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Zeven sings.

There are many other things he does. He sleeps, almost every day. He climbs the drainpipe by old Tatar's pawn-shop all the way up to the roof; sometimes he roof-hops all the way to the alehouse, the only two-story building around, so that he can see all the way to the other side of the river, if the weather's fair. He daydreams about the cows in the distance—at least he assumes they're cows, never having seen one up close—and about living in a farm. The songs always talk about how nice farms are. Peaceful. He doesn't like peace that much, he thinks, never stays still long enough for it, but sometimes he'd like to be able to have any of it. He runs, real far, far from Berte and old Tatar, past the fishmonger's stall all the way to somewhere he can see the richer people from a distance and wish.

(Berte is not his mother. He knows as much. She's too old, and too mean, and besides she told him so. There's rumours that she sold all of her kids to buy dreamerie or something, but she can't sell him because he's not hers. She still took care of him, for some reason, and he feels a little bit like he owes her so. Their life isn't good, exactly, but he knows it would be worse if he didn't have her, if he was just a weird foreign-looking ten(?)-year-old who could only sing good. He thinks maybe he's pretty, under all the dirt and soot, from what some of the stranger strangers said, sometimes, when they sort of sideways said they wanted to buy him off her, too. He had heard what happened to pretty kids who got bought like that, though, so he just stared at them with Glare #4 until they got nervous and left. It always worked.)

He talks to the poor people, instead, and the few rich who sometimes come by here, for whatever reason. He turns the charm on and seduces them into taking pity on the poor half-Haighlei boy and giving him a few coppers.

(He only recently found out that the thing he is is "half-Haighlei", from some merchant that was passing by who had never been here before. He doesn't know what a full-Haighlei is, and all Berte told him was that he's "some foreigner's spawn what won't ever be nothin'". Zeven very strongly disagrees, he will definitely be somethin' someday, but that day is not today.)

He eats, sometimes, when there's enough food.

But today there's not enough food, so what he does instead is sing, because singing makes people give him coppers, and coppers can be used to buy stale bread and mouldy cheese and wormy apples and if the food doesn't really taste good, well, nothing else in his life tastes good, and it's still better than not being alive.

(Zeven's seen dead people, of course. The old frail ones who lived nowhere and couldn't sing so they just begged for their coppers and sometimes people pitied them, or the young ones who tried to steal the coppers without being caught and then got caught. They looked like they were asleep, most of the time, sometimes with wounds but even the living have wounds. Sleeping isn't so bad, and sometimes Zeven has dreams that are better than when he's awake, but Berte told him when you're dead you don't ever wake up again, and you don't dream either, so it's worse.)

Today there's not enough food and it's mostly Berte's fault. They could have enough food if she didn't spend so much of their coppers on her dreamerie. There was a while there when she didn't use it, at all, and then they had warm food and warm blankets and even a new tunic that almost fit him, although nothing really fits him, he's small and scrawny and poor and no one cares about small, scrawny, poor kids, so no one makes clothes for them. Anyway, there was a while there when she didn't use it, then she started using it again, stealing the coppers he got her (they are his, a part of him keeps saying, he is the one singing for them and smiling for them and lying for them, but she takes them anyway) to buy the strange plant (he's been told it was a plant, by Tatar who sold it, but if it's just a plant why does he hide it? and besides it doesn't look like a plant) that made blue smoke and made Berte's eyes look somewhere that didn't exist. Dreams, she says, and that's why it's called dreamerie, but he's pretty sure you shouldn't be dreaming while you're awake.

He gets angry with her about that, sometimes, but never in a way that shows. He knows that if he didn't have her it would be worse, not even Glare #4 is enough to scare away the stranger strange strangers without Berte there to also glare. The strangers don't mess with kids who'll be missed, so he makes sure Berte will miss him. He sings for her, sings and pushes the images in his head into the song, pushes the feelings at her so that she'll feel nicer for a bit, nicer than when she's on dreamerie, even, and sometimes if he pushes too much and too hard his head hurts, but it's worth it because Berte will miss him and so no one will come to steal him.

When he was much younger, like two years ago, he used to hope that if he sang enough, beautifully enough and for long enough, she'd forget about the dreamerie and they could use the money she stole from him to buy actual food instead. But he got over that.

