Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
I woke up in heaven. I was lying in a single bed, but it was large, long and wide, like it was made for a large ogre who liked the perfect amount of cushiony support. Above my head, amidst strings of small lights that crossed and criss-crossed the space, hung instruments in various stages of completion. A dulcimer was directly above my head, its peg holes only half completed. To my right, two violins hung by their necks, one missing the bridge, the other raw wood that hadn’t been varnished. There were so many instruments, mostly in the string category, including five guitars in various stages of completion, one cello, and then the harps.
There were harps of so many sizes, small like mine, and one enormous one that took up half the wall, partially gilded because it was going to be one of those fancy show pieces Hope brought on parades. There were also battle harps and more multi-purpose instruments like my broken precious. My hat hung on the top of an enormous bass, the flowers erect even though the hat dangled down. It looked like flowers were still growing from the floppy felt thing in this room of wonders.
On the wall directly behind the bed there were sheets of paper stuck on nails, price lists, customer names, as well as sketches of instruments that were like nothing I’d ever seen. One sheet showed a lute with Elven runes carved into it, magic that only one luthier in the world was capable of producing with that much immaculate detail and perfection.
I sat up and grabbed the dulcimer, turning it until I saw the small brand carved into the base of the neck. I’d always thought that the fleur-de-lis looked more like a skull propped on drum sticks than a flower. What in the world was I doing in the shop of the greatest luthier of my time, maybe of all time? Rook the Luthier was the kind of artisan that I could only dream I’d someday be able to afford to have visit the music hall. The instruments at my hall were an overall mess, although Tiago did what he could. There was an organ hall that had been a storage room for who knew how long since it had been operational.
My heart raced and my stomach twisted while anxiety fought with outrage. Did the ogre kidnap Rook the Luthier? I’d kill him!
I rolled off the bed, still wearing my floral outfit, and stalked to the door, surprised when it opened easily. The shop held the finished instruments, an assortment of which stunned me and momentarily eclipsed my rage. Directly in front of me was a massive piano made of twining metal with clawed feet, and I swear it was looking at me with a great deal of menace.
“You’re awake.”
I spun away from the piano to stare at the pretty ogre behind the counter wearing an apron and holding my precious harp.
I raised a hand and pointed at him, struggling to bring my angelic war magic to the surface. It didn’t come. “Don’t touch my harp! Where is he? What did you do with him?” I stalked towards the pretty little ogre, looking for something I could use as a weapon since my magic was bound with whatever spells or potions he’d used on me. He watched me rage towards him without any fear in his eyes. There wasn’t anything I was willing to break to hurt him until I saw metal strings dangling down from a holder. I grabbed them and held them like I’d use it to strangle him, maybe rip his head right off his neck with the garrote. For a human, he had a very thick neck, but for an ogre, it was practically delicate.
“What did I do to who?”
“Rook!” I spat. “The Luthier. Where is he? If you hurt him, I’ll rip you limb from limb and take your head and stick it in a spike outside the Square of Immolation for all the tourists to gawk at. Such a pretty ogre. You should be put where people can appreciate you.”
He smiled, showing a flash of those pretty tusks. “Yes, Rook the Luthier recently opened a shop in Song. He’s currently repairing your harp. It’s an interesting make, interesting spelling, very, very interesting. I’ll try not to do any harm to your precious friend.” He smoothed his delicate-for-an-ogre, strong-for-a-human, hands over the wood of my harp while my brain spun and the computations it came to were not adding up.
“You’re…” I stared at him. He was not telling me that he was Rook the Luthier. Except that he was fixing my harp, and all the tools he was using, the way he was using them, barely glancing at my instrument while he smoothed down the joint he’d just made in the wood, like he only needed the slightest attention to do something so simple as to repair an old instrument, made me almost believe his ludicrous suggestion. I’d been kidnapped by Rook the Luthier? My brain shut off.
