like a couple pigs on the way to market. It might get distinctly unfunny, if their guard decided that the application of his boot to their bodies would get them standing up . . . she contemplated her knees, rather than antagonize him by staring at him.
She looked up at the sound of footsteps approaching; yet another man-at-arms neared, this one in a tunic and breeches that were of slightly better quality and showing less wear than the other man's.
"Never mind, Hollis," said the newcomer. "I decided to come have a look at them myself." He surveyed them with an air of vacant boredom. "Well, what do you spies have to say for yourselves?"
"Spies?" Talaysen barked in sheer outrage. "Spies? Where in God's Sacred Name did you get that idea?"
Rune fixed the "captain," if that was what he was, with an icy glare. "Since when do spies camp openly beside a road, and carry musical instruments?" she growled. "Dear God, the only weapons we have are a couple of dull knives! What were we supposed to do with those, dig our way into your castle? That would only take ten or twenty years, I'm sure!"
The captain looked surprised, as if he hadn't expected either of them to talk back to him. If all he's caught so far are poor, frightened farmers, I suppose no one has.
He blinked at them doubtfully. "Well," he said at last, "if you aren't spies, then you're conscripts." As Talaysen stared at him in complete silence, he continued, looking them over as if they were a pair of sheep. "You-with the gray hair-you're a bit long in the tooth, but the boy there-"
"I'm not a boy," Rune replied crisply. "I'm a woman, and I'm his wife. And you can go ahead and conscript me, if you want, but having me around isn't going to make your men any easier to handle. And they're going to be even harder to handle after I castrate the first man who lays a hand on me."
The captain blanched, but recovered. "Well, if you're in disguise as a boy, then you're obviously a spy after all-"
"It's not a disguise," Talaysen said between clenched teeth. "It's simply easier for my wife to travel in breeches. It's not her fault you can't tell a woman in breeches from a boy. I'm sure you'll find half the women in this area working the fields in breeches. Are you going to arrest them for spying, too?" The captain bit his lip. "You must be spies," he continued stubbornly. "Otherwise why were you out there on the road? You're not peddlers, and the Faires are over. Nobody travels that road this time of year."
"We're musicians," Rune said, as if she was speaking to a very simple child. "We are carrying musical instruments. We play and sing. We were going to Kardown Faire and your road was the only way to get there-"
"How do I know you're really musicians?" he said, suspiciously. "Spies could be carrying musical instruments, too." He smiled at his own cleverness.
Talaysen cursed under his breath; Rune caught several references to the fact that brothers and sisters should not marry, and more to the inadvisability of intercourse with sheep, for this man was surely the lamentable offspring of such an encounter.
"Why don't you untie us and give us our instruments, and we'll prove we're musicians?" she said. "Spies wouldn't know how to play, now, would they?"
"I-suppose not," the captain replied, obviously groping after an objection to her logic, and unable to find one. "But I don't know-"
Obviously, she thought; but she smiled charmingly. "Just think, you'll get a free show, as well. We're really quite good. We've played before Dukes and Barons. If you don't trust both of us, just cut me loose and let me play."
Not quite a lie. I'm sure there were plenty of Dukes and Barons who were passing by at Kingsford when we were playing.
"What are you up to?" Talaysen hissed, as she continued to keep her mouth stretched in that ingenuous smile.
"I have an idea," she muttered back out of the corner of her mouth. And as the captain continued to ponder, she laughed. "Oh come now, you aren't afraid of one little woman, are you?"
That did it. He drew his dagger and cut first the hobbles at her ankles, then the bonds at her wrists. She got up slowly, her backside aching, her shoulders screaming, her hands tingling with unpleasant pins-and-needles sensations.
She did have an idea. If she could work some of the same magic on this stupid lout that she'd worked on the elves, she might be able to get him to turn them loose. She'd noticed lately that when they really needed money, she'd been able to coax it from normally unresponsive crowds-as long as she followed that strange little inner melody she'd heard when she had played for the elven-king. It was always a variation on whatever she happened to be playing; one just a little different from the original. The moment she matched with it, whatever she needed to have happen would occur. She was slowly evolving a theory about it; how it wasn't so much that the melody itself was important, it was that the melody was how she "heard" and controlled magic. Somehow she was tapping magic through music.
