gnim linguist

Q: Pity a poor pamphleteer.

A: All right. It was the warehouse of a shoeshine manufactory. My sisters and I wrapped the pots and tied them with string—about this much. Then we passed them to my father, and he labeled them. We sat in the window and worked. Sometimes people in the street stopped to watch.

Q: So you’ve been accustomed from an early age to having an audience.

A: Yes. People looking at you like you’re a wonderful hat to try on. Back then it frightened me.

Q: Does it still frighten you?

A: No. You get used to it.

Q: Did you sing while you worked in the window?

A: Sometimes.

Q: What about?

A: String. Little rhymes about string, about shoes.

Q: I’d love to hear one.

A: (Sings.) String, string, it’s the thing, you can tie it round a parcel, cats are partial to some string—what do you think? Fit for the court?

* * *

Dockside, Wulbren had said of the foundry, wrinkling his nose as though he could smell the pitch. Near the Steeps. Beautiful building, belching smoke into the sky day and night.

The Gondians must not be allowed to sleep. It's midnight, the moon's up cheating coppers from the city's linkboys, and the man huddled on the roof of the Mother's temple tastes smoke on the wind. Getting up had been all right. You get used to it, he thinks as he eases without dignity down the eave: crabwise with a queasy skitter in his chest, like a child afraid to slide down an icy hill. He braces a boot on a loose tile. It's the next part that always knocks him sick.

Hello, Central, he thinks to the others, peering down at the smokestack that juts from the neighboring roof. Even in his mind, he sounds breathless. Magga cammara. Gale's cat was right—

Tressym, thinks Gale with pleasant malice. And her name is Tara, thank you very much.

Tara, terror of the pigeon-post, was right. There's an open skylight in the foundry's dome. The former minstrel Silk leans out to better mark it, holding the sight in his mind for the others down below: mostly for Gale, who's got to aim his spell. A roof tile scrapes beneath his palm. His alien face tics. The dirty wind, salted and smoked, whips his shirt and what's left of his hair.

Shadowheart, entertained as usual by his unease, speaks in his mind. How's the weather up there?

Lovely. Brat. He spiders further down the gable. When he's made it to the edge, he'll try to stand. Let's have a picnic.

Cold milk, thinks Vally, wistful. Baked apples. Butties with egg and bacon and jam.

Karlach's beaming down there, somewhere. Chips!

Ooh, thinks Astarion. Blood sausage. Or—you know, I used to like those little finger-cakes.

Can a vampire, thinks Wyll, eat blood sausage?

Their half-illithid, toeing into a rain-gutter at their behest, thinks with wonder and irritation: if anything happens to these people, I'll go to pieces.

* * *

Q: Some say you aren’t fit for the court.

A: Yes.

Q: What do you say to people who call the gittern a juggler’s instrument? Who say it belongs in taverns, not Mastershall?

A: I’ve played it in both. You want something witty. Let me think.

Q: Take your time.

A: If we all played the harp, the Lonely Harpist wouldn’t be lonely.

* * *

Lae'zel's somewhere above him, hanging from the temple's spire. In the beginning, when the parasite had given him nothing but a headache and an itchy eye, she'd explained her people's psychic powers to him: a strong will strengthens the body, istik. That is why I can leap to the top of this rampart, and you must climb the stairs.

No stairs here. A gust of wind almost pitches him off the roof. He jams a boot in the gutter, then a hand, and catches himself in a tottery crouch.

You do not hesitate because you fear, thinks Lae'zel. You fear because you hesitate. Does a dragon falter at the precipice?

She doesn't see well in the dark. He draws her into his mind. With his eyes, she measures the impossible gap she means to leap; then she's running down the roof, vaulting past him, her hair a comet's tail.

* * *

Q: If you could speak to that boy in the window now, what would you tell him?

A: Work hard.

Q: Really?

A: Yes.

Q: How Baldurian. Is there such a thing as working too hard?

A: It's no good playing till your fingers bleed. But people admire you for it. We sing about—about the warrior who dies standing. The miner who bursts his heart hollowing the hill.

Q: Nobody dies in bed in the old ballads?

A: No, they're always drowning in rivers, and so.

Q: (Sings.) Down, down, down by the river...

A: Yes, yes. And there's Step It Out Mary, and Young Margery, and The Two Sisters. And Rare Wully.

Q: They can't swim? (Laughs.) None of them can swim?

A: Current's too fast.

Q: Don't you ever want to save them? Fish out Wully, marry poor Mary to her soldier boy?

A: I'd love to sing about a strong swimmer for a change.

Q: Someone buoyant.

A: Yes, someone with a lovely backstroke.

