Disclaimer: I'm only playing in Pat's beautiful playground, and to keep things canon-compliant, I have borrowed a bit of dialogue from canon in this chapter.
Chapter 26: Heart Song
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It was Kvothe.
I couldn't say how I knew with such certainty, for the stage below was small enough to grasp in my hand and the brightness of the lights washed out the entirety of its color, but I could feel it reverberating in my soul with the whispers of his voice. All that knowing. All that pain and beauty wrapped up in those sweet words that spoke of tragedy and heartbreak. The Lay of Sir Savien. How many times in my life would I hear this beautiful, horrible, painful song? How many times would I feel its grief and heartbreak?
But this time was different. Because down below in the midst of all that bursting song and glowing color was Kvothe. And my heart soared, and broke, and soared all again.
The music danced, echoing across the seats and rafters. Across the hearts of every soul in that place. Mixing with Kvothe's voice, like a tapestry being sung to life.
"Still! Sit!" he sang. And we did. And his fingers danced across the strings of a lute and set the night afire. Until the very air trembled with beautiful sorrow.
I lost myself in the song. In the power of his voice, which was clear and proud. The voice of Sir Savien, blurring across the boundaries between the past and present. Between fiction and fact. Until I could no longer tell where Savien's voice faded and Kvothe's began. He was Savien. And no world existed, but that of the Amyr — now lost to history. The setting of the most tragic love story of them all.
And then the song changed. Shifted from the pattern I had known. He doubled the third refrain. And then he looked up, out into the silent audience, and the pieces of song began to fade. Unraveling like loose threads. And I realized what was missing. What I had failed to see earlier as I lost myself in his words and voice. It was more than a song. It was the greatest of love stories. And a love story couldn't exist without two hearts. Two voices.
And where? Where was Aloine?
His eyes stared up, out into the crowd. Glowing green for a moment in the bright lights as they brushed against mine. Searching.
And in that moment, as the last notes of music faded away, I understood.
"Savien, how could you know… it was the time for you to come to me?"
I was on my feet before I remembered moving, my hands grasping the edge of the metal railing as my voice — small and unsure at first, but growing louder — drifted down onto the stage.
"Savien, do you remember the days we squandered pleasantly?"
I was singing. Singing for the stage I had yearned for and feared in equal measure. Touching it with my voice, with my likeness still hidden away in pooling shadow. And no one could touch me now. The world had narrowed to me and Kvothe. To Savien and Aloine. To a love story so wondrous the earth had felt need to strike it down.
"How well then have you carried what have tarried in my heart and memory?"
I sang. The song burning inside me. My voice weaving with his as Savien and Aloine came together on the refrain and we danced around each other, ours colors twining like paint. Revealing the most beautiful canvas, as if it had been waiting all this time. Just asking to be unfurled. My voice growing surer all the while. My words never faltering. And around us, the song swelled, the promise of its tragedy looming.
And then tragedy came. Though not in the form I was expecting.
There was a piercing sound. A echoing snap that burst from the stage and resonated through the hall. And in its wake, the music shattered into a sudden silence, like a candle being snuffed from life. Leaning down over the railing, I saw Kvothe frozen upon the glittering stage. A flash of a string, falling away from the neck of the lute in agonizing slowness. His eyes burning beneath the lights.
I felt my heart beat against my ribcage, fluttering in rhythm with the song that still held me even as its last echoes faded away. It was over. And I ached with longing. With regret. My heart was breaking for him.
And then impossibly, unbelievably, he brought his fingers back to the six strings that remained and began to play. Slowly at first. Then faster. His hands weaving the shattered pieces of song back into something unbrokenly whole. Something that was imperfect, and all the more beautiful for it. For what it had overcome... to be alive.
It was magic, pure and simple. He had done the impossible. And somehow so had I.
He reached the final refrain, and I sang again. Our voices fusing into harmony. Mine gentle, his clear and bright. His music deeper even than the night I'd heard him play across the fire, with its glow bathing his skin in amber. Even with only six strings.
And it was over. Suddenly. Shockingly. He looked up, out into the silent hall, his skin translucent beneath the lights. His eyes lost deep within. And then he lowered his face into his hands and wept. Two floors above, I did the same.
It took me over an hour to find him. I had wished for nothing else, but I was still playing a part and Sovoy had been relentless with his praise and admiration.
"I didn't know you could sing like that, Dianne!"
"They should give you your pipes as well."
It was a relief that I was used to foolish flattery. Otherwise his words may have hurt.
I finally managed to get away from Sovoy by enlisting his assistance in the search for my singer. And then I was off, slipping between chairs and tables with such graceful speed that they all but leapt out of my way. I didn't find him on the main level, though, where I surely expected him to be holding court, nor on the one above. And by the time I finished searching that floor, a small fear had wormed its way into my heart.
