... landlords have the right of refusal to serve anyone of the faithless tribes.
— Mandates for Land Ownership
Lonely nights were terrible, Linsan decided. She dragged her shoulder against the wall as she came down the stairs. Her chest ached from the words that she couldn't explain. With a sigh, she reached the bottom and made her way to the nearest table to set down her glass and plate.
She had gone up with high hopes, carrying meals for Brook and herself, but she was once against rebuffed with silence. Leaving Brook's food at the door, she was forced to retreat.
Linsan had almost eaten in her room, but she didn't want to be alone. She brought her food down in hopes that Har would be able to join her, but the older man was in the back cleaning up. She could hear the clink of his dishes as he cleaned them and realized he had wolfed down everything in the time it took her to go upstairs.
Her heart ached. She didn't know what to do besides slowly eat while staring out into the empty room. What she wanted to do was play her violin and bask in the cheers as she bounced around and everyone cheered. Before her trip, she didn't realize how addictive it was to have an audience.
She finished her meal quickly.
When she brought her plates to the back, Har took them.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“I got it,” he said gruffly.
Linsan twisted her fingers together. She looked around for something in the kitchen area, but everything was neatly cleaned up and put away. “Is it usually this quiet?”
“Yep.”
She needed to do something but she didn't anyone else in teh village. Calibo had returned home, some place to the south. Miska wasn't in her smithy the last time Linsan checked. And Brook… Brook was still locked in her room.
Har looked at her. “Sorry. Everyone spends their money on game days and then the next few are quiet as everyone needs to be alone and nurse their hangovers. Or argue about how much money they spent. And it was a good game. They drank me dry, so it will take a month to get shipments of new bottles and barrels, and everyone knows it.”
“No chance of busking?” she asked before remembering that her bow was broken. There was no way she could play for an audience without it.
“Nope.”
Linsan twisted her fingers together.
She needed to do something. She needed to play. “Do you have a fiddle, or something? Any string instrument I could borrow?”
He looked up at her and then shook his head.
Trying to avoid breaking down, Linsan slumped out of the room. As she was about to sit down, she remembered there was something she can do: finish repairing her bow. It was precise work but needed to be done. “Har, mind if I do some work in here?”
“Just clean up after yourself. I'm about to go to bed.”
“Thank you!” She rushed up to her room to get her supplies and her case. Bringing everything down, she brightened the lights by sliding her finger along a crystal plate behind the bar, and then set up everything underneath the brightest spot.
Selecting the smallest blade, she worked the tip to carve out a narrow channel perpendicular to the break. She had to be careful to avoid cutting too deep or wide, but she had to get deep enough that she could fit a spline of wood to hold it together. Biting the side of her tongue, she carefully fitted the ragged ends together to ensure the channel bridged the snap would bind the two sides smoothly.
“Why not just wrap it together?” Har asked.
Linsan jumped slightly, she hadn't heard him approaching. She took a deep breath and focused on each slice. “Because my dad would kill me if I didn't repair this right. And wrapping would never last with the amount of playing I'm going to do. I need a strong core but nothing too heavy to disrupt my movements or stiff to… to… bother me.”
“And this will?” He didn't sound convinced.
Linsan let out her breath and carefully tapped the opening to dislodge the wooden slivers. “Better than wrapping. Much of the wood around here is too brittle or oily to use but I found some branches that would work. It won't be a long-term fix, but maybe something that will hold up for a month or three. After that, I'll need to fix it properly if I didn't already ruin everything patching it.”
“Then couldn't you just replace it? Anyone can carve wood.” His voice was dismissive.
When she was a child, Linsan had asked the same question. She grinned at her father's lecture and tried to boil it down. “I could carve a new one in no time. It break quickly because a bow is more than shape, it's moisture, flexibility, and strength. Good bow wood is seasoned for half a century before—”
“Half a century!?”
Linsan grinned. “Half a century. Sometimes longer.”
Har shook his head. He muttered as he walked away. “That is why fancy instruments like that are a waste of time. If you can't replace it, it's for rich people to show off.”