So Zeven is on a street corner and he sings, and he pushes the images and the feelings into the song (though not as much as he does for Berte; he doesn't want people to steal him if they like it too much), and people stop to listen.

He knows their names, he knows all their names, at least of the regulars, the people who are always there. When Berte sends him out to buy food he talks to them, he listens to them talk about their lives. Anno's little boy was born a month ago and he's small and sickly but he got past the worst of it and he and his wife are now thinking of giving him a name; Lysel likes her name a lot, because her mum had read it from a book about princesses and it was a princess's name, and she doesn't really pretend she's a princess but sometimes she likes to imagine it, and she tries to make her clothes look and feel nicer so that she can think it more, and she hopes someday some prince will come for her but everyone else says the years are getting heavy on her and if she doesn't find a husband soon she never will even though Zeven thinks she doesn't look heavy at all; Dennel is almost old enough to join the guard and he really wants to, he's listened to Zeven's songs about fights and wars and daring rescues and dashing warriors and he wants to do that.

Zeven knows their names and their stories, and he puts them in the music. Sometimes in the words, into some half-remembered melody he heard somewhere else or something he made up himself, but most of the time just in the music itself. That makes people stop more, he noticed, and when he sees someone coming round the corner he puts them in the song, he doesn't look directly at them because he is nice and nonthreatening but he can see them, he can feel them when they detour a little bit so they can get closer and listen more, and drop some coppers into Berte's hat or tear off a piece of the loaf they're taking home for their dinner.

Today he's singing a song for Dennel, some song about a war and a place called Sun's Hill. He only remembers little bits of it, and he knows some bits of it aren't the same as what Dennel thinks so he changed it to match. It's a song for Dennel, who's coming just round the corner and who likes to be sung about even if he never realises it's him Zeven's singing about when he sings about Sun's Hill.

Dennel drops one copper into Berte's hat, and Zeven flashes his Smile #7 at him and then goes to see if Berte has anything left in her waterskin to wet his dry throat.

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There's a rich woman watching him. He didn't see her, or feel her coming at all. 

It's obvious that she's rich because her clothing is very fine, expensive and new and clean, and all in the brightest scarlet Zeven has ever seen. And her face is clean and her boots are clean, even though she must have walked here through the dirt roads and past gutters full of shit. And she's not fat, exactly, but her flesh fills out her rosy cheeks, no wrinkles at all, and it makes her look like a young maiden; it's hard to tell how old she actually is, though she must be full-grown, since she's much taller than Berte. She looks like someone who surely goes home every night to a great Lord's manor with ten rooms and a privy indoors – and probably its own bathhouse, too, since she's so clean. 

She's standing there on the street corner like she doesn't have a care in the world, and watching him with the faintest of smiles on her lips. 

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...something about her.

Well, nothing to it. He turns Smile #3 at her, the one that goes "whoa you're really pretty and also nice to be around" that ladies, especially older ones, often liked. "Milady," he says, trying to enunciate the word well. He's never said it before, never had anyone who could be called milady, but this lady could definitely be called milady if anyone could. He only half-understood what it meant or why it was different from my lady or just lady, but it was and he felt it was proper. He also bowed, a little bit, though he was sure he was doing it wrong somehow. "A song f'r a smile?" Ladies also loved that, him saying that he was going to sing for them if they smiled.—she was kinda smiling already? Which was extra weird, no one really smiled, here, most of the time; they had too much to do to worry about being happy. "Any you like?"

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“I heard your last song.”

Her voice is...a rich woman's voice, her accent proper and crisp, but somehow there's music in it, even though she isn't singing. Somehow there's music in all of her, in her hands and her shoulders and the whole way she moves.

"The Ballad of Sun's Hill, no? Though a unique rendition of it, I don't recall some of those verses. I'd be happy to hear another song, but I'm not sure which ones you know." 

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He thinks quickly about it—rich lady, poor part of town, a poor boy singing about a war he's never seen, but she knew the original. Maybe she'd like another one of his mangled ones? ...no, he thought not. His gut told him he should sing one of his own, the ones he made up, and he had long since learned to trust his gut.

