The wedding is already underway in a small stone chapel beside the market. Eleven guests sit close together while a young couple stands before a priest beneath the carved emblem of an open book, its pages blank. Outside, lamps burn through the city's unending night and coal carts rattle between the workshops. The priest is midway through the opening part of the blessing. The bride turns toward the groom, who is still occupied with something in his hands.
They have chosen the interval between market bells, when a food stall can close and the forge can spare several workers. The cobbler next door has lent his benches, and a coal seller has lent a brazier on the understanding that any fuel left after the ceremony will come home with him.
At the altar, the groom keeps turning his iron wedding ring, searching for the seam where its ends meet. He made both bands himself, and although nobody else can see the join, he knows exactly where to look. The bride catches his hand before he can inspect it again and puts it back in hers. His thumb stays on the seam for another moment, until she closes her fingers around his.
“Leave it, Caio. It's been on my finger since we got here, and I still have the finger.” She holds out her hand for him to inspect, barely patient enough to be convincing. “If you go looking for your file before we're married, I'll tell the priest to finish without you.”
His smile comes slowly. The sleeves of his good coat fall short of his wrists, showing hands scrubbed with pumice after a shift at the forge. A trace of black remains beside one thumbnail. Feria covers it with hers, and he finally looks up from the ring to her face. Her dress has been cut down from her mother's, with the sleeves adjusted twice before the last seam was stitched.
The priest of Doomkhan has settled into the first long passage of the blessing. He holds a book with blank pages, like the carved one above his head, and rests two fingers against the paper whenever he reaches the end of a thought. His voice is steady enough to carry into the last row. The couple have been instructed where to stand, when to take each other's hands, and how to hold the iron rings toward the altar. For the moment their chief duty is to listen.
On the front bench, the bride's father is finding it difficult to do even that. Derejal Serrin has a small brass clasp in his hand and its wooden box beside him. The hinge, which he made years ago for the cord used at his own wedding, closes with a little catch. He opens it, closes it, and tests it again with his thumbnail. It works on the fourth try. He frowns at it as though this is proof of a more serious defect.
“Leave the thing alone,” his wife whispers. “You polished it before we left home.”
“It needs oil, Assia. There's some downstairs.” Derejal checks that the priest is still speaking and slips the clasp into its box. “He's barely begun. I'll have it done before he gets to us.”
He rises from the front bench and makes his way down the aisle. The guests pull their knees back to let him through, and one of the groom's workmates takes his boots off the edge of a neighboring seat. At the altar, the bride sees her father passing with the little box tucked under his arm. She gives him the look she has learned from her mother. Derejal lifts one finger in a promise of discretion, although he is already halfway to the back of the chapel.
A broad stone arch opens behind the last benches. Beyond it, a narrow flight of steps turns beneath the floor toward the old undercroft, where the priest keeps lamp oil and the chapel's other small necessities. The hired fiddler sits near the arch with his instrument across his lap. He had played when the couple entered and has no reason to play again for some time. His long hind feet fold beneath the stool to let Derejal pass. The old man nods his thanks and vanishes down the stairs with the box under one arm.
The sermon proceeds. The priest seldom consults the empty pages, but he turns them with great care. His voice rises at moments, drops again, and always returns to the same patient pace. On the benches people begin shifting their weight without making a sound. Nobody is rude enough to look toward the market entrance. At the front, the couple keep their hands joined, waiting for the priest to reach the next part of the rite.
Caio has finished a late shift at the forge and spent most of the time he ought to have slept fixing the rings. At first he stands straight, his shoulders square beneath the borrowed coat. Then his attention begins to wander with the priest's voice. He keeps his eyes on the carved book above the altar, blinks, and discovers that he has been studying the same chipped corner for a very long time. His head inclines by a fraction. He brings it upright again with a small effort of will.
