I had finally sabotaged Yethyr, without even meaning to. The notation around my accidental smudge lit up crimson. It was going to kill someone, I understood that intrinsically. It was going to rebound onto Yethyr.
The meaning was as clear to me as if it had been spoken. Yethyr immediately understood too, but his was a rigid understanding. He didn’t immediately know how to continue the phrase and turn it into something safe. He needed time to contemplate, time he didn't have.
He would die to his own Death Circle and there was a fitting beauty to that, unintentional though my influence was.
But I needed him to carry out my vengeance upon the council, so I doubled down.
I tried to move his hand more. Usually, Yethyr would never have let me, but perhaps due to some stray survival instinct, he did not resist. I turned the smudge into a note, then another note, and then a phrase, binding it all together.
The active red notation became black and inert once more, and desperately l kept writing.
My composition was new. It was nothing like the music of Yethyr’s Death Circle, but it was stable. It was beautiful even. Yethyr certainly thought so.
He helped me draw with new vigor, adding his strength to mine, slowly guiding me back to his original melody, but now, with me, he was moving faster than he had ever done before.
“My prince, are you sure that speed is safe?” Jaetheiri was saying, but Yethyr ignored her.
His expertise and my intrinsic comprehension intertwined into one force. It was as if he was swinging me in battle, perfectly in sync, perfectly in tune, a dance for only us.
“Thank you,” he breathed to me. I had saved his life. I was helping him. He was grateful.
Soon, impossibly soon, the first rope was complete and he immediately moved on to the next one. There was not a stroke to waste. With every passing moment, the fleet grew closer.
His men seemed to agree. They went to pick up the first rope so they could position it in the river underwater as planned.
“No!” Yethyr cried. “It’s not dry yet. If you drop it in the water and it so much as smudges, we’re all dead.”
Grokar glanced downriver. “Will it be dry in time?”
“It’ll be close.”
The guard looked at the second rope. “Will that be dry in time?”
Yethyr looked down at his current work. It was an excellent point. The second rope would absolutely not be dry in time to be safely submerged underwater. He quickly thought.
“No, but this one doesn't have to be hidden. By the time they notice it, they will have already sailed over the first. It might even be good that they see it. Give them a false sense of security, thinking they spotted the trap before they entered it.”
“So we can tie each end of this one to a tree on opposite river banks and have it stretch above the river itself?”
“As soon as I finish it, yes.” He made to start drawing again, but the importance of the first rope drying abruptly became clear to him.
“Nisari, could you blow air gently over that rope, it needs to dry.”
She huffed a sigh. “I’m going to need a nap by the time you’re through with me.
“You will get that nap and much more if we get through this.”
Yethyr returned to his notation to the sound of Nisari’s most gentle chimes. His hands moved frighteningly fast, but I kept him steady. I couldn't have him dying to his own work, so close to the Numa Mountains and the treacherous Council of Songs.
Just as we were finishing the last touches of the second rope, Wes rushed back. “I am done with the first riverbank.”
Yethyr glanced up and there was Wes’ black notation carving up the grey sand. He was forced to concede that it looked good. “What are you doing on this side of the river then?”
“Well, as you said, my prince, I can’t swim and you are the only one who can hear my request for assistance.”
“Ah.” Yethyr finished the second rope and stood. The wyvern blood was still wet and yet, he needed to somehow stretch the rope across the river without letting it get smudged.
He frowned. “We will solve two logistics problems with one solution. Hold this end.” He placed one end of the second rope in Wes’ bony grasp. “When you get it across, tie it carefully, very carefully, to that tree over there.”
Wes looked at the indicated tree on the other riverbank doubtfully. “And how exactly am I getting across?”
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Yethyr took a bracing breath. “I’m going to puppet your bones across the river.”
Wes flinched but didn’t argue.
“I’ll be as fast as I can.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
“I said I understand. You do not need to say empty platitudes for my benefit.”
I wanted to laugh. Wes had no idea it was not for his benefit but for Yethyr’s. I could feel the revulsion rear its distinctive head in the Prince’s mind. He did not want to puppet Wes, not now, not ever. He thought of how Spryne took control of his own bones in his dreams and his stomach writhed.
Ah, so that’s why it bothered him so.
Yethyr swallowed. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Yethyr wasn’t, but he seized the composition controlling Wes anyway. The smith’s bones hovered at his will and began to float over the river, the rope in tow.
“Jaethe,” Yethyr said between gritted teeth. “Take the other end and hold it high. The rope cannot touch the water.”