He may have left.
I had waited too long, sitting there with Sovoy and letting him flatter me endlessly. All the while wasting precious time. And how would I find him now? I had never had luck crossing the river into the University town. Not in span and span.
My feet carried me back up to the third tier, following a familiar path that I'd walked many times before. I kept my eyes on the ground, refusing to admit defeat. There was nothing on the third tier but reclusive couples in search of privacy and an over-abundance of wine. But if I didn't find him there, it was over. I had looked everywhere else. I'd let him slip away. Again.
I was halfway to our table when I glanced up and saw him.
He was simply standing there, silent, his burning eyes locked on my face.
Kvothe.
It was like a fire suddenly flared to life inside me, its wild energy stealing through my limbs. I rushed at him, all but skipping with the sudden burst of excitement. He was there. Right there. He hadn't left. No, it was him who'd come to me.
I was inches away when I remembered my position. When I became aware of the people that surrounded us, their eyes all the sharper for being turned away. I was here as a lady. Sovoy's lady. And the Eolian wasn't a place I wished to burn with the kindling of my failing propriety.
I was half a step from falling into his arms when I pulled back, stumbling slightly. Reaching out a hand to steady myself against his chest. My heart beating against my chest. I smiled. And it felt like clouds parting after a heavy rain. Like the sun peeking out and its warmth washing over me. As sudden as the ending of an unexpected storm.
For a moment, he seemed frozen. His eyes almost shocked as they roved across my face. And then he took a half step back and bowed. Like a gentleman in a proper court. His cloak draped elegantly behind him. He brought his lips to the back of my hand, lingering there for only a moment. But it was enough to send shivers down my arm.
"I am at your service, my lady," he said, standing and releasing my hand. It was terribly formal. A far cry from the Kvothe I'd once known.
"My lady?" Was he pretending too? "Very well, if you insist."
I offered him a curtsy. It was ridiculous. Here we were, exchanging formalities as if we were back at Duke Samerson's estate. Him in the same shirt he'd once worn on the road months ago. And me? I barely owned the clothes on my back. I would likely leave my rooms without paying once my tryst with Sovoy was over.
"Your lady," I said sweetly. All courtly and proper. The charade carrying on. "What are you doing up here in the third circle alone?" And then a terrible thought struck me. "Are you alone?"
"I was alone," he said. "'Now unexpected Aloine beside me stands.'"
Quoting our song. Our song. That was silly. Still, I couldn't help but smile.
"How do you mean, unexpected?"
"I had more than half convinced myself that you had already left," he admitted. And my heart soared. He had sought me out. And suddenly the night was wonderful. Perfect.
"It was a near thing," I teased. "Two hours I waited for my Savien to come. Finally, filled with despair, I decided Aloine could do the finding this time, and damn the story." I think my smile was wide enough to crack my face by then.
"'So we were ill-lit ships at night…'" Kvothe began, quoting Felward's Falling this time.
"...passing close but all unknown to one another,'" I finished, amused. If we were to converse through naught but plays and stories, then he would find I was well prepared for the part.
"Not many people know that play." He sounded surprised. Almost reverent.
"I am not many people," I said simply, as if it were a profound statement rather than a modest truth.
"I will never forget that again." He bowed his head, the perfect imitation of courtly decorum. It made me laugh. "I can't thank you enough for helping me tonight."
"You can't?" I grinned. "Well, that's a shame. How much can you thank me?"
I meant it as a joke, of course. What I had done for him — the thing I couldn't even begin to explain — I would have done again. In a heartbeat. For him, but also for me. It was as if he had granted me the courage to do what I'd always wanted but had been too afraid to seek. To sing on that stage. But at my words, his eyes seemed to flash a darker shade of green. And then he reached up, without hesitation, and unpinned his talent pipes from the collar of his cloak.
"Only this much." And he held them out to me. His hand unwavering.
"I . . ." I hesitated, a million thoughts swirling through my mind. I thought of him, down on the stage below. Pouring his heart into the music that moved him. The broken string. His unwavering belief the Aloine would appear. What it all must have cost him. And the talent was surely the least of it. "You can't be serious."
"Without you, I wouldn't have won them." He was so sure. So insistent.
"I don't think you can give away your pipes…"
"I can, actually. Stanchion mentioned if I lost them or gave them away, I'd have to earn another set." He took my hand, gently uncurling my fingers before placing the silver pin in my palm. "That means I can do with them as I please, and it pleases me to give them to you."
I was silent then, feeling the shape of the cool metal against my hand. Talent pipes. With these pinned to my dress, I could step into near any establishment within a hundred miles and find a patron. The mere sight of them would make me more desirable than my looks. Than my sex. That little pin was big enough to hold the entire world I dreamed of. And was it unearned?
