Oh, the traveler's song is a weary one,
And the wanderer sings alone.
But the friend at hand is ev'ry man,
And the road is always home.
The quality of the lighting in The Three Crowns tavern was dubious at the best of times. In the small hours of the night, when the golden glow of lantern light struggled to shine through air thick with laughter and the rich smoke of pipeweed, it was jokingly said that you couldn't find your own backside without both hands and a compass. The Crowns was far from Kelebrind's finest tavern; the patrons were rough, the food was rancid, and it was hard to tell from day to day whether the ale or the serving wenches had uglier heads. But for a few hours every night, to one girl's mind at least, there was no more desirable place in Kalidesh than that crowded, pungent, dingy, disreputable tavern.
Lyra Zyphire tapped a dirty fingernail against the stained surface of the ancient oak counter in rhythm with a melody only she could hear. The big man behind the bar looked up at the sound that only the saints knew how he heard over the roar of the crowd of farmers and fishermen. He gave her a golden toothed grin and began to fill a small tumbler with a deep amber liquid. Topping it off expertly, he slid the chipped glass her way. Lyra caught the whiskey with a laugh and saluted the big man, her nervous tapping continuing in little tinktinktinks on the side of the tumbler. He smiled again.
"You're looking lovelier than usual tonight, lass. Wouldn't be trying to break my heart and catch some other strapping young man's eye, now would you?"
Lyra smiled crookedly, subconsciously tugging at the end of her long tousled braid. "Now then Bran," she sighed, batting her eyelashes and striking what, in anyone other than Lyra, could be called a waifish pose. "Am I not far too pure and innocent a maiden to go wantonly breaking the hearts of handsome men such as yourself?"
Branen Casterly beat the splintered bar with his fists, oblivious to the withering glance Lyra was giving him, as he tried to control his snorting laughter. Choking, he wiped his eyes with the corner of a grease stained apron. He ruffled her dark hair affectionately. "Oh, I know, lass. But I also know you too well to think that there is even the remotest possibility that the words "pure" and "innocent" could ever be used in the same breath as "Lyra." He ducked as she swung at him playfully. Sniffing haughtily, she straightened the low neckline of her chemise.
"Even saying that were true, you rotten excuse for a bar monkey, I'd still be afraid your darling, demure little wife would tear my eyes out through my stomach if I so much as looked at you slantwise."
Branen wiped halfheartedly at a dirty glass with a dirtier rag. "Oh don't be silly, lass. Armina would never do a thing like that." He scrutinized the glass up against the smoky light. "She'd go straight for your throat."
Lyra laughed and grimaced as she tossed back the glass of bitter liquid, running her tongue over her teeth, and watched somberly as Branen refilled her glass. Once he had finished, she lifted it too him with a melodramatic flourish and smiled.
"To the Three Crowns; may her guests always be more numerous than the rats in her cellar." She sighed contentedly. "It's good to be back."
Branen smiled and went back to counting bottles, calling over his shoulder over the noise of the jostling evening crowd.
"And well we've missed you. Where have you been, to keep our hearts so lonely for your silver tongue?" He grinned mischievously. "I'm sure our boy Rauwin would be most anxious to hear what has kept you."
Lyra shot him a wry look and wrinkled her nose in the direction of the golden-haired oaf of a bouncer that Bran was referring to. Rauwin's clean cut, handsomely chiseled face stood out among the rough patrons of the tavern like a gold plated dagger amongst a drawer full of Bran's cheese knives. Even now, one of the giggling serving girls, Mara probably, was quite obviously trying her charms on the boy. Lyra chuckled wryly. And if she knew anything, each and every one of poor Mara's feminine wiles were blowing straight over Rauwin's thick head. She rolled her eyes. Pretty boys…
"If you must know, you old gossip, I've been here, there, and everywhere. It is not as easy to slip away as it used to be. My duties at the manor house have been tediously occupying as of late. I think Matthew may suspect something of my little…" she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "…sabbaticals here at the Crowns."
Doing his best to look menacing by the door, Rauwin caught her eye and waved shyly over the heads of the packed patrons. Bran chuckled deeply and Lyra muttered something obscene under her breath.
"Please, don't encourage him Bran. If I receive one more dubiously metered love poem, I believe I shall be ill all over your splendid bar." She gagged and then squeaked in protest as Bran swatted at her with his cleaning rag.
"Well, if you're not requiting any aching loves this evening, perhaps you'll be so kind as to tune up that questionable gut bucket of yours and start earning your keep. Or do I pay you to sit at my "splendid bar" all evening looking pretty?" Lyra shouted a course laugh as she dodged the next swing of his dish rag.
"Compliments and whiskey hardly denote pay, Bran. Especially when it's your whiskey." Ignoring his incredulous outburst, she leapt lightly to a table top, pounding the well worn heel of her boot against the thick, shabby boards to get the crowd's attention. When every eye, bleary or bright, was fixed on her, she doffed an imaginary cap to her audience, breathing in their attention like sweet air, and bowed deeply.
Fixing them all with a charming crooked smile, she winked cheekily at Bran and ran her slender fingers expertly up the elegant neck of her lute. She paused for a moment, her hand poised trembling over the strings. Eyes closed, she reached deep within herself for that place where the strings of her lute became one with her fingers, her thoughts, her heart. Suddenly, with a whoop from her audience and a flashy downward flick of her wrist, the smoky air hung no longer heavy and stifling, but was alive with music.
She played far into the night: ballads, tarantellas, questionable religious pieces that made the somber cleric hiding in a corner sit up and blush, and a few bawdy airs of her own creation. For a few hours, the patrons of the Three Crowns forgot the bad food and the poor fishing season and their empty pockets. For a few hours, a girl and her lute wove them songs of tomorrow.
Lyra smiled. Manor houses and duties and lords and ladies be damned. Here. Here in the smoke and the lantern light and the music; here she was home.