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“Tea and biscuits,” Theysson said. “Get up, Benno. You’ve slept away the afternoon.”
Eduard served out wine and tea and biscuits, while Nadine supervised his work, her voice and gestures a perfect imitation of Mistress Raendl. “I can act the daughter as well as the mother,” she said. “But I know Mistress Kathe would set the girls upon me. Fierce creatures, they are.” She turned to Ilse. “Come, you’ve not told me what you’d like to drink.”
“Tea,” Ilse said mildly. “Just tea.”
“What about a biscuit with ants?” Nadine said, her eyes bright and challenging. “And after, you could tell us one of your famous stories.”
“Ah no.” Ilse shook her head. “No stories. Not tonight.”
“Why not? It helps us to pass the time. It takes our mind off troubling thoughts.”
She spoke lightly enough, but Ilse thought she heard an edge to Nadine’s voice. “Which story did you want to hear?”
“The one about Lir cutting her hair.”
“A story of grief,” Lady Theysson said. “Yes. That would be good.”
Grief and death and love. Ilse felt a pinch in her stomach. Not that story, not now, with her mood so strangely unsettled. She shook her head again. “I’m sorry. I’m not— I wouldn’t tell it properly. Not tonight.”
Nadine let her glance settle on Ilse’s face for a moment. “Perhaps not,” she said. “You do look tired. Let me play storyteller instead. You can tell me which parts I did well, and which I should practice more.”
She wrapped up her string into a ball and drew herself up straight, hands resting one within the other in her lap. Quiet dropped over the common room as the others settled to listen.
Like many legends about Lir and Toc, the story began with Toc’s gift of his eyes.
“When Nil pressed upon Darkness,” Nadine said softly, “he divided Day from Night. And yet that division was a subtle thing, a mere changing from pitchy blackness to a dim possibility of light. We are gods of mists and shadows, Lir said to Toc, and it was clear to him that though she loved their mother Darkness, Lir yearned for something brighter than this constant gloom.”
Nadine’s voice was soft but clear, evoking the whispers of dawn, Ilse thought. Closing her eyes, she leaned back into the couch, giving herself up to the story.
“You think her a shallow creature, perhaps,” Nadine went on. “But think. We are her children, born during that season of love at the Mantharah. In the midst of winter’s drear, or when our souls are wrapped in the shadows of inward gloom, we grieve. We grieve, and if we cannot find the sun within ourselves, we die.
“Toc saw that it was so with Lir. And because he loved his sister, he plucked out his eyes—one for the burning sun, one for the cold bright moon—and set them in the skies. Lir found her brother, sitting blind to the glory he had created, his face wet with blood. She wept. She wept and her tears spangled the night sky with stars. And when she had done with weeping, she forged a sword from sunfire and starlight and oiled it with their mingled blood. With that sword, she cut off her hair, her night-black hair, and from its length she wove a sheath for it.”
Ilse listened as Nadine recounted how Lir sang for a century and a day about Toc’s deed, and how, when she had done, she and Toc made love upon the Mantharah, from which flowed all the life in this world. Would she end the story there? Ilse wondered. No, her tale continued seamlessly into the next fable, when the season of delight ended with Death, another of Nil’s children, who came slouching from the edges of chaos. Love. Death. Grief. Rebirth. The gods serving as the mirror and pattern of our lives.
Nadine ended the tale with Lir brushing open Toc’s empty eyelids and seeing two bright points of light. “And so,” she said, “and so and so and so … he lived.”
A hush followed her last words. Benno Iani looked pensive. Eduard reached a hand toward Faulk, then withdrew it. Emma Theysson touched her fingertips to her eyes, lips, and heart. Respect, said the gesture. Respect and gratitude for the performer. Just at the point when the silence weighed upon them, Nadine stirred. “Eduard,” she whispered. “Music, please.”
Eduard rose without any banter this time and seated himself by the hammered strings. He touched the keys gently and soundlessly. Another pass, and Ilse heard the whisper of velvet upon the metal strings. Smiling, Eduard rolled his fingers lightly across the keyboard, and a shiver of sound broke the room’s hush. Within a measure, Ilse recognized the piece as a new composition by one of Tiralien’s well-known musicians, celebrating spring’s arrival. The first movement began slow and brooding, but soon brighter notes overtook the minor ones.
After Eduard played two more pieces, Mikka joined him at the keyboard, and they played a series of happier melodies. The others began to converse in low tones. Nadine resumed her string patterns, though her face had taken on a pensive air. One by one, the party broke up. Faulk beckoned to Mikka and Eduard, who broke off their playing to follow him into another room. Soon after, Emma Theysson whispered in Benno Iani’s ear, and they, too, disappeared to other regions of the house.
“Young lovers,” Nadine said in her most indulgent tone.
“And the not so young,” Josef said, grinning at her.
“Hah! I’m but a child, even more than Mistress Ilse here.”
She sent a sidelong glance at Ilse. Unsettled by the directness of her gaze, Ilse picked up the tea carafe but found that it was empty.
“Would you like more?” Nadine said.
Ilse gla
nced up and away. “No. Thank you.”
Nadine sighed and exchanged a look with Josef. “I told you,” he said. “She likes me better.”
