The Singer of All Songs

by Kate Constable

  ‘I don’t know nothin about no goddess,’ said Mica matter-of-factly, wiping her nose on her sleeve. ‘All I know is how to raise the wind at my fingertips, and the words my grandma taught me, back in Emeran. But just the words ain’t enough.’

  ‘Not enough in themselves,’ agreed Calwyn. ‘But they are necessary. Quickly, teach me, so I can take your place this afternoon.’

  Mica laughed, the first laugh that Calwyn had heard from her, and it was a rusty little sound, as if she had not used it for a long time. ‘I can’t teach you all the words of power in the space of a meal! I couldn’t teach em all to you in the turnin of the moons.’ She took a sip of water from the beaker, considering. ‘But I could teach you the words we used this mornin. They’ll want to keep northbound for a long time yet.’ She eyed Calwyn doubtfully. ‘The words ain’t too easy. You sure you can learn em right off ?’

  But Calwyn was well-used to memorising difficult words and tracts of lore and long chants. All the rituals of the sisters were learned by heart, and she was soon able to hum the notes and repeat the words of power back to Mica without a stumble.

  ‘You’re quicker’n I ever was,’ said Mica at last. ‘My grandma had to give me ginger biscuits to make me keep still. Course, I were only a little girl then,’ she added loftily, though it seemed to Calwyn that she was barely more than a little girl even now.

  When the sailor came to fetch the windworker, it was Calwyn who went with him, and Calwyn who kept up the steady chanting that drove the ship northward all that day. She and Mica took it turn and turn about, the next day and the next, and in the brief periods when they were confined to their cabin together to eat, Mica taught her more and more of the craft of windworking. In return, Calwyn tried to teach Mica some of her own skills, but even when Mica succeeded in repeating the words of chantment exactly, she couldn’t summon up the magic of ice-call. ‘It’s no good, it ain’t in my blood,’ said Mica with a shake of her head. ‘You must’ve had someone from the Isles back in your history, to sing up the winds like you do.’

  And then Calwyn was silent, wondering who her father might have been. Perhaps Mica was right, and he had been a man of Firthana or Doryus. It gave her a strange feeling to think that they might even now be sailing toward his home, perhaps the very place where she had been born. But Mica nudged her out of her thoughts. ‘Show me the ice again, Calwyn.’

  Calwyn never forgot the look of astonished delight that spread across Mica’s face when she first sang the water in their wooden beaker into a solid block of ice that she could slide out and hold in her hand. Mica had lived her whole life on the scorching islands and warm seas around Doryus; she had never seen ice before, and never tired of begging Calwyn to repeat the chantment. ‘They ain’t never seen nothin like that!’ she’d say, with satisfaction.

  Mica spoke of the pirates always as they, never we. She was not sure how long she had been on the ship; maybe three seasons, by Doryan reckoning, maybe six. That meant half a year, or a year, or somewhere in between. ‘I’ve growed since the slavers took me, that’s all I know,’ she said, peering at the length of brown arm that stretched beyond the end of her sleeve.

  Calwyn said, ‘When we get back to Fledgewing, I’ll give you some clothes.’ She spoke with more confidence than she felt.

  But Mica shook her head, and her face closed in on itself. ‘My grandma stitched this for me,’ she said, and she hugged her arms about herself, holding the faded jacket tight against her skin.

  All the while, Calwyn was trying to think of a way to rescue the others, who were still trapped on Fledgewing. Once or twice she thought she caught a glimpse of someone at the portholes, but she could never be certain. There were still pirate sailors aboard the other boat. Calwyn would have given up all her newly learned craft to go across, just once, to see that Darrow and the others were all right. But she and they were too closely watched for any chance of that.

  Then one morning Mica came below with a grim, sour look. ‘They’ve had a sight of land.’

  Calwyn strained to see out of their single tiny porthole. ‘Land? What land?’ Far away on the horizon she could see a dark, indistinct smudge; it might have been a storm cloud, or a shadow.

  ‘That’s Doryus,’ said Mica. ‘We’ll be in their harbour afore nightfall.’

  seven

  Blood Moon

  THE MASSIVE PEAK that lay in the middle of the Isle of Doryus rose up, stark, sullen and brooding, a black shape stamped against the yellow sky, the pivot around which all the little islands wheeled, the point to which every eye was drawn.

