Don Bassingthwaite: The Yellow silk

"That's a lovely sentiment."

"Ardo left an unpaid account."

"How much?"

"Enough that I wouldn't have minded a piece of his boat, too." Muire uncrossed her arms and stepped back into the smoky warmth of the tavern. Tycho followed-or at least started to. "Where do you think you're going?" asked Muire.

"Inside where it's warm. It's cold out here, Muire!"

"It's where your audience is." An arm swept around the dim interior of the Wench's Ease. "I can't pay you if I've got no customers and right now they have other things on their minds. Get the crowd back in and you can come with them."

"You're not going to have a good musician for long if my fingers fall off from frostbite!" protested Tycho. He started forward. Muire thrust him back. Tycho gritted his teeth. "Fine," he said. "You want them calm?"

"No. I want them drinking."

The door slammed in his face. Tycho gave it a swift kick that set the old wood shuddering and turned around. A few people on the edge of the mob were already looking at him. Tycho fought back a growl and gave them a smile instead. "Back inside. You heard the lady. Or at least you heard Muire and she's as close to a lady as you'll find at the Wench's Ease!"

It was an old line, but it got a laugh. A couple of people started to look longingly at the Ease's closed door. The rage that had sustained the crowd was fading fast with Ardo dead. "That's right," Tycho told them, "nice and warm in there." Hammer was a month better spent indoors and by a fire than outside on a cold night. It wouldn't, he guessed, take much to remind everyone of that. He shook off his mittens and stuffed them in his belt then tugged on the wide leather strap that ran over one shoulder and across his chest. The chunky curved box of his strilling slid around from where it hung behind his back. Tycho settled the instrument in his left arm-its butt against his shoulder, its long neck in his curled hand-with practiced ease and undipped the short bow from the strap with his right hand. The strilling would be out of tune in the cold, but this wasn't going to be a fine performance. He set the bow against the instrument's deepest string and drew it slowly across.

The sound that echoed out of the strilling's wooden body howled like a winter storm coming in off the Sea of Fallen Stars. It got everyone's attention immediately.

The people closest to the sound moved back a pace out of sheer surprise. Tycho stepped forward. He wasn't a tall man and most of the mob gathered outside the tavern stood a good head above him. Physical size, however, wasn't the only measure of a person's presence. "A dark night for dark deeds, friends," Tycho called. Pitched to carry, his voice rang out in the night. He walked on and the crowd parted before him, giving way before the simple force of his confidence. Tycho met the glance of each man and woman with a somber look. "A man who turns on his friends is no man at all. A man who would kill his friends is a monster."

He pushed the bow across a different string. The howling storm turned into a haunting moan, a forlorn wail that slid up and down in pitch as Tycho shifted his fingers on the strilling's neck. More than one head in the crowd looked up at the body hanging from the tree. Tycho paused under it and looked up as well. "Ardo, you stupid bugger," he murmured under the music. The dockside of Spandeliyon was not a good place to fall on the wrong side of rumor. The voice of the strilling changed again and soared up into the night before fading away. In its wake, the mob-no, the crowd-was silent. Even Lander and his men, Tycho saw with a satisfied glance, were quiet.

He let the silence hold for just moment longer then sent his bow dancing across the strilling's strings once more. This time, though, he rattled out a wild tune. Something to get feet tapping and put minds in memory of happier things-like Muire's ale. He'd had enough of the cold. "Now who'll join me in drinking to Ton?" he called. "A murdered soul needs the company of a toast or two from the people who loved him best!" He took a turn through the crowd, giving people a nudge in the direction of the Ease. "He was your friend, Det." Tycho elbowed someone else. "And you, Rana. Brenal, I remember you and Ton hoisting more than a few together!"

He worked the edges of the crowd like a herding dog. Slowly, people began to move back into the tavern. The ground was a treacherous churned surface in their wake, but Tycho danced back and forth across it, bow on strilling keeping perfect time. His calls turned into a patter, rolling off his tongue. "Ervis. Pitch. Blike. Come on, inside with all of you. Drink one for Ton and remember an old mate. Sing a song for him. Umbero, you were his friend. You, too-" Tycho turned around one more time and found himself face to chest with a dark-red tunic. He looked up to the raw-boned face above it and finished smoothly "-Lander."

The thug smiled like a shark. "Oh yes," he said. "Like two peas in a pod we were." A couple of the men who stood with him laughed.

Tycho returned the smile. "Like two dice in a cup," he added, "or two fish in a net." His bow paused for a moment on the strilling. "No, forgive me. Two fish in a net would have been Ton and Ardo."

Lander's eyes narrowed. "You want to watch what you say about dead people."

"I never say anything ill of the dead." Tycho's smile narrowed as well. "The living, on the other hand, are another matter." He sent new sound rippling from his instrument and spun around to usher the last of the crowd back into the Wench's Ease. "Come in and drink, Lander," he called back. "You owe Ton that."

He didn't wait to see if Lander took up the gauntlet, but just followed the stragglers through the door and into the tavern. Warm air embraced him like a lover and he gasped with relief. The crowd had already settled back into their familiar places, filling the Ease almost completely. Many already had more ale in their hands and Muire's serving women were scrambling to keep up with the demands of those who didn't. Tycho let the strilling slide down from his shoulder and wove his way through to the bar. "There you go, Muire," he said, tugging open his coat and loosening his scarf. "Your customers are back again and drinking. Now how about a hot one?"

On the other side of the smoke-darkened wood counter, Muire grunted and turned to draw a tankard of ale from a cask. "You've got the gift," she admitted grudgingly.

"What was that, Muire?" asked Tycho in a mock shout over the noise of the tavern's patrons. "I didn't quite catch it."

"Don't try me, Tycho. Just because you've been traveling doesn't make you a wit. I still remember when you were just another Spandeliyon dock rat, squeaking out songs for a copper and getting into trouble." The tavern door opened again, letting in another gust of cold air. Muire glanced up and her gaze hardened. "Some things don't change."

Tycho twisted around to follow her glare. The Ease's door was just closing behind Lander and his men. The thugs began making their way around the outside of the room to a table-hastily vacated by the customers who had been occupying it-close to the big stone fireplace. Lander gave Tycho a harsh stare. The curly haired man just turned back to Muire. "No," he said, "I guess they don't."

"What did you say to him?" asked Muire.

"Nothing that he'd understand," Tycho told her with a crooked grin.

Muire shook her head. She took a stout iron from a rack over a brazier and plunged it into the tankard of ale. The iron hissed and the ale seethed briefly. Muire passed the tankard across the bar. Tycho shifted strilling and bow into one hand and raised the warm drink with the other. "To Ton and Ardo," he said quietly. Muire retrieved a tankard of her own and clacked it against his.

Tycho barely had a mouthful of ale down his throat, though, before there was a shout from the tavern floor. "Hoy, bard! How about a song? " Tycho gave Muire another crooked grin.