The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [190]
A tentative tap on the door.
"Come in! Come in!"
The boy is as pretty as Dseveh said, dark-haired and long-lashed, dark-skinned and long-legged. He's skittish as a colt, eyes darting this way and that, glancing at (and then studiously avoiding) Ramazi propped up on one elbow on the bed. Hrenuzi and Parl, in contrast, stand behind him looking decoratively bored. Doumani gestures for them to close the door.
"Speak," he says. "Let me hear your voice."
"I...I...don't know what to ― what should I say?"
"Tell me why you want to be a Golden Songboy."
As the boy tumbles into a river of half-formed sentences, a rushing tale of his history and dreams, Doumani doesn't really listen to the words. He's not interested in a childhood on the streets, or imaginings of the exotic Outer Cities, or what it's like to be a poppy-boy in the Salvationist dens, or the first time he saw the Songboys at the Festival, or what a song-whore has to do to scrape by on Poonma Way, or how an assistant on a dhosa-stall comes to hate the smell of ghee (though he does find the scent of it on the lad strangely off-putting and enticing at the same time); no, what he's listening to is the timbre and the tone, the control of the flow, the time between breaths, the quality of the voice.
"Enough," he says, cutting off the boy in mid-flow. "You're a median voice, yes? You know 'The Elegy of Appurashnama?'"
The boy nods.
"Then we'll begin with that. Hrenuzi, Parl, on my mark."
The two step forward to flank the boy, backs straightening into the singer's stance, chest out and shoulders back. The boy mirrors them in almost perfect time (almost perfect time) and together (almost perfectly together), the three breathe in and -
"Begin."
The Tranquil Plaza, as chaotic as it is, might just as well be silent to Kertel as he strides through it, oblivious to the hubbub, raptured in his own.excitement? No. Bliss? No. Tranquility? He almost laughs. He might as well be sailing over the market mire of vendors and visitants, afloat on an updraft of air, looking down from the heavens on the glorious, petty spectacle of a thousand celebrants and stall-owners, none of whom have any inkling as to why this boy, weaving his way across the plaza toward Poonma Way, is grinning so widely, walking so fast he's almost running and with such a spring in every step he might break into a child's skip any second. Thank Chuzdt! Thank Chuzdt and Yeshe and Nartham; thank Hazrin and Pakzish; and thank even Jaggenuth, even grim and surly Jaggenuth, because a Golden Songboy, as Doumani said to him, sings not for one god, but for all. And because he's now a Golden Songboy.
Or he will be, yes, he will be. An apprenticeship, Doumani had said, a trial period as understudy, stepping in if any median voice fell sick. Learning the ropes and learning the songs. And if one of the medians moves on, or Doumani finds a low voice to make up a new trio (there's a high voice understudy in the troupe already; they tried out with Parl as the low; so the audition just went on for ages), then, then, if he has improved enough, then, if the triptet forms right, if the voices fit, then Kertel will be, thank Chuzdt, a full member of the Golden Songboys, singing for padishahs and pilgrims, septons and supplicants. He's already singing in his soul.
He doesn't really see the children batting a limp red balloon between them as he brushes past, doesn't really hear the noise of firecrackers getting louder and more frequent as he breaks into a jog on Poonma
Way, doesn't really feel the thickening of the mob as he darts between them, dances to this side or that, angles and twirls to avoid collisions. All he cares about is getting home to gather the few belongings he'll take with him into his new life; he has to be back at Doumani's lodgings in half an hour, before the sun is fully set, before the Path of Light between Riarnanth and the horizon dissolves into darkness, before the Golden Songboys start their last parade