Chapter Eight
The sun rose the next day as if blithely unaware that an empire was in its death throes, and Marin was fine with that. So long as the sun still rose and the wind still blew, she could sail on.
Admittedly, that was a low bar, but it had worked for her before. As long as the sun still rose and her parents were okay and she had her boat and her sea serpent … and now her wax myrtle … and apparently a whole lot of musicians?
What am I going to do with them?
She’d left them to their own devices in the cabin overnight while she slept out on the deck, beneath the stars, but now that the sun had risen she supposed she was going to have to deal with them.
Feed them maybe? Had any of them thought to bring food?
She doubted it. She wondered if Perri would be willing to round up a school of fish.
It was still another day’s sail until Eventrid. After that, she could wash her hands of them, knowing they were safely out of Alyssium. She wouldn’t have to worry. Except about Rijes Velk. And everyone else in the island city.
I can’t save everyone.
It felt good that she’d saved these people, she had to admit. They’d been lucky, though. If the fire had spread faster … if barricades had been erected in their path … if the gate had been closed … There were a dozen scenarios that could have made that into a disaster.
But it wasn’t. We’re fine.
“Marin?” She heard Dax’s voice behind her and turned.
He had popped halfway up out of the cabin.
She’d expected him to look at least a little rumpled after the excitement of their frantic escape and then sleeping with a heap of musicians in a cabin, but he looked exquisite: flawless skin with zero shadows under his eyes, brilliant purple hair as smooth as silk, crystal horns gleaming like they’d been polished.
Distracted by admiring him, she forgot to say good morning or hello or any other kind of pleasantry.
After a pause, Dax said, “We’ve made some breakfast. Would you like some? ”
“You did? Of what?”
“Ebron was clever enough to ransack the conservatory kitchen on his way out, and Ree said we could use your stove. Also, we found some spices in your pantry—hope it was all right to use some.” He climbed the rest of the way onto the deck, steadied himself, and then crossed to her, carrying a napkin with a boiled egg and a pastry in it.
“There’s sausage and onion in the pastry, I think? ”
She accepted it and told herself to stop staring.
Just because most of them had packed instruments instead of essentials didn’t mean they were all useless.
She felt guilty for judging them so harshly the day before, especially Dax.
He was sheltered, yes, and guileless, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be practical when faced with reality. “Glad someone packed essentials.”
He smiled happily. “Oh, I did! Got out the full collection of Tasia’s symphonies. She isn’t widely known, so there aren’t a lot of copies in existence. I happened to have them out on loan from the conservatory library so it was easy to grab them.”
That … wasn’t what she’d meant, but okay.
His smile faded as he looked back toward the east. Alyssium was a smudge on the horizon, with darker clouds above that Marin knew were smoke.
“My friends confessed last night. They’d been instructed to lie to me about what was going on in the city.
Specifically Grandmaster Vorac had told them to. Threatened them, actually.”
“How did they know what was happening and you didn’t?” Marin asked. She bit into the pastry. The pastry flaked, buttery and delicate, and the sausage inside was perfectly seasoned with spices that made her tongue explode with little fireworks. “Wow, this is good.”
He shrugged. “None of them are bound to the conservatory.”
“Which means?” She took another bite. “What spices did they use? It’s sweet and spicy at the same time—is it ferris pepper? No, wait … I think there’s cumin and cinnamon, but what’s the tang that comes in at the end?”
“Paprika, I think? It means that legally the conservatory is my family. The others … They still have ties outside, and so they’re permitted to travel to visit relatives and friends.”
Staring at him, she stopped tasting the pastry. “Wait. They owned you?”
“No, of course not.”
“But you weren’t allowed to leave.”
He shrugged and stared off in the distance. “It was discouraged.” And then he sighed. “Essentially, no, I wasn’t. It’s complicated. Once I complete my opus, I’ll be able to travel, but until then, all the expenses they incurred training me, feeding me, and lodging me grant them authority.”
