The Hush Read Online Free Page B

clapped him out to the end of the song. When he finished, the room broke into applause and Chester took to his feet, bowing.
    â€˜Thank you, thank you,’ he said. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, any requests?’
    A woman nearby shouted ‘“The Captain’s Cat”!’ to general cheers of agreement. Then a man requested a bawdy song about a cowgirl and her whip, and his wife responded with a tirade of irritable whispers. A few people laughed, shouting support for his request.
    Chester waved his bow, encouraging more suggestions. Song titles flew around the room, and he nodded and laughed at the ruder choices. But he found his gaze drawn inexorably back to his left, to the hulking boy with the cowboy hat. The boy had finished his stew, but he was still watching him. In the dark of the corner, his pale blue eyes looked like the globes of sorcery lamps.
    â€˜â€œThe Nightfall Duet.”’
    The boy’s voice was deep. Quiet. But somehow, even over the rustle and cheers of the crowd, Chester heard it. His throat tightened. His eyes met the boy’s, and there was a long moment of silence between them.
    â€˜The Nightfall Duet’.
    The song had once been called ‘The Thieves’ Duet’, but it had been renamed in honour of the notorious Nightfall Gang. Over the past year or so, the gang had become legendary for their daring robberies, fleecing the wealthy and giving to the poor. And as theirreputation had grown, the tales had grown ever more elaborate.
    Some stories told of the Nightfall Gang stealing forty pegasi from a rancher’s stable, or robbing the grandest bank in Weser City. Some people said they were ghosts in the night, waging a war on behalf of the poor. Others claimed they were evil sorcerers, who twisted the Song to gain their unnatural powers of thievery.
    And for a gang who pulled off the most difficult of burglaries … well, only the most difficult song could be named in their honour. ‘The Nightfall Duet’ was a punishing piece of music, designed to be played by two instruments. It was filled with tricky little runs of notes and even – unusually for a fiddle – a sequence of three- and four-note chords. When Chester’s old boss had taught it to him, the man had barely been able to play it himself, and he’d had decades of practice in his instrument shop. It was a song to test a musician’s mettle.
    It was no accident that the boy had picked this song. This was a challenge. If Chester was good enough, this song could bring the audience to tears. But if he wasn’t up to scratch …
    Well, knowing the horrific squawks that a fiddle could produce, there’d be tears of a different type entirely.
    Chester stared at the boy a moment longer. He forgot the cheering men, the laughing women. He forgot the sloshing beer and the pockets full of coins. There was just this moment. This stranger. This challenge.
    He closed his eyes. He pressed his bow to the strings.
    And he played.
    The music flowed soft, then louder. Chester kept his eyes closed and his mind focused. He was vaguely aware that the room was quieting down, settling into confusion at his choice of tune. This was not a bawdy folk song. It was raw and rich and melting, like butter on the strings, and it dripped down Chester’s fingers into the fiddle. He felt his skin tingle oddly, as it sometimes did when he played music. A tightness grew in his stomach now, a sting pricked in the back of his eyes. The rhythm called to him. He could feel it in the room around him. He could sense it in the fiddle strings, taste it in the air, feel it prickle and blister, heating his skin.
    No, not just the rhythm.
    The Song.
    Chester played his music and, for a moment, the Song played back to him. It played quiet and refined through the floorboards: a gentle waltz. It played wild and raucous through the farmers’ bodies: a folk song made of foam and waves. It played through