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rainbowfic2024-01-28 06:43 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2024-01-28 06:43 pm
Nacre #15; Light Black #25; Vert #25 [Starfall]
Name: Fine Feathers
Story: Starfall
Colors: Nacre #15 (Under the bed); Light Black #25 (Fly); Vert #25 (Hope is a thing with feathers)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Triptych + Novelty Beads (June 2021 Candy Green: keep breathing & Birthday prompts 2020: "Caught in their throat.") + Life drawing
Word Count: 2929
Rating: PG
Warnings: some (mild) implied neglect/abandonment; mentions of injury.
Notes: Starfall Manor 1337 + flashbacks, 1316-1325; Zila Fayne, Pen Stolley, Sy Halsay, Tarin Hyonet, Alno Hyonet, Aliyna Nouriano Hyonet, Zin Hyonet, Parry Hilnost. (A spot of Zila backstory.)
Summary: Zila's always stuck on the outside, no matter how hard she tries.
1337
Stolley stands at the door, barring her entry; an immovable guardian in grey.
"I might be able to help," says Zila. "You never know. I could try singing. Why not?"
Stolley folds her arms. "Have you forgotten you are still in the pay of Imor Veldiner?"
Well, maybe Zila has; and it is true, but hardly worth quibbling over, in her opinion. "Ha, you know all about that anyway. You don't just read my letters to her—you dictate half of them!"
"Are you a member of any sort of medical profession?"
"Well, several of my tutors used to have a lot of theories about music and healing, so -"
"Are you?"
Zila screws up her face. "No. But -"
"Only medical staff are allowed in here. Now, do go away. I have enough to deal with without you pestering me."
"How can I go? You won't give me my pass. The Governor promised me that—he said he had signed it already. He wouldn't be pleased to find that you're holding it hostage!"
Stolley sighs. "I'm not keeping it from you: the Governor has it. Should he recover, he may give it to you whenever he pleases. If he does not recover, I will give it to you after I have gone through his papers. In the meantime, you know I didn't mean you to leave altogether—I'd prefer to have you where someone can keep an eye on you. Just not in my immediate vicinity at this moment, if you please."
Zila shrugs and turns on her heel. It doesn't matter, of course. If the Governor wants to die, he can go right ahead. That's his loss; Stolley's loss. Zila will be fine. Never mind him, never mind Laonna (who is an entirely unreasonable person anyway). Zila will find something else to do and somewhere else to be. She's done that for most of her life.
While she's waiting, she might as well do what the Governor told her before got himself injured. She'll find Imai Nivyrn, who the Governor told her might be able to help her with the power she seems to harbour in her voice. Maybe then, people will believe she could help.
If she still wants to. She might not.
1316, Karne
Zila lies in the loft on a lumpy old spare mattress, starting to drift away into a doze. Voices float up beneath her makeshift bed from the room below. They steal into her dreams (she's flying away into the stars) and pulling her back to the attic—dark, stuffy, musty.
"She can't stay here. The whole of Karne knows who her father is!"
Zila pushes up the sides of the pillow so they cover her ears, but it doesn't stop the words from forcing their way through. "Not listening, not listening," she mutters into the fabric.
"Of course we'd have her else," Uncle Alno says. "But call her what you like — you can't hide the truth here."
Zila's father did something when he was in Karne—which wasn't for very long—and everybody hates him for it. She's pretty sure he deserves it, but she doesn't. It's nothing to do with her. She's never even met him. She sniffs.
"I don't see how," says Mother. "Besides, where else can I send her?"
"People talk," Uncle Alno says. "They know she's yours, not Riya's, and they worked out about Lidis long ago. It wouldn't be fair to her."
Zila huddles tighter into the bedcovers. Mother doesn't want her, and now Uncle Alno and Aunt Shiyel don't either.
"Send her over the border," adds her Uncle. He's standing right beneath Zila: she can hear him clearly, while Mother's is nothing but a muted mumble. "Home. People won't mind there."
They send her over the mountains into Eisterland, to Grandmother and Grandfather in Tanno. She likes the old family farmhouse, but it's not nice to be handed over from one person to another like the mouldy old rock nobody wants to be left holding at the end of the game.
