The Name of the Wind

I had been furious. Just as my fortune seemed to be turning, I was forced to leave my only paying job because of well-intentioned meddling by my friends. But rather than storm over and rage at them, I’d gone away to the roof of Mains and played for a while to cool my head.

My music calmed me, as it always did. And while I played, I thought things through. My apprenticeship with Manet was going well, but there was simply too much to learn: how to fire the kilns, how to draw wire to the proper consistency, which alloys to choose for the proper effects. I couldn’t hope to bull through it the way I had learning my runes. I couldn’t earn enough working in Kilvin’s shop to pay back Devi at the end of the month, let alone make enough for tuition too.

“I probably would be,” I admitted. “But Kilvin made me look in a mirror.” I gave him a tired smile. “I look like hell.”

“You look like beat-up hell,” he corrected me matter-of-factly, then paused awkwardly “I’m glad you’re not upset.”

Simmon knocked as he pushed the door open. Guilt chased surprise off his face when he saw me sitting there. “Aren’t you supposed to be, um, in the Fishery?” he asked lamely.

I laughed and Simmon’s relief was almost tangible. Wilem moved a stack of paper off another chair and Simmon slouched into it.

“All is forgiven,” I said magnanimously. “All I ask is this: tell me everything you know about the Eolian.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE Slow Circles

The Eolian is where our long-sought player is waiting in the wings. I have not forgotten that she is what I am moving toward. If I seem to be caught in a slow circling of the subject, it is only appropriate, as she and I have always moved toward each other in slow circles.

Luckily, Wilem and Simmon had both been to the Eolian. Together they told me what little I didn’t already know.

There were a lot of places you could go in Imre to listen to music. In fact, nearly every inn, tavern, and boarding house had some manner of musician strumming, singing, or piping in the background. But the Eolian was different. It hosted the best musicians in the city. If you knew good music from bad, you knew the Eolian had the best.

To get in the front door of the Eolian cost you a whole copper jot. Once you were inside you could stay as long as you wished, and listen to as much music as you liked.

But paying at the door did not give a musician the right to play at the Eolian. A musician who wished to set foot upon the Eolian’s stage had to pay for the privilege: one silver talent. That’s right, folk paid to play at the Eolian, not the other way around.

Why would anyone pay such an outrageous amount of money simply to play music? Well, some of those who gave their silver were simply the self-indulgent rich. To them, a talent was not a great price to set themselves on such proud display.

But serious musicians paid too. If your performance impressed the audience and the owners enough, you were given a token: a tiny set of silver pipes that could be mounted on a pin or necklace. Talent pipes were recognized as clear marks of distinction at most sizable inns within two hundred miles of Imre.

If you had your set of talent pipes, you were admitted to the Eolian for free and could play whenever the fancy took you.

The only responsibility the talent pipes carried was that of performance. If you had earned your pipes, you could be called upon to play This was usually not a heavy burden, as the nobility who frequented the Eolian usually gave money or gifts to performers who pleased them. It was the upper class version of buying drinks for the fiddler.

Some musicians played with little hope of actually gaining their pipes. They paid to play because you never knew who might be in the Eolian that night, listening. A good performance of a single song might not get you your pipes, but it might earn you a wealthy patron instead.

A patron.

“You’ll never guess what I heard,” Simmon said one evening as we sat on our usual bench in the pennant square. We were alone, as Wilem was off making eyes at a serving girl at Anker’s. “Students have been hearing all manner of odd things from Mains at night.”

“Really,” I feigned disinterest.

Simmon pressed on. “Yes. Some say that it’s the ghost of a student who got lost in the building and starved to death.” He tapped the side of his nose with a finger like an old gaffer telling a story. “They say he wanders the halls even to this day, never able to find his way outside.”

“Ah.”

“Other opinions suggest it’s an angry spirit. They say it tortures animals, especially cats. That’s the sound the students hear, late at night: tortured cat’s guts. Quite a terrifying sound, I understand.”

I looked at him. He seemed almost ready to burst with laughing. “Oh let it out,” I told him with mock severity. “Go on. You deserve it for being so terribly clever. Despite the fact that no one uses gut strings in this day and age.”