Datrea had been a city of song and it was silent. Worse than silent. I could hear fragments of stonesong drifting through the streets, but without the melody and harmony of the whole city supporting them, every note felt wrong and hollow.
Yethyr could hear it. “It is sad,” he said. “I would have liked to have heard this city when it was whole.”
Then maybe you shouldn’t have massacred it! I wanted to scream. I only just barely managed to keep silent.
Yethyr probably felt my contempt anyway. He fell suddenly quiet and Flavrir scoffed. “Are you truly regretting your handiwork, my prince?”
“No, but I do wish that they had surrendered. What a terrible waste.”
Waste was one word to call it. I had much harsher words. The main street was a river of bodies as far as the eye could see—an endless wave of people trying to flee and coming up minutes short.
The Brinn were just starting to wade into the ruin they had wrought, but none were more eager than the Prince. He re-entered the city first, with Jaetheiri and Flavrir at his heels.
They stepped over the bodies at their feet with chilling nonchalance.
How many cities had these animals razed?
“You may take your pick of 102 bodies as we agreed upon. Once you have chosen, I will formally gift my claim to their spoils to you. That shall be your payment and I will consider the matter settled.”
“You waste the bounty before you, my prince,” Flavrir said. “There are thousands here and I know you will raise no corpse thralls yourself.”
“Why would I waste my energy on guards that would do worse work than Jaetheiri? I have enough trouble puppetting myself.”
I felt Jaetheiri’s satisfaction through our stretched bond. No one else noticed.
“What you do to yourself is many times harder than commanding a corpse thrall. Their spirit would do most of the work for you.”
I felt Yethyr roll his eyes. This was clearly an old argument.
Flavrir was happy to retread the ground. “It will only get harder if you let the bodies rot—”
“Wait.” Through the Prince’s eyes, I caught sight of a very familiar trail of Brinn bodies.
Grief at what could have been seized me and the emotion drew Yethyr’s attention.
“Jaethe, do you see that alley?”
Jaetheiri followed his gaze. “It is filled with bodies, like all the others.”
“Brinn bodies. Brinn bodies only.”
Yethyr veered off, taking the very steps that I once took with Mona’s feet. He examined bodies; bodies I had put there with Mona’s fury.
It could only have been a few hours ago. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“This was a great battle,” Jaetheiri whispered.
Yethyr shook his head. “This was a slaughter. In every battle, even one-sided ones, there are usually casualties on both sides. Where are the Datrean bodies?”
“Perhaps it was a Necromancer?” Flavrir said, coming up behind them. “We do tend to kill all at once.”
Jaetheiri arched an eyebrow. “A necromancer that leaves obvious sword wounds in their victims?”
Flavrir looked down at the corpses and laughed. “Serves me right for commenting before examining myself.”
Yethyr waded through the massacre, analyzing my violence until the river of bloodshed ended.
With Mona.
I had never seen her body. Wes had turned away from his handiwork too quickly. Now, it gutted me to see the hope in her eyes; she had died thinking her violence had mattered.
“The sword knows her,” Yethyr said, sensing the force of my reaction.
“That would make sense.” Flavrir hummed. “She wears the black garb of a Datrean smith.”
“I had no idea their smiths were so deadly.” Jaetheiri sounded impressed.
Yethyr frowned. “She was stabbed from behind.”
“You think she was killed by one of her own? What for?”
He looked at her empty hand and squeezed my hilt. “Whatever weapon she used was ripped from her grasp…”
Flavrir looked baffled. “The Datreans don’t believe in the sanctity of a hunt’s spoils.”
I could feel Yethyr’s suspicion. “Jaethe, stand back.” I could hear him reach for the deathsong that he had already written within himself. It was a composition of calling, of summoning, of open discourse.
The life I had eaten from the bodies in that alley surged within me at his call, but they couldn’t respond, trapped in my steel as they were. Yethyr did not notice. He was too focused on the one body that did answer.
Mona opened her eyes.
Yethyr’s song quieted to a low hum, nonintrusive but ever-present. “Hello,” he said in Datrean. His accent was heavy and I was deeply tempted to mock him for it.
“Yethyr, son of Yevvar greets you, Steelsinger. I command you to face me and name yourself.”
And by his will, her mouth moved. “Mona Steelsinger.”
“Are you a great warrior?”
