Instead, her eyes returned to Verity, who had ended one song and immediately started the next. There was a way she blended the songs together, so they seemed to be part of the same overall structure, and Isra had no clue how this had been accomplished. She knew a few traditional Tarbin songs that her father had taught her, but most of her time was spent listening to the birds, if she had a need for music. And while it was true that there was beauty in the birdsong and the clarity of their notes, there was no possible way they could compare to what Verity was producing, all by herself, in this small tavern.
Isra had thought so in the dungeon as well, and when Verity had woven
speech into the lyrics of her song, Isra had felt a giddy joy that she
hadn’t let cross her face because no one
They were close enough that Isra could see Verity’s forearms tense up at particular points and watch her slender fingers play across the strings of the lute’s neck.
“She’s using the flute,” said Isra.
“It’s actually called a lute,” said Alfric, sounding apologetic.
“No,” said Isra, rolling her eyes. “The flute we pulled from the dungeon.” She gestured to Verity. “She’s got extra fingers on each hand.”
“Huh,” said Alfric. “That was fast.”
“Nah,” said Mizuki. “We were testing it the other night. The extra fingers come with something else, a kind of,” she tapped her head, “thing.”
“Enhancement?” asked Alfric.
“Ay, but anythin’ could be an enhancement, couldn’t it?” asked Hannah. “Not a very useful term.”
“It changes how you think,” said Mizuki. “For me, it was like I’d been handling a knife using extra fingers my entire life. For her, all the training translates. It’s actually a pretty good piece of kit.”
“I wonder if anyone else has noticed,” said Alfric, looking around.
“I don’t think they’d make a thing of it. Entads are more common here, in some ways,” said Hannah. “Not uncommon for people to have one or two. Different in a big city like Dondrian, right?”
“In some sense,” said Alfric, furrowing his brow. “The general rule is
that entads flow toward the population centers, but… my guess is that
you’d point out that dungeoneering is easier out in rural areas like
this, so people run dungeons as a rite of passage, and any that aren’t
immediately sold off end up in private hands, especially those that are
bound and
“Ay,” answered Hannah, taking a drink of her ale. “Small stuff, mostly, but there’s quite a bit of it around, and every now and then, someone lucks out.”
“Like Isra,” said Alfric, nodding. “That bow,” he sighed.
“It’s a very nice bow,” Isra agreed. She looked at Verity, who was still softly playing away, her eyes half closed, gentle words on her lips to accompany the strumming of her lute. “I’m surprised she doesn’t have a magical instrument.”
“She did, in Dondrian,” said Alfric. “But like most of its kind, it was probably borrowed from one of the larger guilds at great expense, rather than owned by her outright. If she’d taken it with her to Pucklechurch, she would have been tracked down to retrieve it. From what her parents said, it allowed for an entire orchestral score to be produced from a single instrument.” He shrugged. “Perhaps she wouldn’t want me talking about it. She didn’t seem to have liked her life in the city.”
“She seems happy without all that,” said Isra. She looked down at her food, which was only half eaten. She’d been eating slower than the others and hadn’t yet touched her ale. She took a tentative sip of it and wrinkled her nose. It was fermented grain, mildly poisonous, but in a way that people seemed to enjoy. Grimacing and trying to get used to it, she drank more, then went back to the food to get the taste from her mouth.
“I don’t know that ‘happy’ is the right word for Verity,” said Hannah. “Not yet, anyhow. Some people take some time to find themselves, especially if they’ve been told their whole life that they were somethin’ they weren’t.”
“Ah, I do love that clerical wisdom,” said Mizuki, grinning. She’d drained her ale and had been trying to get the attention of the woman who ran the tavern so she could have another. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. The glasses of ale were quite tall.
“Oh, shove off,” laughed Hannah. “I spent years of my life becomin’ wise, you’d best believe I’m going to share that wisdom anytime I can.”
“Entads,” said Mizuki, returning to the previous topic. “I’m hoping for something great. Something to serve as some fuel for the casting. They usually don’t disturb much.” She waved her hand, gesturing, presumably, at the aether.
