A Lair of Bones

by Helen Scheuerer

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?’

  The door closed behind Odi and Roh went to her bed, pulling back the covers and sinking into the soft mattress. She thought about picking up the heavy tome of laws that sat on her bedside table, long overdue for return to Andwana, and her fingers itched to pick up her sketchbook and stick of charcoal … There was so much to do, so much to think about. But tonight, she would give herself permission to sleep. And almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, slumber dragged her under.

  Roh and Odi were in the abandoned forest long before the rest of the lair awoke. Everything was as they’d left it, with the exception of a few additions. Ames, Harlyn and Orson had seen to some of the items on the list in her absence. Beside the piano’s case was a small stockpile of necessities: fresh parchment and charcoal, more glue and metal clamps, a hammer and nails, several planks of freshly sanded sea-birch timber, and … bones. The last item had been Roh’s request, a tiny addition she’d scrawled onto the list at the last second without Odi seeing. He might have known pianos inside and out, but she knew Saddoriel and its cyrens. And she knew that no matter how good their creation was, it would have to fit in here, somehow. She tucked the parcel away from Odi’s sight, deciding that she’d have to wait until the right moment to propose one final change to his design.

  Scanning the rest of the items, she sighed with relief. ‘Thank the gods for them,’ she murmured as she placed her pack of wires beside the supplies and turned to Odi. ‘We have everything we need, then?’

  Odi dropped his own pack to the ground and glanced from the piece of parchment to the supplies before them. ‘I think so,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘Good,’ Roh replied, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘Now what?’

  Odi glanced across at her and smiled. It was a genuine smile, one that brightened his expression, making him look younger. He continued to smile as he went to the supplies and took up the parchment and charcoal. Then, sitting cross-legged in the dirt, he spread out the blank parchment before him. Roh stood beside him as he began to sketch the remaining aspects of the design. She watched on with a mix of awe and envy as his long fingers brushed the stalk of charcoal effortlessly across the parchment, outlining the hidden intricacies of the instrument.

  ‘This is the soundboard,’ Odi murmured, still sketching. ‘The heart of the piano.’

  ‘It creates the music?’ Roh asked, noting the dark lines on the paper linking from one to another. The ease with which Odi drew the design told her that he’d done this hundreds of times before. That he drew each line with care, knowing what part it would play in the creation of a sound, singular and unified with others.

  ‘Mmm,’ he agreed, the charcoal stilling in his fingers as he studied the design. ‘Each piano is unique, has its own character.’ Still holding the parchment, he stood, taking stock of their tools and supplies once more. ‘Every piece of material we use, every turn of a screw or beat of a hammer contributes to the predominant qualities of the instrument. Mellowness, warmness, the roundness of tone.’ He was speaking more to himself than to her, Roh realised. But it didn’t matter. Odi knew about music in a way that she could never articulate. She felt music in her chest, in her soul when it sounded, but Odi … Odi understood it. The words he used to describe it felt right to Roh, and more than that, they left her wanting more. To understand the notes, the tone in the same way he did. And so she followed his instructions, starting with the soundboard, the heart.

  It was not one large piece of wood, as Roh had guessed by looking at the plans; rather, it was created by gluing smaller planks together. They placed the smaller planks side by side, at a diagonal angle.

  ‘It acts as an amplifier,’ Odi told her as they placed the clamps in place so the glue could dry. ‘Its whole purpose is to radiate a large volume of sound over a wide range of frequency. We’ll cut it to size when it’s dry, so it fits perfectly over the rim of the case.’

  Roh found herself nodding in fascination at this new language.

  ‘That will take some time to dry, so we can work on the bridges now.’

  ‘Bridges?’ Roh didn’t see how bridges had anything to do with musical instruments.

  Odi smiled again. ‘Different type of bridge,’ he said. He showed her his charcoal sketch. ‘On a piano like this, there are two bridges inside. They connect the strings to the soundboard.’ He went to the pack he’d brought back from his home. ‘They’re a little trickier to create, so I thought it would be easier to bring them.’