Mona laughed. “No. I am a smith.”
“How did you defeat the men in this alleyway?”
“I didn’t,” she admitted cheerfully.
“Well, who did?
“Bonesong.”
Yethyr and Flavrir shared a look. “What is Bonesong?”
“Our masterpiece.” A dreamy smile cut across her dead face. “The perfect blade. The perfect song. I can hear it still! The harmony of it. No singer will ever be able to replicate such beauty, not if they tried for a thousand years!”
“Why did you make it?”
Suddenly, a new song drowned out Yethyr’s deathsong, louder and more monstrous than his own. It thundered up from the earth as if it came straight from Hell.
Mona’s smile became manic, gleeful even. With the last of Yethyr’s song providing her motion, she raised her fist to the night sky.
“Victory to the wrathful dead!”
Mona’s voice was pure zeal as a massive burning skull came up from the earth of Hell and swallowed her life force whole.
Her body went lax, the demon disappeared and all songs went silent.
I was trembling. I had heard those words before, a constant refrain in the song of my creation. They were carved into my very being, layered deep into my steel where Yethyr could never read.
“Did you see it?” Yethyr whispered. He was trembling too.
“See what?
“I heard it,” Flavrir admitted.
Jaetheiri’s hand was at her hilt. “Heard what?”
“The demon that dragged her spirit to Hell,” Yethyr said. “It would seem holding Bonesong allows you to see them, even when they haven’t fully manifested into the world.”
Flavrir stroked his beard. “It must be a consequence of the materials used.”
“I would imagine so.”
“You realize, my prince, that if these are the kills of Bonesong and that sword is now enthralled to you, there is an argument that you have a right to them.”
“I suppose.” He did not look at the bodies. “Lady Jaetheiri may take what she wishes. Otherwise, I shall send their bodies to their Tezem.”
Jaetheiri poked around the bodies curiously.
Flavrir piped up. “I would claim a few, as part of my payment.”
“You will do no such thing. What you do with your own spoils is your business, but if I am involved there will be no raising our own. Their spirits are for the sport of Heaven and if they be with Maethe, I would not dare deny them the glory of their hunt. And neither will you.”
Yethyr looked down at Mona. I felt him memorizing her fanatical expression, before moving on. “We haven’t much time. Demons are already dragging their spirits down to Hell.” He waved off Flavrir. “Collect your bodies, Master. Leave our own and any arcanist to me. I will approve your choices when I return.”
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“If that is your wish.” Flavrir turned away. “Happy looting, my prince.”
“To you as well.”
Yethyr and Jaetheiri picked his way through the streets, desolate apart from Brinn collecting bodies and keeping a wide berth from their prince. He was moving as fast as he was willing to. It became clear to me, through analyzing the deathsongs puppeting him that he could run, if he increased the tempo of the song, but for whatever reason, was refusing to.
Perhaps it was exhausting.
Eventually, a Brinn hunter dared approach him. “We have located the forge, my prince ”
“Show me ”
In no time at all, they were at the grand steel door that led to the place of my birth. It had been the first door I had ever stepped through. It had been the door I had slaughtered my makers to reach.
Now through Yethyr’s analytic eyes, I was able to admire how gorgeous it was. It sang of proud and glorious steelsong. Sheets of metal layered over top of one another to create a three-dimensional scene of what I assumed to be the founding of the city. Men arcing mining picks at an untouched mountain while the eyes of demons watched from below.
It was magnificent and as of yet untarnished by the Brinn.
“It won’t open from this side,” the hunter beside them said.
“No, it can open; it just won’t open for you.” Yethyr’s fingers trailed against the door. I heard the steelsong grow louder to repel him. “No doubt it’s bolstered by sideromancy. It would only open for one of their own”
“Do you want an aeromancer to blow down—”
“Don’t bother.” It was gratifying to feel Yethyr’s awe. He wanted to mar the door’s exquisite craftsmanship about as much as I did.
“Many people would be required to keep their forge burning. There must be another entrance. Finding that is probably simpler than taking on Datrean steel.” He tapped the fur bundle that concealed me against the door for emphasis and yelped when it swung open at my touch.
“You were saying,” Jaetheiri said dryly.
He looked down at me. “Perhaps it responds to any sideromancy?”