But she couldn't explain that to Talaysen. Or rather, she couldn't explain it right now. Later, maybe. If this really worked.
The captain poked their packs with his toe as she stood there rubbing her wrists. "Which one is yours?" he asked, without any real interest.
"That one, there," she told him. "Why don't you hand me that fiddle-that's right, that one. A spy would never be able to learn to play this, it takes years-"
"A spy could learn to play a couple of tunes on it," the captain said, in a sudden burst of completely unexpected thought. "That's all a spy would need."
He looked at her triumphantly. She sighed, took the instrument from him before he dropped it, and took it out of its case to tune it. "A spy could learn a couple of tunes," she agreed. "But a spy wouldn't know them all. Pick one. Pick anything. I couldn't possibly know what you were going to pick to learn to play it in advance, so if I know it, then I'm not a spy. All right?"
She saw Talaysen wince out of the corner of her eye, and she didn't blame him. No fiddler could know every tune; she was taking a terrible risk with this-
But it was a calculated risk, taken out of experience. If he'd been a bright man, she wouldn't have tried this; he might purposefully pick something really obscure, hoping to baffle her.
But he wasn't bright; he was, in fact, the very opposite. So he did what any stupid man would do; he blurted the first thing that came into his mind. Which was, as she had gambled, "Shepherd's Hey"; one of the half-dozen fiddle-tunes every fiddler wishes he would never have to play again, and which someone in every audience asks for.
She played it, thinking very hard about getting him to release them, and listening with that inner ear for the first notes of the magic. . . .
He started tapping his toe halfway through the first repetition; a good sign, but not quite what she was looking for. But his eyes unfocused a bit, which meant she might be getting through to him-
Or that he was so dense he could be entranced, like a sheep, by perfectly ordinary music.
Three times through. Three times was what had worked with the elves; three times had coaxed pennies from otherwise tight fists.
Two repetitions-into the third-and-
There. Just an echo, a faint sigh of melody, but it was there. She was afraid to play the tune again, though; repeating it a fourth time might break the magic.
"Pick something else," she called out to him, breaking into his reverie.
He stared at her with his mouth hanging open for a moment, then stammered, " 'Foxhunter.' "
Another one of the tunes she had learned to hate while she was still at the Hungry Bear. She sighed; if her feelings got in the way of the music, this might turn out to be a bad idea instead of a good one. But the magic was still with her, and stronger as she brought the "Hey" around into the first notes of "Foxhunter." His eyes glazed over again, and she began to get the sense of the inner melody, stronger, and just a little off the variant she played. She strove to bring them closer, but hadn't quite-not before she'd played "Foxhunter" three times as well.
But this was a subtle, slippery magic that she was trying to work. She had to get inside him somehow, and control the way he thought about them; this called for something quieter. Maybe that was why she hadn't quite managed to touch the magic-tune yet. . . .
This time she didn't ask him to pick something. She slowed the final bars of "Foxhunter," dragged them out and sent the tune into a minor key, and turned the lively jig into something else entirely different; a mournful rendition of "Captive Heart."
That did it! The hidden melody strengthened suddenly; grew so clear, in fact, that she glanced at Talaysen and was unsurprised to see a look of concentration on his face, as if he could hear it too.
Once, twice-and on the third repetition, something dropped into place, and her tune and the magic one united, just as the sun touched the horizon.
She played it to the end, then took her bow from the strings and waited to see what, if anything, the result of her playing was going to be.
The captain shook himself, as if he was waking from a long sleep. "I must-how-I think-" He shook himself again, then drew his knife and cut Talaysen's bonds, offering him a hand to pull the Master to his feet. "I don't know what I was thinking of," the captain said, vaguely. "Thinking two minstrels like you were spies. Stupid, of course. These past couple of weeks, they've been hard on us. We're looking for spies behind every bush, it seems."
