“Just what am I supposed to do with this?” she asked archly, but she reversed her position on the piano bench so the piano was at her back and gave the guitar strings an experimental strum, adjusting the high E until the pitch was true. They were new strings, and the E liked to slip.

He didn’t answer her, just pulled up a chair so he would face her when he sat in it. He dragged a low table over beside his chair and set the flute on it. Then he searched the cases and pulled out an instrument she hadn’t seen him use—a viola.

“Oooo,” she said. “Can I see?”

He raised an eyebrow but handed it over. “It’s Da’s,” he told her.

She glanced in the f-hole and found a maker’s ink signature and the date 1872. It didn’t tell her much. She reached out blindly and he gave her the bow. She tested it, tightened a peg an eighth of a turn, and stroked the bow across the strings, smiling at the rich tone.

“Bran has good taste,” she said, handing the viola and bow back to him.

He took more care in tuning it than she had with the guitar—as one does, she thought with amusement. Violas—like their little sister, the violin—were temperamental. When he was satisfied, he sat down, the viola held like a cello, instead of the more usual under-the-chin method.

“Ready?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “No? What are we playing? Or do I get to make something up? How about a key signature?”

He grinned. “I have faith. Join in when you are ready.”

He picked up the flute and … he was right, she recognized the tune.

She’d been making an effort at reconnecting with a few of her friends from Northwestern. A few months ago one of them had shared a link to a self-proclaimed Mongolian folk metal band. They called themselves the Hu. They played modified traditional Mongolian instruments in addition to those more commonly found in rock bands. They also used a type of throat singing in which a single singer produced more than one note at the same time.

They sounded exactly like what she’d have expected musicians from Genghis Khan’s troops to sound like if they’d been given the power of modern instruments. She loved it.

She’d shared their music with Charles, he’d listened to a couple of songs, nodded his head—and she’d thought that had been that. Apparently, she’d been wrong.

He began, as the original song did, with the flute, switching seam-lessly to the viola, which he used to mimic the traditional horsehead fiddle. When he sang, he used the throat-singing technique—in, as far as she could tell, the original Mongolian.