Jaetheiri was aching and in pain. I could feel it through our bond, and so I also felt how she shoved all that aside to lean forward, eager and excited, as Yethyr turned the key to the thin copper lockbox.
The greed of the Brinn. It was what my father had hinged my existence on, and I felt it from both of them, like a thick and heady cloud consuming me.
The box opened on squealing hinges that made Wes jerk his skull up. He had been sitting in the grass fiddling with his collection of fishbones and gold coins, but he abandoned his work to stare at the lockbox.
Within were shards of broken red obsidian polished so finely I could see Yethyr's peering eyes reflected in each shard. A silver frame encircled the biggest shard, but it was clear it had once been whole.
“All the jostling from the fighting and the travel must have broken it.” I felt the pang of the Prince’s disappointment.
“What a pity,” Jaetheiri murmured mournfully. “I hate when duels over spoils ruin the spoils themselves.”
I wasn’t so sure it was ruined. The silver frame held no power, but each glass shard rang heavy with stonesong. The composition sounded complete to me, unmarred by the breaking of the thing itself.
Whatever power the stonesingers worked into that obsidian still held strong.
“I’m not so sure it is ruined,” Yethyr said my opinion aloud, gleaning something from my wariness. “Wesed.”
Wes pretended he had not been watching. “Yes?
Yethyr switched to Datrean. “Come. What do you make of this?”
Wes approached, peering into the box warily. “It looks like a broken hand mirror. The stonesingers often make such things from polished obsidian. I have never seen a red obsidian before though.”
“Blood has been worked into it, I believe,” Yethyr said. “I have seen witches do similar.”
“Blood?” Wes cocked his head. “I hear no whisper of deathsong.”
“It must be blood from something or someone who still lives. You cannot work deathsongs into living blood or bone.”
“If that is so, my prince,” Wes said slowly, “why do I hear deathsong in the marrow of the bones beneath your skin?”
“You can speak?”
Yethyr looked up to see Mandorias gawking at Wes.
And Wes gawked right back, “You can speak Datrean?”
It was true. Mandorias had exclaimed it in Datrean, although his accent was even thicker in that language than it was in Brinn. Wes didn’t care. Somehow, his expressionless skull managed to look delighted. I could understand. For this whole journey, Yethyr was the only person who could hear him speak.
Well, I could as well, but I was hardly going to respond while Yethyr was listening.
Amidst my self-imposed silence, Wes only had the Prince. As someone who had lived in a busy forge not so very long ago, that had to be isolating. The thought of having someone else, anyone else, to talk to must have been a delight indeed.
I craved it too, if I was being honest with myself, but I dared not speak.
“Wesed’s always been able to talk,” Yethyr told Mandorias, “in the frequency of deathsong. It’s just now that you are dead, you can hear him, as I can.”
“Oh.”
Yethyr turned back to Wes. “What do you sense in this red broken mirror?”
“No songcraft was worked upon the silver frame itself, but I’m certain there is a great power in the obsidian surface, even broken. I cannot hear stonesong, of course, but the silver has the sound typical of metal warped by the presence of something greater than it. If you know how to listen, it is obvious.”
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Yethyr nodded. “I am relieved. It would not do for the Datrean treasure that two hunting parties died for to be common.”
Wes hummed distractedly, staring intently as the box lid slid closed.
Yethyr narrowed his eyes. “What else?
“That lockbox was made by Domida,” he said. “The key too. I can almost hear her voice in the hinges.”
Yethyr looked down at the box, opening it again just to hear the hinges squeal.
Listening for it now, I knew Wes was right; this was Domida’s work. Domida had made the filigree along the dragon wing of my hilt. She had died to my blade back in the forge; her memories and voice swam in me now.
I grieved, and I saw my grief reflected in Wes’s burning gaze. His skeletal fingers twitched in an aborted motion to reach out and touch the box. Yethyr caught it and frowned.
“Mandorias. Keeping this treasure in such a hard container during this journey will only make it shatter more.”
“Probably, Master. Wrapping it in several layers of soft fur would be wiser. I have just the thing.”
