“Don’t let any metal near him,” Tunda explained at the door to her son’s room. “I just gagged him, but the…thing in Elfred can steelsing.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“Some long-dead Datrean smith. She calls herself Nevsha.”
The name was not familiar. She could not have been one of my makers.
“How long since you noticed her presence?”
“Right before the second Brinn sack. I didn’t realize it was possession at first. He just suddenly became very ill.” She curled her lip. “I guess I should thank the bitch. The Brinn would have taken him away if he had been hearty.”
Yethyr nodded. “When did you know?”
“Not long after. Nevsha is not discreet. She wants to rule the town or something. Prepare us for the apocalypse.”
“Apocalypse?”
“‘The sun of Daened rises as we fall,’” she quoted with a shrug, and Yethyr and I shuddered as one.
“Did you call her here?”
“Of course not!” Tunda cried. “How dare you even—”
“Nothing of Heaven or Hell can possess the living without permission,” Yethyr said flatly. “So who called her here?”
“I didn’t! I swear! My husband gave up two fingers in the last tithe. We would never have let them touch him.”
Yethyr considered her face carefully. “If you speak true, that would mean he himself allowed it then.”
“He doesn’t want her there.”
“Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t now, but he may have been led by false promises.” He grimaced. “Has Elfred always been…touched? Heard things others could not?”
“You mean is he a deathsinger?” she said knowingly. “He didn’t pass the Test of Songs. Almost no one here ever does. Too far from the mountain. The last Flazean child to pass the test was Flinda’s son.”
“Tuzad,” Wes whispered behind Yethyr.
My maker. I felt his spirit ache within me at his mother’s name. I became consumed by Tuzad’s desire to ensure she was safe.
And suddenly so was Yethyr. “Is Flinda still in the city?” The words left his lips before he could quell the impulse. He swallowed, startled by the fact that he cared.
“She lives, although she probably wishes otherwise. Her sons here at home died in the Brinn sacking and her singer son was in Datrea. Odds are all her children are in Hell.”
Or inside me. I felt Tuzad’s grief for his brothers. Yethyr was shaken. He felt it too and was deeply disturbed by the foreign sensation.
Disturbed, but not confused.
“Flinda’s son was an apprentice of Daened, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
He looked down at me with a wry twist in his mouth.
“Never mind that. It’s your son that concerns me. If he cannot usually hear the spirits of Hell, I wonder how he first communed with this Nevsha.” He hummed. “I guess I’ll have to discover that when I confront it.”
“Don’t you dare kill him.”
“My intention is exorcism, not execution. I’m just going to speak with Nevsha.”
“Do you need me to remove Elfred’s gag?”
“No. The dead don’t need a tongue to speak to me.”
Wes snorted but chose not to comment as Yethyr pushed open the door.
A young man was tied down to a small wooden bed; rope rubbed his wrists and ankles raw and more rope was stuffed between his teeth.
The sight struck Yethyr deeply.
Sympathy. What I was feeling from the man who massacred a city without blinking was sympathy and it made me furious. This was what drew compassion out of him? Not the annihilation or torture or enslavement of my people, this?!
Yethyr did not notice my wrath. He stepped deeper into the room, Jaetheiri and Wes on his heels. He focused on the intent brown eyes watching him.
“Do I speak to Elfred?” he asked. “Or Nevsha.”
Deathsong filled the air, sickeningly sweet and eerily familiar.
“Look, my dear Elfred.” A soft feminine voice came from the young man’s body, even though the rope remained tightly clamped between his teeth. “The Doom of Brinn graces us with his presence, as I told you he would.”
Yethyr frowned. “Don’t you mean the Doom of Datrea?”
“I know what I said.” Elfred’s lips twisted into an ugly unnatural smile. “Is Datrea finally destroyed then? Took you long enough, young prince. I was beginning to think you were incapable.”
“You speak as if you wanted your city to fall.”
“No. I am not the traitor here.” Elfred’s eyes looked past him. “You have much nerve, disciple of Daened, to stand before me, at his side.”
Wes visibly flinched.
“And who are you,” Yethyr asked, “to lecture a disciple of Daened so?”
“The 27th First Steelsinger of Datrea. Silly Daened’s thief of a mother wasn’t even alive when I sat upon the throne that now belongs to him.”
“It now belongs to me,” Yethyr corrected and I felt my hatred grow ever so slightly larger.
Nevsha just laughed. “You can slaughter every steelsinger in the world twice over and that throne still would never answer to you. Perhaps, you can bend the First Deathsinger’s throne; you have their gift, but steel? Our steel? Never.”
Yethyr narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been rotting in Hell awhile.”
“Not rotting, flourishing, but yes.”