“None of which you had a choice in, right?” He’d told her once that he’d been given to the conservatory as a child. “You were, what, five years old when you were sent there?”
“Four,” he said.
“Four years old. And your parents were okay with this?”
“They were proud of me,” Dax said. “I’ve a gift.”
The way he said the word did not make it sound like a gift at all.
She scowled at the sea and thought he had very crappy parents.
She also thought she didn’t know him well enough to say that out loud.
She did say, “Your friends shouldn’t have been told to lie to you. It’s not like you’re a child anymore.”
“I … agree.” He was silent for a moment, then shook himself and said, “What I’m trying to say, badly, is thank you.
You saved me and my friends, and I didn’t even know we needed to be saved.
I feel like an idiot, but please know that I’m a grateful idiot.
” He was looking at her, his eyes intense.
“You came for me. Not for my music. For me. I don’t think you know … What you did … You’re extraordinary.”
Marin shrugged. He was being overdramatic again. “Thank Perri. It was his idea. He has a soft spot for you.”
Out in the waves, the sea serpent was cavorting with a herd of merhorses. Their hooves hit the waves as they galloped through the water, flinging droplets off their manes. Their jewel-toned scales gleamed in the morning sun.
“He just likes me for the squid,” Dax said, squinting toward the sun as he watched the sea serpent and the merhorses.
“Oh, he does. It’s true squid love.”
Dax laughed. His laugh sounded like music, and she couldn’t help but smile.
It was the kind of laugh that sounded so pure and true.
He doesn’t belong out here, she thought, exposed to the harshness of the sun, the wind, and the sea.
In the light of dawn, away from the city, she wondered if she’d overreacted, if he would have been fine cocooned in his conservatory …
except his friends, when offered a way out, had seized it.
She wondered how many still remained in the conservatory.
“Why didn’t they evacuate you?” She wasn’t sure who she meant by “they.” She supposed she meant whatever asshole had convinced Dax he belonged to them, as if he were a prize-winning cow.
“I don’t think they expected the revolution to go on as long as it has,” Dax said.
“They believed the empire would squash the rebellion the same way it always has, even without the emperor, and everything would return to normal, with a new emperor, in a matter of days. That said, I haven’t seen Grandmaster Vorac or any of the others in days.
It does make me wonder if they evacuated themselves and left the rest of us to wait it out. ”
She wasn’t certain what to say to that, except that it did seem likely.
A lot of the city had felt abandoned. She guessed that everyone who could flee had already done so, the wealthy and the connected.
Not everyone could. There weren’t any big sailing ships in the city—they couldn’t navigate through the canals—so it was a problem of scale.
People could have evacuated on the imperial warships, but that would have required the empire wanting them to be evacuated …
and it was likely that whoever was currently in charge of the empire didn’t want that.
The imperials wanted everything to stay the way it was.
And they never cared who they hurt to achieve that. So long as their lives stayed the same.
What was it about wealth and power that made people so very small?
“I had no idea sea serpents could make music like that,” Dax said. “It’s not in any of the records, at least none that I’ve seen. I don’t think anyone’s ever studied sea serpent music before.”
“Not surprised.” From the sound of it, his grandmasters sounded like the kind of controlling people who thought they knew best. Like Iovar. If they didn’t allow musicians to leave the conservatory, how would they know sea serpents could sing?
“It’s amazing.”
Marin smiled fondly at Perri, who was swimming back toward them as the herd moved off into the distance. “He is amazing.”
“Do you think he’d sing again, if you asked him to?” Dax said.
“Sure, he likes to sing. You can ask him yourself.”
A delighted look lit up Dax’s face, and he crossed to the port side. “Perri? Would you be willing to sing for me? Or with me?”
Rising out of the waves, Perri flapped his fins and let out a trill.
“He said yes,” Marin translated.
Dax grinned. “Oh, wait, let me get my tri-lute.” He scurried downstairs and then reemerged with the three-necked lute that he’d carried onto the boat.
He sat on the deck on top of the cabin and spent a few moments tuning it.
