Side A – Yasgrid
The invader didn’t stab Yasgrid. So that got things off to a better start than they might otherwise have been. Not that Marianne was likely to stab Yasgrid. They hadn’t parted on poor terms, but Yasgrid did notice a look in Marianne’s eyes that suggested a certain repressed irritation that might have had stabbing-adjacent elements to it.
“Feeling better?” Marianne asked with a light smile as Yasgrid paused in the doorway.
Yasgrid didn’t need her newly honed appreciation for subtlety to know the smile was a lie. Before responding she did a quick check of her memory to try to work out the trap she was definitely walking into was.
When she and Marianne had last parted, what had she been doing?
Recovering.
Yasgrid had been going to bed to recover her strength.
And then she vanished.
Vanished after a Fate Dancer paid her a visit.
Yasgrid winced at the impression that had probably left on the woman who’d dared to enter the Fate Dancer’s camp with her.
“Physically, yes,” Yasgrid said, choosing honesty as the seemingly safest option. “Did you put a pot of tea on?”
“It seemed prudent,” Marianne said. “It’s not often that Naosha M’Kellin breaks out this particular brew.”
“You…?” Yasgrid started to ask.
“Eavesdropped for a bit on your conversation?” Marianne said. “No. The tea is efficacious at dimming conversations from all sorts of prying ears.”
“And that was enough to tip you off that we were speaking of sensitive subjects. Why didn’t you join us though?” Yasgrid asked.
“I did,” Marianne said. “But you disappeared on me. Again. I presumed that was a sign that your discussion was limited to only M’Kellin family members.”
“Ah, no, that disappearance was the result of something rather unusual,” Yasgrid said.
“More unusual than an injured Bearer being spirited away by a Fate Dancer and surviving the experience?” Marianne asked.
“Significantly so,” Yasgrid said, and gave Marianne a recounting of the magic Nia had woven.
Which in turn lead to questions about Shatter Drumming in general, and then the previous occasion on which Nia and Yasgrid had drummed across the gap.
From there the conversation turned to Elshira, and back to the lengthy conversation Yasgrid, Naosha, and Kayelle had enjoyed over tea, and finally around to the trip with Kyra which linked the whole chain of events back to the the last time Marianne had seen Yasgrid.
It wasn’t a hurried conversation, sprawling over the space of a few hours, with Marianne offering observations and questions when Yasgrid’s telling got twisted back around on itself into a confusing mess. By the end, Yasgrid could see the knives lurking behind Marianne’s eyes were still there, but sheathed in the knowledge that no Fate Dancer’s needed to be flayed alive for absconding with Yasgrid against her will.
“So tomorrow you plan to travel to Elshira’s tomb?” Marianne asked when they got around back to the present.
“I’m not sure what we’ll find there but it’s a starting place that may offer clues on where to head next,” Yasgrid said.
“Good. I’ll travel with you then,” Marianne said.
“It won’t be a safe trip,” Yasgrid said, certain that wouldn’t dissuade Marianne, and unsure if she wanted Marianne dissuaded at all.
“More so than you know,” Marianne said. “The Fate Dancer’s are mobilizing for a Grand Conclave around the Ever Frozen Depths which are less than a day’s travel from Elshira’s tomb.”
“Is that normal for them?” Yasgrid asked.
“Their last Grand Conclave was over twenty years ago and its never been held at the Depths before,” Marianne said.
“That’s not a coincidence then, is it?” Yasgrid said.
“No. No it is not.”
Side B – Nia
Nia knew she was going to be in for some ‘fun’ times. Pelegar did not strike her as someone who would oversell the level of effort she required from a student. Despite that though, one question rose above all the others that were crowding Nia’s mind.
“What were you surprised by?” she asked. “You said your weren’t surprised that I made all those mistakes, but you did hear something you weren’t expecting?”
“Yeah. You finished the song,” Pelegar said. “You play like you’ve only had a year of training, but someone who really only had a year of training would have collapsed three beats into the section where Margrada got serious about drumming. You keeping up with her took the kind of things I can spend a lifetime teaching someone. If I didn’t know better I’d say you were born for doing this.”
Nia’s heart soared at that notion.
“She could be better than me, couldn’t she?” Margrada asked. She stated the question plainly but Nia heard deep current swirling underneath it.
Pelegar just laughed though.
“Better? Ha. Not if you both live till the mountain crumble down,” she said, which was exactly disappointing, but seemed maybe a little harsh. Pelegar wasn’t done though. “Better isn’t the right question. Do you think Osdora’s better than me?”
“Uh,” Margrada and Nia both said.
“Children,” Pelegar said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Osdora’s got ‘flash and force’. Talent too. She can handle some of the most complicated arrangements we play and most of the ones we can’t afford to try playing. That’s where she shines. Let me show you something though.”
She beckoned for Nia to hand over her drum, an action which was much less terrifying for Nia after learning she might someday get it, or one like it, back.
“Try to play your own rhythm,” Pelegar said with a nod towards Margrada.
Margrada, sensing that she was playing into a trap, started with a basic rhythm in a long repeating pattern. Nia was sure she could have followed it easily if Pelegar had let her keep the drum, but following it was not what Pelegar had in mind.
Against the rhythm that Margrada was playing, Pelegar played her own. Nia felt the beats wash through her and pull her down into the mountain with inexorable force. Margrada tried to keep to her own rhythm but Nia heard it fall apart beat by beat until Margrada was playing along with Pelegar’s song, each beat from Pelegar’s drum somehow deeper than sound itself could go, and each one a commandment.
Nia had heard Osdora play, she’d heard the whole Shatter band play, and yet the beat from Pelegar’s drum reached deeper and broader than any of them. Thinking back, she could hear it’s echoes from the Battle of the Bands still ringing.
It was her first lesson.
Osdora may have been the star of the band, but Pelegar was the foundation it rested on.