And heard an echo of it, captured and transmuted to a more familiar form.
The vendor was clearly an old sailor stranded ashore by age and infirmity. He had a thin bony face, deep-set eyes, and hands crippled by years of hard use. His booth was set low, tucked nearly out of sight under a dock, where the sea broke across the slate. It was a small booth and held very little, mostly rough objects made out of driftwood. But Taudde had been caught by the sound of a flute the man played.
The old sailor played with his eyes closed and his face tilted toward the sky. The flute was a crude instrument. But in it, the man had managed to capture an echo of the drawing tide. Intrigued, Taudde gave him a small silver coin for the flute. Then he spent an hour sitting on the rocks below the dock, sea spume dashing across his toes, discovering the little instrument’s range and breadth and listening to the breathy echo of the sea hiding behind all its notes. It was a very simple flute, much plainer than Taudde’s own, with no metalwork to increase its range or multiply its notes. But Taudde almost thought he might finally have found a way to begin binding the mysterious magic of the sea into a form he could actually understand and use. If he had time to work on it… time… what was the time? Taudde looked at the sun and jumped to his feet.
Lonne styles were set by law and by strict custom: Foreigners, no matter how wealthy or distinguished, were expected to comport themselves with modesty. The richest dyes were for Lonne nobility. Lavenders and blues were for wellborn or wealthy women, or for keiso. Flat red was for the military, black for the King’s Own, and saffron only for the king’s family.
As a foreigner, Taudde was expected to dress plainly. Yet he, as many foreigners who came to Lonne, was a man of wealth and breeding. Thus, many of the best and most expensive purveyors of cloth goods in Lonne were accustomed to providing the very finest clothing possible within the prescribed limitations. The tailor to whom Benne escorted Taudde brought out a rich brown outfit, accented with pale yellow, with a pair of calf-high boots with turned-down tops threaded with pale yellow ribbons. Taudde thought the ribbons excessive, but Benne so clearly approved of them that he allowed the tailor to add the boots to his purchase.
Then there was another complete outfit in charcoal gray with red accents, including soft suede boots that were clearly not intended for the winter streets. Taudde inclined his head. “I see I shall indeed need an equipage,” he said to Benne, a touch drily. “Find one for me, nothing too extravagant. A single horse should certainly be sufficient.”
The servant nodded quickly. Neither he nor Taudde had referred in any way to the incidents of the previous evening, but Taudde thought that the big man seemed, if anything, a little more wary and cautious this morning. Now he hesitantly sketched a saddle in the air with his hands, tilting his head inquiringly.
“Yes, both a small carriage and riding tack.”
Benne nodded a second time as the tailor apologetically presented his bill. Taudde strolled out of doors to wait discreetly while his servant argued the bill up to an amount Taudde could properly pay.
Down the street toward the tailor’s establishment came a black-and-red company: ordinary soldiers accompanied by half a handful of officers from the King’s Own guard. Taudde turned with casual curiosity to watch the company pass, but found his eye unexpectedly caught by one man who rode in the midst of the guardsmen. A tall man, with strong, stark features and a face as cold and austere as the mountain heights.
Though he had not seen him for fifteen years, Taudde recognized the man at once, half from memory and half from the sheer sense of ungiving power that spread out from him like a river pouring down from a high cliff. This was Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes, the Dragon of Lirionne himself, riding through the streets he ruled like any common court noble. Though, indeed, there was nothing common about the Dragon.
Taudde recognized the harsh, stark features of the king: the falcon-sharp bones, the ungiving mouth. But what he recognized first was the Dragon’s sheer intensity of power. He had not been prepared to meet that power, not here or now, and took an involuntary step backward.
As though drawn by that movement, the king turned his head. The fierce gaze of his ice-pale eyes crossed Taudde’s face. There could not possibly have been recognition in that glance, for a boy of ten can hardly be recognized in the man of twenty-five. Yet Taudde’s breath caught with a conviction that the King of Lirionne had recognized him, that those soldiers would turn aside from their ordinary business to pursue and apprehend him. The Dragon’s men would bring Taudde before the granite throne… He would be condemned and cast into the silent cells within the Laodde, or from the heights into the sea, which was how the Seriantes Dragon disposed of his enemies… Then the cold gaze passed on, and the King of Lirionne looked away indifferently.