Read A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong for Free Online Page B

remember what came next, and the denouement—the solo clarinet in the Phainomai —took me completely by surprise and made my throat tighten. I thought, I wrote that , and I made a mental note of that split second, like pressing a flower between the pages of a book, for later.
     
     
     
    It was only when the recital was over, and the conductor was taking his bow, that I saw him. At first, I really wasn’t sure. It was just a glimpse of a turned-away head, and when I looked again I’d lost him in the sea of faces. I told myself I was imagining things, and then I saw him again. He was looking straight at me.
    There was supposed to be another reception, but I told them I was feeling ill, which wasn’t exactly a lie. I went back to the guest suite. There wasn’t a lock or a bolt on the door, so I wedged the back of a chair under the handle.
    While I’d been at the recital, they’d delivered a whole load of presents. People give me things these days, now that I can afford to buy anything I want. True, the gifts I tend to receive are generally things I’d never buy for myself, because I have absolutely no need for them, and because I do have a certain degree of taste. On this occasion, the marquis had sent me a solid gold dinner service (for a man who, most evenings, eats alone in his rooms off a tray on his knees), a complete set of the works of Aurelianus, ornately bound in gilded calf and too heavy to lift, and a full set of Court ceremonial dress. The latter item consisted of a bright red frock coat, white silk knee breeches, white silk stockings, shiny black shoes with jewelled buckles, and a dress sword.
    I know everything I want to know about weapons, which is nothing at all. When I first came to the university, my best friend challenged another friend of ours to a duel. It was about some barmaid. Duelling was the height of fashion back then, and I was deeply hurt not to be chosen as a second (later, I found out it was because they’d chosen a time they knew would clash with my Theory tutorial, and they didn’t want me to have to skip it). They fought with smallswords in the long meadow behind the School of Logic. My best friend died instantly; his opponent lingered for a day or so and died screaming, from blood poisoning. If that was violence, I thought, you can have it.
    So, I know nothing about swords, except that gentlemen are allowed to wear them in the street; from which I assumed that a gentleman’s dress sword must be some kind of pretty toy. In spite of which, I picked up the marquis’ present, put on my reading glasses and examined it under the lamp.
    It was pretty enough, to be sure, if you like that sort of thing. The handle—I don’t know the technical terms—was silver, gilded in places, with a pastoral scene enamelled on the inside of the plate thing that’s presumably designed to protect your hand. The blade, though, was in another key altogether. It’s always hidden by the scabbard, isn’t it, so I figured it’d just be a flat, blunt rod. Not so. It was about three feet long, tapering, triangular in section, so thin at the end it was practically a wire but both remarkably flexible and surprisingly stiff at the same time, and pointed like a needle, brand new from the paper packet. I rested the tip on a cushion and pressed gently. It went through it and out the other side as though the cloth wasn’t there.
    I imagined myself explaining to the watch, no, the palace guard, they wouldn’t have the ordinary watch investigate a death in the palace. You know he was a wanted criminal? Quite so, a convicted murderer. He killed a man, then killed a guard escaping from prison. He was my student, years ago, before he went to the bad. I don’t know how he got in here, but he wanted money. When I refused, he said he’d have to kill me. There was a struggle. I can’t actually remember how the sword came to be in my hand, I suppose I must’ve grabbed it at some point. All I can remember is him lying