When the request came from a certain patron of Cereus House for Elodie’s presence a week before Midwinter, she made no attempt to refuse. After all he was a Lord in good standing and, perhaps more importantly to her, she’d heard a rumor of a new harp acquired from abroad in need of quick fingers to play it. And so, Elodie arrived an hour before the party, taking care of the more intimate parts of her employment with rather more impatience than Cereus’s reputation expected in her haste to go see the harp. The patron in question seemed more amused than dismayed, fortunately; he knew where he ranked in her list of interests when he hired her.
“After all,” he said, “I count myself fortunate to have your services at all. Cereus’s Midwinter fetes would make the angels themselves proud in their choreographed perfection, and music is no less a part of it all than the drink or decor. To have Cereus’s most prized harpist performing for me, a week before Midwinter, on an instrument obtained at no mean price… My guests will still be talking next weekend as they dissemble to parties all across the most elegant parts of the city. That is what I have truly brought you here for. The rest is merely a lovely perk of your presence.”
“I thank you for your kind understanding. The harp, my lord?” Elodie prompted and, laughing, he led her to it.
The instrument made no secret of its high price with a pillar gilded with fresh-polished gold and held up by carved angels. It dominated the room, lithe and powerful as a swan. For all the instrument’s delicacy of sound, the tension of each tight-wound string pulled powerfully against the structure, and there was not a musician in the city who could not tell of some friend-of-a-friend whose poorly maintained harp had given weigh under that pressure and exploded into splintered wood and alarmed onlookers. But this gleaming instrument – this was freshly made and built to last.
Elodie got to work at once, checking the tuning. “A servant already took care of that,” the Lord told her.
“Yes,” she replied, “but the strings are new and must be tuned more frequently. Every hour, I will take the instrument aside to check the tuning once more – do you have a room where I might do so unobtrusively, and two servants to help me carry it there?”
“Of course,” he replied and then watched as she, at last, allowed herself to try the strings for more than just tuning.
The first note was tentative, quiet as a cheeping songbird. The second bellowed like a hurricane.
“Good dynamic range,” Elodie muttered and her fingers flew. High notes chimed like temple bells, low boomed like lion roars. Here was a fragment of song as sweet as new love; here was one as grim as death. Notes rising, surrounding, filling the ballroom with frenetic energy and joy and –
The music stopped. Elodie stepped back from the instrument, though she couldn’t resist one last soft brush over the strings. “It will do.”
—
High nobles and cultural figures from across not only Terre d’Ange but many allied nations as well came to the city to celebrate Midwinter. Tonight’s guest list was the sort that could only be managed at such a time as this: when all had already arrived in the city but none had yet been lost to the many parties and other obligations planned long in advance. They eyed each other in a canny way, each in turn doing their best to secure an alliance while promising no decisive aid. Pockets of conversation formed and dissipated across the ballroom whose open nature thwarted hope of private negotiations. People made do. Here they congregated in the closest thing to a shadowy corner they could; there they danced closer than even the local fashion with one’s mouth always be at the other’s ear. And here – close to the harp whose wide belly was formed to boom out sound loud enough to fill a ballroom, here where the songs surely concealed all voices from any but the companion closest by – they talked.
They talked, watching carefully for the approach of any other guest.
They talked, and paid no heed to the harpist.
Elodie ignored them at first, focusing entirely on the new instrument – some of the strings in the middle range were quieter than on her own harp, so she needed to remember to pluck them more deeply to compensate; the string spacing on the low notes was ever so slightly wider than she was accustomed to, so she watched her fingers until her instincts had adjusted. But this was one week before Midwinter, a performance she’d been practicing for months, and all too soon the muscle memory took over. It was meditative for a time, to simply let her hands do as they’d been taught as her consciousness drifted after them. But then, well, although she’d never admit it, the playing got a little boring. It was good to be bored while playing – it meant your tune was well learned and without surprises, after all, provided you could avoid being so bored that you became completely unfocused and made a mistake. But it was, well, boring.
The conversations meant to be unheard were so, so easy to eavesdrop on. Keep your eyes low and no one paid any heed to a musician. She was as much a part of the scenery as the paintings on the wall except that – irony of ironies – people tended to keep delicate conversations away from the paintings in case they concealed hidden passages with hidden listeners. The harp, though – people conversed around that.
It was something about trade, she could hear that much. Trade, and warnings about people who might get in the way of it. Phrases like “I’ll handle him,” with a faint and ominous emphasis on “handle.” Or “don’t worry about that. Changes are coming,” with “changes” spoken much the same way. She played a little louder, that they might raise their voices, and a little softer, that she might hear them better, but, for all she strained her ears, it was hard to make out just what they were talking about, until –
Until –
And then it happened. She heard the truth, she heard the plan, she heard what all those ominously emphasized words meant, and she got distracted. Right as the song changed keys. And her fingers kept dancing along by instinct, just as they were supposed to, but her feet – that should have hit the pedals just there, that should have changed those sharps to flats – her feet didn’t move. And suddenly the song was a cacophony of clashing pitches. Suddenly she wasn’t invisible anymore.
