“That sounds good,” says Quinn from over Octavia’s shoulders. She thought it best to leave Bitey behind in case he decided to live up to his name with our new friends.
“It’s good and bad. It’s customary to feed strangers on a hunt, so either the hunt is going poorly, or they distrust us. They’llknow some Selaran, but the less you say about why we’re here, the better.”
“We’ll let you do the talking,” I say.
The woman shouts something excitedly in Orsan, gesturing at Ronan and me.
“She’s asking you to join them. They want to hear you play.”
“Perfect,” I say. “Ronan?”
I offer him my hand. He looks at it for a moment, and then he takes it. My entire body relaxes as we walk into the clearing together.
The Orsa gathered there are a strange group. There seems to be no single defining feature among them, no age or gender or physical resemblance or manner of dress. The woman who seems to be their leader is no older than me, maybe younger, even, considering how vivid her tattoo is. Fewer than half of them have instruments, but all of them join in when it’s time to sing.
They make room for us on the logs, but we’re unable to sit together. This, Taran explains, is also customary when meeting with another tribe. “It’s considered rude to sit with people you already know.”
My seat is between a woman with wild red curls and a man in his seventies or eighties with few teeth and very little hair. He smiles a gummy smile at me as I join and says something to me in Orsan.
I shake my head. Just before I open my mouth to speak, I realize I should conceal my accent. “Sorry, I can’t understand you,” I say in what I hope is a convincing Selaran accent.
“Selara?” he asks.
“Yes. Faros.” I feel nothing from my shadows. My magic doesn’t consider that to be a lie.
“Good. Good. You play.” He points to my flute, his words a statement rather than a question.
“Yes, I’ll play.” In reality, I’m nervous about playing, in part because I’m out of practice, but also because I don’t know any of the tunes. I can sort of pick up some of the melodies to play along, but I never got good enough to improvise my own part.
The same can’t be said for the Orsan musicians. They have no music to read from and little communication about what they’re playing that I can hear. Someone simply starts a song, and the others join in.
And though the music begins simply, it’s anything but simple. The melodies are complex and layered, with themes traveling between the stringed instruments and the wind instruments and the singers. It takes a lot of skill and practice to get to this level of performance, something I never achieved, having learned the flute from a servant in Kalla I didn’t see often. I tried playing once in the tavern there a few years back, but I was too embarrassed to play more than a single song.
Ronan, on the other hand, seems to have had much more practice. He sits across the bonfire from me, playing along as much as he can. Sometimes, he hits a chord out of key, but he’s close most of the time. And he brings in flourishes and picks that are purely Selaran in style, to the delight of the Orsa around him. A pair of lute players comes over, begging him to teach them.
“Husband?” asks the man next to me. He must have caught me staring.
The word sends prickles up the back of my neck.Husband.Ronan could be my husband someday, if we get through this.
“Not yet,” I tell the man. “Partner.” He doesn’t know this word. “Boyfriend?” Nope, not that one either. “Lover.”
“Ah. Love. You love him.” He points from my heart to Ronan, his gummy smile wide.
“Yes. I love him.” My heart aches as I say it. I love him so much.
Gods, I hope this helps him.
The man nods and waits for the song to finish.
Then he starts the next song.
He sings alone at first, his voice clear and higher than I expected. He’s been singing with the other songs, but he’s usually kept a low harmony. Here, on his own, I can hear the beauty in his tone, like a bell ringing over an empty field.
I can’t understand his words, but I can feel them. The song is beautiful and melancholy, full of longing. It’s a love song, I’m certain of it.
I meet Ronan’s eyes from across the fire. His feelings have felt dampened these past few days, as if they were reaching me from a great distance, dull and blunted, edgeless. But now, hearing the song, I feel something in him break.
He looks at me, his eyes drifting over my face like a caress. They’re full of the same melancholy and longing as the song, the look of someone who can feel something precious to him slipping away. The look of someone who wants desperately to grasp it again, to hold on to it and never let it go.