I stumbled back, hit the metal bench of the angry piano and sat, hitting the keys with my elbows and sending a surprisingly agreeable cacophony of notes through the room. The hungry beast sounded like a spring rainstorm. The music held for a long time before eventually it faded, leaving me to stare at the ogre where he worked on my harp with a curious look in his eyes as he studied me back.
“You aren’t Rook the Luthier,” I finally said, still sitting. The bench was surprisingly comfortable, but what else could you expect from the greatest instrument maker of all time? “You’re part ogre,” I added with a frown because if somehow an ogre was also Rook the Luthier, life as I knew it was over. Done. Completely finished.
He smiled again, showing me his tusks. “Yes. Ogres couldn’t possibly be artisans. That reaction is what I’m striving to overcome. I can see that kidnapping, particularly kidnapping females, will have to be done away with, although it is quite effective, particularly when one of the other ogres does it. I seem so harmless, but they are quite persuasive just looking like they do.”
I snorted while his hands worked, sanding, smoothing, filling the wood, renewing the nearly invisible carvings that held spells in them that had nothing to do with sound and everything to do with happiness.
“What spells and potions did you use on me? They were so perfectly effective, like you know my weight and blood lines perfectly.”
“I have a good nose for blood.” His slight smile was absolutely impossible, and his voice was doubly attractive while working with his capable, strong, graceful hands. Those hands had held me as though I weighed nothing. And he’d taken me to an hourly motel. Was I blushing? Possibly. Probably. Yes. Fine. I was blushing, but if he was actually Rook, The Rook, of course I’d be blushing and gushing and trying to get to know him personally, professionally, and any other possible way.
“Do you remember making my harp?” I asked quietly. It had been old when I’d gotten it, so he was older than he looked. Some ogres aged like that, but who knew how he’d age with his mixed blood? Did he possibly have Elven blood? I’d bet he did with the Elven runes he’d carved into that lute. Ogres and Elves both had pointed ears, so the ears hiding in his long dark hair weren’t any kind of giveaway. What was he? Was he really Rook? Was I actually sitting in Rook’s new music shop in Song? Unreal.
“I know the timetable when I probably made it, seventy-five years into my craft. It’s not my best work, but you have given it the care and love that any instrument is lucky to have.”
I sniffed because I shouldn’t have let it get broken in the first place. That wasn’t love or care. “I should have protected it better.”
“I saw the building fall on you. What could you have done that you didn’t do? It is very well-spelled for preservation, almost as if you’re afraid to lose it. To be honest, it doesn’t match your impressive skill set.”
I dropped my eyes to my lap where my fingers were tangling together. If this was Rook the Luthier, and he was telling me that I had skills, well… it was the kind of thing I’d been waiting to hear my whole life. I cleared my throat and tried not to squeak or faint. “Thank you. Do you know the ogre who saved me?”
“Because all ogres know each other?” His lips twitched while he gave me another look with those pretty eyes. Now his eyes were pretty? What was wrong with me? Then again, if he was really Rook the Luthier, and his eyes were capable of seeing and creating the most majestic instruments in the world, then they were far more than just pretty.
“There aren’t many ogres in Singsong, and you were both at the town hall at the same time.”
“There are over two hundred ogres, most working as bodyguards. The gray society has been hiring ogre bodyguards for ten years. I consider that great progress. We have adapted to the position of protector instead of villain rather well.”
“Oh. You seem very interested in ogre progress.”
He smiled his pretty smile while those hands did that thing over the wood and his voice took its time coming, a voice I was already mildly addicted to. Waiting for him to speak made me want sushi. Desperately. My mouth was watering way too much when he finally said, “I am an ogre who has spent many years pushing against the hatred and suspicion that comes from what I am.”
“You’re more than an ogre. You could probably file your tusks, do a small glamour, and pass for a burly elf.”
