The Singers of Nevya (85 page)

Not a chance.

Sira turned to greet Mreen. She did touch the child, just a light pat of her hand. Zakri and Theo, like old friends, went to the cookfire to assemble a meal. Morys and the huge Houseman Berk, who Sira remembered from her days at Amric, had the
hruss
well in hand, and Mreen danced around them, underfoot, a sunny nuisance.

Sira turned again to Jana.
Can you tell me what is happening?

Jana nodded, and gestured to two rolled bedfurs they could sit on.
It is bad,
she sent. They sat side by side, watching the activity.
There is a carver at Soren—

Is his name Cho?

It is.

Sira nodded, remembering a little bowl, breathtaking in its delicacy. She had admired it, years before, when Iban had been her master. And Iban had warned her then.

Jana sent,
Cho has gathered every itinerant on the Continent into his service, and those who would not join him he has coerced, or killed.

Their Cantor? or Cantrix?

Jana could only lift her hands helplessly.

Zakri, with his usual lack of regard for convention, had been listening. He came to kneel beside Sira, looking into her face.

Cantrix Sira,
he sent gently.
The Singer Iban—our master—is one of the dead.

Sira had to close her eyes, and her mind, to hide her pain. Not Iban, surely. Iban dead? It did not seem possible that someone so full of life, so generous, so merry and good, should be gone. She pressed her hand to her breast.
What happened?

This Cho is very strong, and untroubled by conscience. I do not yet know how he did it, but he killed Iban. And he holds the entire House of Soren hostage to his search for power.

Sira opened her eyes, looking into Zakri’s and finding strength and courage, the courage they would need.
And this is why you came for us.

He nodded.

Have you told Theo?

Zakri nodded again.
This will not be easy,
he sent.
Cho tested for Conservatory, but failed. He has never forgotten it. He hates Conservatory, and his Gift is out of control.

Sira put her chin in her hand, and thought for a long time about Iban, and about the Gift. Once again she felt the tides of change swirling about her, tugging at her. But she did not fully understand, did not recognize the pattern, even when Jana told her how ill Magister Mkel had seemed when she was at Conservatory, how weak and pale and vague he had been. Sira asked worried questions, about Mkel, about Cho, but still she did not see the road that was opening up before her. She knew the Gift was pulling her, but she did not know where it led. It did not matter, of course. She did not need to understand. She would follow regardless.

Chapter Eighteen

Shouts and slamming doors and running footsteps outside Sook’s prison brought her to her feet. She jumped up from the window seat and went to press her ear to the door. Loud voices called, and Cho and one or two others answered, but she couldn’t make out the words over the noise of chairs scraping across the stone floor. She strained to hear.

She was sure no one new had come to Soren; she would have seen them. Her window looked out over the courtyard, right above the great double doors at the front of the House, and she had little to do these days but gaze out over the snowy landscape, passing long dull hours in solitude. In recent days there had been no movement at all in the courtyard, not even hunters riding past with their itinerant escorts. Sook welcomed any diversion.

The outer door to the apartment shut with force, and a crash followed, making Sook pull back and rub her ear. Silence followed. She waited for a breathless moment, straining her ears, before she tried her door. It was unlocked. She pulled it partly open to peek out. “Bree?” she called softly. There was no answer. She opened the door wide and stepped out of her bedroom.

The big central room had been abandoned. Teacups and pens and paper cluttered the long table, and the chairs were pulled out every which way. An ironwood pedestal, overturned by the banging of the door, had pitched a carved vase to the floor, smashing it. Sook picked her way through the shards to the outer door. It was also unlocked. She took a tentative step into the hall.

The Singers usually camped outside Cho’s apartment were charging away down the corridor, forgetting all about her. They surprised her by turning right at the end of the hall, not left, down the stairs. Sook followed, hanging back so she could duck into a doorway if they stopped. Her feet were soundless in her furred boots, and her breath came quickly.

Around that corner, she knew, a staircase was set into the connecting corridor. It was a narrow set of steps leading to the attics where the carvers stored their finished work. But in a dormer room on that floor, the itinerants had locked their other, more important prisoner: Cantrix Elnor. She had not been seen outside her room for months. Some House members feared that, like her senior, she was dead. Mura prepared trays every day, to be carried to the Cantrix by one of Cho’s men, but she had no way of knowing who really ate from them; she knew only that they returned empty.

