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“It’s quieter here than at the palace,” Ida said. “You could stay for a while, if you wanted. I could bring you some tea.”
It felt less like an offer meant for Clare than something Ida herself wanted. And if Clare didn’t know why, she wanted to know more about the woman. So she stayed, and she worked through the first book while Ida sat on a couch opposite her and embroidered. When they’d been there long enough for the silence to become comfortable, when the moment was right, Clare asked, “How long have you been with Numair?”
Ida hesitated only a moment. “Since he was born. Since before then, I guess you might say. His mother and I grew up together. She was my closest friend, a sister in everything but blood. When she took ill…” Ida paused, taking a sip of tea long gone cold. “Evaleen made me promise I would always look after him.”
Ida wasn’t an employee at all, then. She was family.
“I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of it.”
Clare had no idea what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. She left shortly after, and Ida insisted on walking her to the door, pressing a container of cookies into her hands as she did.
“Will you be coming back?” Ida’s voice contained far more hopefulness than someone like Clare warranted. But she thought she understood why.
“I will. I don’t know when, but I will.”
Ida nodded. “He’s—I know what he looks like. I know what everyone thinks. But he’s a good man.”
“I know,” Clare said softly. “I know.” And she pretended she didn’t see the tears filling up Ida’s eyes because she had no idea what to do with those, either.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Hey, New Girl
The quiet steadiness she’d found in Numair’s home left Clare when she left it. Her uneasiness returned, hammering home the sense that she still wasn’t in control. Of anything. Oh, she’d made things happen since she’d arrived in Veralna. It was a direct result of her actions that had forced her into the apprenticeship with Verol, that had resulted in Numair’s hiring her for the event that had further catapulted her onto the royal scene.
But she wasn’t yet in control, there. Her popularity and her future with the nobility remained dependent on their whims. Her proximity to Alaric, her new knowledge of the Song and his desire for it, was an ever-present reminder that she still wasn’t safe.
She wanted a sense of further stability, another place in which to plant a foothold. And she just so happened to have a meeting with a certain violinist that evening.
She wasn’t certain she intended to do anything more than annoy Madame Aria, but she’d known, even without Numair’s warning the other night, that annoying her carried risks. So she spent the afternoon in Hightown, building further on the information she’d already gathered about the operation of the Musicians Guild.
The stranglehold the guild had on musical performances in the city had been built carefully over time, until it was so entrenched a thing that uprooting it would be next to impossible. At its inception, Madame Aria had marketed the guild as a guarantee of quality of performance to anyone looking to hire, an easy way for businesses to have fresh artists on rotation while guaranteeing their competency.
Perhaps even once it had only done that, and been successful at it. So much so that it became a draw for businesses to assert that they only hired Musicians Guild licensed artists. Initially, when the licenses hadn’t been so expensive, it had even been an affordable way to guarantee a more steady income—which meant musicians themselves hadn’t fought the guild.
But, as with all things, give an enterprise enough time to run and its greed deepened. The licenses became more expensive, as did the standard fees to hire a licensed performer. Unless, of course, a business signed an exclusivity clause with the Musicians Guild, agreeing not to hire any performer unaffiliated with the guild in return for steeply discounted pricing on those performances.
The business who didn’t sign the contracts didn’t fight the guild’s gradual encroachment either. After all, the Musicians Guild had set the standard for what a talented musician was—one who could pay them to belong—which meant any non-guild affiliated businesses now had an excuse to pay the unlicensed singers they hired mere pittances for their performances. If they were good musicians, they would be licensed. Unlicensed, they were clearly inferior and, subsequently, ought to be grateful they were getting hired at all.
It was an extensive racket, and she might have been impressed by its range if she hadn’t detested it so much. As it was, by the time she finished her afternoon’s reconnaissance, she was seething with a quiet fury. The emotional side of her was already plotting Madame Aria’s destruction, while the cold, practical side of her whispered that it wasn’t her problem. That she had escaped the misfortunes the Musicians Guild could cause for people like her, and she should take that escape without looking back. Without trying to pull anyone else free with her.
The two desires warred within her as she met Amarrah the violinist at the agreed-upon spot.
The woman looked her over from head to toe. “If you’re trying to pass for one of us the clothes work, but the coat’s too fine.”
The clothes were the old ones she’d put on at the Arrendon manor. The coat was Numair’s. She’d returned to the palace to leave Kialla in the stables, taking a rented carriage back into town, and had risked dipping into the suite for the coat. She was accustomed to being cold and she could handle it, but she didn’t like it, and the coat always managed to keep her at the perfect temperature.
She bared her teeth. “I’m not trying to look like anything.”
Amarrah shrugged. “Just remember that you paid me to bring you along tonight, not to make you any friends.”
Clare followed her through the streets, to an out-of-the-way bar that looked as if it belonged in Lowtown rather than High. A sign above the door read Fool’s End, in rough, thrown-together letters. They walked into a rowdy, boisterous room and it was clear, by the way Amarrah stopped the second they were inside, that she expected Clare to recoil from the noise and disorder in ladylike horror.
Clare shoved her hands into her coat pockets, the fingers of her left hand brushing reassuringly over the smooth top of the bone knife, tucked into its cleverly sewn-in sheath. The coat had come with this useful feature—and a different knife, but she found something comforting about the simplicity of the bone blade, so she’d swapped them out—and the familiarity of the weapon had a grounding effect on her as she studied the room’s inhabitants. The majority were younger, those who hadn’t yet given up on making this life work. Those who were older mostly came in the weathered but jovial variety, people who had, impossibly, kept an optimistic outlook on life despite its trials.
When it became clear that Clare wasn’t going to run screaming back out the door, Amarrah led her through the packed room toward the bar. Stares followed them openly, blends of curiosity and distrust. She sat at the bar, ordered a beer and pretended to drink it until the sounds around her returned to some semblance of normalcy.
She had no doubt Amarrah had forewarned everyone about the woman who’d paid her too much money to bring her here tonight. They’d been braced for a woman with more money than sense to walk in and try to take over the place. So she ignored them all while surreptitiously observing them, waiting for curiosity to get the better of someone.