"No harm done, captain," Talaysen said heartily, as Rune put up her fiddle as quickly as she could, and slung her pack on her back. She dragged his over to his feet, and he followed her example, still talking. "No harm done at all. Good thinking, really, after all, how could you know? I'm sure your Sire is very pleased to have a captain like you."
When Talaysen stopped for a moment to get his pack in place, Rune took over, pulling on his elbow to get him moving towards the edge of camp and the road. "Of course, how could you know? But we obviously are musicians and you don't need to detain us, now, do you? Of course not. We'll just be on our way. Thank you. No, you needn't send anyone after us, we'll be fine-we know exactly where we need to go, we'll be off your Sire's land before you know it-"
She got Talaysen moving and waved good-bye; Talaysen let her take the lead and wisely kept quiet. The other men-at-arms, seeing that their captain was letting the former captives go, were content to leave things the way they were. One or two of them even waved back as Rune and Talaysen made all the speed they could without (hopefully) seeming to do so.
It wasn't until they were on the open road again that Rune heaved a sigh of relief, and slowed her pace.
"All right, confess," Talaysen said, moving up beside her and speaking quietly out of the corner of his mouth. "I saw what happened, and I thought I heard something-"
"How much do you know about magic?" Rune asked, interrupting him, and gazing anxiously at the darkening sky.
"Not much, only the little Ardis tells me, and what's in songs, of course." He hitched his pack a little higher on his shoulders. "You're telling me that you're a mage?"
She shook her head slightly, then realized he might not be able to see the gesture in the gathering gloom. "I'm not-I mean, I don't know if I am or not. I know what happened with the elves, but I thought that was just because the elves were easier to affect with music than humans. Now-I don't know. I hear something when I'm doing-whatever it is. And this time I think you heard it too."
"Ardis told me every mage has his own way of sensing magic," Talaysen said thoughtfully. "Some see it as a web of light, some as color-patterns, some feel it, some taste or smell it. Maybe a mage who was also a musician would hear it as music-"
He faltered, and she added what she thought he was going to say. "But you heard it too. Didn't you? You heard what I was trying to follow."
"I heard something," he replied, carefully. "Whether it was the same thing you heard or not, I don't know."
"Well, whatever is going on-when I really need something to happen, I think about it, hard, and listen inside for a melody at the same time. When I find it, I try to match it, but since it's a variation on what I've playing, it takes a little bit of time to do that, to figure out what the pattern is going to be. And it seems like I have to play things in repeats of three to get it to work. It's the moment that I match with that variation that I seem to be able to influence people."
"But what about with the elves?" he asked. "You weren't doing any variations then-"
"I don't know, I'm only guessing," she replied, looking to the west through the trees, and wondering how long they had before the sun set. "But what I was playing was all Gypsy music or music already associated with the elves, like the 'Faerie Reel.' Maybe they're more susceptible to music, or maybe the music itself was already the right tune to be magic. Next Midsummer Faire we are going to have to talk to your cousin about all this-I don't like doing things and not knowing how or why they work. Or what they might do if they don't work the way I think they will."
She was looking at him now, peering through the blue twilight, and not at the road, so she missed spotting the trouble ahead. Her first inkling of a problem was when Talaysen's head snapped up, and he cursed under his breath.
"We'll do that. If we're not languishing in a dungeon," Talaysen groaned. "If this isn't the worst run of luck I've ever had-if I hadn't already been expecting the worst-"
She turned her head-and echoed his groan of disgust. Just ahead of them was a roadblock. Manned by armed soldiers with a banner flapping above them in Sire Harlan's black-and-white stripes.
"Well, there's no point in trying to avoid them; they'll only chase us," Talaysen sighed, as the soldiers stirred, proving that they'd been sighted too. "God help us. Here we go again."