  He handed Roh a long, thin piece of timber and she saw what he meant. While the timber itself was simple enough, there was a piece of felt along it, with hundreds of small pins in a sort of zigzag shape.

  ‘The strings thread through here?’ she asked, running her fingers along the bridge carefully.

  Odi nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  Roh held the bridges as Odi measured and marked their positions on the soundboard with his stick of charcoal.

  ‘Pass me the long one?’ he asked, hand outstretched.

  She held out the longer of the two pieces and he took it, lining it up with the markings he’d just made.

  ‘The treble and tenor strings pass over this one,’ he told her. ‘And the bass strings pass over the shorter one. These two bridges allow the strings to be cross-strung.’

  Roh watched in silence as he applied glue to the bottom of the long bridge and pressed it onto its place on the soundboard. Odi chewed his lower lip as he took the short bridge from her and repeated the action.

  ‘We’ll leave the soundboard overnight now,’ he said, knees cracking as he stood.

  ‘Alright.’ Roh looked around, unsure of what came next.

  But Odi was already at the packs they’d brought. ‘We’ll sort through the strings. We can put them in order so when the soundboard is dry, we know what’s going where.’

  Roh went to him. ‘I … Uh … How?’ She could have kicked herself. She sounded like that stuttering human, Tess.

  Odi threw her one end of a large white sheet and motioned for her to open it and spread it flat across the ground.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he told her.

  Over the course of the day, they worked to untangle and sort through the strings – wires – that Odi had taken from his father’s shop. Slowly, they ordered them across the white sheet from shortest to longest. Roh’s fingertips were tender from handling them. She surveyed their work so far, and still couldn’t comprehend how a bunch of wires housed in a curved wooden box would make music befitting Saddoriel. But for the first time in a long time, Roh had faith. She had heard Odi talk about music; he knew what he was doing – he knew things that even the most gifted cyrens of the lair didn't know.

  The task was a tedious and frustrating one. The journey through the human realms and the tunnels of Talon’s Reach had tangled the wires into a messy ball, where the solution to one knot became the cause of another. Roh ignored the blisters swelling at her fingertips as best she could, but when they were on the verge of splitting open and weeping, she sat back with a bitter sigh.

  Odi glanced up at the sound, placed another wire in the row and wiped his brow on his shirt. ‘We’re just about done with these,’ he said. ‘A couple more. I’ll do them.’

  Roh didn’t know where he found the patience, and although she’d never say it, she admired the quality greatly. He reminded her of Orson in that regard. A pang of sadness hit her in the chest at the thought of her friend. It felt like it had been an age since she’d clapped eyes on Orson and Harlyn. She missed them, more than she could say. She missed the ease of conversation and silence alike. She missed laughing. How long had it been since she’d laughed? Really laughed? She couldn’t recall. Everything since she’d entered the tournament had been so dark, so serious.

  ‘There!’ Odi’s voice pulled her from her spiralling thoughts and her gaze came to rest upon the rows of wires they’d sifted through.

  ‘Thank the gods for that,’ she muttered.
<
br />   Odi huffed a laugh. ‘I know. I can hardly see straight.’

  ‘Can we afford to take a break?’ Roh asked, massaging her sore fingers.

  ‘It would be unwise not to. I don’t think anyone ever does their best work when they’re exhausted. Do you?’

  Roh shook her head. ‘No. Let’s go get something to eat, then we can start fresh on the next steps, whatever they may be.’

  On their way back to the Upper Sector, they passed the workshop and that familiar pang of sadness hit Roh anew as she peered through the window. Both Orson and Harlyn were inside, their heads down. They looked thinner, more haggard than usual. Something about the workshop was different, though Roh couldn’t quite place it. She noted the deep, dark circles beneath her friends’ eyes. She knew that they had to cover her work while she was competing in the tournament, but that wasn’t all.