* * *

Atop the foundry, one of Gale's doors flickers into existence. It opens. Out crowd the wizard and his spellsick-looking entourage as Lae'zel, who'd stuck her landing without a wobble, stoops to frown into the skylight.

Nice place to lay out the checkered blanket, thinks Karlach. Come on, sangster.

Lae'zel was right, of course. He smiles, worried, and steps off the roof. There's the usual lurch like lightning in the blood—he's done it wrong this time, he thinks, he's killed himself—before the startled air around him catches its breath, bears him up, whirls round him in rivulets of obedient smoke.

* * *

Q: And you? Are you keeping your head above water?

A: At the Lady's table you're given four knives. One's for meat, one's for butter, one's probably for soup—

Q: (Laughs.) Oh, no.

There is no other word for it: Gale scoffs. “Favorite cantrip? Why, that’s…” His protests founder as he glances over his shoulder at Frey, who smiles patiently. “I… I do rather enjoy casting illusions,” he offers.

“Perfect!” Frey settles back to watch, arms folded. “Let’s see it.”

Far be it from Gale of Waterdeep to forgo an opportunity to grandstand. Though he had hoped for a more structured approach to his first lesson in sorcery, he nonetheless plucks a bit of fleece from the inside of his robe’s pocket and draws a simple sigil in the air. The scrap goes up in a flash of violet, and a song spools from the brush around them—a clutch of clarionets, presently joined by a careful strumming of strings. There, a piccolo, as if their own Piper were ambling by, only backed by an entire orchestra—is that a harp? Gale smiles to himself, and so rapt is he in the piece’s gradual crescendo that he hardly feels the exhale of the sorcerer’s spell as it twines with his—and then the horns join the concerto.

They both know the piece, it seems. Gale closes his eyes, and he is in the plush seats of Cymbril Hall, waiting for the Waterdhavian Philharmonic to take the stage, and he reaches for his mother’s hand, only she is not his mother; she is a gnome with Frey’s dark curls and brown eyes, and she looks at him with all the love in the world. The magic around them wanes, and the music quietens—has it been sixty seconds already? Frey, having joined in the casting later, finishes the composition with a percussive flourish and the distant sound of applause.

“Well done, my wizard,” he says, and his hand finds Gale’s shoulder once more. 

A channel has opened between them, and through it, Frey sends a whip stitch—a light erupts from his palm, and as it does, Gale feels a pleasant tingle at the base of his skull. Frey leans closer, as if sharing a secret, and the sensation uncoils down Gale’s spine all the way through his soles and into the earth. At the same moment that he becomes aware of the ground beneath his feet, color erupts in the air. Illusory monarchs and morphos whirl about their heads, and roseate petals cascade from above. “Is this…?” 

Gale need not ask; he recognizes instantly the anarchic signature of one of Frey’s wild magic surges. Only, for the first time, he feels as Frey does in the moment—elated beyond belief. His body has become oddly buoyant; indeed, he feels as if he could fly. Frey bursts into tinkling laughter, and Gale cannot help laughing along.

“Lucky we got flutter-bys rather than flames, this time.” They both laugh harder, Frey with his full weight on Gale now. 

The spell is only just fading, that precious seam unraveling, when Gale thinks to return Frey’s favor from their previous practice: he imagines, as clearly as if he’d done it a hundred times before, pulling the sorcerer close and kissing him. Frey’s face flushes, but he stands up straight, ever the poised scholar. 

“How very cheeky,” he chides, unable to keep the smile from his lips nor his voice.

“You’re an excellent instructor,” Gale says, and he means it.

Frey has taken up his logbook once more and flips through it with great concentration. “I’m aware,” he responds, world-weary, then looks back at his wizard. “And, unsurprisingly, you are an admirable pupil.” It may be the most earnest compliment he’s ever given Gale. “Perhaps I’ll see you at the fête?”

A quip stills in Gale’s throat, and he can only watch, mute, as the sorcerer takes his leave. He ought to return to what he was doing, then.

A laugh bursts from Frey like a bird startled to flight. “Really!” he says. He’d thought more highly of the wizard’s intelligence. “Magic goes far, far beyond Mystra.” He pockets the vitriol and makes a mark on his list.

“Pish posh,” Gale says, looking skeptically at the mound of dried acorn truffles the bard had earlier bestowed upon him. “One might as well deny one’s mother’s womb as the cradle of life.” Frey wrinkles his nose, places down his logbook and picks up the spare mortar he’d swiped from the necromancer’s lair. They set to work reducing the truffles to a fine powder, and Gale continues, “You don’t understand. Magic is… my life. I’ve been in touch with the Weave for as long as I can remember. There’s nothing like it. It’s music, poetry, physical beauty, all rolled into one and given expression through the senses.” He pauses, finally, for a breath, and his pestle stills. “Is it the same for you?”