From the back bench one of the smiths watches him. The man has spent enough shifts beside Caio to know that particular struggle, and he gives a soft warning cough. Caio straightens at once. His heel comes down hard enough to make the ring on his finger click against Feria's. She turns her hand over his, concealing his sudden movement from the priest. The man on the back bench lowers his eyes with the careful expression of someone who has prevented an accident at work.
The priest pauses. All eleven guests look up. He takes a sip of water from the cup beside the altar, closes his book halfway, and then, apparently remembering an important part of the blessing, opens it again. A slow change passes through the congregation as everyone settles back. Caio manages to keep his face still. Feria's fingers tighten briefly around his hand.
After a while the coal in the brazier has burned low enough that its iron guard gives a small tick as it cools. A cart rattles past in the street; later, another follows it. The priest is still speaking. A child on the last bench rests his head against his grandfather's coat and falls asleep without ceremony. His grandfather shifts the boy higher onto his knee and turns his attention back to the altar.
Assia glances toward the arch where her husband disappeared. She has waited on Derejal while he finished repairing a latch often enough to know he will ignore everything around him once he starts. The priest has yet to reach the family cord, so she stays seated. By now she can see the empty place on the bench without turning her head. It begins to bother her.
At the next pause, the priest asks the congregation to bow their heads. Everyone does. Caio's head sinks with an eagerness that might have been taken for devotion. When the others straighten again, he stays bent forward. Feria puts a finger against the inside of his wrist. He wakes with a start, catches himself before his knees give way, and lifts his chin with as much dignity as he can recover. His mother, seated behind him, fixes her eyes firmly on the priest.
The blessing is still going. There is nothing hurried about the priest's manner, and the people who need to reopen shops after the ceremony appear to have accepted their fate. Beside the rear arch the fiddler has remained still on his stool. His cracked violin rests across his knees, the bow beneath one hand. His ears follow the priest's voice for a while, then turn toward the wheels of another cart passing outside. He makes no move to play.
Another small pause brings the congregation to attention. This time the priest truly has reached his conclusion. He closes the book, sets it on the altar and calls the young people a little closer, taking their hands between his own for the last words of the blessing. No one on the benches moves until he releases them. Even Caio is fully awake when the priest reaches for the old blue cord that will bind their hands.
Assia looks toward the arch once more. Derejal is still absent. She presses her lips together, glances at the empty place beside her and draws a breath to get up. Before she can rise, Belia turns toward her.
The priest lays the old blue cord across the couple's joined hands. It is worn soft by years of handling. Assia and Derejal used it at their own wedding, and the clasp he carried downstairs belongs to the cord. Its two loose ends hang toward the floor as the priest arranges it over the rings.
Belia Bresk, seated beside the bride's mother, nudges her with an elbow. “Where's Derejal got to? It's his turn, isn't it?” She points toward the empty place on the front bench. “I saw him go down the stairs, but that was a while ago.”
“He's giving that clasp one last polish.” Assia smiles at the couple, who are still holding the cord between them. “He'll have rubbed all the brass off it by the time we're through.” The priest holds the two loose ends of the cord together with his fingers while he waits. Assia touches her daughter's shoulder. “I'll fetch him. Don't you two go anywhere.”
The musician beside the rear arch moves his violin onto one knee as Assia approaches. He folds his long feet beneath the stool to give her room, though she passes without coming close to them. She nods to him and starts down the stairs. The stone turn takes her out of sight. At the altar, the priest keeps the unfastened cord in his hands, and nobody has asked for another tune.
His name is Grunty Croak. He was hired when the family's first musician asked for more silver than the wedding supper would cost. Grunty wanted a few coins, a full plate when the ceremony was over, and a seat close to the brazier while he waited. He is a hare urakian with narrow shoulders inside a travel coat repaired in several shades of brown. His long ears seldom point the same way for long. The violin across his knees is cared for more carefully than his coat: the varnish has worn through where his hand rests, a fine crack runs along one side, and a pale horn peg stands out among the others.
There is little for him to do during the priest's blessing. Grunty has listened to the groom fighting sleep, to the deliberate cough that brought him back, and to the way the guests changed their breathing each time the priest seemed ready to finish. Earlier, the bride's father had passed him with a wooden box tucked beneath his arm and gone down these same stairs. The man has not returned. Now his wife has followed. Grunty rests his thumb against the violin's cracked wood and listens toward the arch, but the stair bends through too much stone to carry any sound from below. He keeps the instrument quiet. Playing without being asked is an excellent way to lose one's supper.
When Assia comes back, he sees her hand first, feeling along the wall as she climbs the last steps. She stops beneath the arch without quite stepping into the aisle. The woman who went down to fetch her husband had been smiling; this one has lost the color from her face. She looks toward the altar, where her daughter is waiting, and then at the floor. Grunty straightens on his stool. He settles the violin across its case. When she finally looks at him, he tilts his head.
“Found your husband, mother-folk?” he asks.
Assia nods. Her lips move before a word comes out. “He's dead. Down there by the table. My husband is dead.” She says it again, almost angrily, as though the second time might make it less true. “He was talking to me only a little while ago.”
The hare is off the stool before she can add anything. He hurries down the stairs in three long bounds, one hand brushing the wall as the passage turns beneath the chapel. The heavy door below is ajar. Inside, the old man lies beside a worktable, an overturned wooden box near his shoulder and the brass clasp still in his fist. Grunty kneels beside him, feels beneath his jaw and then at his wrist. He rests two fingers against the man's chest and waits through several breaths. Nothing answers.
Grunty smooths the old man's coat across his chest. Then he lowers his ears and bows his head. “Moon keep your last road, friend. Feet rest easy now.” Assia's steps have followed his down the stairs. She is standing beside the worktable when he rises, holding her hands together to keep them still.
“It must have been the chest-grip,” she says. “He'd get it after lifting the shutters from the stall. Right here.” She presses a hand against her breastbone. “I told him to leave the heavy things to somebody else. He'd laugh and say he was only tired.” Her mouth twists on the last word. She turns toward the worktable and begins to cry, clutching its edge with both hands. The sobbing comes hard, then stops almost as suddenly as it began. She stays bent over the table, trying to get her breath back.
Grunty takes a step toward her. “Mother-folk, me—”
“The wedding.” Assia wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand and straightens. “It has to go on. Derejal would never forgive me if I let his death ruin Feria's wedding. He was so proud of her.” She looks toward the stairs, speaking mostly to herself now. “The priest must be nearly finished. If I can get them through the last part and out of the chapel, I can tell Feria afterward.” She wipes her face again. “But she'll come looking for him. She saw where he went.” Her eyes settle on the doorway. “I have to keep her upstairs somehow.”
“Me can help,” the hare offers. He says it with the simple readiness of someone who expects to be given something to carry. “Tell Grunty what needs doing.”
“Stand at the top of those stairs. Don't let anybody come down.” Assia takes hold of his sleeve, speaking faster now that a task has presented itself. “I'll tell them the clasp is stuck, or that Derejal's knees are giving him trouble. We can tie the cord ourselves. Just keep them upstairs until they've gone.”
Grunty glances at Derejal. “They saw old fellow go down. Many eyes.” He turns back to the woman. “Me mind door if you want.”
“Only until they leave,” Assia whispers. “Please.” Grunty starts upstairs, Assia just behind him. At the last turn he nearly collides with Feria. She has lifted the hem of her wedding dress and is about to step down to look for her mother. The hare stops so abruptly that Assia nearly walks into him. He steps against the wall beside his violin case, keeping one hind foot across the passage.
“Mother! There you are.” Feria looks past the hare at Assia. “We've been waiting. Did you find Father?” Her impatience disappears as her mother steps into the lamplight.
Assia rubs at her cheeks. “Your father's still busy with that clasp, darling. You know how he gets.” Her voice wavers. “Go back to the altar, please. The priest's waiting for us.”
Feria catches her mother's hand. It's shaking. “Mother, you've been crying.” Assia tries to smile; her lower lip trembles instead. “I'm tired, that's all,” Assia says. Feria tightens her grip. “What's going on? Tell me.”
“Please,” Assia says. “Your father wants this day to go properly. Everyone's waiting for you.” She puts both hands on Feria's shoulders and tries to turn her toward the aisle. Feria doesn't move.
Caio has been watching from the altar. The moment Feria refuses to move with her mother, he hurries down the aisle. “Feria?” He reaches them almost at once, takes one look at Assia and asks, “What's the trouble?”
The guests begin rising almost as soon as Caio moves. The smith who kept him awake through the sermon is first behind him, followed by both families. For the first time since the priest opened his book, nobody needs reminding to pay attention. They crowd toward the rear arch, trying to see what is wrong. Belia comes around the nearest bench and presses forward with the others.
The priest comes after the guests, book in one hand and the blue cord in the other. “Madam Serrin, is something wrong?” Assia reaches for the cord before he can ask anything more. “Nothing. We can tie it ourselves. We don't need the clasp.” She tries to put one end into Feria's hand, but the bride won't take it.
Assia fumbles with the loose ends of the cord, pulling one loop tight and then loosening it again. “Let's go back. Everything is ready. We can finish the blessing, and then we can all go home.” She presses the cord against her daughter's hand once more. Feria draws away; Caio stays beside her, watching Assia struggle with the knot.
Grunty watches from the arch. His violin lies across its case at his feet. He lifts it quietly and rests his thumb against the lowest string. Assia is still pulling at the blue cord, too shaken to notice what the musician is doing.
“Enough.” Feria pulls her hand away from her mother. “What happened to Father?” She turns toward the stairs, lifting one foot to take the first step. Before she can put that foot down, Grunty plucks the lowest string.
Every head turns toward the urakian beneath the stone arch, where the light falls on the cracked body of his instrument. He plucks the strings again without the bow. The first two notes are ugly things, scraping at one another. The third is so clear and sweet that even the priest stops to hear its end. He draws his long foot away from the stair, leaving the passage open. The gathered guests fall quiet. Feria remains at the top step, watching him with frightened impatience.
“Sir, there is no need for music,” the priest says. He steps closer to the arch with one hand extended. “Whatever has happened, let these people have their privacy.”
“Me hear you, book-folk.” Grunty sets the bow against the strings and sounds the same notes again, quietly, as though testing the distance between them. “Just giving folk a little room to breathe.”
His voice rises with the next phrase. It is a poor singing voice by any sensible measure, rough as a toad's throat, and yet the note from the violin arrives beneath it at exactly the right place. He speaks half the words and sings the rest. The two sounds keep meeting, separating, and finding each other again, until the people in the chapel are listening for the gap between them.
“Little feet on father's feet, slow-slow, eh? Big hands keep little hands from falling. Then little feet grow up, run far, get married, leave old boots by door.” His bow drags something like a sigh from the strings. “Good-good. That's how the walking goes. Priest got words, young folk got road. Old folk got one step left. Just one step to see 'em through.”
The priest stops at the edge of the arch. He watches the hare's left foot begin to tap against the stone. Tap. Wait. Tap again, a shade louder. The rhythm does something peculiar to the sounds of the chapel. A woman's breathing catches it; somewhere a heel answers before its owner realizes what she has done. Grunty's ears stand high and still. Beneath his heel, the flagstone gives a thin answer to every note.
“Who got that last-hop, old friend? Me hear it knocking. Don't leave little girl waiting at door. Heel first, toe follows. One step now. No more than one.” He laughs softly into the sound, though there is nothing amused in his eyes. “Come along. Go on. Me keep time.”
The first scrape comes from the stairs beneath the arch. Feria turns toward it and steps aside. Something metallic clicks against the handrail, followed by a shoe striking the worn stone. A brass clasp rises into view, clenched in the hand that holds it; a second hand finds the wall for balance. Step by step, the old man's figure climbs from the bend below, his coat brushing the narrow passage. His polished shoe reaches the uppermost step precisely as Grunty's foot comes down.
Derejal Serrin steps into the chapel.
For one moment the sight is almost ordinary. His coat is buttoned for a wedding; his collar is crooked, as it has always been by the end of a long evening. His right hand holds the little brass thing his daughter has been waiting for. Then the violin lifts into a lively turn, and the rest of him follows it. One shoe crosses in front of the other. He moves into the aisle with a neat sideways step and performs half a pirouette, raising the clasp as if to show it to the congregation. The turn is broad enough to make his coat flare. He has never danced so well in his life.
His head comes around a fraction too late. The face follows the shoulders, eyes open and resting on no one. Feria has reached toward him, but her hand stops in midair. Her father is holding the clasp he went to fetch. He is standing where she wanted him to stand. For a moment she can find nothing to say to either of those facts.
Assia sees his face. She makes a sound like the beginning of his name, puts out a hand to steady herself and falls backward without bending her knees. Belia catches her by one elbow. The other slips through her fingers, and both women go down against the nearest bench, overturning it. The blue wedding cord follows them in a long, useless loop. The priest's book strikes the floor at their feet and falls open, its blank pages toward the aisle.
The chapel erupts. “Fetch the healer!” a woman shouts. Somebody tries to get past the priest and discovers there is nowhere to go. Grunty holds one high note a moment longer than the tune requires. His eyes move from the dead man to the wife lying on the floor and then to the people staring at him. “No, no, good folk! Look at him,” he calls, a little too brightly. “He fine. See? Up on two feet. All proper. No need for all that screaming.”
Nobody appears reassured. Derejal stands in the middle of the aisle with his coat still settling around his legs. Grunty gives the violin a brisk stroke, as if the failure has been one of presentation. The dead man's heel answers at once. “There!” the hare says. “Strong legs. Wedding legs. Me told you.”
Belia is trying to raise Assia from the stone when Derejal turns toward them. His feet make two short, exact steps. He bends, places one arm around his wife's back and lifts her before Belia can tighten her grip. The older woman releases her with a startled cry. Assia's head drops against her husband's shoulder, and her free arm swings loose beside his good coat. She remains quite unconscious.
“Put her down!” Caio shouts. He starts toward them, but the dead man steps backward on a clean, sharp beat and takes the fainted woman with him. “Grunty, for Doomkhan's sake—”
“Hush now, groom-folk. Me fixing!” The musician bears down on the bow. What comes from the violin has the rasp of two pieces of wood fighting, with a small, unexpectedly tender melody caught between them. His hind foot strikes the stone. Tap, tap—then a long pause. Derejal draws his wife's slack hand up between them, sets his other arm around her waist and begins to dance.
The first movement is a slow turn, almost something a living husband might attempt at a family celebration. Then the rhythm quickens. The dead man's polished shoes move through a close, precise pattern of backward steps and sudden turns, carrying Assia along. Her feet brush the floor when the music draws them forward. They leave it when he swings her into the next step. At one point he lowers her so far over his arm that a copper pin drops out of her hair, then brings her upright in a flourish that sends her loose sleeve across his face. Nobody in the chapel has ever seen the couple dance together. Nobody is likely to forget it now.
Grunty smiles at the assembled family with the fixed courtesy of a musician determined to finish his number. “See? Husband dancing with wife. Old love got feet too, yes? Very nice. Very nice indeed.” He adds a little turn of the bow, and the couple passes the altar again with Assia's head lolling against the shoulder of the man who can no longer feel its weight.
Feria takes a step after them. “Mother!” The cry brings Caio forward too, but there is scarcely room in the aisle to approach without being caught in the dance. The priest stands beside his fallen book, watching the dead man's feet. The guests nearest the entrance begin backing away. Two more people push in from outside to discover what all the shouting is about.
“Blasphemy!” A voice rises from the rear bench, sharp enough to cut through the music. An elderly guest has climbed onto the seat for a better view and is pointing at the violin. “That's the forbidden dance of Krea's heretics! Here, in the house of Doomkhan!”
At Krea's name, one of Grunty's ears folds hard against his head. He turns toward the speaker. His foot comes down on the wrong beat, and the bow slips across two strings at once. The sound is hideous. In the middle of a sudden turn, Derejal loses every trace of grace. His knees buckle. For an instant he and his wife seem to hang together, his arms still arranged to hold her. Then both fall to the stones in a tangle of coats and limbs, while the last note dies under Grunty's thumb.
Feria screams. Caio reaches the fallen pair and drags Assia clear. “Assia! Can you hear me?” Derejal remains where he has landed, one cheek against the floor, the brass clasp finally released from his hand. The priest kneels beside the widow, checks that she is breathing and looks up at the musician with the kind of attention Grunty has been hoping not to attract.
“He's a danse macabre!” someone shouts from the doorway. The words travel backward through the people crowding the chapel steps. “The hare with the fiddle! That's what he is!” “Get the watch!” a man cries, gripping the doorpost. Several of the guests who had been trying to help now turn to look at Grunty.
Grunty is holding the violin against his chest. His bow trembles once and grows still. Across the floor he can see the bride kneeling beside her parents, Caio trying to prop Assia against his knee. “Me said one step,” Grunty murmurs. He lowers his ears. “Should've stopped the bow.”
The priest rises, sacred book in hand. “Put that instrument down. You're going to answer for what you've done in this chapel.” Feria's uncle has reached the end of the aisle and is looking for a way around an overturned bench. Grunty takes one step toward the exit, offers the room a small, apologetic bow and gathers his violin case. “Stop him!” the uncle shouts behind him.
Outside, the street has noticed the commotion. A wedding in the little chapel is a matter of no particular interest, but a dozen people screaming at once can attract a crowd before the first two finish. A hot-root seller has abandoned his stand to get a better look, and two apprentices on their way home have stopped with their tools still in their hands. They know neither family. The prospect of telling the story later has made the walk worth their time.
By the time Grunty reaches the door, people are packed shoulder to shoulder on the chapel steps. The musician looks up at the small forest of heads blocking his path. Behind him, the uncle's voice is getting closer, accompanied by the scrape of a bench being dragged clear of the aisle.
“Beg pardon,” Grunty says, bowing to the first man in his way. “Very good wedding. Most memorable. Me hope young folk keep each other warm, yes? About my payment, no need to hurry. Grunty very patient urakian.” He makes a show of stepping politely aside. “Catch him!” the uncle roars from the chapel. The hare springs.
His left hind foot catches the broad shoulder of a coal carrier. His right comes down on a cap, pushing its wearer halfway into a neighbor's arms. A third leap takes him over the heads of the people trying to get into the chapel, and he lands on the far side of the crowd, case under one arm and violin under the other. A surprised merchant catches the cap in his face. The hot-root seller's cart rattles as the hare bounds across its corner. Every apology comes half a second after the damage it addresses.
“Sorry, sorry! Moon smile on wedding folk! Lovely ceremony!”
Then he is away, running into Mubunash's market lanes with a gait that makes his upper body seem to follow his feet on a delay. The furious uncle emerges onto the steps. “Which way did it go?” he demands, and five people point in six different directions. Several go with him. Others remain, hoping the chapel has more entertainment left in it.
He gets through the next turning before he looks back. The crowd has not followed the same route; it has split at the first turning, with one group charging left and another running right. Grunty slows long enough to put his violin into its case, which turns out to be a mistake. By the time he fastens the second clasp, the uncle's voice carries through an archway behind him. The hare bolts forward and rounds a corner straight into a young woman coming the other way.
They collide hard enough to turn both sideways. She catches the wall. He sits down in the street with the violin case between his knees and sincere astonishment.
“Watch where you're going!” Mara Vey has one hand beneath her cloak before she finishes speaking. The other catches the case when it begins sliding out of his lap. She lets go as soon as he has it. “There's a whole road here. You could have used some of it.”