  All day long the sailors had been sniffing the air, as the distinctive sulphur stench of the island drifted across the waves toward them and seeped below the decks into every cranny of the ship. With each breath, Calwyn imagined a yellow stain furring her nostrils and throat; the air was thick, tainted, metallic. She couldn’t believe that people lived and walked about and ate their meals in this overpowering stink.

  The two ships had dropped anchor at one of the many small rocky islands that lay sprinkled around Doryus. This was the pirates’ base, the place where they counted their coins and fought and fished and repaired their boats, where they grew their slava and kept their women. Like all the Doryan islands, it was a fierce, hot and lawless place. There were few tall trees; the huts that huddled by the shallow harbour were built of stones and thatched with wild seagrass. Slava bushes struggled up, stunted and rusty-looking, from the cracks between the rocks, and the acrid stench of slava mingled with the smell of sulphur. Greenish stains of slava spittle were spattered all over the ground.

  Even after the sun went down, the air inside the cabin was hot and stifling. The sounds of the pirates’ carousing drifted in from the shore, and the lanterns strung up along the water’s edge sent sickly yellow light flickering over the roof and the walls. Softly Calwyn began to sing, a quiet chantment that sent a cool breath into the air, and then Mica joined her voice to Calwyn’s, chasing the coolness into a gentle breeze that sighed across their bunks.

  Presently Mica said, ‘Tomorrow he’s takin your friends to the slave market in Doryus Town.’ He was the pirate captain.

  Calwyn’s song faltered, but she made no reply.

  Mica sat up on her elbow. ‘Calwyn, did you hear me? And while he’s there, he’ll be askin about for that trader with the empty ship, so’s he can sell you, too.’

  Calwyn broke off her chantment. ‘What did you say? What empty ship?’

  ‘Empty as a slava-chewer’s head. I seen it myself. Plague ship, they was sayin. All his slaves must’ve gone over the side. The one that tried to buy me, that’s who I mean. Back at the time of the Whale and the Two Brothers – half a turn of the moons ago,’ she amended, remembering that Calwyn’s way of reckoning the moons was different from her own. She leaned back with her arms behind her head. ‘He might think it’s cheaper to buy one windworker than a whole galley-full of slaves, but it won’t be, not if he gets the price he’s askin – What’s wrong with you?’

  Calwyn let out a long, shuddering breath. ‘I know him,’ she said. ‘He’s no trader. He’s a prince of Merithuros, and a sorcerer. He moves the oars of that ship with chantment, not slaves. He – he killed our friend. Back in the Westlands.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Mica flatly. ‘There’s a good reason not to get sold to him.’

  Calwyn was silent.

  Mica said sharply, ‘Ain’t you listenin to me?This is our only chance, now, tonight! We got to get out of here while he’s ashore drinkin, and the rest of em chewin slava. We got to get onto your friends’ boat.’

  ‘It’s not so simple, Mica!’ said Calwyn. Thinking about Samis again brought back all the feelings of the last days on Fledgewing, the despair, the fighting, their hopelessness. She said dully, ‘Even if we get off this ship, we’ll all be in bondage again soon enough. Bondage to him. Who knows, it might be better to stay where we are.’

  ‘What are you talkin about?’ demanded Mica. ‘Are you sick? You t
alkin in your sleep? Don’t you want to be free?’

  Calwyn was silent for a time. Then, slowly, with many hesitations, she told Mica about Samis, and his ambition to be emperor of all Tremaris, his plan to master the Nine Powers, and how he had already mastered at least five of them. ‘We had a quest to stop him, my friends and I. But that’s all finished now.’

  ‘Since you was captured.’

  ‘No. No. It was over before that.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Mica, and her voice was small and hard and cold. ‘This sorcerer, he’s a cruel man, a bad man?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’ Calwyn thought of the white figure of the falling priestess in the courtyard, of Xanni’s long lashes against his pale cheek as he fought for breath on that long dreadful night, of the look of greedy triumph on Samis’s face as he stretched out his hand for the Clarion.

  ‘And if he gets his way, there’ll be hurt for people? People killed?’