"I'll sing you one you don't know," he replies instead, and gets to it. The story in it is vapid and shallow, about a soldier that falls in love with a woman on the other side of the war because she's the prettiest he's ever seen and when his side wins the war she agrees to marry him, but the story isn't the point. The rhymes are the point, the wordplay—this one isn't one of the crass ones, rich lady in rich clothes wouldn't want crass songs even here—and of course, the melody. He was quite proud of the melody, and he pushed the image of this made-up war and its made-up lovers, built up out of dozens of other songs and stories he knows.

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She listens and watches, bobs her chin and taps her toe like she can't help herself but move along to the music. She looks thoughtful, and maybe even impressed. 

Berte watches from where she's sitting on their filthy canvas blanket, looking like she might be curious if she had the energy for it.

When Zeven finishes, the rich woman takes a step closer to him, and smiles. It's a broader smile, but also more fake, like she's having to work at it and pretend. "What's your name, boy? Do you have parents?" A glance over at Berte. "Is she your grandmother?" 

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He doesn't like that. People who fake smiles—well, everyone faked smiles, but there's different types of fake smiles and he doesn't like this lady's fake smile.

"Zeven, milady," he replies in a carefully cheerful tone. "Berte takes care of me," more the other way around, "but I got no parents. An' Berte's not m'gran. She's jus' Berte."

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“Him’s a foundling," Berte says, without actually bothering to look over at them. "A n'orphan. Took him in like me own babe.” 

     “I see.” The lady looks over at Zeven, then down at his ragged clothes, and her mouth puckers up like she just ate something spoiled. “And how old is he?" 

Berte scratches her arm. "He's ten." 

     “He doesn't look ten.” The rich lady is frowning again. 

Berte scowls at her. “Why all the questions?” 

     "Well." And the rich lady turns back to Zeven. "I'm Lynnell. Bard Lynnell. Zeven, lad, how would you feel about having a new home?" She does the forced-friendly smile again. "With a bed of your own, and hot food three times a day, and lots of other children to be your friends. How does that sound?”

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Well at least she's honest about wanting to steal him rather than doing the sideways thing.

Still, the offer itself sounds great. If it's true. But it's probably not. "Why?" is what he asks after a couple of seconds of silent deliberation.

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She blinks at him, like she can't make sense of the question, and then her eyes soften. "Because you have a very special talent, and there's a school for children like you, in Haven. Where you can learn about music."

     “Now wait a minute, lady!” Berte struggles to her feet, wincing. “You can’t just march in here and take him!" 

“You said yourself you are no relation of his.” 

     Berte's eyes are flashing, her face going red. “I’ve cared for him like my own son, all his life!” 

Again, the rich lady’s eyes flick down to Zeven's filthy tunic, his bare feet. “He’s your livelihood, you mean. A voice and a Gift like that, singing on a street corner in the slums. The gods be damned.” A pause, and then her eyes fix on Berte again. "I’ll give you five silvers for him.” 

     “Why’s he worth that to you?” But despite Berte's attempt at a suspicious glare, Zeven can see the hungry greed in her eyes. 

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...a school? For music?

He's heard of Haven before, once or twice; presumably it's a city of some kind, and probably a big one, since he's pretty sure there are many cities and he hasn't heard many city names so most of them must be small and unimportant. Just like his city.

Zeven knows he can sing well, he's heard other people trying and he knows he sounds better than all of them. And if she's right, if she's telling the truth...

He looks at Berta and wonders about what she'll do with five silvers and without him. Will she buy food? Will she remember? Or will she spend it all on dreamerie and forget?

...does he care?

........he does, a little. She did raise him. But—she doesn't love him. She didn't ever really care about him. Didn't care about anyone; he tried telling her their stories, about the people he met, and she never cared, sometimes got irritated with him for talking.

He doesn't love her. Not really. He owes her, but—she owes him too. And if he's worth five silver to her and nothing more...

"Milady jus' said," he replies quietly. "It's 'cause I sing good."

Seems like he's just decided, doesn't it?

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Berte nods. She swallows, and it almost looks like she might cry, which is stupid because he's never seen her cry before. "And you'll take good care of him, no?" 

     Lynnell ducks her head. "Of course. He'll have everything he needs – everything he could want. And someday he might sing for the King. He's very talented." 

