Jaetheiri caught sight of Vezemar first. He was sitting on what probably used to be a piece of the Wily Seal’s deck. He awkwardly steered closer to them with a half-splintered plank.
“My prince! Venerated Victor!” He looked battered and exhausted but saluted them with cheer. “I am relieved to see you both have survived this madness.”
Technically, Yethyr hadn’t survived, but he wasn’t going to tell Vezemar that.
“I am relieved to see you as well. Have you found any survivors?”
“Only you so far. It’s been nothing, but thrall bodies and poor Umbar.”
“Umbar’s dead?” Yethyr and Jaetheiri shared a look.
“Aye. It seems we huntguards are short-changed once again. I do not want to be the only one guarding you at night, my prince. Let us hope Grokar and Kettir live.”
Let us hope anyone lived, Yethyr thought glumly.
“I have hope though,” Vezemar was saying. “I wasn’t the only one who has raided in coastal hunts. Others know how to swim.”
Vezemar helped Yethyr onto his makeshift raft while Jaetheiri collected Tular’s spyglass and a sheathed warfang from Dathari’s body. That was right. I had forgotten her own warfang had fallen into the water during their grappling match.
I had also forgotten about Kvelir’s copper lockbox, but it was clear Jaetheiri hadn’t.
“What is that?” Yethyr asked when she sat down on their raft with the lockbox in her hands.
“Kvelir’s treasure, I believe. He was holding it when I fought him.”
Yethyr straightened. “You fought Kvelir?”
“I did. He wanted the key off you, but we need not concern ourselves with him. His body is in the lake now.”
It was a technical truth, artfully designed so she did not have to lie to her prince. I almost pitied Jaetheiri when Yethyr pressed.
“Are you certain he is dead?”
Jaetheiri kept her face neutral, but I noticed her swallow. “Aye. He is dead.”
Yethyr nodded, satisfied. As Vezemar began to awkwardly row them toward shore, the Prince took the lockbox from Jaetheiri. It was strangely thin and made of Datrean copper. He quirked a brow at her.
“I have the key. Think I should open it?”
She frowned. “Does it have any arcane traps?”
There was a faint steelsong ward worked into the copper of the box, but with the key, it would be harmless.
Much louder was the stonesong resonating from within the box. I didn't think it sounded dangerous, but of course, Yethyr didn’t know that. He heard nothing at all.
“It might; it holds no necromantic power that I can detect.”
“On the off chance that it is some deadly Datrean artifact,” Jaetheiri said drily, “could we perhaps open it when we have dry land beneath our feet?”
Yethyr hummed. “I suppose you’re right.” He put the box in the pocket of my father’s jacket and suddenly straightened his spine. “Stop paddling, Vezemar.”
“My prince?”
Yethyr listened to the water below. I could hear the deathsong that had his attention and sighed.
I really had no luck.
“Wesed Steelsinger,” the Prince said in Datrean as he unleashed a deathsong of calling within himself. “I, Yethyr, son of Yevvar Kentheir, call upon the pact between us. Awaken and come to me.”
I could hear Wesed’s bones reanimate and rise to the surface of the water. It reminded me of the first time Yethyr raised him. Instead of emerging from the lava that killed him, Wes clamored out of a Lake that failed to kill him.
Truly, I managed to eliminate everyone except the people I wanted eliminated. My incompetence was becoming embarrassing.
Jaetheiri and Vezemar yelped at Wes' appearance and scrambled to make space for the sopping skeleton on the raft.
“Demons below,” Wes said hoarsely. “I’m never going to get used to that feeling.”
“Are you alright?” Yethyr said. “I was briefly…out of commission and could not maintain your deathsong.”
“That’s one way to describe your own drowning,” Wes said bluntly. “I am well enough considering I had dozens of seals try to eat my bones and—you!” He shook his bony finger at me. “You tried to kill me!”
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And you have been trying to kill me this whole time, I wanted to snap back. Wes was such a hypocrite.
Yethyr tried to mediate. “Bonesong was consumed by watersong. It didn’t mean it.”
“Didn't mean it! It deliberately let everyone else be consumed by watersong too!” He squeezed out of the water from the scraps of black robes still hanging off him. “Mona told the Master that would happen. ‘Isn’t it risky making Bonesong’s curse that conductive? What if someone dropped it in the ocean?’ she asked ‘Is everyone in it doomed?’”
“Surely the sword must have a limit—”
“Of course, there’s a limit!” Wes snapped. “That’s not the point! Look at the wrecked Flazean ship! Everyone is dead or cursed because Bonesong touched the water. Just as my crazy master intended!”
Wes winced at his own words. “That was unworthy of me. I have no right to insult my master so.”
Damn straight.
Yethyr considered. “So its power does travel through water as I suspected.” He switched back to Brinn. “Vezemar, did you hear the music when you hit the lake?”
“Aye, and believed many strange things while I did too. I did not even swim at first. Thank the fangs of Maethe that I remembered to start stroking in time.”
Angels had nothing to do with it. That was my doing. I had reminded the people who could swim to do so. If it had worked for Vezemar it probably worked for others too.
