"All right-I can see that. But we should try to anticipate problems and head them off before they become problems. For instance: divided authority. Someone trying to work us against each other. If you give me authority, it should be only as your other set of ears. All right?" She waited for his nod of agreement before continuing.
"What about children?" she said, surprising him completely.
"What about them?" he replied without thinking.
"I want them. Do you? Have you thought about what it would take to raise them as Free Bards?" She held up her hand to forestall his protest that it would not be fair to her to saddle her with children she might well have to raise alone. "Don't tell me that you're old, you'll die and leave me to raise them alone. I don't believe that for a minute, and neither do you."
He snapped his mouth shut on the words.
"Well?" she said, rubbing her head to relieve the ache in it. "Is there a way to have children and still be Free Bards?"
"We could settle somewhere, for a while," he suggested tentatively.
She shook her head, and winced. "No. No, I don't think that would work. You have to be visible, and that means traveling. If we lived in a big city, we'd have to leave the children alone while we busked-no matter how good we were, we would still be taking whatever jobs the Guild Minstrels didn't want, and that's pretty precarious living for a family. And the Guild would be only too happy to flaunt their riches in the face of your poverty-then come by and offer you your old position if you just gave all the Free Bard nonsense up."
She watched him shrewdly to see if he'd guess the rest of that story. "And of course, that would mean either giving you up, or persuading you to turn yourself into a good little Bard-wife and give up your music." He shook his head. "What a recipe for animosity! You know them better than I thought you did."
She snorted. "Just figured that if there was a way to make people jealous of each other, and drive a wedge between them, they'd know it. I imagine there's a lot of that going on in the Guild."
He pondered her original question for a moment, and emptied his mind, waiting to see if an answer would float into the emptiness. He watched the dance of the sunlight on the sparkling waters, flexing and stretching his fingers, and as always, waiting for the tell tale twinges of weather-soreness. His father had suffered terribly from it-
But then his father had also shamelessly overindulged himself in rich food and wine, and seldom stirred from his study and office. That might have had something to do with it.
"There's another way," he said suddenly, as the image of a Gypsy wagon did, indeed, float into his mind. "We could join a caravan of Gypsy families; get our own wagon, travel with them, and raise children with theirs. If there are older children, adolescents, they watch the younger ones, and if there aren't there's always someone with a task that can be done at the encampment that minds the children for everyone else."
She raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Mind you, this is all nasty tale-telling from evil-mouthed, small-minded villagers, but-I've never heard anything about Gypsy parents except that they were terrible. Selling their children, forcing them to work, maiming them and putting them out to beg-"
"Have you ever actually seen any of that with your own eyes?" he asked. She shook her head, carefully. "It's not true, any of it. They know how to prevent having children, so they never have more than they can feed-if something does happen to one or both parents, every family in the caravan is willing to take on an extra mouth. The children are tended carefully, the encampment is always guarded by dogs that would take on a wolf-pack for their sakes, and the children loved by everyone in the caravan. They grow up to be pretty wonderful adults. Well, look at Gwyna, Raven and Erdric."
She gave a dry chuckle. "Sounds too good to be true."
"Oh, there're exceptions," he admitted. "There are families other Gypsies refuse to travel with-there are families that are hard on their children and a general nuisance to the rest of the adults. Any child that doesn't learn how to get out of the way of a drunk or a serious situation is going to be on the receiving end of a cuff. You must admit, though, that can happen anywhere. Mostly, Gypsy children are the healthiest and happiest I've ever seen. The drawback is that they won't learn reading, writing, or the Holy Book-the Gypsies don't hold with any of the three."
"Reading and writing we can teach them ourselves," Rune countered. "And the Holy Book-they should read it when they're old enough to understand that what they're reading is as much what the Church wants you to believe as it is Holy Words." She thought that proposition over for a long moment. "That would work," she concluded, finally. "Having a wagon to live in eliminates one of the biggest expenses of living in a town or city, too."
"What, the rent?" He grinned. She'd already told him about her job at Amber's, and he knew very well they could always find something comparable if they ever cared to settle in one place for long.
"No," she countered. "The damned tithe and tax. If they can't catch you, they can't collect it. And if you leave before they catch you-"
"Point taken," he admitted. "Though, I'll warn you, I do pay tax; I've been paying both our shares. If you want decent government, you have to be prepared to pay for it."
He saw a shadow of something-some remembered pain-pass across her face. "Point taken," she said, quietly. "Tonno-felt the same way as you, and lectured me about it often enough. But the tithe serves no damned purpose at all. If it got into the hands of Priests like your cousin, that would be different. Most of the time, though, it ends up in the hands of men that are no better than thieves."
He snorted, and tried not to think too hard about most of his dealings with the Church-those that hadn't involved Ardis seeking out someone specific for him to speak to. "I've known thieves with more honor-and Ardis would be the first to agree with you. But we weren't talking about Ardis."
"No, we weren't." She leaned forward, intently. "Talaysen, what do you intend to do with the Free Bards?"
"Do?" Was she really asking what he thought she was asking? "What exactly do you mean?"
"What I said," she replied. "What are you going to do with them? Oh, it was enough to form them, to keep the Bardic Guild from getting rid of them when there were only a handful of you, I'm sure. But there are nearly fifty of you now-not counting the ones that didn't come to the Midsummer Faire. And there are more joining every year! They think of you not only as the founder, but as the leader-now what are you going to lead them to? Or is this just going to be a kind of Gypsy Clan with no other purpose than to live and play music?"