Soul Music

nice and crunchy, see.”
    Glod shrugged.
    “That proves it,” he said. “No one who likes dwarf bread can be elvish.”
    The place was almost empty. A dwarf in an apron that came up to its armpits watched them over the top of the counter.
    “You do fried rat?” said Glod.
    “Best damn fried rat in the city,” said Gimlet.
    “Okay. Give me four fried rats.”
    “And some dwarf bread,” said Imp.
    “And some coke,” said Lias, patiently.
    “You mean rat heads or rat legs?”
    “No. Four fried rats.”
    “And some coke.”
    “You want ketchup on those rats?”
    “No.”
    “You sure ?”
    “No ketchup.”
    “And some coke.”
    “And two hard-boilled eggs,” said Imp. The others gave him an odd look.
    “Well? I just like hard-boilled eggs, see,” he said.
    “And some coke.”
    “And two hard-boilled eggs.”
    “And some coke.”
    “Seventy-five dollars,” said Glod, as they sat down. “What’s three times seventy-five dollars?”
    “Many dollars,” said Lias.
    “More than two hundred dollllars,” said Imp.
    “I don’t think I’ve even seen two hundred dollars,” said Glod. “Not while I’ve been awake.”
    “We raise money?” said Lias.
    “We can’t raise money by being musicians,” said Imp. “It’s the Guild law. If they catch you they take your instrument and shove—” He stopped. “Let’s just say it’s not much fun for the piccollo pllayer,” he added from memory.
    “I shouldn’t think the trombonist is very happy either,” said Glod, putting some pepper on his rat.
    “I can’t go back home now,” said Imp, “I said I’d…I can’t go back home yet. Even if I could , I’d have to raise monolliths like my brothers. Alll they care about is stone circles.”
    “If I go back home now,” said Lias, “I’ll be clubbing druids.”
    They both, very carefully, sidled a little farther away from each other.
    “Then we play somewhere where the Guild won’t find us,” said Glod cheerfully. “We find a club somewhere—”
    “Got a club,” said Lias, proudly. “Got a nail in it.”
    “I mean a nightclub,” said Glod.
    “Still got a nail in it at night.”
    “I happen to know,” said Glod, abandoning that line of conversation, “that there’s a lot of places in the city that don’t like paying Guild rates. We could do a few gigs and raise the money with no trouble.”
    “All three of us together?” said Imp.
    “Sure.”
    “But we pllay dwarf music and human music and trolll music,” said Imp. “I’m not sure they’lll go together. I mean, dwarfs listen to dwarf music, humans listen to human music, trollls listen to trolll music. What do we get if we mix it alll together? It’d be dreadfull.”
    “We’re getting along okay,” said Lias, getting up and fetching the salt from the counter.
    “We’re musicians,” said Glod. “It’s not the same with real people.”
    “Yeah, right,” said the troll.
    Lias sat down.
    There was a cracking noise.
    Lias stood up.
    “Oh,” he said.
    Imp reached over. Slowly and with great care, he picked the remains of his harp off the bench.
    “Oh,” said Lias, again.
    A string curled back with a sad little sound.
    It was like watching the death of a kitten.
    “I won that at the Eisteddfod,” said Imp.
    “Could you glue it back together?” said Glod, eventually.
    Imp shook his head.
    “There’s no one left in Llamedos who knows how, see.”
    “Yes, but in the Street of Cunning Artificers—”
    “I’m real sorry. I mean real sorry, I don’t know how it got dere.”
    “It wasn’t your faullt.”
    Imp tried, ineffectually, to fit a couple of pieces together. But you couldn’t repair a musical instrument. He remembered the old bards saying that. They had a soul. All instruments had a soul. If they were broken, the soul of them escaped, flew away like a bird. What was put together again was just a thing, a mere assemblage of wood and wire. It would play, it might even deceive the casual listener, but…You might as well push someone over a cliff and then stitch them together and expect them to come alive.
    “Um…maybe we could get you another one, then?” said Glod. “There’s…a nice little music shop in The Backs—”
    He stopped. Of course there was a nice little music shop in The Backs. It had always been there.
    “In The Backs,” he repeated, just to make sure. “Bound to get one there. In The Backs. Yes. Been there years .”
    “Not one of these,” said Imp. “Before a