I sang his absolute value, resonated with him at the most fundamental level, and caused a violence inside him that tore him apart. He appeared to try and scream, but he could only tremble and sweat and suffer as my song undid him.
Finally, in a darkly beautiful moment, the resonance was complete. That’s when I stopped, and he collapsed. The sweat and blood that coated him steamed in the moonlight. I felt both triumphant and sick inside, my own sense of attunement fading. But in those moments of song, I had found the place of the Sellari, that fingering a Lieholan could use to target the song of an entire people.
It was a broad and bloody thought. And once I’d found it, I began to weep. It was not a song I should know. The moral weight of that knowledge stole my strength and turned my legs to water. I fell to the mulch of rotting poplar leaves and sat there, smelling their autumn brown and the scent of cold soil.
Divad turned the length of Pemam wood slowly over the alcohol flame. He’d been at it for three painstaking hours. He carefully heated each thumb-length of the bow-stick over a small clay pot filled with sour-mash-soaked gauze. Using a strong wheat whiskey served a whimsical notion he couldn’t explain. He was also of the opinion that the spent wheat alcohol infused the bow with the grace seen in an unharvested wheat field brushed by a slow wind. Then he put the heated section to the camber, bending it gently before placing it on the edge of the flat bench. With a caliper, he measured the distance from the benchtop to the upper edge of the bow. For best performance, the bow camber needed to follow a gently increasing arc.
He turned a fair hand as a bowmaker, and had made countless bows in his day. The viola bow, in particular, proved to be a favorite, though, as its three extra finger-lengths over its violin counterpart allowed for a greater-than-usual variety of breaks and spreads. He’d fit it with a wider ribbon of horse hair, too—two hundred fifty strands. But the gradations he worked through now were the thing. They needed to be precise so that the bow remained equally flexible from tip to handle.
He sight-checked his work with a wooden template, too, though he preferred the exact measurements he got with his caliper.
Lesser luthier shops rushed through bow construction. They missed this crucial bit. Divad liked to tell his impatient students that: The viola, it is the bow. His overemphasis on the need for precision in its construction would, he hoped, mean they’d take care in all parts of making an instrument. It was true, though, that a well-made bow had a marked effect on the timbre of the instrument. More than anything else, he thought it gave the player a better hand at legato. Easy, fluid transitions in a piece most pleased his ear, so he didn’t mind spending extra time to craft a proper bow.
He was in the process of bending in the delicate centermost section when indelicate footsteps crossed the luthier shop threshold.
“You’d best have a powerful reason for charging in all clumsy-like,” he grumped. “You know this is delicate work up here.”
“I think you can take a rest,” came an unfamiliar voice. There was a calm but commanding tone in it, as from one who feels sure he’ll be obeyed.
Divad released the pressure on the camber and looked under his armpit to see three men from the League of Civility entering his workshop. They weren’t bustling, really. But they might as well have been, compared to the easy manner he instructed Descant members to use when coming into this place. The League liked to say of themselves that they served the common interest. Their emblem of four interlocking hands, each clasping the wrist of the next in a quadrangle-like circle, seemed comically obvious. Though the modest chestnut brown of their cloaks did just as good a job of conveying common while also setting them apart in uniform fashion.
He put the bow down gently and turned, wiping his hands on a dry cloth dusted with talc. “How can I help you gentlemen?”
The lead man slowed up, beginning to walk the line of instruments hanging from pegs in various states of repair. He ran a finger across each as he passed, the motion one part intimidation and another part casual familiarity. Close behind the other two Leaguemen came three Lyren, their arms outstretched as if they’d been beseeching their guests to slow down. Divad held up a hand for them to relax.
“Just some questions. Nothing that has to become contentious.” The Leagueman’s lips showed the barest of grins.
“Sounds harmless,” Divad replied. “Always glad to educate. Shall we go and have a seat. I can offer you some—”
“What is it you do here?” the man asked.
Divad looked around. “I should think it’s somewhat obvious. I repair instruments.”
The man offered a soft chuckle. “You’ve wit. Please answer the question you know I asked.”