“Why leave now then?” Yethyr said. “Why possess this man? What do you want from him?”
“I want nothing from this stupid boy. He is the one who wants and wants. He is the one who prayed to Hell. ‘Protect me from another sacking,’ he begged. ‘Save me from my father’s fate,’ he whined and I heard. I answered.”
“What happened to his father?”
“Who knows? Maybe he was killed in defense of Flazea during the first Brinn attack. Maybe he was taken away by the victors. I kept my end either way. I made his boy too sick to be conscripted into the militia; I made him too sick to be taken by the Brinn slavers and what thanks do I get? Bound to a bed in this most undignified manner.”
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“What were you expecting to happen?”
The boy shrugged. “Honestly, not much. This is a fisherman’s son. They are rather boring. The only thing going for dear Elfred is that he’s alive.”
“So you wanted to live again?” Yethyr narrowed his eyes. “Were the Halls of Z’krel not up to your exacting standards?”
“There are times when it is best to make oneself scarce from Z’krell’s halls.”
“If that is your goal, you need not stay within a bedbound fisherman’s son. Tell me where you are laid to rest and I will raise you myself. I am…in the market for steelsingers.”
“And follow in the footsteps of the weak and cowardly? I think not.”
“So you rather just stay here, tied to a bed?”
“I came here because I had no intention of sacrificing myself for the Bride of Z’krel’s vengeance. Being near you and…” Elfred’s eyes lowered to me. “...what we made will ensure that I join my colleagues’ pitiful fate. Being sacrificed is for the common. ”
“‘What we made?’” Yethyr echoed. “Weren’t you dead when Bonesong was made?”
Elfred looked to Wes. “Oh, what an indecisive traitor you are, disciple.” Her laughter dripped like poison. “You didn’t tell him? You didn’t tell him what your First Deathsinger did, what we did to make that sword? Are you a traitor or aren’t you?”
“No,” Wes said suddenly. “I’m not the one harassing our helpless kin to hide from being summoned back to serve Datrea.” He straightened. “You’re the only traitor to our people here.”
“Watch your tongue,” Nevsha spat. “You and I both know that sword was not made to ‘serve Datrea.’”
It hurt to hear that truth. I had so wanted that to be my purpose. Even now, even now that the city was dead and gone, I still wanted to serve it.
But my makers did not care what I wanted. Wes did not even look at me when he spoke. “Perhaps, but that doesn’t give you leave to lecture me.”
“The arrogance! You speak to your better a thousand times over, disciple. If you were my apprentice, I would throw you in the Brass Bull.”
“I am very fortunate indeed then,” Wes said, “that such teaching incentives were deemed ineffective and wasteful.”
Nevsha huffed. “The modern crop is soft. None of you would last a stanza against me.”
Elfred suddenly made a muffled cry behind his gag and I shuddered. It was pure steelsong. Yethyr couldn’t hear it and I chose not to warn him.
The music wasn’t directed at him anyway.
A hidden little steel screw flew from Elfred’s grasp with such force that the rope around his right hand shredded apart. It flew toward Wes’ skull, faster than an arrow, faster than thought…
And Wes dodged it.
The screw slammed into the wood of the wall and it shook the house. Tunda screamed, Yethyr and Jaetheiri both jumped, and Wes just laughed.
“Your style is old fashioned, First Steelsinger Nevsha. Easy to predict.” He stood tall and for a single moment, he reminded me of my father. “You wouldn’t last a phrase against a modern forge.”
“You dare!” Elred ripped his gag off with his now free hand and began to sing in earnest.
Wes at once recoiled, clutched his skull, and screamed.
I heard the metal of his now melted jewelry twist slowly into his bone and suddenly, it didn’t matter that Wes was trying to destroy me. He was once my maker and once my wielder and he was being tortured for some dead woman’s pride.
“Stop her.” I said in Yethyr’s voice and to my relief, he did not question the thought.
“Enough!” There was a deathsong of command laced in Yethyr’s voice, and both Wes and Nevsha found they could not speak. “We are distracting ourselves. Release the fisherman’s son.”
Elfred worked his jaw with annoyance and glanced down at me. Clearly, my manipulation had been noticed. “Loyal to your makers, are you?” Nevsha said with the man’s mouth. It was eerie, hearing her cadence in a deep male voice. “I have done all he asked and now dear Elfred is mine. I have my rights.”
“I don’t think you understand.” Yethyr took a step closer. “I am not disputing your ownership. I am challenging you for that ownership. Release this man permanently.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“That was not a request,” Yethyr said coldly. “Forfeit or join my tribute to the Conquering Fang. Those are your options.”
“You think you frighten me?”
“I should.”