Sure enough, we found Kettir on another rocky island on the lake. Selkie bodies littered the rocks. Kettir himself was covered in their blood, warfang trembling in front of him. There was a wild panicked look in his blue eyes that set everyone on the raft on edge.
“Huntguard?” Jaetheiri said gently. “The selkie are gone now. The threat has passed.”
Kettir’s wide eyes dropped to me at Yethyr’s belt and the terror did not abate, in fact, it only got stronger. “Has it now?” he said softly, slowly sheathing his warfang.
“Did the selkies attack you?” she asked.
“They wanted to take me,” he whispered. “Defile my body and wrap me in the essence of some other angel.” He carefully stepped over the selkie bodies he had left in his wake and shuddered. “Are they gone?”
“It appears so,” Vezemar said. “We are avoiding touching the water just in case.”
Kettir carefully joined them on the raft. “That seems…” he sat as far from Yethyr as he could, eyeing me warily. “...prudent.”
With now five bodies on the makeshift raft, it was a struggle to paddle to shore. It was slow, achingly slow. As time passed, Jaetheiri’s adrenaline began to fade, and I could start to feel pain through our bond. Some selkie seals must have managed to strike her after all, but she chose not to check while on the tenuous raft. She waited; she ached.
Once, out of the corner of his eyes, Yethyr and I thought we saw the flaming skull of Z’krel on the beach, but when he turned his head, there was nothing.
The ever-nearing beach was empty.
Dawn light was creeping over the horizon and still, they were on the lake.
Wes passed the time by singing. Only Yethyr and I could hear it. It was halting deathsong, his inexperience fragmenting his voice.
“What is it you are trying to do?” Yethyr asked curiously.
“Control fish skeletons so that they can retrieve my pack from the bottom of the lake.” Wes sighed. “It had all the metal I took from the forge. I can hear the metal. I know exactly where it is. I just need to get the dead fish spirits to pick it up.”
“I see.”
Wes looked at Yethyr nervously. He was clearly waiting for the Prince to chastise him for his blasphemous ways and tell him to stop singing.
“Your melody is off and the octave needs to be lower, at least in the beginning," Yethyr said instead. "You can go higher when you need them to swim up to you.”
Wes, incapable of expression, managed to look startled. Tentatively, he sang again lower than before.
“No, no, no. Not like that. Don’t you hear how those dead fish are bumping into each other when you do it like that? You need to be like…”
Yethyr tried to hum the melody, but it was clear he hadn’t ever sung before and his voice cracked by the second note.
Everyone on the raft looked at him strangely and I felt his rush of embarrassment. He quickly took up a knife and carved notation in the wood of the raft between him and Wes.
“Like this. You see?”
Wes cocked his head at the markings. Yethyr had taught him how to read Brinn notation and clearly, he had taught him well.
He sang the melody slowly, but clearly and the Prince was awed. “Magnificent.”
Wes was startled into quiet. “It’s your composition; I’m just singing it.”
“...yes, of course.” And that was exactly it. I suddenly realized Yethyr had never really heard someone sing his necromantic work willingly. He dominated the spirits in his bone armor or in the pendant to sing his compositions of course, but that was by his will and his direction. Wes was looking at Yethyr’s notation with an artist’s eye and interpreting it himself, singing it as himself.
And for a second, Yethyr felt seen in a way he had never been seen before.
It was intimate and heady and Yethyr could not explain. “You sing it well. Do you hear how the fish bones move to the rise and fall of the music?”
Wes was nodding. “Yes, I hear what you mean now. They’re moving in a direction, not the correct direction, but at least these blasted fish are swimming straight.”
Yethyr immediately started to carve more notes into the raft. “If you want to turn, I would do this.”
Wes was eagerly reading as he wrote, asking questions with wonder.
“I would give you more precise notation, but I don’t know where this pack of yours is. I can’t hear steelsong.”
“That’s okay.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “This is good practice.”
With Yethyr’s careful tutelage, Wes sang, a school of skeletal fish at his beck and call. They danced choppily to his hesitant melody at first, but with each repetition, Wes’ ghostly voice grew more confident and freer. He soon could switch between the musical phrases commanding them to swim straight or turn and to swim up or down as quickly and easily as breathing.
Their little bony heads breached the water, bringing him whatever metal he sensed at the bottom of the lake. Datrean coins and fish hooks mostly, but he had his pack of Datrean metal back by the time they hit the shore.
The Brinn were all delighted to be back on dry land and disembarked from their raft with cheerful haste.
Vezemar’s cheers rang loud through the air until a voice suddenly said,
“Are you trying to call those seals back?”
Dethur.
He had been waiting for them on the riverbank, and at the sight of him, Yethyr felt lighter. Some hunters really had survived the sinking and the selkies. If he could just find Grokar, Hegrir, and Nisari, he could almost imagine that his Hunt was still doable.
If he just kept everyone alive and loyal, he could do this.
Then Dethur frowned.
“Lady Jaetheiri. Why are you wearing my sister’s warfang?”
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