Wystwood

27. Songbird in a cage

Gold, as it soon became clear, was a problem easily solved. Solen and Lark had murmured of a job that would surely bring in the coin, a job that Ada was to accompany Solen on the following afternoon. Solen seemed confident in her plan, the details of which remained concealed beneath hushed breaths and shifting eyes. All that emerged was that the next day appeared to be less of a trial for gold, and more a test of Ada's loyalty. A taste of her resolve.

Ada tried not to dwell on what job was so probable to supply the self-proclaimed bandits with gold, but her heartbeat faltered when Solen emerged later that evening with a bandolier of silver knives, each blade larger than the one before. With dainty fingertips, she drew out a square of silk from her trouser pocket and began to polish the knives' glinting edges.

Raeph had stolen away when the shadows had crept like sea tides through the taproom. There hadn't been a whisper of his footsteps climbing the staircase when he left, as though the man had mapped the house for every creak and clatter. He had simply disappeared like smoke drawn to dusk, and Lark's later grumbles that he was labouring too hard these past nights suggested Raeph had left the house altogether. That, at least, loosened the knots down Ada's spine.

It hadn't taken long for Lark to move his complaints onto other matters, rubbing his hands across his stomach and insisting that he had never known such hunger in all his life. Solen had simply rolled her eyes, a newly polished blade flickering in the candlelight as she pointed out they had eaten stew not five hours ago.

Even so, Lark had charged off ten minutes later, returning with a disgruntled Armestrong and a book of matches for the hearth. Armestrong must have prepared for their supper earlier that day, as a plucked and trussed pigeon hung from her arm. Ada thought of the soot strewn streets of outer Wysthaven, and decided not to ask where they had caught it.

Armestrong kept her gaze reigned in on the bird as she filleted it, her patchwork dress in colourful conflict with her clouded eyes. Lark, too, seemed to struggle to find his voice. Despite the smile he had offered Ada that afternoon, the boy now kept a subtle distance. He tiptoed around Ada, not quite in fear, but with a distinct unease that rippled beneath his stiffened limbs.

He relaxed a little after he pulled a strange instrument from beneath the bar, its shape something like a lute, but with a head that twisted in and around itself, blooming at the top like a posey of chiselled carnations. He perched back down on his stool, Solen a sprawled buffer between himself and Ada, and began to play.

The melancholic tune that shivered from the strings did not match Lark's boyish features. There was a sorrow that clung to each note as it sank into the air and sighed of a hardened heartache. It was beautiful; so much more resonant than the fiddle Ada's father would bring out on Christmas Eve, or the keys of splendid pianos that would drift over a neighbour's window boxes on lazy Sunday mornings.

The fire beneath the warming skillet hissed faintly in time, and when Lark had finished, Solen hummed in appreciation, running silk over silver even as her eyelids softly shuttered.

"That was lovely," Ada said, watching the young man whose fingers had not yet left his strings.

Lark lifted his bright eyes to hers, his stare unwavering for a handful of stuttering seconds. Whatever he found upon her face, he seemed content with, because his lips tilted up once more at Ada and he gracefully bowed his head.

Their meal was a sober affair. Lark dragged a table out from a dusty corner and arranged it with chipped plates and dulled silverware. They each sat on a wooden stool, though Ada silently cursed her choice as one of the whittled legs below her wobbled precariously on the uneven floorboards. Raeph did not return to eat.