Sook reached the corner in time to see a clamoring knot of people pouring down the staircase and into the corridor. It was not Cho at the center of the group, but someone else, someone shorter. Sook couldn’t see. Was it—could it be Cantrix Elnor? That would mean at least she was alive!

Sook shrank back into the meager shelter of a doorway, but no one was looking in her direction. There was nothing gentle in the way the itinerants were hauling their captive about, the whole lot of them yelling and cursing as they dragged whoever it was downstairs. Sook couldn’t believe that even the itinerants would treat Cantrix Elnor so. They descended the staircase in noisy disorder. Sook ran to bend over the banister and peer into the lower corridor.

The din below her diminished, then abruptly dwindled to nothing. A crowd of House members collected in hushed dread as the band marched their captive into the carvery. A voice cried, “You bastard! What gives you the right?” There was a crack of flesh against flesh.

Nori was at the foot of the stairs, staring after the itinerants, her hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes wide.

“Nori!” Sook hissed. “What is it? What’s happened?”

Nori’s eyes turned up to her, filled with tears. “It’s Yul . . . he was in the attic, where Cantrix Elnor . . . He shouldn’t have gone there! It wouldn’t have done any good!”

“What about Yul? What do you mean?” But Nori only buried her face in her hands.

Sook’s neck prickled under the coil of her hair. She crept down the stairs, a tread at a time, until she could see the carvery door. No one noticed her, neither Singer nor Houseman. All eyes were on the end of the corridor, all ears straining.

Just as Sook reached the bottom of the staircase, Mura came running from the kitchens, her hands wringing a towel. Her eyes flicked over Sook, but she didn’t stop. She pushed her way through the people. “Let me by! Let me through!” she cried.

Sook sidled through the crush to follow Mura. When people recognized her, they pulled back, as if she were dangerous. She understood it. There would be some penalty for her brief freedom, but she didn’t care. She caught up with Mura, and they reached the door together.

The carvery was brilliant with light and hot with tension. Yul was just getting to his feet with the aid of two other carvers. He touched his swollen lips with his fingers. The mark of a hand showed clearly on his face, imprinted in red. When he took his hand away, he reached above his head to the row of
obis
knives, and snatched one from its hook. He pointed it, black and gleaming, across the room.

Cho leaned against a workbench on the opposite side of the carvery. His plait lay across his shoulder, and his own knife remained in its scabbard. His companions fell back, wary of the sickening psi that was sure to come.

“Yul! Don’t!” Mura cried. Her voice echoed against the high ceiling amid the soft jangle of the swinging
obis
knives.

Her son lifted his free hand to acknowledge her, but his eyes never left Cho. The long, slender blade of the
obis
knife trembled in his hand, catching the light. Yul held it before him with the blade out, his forefinger braced against the choil as if he were about to make the first cut into some raw chunk of ironwood. Only the Gift, wielded with the
obis
blade, could separate the fibers of the irontrees, force their unyielding bonds apart. It was the special province of the carvers to do that work, and they served long apprenticeships learning their craft. They had a discipline and tradition all their own.

But this knife was pointed at a man’s heart. Cho stood with one hip against the workbench, his arms loosely folded. “Do you think you can do it, Carver?” he said lightly.

Yul’s lips drew back from his teeth. His face was so suffused with anger that Sook hardly recognized him. “We’ve had enough of you!” he shouted. The veins in his throat stood out in ropes, painful to see. “Singers loafing around the House, gardens half dead, darkness, cold!” He gestured about him with the knife, and the carvers near him stepped hastily away.

“Yul!” Mura cried again.

Cho flashed her a brief cool glance. “Ah, the cook,” he said. “You should have taught your son obedience when you had the chance, Housewoman.” His thin body in the dark tunic snapped suddenly straight, looking like a blade itself. “It didn’t work, anyway, did it, boy?” He gestured around him to the people watching. “You didn’t get away with it, did you? Maybe these honest Housemen and women like their freedom after all!”