"This time, let's see if we can't get them to let us prove we're minstrels right off," Rune said, thinking quickly. "I'll try and work magic on them again. And since you heard what I was trying to follow, you join me on this one. Maybe with both of us working on them, we can do better than just get them to let us go."
"All right," Talaysen replied quietly, for they were just close enough to the barricade that a sharp-eared man might hear what they were saying. "Follow my lead."
He raised his arm and waved, smiling. "Ho there!" he called. "We are certainly glad to see you!"
Looks of astonishment on every face told Rune that he'd certainly managed to confuse them.
"You-sir, are you the captain?" he continued, pointing at one of the men who seemed to be in charge. At the other's wary nod, Talaysen's smile broadened. "Thank goodness! We have a lot to tell you about. . . ."
"Ten pennies and quite a little stock of provisions, and an escort to the border," Talaysen said in satisfaction, patting the pouch at his belt. "Not bad, for what started out a disaster. Maybe our luck is turning."
"Maybe we're turning it ourselves," Rune countered, but lazily. She was not going to argue about results, however they came about.
A good night's sleep in the Sire's camp had helped matters. They'd done so well that they'd become honored guests by the time they were through playing, instead of captives. And while Sire Harlan was not interested in taking on a musician until his little feud with his neighbor had been settled, he did know about the banning of non-Guild minstrels from the previous three Faires. When they had played for him personally, he spent quite some time talking with them afterwards, over a cup of wine. He had assured them that a similar attempt at Kardown had been blocked.
"Did you hear the rest of the story about the Faires?" Talaysen asked. "I asked Captain Nours about it, and got an earful."
She shook her head. "No, I wasn't close enough to listen, and that terribly earnest cousin of the Sire was pouring his life-story into my ear."
"That's what you get for being sympathetic," he chuckled, and kicked at a rock to keep from stepping on it. "It wasn't just the Bardic Guild. All the Guilds got together and barred non-Guild participants. Sire Harlan's captain is also a wood-carver, and he's heard that if they try the same again next year, the non-Guild crafts-people have threatened to hold their own Faires-outside the gates, and just off the road. Which means no Church tax or city tax on sellers, as well as an open Faire."
She widened her eyes. "Can they do that?" she asked.
"I don't know why not," he replied. "One of the farmers has agreed to let them use his fallow fields for free for the first year. That may be how the Kingsford Faire started; I seem to recall something like that-the Church putting a ban on entertainment or levying an extra use-tax. I can tell you that most common folk would rather go to an open Faire, given a choice. Anyway, he asked me to spread that bit of news as well, so that the small crafters are ready, come next year."
She nodded, stowing the information away in her memory. That was another thing the Free Bards did that she hadn't known; they passed news wherever they went. Often it was news that those in power would prefer others didn't know. Ordinary minstrels might or might not impart news as the whim and the generosity of their audience moved them; Bardic Guild musicians never did.
So in a way we are spies, she reflected. Only not in a way that sheep-brained captain would ever recognize.
"Aren't we going to meet Gwyna at Kardown?" she asked, suddenly, squinting into the sunlight, and taking off her hat to fan herself with it.
"That was the plan," he replied. "Why?"
"Oh, nothing-" she replied vaguely. She hadn't thought about the coming encounter, until the association of "news" brought it to mind.
She and Talaysen were news, so far as the Free Bards were concerned. When they had parted from the Free Bards, she and Talaysen had been Master and Apprentice. Now their relationship was something altogether different. Gwyna planned a course of travel that put her in and out of contact with a good half of the Free Bards over the year, not to mention all the gypsy Clans. She would be the one telling everyone she met of Master Wren's change of status, and if she didn't approve . . .
Rune realized then that she wanted not only Gwyna to approve, but all the rest of the Free Bards, including people she didn't even know yet. And not just for her own sake. If there was divisiveness in the Free Bards, trouble with Talaysen's leadership, the things she and Talaysen had talked about would never come to pass. The group might even fall apart.
We will never make a difference if that happens, she thought worriedly, and then realized with a start that for the first time in her life she was thinking of herself as a part of a group. Worrying about "we," where "we" meant people she'd never met as well as those she knew and liked.
