The Last Witness by K. J. Parker Page A

easy target—one of the very few stupid things I’d never done before. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a secret part of me that won’t be satisfied until I’ve completed the set.
    Time to go. As I walked quietly up to the road, I cursed myself for cashing that two-hundred-angel draft. It’d be suicide to go anywhere near the Social and Beneficent, or even to write a draft; they’d track me down and that’d be that. My only hope lay in anonymity and distance.
    I started walking. About a week later, I stopped and asked where I was. They looked at me as if I were crazy and said, Scheria. Just my luck.
    * * *
    Don’t get me wrong. There are worse places than Scheria. Four of them, at least.
    I never had the time or the energy to learn a musical instrument; but I had the unhappy privilege of attending the great Clamanzi in his last illness, which was horribly exacerbated by memories of how badly he’d treated his wife. The poor man only had days to live, and it was certain he’d never play the flute again. It wasn’t really stealing, more a case of rescuing a glorious thing and keeping it safe.
    Partly out of respect, I’d never even picked up a flute since that day; but it was all there, in my head. My tactical adviser suggested that the old man’s people wouldn’t be looking for a travelling musician. And, whatever their other faults as a nation, the Scherians are fond of music.
    I’m ashamed to say, I stole the flute. I heard its music as I was walking down a village street. Pretty tune, I thought; then it stopped, and maybe its beauty reminded me of Clamanzi, I don’t know. I waited; it started again, and I traced it to a house in the corner of a little square. I went away and came back after dark. The blind man I mentioned just now helped me find the flute—it had been left lying around on the kitchen table, some people are just so careless. My flute now.
    To practice, I walked up into the hills. As well as the flute, I’d found a new loaf on that kitchen table, and there are plenty of sweet-water springs draining off the peat. I allowed myself three days to learn the flute. Took me about half an hour, in the event. The rest of the time I took to eat that loaf, I just enjoyed myself, playing music.
    I say
myself;
I can’t really claim any credit. I’m the first to admit, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. So please don’t make the mistake of thinking that listening to me was like listening to Clamanzi. I had the fingering, the breath control, the education, the technique—but no passion, no soul. Correction: I had my soul, which is a pretty inferior example of the type and certainly not something you’d want to listen to. No angel; I think we’ve established that. But I could pipe a tune, as well as most and better than some, and a piper can always earn a few stuivers in Scheria. Not that there’s much in those parts you’d want to spend it on.
    The hell with it; I walked to the next town, sat down in front of the mercantile, and started to play. Not even a hat at my feet—I didn’t actually possess a hat—just music, for its own sake. To begin with, people were reluctant, because there was no obvious place to drop their coins. But once two or three stuivers were gathered together in a little cluster that ceased to be a problem. The store owner came out and I thought he was going to move me on; instead, he brought me out a bowl of tea and a loaf of bread, quietly so as not to disturb me. I only stopped when my lips got sore, by which time the pile of coins was too big to hold comfortably in one hand. Best part of a quarter angel; more than a skilled man earns in a week.
    I slept, by invitation, in the storekeeper’s comfortable hayloft, and started playing again as soon as it was light. It helped that I can remember every tune I ever heard. On the third day it rained; but that wasn’t a problem, because the local lord-of-the-manor sent a cart for me. He had guests for dinner, and if I