Interview with Silk, court minstrel of the Lady of Sundabar
by Erlene Shrodd, journalist
c. 1350s D.R.
This interview took place in a quiet corner of Baldiverās. I drank coffee; Silk, newest addition to the Ladyās court at Mastershall, drank some sort of turpentine. He has Sorcha curlsāthe libel is quite trueāand the sort of gawky, gently serious young face that ages with character. Even when he joked, he didnāt smile.
Q: You worked in a warehouse as a child.
A: Yes.
Q: What was that like?
A: Busy.
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 stringāabout 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 youāve been accustomed from an early age to having an audience.
A: Yes. People looking at you like youāre 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: Iād love to hear one.
A: (Sings.) String, string, itās the thing, you can tie it round a parcel, cats are partial to some stringāwhat 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 rightā
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. Orāyou 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 arenāt fit for the court.
A: Yes.
Q: What do you say to people who call the gittern a jugglerās instrument? Who say it belongs in taverns, not Mastershall?
A: Iāve 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 wouldnāt 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 aboutāabout 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 bloodāhe's done it wrong this time, he thinks, he's killed himselfābefore 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 soupā
Q: (Laughs.) Oh, no.
A: I suppose I'm playing by ear.
