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music.
    "Can you hear me, Annice?"
    "I hear you."
    Slane picked up his first pen. "Begin recall."

    Deeply in trance, Annice started to speak, each word carefully enunciated. "I left Elbasan in early morning, one day after Second Quarter Festival…"
    The two quarter scroll began to fill with bardic shorthand and Slane let the greater part of his mind wander. Some bards never quite got the hang of editing out their personal lives, but Annice, no matter how deep she went, had never let a salacious detail slip.
    Observant , Slane acknowledged. But boring . With any luck, he'd be on recall when Tadeus came in. Now there was a bard who knew how to party.
    A baby. Shoulders braced on the stone chimney, Annice slid down until she settled on the roof of Bardic Hall. She was going to have a baby. Between her discussion with the captain and the rest of the day spent in recall, this was the first chance she'd really had to just think about it.
    At least the weaver hadn't lied about the wool for her breeches being preshrunk.
    A baby.
    She let her head fall back against the masonry hard enough to snap her teeth together. "What in the Circle do I think I'm doing?"
    Having a baby.
    "I don't know anything about babies!"
    But she knew she wanted it. Had wanted it from the moment Elica had told her. Or perhaps a little after that, when she'd calmed down and stopped demanding to see a healer who knew what she was doing.
    A cold wind off the harbor moved her around to sit on the palace side of the chimney. In a little while, when the lamps were lit inside, she'd be able to see her old suite. It wouldn't take much to discover who was living there now—she could Sing a kigh over to the windows in a couple of minutes—but she didn't want to know. Hadn't ever wanted to know. She went into the palace to take her turn witnessing in the courts but that was it. She'd never been asked to play at any function and she'd never attended any that were within her rights as a bard to attend.
    Although Bardic Hall and the palace were both within the Citadel walls, there was no chance of an accidental meeting with His Gracious Majesty, King Theron. He lived surrounded by insulating layers of people and protocol and moved in circles far from those of a lowly Bard. Even while growing up with the full rights and privileges of a princess, she'd gone for months without seeing her father.
    But Theron could have called for her at any time. Their father had often spoken with the bards just returned from Walks rather than relying solely on the records. Apparently, it hadn't occurred to him that a bard who'd spent the first fourteen years of her life learning politics and protocol might make useful observations.
    It didn't take Bardic Memory to recall the message that had accompanied the invitation to her cousin's joining—Theron had added a pompous declaration of forgiveness for the mistakes of her youth. Well, he'd been the one who'd cut her off from everything she'd known and she hadn't forgiven him . She'd said as much in the message that had gone back to the palace. All she'd wanted was for him to say that he was sorry for the way he'd hurt her. He never had.
    It didn't matter. As the captain had said, the bards were her family now.
    Annice slid one hand inside her jacket and pressed it against her waist. She remembered how Theron had looked when he'd laid his heir in her arms. He'd stared down at his daughter as though she was the most amazing creature he'd ever seen, as though she was the only baby ever born.
    Annice tilted her head to watch the sky as lights began to break up the block of shadow dusk had wrapped around the palace. I want to feel what Theron felt when he looked down at Onele. I want something I can love that much .
    A gust of wind, cold across her ear, brought her head around in time to see a kigh disappear below the eaves. So much for quiet contemplation; she wouldn't be alone for much longer.
    "Although, come to think of it, I haven't exactly