Chapter 1

It is always there: The sound. The noise. The music. Playing in my head, thrumming in my fingertips, singing in my heart. A constant companion, always trying to escape, bubbling to the surface, sneaking out unconciously.

It’s one of the reasons people find me so odd, I think; a shabby-looking, wild-haired stick figure lurking the streets, tapping out rhythms on brick wall and bar top. Humming half-melodies. Belching out onomatopoeic forms of rhythm and harmony like a possessed accordion.

One of the reasons.

But it’s there nevertheless. Even now. An unconscious form of emotion, expression and personality. I am what a magus would call a vestibulant, if such people weren’t outlawed from the kingdom. Regular folk call my kind awaever. With a decent instrument in my hands, I can focus it; shape it; turn it into a living thing. These noises and sounds. This music. This magic.

It was in my aching head on the morning that I staggered, batter and bruised from a Kettleblack jail cell — not the first time, I might add — the victim of constabular malice. It had obviously been a slow night for the neighborhood authorities the night before and an errant busker looking to make earn a few coppers probably seemed like bargain entertainment.

I had been running the blinders the evening prior, an old sympathy grift that involves wearing a cheap veil over the eyes while playing. Nothing you can’t actually see through, just something to give the impression of disability; tug at the old heartstrings of the rubes on the street. It gets better tips.

It also hides from plain site that I’m different than everyone else in the Kettleblack district; in the whole city of Melloch, for that matter. Maybe in all of Vanderhelm. It hides the gift my mother gave me: My Venthan eyes.

People don’t take too well to the Ventha in Melloch. Hell, most people have never even seen one before. When the kingdom of Vanderhelm was essentially walled off in self-imposed exile, it was to “protect us from the Urkal hordes.” It also shut us off from the rest of the civilized world.

The Ventha hail from the southern continent, a short, harrowing ride across the Blunt Straits from Vanderhelm. Theirs is an egalitarian society, so I’m told, steeped in magic, culture, and commerce. Like most folk around here, I’ve never actually seen a full-blooded Ventha. Well, not unless you count my mother. But I have no memory of her.

I have, on the other hand, seen a half-blooded Ventha, as have the people I know. I see one every time I catch my reflection in a shop window, or mornings in a mirror above the washbasin of whichever companion I’ve managed to charm myself into the good graces of the night before. As I’ve said: My mother was Venthan. My father… well, he was son of a bitch. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Ventha look, speak, and act pretty much like the men and women of Vanderhelm. I’ve heard they’re a little bit taller, slighter of build, perhaps more angular of feature. Venthan eyes are like those of other men and women as well, except that the irises are huge. Much like a cat’s, Venthan eyes are luminous and reflective and show no white. My mother’s eyes were cobalt blue and shone like the twin moons, or so I’m told. I have my mother’s eyes.

Which brings me back to the blinders, and my misfortune of having attracted the attention of a particularly bored constable on this particular evening. He wasn’t too keen on my playing that night, apparently, or of my intentions to profit from the generosity of the good people of Kettleblack, that being what it is.

It was a brisk autumn evening on the Division Road, lit by the gas lamps and the meager moonlight of Cluva. The typical rabble shuffled past — cretins, whores of both genders, thugs, businesspeople — as I stood leaning against a lamppost. My breath showed in faint plumes. I was in the middle of the third chorus of Rag and Bone, applying my considerable charms to the meandering current of folk when a rough hand caught my wrist and wrenched it free of the neck of my instrument, spinning me around.

“That’ll be enough of that racket, blind boy.”

He pulled the veil from my eyes a moment later, and I knew my night was about to take a turn for the worse.

“What th’feck?” He started. “What kind of beast be you?”

With a mighty cuff to the side of my head, I suddenly found myself on the ground, my instrument clattering to the ground out of reach. I looked up at the officer dimly, a dull ringing joining the music in my head. He rolled me over roughly and applied a pair of irons to my wrists, patting me down. Upon discovering the lace holding my neck-pouch, he gave it a sharp tugged and pulled it free, cutting the skin on my neck.

“What have we here?” He mused gruffly, pressing his knee into my back. I heard the coins tumble into his palm. “Not much of a living to be made on the streets of Kettleblack it would seem,” he grunted.

And with that he heaved me up and swept my cap — and de facto tip jar — from the ground, pocketing those few coins I’d collected from my endeavors as well. Prodding me forward with his stick, I staggered on wobbly legs. It was with the faintest afterthought that he spun and grabbed the neck of my instrument, slinging it over his shoulder like a baton.