  ‘An order’s come through that Ames says must be attended to …’ Orson’s words came back to her as she willed her friends to look up and see her in the window. They didn’t. They were working too intently, on something Roh didn’t recognise.

  It wasn’t their usual work – Roh would know that from a mile away. It was then that she realised what was different about the workshop. Half of it had been sectioned off. The workers were crammed together, seated elbow to elbow, their brows creased with discomfort.

  ‘What in the name of …?’ Roh breathed. In all her seventeen years, she’d never seen the workshop transformed in such a way. Her hands clamped over the windowsill, her talons threatening to break through with the injustice of it all.

  Neither Orson nor Harlyn looked up. Roh made to leave, but her eyes caught on something else … Her project, tucked away at the back of the room, covered up and untouched. A heaviness settled on her chest then. One day … One day she would make it a reality. And Harlyn and Orson would have front-row seats to music that could be heard throughout all of Talon’s Reach.

  Roh and Odi saw no other competitors in the Upper Sector except for Neith. As they were filling their plates in the dining hall, the water runner waved at them with a broad smile from across the room. Roh returned both wave and smile, though she felt anything but cheery. For a brief moment, she wondered what her fellow lowborn was building for the trial, only she didn’t have the energy to ponder it for long.

  ‘We haven’t seen Tess since …’ Odi trailed off as they passed the door to Yrsa Ward’s quarters on the way back to theirs.

  Roh shrugged. ‘Why would we?’ She didn’t want to linger on what saving that human’s life had cost her. To think there could have been one less Elder Council representative to contend with … Odi didn’t seem to understand the risk she’d taken there.

  ‘I don’t know. But it’d be nice to know if she’s alright? If she found her token.’

  Sighing, Roh shook her head and said no more as they reached their chamber and Odi ducked away to bathe. Perhaps all the concern was a trait more common to humans. She certainly hadn’t seen any cyrens worrying about fellow competitors like Odi did.

  After she’d finished eating, Roh dropped onto her bed and pulled her sketchbook onto her lap, taking the stick of charcoal from the bedside table. Settling herself, she started her sketching exercises. She drew perfect straight lines freehand, developing the basic principles of construction: horizon, viewpoint and vanishing point. The exercises soothed her, and she revelled in how they showed off her technical talent. Roh lost herself in the points, lines and planes, creating basic geometric shapes, then defining the distances and clarifying the depths.

  ‘What are you drawing?’

  The charcoal snapped between Roh’s startled fingers. She hadn’t noticed Odi emerge from the bathing chamber and come to stand beside her.

  With a muttered curse, she set aside her sketchbook. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You won’t tell me?’ Odi sounded hurt.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. I’m just practising.’

  But Odi didn’t move; he stared down at the discarded sketchbook.

  Roh sighed, sitting back so Odi could see her work. ‘Ames says my technical ability is good, but I haven’t yet developed the artistry, the imagination for truly inspired designs. That’s why I find it easier to fix other people’s work rather than create my own. I keep thinking if I just keep practising, something will come to me.’

  Odi shrugged. ‘Good things take time, Roh.’

  Roh suppressed another sigh and headed to the bathing chamber. Time was one thing she didn’t have much of.

  Sleep didn’t come that night. In its place, Roh recalled the dozens of banners she’d passed on the way up to the Upper Sector.

  Neith, Spirit of the Water Runners.

  Neith for Queen.

  On Neith’s swift wings …

  Roh had pretended she hadn’t seen them after they’d left the workshop window, but she had. She’d seen every single one, each one essentially a vote against her. Word was out about her parentage and she hadn’t realised that the resentment for her origins would come so hard from her own sector as well. There had not been one sign in support of her, Saddoriel’s isruhe. In the brightly lit foyer and dining room, she had brushed the sting of it away, but now, as she lay in the darkness of her chamber, she recalled the script of every single banner. Each one like a low punch to her gut.

  With a frustrated sigh, she rolled onto her other side, but she was only greeted with other worries she’d swept to the back of her mind. They filled the absence of sleep like a great wave rushing into a sea cave.