Linsan ignored him and concentrated as she finished carving out the channel and then set about creating a spline of the wood she had found to fit inside it. The tiny scrapes were comforting as was the smell of wood and the soft sounds of the blade. It reminded her of her father, back when he worked his tools.
Alone, she finished the spline. She pulled back to inspect her work, looking at it critically as her father would have inspected it. It looked amateur but decent for her first attempt.
She made more of a mess gluing the length of wood into the channel. By the time she was done, she had globs in her hair and two of her fingers kept wanting to stick together.
But it was the best she could manage with the tools and skill she had. “Please hold,” she whispered, not sure if she was beginning the Couple for help or the instrument herself.
She set it on the windowsill where it would get the afternoon sun. Then covered it in the towel Har used for his bread. It would get the heat it needed to cure while protecting the wood from the direct light.
It took her a half hour to clean up her mess.
But, as she went to close her violin case, she hesitated. Looking down at the Sterlig, she felt a longing to play something. It didn't matter that there was no bow, she just needed to move and make some noise to quiet the anxiety that bubbled inside her.
Glancing around the lit room, she pulled her violin out and settled it against her neck. Without a bow, she had to use her fingers. It was a technique that her father had written about but she never practiced. With two fingers, she grabbed a string and plucked it.
The vibration was short and percussive, without the melody of being that came from running her bow across the strings. But the sound of her family's instrument humming against her neck let out some of the tension that tightened her muscles.
Linsan smiled and plucked more strings, random at first as she practiced with using two fingers and one. She found that she could play with both hands. It took her concentration for each note, but as the sounds began to form into songs, she realized she needed less focus on the act of plucking the strings and more on the melodies that naturally followed.
She swayed and then slowly twirled in time with the music, enjoying the peace that came from playing. She smiled and let her body move with the ditty.
The air around her didn't shimmer. There was no feeling of using magic as she played. No draw of power or the swirl of it following her song. There was an emptiness where the magic came from but, at the same time, she was playing for the sake of playing.
Linsan finished one song and flowed into another. It was a ballad that she knew by heart. Slowing it down and playing with her finger gave it a much different tone, sharper and more poignant. She could easily imagine herself using her fingers during scenes in plays or when she wanted to invoke a different tone.
“Beautiful,” Miska said.
Linsan kept playing as she saw the blacksmith leaning against the door of the pub. She had switched back to her corset and gone with a clean blouse and long skirt. The smudges of soot and sweat were gone. She had brushed her hair which looked still moist. She had also put on a small amount of makeup on her lips and cheeks.
“Thank you,” Linsan said as she stopped.
Miska glanced around. She seemed both relieved and anxious with what she saw. “I heard you playing as I was wandering around.”
Linsan took a long look at her. There were damp patches underneath her shirt, where the fabric clung to skin underneath and gave shadowed images of her tattoos. It was obvious to her that Miska had prettied herself up and headed straight to the pub, probably because she heard the playing.
But there was no reason to call that out.
Linsan shrugged. “I just needed to play something.”
“Is your Princess down?” Miska said looking around.
“Still in her room.”
“Oh.” Miska sounded disappointed.
Linsan's lips pressed together. She was tempted to suggest Miska went up and take Linsan's place in Brook's bed, but she wouldn't. Even if a hundred plays told her the dangers of forcing a relationship, she was confident that handing off Brook's passion to someone else would have made everything worse with her relationship with her friend. “Maybe tomorrow.”
Miska toyed with skirt. She stared down at the ground as she whispered, “Do… you want company?”
“I'd love to have someone to talk to, if you don't mind me playing a little.”
“I meant…” Miska looked pointedly at the ceiling.
It took a second for Linsan to register her meaning. She froze as a sudden tingling raced along her skin. Then she shook her head. “No, thank you. I'm not interested.”
Miska's shoulders slumped. She glanced out into the darkness. “You prefer men then?”