1318, Tanno
"Sing, little bird," Grandmother says to her, often and often. They sing all the old songs together. They sing as they clean and cook and help make butter and cheese. Grandfather doesn't have many goats or sheep, even less than Uncle Alno and Aunt Shiyel, but there's still always plenty to do.
They have chickens, too, and Zila hunts for eggs; warm under sitting birds, whose feathers she ruffles in her attempts.
She sleeps in the tiny, topmost room in the old family house, in a wooden bed that will soon be too small and needs thick, folded paper to prop up an uneven leg. But it has a blue and gold quilt made by Grandmother. Grandmother's family weren't farmers. They made beautiful things that people in Tanno would have to save up forever to buy. Grandmother tells Zila about all the embroidered dresses, bed covers, and hangings; chairs and cabinets with gilt edging, and crockery with pretty patterns glazed onto them, topped off with flashes of gold leaf.
"I could have been a great singer," says Grandmother Hyonet. "But I was too useful; that was my mistake. I was the best embroiderer out of the lot of us—until I rebelled and ran away with your grandfather. Ha! Look where that got me – halfway up a mountain with the goats." Then she laughs and taps Zila's cheek with thin, cold fingers. "And you, little songbird."
It's that kind of thing that make the Tanno cousins poke and pinch Zila and call her names. She is Grandmother's favourite, they say. It's not fair, they say. She should go away and leave them alone. Things were better before she came.
Zila sticks out her tongue. It's not her fault if Grandmother knows she's the best one. She doesn't see how anyone could like any of her mean Tanno cousins anyway.
1321, Tanno
Zila isn't allowed in her grandparents' room, but the treasures inside are too alluring. The bedcover and curtains have faded into ghosts of their former selves: bright gold and cream and deep pink are dusty pastel colours, but they prove Grandmother's tales true. Zila lies on the bed and strokes the worn fabric, tracing fascinating lines of intricate embroidery, though threads have snagged and broken in places. She imagines it new and bright and shining; imagines herself Queen or Governor of everywhere, anywhere.
She hears a solid tread on the stairs and gasps; hastily, she rolls off the bed and pushes her way under it, hidden amongst stray oddments and a thin strip of dust at the centre that has escaped Grandmother's stern reach. The world is darkened and tinged with the pink of the cloth that hangs over the sides. Zila holds her breath and plays dead.
"You shouldn't encourage that girl," Grandfather says as he marches inside. "You can't live by singing."
Even from a position where she can only see Grandmother's ankles, Zila can feel how straight and stiff she goes. "Some people can. Zila could — if she can get into the Academy. And she will—I still know a few people over there—they'll give her a hearing, that much I can guarantee."
"Liyna! Leave well enough alone."
Zila presses her hand over her mouth to stifle her reaction. She won't be going to the Pollean Academy if they catch her.
"She'll get in," says Grandmother. She sits, the mattress creaking and dipping with her weight. "I know what I'm talking about." A pause; more steps and creaking and rustling. Then Grandmother adds, impatience stealing into her tone. "What are you doing? Haven't you found it yet?"
"Nearly ready," says Grandfather. He's rooting around in the chest of drawers in his shirtsleeves; looking for something.
"Hmph." With that, Grandmother bustles and snaps away, out of the room.
Zila can't move for what feels like forever. Grandfather on his own is too quiet. Every time she thinks she must somehow have missed him leaving, the floorboards creak and he moves about from the cupboard to the drawers or back to the bed in a series of soft shuffling, and she must close her eyes and pretend she doesn't exist a little longer.
But it's all right: she's going to sing, and she's going to be the very best at it that a person can be. The Academy will beg her to stay. Grandmother says so.
1325, Eisterway
Her mother and stepfather live close to the Governor's Palace and they have three little half-sisters cluttering up the place already. The eldest, Liya, is only six, and Mother says there'll be another along soon. Zila's stepfather, Parry, travels around selling whatever he can buy cheaply in bulk and thinks he can pass on with a profit. He's hardly ever here, although whenever he is, he and Mother must make up for lost time, or there wouldn't be all these surplus sisters for her to fall over.
Each morning Zila runs along the stretch of narrow lane that leads from their house to the gate of the Academy. The main school building is a towering greystone monstrosity, with a central concert hall, and the wings rounded off with smaller towers. It's surrounded by smaller tower blocks in the same grey, fort-like mould where they put the live-in students.
