Chapter 1
There was a fiddler on the platform when the train came in. High, shivering notes met low, shivering commuters in unusually icy December air. Frost was coming tonight, but the fiddler didn’t care. The case lay open at his feet, a yawning maw for money, and he played what he thought the milling crowd of commuters and students from the next town over wanted to hear, played the lively, and the simple, and the easy-to-enjoy. The money-making tunes that every busker knew. That which would, in theory, separate commuters from coins.
He was wrong. Not just in his assessment, but in his poise and playing. He held the bow at too wide an angle, his elbow was too lax, and his shoulder loose and easy in a way it shouldn’t have been. His hair was tidily scraped into place, and he watched the