He studied me for a long moment before he looked down at the harp in his hands. His brows were furrowed when he spoke, and he didn’t look up. That voice. I could write a symphony based on that voice, the way the low notes lingered and the key shifted, depending on his subtle emotions. “I glamoured myself at the beginning. That is how I gained an internship with the great Elven craftsmen at the time, by hiding who I am, by holding all ogres in contempt every time I saw one, but from what I learned of elves, their vanity, cruelty, corruption, there is no real superiority of character or nature. Ogres can be trained, can adapt, can find a place in the most selective guilds and thrive, but only if they aren’t slaughtered on another pointless battlefield. I am not part ogre. It’s all I am. I am not ashamed of my heritage, my identity. I am small and appear delicate, but there is a wide range of ogre characteristics, even though they’ve been bred out as well as…” He frowned darkly. “It is still custom among some of my tribes to cast out the smaller of our kind, but there is a place for everyone. I will make it so.” His eyes glittered for a moment, and I knew there was magic in him as well as conviction, compassion, and an incredibly strong sense of justice.
My world had shattered, completely collapsed. I was screaming in freefall, about to be skewered on a spear that killed everything I thought I knew about existence. Ogres were the dark equivalent of elves, the great warriors on land, but this guy was saying that it was more than that. Ogre nature was a mixture of conditioning and selective breeding, but I knew ogres. When I was just a little kid, I was taken by a band of ogres who kept me in their camp. Yes, they’d given me my precious harp to keep me quiet, but they’d also experimented on me, putting various spells on me to see what they did to the little angel girl before they’d returned me to my dad after he’d given them what they wanted. I still didn’t know what the price had been, but it had been high and my father refused to talk about it.
I shook my head and gripped the metal bench, scrabbling for truth, for some fact I knew. In spite of being metal, it was warm, like living flesh. Maybe I shouldn’t be sitting on it, but I wasn’t sure my legs could hold my weight. “Says the kidnapper. For all I know, you’re just an extremely talented liar. That would be the Elven in you.”
He raised a brow and his lips shifted into a slight smile. “You don’t believe me?”
“No. I don’t believe you’re only ogre and I don’t believe that you’re Rook the Luthier, and I don’t believe that ogres want to be a healthy part of the world’s economy. A few, perhaps, but the majority want nothing more than to rip apart the light.”
“You have a very healthy sense of skepticism. Repairing your harp doesn’t convince you?”
“You clearly know your way around instruments, but that doesn’t mean that you’re capable of creating an original instrument of breathtaking capabilities musically and magically.” Didn’t it? No. It couldn’t. I wasn’t going to be swayed by a pretty instrument shop and a good line. I crossed my arms and lifted my chin, challenging him.
He studied me thoughtfully. “I see. You require proof of the full extent of my capability? Your experiences with ogres must have been very convincing.”
I frowned at him. “One of them kidnapped me not too long ago.” He’d kidnapped me, and I had no idea how long he’d had me unconscious.
He nodded. “And one of them saved your life not long before that.”
I glared at him because that was entirely beside the point.
His expression lightened. “Very well. I will create for you a custom instrument matched to your exact capabilities. To do so, you will have to play. What instrument do you choose? I know that you love this harp, but as the music master, you must have skill in many instruments.”
I stopped breathing as I studied the man, or ogre, or world’s greatest luthier. He had complete confidence in his ability to impress me with his instrument-making skills. If Rook the Luthier was going to custom make an instrument for me, he would charge more money than I could ever pay.
I licked my lips, hating that I had to say the words that would keep this possible once-in-a-lifetime experience from happening to me. Rook didn’t take custom clients very often, maybe once in a decade. It was absolutely unthinkable that I'd ever turn him down, but facts were facts. My shoulders slumped. “If you really are Rook the Luthier, I can’t pay you.”
He pursed his lips as he studied me, but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “I see. I suppose we’ll have to call it part of the price for taking Lanise under your wing.”
I frowned at him because right now I didn’t even have access to the music hall where he wanted his niece to go. “Hold on there. I didn’t agree?—”
“But if I can prove that I’m Rook the Luthier, why wouldn’t you?” He raised a brow and looked so adorably quizzical when he cut me off. Adorable? An ogre? I probably had brain damage from all those falling rocks.
