“I need you to play for the spirits.”
Jack hesitated. He could almost feel a trace of pain in his hands, in his temples, just thinking about singing for the folk. But this was part of his duty as Bard of the East. “I’ve already played for the water and the earth.”
“I know,” Torin said, “but there’s trouble, and I need to speak with the spirits.” He explained about the blighted orchard, and how the sickness had been passed to Hamish Brindle.
“The boy who drowned yesterday?” Jack asked, brows arched.
“Yes,” Torin said. “Which makes me believe there is such unrest in the spirits’ realm that it has bled into ours and is only going to get worse, owing to our ignorance. If you could draw forth a spirit from the sick orchard, perhaps they could tell us what has happened and what can be done to heal it. Then we’d know what we can do to protect ourselves and keep the blight from spreading.”
Jack was quiet as he wondered whether he could play Lorna’s ballad again to call forth the earth faeries or needed to compose his own music. He felt like he had a stone lodged in his throat when he tried to imagine inking notes of his own. He just felt so empty.
As Jack gazed at the blue-hearted fire in the hearth, he felt a sudden warmth at his back, as though someone stood behind him. He heard a voice, so familiar he would know it anywhere, whisper into his hair.
This is your moment, old menace. Play for the orchard.
Jack couldn’t resist: he glanced over his shoulder, as if he would find Adaira standing behind him. But all he saw was a stream of sunlight, sneaking in through a slat in the shutter.
He might have been surprised that she would haunt him at such a moment, but he knew better. Because this was why Adaira had summoned him back to Cadence in the first place. She had asked him to sing the spirits up from the sea, to croon to the spirits of the earth, to draw forth the spirits of the wind. And Jack had done as she asked, as if he were part of the tides and the rocks and the gusts of the isle. He had done it even when he had doubted himself, because Adaira had believed in his hands and his voice and his music.
“I would do this,” Jack said, his gaze returning to Torin. “But I don’t have a harp. Mine was ruined by the northern wind, when I played for the air.”
“You have Lorna’s.”
“Yes, her grand harp, which is for the hall. I need something smaller. To play for the spirits I have to go to where they are. To sit in their domain.”
“Don’t you think Lorna had one herself?” Torin countered. “She played for them all those years in secret. As you did at midsummer. Surely there is another small harp somewhere in the castle.”
Jack inhaled sharply, ready to make a retort. But the words melted into breath; he knew Torin was right. Lorna must have had another harp hidden somewhere.
“Are you afraid of the pain, Jack?” Torin asked gently. “Sidra has told me that you suffer physically after singing for the spirits. She said it’s something I need to be aware of. I’m to be with you when you call to them. As Adaira once was.”
Jack glared at him. “It’s not that.”
“Then is there another reason?”
Torin’s question made Jack stiffen. He let his attention drift around the room. To the strips of pie dough on the kitchen table and a jar of red berries, preserved from summer. To the loom in the corner with a plaid in its maw, a pattern emerging from countless threads. To Frae’s stack of schoolbooks on the hassock, her slingshot resting on an open page.
Jack didn’t know how to explain it. He didn’t know how to give his grief a shape, a name, because he had been doing just fine the past month, letting his pain simmer beneath the surface. He slept, he ate, he worked the croft. And yet there was no joy for him in these occupations. He was simply taking up air, and he knew it and he hated it.
The truth was . . . he didn’t feel like playing. He had let his passion wane ever since Adaira left. He didn’t have the heart for it. But if Torin and the isle needed him to sing again, Jack would draw up the remnants of his music. Even if it was dangerous to do so these days, after the northern wind’s warning that he should cease playing.
“All right,” he said. “If we can find a harp, I’ll play for the orchard.”
“Good,” Torin said, unable to hide his relief. “Let’s go to the castle now. I have a skeleton key. No room will escape our notice.”
Before Jack could blink, Torin strode past him, heading for the front door.
Well, this day is not going according to plan, Jack thought with an inward grumble, as if he had scheduled his hours with important tasks. Which he had not, of course. But there was now a good possibility that, with Torin determined to look behind every tapestry and turn over every stone in his search for a harp that might or might not exist, Jack would be stuck in the castle for hours.
Jack grabbed his plaid and began to trail Torin to the threshold, only to realize that his boots had tracked manure into the house.
He stopped short, imagining how Mirin would react when she saw it.
Jack sighed.
“Shit.”
Chapter 3
One would think that Torin, who not only had served as Captain of the East Guard for three years but was also Alastair Tamerlaine’s nephew, would know every nook and cranny of the castle. He was surprised to discover there were many hidden doors and rooms he had never known existed. Inevitably, he wondered if Adaira had been aware of them.
“No sign of it here,” Jack said with a sigh, brushing the dust from his clothes.
Torin surveyed the chamber. In every corner was a stack of crates that both he and Jack had painstakingly searched through. They had uncovered tarnished candelabras, moth-eaten damask, small tapestries of harts and moon phases, bronze pots, iron griddles, plaid blankets, and silver washbasins. But after scouring for hours, they had found no trace of Lorna’s second harp.
They had started in the music turret, although Jack insisted that it wasn’t there. From the southern tower, they had wended their way through the corridors, leaving no door untouched. The two of them had passed through doors carven with flora and fauna, doors latticed in iron and silver, doors that were so small they both had to stoop to pass over their thresholds. Shy doors that hid in shadowed walls and proud gilded doors that gleamed in the torchlight. Torin almost felt like a lad again, caught up in the wonder that one of these doors was bound to open to another place, another realm. Like the faerie portals his father had often told him about when he was younger.