Zila doesn't even mind all the musical theory and the more regular sorts of subjects they make her learn. The rest of the time, they let her play and sing and she gets to hear all the visiting musicians. She does whatever they ask: sings scales, rounds, harmonies or practises a refrain over and over until she's sick of the sound. She wants this badly enough to do it. She'll succeed if it kills her. She sees the way the lecturers look at each other when they think she's not watching. Grandmother is right: she is good and they know it.
The only discordant note is Parry. He's all right, but stricter than you'd expect for someone who scurries about the whole of the District conning people into buying rugs or pots and things. He can't stop Zila from going to the Academy—her scholarship isn't his business—but he's no use for Poll, he says. The only sacred place he likes is the Empty Temple. Maybe it's all that talking the rest of the time that makes him honour silence and nothingness so much, but Zila has never been one for being still and quiet. Her little sisters aren't good at it, either. Liya and Nouria sometimes hide under Zila's bed when Parry's there and listen to her singing. Parry can't stop her. She tells him she has to practice, radiating smug virtue, and he's left uselessly muttering about that frivolous, fancy school. Zila sings on, louder than ever. The other two join in where they can.
It's not only the scholarship that protects her. Mother cleans in the Governor's Palace, and the Governor herself knows about Zila's studies—heard her sing specially once—and sometimes asks how she's is getting along, and she'd hardly be impressed to hear that Parry had put a stop to it for no good reason. One day Zila will sing for every important soul in Portcallan—Lialia—everywhere. People will fight each other for tickets or pay a hundred starflowers just to hear her.
Outside, in the lane, she takes a bow to an imaginary adoring audience, before she has to go back to the cramped apartment.
In the end, she goes everywhere, but not quite the way she planned: travelling from one mountain hamlet to the other, selling songs like Parry sells his wares—or worse, cleaning for people, like Mother in the Governor's Palace.
But she's saving up every soler she gets. She'll make it to Portcallan. She'll sing and the whole world will sit up and listen.
1337, Starfall Manor
Starfall is full of people who hate the Governor and everybody connected to him; there's nothing left for Zila here. The guard Pio promised to help, to find Imai Nivyrn for her, and to talk to their medics about letting her in to see the Governor, but she can't sit around waiting for him. He'll forget, or nobody will listen to him, or maybe he didn't mean it, anyway.
Other people so rarely keep their word. Grandmother's her only exception to the rule. She'd almost thought the Governor might be another, but he's letting her down right now, working hard on dying even though she told him not to.
Zila returns to the infirmary wing. "Stolley sent me," she tells the guard outside, one of the Governor's people. She raises her chin and employs a haughty tone borrowed from one of her old lecturers.
The guard gives her a hard look. "Stolley told me on no account to let you in," she says.
Zila huffs and retreats around the corner. Why is she bothering? Paying her debts before she moves on again, maybe, but it's not worth it. Nothing lasts: she's a bad luck charm in a tiny village that can't take any more knocks; one mouth too many to feed; the last cherry that won't fit in the jar. She always turns up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Zila takes one last look back down the corridor, towards the room where they've got the Governor. A daring plan to wait till the guard leaves, or someone else goes in, and slip in unnoticed passes through her head. It won't work, of course. Even if it did, what would she do after—hide under the Governor's hospital bed, and what then?
No; if there's one thing Zila knows, it's when to make her exit.
She straightens, and breathes a last silent goodbye to him—and to Laonna, to Pio and his dog—and then she runs for her room. She'll grab her bag, and go. She'll manage. At least nobody outside this place is going to attack her for no reason.
When she reaches the guest quarters, one of the Starfall people is outside her door, holding a piece of paper against it, trying to write something.
"Excuse me?" says Zila, hands on her hips. "I want to go into my room, thank you. Don't you have a desk for that sort of thing?"
He swings round and breaks into a bright smile. He holds out his hand. "Imai Fayne! My name is Sy Halsay—I was looking for you. I'm one of the physicians here—Pio said you wanted to see Governor Delver."
Zila pokes a gap in the floorboards with the toe of her shoe. "I say all sorts of things I don't mean. Stolley won't let me, so there's no point."
"I think there might be." Sy says. "You offered to sing for Governor Delver, didn't you? Well, I don't see why we shouldn't let you. Something suitable, of course. Noise—excitement—would be unlikely to help."