  The days merged into a week, and then two. Roh and Odi worked tirelessly down in the abandoned water forest, both sporting bloodied bandages around their fingers from spending hour after hour stringing the wires through the correct bridge pins. Roh couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this tired, the kind of exhaustion that sank down to her bones, making her whole body heavy. It wasn’t until one afternoon, when she was ‘borrowing’ a jar of glue and a pair of wire cutters from the workshop, that the full extent of her weariness hit. She had decided to leave Odi in the forest, deeming it more than safe if she locked him in. Alone at long last, she stood in the doorway in an utter daze, finally able to sink a little under the weight of the burden she carried. She found herself staring into the empty room, at the exact spot she imagined Harlyn and Orson had sat when they had been discussing their deathsongs. The memory stung Roh, sharper than before, heightened by her fragile state.

  ‘You’ll get there, you and Roh both.’ Orson’s sweet voice filled her head, along with the notes she’d heard of her friend’s deathsong. Despite the reassurances Roh had overheard, they gave her no comfort as she recalled her fruitless, strangled efforts in the mouth to the human realms. She was a failure. What sort of queen would she be without a deathsong? She would be the laughing stock of Saddoriel. If she even made it that far. Her thoughts echoed Finn and Zokez’s taunts from the first trial. And why wouldn’t those worries return to her? She couldn’t understand why she was having such trouble. It was instinct to a cyren, like breathing under water, like listening to the melodic notes of the fiddles —

  ‘What are you doing, Rohesia?’ Ames’ voice sounded from behind her and she jumped, jolted from her reverie.

  ‘I …’

  But Ames frowned at whatever he saw on her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Roh asked. She had known the old cyren all her life and not once had he ever asked her something so personal. She must have misheard him. The Ames she knew wanted no part in the emotional turmoil of his students.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said again, peering into her face.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied automatically.

  Ames gave a frustrated sigh and strode past her, into the workshop. He sat at his desk, clasping his hands before him and waiting expectantly. He truly wants to know, Roh realised. Although Ames had never been a parental figure as such, he had known her longer than anyone else in the lair. He had taken her in when she had been cast out fr
om her mother’s prison cell. Roh took a step inside, glancing once more at the spot where Harlyn and Orson usually sat.

  ‘It’s my deathsong,’ she told him reluctantly.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Everyone else is finding theirs and I … I’ve got nothing. I’m useless. I —’

  Ames shook his head. ‘You are still young, Rohesia. It will come.’

  ‘But what if it doesn’t? Queen Delja sang her first note at eight years old! And she has the most powerful song in history.’

  ‘Does she?’ Ames tugged on his collar, as he usually did when he posed such questions.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Roh asked, brows furrowed.

  ‘Does Queen Delja have the most powerful deathsong in history?’

  Roh chewed her lower lip as she worked backwards in her mind, trying to find the precise source of that information. ‘That’s what everyone says,’ she replied weakly.

  ‘Ah, therefore it must be true,’ he said dryly.

  ‘Well, I —’

  ‘Queen Delja did sing her first note at eight years old, but she didn’t sing her full song until her later fledgling years. However, even then, it was not she who had the most powerful song in known history. That claim belonged to one of King Asros’ battalion leaders, many hundreds of years ago, and if my sources are correct, she did not find her deathsong until long after her fifth decade. She was in the minority, that’s sure enough. But when she did eventually find her song, Rohesia, it was something else entirely.’

  Roh gaped at her mentor. She had never been told that story before. ‘You heard it?’

  Ames nodded. ‘Once. And I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘Sedna Irons. She led King Asros’ cyren armies across the seas in the Age of Chaos. A bitter end for such a talent.’

  Roh didn’t know what to say. All her life she had believed she was behind the others, that she was lesser, that she may always be lesser, but now … The most powerful deathsong in cyren history had belonged to someone who hadn’t found it until her fiftieth year. There was hope yet.