And beyond that, there were more complicated party melodies, those that took the confusion of personhood to a greater extreme. Some entads worked only for a specific person, but in a party situation, it was possible to blur that line a bit. And because the party link persisted no matter the distance between members, it was also possible to sing a song that would affect someone on the other side of the world. The same was true for guilds but to a much lesser extent, and it was unheard of for a bard to be able to perform a proper guild melody before the age of thirty. A bard could heighten that confusion, though it was a matter of degree, and there were some obvious problems with attempting to maintain complex melodies, since at a certain point, trade-offs had to be considered.
So far, there seemed to not be all that much use for that kind of melding. Isra’s bow could probably be confused into working for someone else, but there was no reason to do that. Alfric’s dagger could, perhaps, take the entire team, but they already had a workaround for it. There was probably something on the horizon though, some entad that they would find in the next five dungeons, or the next ten, or however many they ended up doing.
Verity was slowly starting to come around to the idea that this might simply be what she did with a fair chunk of her life. Aside from the very end, the second dungeon had gone swimmingly. There was quite a bit to like about bardic music in a dungeon, as opposed to in an auditorium. In the dungeon, she was given free rein, and if anyone had been second-guessing her, they had wisely kept their comments to themselves. There was room to experiment with the magic, to try new things that might not entirely work.
Verity didn’t have her lute with her, but she began to make her way back to the house and sang herself a song as she did. It would have been easier with so-called standard lyrics, but she couldn’t resist the urge to make up her own.
“She runs to the leylines, and tacks to the wind, she screams through the forests, and I wish we were twinned,” Verity sang. “I’d strip off her clothes, and look at her bare, we’d tongue each other, and not have a care.” It was too lewd, and it felt like ‘tongue’ was both awkward and had too few syllables. Verity did like a good cheat, but ‘tuh-ung’ felt awful to say. ‘Finger’ had the right number of syllables, but it was so lewd that even just thinking it in her own mind left Verity blushing, let alone saying it out loud. She knew a fair number of bawdy songs, but there seemed to be relatively few of them about women, and she’d never actually performed one for an audience.
“Butterfly feeling, your touch is so healing,” Verity sang. But that felt too much like it might be about a cleric, and while Verity probably would have accepted a proposition from Hannah, they weren’t exactly on the same wavelength, or at least it didn’t feel like it. Of course, Verity had absolutely no idea what she was doing when it came to romance. She didn’t know how to give off signals or how to read signals. “My love I conceal, can’t wait to reveal.”
The bardic melody depended, in part, on holding the song in your head, and spinning up new lyrics definitely made things much harder. Still, it felt like she was getting to a party melody, though a simple one, increasing her own strength as though she were as strong as the five of them put together.
“Pinkish-red lips, gentle curved hips, tied-back blond hair, are you aware, of the nervousness running, through my spine and my veins? Do you think of my heart, and what it contains?” It was all rubbish, but it was a nice kind of rubbish at least, free and honest, found in the moment.
“Who is that song about?” asked a familiar voice from behind her.
“Eep,” said Verity, turning around. Xy was standing there in what remained of the rain, which was disappearing before it could touch her. “No one.”
“No one, but blond?” asked Xy, grinning. Her blond hair was tied back. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you, but I thought I would check out the house before I left, so I knew where it was.”
“You heard all that?” asked Verity. She felt mortified and was incredibly glad that the ‘finger’ line hadn’t been said out loud.
“Most of it, I think,” said Xy. “I was hoping you’d hear me, but the rain covers up a lot of sound. Sorry, I didn’t mean to listen in, if it was… private.” She bit her lip, which did a bad job of hiding her smile.
“No, um,” said Verity. “I was… I thought you weren’t interested. In me.”
“Yeah?” asked Xy.
“And I guess I’m still not sure,” said Verity. She was fidgeting with her umbrella. She felt a bit useless.
Xy laughed. It was a high, pretty laugh. “Do you like to be teased?”
“Um,” said Verity. “Teased?”
“Some people don’t,” said Xy. She was still giving her winning smile. “I wouldn’t want to tease you, if it was just making you uncomfortable.”
“I don’t think I do like being teased,” said Verity.
“Then I won’t tease,” said Xy. “Yes, I’m interested, depending on what you’re interested in. I don’t come into Pucklechurch that often, usually every few days, and my schedule is a bit tight, but we could go on a date, and see how we get on together. Longer than that… It would be your first time?”
“Yes,” said Verity. “More or less.” She was, thankfully, able to stop herself from launching into a story about the conservatory. “Sorry if it’s… obvious.”
“There are probably some things for you to learn,” said Xy, nodding. “And I am more than happy to teach you.” She took a step forward, and Verity felt herself sway. “I’m sorry I don’t have the time now. But now that I know you’re interested, and you know I’m interested, the next time I come to Pucklechurch, we’ll have a good time together.”
Verity nodded. “I’m looking forward to it,” she managed.
Xy grinned, then took off the other way, moving with a cartier’s speed. Verity had no idea where the nearest leyline was, but cartiers were always moving toward one or the other of them, and Xy ran fast, sixty miles an hour, out of view in a heartbeat.
Verity was left wondering whether this was what swooning was like. She was blushing, that certainly couldn’t be helped, and the cool of the rain felt good against her hot skin. That Xy didn’t seem to be too interested in anything long term, that she had put in qualifiers, all that did nothing to reduce Verity’s warm feelings.
When she got back to the house, she lay in one of the chairs, smiling and soaking in it.
Chapter 38 — Jockey
“You know,” said Hannah as Alfric attached the floatstones to the wardrobe, “it’s quite likely that in another dungeon or two, we’ll have somethin’ that makes this wardrobe useless.”
“You’re saying this is probably pointless?” asked Alfric. He grunted slightly as he strapped the floatstones down. They were using chains with cloth padding so as not to scratch the wood.
“I’m sayin’ that I’m preparin’ myself for all this work bein’ for nothin’,” said Hannah.
“It wouldn’t be for nothin’,” said Alfric. He glanced at her to see how she’d taken the tease about her accent, and she grinned at him. He’d done a terrible job. “We’ll still have the entad back in Pucklechurch, and if we don’t need it, we can sell it. Besides, I don’t want to have, in the back of my mind, some worry about whether someone is going to steal this.” Thankfully, no someone had done so. Alfric had seemed unreasonably worried about it, especially after knowing Lola was in the area, but it was sitting right where he’d left it, without a scratch, still totally functional.