Before he answers, Frey pours the essence into a pouch and marks it in his book. “Magic is like music,” he allows, dusting a bit of truffle from his palms, “although, you’re reading a piece of notation, while I’m playing by ear.”

“Fair enough—though in the end, we’re still playing the same composition.”

“Are we?” Frey says. “I do think my musical style is rather more improvisatory than your own. I may not always know where my spontaneity will take me, and I may occasionally play a note off-key, but one might argue that the piece I play is richer, more varied and more interesting for its extemporaneous nature.”

“One might argue,” Gale responds, smiling, ever a good sport, “that a classical piece is best played as it was written.”

“One might.” Frey returns the smile. His alchemical inventory is complete, but as he takes his leave, a hand finds his shoulder—gentle, imploring.

“Perhaps I can show you,” Gale says. “We can reach into the Weave together.”

Frey raises a brow, hazards a glance back at the rest of the rambling camp—most have settled into their tents or cots, though candles are still lit, the fire still tended. Karlach plays a game of fetch with Scratch, the twig singed and blackened when he noses it among the brush. Lae’zel sharpens a sword on her whetstone, and the bard hums a tune for the stars. “Alright,” Frey says, and turns back to Gale. “By all means.”

“Then follow my lead.”

Over a century of Frey’s life collapses in the space between them when Gale steps into the role of a Blackstaff professor. He is, for a fleeting moment, young again; wild magic thrums restless in his limbs as he imitates Gale’s demonstration with a measured flourish. A surge of adrenaline nips at the heels of the incantation, and he channels it—as he was taught—into the final component, which Gale describes as “picturing the concept of harmony”. If Frey weren’t so focused, he would laugh. Instead, he reaches incorporeally for that old thread, the one that smells of chalk and clacks like a wooden staff rapping against a blackboard.

“You did it,” Gale says with a touch too much incredulity. “You’re channeling the Weave. How does it feel?”

Familiar, Frey wants to say. A bit dull, really.

But there, Gale sits with his hands slightly aloft, fingers curled as if holding one delicate string, and his face shines with unselfconscious joy, brown eyes sparkling in the light of the spell that surrounds them. Frey takes a step closer, allows the magic to envelop him. An image rises in his mind unbidden—another step, and he would be mere inches from the wizard, standing between his knees, their faces close enough for a kiss. Gale looks up at Frey with a start. Hard to tell, amidst the purple glow of Mystra’s Weave, but his face appears flushed, and he’s stammering now, and Frey smiles crookedly.

“Apologies,” he starts, though he is not sorry at all, and Gale cuts him off.

“I—I didn’t think… I wasn’t expecting it, is all.” The magic pulses between them, a slip stitch sliding together to bring frayed edges nearer. “It is a pleasant image, to be sure.”

“Is it?” Frey’s smile deepens and his ears warm.

“Most pleasant, in fact.” Gale clears his throat, sits up a bit straighter so that their eyes are level. “Most welcome.” 

His hands relax, and the Weave dissipates, leaving only the cool night air and the distant rasp of steel grinding against quartz. Frey could lean in now, he thinks, and make real the immaterial. He takes a step back, bows slightly. 

“I enjoyed sharing a moment of magic with you,” Gale says, his tone bordering on businesslike. He gathers up his abandoned supplies and stands. Frey fumbles for a proper response, finds it in the great mass of his heart which has, somehow, found itself lodged in his throat.

Around them the inn makes an arthritic noise. That it's not yet crashed down around their ears is more a miracle than the goddess's ward. One of the ancient roofbeams sags, sifting centuries of dust onto the floor, as Jaheira's chair creaks back.

"Tell me again," she says, "what you told me outside."

Outside. He rubs his throat where the roots she'd called from the roiling earth had crushed it—he'd seen white, heard the others choking—and dragged him several paces.

If you've misjudged her, thinks Shadowheart, tart, you've killed us all.

We are not so easily slain. Lae'zel, rallying the troops. Speak.

Go on, sangster, thinks Karlach, rocking gleefully on her toes. He knows it without turning round. I mean—that's Jaheira!

Vally's hand squeezes his shoulder. Snub-nosed malapert, apple-thief. Who knows what he might barter for her—for all of them—from the High Harper, in exchange for this show of faith. Room and board, if this hovel's not full up. Soap, salves, sanctuary. Boots for Wyll that haven't seen everything.

Heh, thinks Wyll. I may have out-twinkled the toes.

Jaheira lifts an eyebrow—just like in the woodcuts. How about that. "I am beginning to feel left out."

He sips again from the drugged cup. I can lie, he tries to say, curious about what will come out; what comes out is the sort of tuneful noise he must have made while being strangled. All right. He clears his throat. What was it that he'd told her outside?