Zila swallows. "The Governor said I might have, I don't know—affinity, he said. I wouldn't want to screw things up."
"Oh, I doubt you will do any harm," says Sy, much too easily. "Don't worry about Imai Stolley. If we recommend this approach, she will feel duty bound to give it a try."
"Are you that desperate?"
Sy laughs. "Perhaps. But Rion—Imai Wolmer—and I aren't sure why the Governor hasn't yet recovered full consciousness. Positive external stimuli may help, and if a professional singer like yourself with a good knowledge of songs the Governor prefers—well, it would be silly not to take you up on it. It's unlikely to do much good, I'm afraid, but there's nothing you can do to make matters worse."
"If this goes wrong," says Zila, "I want you to make it very clear to everyone that you were the one who said that."
Sy can do what she can't, and open doors. He leads her back to the infirmary. This time, the guard stands back for them to pass, and even Stolley, looking even greyer than ever, says nothing.
The Governor also says nothing; lying silent and still enough to please Parry. Zila halts in the doorway. Now she's got what she asked for, she doesn't want it. He's faded into a bleached ghost of himself, like grandmother's fine quilts. She's used to him ruling the room. Fingers squeeze her heart. She's too late: the Governor has already left.
"Something quiet—slow—familiar to him," says Sy softly at her side, keeping a light hand on her arm. The state of the Governor doesn't seem to bother him. "When you're ready, that is."
Zila swallows, her mouth too dry for talking, let alone singing. "He's not here," she whispers when Sy looks at her. "It's no good."
"No harm, either," says Sy, patting her arm. He sounds far too cheerful.
Stolley has her eyes on Zila, who braces herself for another lecture. Eventually the older woman says, heavily, "Alion's Lament, then. Veldiner's choice. You remember? She knows her business."
Sing, little bird, says Grandmother's voice in her head. All the old song's gloomy birds take flight at the words.
There's always a song to be sung. Nothing else matters. Zila closes her eyes and shapes the mournful melody with which she filled the Calla Hall months before into something softer, smaller; a last lullaby. She sings.
"I left my love beyond the grey mountains high, To follow the snowbird as it crossed the sky...
Story: Starfall
Colors: Nacre #15 (Under the bed); Light Black #25 (Fly); Vert #25 (Hope is a thing with feathers)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Triptych + Novelty Beads (June 2021 Candy Green: keep breathing & Birthday prompts 2020: "Caught in their throat.") + Life drawing
Word Count: 2929
Rating: PG
Warnings: some (mild) implied neglect/abandonment; mentions of injury.
Notes: Starfall Manor 1337 + flashbacks, 1316-1325; Zila Fayne, Pen Stolley, Sy Halsay, Tarin Hyonet, Alno Hyonet, Aliyna Nouriano Hyonet, Zin Hyonet, Parry Hilnost. (A spot of Zila backstory.)
Summary: Zila's always stuck on the outside, no matter how hard she tries.
1337
Stolley stands at the door, barring her entry; an immovable guardian in grey.
"I might be able to help," says Zila. "You never know. I could try singing. Why not?"
Stolley folds her arms. "Have you forgotten you are still in the pay of Imor Veldiner?"
Well, maybe Zila has; and it is true, but hardly worth quibbling over, in her opinion. "Ha, you know all about that anyway. You don't just read my letters to her—you dictate half of them!"
"Are you a member of any sort of medical profession?"
"Well, several of my tutors used to have a lot of theories about music and healing, so -"
"Are you?"
Zila screws up her face. "No. But -"
"Only medical staff are allowed in here. Now, do go away. I have enough to deal with without you pestering me."
"How can I go? You won't give me my pass. The Governor promised me that—he said he had signed it already. He wouldn't be pleased to find that you're holding it hostage!"
Stolley sighs. "I'm not keeping it from you: the Governor has it. Should he recover, he may give it to you whenever he pleases. If he does not recover, I will give it to you after I have gone through his papers. In the meantime, you know I didn't mean you to leave altogether—I'd prefer to have you where someone can keep an eye on you. Just not in my immediate vicinity at this moment, if you please."