It was a curious feeling, having been a loner most of her life, to suddenly find herself a part of something.
If Gwyna didn't approve of what had happened between her and Talaysen-
Then she mentally took herself by the scruff of the neck and shook herself. Of course she'll approve, she scolded. She was practically throwing us into bed together before we all broke up. I'm running from shadows that aren't even there. The fact that we're married shouldn't make any kind of a difference to her. She told me herself that Talaysen spent too much time alone.
She noticed that Talaysen was watching her with a concerned frown, and smiled at him. "It's all right, no disasters. Just thinking things through," she said cheerfully. "Tell me something, do you think we were working magic last night, or not?"
He hesitated a moment, taking the time to wipe some of the dust from his face with his scarf. "I never thought of myself as a mage, or anything like one," he said, finally. "Even though everything I've ever really wanted I've gotten. Now that I think about it, that is rather odd; I don't know of anyone who always gets what he wants or needs. I always thought it was plain fool luck, but maybe it wasn't just extraordinary good luck. Maybe it was magic all along."
"Your cousin's a mage," she pointed out. "I'd always been told that sort of thing runs in families. That's the way it is in ballads, anyway."
"That might explain it." He paused a moment, and Rune had an idea that he was gathering his thoughts. "Last night I told you that I heard the melody you were trying to match the first time we were caught. You wanted me to see if I could actually match it myself when we were wooing Sire Harlan's men, and I said I'd try, and we didn't have a chance to talk about what I did in private. Well, I heard the melody, just like before, and I tried to match it. Easier on a lute than a fiddle, by the way."
She nodded. "And you did it; I felt you snap into the melody at the end of the first time through, and the tune got stronger as we played it. Which was probably why they asked us to stay and play for them, why the men gave us supplies, and why the Sire gave us money and an escort."
"I think it's also why the Sire talked to us personally," he said. She raised an eyebrow in surprise, and he nodded. "When we played for his men, he was listening just beyond the fire. I didn't see him, but somehow I knew he was there, and I knew we needed his goodwill. I saw you were doing all right with the men, so I turned my attention to him. I hoped I could get him to help us out; the captain was pretty reluctant to exceed his authority." He frowned, as if thinking of something unpleasant.
"I'd say it worked," she replied, wondering why he was frowning.
"That's the trouble, it did, and too well." His frown deepened, and he tucked his scarf around his neck again. "He talked to us very like equals, he gave us money and an escort. He shouldn't have done any of those things, it's just not in the character of most Sires to welcome strangers into their camps and treat them like old friends. What I did somehow made him act completely differently-"
"Maybe not," she countered. "He was camped out there with his men, after all, and he's obviously liked as well as respected. Maybe he would have done all that anyway. Maybe he's used to treating underlings well; maybe he just likes music."
"Maybe, but it's not likely." He shook his head. "But that's not the point. The problem here isn't what he did, it's that I made him do it. I made him do those things just as surely as if I'd held a knife to his throat and ordered him to tell us the same things. Even though it kept us out of trouble, I don't like the implications. Being able to change the way people think and react is-well, it's frightening."
She started to object, then shut her mouth, thinking about it. It was frightening, and she found many reasons why what she was doing was wrong. "Can Ardis do that?" she asked.
He nodded. "That, and other things. Healing, for one. Mostly she doesn't use her magic. I think she told me that she uses it only when-after very careful consideration-she thinks it's just and fair to do so, and not simply convenient."
How would I feel about somebody coming in and changing my thinking around? she wondered. "Was it just and fair of us to keep those men-at-arms from throwing us in a dungeon, or conscripting us?" she countered. "I certainly think it was! They wouldn't listen to reason or logic, and I was running out of patience."
He grinned. "I'd have to say yes and you know it," he mocked. "That's a cheating question."
"Would it have been just and fair to get that Priest to marry us?" she continued.
"Now that is a good question." He mulled that over for a bit. "I would have to say no. Even though he was being an officious, uncharitable, vain and foolish man."