Nevsha scoffed. Suddenly she sang, not steelsong, but deathsong, familiar frighteningly familiar deathsong, and I panicked.
She was trying to crush Yethyr’s skull with his bone armor; she was trying to hold him in place and I had heard it before. I had heard it before!
Suddenly, I was being made again. Hammered into place. A choir of steelsong all around me.
A choir of deathsong too, holding me still. I felt like a trapped animal. I needed to escape; I needed to silence the song before…something. I didn’t remember.
I remembered Nevsha’s voice though. She wasn’t one of my makers, but she had been at my making. How? Why? Back then, I had needed to stop her from singing. She had been doing something terrible, something monstrous.
I still needed to stop her from singing. Right now. Especially now.
Nevsha abruptly stopped singing.
“I’ll go! I’ll go!” She cried, recoiling from Yethyr.
The Prince blinked down at me, my panic coursing through him. He had unsheathed me. He had not meant to and I had not meant to make him. I had never felt so out of control and in my panic, I was actually controlling him.
I wanted to laugh.
“I’ll go,” Nevsha was shrieking, staring at me in terror. “Just keep that thing away from me! I have not gone through all this effort just to be eaten by that monster anyway.”
Eat her? For once, I had no appetite for her life. I didn’t want that voice within me where I could not cut it out.
The sound of it was awful and grating even now. She was singing and I felt Hell answer. The air seemed to shift and I recognized the feeling.
A Hellgate, from within Elfred. She was trying to flee.
How dare she? After she did…whatever she did to me, how dare she not bear to face me?
Just the thought of it enraged me and my rage was Yethyr’s.
“You’re going nowhere,” Yethyr said hotly, disrupting her composition of escape with a wave of his hand. “Stay. Not until you release your claim on Elfred. I know your kind. You’ll just slither back the moment I leave.” He advanced toward the bed and Nevsha sang again, desperate to slip back into Hell before he could reach her.
I hated how frightened I was at the sound.
“Stop,” she sang and remembered a time when I was frozen.
“Submit,” she sang and I remembered a time when I was helpless.
But Yethyr did not stop; he did not even pause. He grabbed Elfred’s throat, and to both of our surprise, my panicked strength made his grip bruising.
I needed her to stop singing and if I had to choke the sound out, I would. I would—
“Hush.” Yethyr squeezed my hilt and everything went quiet. Both my thoughts and Nevra’s singing died at Yethyr’s command.
For a second, the room was silent, as if the whole of Hell held its breath. “Don’t worry about her,” Yethyr whispered in that quiet. “I’ll protect you.”
The very steelsong holding me together stuttered. The lives within me gasped.
Was Yethyr….was Yethyr defending me? Was that really what was happening now? It defied comprehension. It defied sense. It defied the natural order of things. I was supposed to be ruining his life!
How mortifying.
Nevsha cackled. “Not even a demon could concoct this kind of irony.”
Yethyr glared at her and that inexplicable softness that had come over him evaporated.
He put my blade to Elfred’s stubble and I shuddered. I didn’t want to cut Nevsha. I didn’t want her life or her voice anywhere near me. My edge was going to nick her if I didn't stop this shaking…
Yethyr held me steady, his grip strangely and relievingly uncompromising.
“I thought you knew who I was?” He hissed. “I duel Spryne every time I wake and every time I shut my eyes. Do you think your feeble humming could hold sway over me?” His rage and my rage were united. “Over me?”
Nevsha very wisely said nothing.
“I didn’t think so. Release him.”
Nevsha stopped fighting. “I release him to you.”
Blood tendrils poured out of Elfred’s body, coalescing in a red mote of light much like how Wes appeared back in Hell.
The light tried to slip away, but quick as a blade, Yethyr snapped Nevsha’s spirit into his palm, holding her still.
“You said you were going to let me go!”
“I said nothing of the sort,” Yethyr said. "And you deserve nothing of the sort." He called upon his composition and drew her into his pendant, finally shutting her up, finally making her helpless, and it felt like justice.
He had done it for me, I realized, and I despised him for it.
I despised that I was grateful.
Who was this Nevsha to bring this out in me? How was she involved in my making? Yethyr glanced at Wes, who was failing at making himself inconspicuous in the corner.
He had much to explain—
Elfred groaned incoherently. His dark eyes blinked open and his expression was relievingly absent of Nevsha’s malice.
Yethyr turned to where Tunda had been hiding under a table. He awkwardly cleared his throat.
“I return your son to you, Dockmaster Tunda.” Then upon failing to think of a more eloquent way to put it, he said, “I want my boats.”
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Would you make a deal with Nevsha to avoid fighting or being captured by the Brinn?