I tugged a strand of my too-long hair and tried to think. If he was Rook the Luthier, I’d be the world’s greatest idiot to turn down this kind of deal. I could figure out something to do with his ogre niece until the slight misunderstanding with Master Cutter was resolved. Absolutely. I could figure it out. Also, he’d mentioned something about funding.
“I find myself in a position where it is impossible to refuse you.”
He smiled. It was equally attractive and terrifying. Making a deal with an ogre? I must be mad, but if that madness had a hallucination about Rook, no musician could possibly blame me for indulging in it.
“Now,” he said soberly, coming around the partition and taking my garroting materials out of my hands. “Let’s see what you can do.”
“Do with what?”
He didn’t answer me, just went to the side of the shop behind a line of basses and cellos and pulled out a monster harp that would weigh more than me. Of course, he had no problem lifting it, but it was still an armful. He brought it over to me, the whole thing encrusted with gems in the gold dipped frame threaded with intricate lines of silver, unless it was platinum. He placed it in front of me carefully, aware of where the precise balance of the ridiculous instrument was.
I studied the gaudy thing for a long time. “It’s too beautiful to possibly have good tone.”
He laughed, and his voice was so sublime, he almost reminded me of my brother. My brother’s beautiful music hid the most destructive and vicious person in the world. That was a good reminder of exactly what I was dealing with.
“The tone won’t be the problem. It is large for you, but I need to see the full breadth of your talents if I’m going to create something that matches your skill and tastes. Please play, anything you like, but hopefully something that stretches your ability.”
Oh. That’s what we were doing. I was supposed to just sit on the monster bench and play the harp? I glanced back at the ominous piano directly behind me. “Should I sit somewhere else?”
“If he hasn’t eaten you yet, you’re probably safe.” His eyes glinted with amusement as he sank into a crouch, preparing himself to wait and watch like ogres did when they were waiting around the campfire for the stories and music to start.
“Right.” I licked my lips and touched the ridiculously large harp, the precious, proud thing. It was warm under my fingers, and a flicker of light rose to the surface of the gold. Heavenly gold. I gulped and looked past the mystic instrument to the ogre. “Did you enchant it?”
“Of course. I’m Rook the Luthier. I always enchant my instruments. Do you need something smaller?”
Good grief. This harp made the one Hope took on parades look like a cheap toy. It was made for angels. An ogre had created an angelic instrument that would be more than welcomed into the HARPs. I hadn’t played anything with angelic gold for a long time, but since the harp was my preferred instrument, and I was a master of it, I closed my eyes and prepared.
What would I play? A grand march? A heavenly dirge? No, I’d play the most complex piece I knew by an elven composer notorious for his ridiculous range and intricacy. Most harps couldn’t handle so many octaves, but this harp could take anything I gave it. Right. He needed to see what kind of musician I was, because he was going to create a custom harp just for me. Rook the Luthier?! I was going to show him absolutely everything I could do, and then some. It wasn’t about perfection, it was about range.
The intro was light, delicate strokes in the upper octaves, and then the melody began, and I sang. It was technically a duet, but that was fine because I’d just add the male singer’s voice to the accompaniment. The first part, the solo, where I sang the Elven song on the heavenly instrument, I was filled with the power of the thing, the strength, solidity that it gave me as it supported me and gave me the ability to accomplish every impossible trill. It was tuning in to my angelic blood. No question about it. This harp had been made for an angel.
How in the world had an ogre managed to create something like that? I opened my eyes and saw his glowing gold gaze through the strings, making my heart beat a little faster. Patterns of gold also spread over his cheeks, intricate chases of light that showed his magic even if I had no idea what he was doing. I should have thrown the harp down and jumped out the nearest window because he was an ogre, but then the part where the second voice was supposed to join came and he opened his mouth and sang.
He knew this song? One of the most obscure Elven numbers that was rarely played because it was so difficult, long, and obscure? He was a musician even if he wasn’t Rook the Luthier, and the last thing I’d ever do was run from a musician. Unless it was my brother.