Berte shivers. Lynnell nods briskly, and reaches under her fine scarlet cloak, and takes out a heavy coin-purse. She counts out five shiny new silver coins into Berte's wizened palm. 

And then Berte steps forward and holds out her arms. "Zeven. Make the best of it." Her voice cracks a little. "And...be careful." 

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...now she wants a hug? Huh. Maybe—maybe she did care about him after all. A little.

Not more than five silvers, though.

He dutifully steps into her arms and hugs her, for an appropriate length of time, and he thinks that actually he will miss her, even despite everything. And, and he shouldn't cry either, he's never seen her cry and she's seen him cry a lot, but not anymore.

If he's gonna be stolen away to learn music he should be a grown up about it and grown ups don't cry.

Then he steps away and turns to look at the—the Bard? Why did that word sound important? He's not really sure, but maybe he can wait until she looks like she won't be bothered by a question and ask.

"Okay," he says, and it's kind of a dumb thing to say when you're being stolen away but he doesn't know what else to say.

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She doesn't try to fake-smile at him, just takes his hand and leads him away. 

A few minutes later, they pass the fruit-seller’s stand and cross the big road. The rich people's carriages stop to let the woman in red cross, and then they're on the other side, surrounded by big fine houses and streets clear of beggars, if not of horse-manure. Which presumably comes from the horses pulling all those big fine carriages. 

They stop outside a building, which is big but not as fine. Bard Lynnell looks down at him. "Do you know how to ride?" 

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"No, milady," he replies. In truth he never knew this was a thing you could know? He thought you just sat and then the horse went. But if milady is asking then there must be something to know and he definitely doesn't.

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"That's all right, then. You can ride with me." 

Up close, the horses look even bigger. Lynnell seems to know what she's doing, though; she barks something at one of the stablehands, who slings down an enormous leather saddle from a peg on the wall and plops it down on the horse's back. The horse stomps its front hoof, which is almost the size of Zeven's face, and flares nostrils bigger than silver coins, but Lynnell doesn't seem alarmed. 

And then apparently they're ready to go, because she picks him up around the middle and hefts him up and sits him down on the front of the saddle, and then sticks her boot in the stirrup and swings herself up behind him. 

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She's not scared, if she's not scared then the horse must not be scary, even if his brain is coming up with all the ways this horse could really hurt him if it had a mind to.

But when she grabs him he freezes, stiff like wood, forcing all of his instincts to be quiet and not try to fight. One time a man tried to grab him like that by the river and he thrashed and clawed and bit until the man let go and then he ran faster than he ever had before, and he had nightmares about that for weeks, and whenever anyone touched him he wanted to run, but eventually he figured out how to stop feeling terrified.

This was different, though, in lots of ways. He's going with her willingly, he's not fighting her and trying to run even though he could; Berte's got the silvers and he could run back, he knows he could, and then she'd have the silvers and also him, so if he's not fighting it's because he doesn't want to. But it's finally sinking in that he's actually leaving, that even if he could run he won't so it's the same as if he couldn't, and once the horse starts running then it'll be too late and he's never coming back.

It's terrifying in a whole different way, but also... exciting.

He's never coming back. Because he's going to see other places, places he's only heard of, places that might as well have been made up for all he knew, except they aren't, and he'll go to them.

He quickly relaxes in the saddle, once he's thought about this. It's scary, but scary can sometimes be good.

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It's a thirty-mile ride to Herald's Hill, which is apparently the slightly bigger town they'll be stopping in tonight. Lynnell says it has a Guard-post and a proper House of Healing, and then doesn't say very much after that. 

They ride away from the river, down a road of hard-packed gravel that barely raises any dust, passing wagons piled with food – more food than he's ever seen in one place before, early autumn harvests, heaps of turnips and enormous winter squashes and pumpkins. One wagon is full of live chickens, squawking indignantly and pecking at the feet of the farmboy sitting in the back and watching them. They pass fields of swaying golden wheat and barley, not quite ready for harvest, and there are farmhouses, and Zeven finally sees cows up close – they're big, but slow and placid, not scary like horses – and also sheep and pigs and goats. The sheep are almost ready for shearing, and look very silly with their round bushy coats, like cattail heads once they're dried out and the fluff is starting to burst out. 