Not just any steelsong, no. It was almost certainly because I held the life force of nearly the entire order. As far as the door was concerned, I was a steelsinger. I was dozens of them.
Damn it. Why was I helping him?
Yethyr stepped through and was immediately greeted by the massacre of my family. I was ashamed that seeing the streets outside had desensitized me to the carnage. The grief came, but not the revulsion.
I wished it did, I could not become like these Brinn, who felt nothing at the death of thousands.
Yethyr felt loss then, loss at the chance at enslaving my makers, I presumed. That didn’t stop him from trying.
He reached within himself for that composition of calling again and this time, he noticed the surge within me in response.
The song died within him. “Jaethe, the sword did this.”
“What?”
“I had wondered why no one but the smith answered me in that alleyway. Perhaps Maethe herself had devoured those hunters’ lives, I thought, but no. This sword did.”
She scoffed. “Flavrir couldn’t have raised them even if you had permitted it.” She glanced down at me. “But, can it do that?”
“It must. I tried to call the bodies piled here and I felt myself tug at the sword instead.” Yethyr looked at the bodies at his feet with new alarm. “Bonesong killed them all.”
“But…why?”
“That is a good question. It did not desire to. Even now, its grief is palpable. The guilt alone.”
Ah, so he did know what guilt was, did he?
Yethyr carefully stepped over the bodies by the door to enter the forge proper. “Perhaps a blood price is required to make something like this, a price they all paid willingly.”
If only.
“Not all,” Jaetheiri said. “Many of these bodies have our arrows in them.”
That was a different grief and different guilt. I recalled that well. Many of my makers ignored the arrows flying through the windows to complete me.
I saw my father's body, his face alight with manic satisfaction. “I know what it is I made!” I could still see those words written in his dead brown eyes. I remembered the agony of his death. Demons below, it hadn’t been that long ago.
Too late, I realized my pain had given my father away. Yethyr stood over him and from the sheer force of my pain, knew who he looked upon.
“Jaethe, that’s him.”
Jaetheiri caught her breath. “Daened of Datrea.”
He was covered in the soot and grime of his forge. The labor of making me had disheveled his braid of tawny brown hair. There was still an arrow embedded in his skull, and yet, such was my father’s reputation, that all the Brinn in the room stood cowed.
The hunter with them whispered in wonder. “It’s like seeing the carcass of a dragon.”
“He is a dragon,” Yethyr murmured. “A dread that transmuted fire into death. How many have been cut down by his steel?”
“The number can’t be counted,” Jaetheiri said. She crouched down and pulled the arrow from his head. The squelching sound made me wish I had the capability to hurl.
“Hunter.” Yethyr turned to face the man that had guided them here. He was taller than Yethyr, but the way he shrunk back at his prince’s gaze made it easy to forget that. “Take this arrow.” At his direction, Jaetheiri handed the man the arrow that killed my father. “Track down the archer attached to its notch code and bring him before me.”
“At once, my prince.” He saluted and left.
We were alone, just the bodies of my makers, the last of my wielders still alive, and me.
“Shut the door Jaethe.” Yethyr turned back to my father to the sound of hinges creaking shut. He unwrapped me from the bundle of fur and held me aloft, for all my dead makers to see.
“Daened of Datrea, First of all Steelsingers.” His deathsong burst out of him, loud and deep and incapable of being ignored. “Hear me, great smiths of Datrea. I greet you. Come and face me.”
I felt that pull again on the life trapped within me. The arrow-riddled blacksmiths began to stir. Poor Satad, who had picked me up first from my father’s body, who had died to Mona’s wrath, shuddered to a facsimile of life. Yethyr ignored them all.
My father was sitting up.
He moved jerkily, but the way his arm came to rest over his knee was laughably relaxed. He was dead a moment ago and yet he was already perfectly at ease. He looked up, saw me, saw Yethyr and smiled savagely.
“Why if it isn’t our frail prince at the gates.” My heart ached at hearing his voice again, rough as gravel, but still his.
“Lord Daened,” Yethyr said breathlessly. “We meet at last.”
“I see you have also met my son.” He leered at me. “Where did your soft heart take you, I wonder? Right here, where I said it would.”
I churned. He had told me trying to save the city was folly. He had told me I would end up in Brinn hands.
I had not listened.
Yethyr was listening now though. “Soft heart? This sword slaughtered most of your order.”
