Guildless

Aldevaer’s Arpeggio in D minor, twenty-fifth measure. Wineyll’s tongue skipped through the sixteenth notes, dipping and climbing the registers. Her flute, hollowed from mine crystal, turned the melody into a symphony as each note resonated through the flaws. When her father had given her the instrument, he’d said no Trainer silversmith could make an instrument to match it. As proof of his words, when they’d performed together, audiences had listened, jaws slack with awe.

Alone in a practice chamber, Wineyll cloaked herself in the flute’s harmonies. The Arpeggio was the most difficult piece she knew. She’d spent months mastering the variable dynamics and the triple tongued measures so she could fly through without a flub or slur for her senior levels. At the examination, even Master Grumblin had given her a standing ovation, and forgiven her for the moth hatchlings she’d left in his desk as a prank.

Her tongue, tired from hours of practice, slipped, and an accidental glissando marred the passage. It had been two years since she’d played the piece. Sighing, Wineyll set down the flute and flexed her fingers and jaw. Silence settled over the practice room, and screams and cajoling whispers echoed between her ears.

A rap sliced through the memories, and the practice room door opened on an apprentice.

“Reyendal wants to see you,” he said. “You’re to meet him in the Music’s office.”

A fist squeezed her chest. “Where?”

“The Music’s office. The Harmony’s there too.” The boy’s frown, serious and sympathetic, launched her heart into a faster rhythm. Hands shaking, she wiped down her flute, tucked it into its case, and made her way to the Music’s chambers. Pockets of apprentices and students loitered in the hallways, the groups falling silent as she passed. Two years ago, they would have greeted her with jests and plaudits. Head bowed, her hair shielding her from their stares, she hurried onward.

The trio that led the Minstrels Guild sat in chairs on one side of a table, an empty space on the other side—their exact positions the day they’d expelled her father. Dread clogging her throat, she stood in the same spot he had and Listened to their judgment.

It wouldn’t come from the Music. His thoughts were as confused as ever—for years, Wineyll had Heard the masters’ private complaints that he ought to step down, but Harmony Silnauer had managed to keep the senile old man in place at the top. Melody Reyendal, as always, would follow Silnauer, and Wineyll knew the outcome before anyone spoke a word. Beneath her pitying smile, the Harmony’s thoughts seethed with scorn.

“Thank you for coming so promptly,” said Reyendal. “Do you know why we’ve called you here?”

Her heart drumming, she replied, “No, sir.” She’d make them say it.

He cleared his throat and spoke aloud. “I’m afraid we must suspend—”

“Expel,” interjected Silnauer.

“We are forced to expel you from the Guild,” Reyendal said.

“Why, sir?”

He flipped through a ledger. “You were journeyed nearly a year ago, and yet you have not earned back your salary, much less your room and board. This organization is not a charity.”

Anger struck the timpani in her chest. “You granted me a leave of absence when the throne asked me to help rescue Prince Ashel. I’ve only been back a month.”

Reyendal glanced at Silnauer. “Yet since your return, you haven’t earned a single crystal.”

“I haven’t been assigned any gigs. Did the Guild rules change while I was gone? I thought journeyed minstrels weren’t allowed to manage our own bookings until we’d gained two years in the field.”

“That’s the problem. It seems no one wants to book a suspected traitor.”

“I’m no traitor!”

“Yet rumors abound that you collaborated with Lornk Korng in the maiming of Prince Ashel—your own brother in the Guild.”

Cold rippled over Wineyll’s skin. “If Ashel were here, he’d tell you I did everything I could to save him.”

“He is not here, and I find it unlikely he would vouch for you,” Silnauer said. “Whatever his flaws, Prince Ashel recognizes that this Guild’s primary mission is to spread Elesendar’s word and live according to His prescribed virtues. You, like your father, seem to have forgotten our purpose. Your father indulged in pleasures of the flesh outside the sanctity of marriage, one of Elesendar’s most sacred commands. You permitted yourself to be seduced by Lornk Korng, then you did his bidding during the battle of Olmlablaire. As a result, the prince lost his hand and any ability to serve Elesendar as a minstrel.”