Jaetheiri did as directed.
Wes tried not to fight the process, but his bones twitched with involuntary resisting deathsong. It wasn’t strong enough to do anything against Yethyr, but that almost made it worse.
He saw Wes’ helplessness and the Prince’s hands began to shake.
They did not steady until well after Wes was safely across and released from his hold.
Wes tied the rope to the tree as directed and once his hands were steady, Yethyr did the same on his side of the river.
He could see Wes start a second line of black notation on that opposite bank. The Prince was just deciding whether it was worth it to lug himself over there to help when Mandorias approached him.
“Master, The Wily Seal is repaired.”
“Push it into the water. We need to be ready to flee if necessary.”
Yethyr climbed on the deck of The Wily Seal and helped direct the motion to shove it back into the water.
He had the thralls row right beyond the rope he and Wes had hung over the river. He needed to be near it, I remembered. The Prince had stood close when he had activated the Death Circle that annihilated Datrea.
But this circle was incomplete and they were running out of time. Yethyr was waiting for Wes to finish the final side of the notation. He was waiting for the blood he had used on the first rope to dry.
Just waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
Yethyr’s heart was pounding. He had thralls hide what Wes drew along the beach with debris and undergrowth, more to give everyone something to do than anything else.
Still they waited.
When Tular announced how close the ever-nearing fleet was, Yethyr calculated they would have to put the first rope underwater now or risk the fleet catching them in the act of setting the trap.
He could wait no longer. He hoped it had dried enough.
“Is it safe to touch?” Grokar asked.
Yethyr had no idea. “Yes. I haven’t activated it. Put it in the water.”
The thralls who could swim were contracted to thread the rope under the river and line it up with Wes’ notation on the other shore.
Wes had cleverly started his black notation at the point nearest to the impending fleet and worked backward toward us. Presumably, so he could keep working up until the last possible second.
It was the right call. The ships came into view and he was still drawing.
“Steelsinger,” Yethyr hissed.
“Just a moment.”
“Wesed!”
“I’m almost done.”
The boats passed over the sunken rope, unknowingly entering the Death Circle. The first ship passed and then the second, and then the third.
“Will it kill them all?” Kvelir asked.
“I don’t intend it to,” Yethyr said. “I need some alive for questioning.”
Kvelir shook his head. “Leave none alive, my prince. We cannot afford to leave anything up to chance.”
“I have it under control,” Yethyr said, even though he did not feel like it himself. “If you want added assurance, position archers at the ready.”
Kvelir went off to do just that as the fourth boat passed over the rope.
“It’s done, my prince,” Wes shouted to Yethyr, scurrying away from their now continuous circle of deathsong notation. The first approaching ship was near enough that anyone on it would have heard Wes if anyone but Yethyr and I could hear the dead.
Yethyr hesitated. I realized then that he had never intentionally unleashed a Death Circle upon his own people. He didn’t like it, now confronted with the reality of it.
A fifth ship entered the circle.
“Jaethe, give me Aesherri’s loud horn.”
Jaetheiri gave him the horn he had used to announce to the city of Datrea. “You’re stalling,” she muttered under her breath.
“I know,” he said as a sixth ship entered the circle.
He put the loud horn to his lips. “Fellow Host of Heaven! I am Yethyr. Firstborn son of King Yevvar Kentheir. Announce yourselves.”
Several voices layered over one another. “Shumari’s Hunting Party!” some cried. “Teshir’s Hunting Party!” shouted others.
A seventh ship entered the circle.
Yethyr silenced them with his voice.
“I confess, I am perplexed by your unprovoked aggression. Explain yourself or be destroyed.”
Someone from the closest shouted back. “We hunt what is rightfully ours!”
Suddenly arrows went flying from our side, from their side, from everywhere. The sky was black with volleys of arrows and the Prince’s resolve turned solid as stone. They could not afford to lose another hunter to such an onslaught.
Yethyr clutched his pendant and said the words that had doomed my city. “Conquering Fang of Maethe. I dedicate this feast to You.”
Nothing happened and for a moment, Yethyr’s heart sank. Perhaps the rope had not been dry enough. Perhaps Wes had not been ready.
An eighth ship sailed into the circle.
And then, Wes’ black lines on the shore and Yethyr’s black lines along the rope turned crimson. Deathsong, pure and all-consuming, rang through the air. The black maw that had devoured Datrea opened wide again beneath the river and red ribbons of precious life streaked through the sky.
As an entire fleet died as one.
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Who shot first?
