Luna Meridian had six weeks to reach the Solstice Court, and she was going to ride in alone unless she found other women who played loud. She stood in the road with her lute strapped across her back and read the notice she had nailed to the post outside the tavern. WOMEN BARDS WANTED. TOUR EVERY HOLD IN COPSEFIRE. NO SOFT SONGS. Her red hair stuck to her neck from the walk. No one had answered the notice in three days. The king's court had never let a woman like her onto that stage, and one woman on a road was not a troupe. It was a rumor waiting to die. She pulled the notice down and walked toward the abandoned church at the edge of the village. The roof sagged. Weeds grew through the doorstep. She had slept in worse. Inside, she meant to practice until her voice gave out, then sleep on the stone. She stopped in the doorway. Someone was already inside. A short girl in a battered leather jacket sat on the altar with a flame-painted guitar across her knees. Purple streaks in her black hair. She was tuning by ear, head down, not looking up when Luna's boots scraped the threshold. Behind her, a blonde girl leaned against the wall with a bass, arms crossed. A third girl crouched by the empty font, drumsticks in one hand, tapping the stone in a slow, steady four. "Church is taken," the drummer said. "By who," Luna said. "Us." Luna stepped inside. "You play loud?" The guitarist looked up. Her eyes were bright and tired. "We play loud enough that a bar owner three towns back paid us to leave." "I'm going to the Solstice Court," Luna said. "I need a band. Women only. Every hold between here and the capital." The bassist did not move. "Why women only." "Because no one who looks like me has stood on that stage," Luna said. "I want four of us walking in, not one." The drummer stopped tapping. She looked at the guitarist. The guitarist looked at the bassist. None of them spoke for a long moment. Something moved in the corner of Luna's eye, near the broken window: a pale, drifting shape, small and sad, watching them. It faded when she turned her head. The guitarist swung her guitar around and struck one chord. The sound hit the stone walls and came back doubled. Dust fell from the rafters. "Jade Riff," she said. "That's Riley on bass. Other Riley on the sticks. We were headed east anyway." "Luna Meridian." "We split the take four ways," the bassist said. "And we don't wait for you if you're late." "Fine." The drummer stood. "First hold's two days out. We leave at dawn." Luna set her lute down on a pew. The troupe had four names now. It also had a problem she had not thought about yet: four bards, one road, and no wagon to carry them.

At dawn the four of them walked out of the abandoned church with instruments on their backs and no wagon in sight. Luna led them down the road toward the first hold, two days east. She had a set list in her head. She had never heard her bandmates play a single one of her songs. They reached the hold at dusk on the second day. The steward met them at the gate. He was a thin man with ink on his fingers and a ledger under one arm. He looked at Luna's red hair, then at Jade's purple streaks, then at Riley's tattoos. He laughed once, short. "Play tonight," he said. "If the room stays, I pay. If the room leaves, you leave." Luna asked for a place to rehearse. He pointed across the yard to a lit building with a slanted roof and colored windows. A sign above the door said the loft was rented by the hour. They had four hours. Luna climbed the stairs first. The loft smelled of sweat and old beer. Amps lined one wall. She pulled a folded page from her jacket and set it on a stool. "Six songs," she said. "Mine. We start with the fast one." Jade picked up the page, read it, and frowned. "I don't read staves." "Then listen." Luna sang the first verse without the lute. Her voice filled the loft. Jade watched her mouth. "Key of A," Jade said. She struck a chord. It was wrong. "D," Luna said. Jade struck D. Riley Crash sat behind the kit and tapped a slow four. She said nothing. She listened to Luna hum the chorus, then hit the snare on the two and four without asking. "Faster," Luna said. Riley doubled the tempo. The bassist locked in on the third pass. Jade found the bridge by the fifth. They ran the song eight times. Luna's throat burned. They ran it a ninth. By the third song Jade was writing the changes on her palm in charcoal. By the fifth, Riley Crash had stopped tapping and started hitting. The floor shook. A neighbor pounded the wall. Nobody stopped. The fourth hour ended. They had six songs standing. Not clean. Standing. They crossed the yard to the tavern where the steward waited. The room was full. Miners, farmhands, two guards off shift. The stage was small. Luna plugged her lute into a borrowed cabinet and looked at Riley. Riley counted them in with her sticks. They played the fast one first. The room went quiet on the verse and loud on the chorus. By the third song, boots were on the tables. By the sixth, the steward was at the bar counting coin into a leather pouch. He handed it to Luna at the end of the night. "Next hold's four days," he said. "They won't be this kind." Luna weighed the pouch. It was lighter than she'd hoped.

Luna counted the coin on the tavern table at dawn. Four days of road stood between them and the next hold. On foot, with a lute, a bass, a guitar, and a drum kit, they would arrive dead on their feet and unfit to play. She needed a wagon by noon or the tour ended before it started. She walked to the stable behind the tavern. The stableman scratched his beard and named a price. It was three times what the pouch held. He would not come down. He said a cart with a beast to pull it was worth what it was worth. Luna went back to the loft where the band still slept. The practice space above the tavern smelled of last night's sweat. Jade slept curled around her guitar case. Riley Crash sat up first, sticks already in her hand out of habit. Riley Thorne swung her legs off the bench and reached for her bass. "We're short," Luna said. "We can't buy a wagon. We can't walk it either." Jade sat up. She pushed purple hair out of her face. "Then we earn it here. One more night." "The steward said play once and go." "Not the tavern." Jade nodded at the window. Across the yard a smaller building leaned under a slanted roof, its colored glass panes bright in the morning sun. A hand-painted sign advertised the loft for rent by the hour. "That place hires out for private shows. Merchants pay to book bands for guild suppers. I saw a notice tacked by the door." Luna went down and read it. A wool guild wanted music that evening for a contract signing. The pay was posted. It would cover the wagon and the beast and leave a little over. She walked back to the tavern steward. She asked if he would keep his room quiet tonight and let the band play the guild supper across the yard. He shrugged and said the guild's coin was not his coin. They played the supper that night in the rented loft. The wool merchants sat at long tables. Luna kept the volume down for the first two songs. By the third she let Riley Crash open up. The merchants stopped talking and started listening. The guild master paid in full at the end and added a copper for the drummer. At dawn Luna walked to the stable with the fresh purse. She counted out the price. The stableman handed her the lead of a broad, patient mare hitched to a flatbed cart with slat sides. The bed was long enough for the kit and the cases and three sleeping bandmates while one drove. Luna climbed onto the bench and took the reins. Jade loaded the guitar. Riley Thorne laid the bass across a folded blanket. Riley Crash tied the kit down with rope. The road east was four days long. Now they had wheels under them.