Eventually, Lynnell must realize that Zeven might be hungry, because she stops and plops him down on the side if the road, at a place that has a well for travelers to refill their waterskins and a few stone benches. She has food in her saddlebags, and offers him travel-bread, with a hard sturdy crust but not stale inside at all, and a little cheese with a rind on it but a soft creamy inside and no mold at all, and even some dried apple. 

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Oh.

Oh.

This is—nice? Well, it's just the first day, theoretically he could still run away so maybe she just wants to keep him pliant until he can't and then show her claws, but... but...

...but his gut is telling him that she might actually not want to do anything particularly bad to him, and will just take him to this mysterious music school. He's still not sure how far to trust that—what are they getting out of it, why would they care so much if some random orphan is good at singing, he bets lots of people are good at singing (elsewhere, people he's never met and might meet now). Why go all the way... wherever they are, he has no idea how far Haven is but it's probably very far? Why bring him all the way from this far to a music school, who benefits from this?

Well. Whatever the answer to that might be, Zeven will not be best-served by looking suspicious of everything, and besides, this food is so much nicer than almost anything he's eaten for the past two years he ends up stuffing all of it into his mouth faster than he can actually chew it and at the end of it his stomach kind of hurts.

Worth it, though.

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While Zeven is still eating, a family arrives in a real carriage – not a fancy carriage, and they're not dressed like nobles, but their clothes are fine enough that must be wealthy merchants. They stop to stretch their legs and draw water from the well for their horses. 

The children, three plump girls all younger than Zeven, are all ecstatic to see Lynnell, and bounce up and down like jumping frogs, shrieking about how she's a real Bard mama mama look a Bard! until their mother tells them off for it. 

Lynnell smiles indulgently, and then slings down the big leather case hung from one of the saddlebags and takes out a lute. Zeven has never seen a real instrument up close before. "Well, young ladies, I can spare a moment for a song. What would you like to hear?" 

More jumping up and down. "Demonsbane! Please?" 

Lynnell glances at their mother first, receives a nod, and then she plays, and sings

Along the road in Hardorn, the place called Stony Tor
A fearful band of farmers flees Karsite border war
A frightened band of farmers, their children and their wives
Seek refuge from a tyrant who wants more than just their lives

Now up rides Herald Vanyel. “Why then such haste?” says he
“Now who is it pursuing, whose anger do you flee?
You are all of Hardorn; why seek you Valdemar?
Is Festil no protection or bide all his men too far?”

“Oh Vanyel, Herald Vanyel, we flee now for our lives
Lord Nedran would enslave us, our children and our wives
He'd give our souls to demons, our bodies to his men
King Festil has not heeded or he happens not to ken.”

Now up speaks Herald Vanyel, “The border is not far
But you are all of Hardorn and not of Valdemar
You are not Randale's people, can call not on his throne—
But damned if I will see you left so helpless on your own!”

 

She's doing the thing that Zeven does, that he's never heard anyone else do, where she puts pictures and feelings into the music, and there's a handsome man dressed all in white with streaks of silver in his dark hair, and lightning in his hands...

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He sways a bit, everything clicking into place. It wasn't going to be a school of music, was it? Or not regular music. It was a school of his kind of music, the, the special thing—she recognised it. Because she had it too.

And the song—of course he knows it, it's a favourite of wandering minstrels, he knows the words by heart, but...

He had pictured it all wrong. Herald Vanyel, whoever he was, hadn't looked at all like the man Lynnell was making him think of, in his head, but it was not just his looks. He felt different, felt like, like... Zeven didn't know what. Like a hero, maybe, though he thought he'd known what a hero was and apparently he didn't. Not before.

Moved by an instinct he cannot name, he joins her on the next verse, adding his voice in harmony with hers.

So forth goes Herald Vanyel, and onward does he ride.
On Stony Tor he waits then, Yfandes at his side.
With Nedran's men approaching, he calls out from on high,
"You shall not pass, Lord Nedran! I shall not let you by!"

He doesn't push much, into it. Instead he rides what she's already doing, reinforces it, embellishes it. She's the one telling the story, he's just giving it a bit more volume.

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