“I prefer my violin,” Linsan said as she lifted her instrument. Her smile felt a little forced as her heart beat faster. She swallowed at her dry throat before she said, “But when it comes to bedding, I'm not interested in anyone.”
It felt easier to say to Miska. It also felt right, as if she had found a label for herself that made sense. She smiled to herself and plucked the strings a few time in a simple scale.
“Oh.” Miska sounded sad. She tugged on her shirt. Shaking her head, she started to push herself from the door.
Linsan's heart broke a little. It was clear that Miska was hoping for something to brighten her life, to fill up those empty places that music filled in Linsan. There was a hunger in her eyes and Linsan was reminded of seeing the tattoos showing an empty life crawling across the years. “Not everyone hates you, Miska.”
Miska glanced back at her. A furrow formed on her brow and then faded. She glanced up again. “Do you think I'd be something the Princess would like?” There was a quiet desperation in her voice.
Linsan remembered how Brook had blushed and acted around Miska's brusque and teasing comments. “I can't say for sure, but she might. I wouldn't push too hard, I heard someone broke her heart recently.”
Leaning back against the door frame, Miska gave Linsan a sad smile. “You think she'd be up for a night of fun? You aren't here much longer and it might get her to relax.”
With a smile, Linsan said, “That's her choice, but she seems get flustered when you tease her. And I think you have more corsets than her.”
Miska glanced down at her own figure. She cupped her breasts for a second, then ran her fingernails across the bones of her corset. “I like looking pretty. It makes me feel like I'm something more than a weed in this village.”
“But you keep switching out to work on the forge?”
“Of course,” Miska said rolling her eyes. “Do you know how much a good corset and outfit like this costs?”
“Yes. My mother made her fame on stage. I grew up with dresses like those and heard more than a few directors screaming when one got ruined. You'd think they were using it to mop up spilled wine.”
Miska laughed, a deep but joyous sound that filled the room. “Well, this outfit took me two years to get the cukdins to pay for it. And then another year to convince a seamstress to stop here long enough to fit me. There isn't that much business in the village, but there isn't much else to spend money on and I have little interest in drowning myself in bottles or forcing the land to produce crops.”
“I take it you mastered the art of quick change? Did you get speed hooks sewn into it?”
“Speed… hooks?”
“There little magical hooks that when you run a stone against them, they pop open. Some of the fancier stages have them mounted on a bar near the edge of the stage so you could back up, pop the hooks, and then strip out for the next outfit.”
Miska stared and shook her head. “Really?”
“Not many stages have them though. There are a bunch of other ways of changing outfits. Some use magic, others are more mechanical.”
“I'd love to see that some day,” Miska said wistfully.
“I hope you do.”
Miska laughed again. “I guess I'm doomed to sound like Old Gab, moaning about the plays she heard as a child.”
“She saw my mother on stage.”
“Really?”
Linsan nodded. She set down the violin on the table and gestured for Miska to join her.
Miska looked across the room and then held up her hand. “I better not. Har isn't fond of having me in the pub at night, at least not if I'm not… playing. Even then, he doesn't really want us to linger.”
There were other stories not being told. Linsan sighed. “Sorry.”
“It's okay. Thank you, Linsan. I'll just head to bed and get working on your car in the morning. You'll get on the road soon enough.”
“Thank you.” Linsan watched Miska step off the porch with a little thud. Then she realized she had one more question. “Mis!”
Miska turned.
“You said you hated how women would use you and leave. Why do you tease Brook so much?”
“She thinks her money and looks are going to be the answer for everything. And she clearly doesn't think of anyone below her class. As I said, she's the type to use you and then throw you away.”
“That didn't really answer the question.”
“Well, every time she opens her mouth, I want to slap her.”
Linsan laughed. “Oh, I know that feeling. We fought for years. But, once you get over her prickliness, she's a good friend. My best, actually.”
Miska used her finger to push back her blonde hair over her ear. She gave Linsan a wry smile. “Pretty sure I'm not going to see that side of her before you leave. But, as it happens to be, I also really like the pretty ones.”