Tears streamed freely down Orson’s face. ‘It was outlawed for a reason. So many cyrens died. Roh … you can’t do this.’
The bathing room spun before Roh. ‘Forfeit?’
‘Yes. Please. You have to.’
The despair etched on her friends’ faces made the final trial all the more real to Roh, unmasking it for the insanity it truly was. Retrieve the scale of a sea serpent … A deathtrap designed by the Council of Seven Elders to eliminate any threat to their current power. Roh recalled the tremors and the distant screech in the outer tunnels of Talon’s Reach. She also remembered the texture of Toril Ainsley’s scars and how she’d wondered if she’d leave this tournament whole.
Skin tingling, Roh traced her own scar. ‘Odi … Without him I’m eliminated anyway.’
‘Good,’ Orson said firmly, palming away her tears. ‘If it means you stay alive, then good.’
‘Orson, it’s not that simple.’
Orson’s eyes were fierce and her tone unusually sharp as she said, ‘No? How is not wanting you to die not simple?’
‘It’s just …’ Roh didn’t understand it herself, couldn’t process the warring emotions roiling inside her. ‘This can’t be it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Harlyn asked.
‘It … it can’t end here. Not after everything. What would you do?’ As the question left her lips, she realised how much she needed to ask it, how much their opinions truly mattered to her. They had always been a trio, until, without their knowledge, she had severed that tie. At that moment, she wanted to tell them, to confess to them all she had done, how she had wronged them, her guilt nearly bubbling from her like the white foam of a wave. She bit her lip, holding back the flow of words. If she told them now, it would only be to relieve herself of her own pain. It would be selfish, she told herself. Her decision was something she had to live with; there was no point in destroying things for them, too.
‘I don’t know what I’d do.’ Harlyn shrugged. ‘And we’ll never know. It doesn’t matter, does it? It’s about what you’ll do.’
Roh’s friends continued to talk, but their voices were distant. Roh’s head was filled with a panicked fluttering sound, or perhaps it was coming from her chest, she didn’t know. Harlyn and Orson blurred as blood rushed to Roh’s head and sweat chilled her skin. Fear wrapped around her like thick, heavy chains. She imagined herself restrained from neck to toe, released into the current and sinking to the bottom of the seabed like a stone. Although she could breathe beneath the infinity of water, it was knowing she’d be trapped down there forever that cast an immovable shadow across her heart.
‘I’m afraid,’ Roh croaked aloud. Her chest was tight, as though those chains had indeed imprisoned her. Those two words revealed it all. The stark truth of the matter. The utter terror drowning her at the thought of what lay ahead.
A warm hand squeezed her shoulder. Harlyn. ‘If anyone can do it, Roh,’ she said, all traces of her past envy gone, ‘it’s you.’
Roh stayed in her old bed that night, listening to the comforting rhythm of her friends’ quiet snores. Only emptiness awaited her in the Upper Sector quarters. She had to get Odi back. He was her responsibility. More than that, he was her friend. He’d risked it all to come back. And now, she would do the same. The only question was, how? Roh lay in the narrow bed, the sheets still scratching against her skin as her mind spun with an array of absurd options. None of them were right, none of them would see Odi returned to her side and the two of them still in the tournament.
There is one person who might know … Harlyn’s words from all those months ago lingered in Roh’s mind like the after-effects of a poison. Cerys … Cerys might know something, anything that could help her. She had been in Saddoriel for centuries. She knew the queen. If there was a possibility, even the slightest chance that Cerys knew something that could turn the tide in Roh’s favour … Silently, she swung her feet from the bed, feeling the cold floor beneath her soles, but a new voice filled her head.
‘It felt like … It felt like you might be on the brink.’
‘Of what?’
‘Making a bad decision. You had this look in your eyes, like no one could stop you … You need to be focusing on this trial. Not running off chasing ghosts.’
Roh swallowed the lump in her throat. Was that what she did? Ran off chasing ghosts while the world around her fell apart? She waited a moment, and then swung her legs back into bed, yanking the covers up to her chin. As silence settled around her once more, she swore she could hear the faint notes of a melody. She knew it was Odi, wherever he was. It could be no one else. He had told her that each piano was unique, had its own character. Well, so did each musician, Roh realised as the song washed over her, loud and clear now, despite her being in the Lower Sector. The way Odi played was different to his stepbrothers. There was more soul, more feeling to the sounds that poured out of the instrument at his hands. At long last, Roh fell asleep, with the melody in her heart and a promise to help Odi on her lips.
Roh made her way to the Upper Sector in the quiet hours of the morning. Odi’s music was long gone, replaced with the clear notes of a duo of fiddles. She passed through the Great Hall, weakly hoping to find Odi there, but it was empty save for the enchanted music that filled the domes above. As she entered the foyer to the residences, the song still wrapped around her, Roh realised that she’d never felt so conflicted about her yearning for music before. The sounds she now heard were encased by rage and guilt. How could there be so much pain and suffering at the root of something so beautiful?
‘There you are!’ a husky voice exclaimed. Yrsa Ward was charging straight for Roh. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ she said, irritated.
Roh frowned, spotting Tess at Yrsa’s heels. ‘Clearly not everywhere.’
‘Request an audience,’ Yrsa demanded.
‘What?’
‘Request an audience,’ Yrsa repeated impatiently. ‘With the queen. She can’t change the rules mid-course.’
‘I think she’s proven that she can.’
‘There’s a difference between re-introducing an old tradition and breaking the rules of her own tournament.’
‘I don’t —’
‘Do you know nothing of Saddorien cyrens? We choose our words carefully. Choose yours carefully, and you’ll get your human back.’ Yrsa was already walking away.
Roh started after her. ‘Why are you —’
But Yrsa and Tess had slipped into the Great Hall, the door swinging closed behind them.
In her chambers, Roh sat at the bay window, looking out onto the empty foyer below. A dozen voices filled her head. She couldn’t stop the onslaught of their words. