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The wall of fire was still there, sealing us in together, so I couldn’t run, and while it felt like lunacy to sit down and put the guitar on my knees, I was this sector’s new musical maintenance person, and what did I have to lose?
I might as well go out of this life singing as screaming. I hummed the tune of the first maintenance spell and then played the strings. Nothing interesting happened except that Pansy flopped down and started snoring in harmony, because he’d had a long day. Poor beast who wanted me to die.
I went into the next maintenance spell’s melody, and then the next, before going back to the beginning. I tried to capture the same feel as Mirabel had when she’d been playing, but I couldn’t do more than one note at a time on the guitar, although maybe I could sing the second part while playing the first. I was clearly a beginner if I couldn’t do something that basic. I tried. When I played the right combination of notes at the right time, I felt the resonance both in me and in the scuffed blacktop I was sitting on. Another piece of the ceiling came down, larger that time, and the sound blocked out my playing for a long time, but I kept going until I felt the shift as the air tightened around me, and my notes grew thick and slow, like time was spreading out, and matter was flowing through space backwards.
It was hard to explain, but one moment I’m a lame wannabe musician bleeding on the road, and the next I was part of the lines of music that flowed through the city of SingSong, connected, interconnected, each relying on the strength of the other. I could see the glowing cords flowing through the stones, metal, glass, and wood, each with its own timbre, its own song.
I kept playing through the basic songs one note at a time with my sad and swollen fingers, but it sounded different, felt different, real, resonant. My voice was one piece behind my guitar, and then Pansy started howling, picking up a third part.
Strength flowed into me through the music, the strength of the people, bright souls a song in its own right, music and strength, light and power that echoed and burned in every heart.
Lines of gold spread out from my circle of fire in the blacktop layered over ancient stone, up and down the road and towards the buildings around me. A gothic monstrosity of crumbling stone was directly in front of me, and those lines of light spread towards the house ever faster until they hit something and a sonic boom echoed down the street, almost breaking my rhythm and tune. Pansy shook his head and howled louder, so I smiled at him and did the same. Loud, fearless, utterly idiotic, we sang those maintenance spells until it felt almost natural in spite of my numb fingers.
Notes floated up to my right, and there was Mirabel, the Music Master with her harp, filling in the parts I’d been missing, plus adding more depth, feeling, emotion that I’d probably never be able to grasp.
To my left, Tiago took up the part that Pansy had been howling, his artistry putting my own efforts to shame. I was about on par to Pansy’s howling which while was mostly in tune, certainly wasn’t a pleasure to listen to, not like Tiago and Mirabel, but I still kept playing, and Pansy still kept howling, until a dozen musicians had joined us, and the lines of gold had thickened into strands that flowed through Song, spreading out around us, up the walls, until the ceiling was dripping with the golden healing magic.
The piles of rubble vanished, the cracks in the ceiling smoothed, and still, the flames I was trapped in rose, and so did the song.
How long did we hang out, singing maintenance spells in Song? Long enough for the locals to join in, including the werewolf pups who had chased us here. Their singing voices were quite good, and Mirabel was probably eyeing them for potential musicians by the time the flames went out, dousing the song with it.
I slumped over my guitar, no longer sustained by the magic, and so did Pansy, dropping flat and looking dead and run over by a dozen buses.
I stayed like that, barely not falling over completely when the werewolf approached.
“Hey, lady, you broke my skateboard. You gotta replace it.”
I looked up in time to see Mirabel round on him, her small figure vibrating with energy, since she apparently knew how to manage her magic much better than me. She shook a finger at him. “You should be honored that your sector’s musical mistress deigned to take it for her service of your city. Come to the music hall, Saturday at midnight, and we can talk about possible repayment, otherwise, be on your way. The show’s over, so move along.” She shooed the lurking monsters on their way, but something about the way they went after nervous looks at the house made me put real effort into climbing to my feet.
Move along was right.
“That wasn’t exactly an intelligent first concert,” Tiago said, peering at me through his monocle. “You are going to sleep for a few days after this, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not.” He smiled suddenly and brilliantly. “I was like that my first time, as well. The rush of seeing the lines of power coming alive just for me and my music, there’s nothing like it, don’t you agree, Miss Morell?”
I grunted, which may have been a yes, and then staggered back the way I’d come.
“Oh no,” the old man said, catching my arm. “You shouldn’t go that way. The quickest way to get back to your apartment is through the Library of Antiquities. I’ll show you how to get there from this side, since it seems that you are thoroughly disoriented.”
I nodded, because I wanted to go to my beautiful peaceful library, but I must have been more than disoriented because I didn’t consider the side beneath the library, the black ebony building with its grand gothic arches and red fiery torches along the walls on the walk up to the monstrous, massive edifice. It looked like a punk gothic version of the Library of Antiquities, part Victorian, part scientific, like the LED lights lining the sidewalk beneath the garish torches.
I stopped walking, letting go of Tiago’s arm that I’d been gripping so tight.
“I can’t go in there.”
“It is open to the public,” he said reassuringly. “Not that you can wander anywhere you’d like, but you may most certainly take an elevator up to the library. I suppose I could hire someone to carry you. Those werewolves would probably do it for free, but I don’t think you’d want them to know where you live,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
The Scholar wouldn’t be loitering around in the public access areas of his building, not while he had Horace to raise.
“Tiago, we need to check how far the maintenance setting went,” Mirabel said, reminding me that she was there and just as badger-like as ever. She gave me a tense smile. “You’ll be okay from here alone, won’t you?”
I nodded, because if it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t be down here, or Pansy if you wanted to be specific, but a trained assassin should be able to control a fat bulldog. Mirabel passed said fat bulldog over to me, and I almost dropped him.
Tiago secured my guitar over my shoulder with his own guitar strap and patted my shoulder. “Get good rest. You did well.”
“Yes, you did,” Mirabel agreed, flashing a bright smile at me that changed into concern as she dragged Tiago back out into the street, leaving me to face the research lab on my own. I took a steadying breath and then started forward briskly, hoping that no one noticed my limp.
I made my way up the steps and to the door guarded by an enormous ogre, or something with small tusks.
“Good afternoon,” I said as calmly as I could.