Zila shrugs and turns on her heel. It doesn't matter, of course. If the Governor wants to die, he can go right ahead. That's his loss; Stolley's loss. Zila will be fine. Never mind him, never mind Laonna (who is an entirely unreasonable person anyway). Zila will find something else to do and somewhere else to be. She's done that for most of her life.
While she's waiting, she might as well do what the Governor told her before got himself injured. She'll find Imai Nivyrn, who the Governor told her might be able to help her with the power she seems to harbour in her voice. Maybe then, people will believe she could help.
If she still wants to. She might not.
1316, Karne
Zila lies in the loft on a lumpy old spare mattress, starting to drift away into a doze. Voices float up beneath her makeshift bed from the room below. They steal into her dreams (she's flying away into the stars) and pulling her back to the attic—dark, stuffy, musty.
"She can't stay here. The whole of Karne knows who her father is!"
Zila pushes up the sides of the pillow so they cover her ears, but it doesn't stop the words from forcing their way through. "Not listening, not listening," she mutters into the fabric.
"Of course we'd have her else," Uncle Alno says. "But call her what you like — you can't hide the truth here."
Zila's father did something when he was in Karne—which wasn't for very long—and everybody hates him for it. She's pretty sure he deserves it, but she doesn't. It's nothing to do with her. She's never even met him. She sniffs.
"I don't see how," says Mother. "Besides, where else can I send her?"
"People talk," Uncle Alno says. "They know she's yours, not Riya's, and they worked out about Lidis long ago. It wouldn't be fair to her."
Zila huddles tighter into the bedcovers. Mother doesn't want her, and now Uncle Alno and Aunt Shiyel don't either.
"Send her over the border," adds her Uncle. He's standing right beneath Zila: she can hear him clearly, while Mother's is nothing but a muted mumble. "Home. People won't mind there."
They send her over the mountains into Eisterland, to Grandmother and Grandfather in Tanno. She likes the old family farmhouse, but it's not nice to be handed over from one person to another like the mouldy old rock nobody wants to be left holding at the end of the game.
1318, Tanno
"Sing, little bird," Grandmother says to her, often and often. They sing all the old songs together. They sing as they clean and cook and help make butter and cheese. Grandfather doesn't have many goats or sheep, even less than Uncle Alno and Aunt Shiyel, but there's still always plenty to do.
They have chickens, too, and Zila hunts for eggs; warm under sitting birds, whose feathers she ruffles in her attempts.
She sleeps in the tiny, topmost room in the old family house, in a wooden bed that will soon be too small and needs thick, folded paper to prop up an uneven leg. But it has a blue and gold quilt made by Grandmother. Grandmother's family weren't farmers. They made beautiful things that people in Tanno would have to save up forever to buy. Grandmother tells Zila about all the embroidered dresses, bed covers, and hangings; chairs and cabinets with gilt edging, and crockery with pretty patterns glazed onto them, topped off with flashes of gold leaf.
"I could have been a great singer," says Grandmother Hyonet. "But I was too useful; that was my mistake. I was the best embroiderer out of the lot of us—until I rebelled and ran away with your grandfather. Ha! Look where that got me – halfway up a mountain with the goats." Then she laughs and taps Zila's cheek with thin, cold fingers. "And you, little songbird."
It's that kind of thing that make the Tanno cousins poke and pinch Zila and call her names. She is Grandmother's favourite, they say. It's not fair, they say. She should go away and leave them alone. Things were better before she came.
Zila sticks out her tongue. It's not her fault if Grandmother knows she's the best one. She doesn't see how anyone could like any of her mean Tanno cousins anyway.
1321, Tanno
Zila isn't allowed in her grandparents' room, but the treasures inside are too alluring. The bedcover and curtains have faded into ghosts of their former selves: bright gold and cream and deep pink are dusty pastel colours, but they prove Grandmother's tales true. Zila lies on the bed and strokes the worn fabric, tracing fascinating lines of intricate embroidery, though threads have snagged and broken in places. She imagines it new and bright and shining; imagines herself Queen or Governor of everywhere, anywhere.
She hears a solid tread on the stairs and gasps; hastily, she rolls off the bed and pushes her way under it, hidden amongst stray oddments and a thin strip of dust at the centre that has escaped Grandmother's stern reach. The world is darkened and tinged with the pink of the cloth that hangs over the sides. Zila holds her breath and plays dead.