He spoke as if they belonged to me. As if I had been the one to win them on that stage when I had done nothing but lend him my voice.
I looked at him then, really looked at him. My eyes tracing the contours of his face. The edges of his cloak. The fire burning in his eyes. He could earn his pipes again, could earn them without me. I didn't have that luxury.
But how could I possibly take them?
I had taken so many things from so many men. Things that were offered, and those that weren't. Had thought of them so little, that most were lost to memory. They had meant nothing, aside from the coin they put in my purse. But Kvothe was different. Even if he had left, too. He had seen me. And I saw him. The same cloak he'd worn then, threadbare now. His shirt, patched in two places. Shoes scuffed to bits.
I glanced down again, slowly closing my hand around the pipes. They weighed more than I could carry.
"I think you might be a wonderful person," I whispered, looking up at him again. "However, this is too great a thanks. More payment than is appropriate for any help I've given you. I would end up in your debt." And I slipped the pipes back into his hand.
"I would rather have you beholden to me." I smiled. "This way you still owe me a favor."
He didn't argue. And the conversation that followed was sweet and light. I expressed my shock that he had let his entire trial hang on the chance of an Aloine waiting in the wings. And he, in turn, stated his surprise that I had only heard the song twice before. But it wasn't really the sort of song you could forget, despite my reservations. And I had just heard it, off in Aetnia.
But it didn't matter what words were exchanged. What was spoken. That he never once called me anything but Aloine, and I couldn't tell if he remembered me, or the night we'd spent beneath the stars. I had been so certain when our eyes met and I nearly stumbled into his arms. The pull so strong between us. How could anything do that, but memory?
Still, he acted as if I were a lady. A stranger. But why should he know me, after all? There was nothing extraordinary about me. Nothing worth remembering. For all the impressions he had made on me with his words and with his music, I had only ever been a passenger. Just a breath of wind on the road.
I decided that was all right. All that mattered now was that he was here beside me. And for the first time in months, the four corners felt right. The ground balanced. Steady. And the conversation between us was easy, like a river flowing. It could have lasted all night. It would have, I think, had Sovoy not returned.
And even then, even with him there beside us and I as his lady of the evening, my attentions slipped past him, to Kvothe. And it didn't matter that somehow they did know each other from The University. That perhaps there were boundaries between them I shouldn't cross. But my heart was full. And Kvothe spoke in phrases of story and pieces of song, and I responded in kind. Our conversation dancing between us. Sovoy on the sidelines, forgotten. The spaces between us fuller than anything that I had ever known.
And then he spoke the painful truth I'd wished I wouldn't hear. Confirming the suspicions that had begun to grow in my heart as our words spun gossamer webs around us. "The reason my heart is so heavy is that I fear I might never know your name."
He didn't remember me after all.
It hurt, I couldn't deny that. But I had been hurt before, and my mask never slipped. This time, I was his Aloine. And Tehlu hold me, I would make sure he did not forget that.
"Dianne," I whispered in his ear. Because Sovoy was beside me, and I was Dianne now. And the Denna he'd once known was gone. Most days I could no longer find her myself.
He was silent. The pause so long it sent shivers down my arms. And cracks streaked across the surface my confidence. Did he remember Denna after all? Would he think me a liar, call me out as such here and now? And all before Sovoy. And why, then… Why...
Was he a liar too?
"Well?" I asked, my voice steady, unconcerned despite my dry lips.
"I have it. As sure as I know my own."
"Say it then," I insisted. Say it. Before my world breaks.
"I am saving it." He was smiling. It was not the smile of a man who was staring into a lie. "Gifts like these should not be squandered."
I said nothing. My heart beating silently, painfully.
"Dianne," he said at last. "Dianne. It suits you."
I held his gaze and he held mine. His eyes unreadable. And then he glanced away, abruptly pushing himself back from the table. Suddenly burning to leave, when he had been so insistent to stay.
"I should get back downstairs. I've got important people to meet."
Sovoy rose just as abruptly, hurrying to shake Kvothe's hand.
"Well done tonight, Kvothe. I'll be seeing you." He sounded pleased, though I caught the undertone of relief beneath the words. The unspoken warning, which rang so clearly to my trained ears. Do not steal my woman. As if I were his to take. To keep.
"I hope to see you too," I added quickly, standing as well. I offered him my hand in parting, and he shook it. Quickly. He did not kiss it, as he had done just an hour before. And then he vanished, melting into the shadows that wrapped the third tier like velvet.
And I couldn't help but wonder, as I settled back down at the table — which felt so empty now without him — was it Sovoy's gaze he had been running from?
Or was it mine?