"Why not?" she asked, wanting to hear his reasoning.
"It would not have been just and fair to change his mind, because we were only inconvenienced. On the other hand, if those men-at-arms had jailed or conscripted us, we would undoubtedly have been harmed." He smiled feebly. "I don't do well in damp dungeons. And I wouldn't know one end of a sword from the other. In the former, I'd probably become ill rather quickly, and as a conscript I'd probably become dead just as quickly."
"Obviously the same goes for the elven-king," she replied, thoughtfully.
He nodded. "Elves aren't predictable. He might have kept us a while, or killed us when he tired of us. Now, whether or not we should have used this power of ours to change the minds of people at those Faires to let us in-I don't know."
"It's not worth debating," she told him, as a jay overhead called raucous agreement. "We couldn't have done anything to help ourselves or others at the last three Faires because the people we needed to influence directly were not going to come out to listen to us."
"True, but we could have started a riot," he said, so soberly that she knew he was not joking. "All we'd have needed to do would be stand outside the Church gates and sing rabble-rousing songs with that power behind them. People were annoyed enough already, especially the ones being turned away. We could quite easily have started a riot without anyone suspecting we were to blame."
The morning seemed suddenly cold, and she shivered. She'd never seen a riot. She didn't want to see one. People could be killed in riots; children often were trampled and either killed outright or maimed for life. "We don't do that," she said forcefully. "We don't ever do that."
"I agree," he replied, just as forcefully. "It would have to be something worlds away more serious than what we encountered to make starting a riot justified."
She paused to collect her thoughts. "You do realize that we're talking about this as if it's real, and not the product of some really good luck and our imaginations, don't you?"
"I don't have any doubt that it's real," he told her. "We've managed to change things three times with this-whatever it is. When something happens three times, it's not a coincidence, it's real."
It's more times than that, she thought wryly, remembering how she had coaxed money from unresponsive audiences. And then she sobered, thinking about what she'd done in a new light.
Had that been "fair and just"? After all, she hadn't done anything important to them, had she? They wouldn't have parted with their coins if they hadn't had them to spend. Would they?
Yes, but- She had still changed their thoughts, the most private thing a person could have. The poorest person in the world, the man accused of heresy and thrown into the Church's dungeons, a cripple who couldn't move arms or legs-they could still claim their thoughts as their own, and in that much they were wealthy and free.
But what she and Talaysen did could change that. Not in any large way, but it was still a change. And for what? Convenience, again. The convenience, perhaps, of not working quite so hard. . . .
Never mind that finding that elusive thread of magic-song and matching it was harder work than simply playing well. She had to assume that one day it might become easy. What then? Wouldn't it be a temptation to simply sit back and play indifferently, knowing that she would be well-paid no matter how she played?
She thought of all the cold days in the winter, busking on a corner in Nolton, and had to admit that it would have been more than a temptation. If she'd known about this, she'd have done it. And she'd have probably teased her audiences into buying hot cider and sausage rolls from her vendor friends as well, whether the listeners were hungry or not.
No. That was wrong. Absolutely wrong. It was a cheat, and it made her music into a lie.
"We don't use it to make audiences like us, either," she said into the silence, with more force than she intended. "They either appreciate us on their own or not at all."
He raised an eyebrow at her outburst but agreed immediately. "What do we have, then? Not for the sake of convenience, not when there are other ways to deal with a situation, only when it's fair and just?"
She nodded and sighed. "You know, I hate to admit this, but it sounds as if we're saying we can't use it to help ourselves at all."
He laughed. "Oh, partially. We can't use it unless we're really being threatened, shall we say? Or it's for something that truly needs to be done."
"That sounds good." She glanced at him, and couldn't help grinning. "Now, does threat of hunger count?"
"I don't-"
"Or how about if I wait until you're hungry to ask that question?" she said, and chuckled.
He only shook his head. "Women," he said, as if that explained everything, and then changed the subject.
Just like a man, she thought with amusement, and let him.