Mandorias procured scraps of softened hide that he had salvaged from the wreckage and carefully wrapped the broken mirror. He separated the loose obsidian shards into a separate leather pouch and then put everything into a bigger pouch.
Yethyr tucked the pouch into the pocket of my father’s coat and held out the now empty lockbox to Wes. “Hold this for me, steelsinger. I suspect it will be better cared for in your hands.”
“Really?” Wes gasped, reaching for it with awe before remembering to be suspicious. “What do you intend for me to do with it?”
“Whatever you wish,” Yethyr said honestly. “I have no need for it.”
Wes took the lockbox with trembling, bony hands. He looked at Yethyr with something raw, something sincere, something grateful.
“Thank you, my prince.”
The Brinn made a great roaring fire that night, the biggest I had ever seen them make. At first, I thought it was to keep them warm now that they were out among the elements and not the hold of a ship. They clustered around it, eagerly eating some antlered creature that Kettir had shot.
And then, when those bones were set aside, Vezemar stood, and everyone grew very quiet. “There is much about guarding the Prince that can not be spoken of. One day, I will be able to tell all before Maethe herself, but before this funeral pyre, I will settle for telling those deeds of Umbar and Grethyr that burn brightest, that deserve to be heard here and to campfires beyond.”
The Brinn began to stamp their feet as he launched into a story about Grethyr saving his mother from a Zimu raider. Others chimed in, telling of great shots they had seen him take and great warriors they had seen him slay. Grokar stood and told of how he died defending his Prince from a mob of Flazeans in the streets and how his mother would weep, and all around the bonfire, people wailed as if they were that mother.
“I recommend him to join the Hunt of Heaven,” Vezemar cried over their roars, and others joined in.
Then Vezamar spoke of Umbar and him defending the Prince from a traitor. Then Yethyr himself told of how he tried to tame a hawk. Others joined in, and others pounded their chest. They recommended him to Maethe or the Conquering Fang or the Founding Fang, and on and on it went. Slowly, one by one, the deeds and deaths of every hunter who had died on this journey were told to the bonfire.
They told of Dathari and Dethur’s deeds interchangeably as if they were one hunter instead of two. They praised how Dethur wailed at his sister’s death. They praised his vow for vengeance, but they spoke of him as if they were certain that he was dead.
He probably was.
They urged Jaetheiri to tell of Dathari’s death, but she refused. “That was not her who I fought,” she said. “And I will not pretend otherwise.”
In the absence of descriptions of her glorious death, Hegrir prayed that Dath and Deth would hunt together for the glory of Heaven, as an unstoppable force from which all demons would flee.
Jaetheiri and Yethyr both winced at that, for they knew it would never be. Jaetheiri had forced me to kill Dath after all. I had eaten her whole, and her spirit now churned within me.
She was never going to Heaven.
I felt Jaetheiri’s guilt. It was a strange, unnatural emotion on her, and I preferred her relief when the party moved on.
They told no stories of Tular or Kvelir.
When the hunters were done, the thralls stood and began to tell tales of laborers and cooks and servants who drowned in the Lake. They told of warm meals well-made and a leather armor well-sewn. They told funny adventures, kind deeds, and simple pleasures. Their stories weren’t glorious exploits or hunts, but the hunters stamped their feet as if they were the same.
To Heaven, they recommended their deeds, and to Heaven, they all wished they would go.
Jaetheiri at last spoke, telling how Sviri, a thrall woman no one else had named, had cared for her bruises and broken bones during her training with Ettisar.
“May she rest in Heaven,” she said and all around the bonfire Brinn echoed.
Then she spoke of another.
And then another.
And then another.
If it was strange for her to speak among thralls, no one acted as such. All danced around the fire, stamping their feet and pounding their chest, wailing at the stars above. In the shadows of roaring flame light, they looked more like raving beasts than humans, and yet, as they told tales of hunters and thralls who now lay dead because of me, they seemed more like people than ever before.
To me, in that stomping, dim-lit madness, the Brinn finally made sense.
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What powers lie dormant in the red mirror?
