Songmaster Read Online Free PDF Page B

needn’t act so upset about it. It isn’t exactly a secret, you know. Whoever finds the body will know, that’s all. Whoever finds that the Songmaster in the High Room is dead will know.”
    “How will I know?”
    “It will be obvious to you. Just go and tell him or her that he or she is supposed to take care of funeral arrangements. It’s all that simple. But you really ought to act quickly. The Songhouse shouldn’t be long without someone in the High Room.”
    He turned back to his work with a finality that told Kya-Kya she must leave, must be about her business, certainly must not bother him anymore. She left. And wandered the halls. She had thought to be quit of the Songhouse in a matter of months, the least important person ever to have been there, and suddenly she was supposed to choose the leader of the place. What kind of crazy system is this? she thought. And what the hell kind of rotten luck for me, of all people!
    But it was not rotten luck, and as she wandered through the stone corridors, all of them chilly with the winter outside, she realized that no one ever came to the High Room unbidden except maintenance people, and all the maintenance people were Deafs or Blinds, those who had not made it into the highest reaches of the singing folk. They could not sing, they could not teach—and so it was left to one of them to stumble across the body and, being impartial, not a member of the eligible group, choose fairly the person who obviously should be the Songmaster in the High Room.
    Who?
    She went to the Common Rooms and saw the teachers moving among the classes and knew that she could not suddenly elevate a teacher above his rank; it was tempting to be whimsical, to take vengeance on the Songhouse by naming an incompetent to head it, but it would be cruel to the incompetent so called, and she couldn’t destroy someone that way. She knew enough to know that it was just as cruel to lift someone above where he ought to be as it was to force him to stay below his true station. I won’t cause misery.
    But the Songmasters, the logical group to choose from—she knew none of them, except by reputation. Onn, a gifted teacher and singer, but always assigned as a consultant to everybody because he couldn’t live with the necessity of keeping a fixed schedule, meeting with obnoxious people, and making, of all things, decisions. Much better to give advice. No, Onn was not the one anyone would expect, though he was by far the nicest. And Chuffyun was too old, far too old. He would not be long behind Nniv.
    In fact, just as Hrrai had told her, the choice was obvious. But not one she enjoyed, not at all. Esste, who was cold to everyone except for the little boy she was promoting as a possibility for Mikal’s Songbird. Esste, who had reached down into the Common Rooms and lowered herself to be a teacher when she had been administrator of half the Songhouse, all for the sake of a little boy. No one made such great sacrifices for me, Kya-Kya thought bitterly. But Esste was a great singer, one who could light fires in every heart in the Songhouse—or quench those fires, if she wanted to. And Esste was above the petty jealousies and competitions that were endemic to the Songhouse. Esste was above such things in her attitude—and now she would be above them in station, too.
    Kya-Kya stopped a master (who was quite surprised at having a Deaf interrupt her) and asked where she might find Esste.
    “With Ansset. With the boy.”
    “And where is he?”
    “In his stall.”
    Stall. The boy had been promoted. He couldn’t be more than six yet, and he was already in Stalls and Chambers. It turned Kya-Kya’s mouth down, her stomach dull. But in a moment she brightened again. The boy had been advanced by Esste, that’s all. He would be in the Songhouse all his life, except for a few years as a performer. While she would be free, could see all of Tew—more, could see other planets, could go, perhaps, to Earth itself where Mikal