She was surprised at how natural he looked, and she wondered if she was wrong to think he didn’t belong on the sea.
Or maybe he was just the kind of open, friendly person who was at home anywhere.
“You start,” he said to the sea serpent.
Perri trilled a query.
“He doesn’t know what you want him to sing,” Marin said.
“Anything,” Dax said. “What you feel. That’s always best.”
The serpent was quiet for a moment, and Marin grinned. “You’ve made him shy. Usually he’s loud all the time.”
Perri protested that with a sharp whistle and a splash.
Ready for it, she jumped back with a laugh.
“I’ll start, then,” Dax offered. He ran his fingers over the strings in a waterfall of notes, then he paused and waited.
Standing, he carried the tri-lute to the side of the boat.
A wave smacked the hull, and Dax wobbled.
Marin tensed, ready to spring forward to catch him, but he steadied himself and then replayed the notes.
Swimming closer to the sailboat, the sea serpent sang a short cascade of notes.
Sitting with his feet dangling over Silver’s side, Dax grinned at Perri and matched that cascade with his own, then added a few extra notes. His fingers moved so fast that Marin couldn’t follow them.
Perri sang back chords, and Dax harmonized, adding a melody in between the sea serpent’s notes.
The tri-lute’s music was soft and sweet to the sea serpent’s trumpeting.
Marin heard a shuffling behind her and saw movement out of the corner of her eye—one of the other musicians, the bald man with tattoos, was coming onto the deck.
He held a flute in his hands. Sitting himself behind Dax, he added a few mournful notes in the gaps between the lute’s notes and the sea serpent’s breaths.
A few minutes later, they were joined by the gold-haired woman with a drum. She added a low, deep beat to the swirling music. It steadied the sound, as the melodies and harmonies swirled around it. From belowdecks, singing rose up, a chorus, sweet and slow and sad. Marin didn’t recognize the words.
Ree joined Marin by the helm. “It’s pretty,” he said.
Pretty didn’t begin to cover it. The sailboat felt engulfed by music. It was as mesmerizing as the sea itself. “What do you think they’re singing about?”
“One of them said it’s a goodbye song,” Ree said.
Softly, beneath the music, Dax said, “It tells a story of a woman who leaves her home because it’s sinking into the sea.
The first verse is when the seashore is swallowed, and she remembers her childhood on the beach, playing in the tide pools, digging in the sand, strolling with her lover, scattering his ashes when he died. ”
Marin listened to the music as it curled around her.
The flute sang a mournful melody, while Perri trumpeted out a counterpoint that made her think of the crashing sea.
Beneath it, Dax played the waves, the steady current, while the singers harmonized belowdecks, their voices reverberating in the chamber of the cabin.
“The chorus is her sadness and how she carries it with her wherever she goes,” Dax said.
His fingers danced over the strings, and Marin couldn’t tear her eyes from them.
Every pluck was sure and strong. She had an immediate and vivid image of those sure and strong hands on her body, and she shoved that thought away as hard as she could—it was not at all a helpful or appropriate thought.
Even if he had called her extraordinary.
Ridiculous, she thought. I’m extremely ordinary.
As the chorus slipped into a verse, he translated, “She fashions a basket made of seaweed to carry her sadness in.”
“What happens to her?” Ree asked.
“Eventually, she finds someone else who helps her carry the basket,” he said. “She always carries it, but it’s lighter, even though as the years pass, she adds more sadness to it.”
“Why doesn’t she just put the basket down?” Ree wanted to know.
“She can’t,” Dax said. “It’s part of her.”
“She’s part basket?” Ree said. “That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Something can not make much sense and still be true,” Dax said. “Especially in art. Music is all about the truth of the heart.”
That was lovely. And it made her think about the stories she loved, like the one she’d told Ree or all the variants on how she’d befriended Perri—full of very little fact but a lot of truth. No wonder he likes my stories. They were like his songs.
Still, as Marin listened to the music and watched Dax’s fingers on the strings, she thought Ree was right: the woman should just put the basket of sadness down and live.