“You came. I had to see you. So I invoked grandmaster privileges,” Dax said with a grin. “No doors in the conservatory are closed to me, and that includes the exit.”
“You did it, then?” Marin asked. “You’re a grandmaster?”
“Of course he is!” Ree said. “He was magnificent!”
Dax crossed to her and took her hands. His hands were warm, soft, and familiar. She felt the calluses from the tri-lute strings. “Did you hear in my opus how—” He stopped himself and rephrased. “What did you hear?”
She told him it was the most beautiful music she’d ever heard, very clearly worthy of being a grandmaster, not that she knew anything about it, but she’d loved it. She tried to remember the phrases she’d heard the audience say and repeated those.
When she’d run out of praise, he repeated the question. “What did you hear?”
“The sea,” Marin answered. “I heard us sailing the sea.”
Dax smiled.
She smiled back.
And for a moment, nothing else existed.
Then Perri splashed them.
Marin yelped. “What was that for?”
The sea serpent swung his head toward the east, the closest gate out of Alyssium. He was ready to head out to the ocean again. Marin felt her heart plummet. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye. If this was goodbye. Did it have to be? He’d sung of them…Ask him,she ordered herself. She didn’t want to pressure him… Tentatively, she asked, “What happens now? You’re a grandmaster. Do you… need to do grandmaster things?” She realized she’d never asked what it meant, or what he’d expected to happen after his opus. There was a lot they hadn’t talked about.
“Now, I make music,” Dax said.
He was standing on her boat, smiling at her, as if he intended to stay. But did he? If he wanted to make music, this was the conservatory, the center of all music in the Crescent Islands! She didn’t know how to ask the question she desperately wanted to ask.Say it. Tell him how you feel!
But he spoke first. “I told the other grandmasters that I make the best music out on the sea. It inspires me.Youinspire me.”
“You told them?”He stood up to them.Dax, who had worked hiswhole life to please people, who had been brought up to believe his only value was in serving the grandmasters, who had had friends and family stripped away from him to keep him focused on doing what they wanted him to do… At last, he had stood up to them.For me?
“I used my Daxicend voice.” He straightened his posture and said in a regal tone, “I am Daxicend the composer, and I will do as I wish.” She laughed, then her laugh faded. He was looking so intensely into her eyes.
He truly did it. Not for me, or not just for me. For himself.Now it was hard to breathe. “You want to stay on my crew.”
Dax was still holding her hands. “If you’d let me. I realize I already went to the End-of-Harvest Festival… That was only payment for a few weeks on the boat… but…” He released her hands and pulled out a pouch. He opened it and held it out for her. “I can pay my way.”
Gems sparkled. Many, many gems.
“How…” Her throat felt dry.
“There were several buyers who wanted first-year performance rights for my opus. I hadn’t been sure they would—I couldn’t promise it—but it should be more than enough to cover your parents’ debt.” He was beaming at her.
Marin felt herself shake her head, even as Ree cheered and Perri danced in the canal as best he could in the constricted space, which ended up with lots of canal water splashing across the deck and the three of them.
Dax’s eyes were fixed on hers. His smile began to fade.
“That’s yours,” Marin said. “I can’t take that.”
“I want you to have it. I want to sail with you. And this—”
“I don’t want you to buy your way onto my crew.” She couldn’t let him pay her to work for her. It wasn’t… “No, this isn’t… This isn’t what I want.”
Beside her, Ree wailed, “Marin!”
“I thought…” Dax began.