  ‘I should think so,’ said Calwyn drearily.

  Mica sat up. ‘It seems to me, them that sees an evil thing unfold, and don’t do nothin to prevent it, are just as bad as them that does the evil. If I could’ve fought the slavers when they came to Emeran, I would’ve done it. I have fought him, and his crew, when I could, and paid the price for it, too. But I were just one against many. You –’ She jumped off the bunk, waving her hand toward the sea to indicate Fledgewing. ‘You and your friends is many against one. What excuse have you got?’ Her voice was mounting in fury as she spoke, and her last words were almost a shout.

  Calwyn sat up, too, and stared at her. Mica’s round golden eyes gleamed with anger, and with something else too: disappointment.

  Calwyn said, ‘He’s very strong. He’s stronger than any of us.’ But her words were feeble, and she knew it.

  ‘Better to be brave, and try, and be beaten, than creep off to some corner and die of shame and fear, like – like a snail!’

  Mica’s words bit her like bee-stings. Wasn’t that just what she’d said to Darrow, long ago, in Antaris? She had despised him for giving in to his despair. But that was before she’d seen Xanni killed, she argued with herself; everything was different then. But as quickly as she framed the thought, the answer flashed back, firm as the beating of a gong: Xanni would want us to go on fighting. Or else his death will be for nothing.

  For a time there was no noise in the cabin but the unsteady songs of the sailors, already drifting into a haze of slava.

  Mica said, ‘You’re thinkin how to get out.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

  ‘Are you a thought-reader now, as well as a windworker?’

  ‘You ain’t goin without me!’ said Mica fiercely. ‘You can’t get off this ship without me. You wouldn’t last five breaths on this island.’

  ‘Hold your peace,’ said Calwyn. ‘I’m not going to leave you behind.’

  The bonds of the captives on Fledgewing had been removed long ago, but the hatchway to the deck was kept securely fastened, and there were always three or four pirate sailors standing guard. The snug cabin was almost unrecognisable; the captain had ordered his men to search it, but they hadn’t found anything they counted as treasure. Even the cushions on the benches had been slashed, but spilled out nothing but feathers; the lockers had all been emptied and their contents taken away to the pirates’ ship. The three sat gloomily among the wreckage as they had done for many days.

  ‘It’d be easy enough to surprise them and throw them overboard,’ said Tonno, for perhaps the hundredth time.

  Trout, also for perhaps the hundredth time, looked dubious. ‘And once we’ve thrown them overboard, what then? We can’t escape without Calwyn. And we can’t go anywhere without a new mast.’

  ‘Now we are at last by land again, that is not so large a problem as it was.’ Darrow looked through a porthole toward the cluster of huts on the shore. ‘This is where the bandits bring their ships to be repaired. There must be new masts somewhere on this island. See, Tonno, there, they have set some out to season, and strung up lanterns from them.’

  ‘Not bad. Yes, one of those would do.’

  ‘Except that we’re locked in here, and the poles are out there on the shore!’ said Trout in exasperation.

  ‘We must take our chance while we can.’ Tonno spoke urgently to Darrow, ignoring Trout. ‘They could come and take us off to a slave-trader’s yard at any time. If we lose Fledgewing, then we’re lost indeed. We must take back the ship before anything else. Whatever happens after – whatever happens, we must get out of the clutches of these bandits.’

  ‘But what about Calwyn?’ said Trout.

  Darrow said, ‘Tonno is right. If we have Fledgewing in our own hands, we can try rescuing Calwyn. But if we try to rescue Calwyn without Fledgewing, we are all in greater danger than before.’

  ‘Lucky she’s not here, to hear you say that the boat’s safety comes before hers,’ mutteredTrout, so low he thought Darrow wouldn’t hear him.

  But Darrow’s ears were keener than he realised. ‘No one thinks more of Calwyn’s safety than I do,’ he said sharply. ‘But Calwyn would agree if she were here. Fledgewing first. When we are all together again, you can ask her for yourself.’

  It seemed that half the night had gone before the two girls heard someone moving sluggishly about in the passageway outside their cabin. Mica began pounding on the bolted door. ‘Hey! Hey!You out there! Bring us some water, can’t you? We’re parched in here!’