The Harmony’s vile accusations were accurate, but none were true. Or supposed to be known. Geram, Ashel, Vic—they’d all promised no one would know. Fury roiling, Wineyll tore through their minds to find out who’d betrayed the secret. Silnauer swayed, her lips a rictus as she tried to block Wineyll’s rifling, while Reyendal sat as dumbly as the Music, his memories as easily shuffled as a deck of cards. There she found a letter, scribbled on a scrap of dirty parchment, delivered by a shamefaced prison guard. “You believe the Relmlord?” The question came out as a scream.

“Your impertinence seals your fate,” snapped Silnauer.

Reyendal cleared his throat again. “Wineyll, I hope you can appreciate the difficulty of this decision. We have known you from infancy. You were one of the brightest stars in our ranks. It is with the deepest regret and disappointment that we must rescind your Guild membership, but you force our hands.”

Her body trembled with disbelief they would do this, even as Reyendal’s words echoed the hollow regrets he’d pronounced to her father.

“We are not unmerciful,” Reyendal continued. “We know very well that a young person such as yourself, who has known no home but this Guild, will need time to arrange employment elsewhere. You may keep your bed in the dormitory for another month, but by the spring equinox, you must leave.” His chair squeaked against the floor, and he came round the table. “The case, please.”

He may as well have kicked her in the gut. Unable to breathe, she hugged the flute to her chest. “My father gave this to me.”

“All instruments are Guild property.”

“But he said it was mine.”

“As long as you earned it. You cannot work as a minstrel any longer, Wineyll. You’ll have to find another path.” The Melody pulled the flute from her grasp, and she felt as if he’d yanked out her heart.

“You should consider Alna,” Silnauer said. “I believe the Courtesans there might welcome a pretty young woman with experience, particularly from so adroit a mentor.”

Wineyll’s gaze locked on the Harmony as a wave of memory struck her.

Silnauer’s lips tilt in scorn. “How quickly did you learn your craft in Traine? You had a master of some renown, or so I hear.”

Cheeks burning, Vic stares at Silnauer. “What have you heard?”

“Enough to know what sort of person you are. I see no place for heretics within an institution designed to revere Elesendar. Yet the Courtesans in Alna might admit you.”

Dismissed, Wineyll stumbled into the hallway, still enveloped by Vic’s memory from an encounter she’d had with the Harmony years ago, soon after she arrived in Latha. During the battle of Olmlablaire, Wineyll had dug into Vic’s mind in order to subdue her, because the Relmlord said if she succeeded, he wouldn’t take any more of Ashel’s fingers. Yet one by one the severed digits had dropped to the floor while Ashel begged her to leave Vic free, so Lornk Korng could be stopped. Ashel would have sacrificed his tongue to keep Vic out of Lornk’s hands, and she would have drained Vic’s mind entirely to spare her Guild-brother more agony. In the end, Ashel lost his fingers and his favored place in the Guild, and Wineyll was left with another woman’s memories that would swamp her own now and then, flushing out her other failures.

Like all those massacred nomads. She, more than any other Lathan, should undertake the Penance the Relmans demanded. Vic had taken her on the secret mission to rescue Ashel because she could weave illusions and place them in others’ minds. She’d sworn she could hide a raiding party, so the company could steal the horses they needed. Because she’d failed, they’d been forced to kill the nomads down to the last baby.

She trudged to her room as if hauling water in the Badlands. The Guild’s paneled chambers, filled with music and chatter, were the only home she’d ever known, but maybe this wasn’t the home she deserved. She ought to undertake the Penance, but did she have the courage to face the relatives of the massacred? A hero would, but Wineyll was no hero. She’d proven that at every turn.