My father glanced around banally. “So it has. All that death. All that effort. All for a failure.”
I felt like snapping in two, right then and there. The disdain in my father’s eyes hurt more than his death. Shame flooded me, so strongly that Yethyr felt it. It made the steelsong within me grow so loud and discordant that my father could hear it.
“You should be ashamed, Bonesong, to let yourself fall into Brinn hands, his hands, and so quickly too! My body is not yet cold and already you let him flaunt you like some pet. What a disloyal thing I have made.”
Wait, it was he who wanted me to fall into Brinn hands…oh. Oh. These words were for Yethyr’s benefit, not mine. My father was helping me, even now. He wanted the Prince to believe I was meant to protect the city. He wanted him to believe I had already been beaten. Anything to ensure the Prince did not suspect the true purpose of my creation.
“It is only right,” Yethyr said, “that something so profane should betray you.”
“Profane?” he hummed. “Perhaps, but beautiful nonetheless. The closest to perfection I shall ever reach.” He curled his nose. “Now seeing its betrayal, I realize how much I fell short.”
The words hurt even when I knew them to be false.
“It need not be the end,” Yethyr said eagerly. “You could craft more. Let me take you into my service, with free rein to do whatever you wish. We make lords of lesser hunters than you and your work. You would be revered among us.”
Daened of Datrea threw his head back and laughed. The sound crackled against the walls, musical and mocking and dripping with steelsong, a song of breaking, of unmaking, and it was all I could do to keep myself from ripping apart at the seams.
Jaetheiri’s warfang crumbled in its sheath; my siblings in steel shattered where they hung from the walls. The anvil where I was made cracked in two and the magnificent door behind us splintered at the hinges.
Everything broke at the sound of Daened of Datrea’s laughter.
All apart from me.
“Revered among Maethe’s hunting dogs?” he cackled. “What an easy honor that is. I am already revered and feared among your people. I need not serve you to make that so. I have no use for Brinn honor.”
Yethyr looked down at me, the only thing to endure the amusement of a dead man, and was afraid. Afraid and awed. “What is it then that you do want, my lord? Whatever your price, I will pay it.”
“What I want has already been trampled to dust in your haste to get here. As for my price…” his smile was grim and satisfied. “...it is something that you will pay in time.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I know many things, spawn of Felnae. I knew you would come.” My father looked down at himself. “Though even I did not think it would be so soon. The last songs that I shall ever sing as a living man are still echoing through these walls.”
“I could not wait. We have moments before they will try to drag you down to Hell.”
“I am already in Hell, frail prince. Do you think Z’krel would waste a moment collecting me? I answered your call from his hall.”
Yethyr was stunned. “And that demon did not stop you?”
“Stop me?” He laughed again. Metal shards trembled. “Who is he to deny me my whims? He knows better than to stop me.”
Metal shards flew at Yethyr and I parried them for him. Yethyr was startled at my defense, but I knew what I was doing. I knew what my father wanted me to do. He was playing a long game and now, so would I.
Yethyr ignored the attempt on his life, man of Brinn that he was.
“That is a mistake Z’krel will come to regret,” the Prince insisted. “You do not need to go back. I can release you from the chains of Hell. Please, my lord. Let me save you from that torment. I can give you a chance to rise again.”
“I will rise again,” my father said with conviction, “but not through your power. A song has started, quiet now, yet it shall out last us both. Can you not hear it? You will. When it catches up with you, all you will be able to do is dance.”
“What song?”
“The song of fate, frail prince. The instruments cannot help but be played now. Your final opportunity to silence it died with this city. It is inevitable.”
“What is inevitable?”
“Victory.” Daened of Datrea bared his teeth with glee. “Victory to the wrathful dead.”
And the entire forge suddenly opened their eyes, from Satad to the arrow-riddled blacksmiths whose names I did not have a chance to know. Even the massacred lives entombed within me found their voice. Everyone sat up as one and echoed in a single, unflinching voice.
“Victory to the wrathful dead!”
Yethyr’s deathsong faltered at the force of such unity. The choir of steelsingers crumbled back down, as still and silent as they ever were. I watched the life leave my father’s eyes, and he too fell once more.
It was as if I had lost him a second time.
Thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate all the support I have gotten during the transition to move this story to Royal Road. Do tell me what you think! I love comments and often respond to them
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