The crowds further down the stairs from where Erjed fell surged to grab me.
“Keep away from that sword!” that deadly voice said from inside the palace. “Avert your eyes from it if you can. It is cursed. Let the dead handle it.”
To my relief, people rightly recoiled. And who wouldn’t? That voice alone had just slaughtered an entire horde of Brinn.
And Erjed.
Her rich voice was all pleasant now. “Come in! Come in! Hurry into our chamber.”
No one moved. No one could bring themselves to step over me.
The woman sighed. “Bonesong?”
I startled. “Are you…addressing me?”
“That was the name Daened gave you, is it not?”
I was stunned. “You can hear me?”
“Of course. I am First Deathsinger Zasha. It is my business to hear the voice of spirits most can’t hear.”
I was delighted. She didn’t have to hold my hilt to hear me. She was someone I could talk to without immediately dooming. “It is good to meet you Zasha!”
“I am happy to meet you as well, son of Daened.” Her amusement turned apologetic. “Forgive the indignity, but would you permit us to wrap you in a cloth? The sight of you is disruptive. By design, I know, but—”
“Indignity?” I cried. “Don’t be absurd. Double wrap me if you can.”
Zasha laughed. “Acad, wrap Bonesong in your cloak and everyone else: get inside or I will assume you all are rejecting the Council of Song’s hospitality and shut the palace door.”
People scurried over me then.
Malinda clung to her dead father’s back, trying to stay behind. “Why didn’t you tell me your name, Brother Tooth? Bonesong is a pretty name.”
Since I knew she couldn’t hear me, I was willing to admit.“Because I like it when you call me brother.”
One of Erjed’s fellow shovelers gently picked her up. “Your father wouldn’t want you to stay out here.”
“But Brother Tooth can’t be left behind!” She yelled as she was dragged inside. “He’ll be lonely!”
I wasn’t left alone for long
I was gingerly picked up with a cloth by a dead man. Even with the fabric of a cloak between us, I knew no life was in the cold hand holding me. He was a walking corpse, I realized. Deathsongs stitched his decaying flesh back together and forced his muscles to move to a certain rhythm.
Zasha’s deathsongs. She controlled him; she made him, perhaps long ago.
Acad. I could feel his name through the cloth. Even without us actually bonding, I saw through his decaying eyes.
I saw Deathsinger Zasha. Her dark hair and bronze skin were in sharp contrast to her white robes.
She bowed to Acad although it was clear she was bowing to me. “Forgive us for not being able to receive you properly in this city’s final hour.”
“Do not worry. We don’t have time for such formalities regardless.”
“How true you are.” She turned into the palace and Acad followed her. He seemed accustomed to it. Perhaps he was her guard.
The palace’s receiving hall was a massive rectangle, precisely sculpted for perfect acoustics. I could hear choirs singing from the next room over; the sound bounced and reverberated off the stone walls.
At the farthest end was a stage. There sat a woman in slate gray robes, while a man in crimson paced around her.
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“You stand in hallowed halls before the Council of Songs!” Someone cried. The group of random civilians Erjed and I had picked up were appropriately cowed.
The red-robed man ignored them. “Did the man at the door speak true?”
Deathinger Zasha reached the base of the stage but did not climb to join them. “Aye, First Firesinger. He was wielding Bonesong.”
“Son of Daened,” the woman in gray addressed me in a strained voice. “What news do you bring of your father?”
“He died moments after my completion.”
“The First Steelsinger has fallen,” Deathsinger Zasha translated.
“A member of this council already felled!” The First Firesinger shook his head. “A dim omen indeed.”
“He knew the risks of remaining in his forge, so close to my failing walls,” the gray-robed woman said tiredly. She had to be the First Stonesinger, if she could dare to call the city walls hers. “And what of his remaining choir?”
“All dead.” I hoped they would not ask me how.
“The Order of Steelsingers is gone,” Deathsinger Zasha translated again.
“Centuries of knowledge,” the First Stonesinger murmured, “All turned to dust.”
“My sympathies, son of Daened.”
“Your song killed my father,” Malinda said quietly, but in that acoustically perfect hall, her bitter words rang loud and clear.
Deathinger Zasha turned toward Malinda. “I didn’t want to endanger civilians,” she said sadly, “So I wove my song for only those who held a blade. I am sorry.” She dipped her head solemnly to a little girl who couldn’t see it. “I didn’t think that Bonesong would have passed to a common man.”
“If you can sing like that, why aren’t you out there fighting them?” Malinda’s accusation bounced off the walls. “Why are you hiding in here?”
Deathsinger Zasha did not shirk from the echoes of a little girl’s wrath. “I must hide. I’m the only reason why Yethyr hasn’t drained the life of us all yet.”
“Who is Yethyr?”
“The Prince of Brinn. He is who besieges us. The Skeleton Prince, his people mockingly name him. How little they understand,” she huffed. “The only reason this siege is happening at all is because their ‘Skeleton Prince’ spent the precious months of this siege drawing a Death Circle around the whole city.”
Everyone gasped in horror. I clearly was the only one who didn’t know what that meant.
“Precisely,” Deathsinger Zasha said simply. “If my order ever ceases to sing our resistance, everyone in this city’s life will be consumed with a single deathsong.”
There were shrieks of hysteria deeper in the crowds.
“Even now, it is a risk for me to step away from our choir for this long. I am the only one among us with the volume to match that boy’s raw talent.” She smiled grimly. “But our stalling now can come to an end, now that we have you.” She turned to me
“What must I do?”
“Our palace has a Hellgate. We can use it to escape far from here.”
“What are we waiting for?”
“It must be sung open by members of all four orders and the entire choir of steelsingers remained at the forge to aid in the making of you. And now they are all dead.”
Because of me, though I could not bear to voice that truth.
“Do not tell me that the survivors of Datrea are doomed because people were too busy making me.”
“Do not despair, Bonesong. You shall be our salvation yet. You can sing the songs of your makers, can you not?”
I remembered my poor attempt to sing over Wes. “You think that would be sufficient?”
“I suspect so.”
Hope was a sweet thing. “If it will get these people out of here, then I will do all I can to help.”
“The blade will help us.”
“That is a relief.” The First Stonesinger limped to her feet. “I gave everything I had to the walls. My choir lies dead of exhaustion. I’m not sure I would have had enough strength to open the Maze of Stone.”
“Well, now you don’t.” The First Firesinger let her lean on his arm. “We won’t be forced to escape that way anymore.”
Deathsinger Zasha frowned. “Someone will have to brave Daened’s curse and touch Bonesong directly. The sword will need a body to sing through.”
“Pick me, Deathsinger.” Acad spoke, which startled me. I had assumed the corpse holding me could not speak. “I will not fail you.”
“Very well.”
Suddenly, Acad gripped my hilt with his cold bare hand, and I felt myself begin to intertwine with him like I had with all the others. My sight through his eyes grew clear. I had not noticed how much the cloth between us had been blurring my view. Acad’s hands were so deathly cold, that I was surprised to find his emotions as hot and temperamental as a living man.
But our bond wasn’t complete. He still needed to kill with me.
“I can’t sing through him yet; Binding oneself to me requires blood to seal.”
There was a bang at the palace door. More Brinn must have filled the promenade. Powerful though it was, the door would not hold them back for long.
“We shall make our preparations for the Hellgate.” Deathsinger Zasha smirked wryly. “It looks like there is plenty of blood for you to spill.”
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