“You were a spy?”
Ahm Lin shook his head. “Merely a witness to the affairs of greater and richer men. At first Lol-Than would have me sit in the corner of his throne room, playing with his children, if anyone asked I was said to be his ward, orphan son of a distant cousin. Naturally, most assumed I was his bastard, an unimportant but nonetheless honoured position at court. As I played, men would come and go with varying degrees of ceremony and protracted effusions of respect or regret at besmirching the king’s palace with their unworthy presence. I noted the richer the man’s clothes or the larger his entourage, the more he would proclaim his abject unworthiness at which Lol-Than would assure them no insult had been suffered and offer his apologies for not providing a more ostentatious welcome. It could take an hour or more before the true reason for the visit became apparent, and it was almost always about money. Some wanted to borrow it, others were owed it, and all wanted more of it. And as they talked, I would listen. When they were gone, with an assurance the king would give them a swift answer and an apology for the appalling discourtesy of delaying response to their request, he would ask me what song the music of Heaven had sung during the conversation.
“Being but a boy I had little notion of the true import of these affairs, but my song didn’t need to know why a man lied or deceived, or hid hatred behind smiles and great respect. Lol-Than knew why, of course, and in knowing saw the road to either profit or loss, or occasionally the axe-man’s block.
“And so I lived my life at the Merchant King’s palace, learning from Shin-La, telling the truth of my song to Lol-Than. I had few friends, only those permitted me by the courtiers appointed my guardians. They were a dull lot mostly, happy but unquestioning children from the minor merchant families who had bought a place at court for their offspring. In time I came to realise my playmates were chosen for their dullness, their lack of guile or cunning. Friends with sharper minds would have sharpened my own thoughts, made me consider that this pleasant life of luxury and plenty was in reality nothing more than an ornate cage, and I a slave within it.
“There were rewards of course, as I grew to manhood and the lusts of youth took me. Girls if I wanted, boys if I wanted. Fine wine and all manner of bliss-giving potions if I asked, though never enough to dull the sound of my song. When I grew too old to play with Lol-Than’s children I became one of his scribes, there were always at least three at every meeting and no one seemed to notice that my calligraphy was clumsy and often barely legible. Life in my cage was simple, untroubled by the trials of the world beyond the tall walls that surrounded me. Then Shin-La died.”
His gaze had become distant, lost in the memory, shrouded in sorrow. “It is not an easy thing for a singer to hear another’s death song. It was so loud I wondered the whole world couldn’t hear it. A scream of such anger and regret it sent me reeling into oblivion. Sometimes I think she was trying to take me with her, not out of spite, but duty. In hearing her final song I understood that her devotion to Lol-Than was a lie, the greatest of lies since she managed to keep it from her song throughout all the years she had taught me. Her final song was the scream of a slave who had never escaped her master and didn’t wish to leave me there alone. And she showed me something, a vision, born of the song, a village, ruined, smoking, littered with corpses. My village.”
He shook his head, his voice laden with such sadness that Vaelin realised he was the first person to hear this story. “I was so blind,” Ahm Lin continued after a moment. “I failed to realise that the value in my gift lay in no-one knowing of its existence. No-one save Lol-Than and the old woman I would replace. I remembered all the people Shin-La had used in her lessons, all the suspected criminals and servants, there must have been hundreds over the years. I knew they could never be allowed to live with the knowledge of my gift. I had killed them merely by being in their presence.
“When I woke from the oblivion Shin-La had dragged me to, I found I had a new sensation burning in my soul.” He turned to Vaelin, an odd glint in his eye, like a man recalling his own madness. “Do you know hate, brother?”