“Crowded,” Tara grumbled after she shoved past stevedores and stockbrokers to reach Jones by the stage. “I thought we had a deal.”

“We do,” Jones said. “But rumor travels faster than truth. People hear what’s said between the lines. I hope your exclusive’s worth the delay.”

A hush capped the crowd’s murmur, as if a conductor had given signal. The Guild’s front doors opened and two lines of velvet-robed choristers emerged in step. At the square’s edge a man argued with a hot dog seller, and traffic clanked and clattered as usual, but the silence by the stage was so deep Tara could hear each singer’s footfalls. Onstage, they curved into a shallow U. A singer in darker robes stepped forth, raised her hand. Tara heard a pitch but saw no pipe.

That morning’s song had been a stripped-down version of the Paupers’ Quarter fight, sans goddess: incantation more than melody, like the call-and-response hymns from Edgemont services. The simple line emphasized the words, which were the point.

At least, Tara had thought they were.

But words were not the point of the Criers’ song that night. Tara heard a theme stated in the bass and restated, discordant, by other voices, describing the Paupers’ Quarter gathering. The music swelled, shards of melody grating against one other, when Shale arrived. And then, the piece trembled on the verge of decoherence—she was not musician enough to give what happened its proper name. Harmonic fragments locked into a new, shining tone, a strange expanded inside-out chord, a brilliance. She caught her breath to keep from weeping.

Exhaustion, she told herself. Heightened emotions from two days’ hard work.

She knew she was lying.

No single word betrayed Seril or broke Jones’s promise. But Shale—although four decades of suspicion had primed the crowd to call him a monster—brought them glory through this music.

The choir held the chord, shifting like the light a full moon cast through diamond. Then came the dying fall, a restatement of the initial themes to summarize the night’s events.

Tara’s eyes were hot. Entirely due to the intensity with which she’d watched the stage. Of course.

The song ended. The audience stood rigid as if a current ran through them.

Applause came in torrents.

Tara turned to Jones. The journalist had her hat cocked back, her chin up, her hands in the pockets of her overcoat. The corners of her mouth turned up.

“Between the lines.” Tara had to shout to be heard through the cheers.

Jones shrugged. Every line on her face said, satisfied. “I’ve waited a long time for something to fit that music.”

“You wrote that?”

“A year back. Finally had cause to use it.”

“That was”—she searched for the right word—“more generous than I expected.”