I closed my eyes and focused on the instrument, forcing my voice to capture all the nuances in tone and emotion the song required while my fingers danced. His voice wasn’t anything close to angelic, which was fine because it was an elven piece, but I was half angelic, and so when he sang, he contrasted so completely that it set off my own sweet tones as if the Elven song was always intended to be played by an ogre and an angel. It gave the song purpose, conflict, emotion that built within the piece that was supposed to be nothing more than an exercise. The words started to mean something, the aching for beauty, and his voice clarifying the obscure words, providing context out of his own raw musicality. It was the bone-gnawing craving for another heart that would bring light to his darkness, but the fear that his darkness would crush his precious love’s delicate light.
Yes, I knew the words, and they’d always struck me as silly, because every soldier in the Hosts knew that light was the strongest, least delicate thing in existence. Hearing him sing it, I felt the weight of mountains of darkness burying the light in his soul. I felt his yearning for something light and good in his life. I felt his soul, trapped in the dark nature of his being but longing for a different existence.
I sang, offering him my light, my heart, and then almost flinched because what was I thinking, doing a love song duet with an ogre, but I didn’t, because the strings under my fingers had to be held perfectly during those long scales and trills, so flinching was absolutely out. I wasn’t going to mess up the beauty and emotion for the sake of my skittishness. Also, if he stopped singing and ruined the song, I’d kill him.
The piece was long, and parts were pure instrumentation, which I did with the focus I reserved for music, and yes, I did use my toes, and hair, and will, to get some notes to fall into line, adding in everything necessary to make this piece what it had to be now that an ogre and an angel were trying to conquer it. The harp came alive, gold glowing, jewels burning, feeding me their strength while the sound pealed and responded to my will with the delicacy of a much smaller, less elaborate harp. Playing it was pure pleasure, so I extended the interlude, adding things that no sane instrument would be able to do, because the music swallowed me up, consuming me in its absolute perfection.
He came in without me, because he was supposed to, and apparently he knew what he was supposed to do. And then his words blended with the harp’s notes, and everything was raw power and dangerous desire that no respectable elf would ever feel, but the harp leapt to meet that dark tone, building in tempo and volume until I came in, fighting my way through those chords of power and beating hunger to find his heart, the place in the darkness that could be tamed, drawing it towards the light, but the struggle of darkness…
I became lost in emotions as the music conquered me and I became its slave. It was the sweetest, most intense, agonizing pleasure I’d ever experienced, and I’d played among the ranks of the angels.
The song built higher and higher while I soared on emotions that became absolute reality until the rush of the finale, where pleasure and aching and hope were drawn out to the utmost, and then it peaked, slammed down, and ended in a growl of lowest tones, his voice, my harp’s lowest strings, and then silence.
The silence was a blunt shock that hit me like a wall of stone. I sat there blinking at the ogre standing across from me, his eyes on me, the hunger he’d sung clear in his glowing eyes. Would he eat me? Ogres shouldn’t eat angels, because our blood was poisonous. He’d have to drain me very well first. Maybe he’d use my blood in his luthier process. That would be such a worthy cause that I wouldn’t raise a hand to stop it. Irrationality, thy name is Mirabel.
“Interesting choice of music,” he growled, the same tone as the song. His voice rubbed across my soul like a washcloth in a hot, bubble-filled tub.
I swallowed and tasted blood. Weird. Everything was weird. “It has the largest range I know.” My words were breathy, my chest rising and falling as I struggled to get enough air. Was the shop too close or was it the instrument, sucking the oxygen out of me?
“You couldn’t just adapt an angelic song to suit the instrument?”
I frowned at the harp. It still glowed, and all the gems sparkled as if they were truly proud of themselves for their excellent performance. Well. They should be. My arms were heavy, flopping to my side when I took them off the warm gold. “I suppose that would have been more rational. I didn’t think that you’d start singing.”
He raised a brow, and his scowl became quite ominous. “How could I resist? Literally. I could not resist. You had a great deal of compulsion in your song. Do you have siren blood by any chance?”
