By the time Yuka met Steve Borman, nobody knew Yuka had ever had another name. Then Alex Torni invited her to become part of Rome’s Burning, and it was like she had never had another home.
CHAPTER FIVE
Melbourne, Australia, 2014
Despite its desperately humble origins, the evening meal Yuka assembled was well received. With Yuka’s history of sourcing meals in the cheapest way possible, this was considered a terrific success. Laszlo even went so far as to compliment her sincerely, an event which left Yuka speechless with embarrassed pleasure and Laszlo gruffly carrying dishes to the sink to hide his face.
As further distraction from the awkwardness of the exchange, Yuka laid her damaged sticks on the table. ‘I need new ones.’
Sal brushed a curious finger over the pulverised tips.
Yuka shrugged. ‘The dead under the market woke. I put them back to sleep.’
‘And you’re only telling us now?’ Sal wasn’t amused.
‘If it was serious, I would have fetched you. They and the energy that woke them sleep again. Now I need more sticks.’
Before Sal could argue the point, Steve, leaning back in a chair with his hands behind his head, drawled, ‘You know what those old burial places are like, Sal. Folks shift a few bones, build a car park or a shopping centre right over the rest and think that’s it. They don’t hear the dead spinning in their graves.’
‘It’s not funny,’ Sal said.
‘Naw, ain’t funny,’ Steve agreed. ‘Ain’t nothing too serious either. Some bones are just bones remembering flesh for a space. No evil in it. Hush ‘em down, like Yuka said, and it’s fine. You know it, Sal. You’re just on edge. Let it be.’
‘I can’t be the only one on edge, Steve. How can you-?’ His throat closed up before he could finish the accusation.
Steve leaned forward, dropping his hand over Sal’s fingers splayed on the tabletop. ‘I’ve been with this band since before Alex and Kurt. I’ve seen people I love die. I’ve seen ‘em be eaten by the dark, and by monsters, and you know I’m not being merely poetical when I say that. But I keep going because if I give up, I watched people I love die for nothing.’
Sal’s chest rose and fell in a shuddering sigh. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m trying.’
‘I know you are. Try to breathe. The world’s full of restless things, but it don’t mean they’re all trying to eat us. Let’s get our heads around the new gig, sort out our rehearsal schedule. Tomorrow, we’ll get Yuka’s sticks and we’ll scout for new talent.’
Not replacement talent. Never replacements. Whoever they found to join them – if anyone – they would change the band and make it something new. It’s how the band had worked for seven hundred years, since the first piper and drummer joined forces to protect their city. Band members came and went; the name of the troupe changed with the changing leaders, but the band endured under the Grandfather’s Axe principle. The component parts had changed over and over again, yet the troupe maintained an historical continuity.
That’s how each generation had explained it to the next, at any rate, and every Minstrel who ever joined embraced the philosophical paradox, because who would remember every single person who had ever been part of it, who were recorded into the oral history and carefully stored journals, if not them? They had to be the recorders of their own history, since the rest of the world generally had no idea who they were or what they did. They worked for nobody but the balance, they answered to no-one but each other. They did what must be done and moved on, generation after generation, with nobody but themselves to know that the singer who had closed a ghoul in a tomb in Zagreb in 2002 had any connection to the medieval piper and drummer who had sealed a guilt-ridden god in a stone jar in the Thames.
Yuka had recovered from Laszlo’s praise enough to help him dry and stack away the dishes he’d washed. While they took care of the domestic chores, Sal and Steve drafted a potential set list and a rehearsal schedule.
As Steve, Sal and Yuka worked through the set selection in more detail, Laszlo, who knew none of the songs, cradled the violin Steve had earlier handed to him. He’d spent hours polishing and tuning the instrument, and played some of his old repertoire on it, wondering what he’d done to be worthy.
The ‘fiddle’ that Steve had retrieved from the trunk was the same he played that terrible day in Erdõdülõ. It was very old, the back elaborately carved with birds and vines. Whoever had made it – and it wasn’t a Micheli or Amati or any of the other early known luthiers – had been a genius with both wood and music. The violin was beautifully balanced and modulated. Laszlo had been lucky enough to hold and play a Stradivarius in his time, an exquisite instrument. This faded, battered, beautiful thing was ten times the instrument that Stradivarius had been.
Well, for a start, it was unlikely the Stradivarius had ever been used to sing trees into weapons to stake vampires or ignite the air itself.
Laszlo ran his finger gently over the fretboard, and wondered if the old violin knew it had been used to help kill two men who had cherished this instrument as part of their heritage: who had loved each other and their little daughter as fiercely as they had loved their not-famous yet somehow infamous band.
As the last members of that infamous band reached the end of a song, Laszlo asked into the hush: ‘What did that man Malone mean about “what they say about you”?’
‘We got a reputation in the business,’ Steve said. ‘Musos like to have us as their support act. It’s a word of mouth thing.’
‘But why?’
‘Word spreads about a band like ours,’ Sal said, like it was a lecture he’d heard before but never given. ‘There’s magic in our music, even when we’re not singing spells. If you sing enough magic into the instrument, it will seep out no matter what you’re doing.’ He nodded at the violin. ‘That one has almost four hundred years of music and spellwork in it.’
‘No offence to your playing, Laszlo,’ interrupted Steve, ‘but a six year old could’ve played that day and it would’ve helped.’
Laszlo believed it. He remembered too well the power of the song swelling out of the violin, and how he had merely to follow its lead.
‘When a Minstrel band plays support, it’s a golden ticket for the main act,’ Sal said. ‘No matter how good or bad the headline act is, we play and the audiences love them.
‘The gigs are always the best. Merchandise sells faster,’ Yuka added.
‘That’s why we only play shows when we need the money, even though we always need the money,’ Sal added the old joke with a faint smile. ‘Great power must be used wisely.’ Then sadness enveloped him again, because the person who used to tell that tired joke was dead.
Laszlo wondered if he should say something comforting, or change the topic – but Sal scrubbed at his face again.
‘You know we have to send half of what we make for Gretel.’
Steve shifted his bass from his knee to the floor. ‘You don’t need to worry about Gretel. We’re going to take care of her.’
‘How? Where’s she going to end up? Your niece can’t babysit her forever; nobody knows where her birth mother went after she handed Gretel to Alex and Kurt. We can’t look after her. We couldn’t keep either of her fathers alive, we certainly can’t keep a child safe on the road.’
‘I said,’ Steve said with sharp emphasis, ‘she’s gonna be fine. I got it under control.’ He met Yuka’s glare. ‘And don’t you start with me, Yuka. We heard all you and Sal had to say about the irresponsibility of Kurt and Alex wanting kids way back then. It’s done. A hundred told-you-sos won’t change the situation.’
Yuka’s