Soul Music

alley off Gleam Street, a fact that would have interested the four enforcers of the Musicians’ Guild sitting outside a piano-shaped hole in Phedre Road.

    Susan strode through the rooms of Death, seething gently with anger and just a touch of fear, which only made the anger worse.
    How could anyone even think like that? How could anyone be content to just be the personification of a blind force? Well, there were going to be changes…
    Her father had tried to change things, she knew. But only because he was, well, quite frankly, a bit soppy.
    He’d been made a duke by Queen Keli of Sto Lat. Susan knew what the title was supposed to mean; it was supposed to mean “war leader.” But her father never fought anyone. She’d never seen him with a sword. He just spent all his time traveling from one wretched city-state to another, talking to people and trying to get them to talk to other people. He’d never killed anyone, although he might have talked a few politicians to death. That didn’t seem to be much of a job for a war leader. Admittedly there didn’t seem to be all the little wars there used to be, but it was…well…not a proud kind of life.
    She walked through the hall of lifetimers. Even those on the highest shelves rattled gently as she passed.
    She’d save lives. The good could be spared, and the bad could die young. It would all balance up, too. She’d show him. As for responsibility, well…humans always made changes. That was what being human was all about.
    Susan opened another door and stepped into the library.
    It was a room even bigger than the hall of lifetimers. Bookcases rose like cliffs; a haze obscured the ceiling.
    But of course it’d be childish, she told herself, to think that she could go in waving the scythe like a magic wand and turn the world into a better place overnight. It might take some time. So she should start in a small way and work up.
    She held out a hand.
    “I’m not going to do the voice,” she said. “That’s just unnecessary drama and really a bit stupid. I just want the book of Imp y Celyn, thank you very much.”
    Around her the busyness of the library went on. Millions of books quietly carried on writing themselves, causing a rustle like that of cockroaches.
    She remembered sitting on a knee or, rather, sitting on a cushion on a knee, because the knee itself had been out of the question. Watching a bony finger follow the letters as they formed on the page. She’d learned to read her own life —
    “I’m waiting,” said Susan meaningfully.
    She clenched her fists.
    IMP Y CELYN, she said.
    The book appeared in front of her. She just managed to catch it before it fluttered to the floor.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    She flicked through the pages of his life until she came to the last one, and stared. Then she hastily went back until she found, written neatly down, his death in the Drum. It was all there—all untrue. He hadn’t died. The book was lying. Or—and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it—the book was true and reality was lying.
    What was more important was that from the moment of his death the book was writing music. Page after page had been covered with neat staves. While Susan watched, a clef drew itself in a series of careful loops.
    What did it want? Why should it save his life?
    And it was vitally important that she saved him instead. She could feel the certainty like a ball bearing in her mind. It was absolutely imperative. She’d never met him up close, she’d not exchanged a word with him, he was just one person, but it was him she had to save.
    Grandfather had said she shouldn’t do that sort of thing. What did he know about anything? He’d never lived .

    Blert Wheedown made guitars. It was quiet, satisfying work. It took him and Gibbsson, the apprentice, about five days to make a decent instrument, if the wood was available and properly seasoned. He was a conscientious man who’d devoted many years to the perfection of one type of musical instrument, on which he himself was no mean performer.
    In his experience, guitarists came in three categories. There were the ones he thought of as real musicians, who worked at the Opera House or for one of the small private orchestras. There were the folk singers, who couldn’t play but that was all right because most of them couldn’t sing either. Then there were the—hemhem—troubadours and other swarthy types, who thought a guitar was, like a red rose in the