Free The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III by Mercedes Lackey Page B

and headed for the bathroom.
    The water-cascade worked just like the one she remembered, and to her great pleasure the soap was delicately scented with jessamine and left a fresh perfume in her hair. She luxuriated in the hot water pouring over her body, washing every last trace of the long journey away. This would be wonderful for easing the aches and strains of long playing, caused by sitting in one position for hours at a time.
    She dried and styled her long, waist-length black hair in an arrangement very unlike Nightingale’s simple braid; this was an elaborate coil and twist along the back of her head, with the remainder of her hair emerging as a tail from the center of the knot, or allowed to trail as a few delicate tendrils on either side of her face. She slipped the silken dress on over her clean body—it would have been a desecration and a sin to have put it on without a full bath—reveling in the sensuous feel of the silk caressing her hips and legs, slipping sleekly over her arms.
    Now she took the cover off the larger of her two harps, the one she could only play while seated, and tuned it. She ignored her stomach as she did so—she could eat later, if need be, but at the moment she had to get the harp ready in good time before her performance. Kyran had told her that he would send one of the servers up to her room, to guide her to the Oak Grove when it was time for her to play—her performance would extend past midnight, just this once, because she would never have had time to bathe and change and ready herself before suppertime.
    It was very hard, though, to ignore the savory aromas wafting up from below. Most of them were as strange as they were pleasant—not exactly a surprise, if most of the clientele were not human.
    She was going to surprise Kyran, however. He probably expected her to perform human-made music only, but Lyrebird was a bird of a different feather altogether.
    Hmm. Perhaps I ought to have worn the black!
    She was going to sing and play the music of at least three nonhuman cultures, besides the Elves. Human music would comprise the smallest part of her performance.
    And again, since very few people, even among the Gypsies and the Free Bards, knew that she collected the music of nonhumans, this would be utterly unlike Nightingale.
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    She retired to her room in a glow of triumph, harp cradled in her arms, two hours after midnight; entirely pleased with herself and her new surroundings. Her particular performance room—which was, indeed, decorated to resemble a grove of trees with moss-covered rocks for seats and tables “growing” up out of the floor—was far enough from the dance floor that her own quiet performance could go on undisturbed. She had begun with purely instrumental music, Elven tunes mostly, which attracted a small, mixed crowd. From there she ventured into more and more foreign realms, and before the night was over, there were folk standing in line, waiting for a seat in her alcove. Most of them were not human, which was precisely as she had hoped; word had spread quickly among the patrons of Freehold that there was a musician in the Oak Grove who could play anything and sing “almost” anything. Most of the nonhumans were hungry for songs from home—and most of the time she could oblige them with something, if not the exact song they requested.
    As she climbed the stairs to her room, oblivious to the cacophony of mixed music and babbling talk, she hardly noticed how tired she was. She was confident now that her salary would be in the three-or four-silver area, if not five. That would be enough; it would purchase the help of quite a number of children at a copper apiece. Kyran had checked on her during one of the busier moments, which was gratifying—he’d had a chance to see with his own eyes how many people were lining the walls, waiting for seats. His eyes had gone wide and round when he’d seen her in costume, too.
    He certainly didn’t expect that out of