Sable Arden's Arc

Chapter 5 of 3

The sheets were moving through the city now, but Sable could not follow them. She had drawn the melody by hand. She had cranked the press. Still she did not know if a single stranger could read her marks. The notation meant nothing without a mind to unlock it. She needed proof. So she left the vault through Kael's corridor and went to find the woman whose stall had taken the first drop. The repair stall stood under a striped awning, blue and green, its shelves neat with jars and tools. A heavyset woman in a grease-stained apron looked up from a broken scanner. Grapes sat on a plate beside her hand. This was the trader Jade had named, the one who fed half the quarter. Her eyes moved over Sable's patched grey coat, then to the ink on her fingers. She knew at once who had come. "You're the archivist," the woman said. She did not smile. "You want to know if your paper works." "I need to know," Sable said. The woman wiped her hands and called past the awning. Two children came running. Twins, near ten, dressed alike. One wore a long braid; the other's hair fell past the chin. The braided one held a wooden flute. Both carried satchels stuffed with paper. "They took a copy three days back," the woman said. "Never heard the tune in their lives. The state scrubbed it before they were born." She folded her arms. "Show her." The braided child, Cora, pulled a sheet from her satchel. Sable's breath caught. It was her own printing, the colored notes she had drawn from the pins of the music box. Cora raised the flute and set her eyes on the page. Her brother Kevin leaned close to read along. The first notes came thin and careful. Cora's fingers found the holes. The melody climbed, then bent low, exactly as Sable held it in her skull. It was right. Every phrase was right. Then Kevin opened his mouth and sang the words above his sister's playing. Sable stood frozen. The song she had guarded alone now poured from two children she had never taught. They had learned it from paper. From her marks and nothing else. Her hands shook. For years the melody had lived in one mind. Now it lived in three, and she had said not a word. Cora lowered the flute. "Did we play it right?" "Yes," Sable said. Her voice broke on the word. "Exactly right." The trader picked a grape and ate it. "Then your paper teaches. Four hundred sheets. Four hundred more mouths, if they're brave." She leaned in. "But two children just sang a banned song in an open stall. Sound like that carries. If they can learn it that fast, so can someone who reports to enforcers." Sable looked at the open awning, at the street beyond. The proof she wanted was also a danger she had loosed. The song could teach itself now. She could no longer control who heard it or learned it. A man walked past and began humming a few bars of the song, almost absentmindedly. The song was spreading. Cora and Kevin promised to teach it to the children at their school during recess.