Page 94 of A Fae in Finance
The town must have emptied as we walked down the hill—presumably they’d seen me stumbling down the road and remembered collectively that they had to do some washing up. The music continued, swelling discordant notes softening into a melancholic minor key. As we walked past the first house, I couldn’t stop my body from shivering—a long, thorough shake that left me even colder than before.
Between the second and third houses we came upon the player. He sat in the open air, at an instrument that resembled a baby grand piano, positioned so he could look out over the water as he played. His body swayed back and forth, following his arms across the keyboard—which was longer than any piano I’d ever seen.
His eyes were closed, but he had long blond hair half piled into a bun at the top of his head, curls spilling around his shoulders and down his back. He wore a simple black tunic, and over it a very human-looking overcoat, black wool that tangled his hair. And he was broad, broader than a musician should be, and with the pinkest skin I had ever seen—like the icing on a strawberry donut.
As if he sensed us, his eyes snapped open, though his fingers didn’t even stutter on the keys.
“Sahir,” he said, and he had pink irises, too, crenellated like the petals of a chrysanthemum. I could imagine myself falling into them, caught between the layers like a tiny silver star in a kaleidoscope.
“Aram.”
I tried to feel vague surprise as Sahir slid between the almost-piano and the far wall and joined Aram on the bench.
Instead I mostly just felt annoyed, even as his hands joined Aram’s and the melody redoubled. I leaned against the wall and couldn’t manage to feel unnerved as it shifted beneath my weight.
“You bring her here,” Aram said. I could hardly hear them over the swell of the music, the twining joy and melancholy. Which was probably Sahir’s goal. “With our lord’s permission?”
Unfortunately for Sahir, I had perfected the art of listening to my parents’ conversations through bass-heavy pop music on long car rides.
“Little happens in his realm that he does not know,” Sahir answered—a nonanswer. So did the Princeling not know I’d left? “And where are the others?”
“Inside.” Aram jerked his head to the side, toward the wall of one of the houses. I found myself sliding between the not-piano and the wall to get closer to them. It was a tight fit, and my shirt caught on the edge of the semi-piano, but I got through. “They will come out if you wish it.” Aram’s eyes flicked toward me and then away.
Sahir turned his head to stare at me and spoke without breaking our gaze. “I wanted her to see some of our world. I thought it might help her adjust.”
At this, Aram stopped playing, abruptly. Sahir continued on for a few surprised notes and stopped, too. The silence rang in my eardrums. Aram swept his black peacoat out away from the bench and stood up, one hand already reaching for my chin.
Before I could duck away he’d grabbed me, and I squirmed for a second before giving up. I stood, pinned to the wall, and stared at his face. It didn’t matter what he did, after all.
“Read her face, good-brother,” Aram said. “Can you not see her thoughts there, plain as a tree against the sky? Mortals cannot live without the sun. They wither, or they snap. You were not alive before—you have not seen it. But I have watched them wither, like so many stems in glass vases, and dry, preserved but lifeless, under the hills.”
“I thought—” And I couldhearit, the catch in Sahir’s voice. The pain. Did he sound like that because of me? “Why do you say these things, where she can hear?”
“Does she look like she cares?” Even this he didn’t say cruelly. I felt his grip tighten on my chin, the dry rough scratch of his fingertips as he turned my head to the side. “Stay for the evening meal.”
“Will my cat wither, too?” My voice shocked me, hoarse but urgent.
“Your what?” Aram dropped his hand to his side, wiped his fingers on the leg of his trousers like my skin was dirty.
Sahir cleared his throat. “She brought—I brought her cat here.”
“If he’ll wither, too, please let him go,” I said.
Aram moved his piano-adjacent object to one side, the strength of the gesture at odds with the gentle way he handled the instrument.
“Cats do notwither,” he said scathingly. “Cats are indifferent.” And he headed farther back into the alley between the two houses, his skin gleaming in the dusky air. “You interrupted our evening concert, good-brother,” he added.
Sahir grunted, apparently unimpressed. He took my arm and led me after Aram. It took me a moment to recognize what I felt as relief. Doctor Kitten would be fine.
Aram ducked under a low lintel a few paces back in the alleyway. Sahir followed, ducking as well. He pulled me behind him, but I didn’t need to bow my head at all.
The room beyond reminded me more than anything of a kitchen in a seventeenth-century manor house preserved somewhere in Europe. It was long, low, devoid of modern technology, but comfortable and lavishly decorated. I stared at the fireplace that dominated the center of the room, with its red brick beehive chimney. On the hearth, a little girl sat playing with a cloth doll.
She cried out when she saw us and ran to Sahir, arms wide. He bent down and caught her up, smiling. “Little one,” he said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You’re taller than me already!” He held her up, dangling her above his head so that it was technically true.
She giggled, pink eyes huge, and grabbed at his arms. “Uncle!” she shrieked. “Higher!”
And he pushed her higher, tendrils of magic streaming from the palms of his hands, until she dangled suspended and shrieking with delight.
