Iridian

21. LEGACY

Someone was playing a jazz piece on the antique square piano. It was the one piece of furniture that stuck out like a sore thumb in Llewellyn's otherwise very modern living room, but he was loathe to move it—instead, leaving it to sit in the corner near the stairs. I didn't even know the piano was still in tune since I'd never heard anyone play in. Until now.

The song reflected my pensive mood as I stared absently at the spring shower beyond the window, letting the mildly bitter tang of the coffee I was sipping to sink into my tongue. The smoky scent of burning tobacco wafted from the living room, mingling with the strong aroma of the coffee.

"Halden, can you please smoke outside?" Paige's irate voice carried over easily. The music stopped on a sour note. I didn't have to try hard to listen from where I was standing just beyond the entryway.

"It's not smoke. It is mood," Halden drawled, in an attempt to mollify her. "Jazz, and cigars."

"I love the jazz, but not the cigars. Now shoo," she returned. I imagined Paige must be tapping a foot impatiently just about now. There was a loud sigh accompanied by the scrapping of a bench being pushed.

"Spoilsport."

Halden sauntered around the corner from the living room, a lazy grin plastered to his face with a half-burnt panatela clamped between his teeth. He wore a vest over a loose shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal the array of tattoos on his arms and hands.

"I love annoying her," he twinkled. "She's so easy."

I shook my head at his mischief. In the week I'd returned to Ashbrook, I'd learnt that Halden was a bit of rogue, and Paige was his favourite victim. He had filled out, erasing the emaciated look he had sported in the catacombs but his frame was still very thin. Side by side, we really didn't look much like each other, except for the eyes—only then did the family resemblance become very apparent.

"Come daughter. Long faces are not to be made on rainy days. Sunny always on the inside," he tapped his chest with a sagacious expression. "Let us leave curdled archivists who lack the palate for the scent of cigars to their morose, unexciting existence."

"Curdled?" I raised a brow.

He nodded with a devious smile, his eyes flicking towards the room he had just exited.

"Shoo!" Paige said from the living room entryway, hands on hips. Halden's laughter rang.

I followed him to the backyard patio and perched on the wide railing as he settled himself into a rocking chair. The rain continued to drizzle, creating a curtain of water that misted over the edge of the roof. It was a patsy sort of rain, nothing compared to the violent thunderstorms I'd once been used to.

"When you spend a lot of time evading detection, you learn to blend in and become someone else," he mentioned conversationally, puffing a smoke ring. "This is my jazz pianist persona."

I looked away from my contemplation of the weather, surprised at his choice of topic. Neither of us had gotten around to discussing our favourite foods, much less personal history. We were still circling each other around the father/daughter relationship and it was not something that we were comfortable with just yet. My mother was the one true link between us and she was the subject that we avoided most of all without even saying.

"Did you always play?" I asked, following his cue.

He shrugged. "A little. I started because I was curious. I'm a farm boy, you understand. I'd never seen anything fancier than a shepherd's pipe. There was a harpsichord in Atreus' parlour at the time and one of the maids knew how to play. That in itself was unusual, because maids aren't usually educated in such things but she was—the bastard daughter by some lord and had had some advantage of education for a time. I suppose the lord must've indulged her until she grew too old and had to be placed somewhere. Atreus had some unusual people in his household, misfits of various kinds. His butler was a reformed thief if I'm not mistaken. But I digress. You were asking me about the piano."