“Beg pardon, milady. Me used road. Road used Grunty back.” He gathers his long feet beneath him, then hears the shout from the arch. His ears collapse against his head. He looks at Mara, the case, and the corner behind her, searching for an option that won't involve dropping the violin. Whatever he decides, he does it with the most imploring eyes the young woman has ever seen on a face that wasn't trying to sell her something.
Mara follows his gaze. Men are spilling into the lane, angry enough to be careless and not yet close enough to identify the people near the wall. She takes one more look at the hare's torn coat and the fiddle case, then grips him by the back of the collar and pushes him into the recess of a sealed shop doorway. A carved stone buttress shields one side of it. Mara steps in front, pulls the wide part of her cloak around herself and lets it fall over his bent ears. Grunty folds up with astonishing speed. One ear makes a pointed shape beneath the fabric; she gives it a firm push with her elbow and it disappears.
“Don't move,” she says under her breath.
He stops moving so completely that she has to glance down to be certain he is still there. She has stood like this in other doorways, but never with an urakian tucked beneath her cloak. His violin case presses against her calf. The metal catches on the case feel cold through the cloth.
The uncle reaches the mouth of the lane and stops to catch his breath. “You, girl. A hare with a fiddle. Came this way. Where's he gone?”
Mara lifts her chin toward the market road. “That way.” She offers this with the irritation of someone who has been stopped in the street to settle a stranger's business. The uncle takes it for authority. He waves the other men after him and heads for the coal carts without thanking her.
Mara waits until the last pair of boots has faded into the market noise. She lets the cloak fall open. Grunty unfolds himself from the doorway in a series of careful movements, first the case, then the feet, then the ears. He brushes the dust from one sleeve and bows with such force that the case strikes his knee.
“Moon smile on you, cloak-folk!” He pats each ear, relieved to find both where they belong.
Mara gives his ears a quick inspection. “That lot looked ready to take your ears home as proof. So what'd you do?”
“Wedding, cloak-folk.” Grunty settles his violin case across his knees. “Bride wanted her father back. Mother wanted him left downstairs. Me thought a little music might help.” He walks two fingers across the case, turns them in a tight circle, and lets them fall over the edge. “First dance went lovely. Second one upset the priest.”
Mara watches his fingers tumble over the edge of the case. She's followed the words, but they haven't explained a damn thing. Grunty only smiles, sly and wide-eyed, as though the world has surprised him in some wonderful way. He makes no attempt to explain.
“Riiight,” she says at last. “Try not to get yourself killed out there. Nasty folk in this part of town. Even for Mubunash.”
“Grunty Croak!” he announces suddenly, pressing one hand to his chest and bowing so low his ears nearly brush the stones. “Both names, very proper! And you, good cloak-folk? What name Grunty call you?”
Mara gives him a crooked smile. “None of your business.”
“Ah! Lady None-of-My-Business! Fine name!” Grunty bows again, knocking his case against his knee. “Big thanks, milady! If roads cross again, Grunty pay you back. Both ears promise!”
Mara gives him a quick smile, already drawing her cloak close. “No need. The Moon smiles on you, Grunty Croak. See ya.” She turns away.
Grunty sets off in the other direction, hopping along with his violin case beneath one arm. A few steps on, he calls over his shoulder, “Sweet song in your heart, little miss. Always listening for somebody else's breath. Who listening for yours, eh?”
Mara stops halfway through a step. By the time she turns around, Grunty is nearly at the corner. He croaks a little tune, sweet and badly off-key. It sounds almost like a lullaby sung in a warm room, until a low note makes her skin prickle.
King wears gold and beggar wears gray,
Both go quiet when breath goes away.
Worm says "Supper!" Me asks "Why?"
Moon says "Hush." Me says "Aye."
His voice fades around the corner.
She stays where she is for another moment, then shakes her head. “Xanesh,” she mutters. “You'd think I'd be used to strange folk by now.”
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