  A dismissive muttering was the only reply, but Mica banged even harder on the door. ‘Hey! You deaf ? Some water!’

  At last the door was thrown open, and a bleary-eyed sailor appeared with a jug in his hand. ‘Shut your mouth! Do you want to wake the whole ship?’

  ‘Why not? You and your dogs of friends’ve been keepin us awake with your so-called singin ever since the sun went down,’ retorted Mica. Calwyn began to sing, as if in mockery of the tuneless songs they had been hearing all night. The sailor merely grunted, shoved the jug into Mica’s hands, slopping out half the water, and retreated through the doorway. Calwyn and Mica looked at one another. They could hear him struggling to push the bolt back. At last he managed to shoot it halfway into the hole in the doorframe, grunted, gave up, and shuffled away.

  Mica brought her hands together in a quick fierce clap of delight. Calwyn’s song was not really a mocking imitation; it was a small chantment, singing up a tiny chunk of ice to partly block the bolt-hole. Now she crouched by the doorway and sang softly, coaxing the small block to grow, little by little, slowly easing the bolt across.

  ‘Quick, quick!’ urged Mica in a whisper.

  ‘I don’t want to make a noise.’

  ‘There ain’t no one to hear. Hurry!’

  At last, with a creak that sounded like a thunderclap to Calwyn’s ears, the bolt slid free. Mica gave the door a gentle push and it swung open.

  At once Mica was racing through the maze of passageways; Calwyn saw the flash of her bare feet as she ran, like pale fish darting through murky water. The passages twisted and turned, walls loomed up in front of her face; she didn’t know the way as well as Mica, who could have run it blindfolded. Calwyn held out her hands as she stumbled forward, trying to keep up.

  Here at last was something familiar: the rungs of the ladder that led onto the deck. She grabbed the solid wood and pulled herself up, eager to poke her head out of the choking darkness, into the clear moonlight. But on deck it was still dark. Only one solitary crescent moon sailed close to the horizon, glowing an uncanny red. The lanterns along the shore had burned out, too, although muted lights still shone from within some of the huts. The great peak of Doryus loomed over them, black against black. Calwyn shivered.

  Mica tugged at her arm, grimacing at her to hurry, and pulled her through the deepest pools of shadow toward the wheel deck. Here and there sailors lay sprawled and snoring, seeking some cool air rather than stifling below; stupefied with slava, they didn’t stir as Mica and Calwyn tiptoed lightly past.
>
  Like little mice, Mica’s feet pattered swiftly up the ladder to the high wheel deck at the stern of the ship. Calwyn followed, rehearsing in her mind the chantment she would need. She was going to build a bridge of ice between the two ships, so she and Mica could cross, and then bring it crashing into the sea before anyone could follow them. It would need raised sides, so their feet wouldn’t slide off; the ice would have to be strong and thick, so that it didn’t melt in this humid air. She knew there were pirates on Fledgewing still, but she was sure that she and Mica could deal with them – She came up with a bump against Mica’s back in the thick dark.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look, look!’ Mica ran to the rail. ‘They’re gone! Fine friends you’ve got. They’ve gone without us!’

  Calwyn pushed her aside. It was true. The two long ropes that had fastened the ships together were dangling limply in the water. Fledgewing had disappeared.

  Trout knew he would never get to sleep. He was far too hot, for one thing, and he was nervous. It was all very well for them to speak so lightly of throwing pirate sailors overboard, a great burly fellow like Tonno, and Darrow, a vagabond without a homeland, who must have picked up a few shifty tricks in his time. But he, Trout, was no fighter, and he had seen enough fighting in this company already to last him the rest of his days. It was odd, he thought, that he’d spent his whole life in Mithates, learning how weapons worked, inventing improvements to them, studying the sharpness of steel and the trajectories of catapults, but never until now had he seen actual combat, and bruises, and broken bones, and blood. Before Xanni, he had never seen anyone die. He hadn’t really thought about it before, what the weapons and war-machines were for ; he’d only thought about passing his exams. Would he be able to go back to the haven of his workshop without thinking of those things every time he picked up a blade or an arrow or a model of a war-machine? Restlessly he turned over again, pummelling his pillow.