The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [33]
“I will not deceive you,” the leic said. “Your hands can be made better, but they cannot be made as new.”
“I never imagined they could be.” Leoff sighed, blinking away tears of pain as another half-healed bone snapped and went groaning into a new position.
The next day he clumsily pawed through one of the books the usurper had supplied him, using hands encased in rigid gloves of iron and heavy leather, as the physician had promised. They were splayed out, fully stretched, and looked altogether too much like the comically exaggerated hands of a puppet. He couldn’t decide whether he appeared droll or horrible as he tried to turn the pages with his cumbersome mittens.
He soon forgot that, however, as he was lost in puzzlement.
The book was an older one, printed in antique Almannish characters. It was entitled Luthes sa Felthan ya sa Birmen—“Songs of Field and Birm”—and those were the only intelligible words in the book. The rest of it was inked in characters Leoff had never seen before. They resembled the alphabet he knew in some regards, but he couldn’t be certain of any single letter.
There were some pages with odd poetic-looking configurations that also seemed somewhat familiar, but all in all it appeared that the book’s cover and its contents did not go together. Even the paper inside didn’t seem to match; it looked much older than the binding.
He’d found an intriguing page of diagrams that didn’t make any more sense than the text, when he heard someone rattling at the door again. He sighed, steeling himself for yet another round with the prince or his doctor.
But it was neither, and Leoff felt a rush of pure joy as a young girl walked in through the portal, which promptly slammed and locked behind her.
“Mery!” he cried.
She hesitated a moment, then rushed into his arms. He lifted her, his ridiculous hands crossing behind her back.
“Urf!” Mery grunted as he squeezed.
“It’s so good to see you,” he said as he set her down.
“Mother said you were probably awfully dead,” Mery said, looking terribly serious. “I so hoped she was wrong.”
He reached to tousle her hair, but her eyes grew wide at the sight of his claws.
“Ah,” he said, clapping them together. “This is nothing. Something to make my hands feel better. How is your mother, then, the lady Gramme?” he asked.
“I don’t know, really,” Mery replied. “I haven’t seen her for days.”
He knelt, feeling things pop and pull in his legs.
“Where are they keeping you, Mery?”
She shrugged, staring at his hands but never directly into his face. “They put a blindfold on me.” She brightened a bit. “But it’s seventy-eight steps. My steps, anyway.”
He smiled at her cleverness. “I hope your room is nicer than this.”
She looked around. “It is. I have a window, at least.”
A window. Were they no longer in the dungeons?
“Did you go up or down stairs to get here?” he asked.
“Yes, down, twenty.” She had never stopped staring at his hands. “What happened to them?” she asked, pointing.
“I hurt them,” he said softly.
“I’m sorry,” Mery said. “I wish I could make them better.” Her frown deepened. “You can’t play the hammarharp like that, can you?”
He felt a sudden clotting in his throat. “No,” he said, “I can’t. But you can play for me. Would you mind doing that?”
“No,” she said. “Though you know I’m not very good.”
He peered into her eyes and placed his hands gently on her shoulders. “I never told you this before,” he said, “not in so many words. But you have it in you to be a great musician. Perhaps the best.”
Mery blinked. “Me?”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“My head is too large for my shoulders, anyhow, Mother says.” She frowned. “Do you suppose I could ever compose, as you do? That would be the very best thing.”
Leoff rose, blinking a bit in surprise. “A female composer? I’ve never heard of that. But I see no reason…” He trailed off.
How would such a creature be treated, a woman composer? Would she reap commissions? Would it bring gold to her pocket?
Probably