“Siren blood?” Buzzing was all over my skin. I needed to scrub myself all over with his voice, or take a bath, preferably in sushi. Everything was weird after the otherworldly musical experience.
“No, you do not. I am very good at sensing blood.” He shook his head slightly and stood, hefting the harp like it wasn’t still glowing and luring me to it.
I stretched my arms out after it, even though they were lumps of lead. “Wait! Where are you taking it?” My precious, beautiful, magnificent love. Had I ever played an instrument that grand and powerful? Would I ever again?
He didn’t answer as he tucked it back behind the basses, safely out of sight, except that I could see a flicker of gold, a glimmer of diamond before he turned back to study me with arms crossed over his broad chest. He looked dissatisfied for some reason.
I straightened up and crossed my own arms, trying to bring them back to normal. The music’s spell was still wrapped around me, and I had to admit that I felt an urge to tackle the pretty ogre to the ground and taste his skin. His song had come out of his skin, and I wanted to taste it, to see what material he was made out of. Yes, I tasted instruments. It was a completely normal impulse, but I’d never felt the urge towards a musician. Ah, because he was an instrument maker. Or something. I don’t know. My head was still full of music, like my whole body, heavy with the sound, the emotion, the reality of it. All in all, it made logical thought processes somewhat difficult.
“Are you prepared to play something else, or do you need time to recover?” he asked, his eyes still glowing, frown still firmly in place like that song hadn’t been pleasant for him.
I stiffened my spine and raised my chin. If he didn’t like that music, he had no taste, because it had been exquisite. He’d been exquisite. “I am always well enough to play. Do you have an even larger harp that needs company?” I hoped he did.
He inhaled, nostrils flaring slightly, which made me wonder if he was doing the ogre sniffing me thing before he turned on his heel and went behind his counter. He took a medium-sized instrument from beneath the counter and then brought it back over to me. I knew the weird thing immediately, the double rows of strings like one harp stacked on another, with some bells and metal bars on the side for percussion.
“That’s an ogre instrument.” I’d watched the ogre camp commander play it, the first time I hadn’t been afraid when I was kidnapped, because I’d been mesmerized by the weird, fascinating song he’d made on the barbaric instrument.
“Indeed. Let us see what exactly you can make out of this.” He held it out, then settled it on my lap when I didn’t immediately grab the thing. Sorry, but I was still in shock and awe from the most incomprehensible musical experience in my life. And now I was supposed to do something with the small, stumpy thing that had limited range in notes, tone and expression? Pardon me while I try to adjust to disappointment.
I grabbed it when he let go instead of letting it fall to the ground, but my hands were still buzzing from the other piece. Why wasn’t he more affected? Did he not feel connected, like the words had been real, that our souls had mingled for a moment of breathless wonder? I wanted to curl up in that bed with the covers pulled over my head and relive the music until my feeble flesh came to grips with its majesty, but instead I had to dive into the depths.
Oh well. I still recalled some of the tunes the ogres had played, and I’d actually messed with them, trying to make them more when I was back home, when my dad wasn’t around, because he absolutely hated when I played anything that wasn’t angelic, elven, human, or fairy. I’d gone through a mermaid music phase and after that, he’d shudder at the first strains of anything remotely oceanic.
Anyway, if Rook the Luthier wanted to see what I could do with an ogre instrument, I’d do my best to impress. Hard as that would be. He was an ogre, so he probably liked ogre tunes. At the camp, the most favorite had been this ditty about stomping bodies, and ripping heads, then making broth from bones and bread from brains. I’d combine it with a siren piece about luring sailors to their deaths. Would he sing? He’d better not, but if he did, it would be so much better. I was already composing things for his voice in the back of my head. I’d better not start, but it was already too late.
I cleared my throat. “Um, I know a battle song that you may sing to, if you wouldn’t be uncomfortable with that.”
His dark brow flicked, and he cocked his head. “An ogre call to battle?”