"We are not," he begins again, tentative but steady, "True Souls—"

* * *

Hours of that, so that when he finally twitches to sleep on Barcus Wroot's workbench, the High Harper's voice still angles sharp and searching through his mind: describe this vision, and tell me all that you know of this cult, and what happens when this great big die is rolled?

The Prism. By then sleeplessness had made him snappish. I don't gamble.

Ha! She'd liked that. When she pounced at last, as he'd been waiting with sweaty palms for her to do, she was still smiling. Who was your handler, Harper?

A hole of mute astonishment had opened in the back of his mind, where the others live. A full blessed four-beat rest. Shadowheart had recovered first. What?

He never told me his name. All that cloak-and-dagger. He never even saw the man's face in full light. With a tottery hand, he'd drained his cup to the dregs of the drug. By the end I wasn't sure whether I was spying for the Harpers or the Guild.

We Harpers are not so sticky-fingered as Nine-Fingers' folk. It impedes the tuneful plucking of strings. The glint in Jaheira's eyes as she poured more wine, studying him, had left no doubt about who he'd been spying for. You disobeyed your orders.

I had my strings to pluck, High Harper. His shadowy contact had told him, the last night they met, to start opening his patroness's letters. Ruth had laughed when he told her. And a good servant doesn't pocket the silver.

A panther's eyes burned out at him from the High Harper's pleasant face. For shame, to turn a coat so finely broidered. One hears that Lady Linnacker garbs her servants in velvet.

This woman, he'd thought, is going to eat me—and Lae'zel had chked, up in the loft where she was listening, and he'd felt better.

He's woolgathering, not sleeping. He sits up with a wince; the Harper pin Jaheira had offered him is pricking him in the chest. Beneath the table Barcus, who's brushed himself off and grumbled on after every ignominy a man might bear, shifts with a whistly snore. He feels abruptly as though the rusty pin's pierced him through.

It must be love, says Shadowheart nastily into his head. Glittering gods. He'd thought the others were asleep. Or lockjaw.

One of those. Whatever it is, he goes out to the forecourt to walk it off. The wind that whistles through the innyard is cursed cold. He might have sang in this inn, once, to the ghosts that haunt it now. They're all alike, the inns. The patrons roar and slap your back so hard you go flying off the milking-stool some spotty ostler's son fetched from the stalls.

"You smile," says the voice from his nightmares, "when you are upset."

For a moment he wonders when, during the hours the High Harper had spent putting him to the question, she'd made the observation. Then he turns and sees her by the innyard's dried-up fountain. "Oh, god."

Jaheira's eyebrow goes up again. "He loves you not?"

Startled, he follows her gaze to his hands. At some point he'd plucked a withered weed and started shredding it.

"Don't answer that," says Jaheira—to some traitorous twitch of his face, he supposes. She kneels with stiff grace to look him in the eye. He finds himself—good grief, she's conscripted him—standing up straighter. "You're still drugged. Your Sharran finds this prudent?"

"She's cross." That Shadowheart might lift a finger for his comfort had never occurred to him. For Vally's comfort, certainly. Their Sharran is not terribly consistent. "Your Selunite called her a—"

"Hush. This is no longer an interrogation." When Jaheira puts her thumb to the perpetual anxious line in his brow, the magic in it—some dispelling-charm, Gale would know—prickles down to his fingertips, his feet. "Tell a lie."

He clears his throat, relieved. The spell still itches in it. "Happy to be here."

"Ha." Jaheira studies his face. Not unfriendly, the look in her eyes, but not tame. "You are my elder, I think?"

Believe the songs, and she's won a thousand battles. He's hidden from several. Blundered through two or three. "In years only, High Harper—"

"Don't wheedle, minstrel."

"All right. I've the better knees."

He'd been so certain that she'd laugh. Instead, with the tense and catlike calm that unnerves him, the High Harper flicks a speck of grime from his cloakpin. Taps it. He feels a sudden, shivery kinship with small creatures caught by the tail.

"Indulge an old woman's curiosity," she says in a voice sheathed, but sharp. He's not at all sure about the knees. "Why do you think I let you have this trinket?"

"The pin makes the Harper, I suppose." No longer an interrogation, he reminds himself. "Do I look any taller?"

"Taller?" says Jaheira, entertained. "No. Nobler of chin? Also no. But you do not look as though you will turn tail on us a second time. If you were to forswear your oath again, after I have been so lenient—well." She smiles. He's felt safer at knifepoint. "It would not be your wisest course."

"I never swore an oath." He'd only been a catspaw. Nothing expected of him. Nothing entrusted. He meets her eyes, feeling small and ill—and thinks again, with a shock of exasperated amusement, of the High House's bicentennial. Swallows. Tries to smile. "What do I say?"