“Get away with what?” begged Mura.

Yul looked to his mother, looked around at all the faces in the carvery and crowded into the corridor beyond it. “Cantrix Elnor is alive!” he exclaimed. “I heard her voice, and I tried to get her out of there! She’s shut up like an animal, like—”

One of the other carvers stepped up to Yul again, cautiously touching his arm. “Yul, be careful! There’s no point—”

Yul shook him off. He said, “It’s time to fight back.” He shifted the knife in his hand, the nib pointing up, the haft in his fist. “Though I never thought to use my Gift in such a way.”

Cho sneered at him. “You and your sacred Gift! What good is it if you don’t control your own destiny?” Languidly, he lifted his braid and dropped it back over his shoulder. Then, very slowly, he unfolded his arms and opened them, spread them wide like the black wings of a
ferrel
gliding on the wind. He exposed his chest to Yul, both invitation and challenge. Sook felt as if the stone floor were dropping away beneath her.

The knife in Yul’s hand quivered with the strength of his psi gathering around it. It seemed to take on a life of its own, vibrating, glowing faintly. Mura moaned her son’s name.

Yul pulled his arm back. With a graceful motion, he threw the knife directly at Cho.

Someone in the hallway shrieked. Sook knew without turning her head that it was Nori. The knife flew toward Cho, aimed with psi, thrown with muscle. It sang through the air, describing a precise arc. For one splendid moment it seemed to the House members it would succeed, that it would reach its target and free them from the tyranny destroying them.

But as they watched, the path of the knife changed. The arc became an angle. The knife lifted high, hilt trailing, then descended, blade down, whistling as it fell. Its sharp point struck the floor. The blade sank a thumb’s length into the stone. The haft quivered for long seconds.

In the following silence, Sook heard the faint ring of the
obis
blade shuddering against the stone. “As I thought,” Cho said. “You couldn’t do it.” He lowered his arms without haste.

“Someone will!” Yul said. He made no attempt to get away, but stood stalwart, empty hands hanging, facing his fate. He knew, and so did everyone there, what was coming. A tear sparkled briefly in his eye and was gone, blinked away as he thrust up his chin and waited.

Mura trembled as Cho looked down his nose at Yul, and began to narrow his eyes.

The Singer Bree cried out from behind him. “Cho! It’s not necessary!”

His head snapped around, and he glared coldly at her. “It is,” he hissed. “Or shall I waste time defending myself whenever one of these
hruss
decides to challenge me?”

Bree faltered, swaying on her feet.

Cho swept the crowd with his eyes. “Anyone else?” Only Mura moved, one step into the carvery. That didn’t concern him. “Good,” he said clearly. “You’ll all remember this.”

Mura cried, “No!” Nori sobbed from the hallway. Those were the only sounds as Cho’s eyelids lowered until his eyes were only slits of darkness. Yul sank to his knees, then slumped to the floor, his eyes rolling back, his mouth open.

Mura’s scream turned Sook’s stomach to ice. Mura ran to bend over her fallen son, with Sook close behind her. They knelt beside Yul on the stone floor. They chafed his wrists and rubbed his cheeks, called to him, cradled him in their arms, but it did no good.

Mura turned her wet and livid face up to the other carvers. “Get him!” she shouted. “All of you, at once, you could do it! He’s killed Yul! He’s killed my son!”

The carvers gazed at her in mute misery. One woman wept, the others huddled together in fear and revulsion and shame.

Cho laughed aloud. “You see, Bree?” he called. “None of these will try me again.”

Mura jumped to her feet. “I will!” she shrieked. “Give me a knife, someone! His cursed Gift is nothing to me!”

Sook’s eyes were on Mura, and she didn’t see Cho come for her. She felt her arm twisted savagely, and she was jerked to her feet with a painful wrenching of her shoulder.

“And is this girl nothing to you?” Cho’s voice was as sharp and light as a knife edge. He had Sook’s arm tight in his hand. “Do you want to attack me now?” he taunted Mura, leaning over her so that drops of his spittle struck her cheek. He gave Sook a shake that jarred her teeth and loosened the binding of her hair, spilling her long tresses over her shoulders.