"You shouldn't encourage that girl," Grandfather says as he marches inside. "You can't live by singing."
Even from a position where she can only see Grandmother's ankles, Zila can feel how straight and stiff she goes. "Some people can. Zila could — if she can get into the Academy. And she will—I still know a few people over there—they'll give her a hearing, that much I can guarantee."
"Liyna! Leave well enough alone."
Zila presses her hand over her mouth to stifle her reaction. She won't be going to the Pollean Academy if they catch her.
"She'll get in," says Grandmother. She sits, the mattress creaking and dipping with her weight. "I know what I'm talking about." A pause; more steps and creaking and rustling. Then Grandmother adds, impatience stealing into her tone. "What are you doing? Haven't you found it yet?"
"Nearly ready," says Grandfather. He's rooting around in the chest of drawers in his shirtsleeves; looking for something.
"Hmph." With that, Grandmother bustles and snaps away, out of the room.
Zila can't move for what feels like forever. Grandfather on his own is too quiet. Every time she thinks she must somehow have missed him leaving, the floorboards creak and he moves about from the cupboard to the drawers or back to the bed in a series of soft shuffling, and she must close her eyes and pretend she doesn't exist a little longer.
But it's all right: she's going to sing, and she's going to be the very best at it that a person can be. The Academy will beg her to stay. Grandmother says so.
1325, Eisterway
Her mother and stepfather live close to the Governor's Palace and they have three little half-sisters cluttering up the place already. The eldest, Liya, is only six, and Mother says there'll be another along soon. Zila's stepfather, Parry, travels around selling whatever he can buy cheaply in bulk and thinks he can pass on with a profit. He's hardly ever here, although whenever he is, he and Mother must make up for lost time, or there wouldn't be all these surplus sisters for her to fall over.
Each morning Zila runs along the stretch of narrow lane that leads from their house to the gate of the Academy. The main school building is a towering greystone monstrosity, with a central concert hall, and the wings rounded off with smaller towers. It's surrounded by smaller tower blocks in the same grey, fort-like mould where they put the live-in students.
Zila doesn't even mind all the musical theory and the more regular sorts of subjects they make her learn. The rest of the time, they let her play and sing and she gets to hear all the visiting musicians. She does whatever they ask: sings scales, rounds, harmonies or practises a refrain over and over until she's sick of the sound. She wants this badly enough to do it. She'll succeed if it kills her. She sees the way the lecturers look at each other when they think she's not watching. Grandmother is right: she is good and they know it.
The only discordant note is Parry. He's all right, but stricter than you'd expect for someone who scurries about the whole of the District conning people into buying rugs or pots and things. He can't stop Zila from going to the Academy—her scholarship isn't his business—but he's no use for Poll, he says. The only sacred place he likes is the Empty Temple. Maybe it's all that talking the rest of the time that makes him honour silence and nothingness so much, but Zila has never been one for being still and quiet. Her little sisters aren't good at it, either. Liya and Nouria sometimes hide under Zila's bed when Parry's there and listen to her singing. Parry can't stop her. She tells him she has to practice, radiating smug virtue, and he's left uselessly muttering about that frivolous, fancy school. Zila sings on, louder than ever. The other two join in where they can.
It's not only the scholarship that protects her. Mother cleans in the Governor's Palace, and the Governor herself knows about Zila's studies—heard her sing specially once—and sometimes asks how she's is getting along, and she'd hardly be impressed to hear that Parry had put a stop to it for no good reason. One day Zila will sing for every important soul in Portcallan—Lialia—everywhere. People will fight each other for tickets or pay a hundred starflowers just to hear her.
Outside, in the lane, she takes a bow to an imaginary adoring audience, before she has to go back to the cramped apartment.
In the end, she goes everywhere, but not quite the way she planned: travelling from one mountain hamlet to the other, selling songs like Parry sells his wares—or worse, cleaning for people, like Mother in the Governor's Palace.
But she's saving up every soler she gets. She'll make it to Portcallan. She'll sing and the whole world will sit up and listen.
1337, Starfall Manor
Starfall is full of people who hate the Governor and everybody connected to him; there's nothing left for Zila here. The guard Pio promised to help, to find Imai Nivyrn for her, and to talk to their medics about letting her in to see the Governor, but she can't sit around waiting for him. He'll forget, or nobody will listen to him, or maybe he didn't mean it, anyway.