Their conversation stopped. Their eyes were on her. She improvised as well as she could, trying to make the wrong parts sound like they’d been a daring choice, a flirtation with dissonance always meant to resolve into sweetness. Perhaps it worked. Perhaps it was convincing. Perhaps.
By the time the clock next tolled, the pair had wandered off. Using all the poise she’d been taught at Cereus House and inwardly thanking Blessed Elua that her makeup hid her skin’s shocked pallor, Elodie calmly swept away with the harp to the side room for re-tuning.
“Thank you,” she told the servants distantly. “It should be about ten minutes until I need you again.” Alone at last, she allowed herself to let out a long breath and tried to think. It was urgent that the news of this plot be passed on, but to whom?
With all the nobles in the room, surely someone- surely-
And then the door opened.
She looked up.
—
Petrea, the Second of Cereus House, was aghast when she was awoken by a servant hours later.
“What do you mean, she vanished in the middle of an assignment?”
“I’m… afraid what I mean is that she vanished in the middle of an assignment. The city guard has been told, and our own guards have been scouring the city as well, but… Elua’s angels, I promise I would have woken you if I’d any inkling she’d still be gone! I assumed some patron at the party offered to pay her marque, or perhaps there’d been a secret lover, or…”
“A secret lover for Elodie? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, a secret musician looking for a duet partner then. I swear to you, I didn’t know! If anything has happened to her… Well, Elua willing, we’ll find out soon enough.”
“And if we don’t? We’ve already lost six hours. If she hasn’t shown up already, she’s either hiding, being hidden, or dead. We’ll have to make investigations. If anyone knows anything…”
“We’ll find out. I promise, we’ll find out.”
“A bold promise. … I know it must sound terribly cold, but… it’s a week until Midwinter. She was to play the harp.”
“Is. She is.”
“Even if she is not gone entirely, she may return in no state to perform. Or she may have just proven herself untrustworthy to do so. In any case, we must plan alternatives.”
“Fayette?”
“Contracted out for the night already.”
“Marlene?”
“Out. All of the musicians fit to perform are out, hired by patrons who paid very dearly to have them away from Cereus House on that night. Are we to save our fete at the expense of ruining theirs? Shall we become known as the House for those who fetishize unreliability?”
“Fine – fine! I have an idea. Her party – she went because the Lord had recently acquired a new harp from overseas. The harp merchant, I remember her – Chantae d’something-or-other. Sister of one of the patrons here and I’ve heard she plays. The sailors say the winds have been abnormally fair lately; if she’s newly back from traveling and arrived earlier than expected, she may not have other plans for Midwinter.”
“Will she play well enough for Cereus House?”
“What other choice do we have?”
—
Chantae stepped into the courtyard with a rather bemused expression and a cloth bag nearly as tall and twice as wide as her on her back.
“Please, come in. May we help you with your, um,” a servant said, glancing uncertainly at her burden.
“My harp. Cased. No, thank you; you look very strong and capable, but I wouldn’t ask you to carry my head for me either.”
She followed him inside, placed the instrument delicately on the ground next to her seat and accepted an offer of tea. “I hear you need a harpist?”
“Yes,” the servant answered. “The Second, Petrea, will be along in just a moment to discuss it with you.”
“Fine. Has she been warned that I’m a harper instead?”
“Um,” the young man mumbled. “May I ask the distinction?”
“The large harps with pedals and carved pillars and such are played by harpists. I deal in them, as they’re popular in Terre d’Ange, but they’re delicate; wrapping and unwrapping them on the road is a slow process and they really shouldn’t be exposed to too many different temperatures or humidity. The smaller, simpler harps of Cruithne have no such troubles; since I spend most of my time on the road, that’s what I play. I can pluck out a tune on the larger, but it’s not what I have the most practice on, and a week’s not enough time for me to be able to pretend otherwise. So, Cruithne harp, harper. Is that acceptable?”
“I’ll ask, but – given the royal family’s history with Cruithne, I suppose it could be said there’s a certain exotic romance to having a harper rather than a harpist. I’m certain it will be acceptable, my lady.” He hesitated a moment, before adding,
“Will you be alright with working for us for the evening? I’m certain your musicianship is superb, it’s just – those working the Midwinter Masque have usually trained for many years in the arts of humble servitude, and -”
“And I don’t act like a delicate flower of the Night Court? Don’t worry,” Chantae laughed. “Merchants only succeed if they know when to speak up and when to shut up. I’ll act every bit as delicately as you need me to.”
“Thank you. And… we still don’t know why Elodie vanished, so…”
“So I’ll be careful, too.”