House of Shadows by Neumeier Rachel

might string a harp with the winds from the heights, but the music of the sea had so far eluded Taudde’s attempts to bind it into wire. Perhaps pipes… perhaps reeds? If the sea’s music could not be bound, it might perhaps be echoed… There was no intrinsic reason this wild magic could not be blended into bardic sorcery. Surely there was not. He was so close to understanding the heart of the sea… yet he had thought so for days, for weeks, and seemed never quite able to plunge from the edge of the cliff into that wild heart.
    But he could lose himself, and all his ephemeral worries, in the attempt.
    In the morning, Taudde, wakening at dawn as always despite his late night, stood at the window to watch the sunlight pour over the crests of the mountains and fill the streets. Then he went thoughtfully down the stairs to the kitchen.
    Nala gave him a cordial nod, a smile, and a plate of sweet rolls. She had been stirring the savory rice porridge with which the folk of Lonne liked to break their fast, sprinkling a handful of shredded dried scallops into the pot, but she knew that the rolls were more to Taudde’s taste. The fragrance of honey and toasted walnuts filled the air.
    Taudde took a roll and leaned his hip on the edge of the table while he ate it. “Tell me, Nala,” he asked as he picked up a second roll, “what is the best keiso House in this city?”
    “Maple Leaf House is very glamorous, lord,” the woman said promptly, “if my lord wishes the very highest style. Cloisonné House or the House of Butterflies are also elegant, but not so… so…”
    “Snobbish?”
    The woman blinked at this, but agreed, “Just so, lord. The keiso at the House of Butterflies are famous for their good cheer.” She gave him an appraising stare and then went on, “Though the more discerning often consider that the keiso of Cloisonné House are more graceful.” From Nala’s matter-of-fact tone, he might have asked her for the names of the best spice merchants in Lonne.
    “The most artistic? The most accomplished?”
    “Ah, now, that is likely Cloisonné,” Nala said decisively. “They have very fine dancers there, and the best instrumentalist in Lonne came out of that House.”
    Taudde inclined his head, acknowledging the woman’s expertise. “I will be dining at Lord Miennes’s house tomorrow evening.”
    “Yes, lord. The invitation arrived this morning.” Nala indicated a slim scroll in the letter rack, bound with an ivory-colored ribbon.
    Already? Taudde lifted the scroll, undid the ribbon, and glanced over the graceful script. The hand that had written the invitation appeared to be the same that had signed it. “He wrote this himself,” Taudde commented, not quite a question, angling the letter for Nala to see.
    “Oh, yes, lord. That’s the custom with invitations.”
    “Is it?” This seemed, for a reason Taudde could not quite grasp, an important tidbit of information. He let the scroll roll itself upagain. “You know everything, Nala—let me ask your advice. I believe there may well be noble guests present. I may wish to invite one or more of these guests to a later function of my own. Do I correctly gather that a keiso House is considered a suitable venue for such an event?”
    “Oh, yes, lord! Nothing could be more suitable.”
    After a moment Taudde managed to frame the sort of elliptical question preferred in Lonne. “As a foreigner, Nala, I am naturally not very familiar with the keiso of Lonne. But in Miskiannes, that, um, sort of establishment is not often considered proper for, ah, a high-class gathering.”
    “Oh, no, keiso Houses aren’t
that
sort of establishment at all,” the woman exclaimed. Her voice held underlying tones of both amusement at the foreigner’s ignorance and shock at the suggestion he had skirted. “My lord is thinking of aika, not of keiso, and that’s no wonder, I suppose, since no other city in the world has keiso. Not but that our aika aren’t also the most