“Oh, no, not one of their actual battle songs. Those are far too repetitious, although come to think of it, I could probably add a line in there with the cheerful one, you know…” I hummed a few bars of the battle song they sang when they were really excited and happy to be going up against a worthy opponent. They didn’t always sing that one. Sometimes it was a song about mowing bodies down and throwing them over a cliff, because their enemy didn’t deserve the space they took to exist, but they were usually quite happy to fight angelic hosts, so I’d heard a lot of the cheerful one.
“You’d like me to sing with your playing? A battle song? In my instrument shop? Suppose I became inspired and started destroying instruments?” Were his eyes twinkling?
I looked around at the beautiful creations, then shook my head at him. “That does sound dangerous. No, you’d better not sing any war ballads, just the destruction ditty.”
I started playing the first chords with the jingle of bells, and then he leaned back and nodded. “Ah, ‘The Rat Ate the Cat.’ I know it well. It is a children’s song, not for battle.”
“You have something against children’s songs?” I didn’t believe him because they’d sung it around the campfire, and I was the only child there. The enormous battle-hardened ogres wouldn’t have sung it so cheerfully for me, their prisoner, would they? Of course not.
“Not at all. Let us begin.”
I played the intro again and then he came in with the rapid lyrics in ogre, which was a coarse and rough language that I didn’t know. The chorus was in English, and it was the same words I remembered, about catching and cooking a human for supper. And then the next verse, I shifted keys and then I started in with an overlay I’d learned from a book on Siren songs. It was a creepy thing that had dissonance that twisted the ogre tune into something absolutely weird and evocative. Then I sang all the hissing whispers that went with the words that meant hardly anything, but it was the sound of the thing. And the sound was compelling.
The instrument wasn’t sure what to do with such contrasting pieces being played at the same time, but I urged it to submit, so it did, until the song was basically ogres happily eating humans while the sirens were cleverly luring the ogres to their deaths while they were distracted. It was an eat or be eaten, everyone has a predator, there is no safety however confident you are in your own strength kind of moral, which I found amusing as I trailed off the last note, with a tinkling hiss. Not a lot of instruments could manage that sound, but that ogre instrument was one of them.
He took a deep breath and exhaled as he studied me. “You are more accomplished than I imagined.”
I blinked and felt awkward, because that last song I’d twisted completely out of shape to make it something else, and I’d used his voice to do it. “Um. Thanks. I apologize if that was disrespectful to your musical culture. It’s just the instrument is severely limited, but it does lend itself to the eerie siren’s sound.”
“No, you bent it to that sound. It makes me wonder what you couldn’t do with an instrument. You are extremely talented. I wondered why a person would be elected Singsong City’s music master at such a young age, but now I see that it was completely warranted.”
I was blushing. So hard. I mean, it’s one thing for the Harp’s lieutenant to tell you that your music is powerful enough to lead the way in the next field battle, but another to be told by Rook the Luthier, who studied with elves, that you’re worthy of the position that you flat-out stole. The position I was using to get a custom instrument created by the master of musical instruments. I felt more guilty about my deception than I’d ever felt before.
He took the instrument off my lap and studied me with knowing eyes. Did he know that I was lying? Were those words just a set up for the big reveal? “You’re hungry. You used up a great deal of magic and personal energy to create such a concert. You mentioned sushi. There is a new place down the street. I will bring you some while you wait here. I’m going to lock you up because you need to rest, and you still aren’t entirely convinced that I’m Rook the Luthier.”
I waved a hand away, and it really waved around, kind of disconnected from my body. “Nonsense. I’m fine. I’m hardly going to—” I stood up and then collapsed, or I would have collapsed if he hadn’t swooped me up in his arms and carried me to the room, the one with the bed and all the unfinished instruments, carefully laying me down before I had time to be shocked at being so close to someone I’d sang that miraculous duet with.
“Rest well, Mirabel.” He bowed low, eyes gold and brilliant. “I thank you for your excellent concert. I will remember it always.” Maybe it had made an impression on him.
I tried to push myself off the bed, but his eyes were so heavy, the next thing I knew, my own eyes were closing as he gently pushed me off to sleep.