once we need those very forces ourselves. So, no more mischief. Not till I solve my little problem with Mr. Bogrevil.” She walked on.
The lads stood around their victim a moment longer and only grudgingly left the purse there as they followed their leader.
Bogrevil made a sweeping bow and said, “Welcome, good sir, to the land where dreams o’ertake your other life. You would like a boy to smoke for the evening?”
The puppeteer hesitated and glanced from parlor to parlor, uncertain which one was providing the music. “I’ll browse?” she suggested in a deep whisper.
Bogrevil stepped back and broadly waved his arm. “By all means.” If he suspected at all that she was a woman, he didn’t show it. She was disguised, and therefore following the rules. He said, “If I can be of assistance, or when you’ve chosen, don’t hesitate to call upon me.”
They made respectful half bows; she strolled past the left-hand parlor and drew up before the middle one. The icy music of a santur trembled behind the beaded curtain there.
Seated cross-legged upon pillows in the middle of the room and surrounded by musical instruments, Diverus did not react as she stepped through the curtain. A small boy wearing a tray on his head glided up beside her to offer a drink. She took it, but then turned back, fascinated by the elegance of the tune being played and contemplating all the instruments lying about the player.
The musician himself was under the spell of his music: His eyes remained closed and his head rolled, snaking back and forth. His fingers flicked the tiny mallets with astonishing speed and accuracy. He never looked at them once. He continued playing for another ten minutes before the piece found an end, and his eyes didn’t open until the last tinny note was fading. Then his back arched and he inhaled sharply, suddenly, as if his spirit had plunged back into him from whatever dreamscape it had flown to on the wings of song.
Some of the others arose and made their way past her on unsteady legs. One was propped up by his rented boy. Outside the gauzy curtain, behind her, she heard Bogrevil directing them to various rooms. The beads hissed as he came into the parlor.
He stopped beside her. “Remarkable, ain’t he?”
She nodded. “I wondered, how much…”
“For an evening? Don’t misunderstand me, young sir, but I doubt you could afford him.” Then he named the shocking price, almost apologetically. “You see, if I let you have him for the rest of the evening, then I deprive everyone else of his boundless talent. Thus he comes very dear. No help for it, I’m afraid.”
“He plays all of these?” she asked.
“Oh, every single one. In more than a year nobody’s yet brought an instrument to our establishment that he couldn’t play, and with skill equal to what you just heard.”
“The gods favor him then.”
Bogrevil laughed. “Indeed, they do.”
Leodora considered for a moment while Diverus rolled aside the santur and took up a teardrop-shaped ud. He seemed to shiver at touching it. She asked, “What if I were to wait until the evening was over? No one would be deprived of their music then.”
Bogrevil’s brow knitted. Nobody had ever proposed that before. The quoted price for the boy’s services usually ended the conversation.
“That’s hours from now. I mean, I suppose,” he said, formulating, “the price would be a little more reasonable under those conditions. He’ll be tired, though—don’t know that he’ll care to accept. And still higher, I’m afraid, than most of the boys, because the experience will still drain him and he’ll still have to recover, and—truth is—nobody’s had him like that. It might drain him too much to play next night. There’s a lot to think about here. I must ponder it awhile.”
Leodora nodded as if she understood everything he’d said. But knowing nothing of what actually went on in this paidika, she couldn’t fathom what it was that might drain him. “I shall just listen then—if that’s all right.”
Bogrevil opened his mouth to object, but she touched his hand and a coin slipped between her fingers into his. He glanced at it, surprised and delighted by what he saw; and he wondered why he hadn’t thought to charge for the pleasure of listening to Diverus right from the start.
“Listen to your heart’s content,” he said. “I’ll see that he plays the shawm for you before daybreak.”
“That’s his best?”
“It stops everything in this place when he does it.”