Other people so rarely keep their word. Grandmother's her only exception to the rule. She'd almost thought the Governor might be another, but he's letting her down right now, working hard on dying even though she told him not to.
Zila returns to the infirmary wing. "Stolley sent me," she tells the guard outside, one of the Governor's people. She raises her chin and employs a haughty tone borrowed from one of her old lecturers.
The guard gives her a hard look. "Stolley told me on no account to let you in," she says.
Zila huffs and retreats around the corner. Why is she bothering? Paying her debts before she moves on again, maybe, but it's not worth it. Nothing lasts: she's a bad luck charm in a tiny village that can't take any more knocks; one mouth too many to feed; the last cherry that won't fit in the jar. She always turns up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Zila takes one last look back down the corridor, towards the room where they've got the Governor. A daring plan to wait till the guard leaves, or someone else goes in, and slip in unnoticed passes through her head. It won't work, of course. Even if it did, what would she do after—hide under the Governor's hospital bed, and what then?
No; if there's one thing Zila knows, it's when to make her exit.
She straightens, and breathes a last silent goodbye to him—and to Laonna, to Pio and his dog—and then she runs for her room. She'll grab her bag, and go. She'll manage. At least nobody outside this place is going to attack her for no reason.
When she reaches the guest quarters, one of the Starfall people is outside her door, holding a piece of paper against it, trying to write something.
"Excuse me?" says Zila, hands on her hips. "I want to go into my room, thank you. Don't you have a desk for that sort of thing?"
He swings round and breaks into a bright smile. He holds out his hand. "Imai Fayne! My name is Sy Halsay—I was looking for you. I'm one of the physicians here—Pio said you wanted to see Governor Delver."
Zila pokes a gap in the floorboards with the toe of her shoe. "I say all sorts of things I don't mean. Stolley won't let me, so there's no point."
"I think there might be." Sy says. "You offered to sing for Governor Delver, didn't you? Well, I don't see why we shouldn't let you. Something suitable, of course. Noise—excitement—would be unlikely to help."
Zila swallows. "The Governor said I might have, I don't know—affinity, he said. I wouldn't want to screw things up."
"Oh, I doubt you will do any harm," says Sy, much too easily. "Don't worry about Imai Stolley. If we recommend this approach, she will feel duty bound to give it a try."
"Are you that desperate?"
Sy laughs. "Perhaps. But Rion—Imai Wolmer—and I aren't sure why the Governor hasn't yet recovered full consciousness. Positive external stimuli may help, and if a professional singer like yourself with a good knowledge of songs the Governor prefers—well, it would be silly not to take you up on it. It's unlikely to do much good, I'm afraid, but there's nothing you can do to make matters worse."
"If this goes wrong," says Zila, "I want you to make it very clear to everyone that you were the one who said that."
Sy can do what she can't, and open doors. He leads her back to the infirmary. This time, the guard stands back for them to pass, and even Stolley, looking even greyer than ever, says nothing.
The Governor also says nothing; lying silent and still enough to please Parry. Zila halts in the doorway. Now she's got what she asked for, she doesn't want it. He's faded into a bleached ghost of himself, like grandmother's fine quilts. She's used to him ruling the room. Fingers squeeze her heart. She's too late: the Governor has already left.
"Something quiet—slow—familiar to him," says Sy softly at her side, keeping a light hand on her arm. The state of the Governor doesn't seem to bother him. "When you're ready, that is."
Zila swallows, her mouth too dry for talking, let alone singing. "He's not here," she whispers when Sy looks at her. "It's no good."
"No harm, either," says Sy, patting her arm. He sounds far too cheerful.
Stolley has her eyes on Zila, who braces herself for another lecture. Eventually the older woman says, heavily, "Alion's Lament, then. Veldiner's choice. You remember? She knows her business."
Sing, little bird, says Grandmother's voice in her head. All the old song's gloomy birds take flight at the words.
There's always a song to be sung. Nothing else matters. Zila closes her eyes and shapes the mournful melody with which she filled the Calla Hall months before into something softer, smaller; a last lullaby. She sings.
"I left my love beyond the grey mountains high, To follow the snowbird as it crossed the sky...
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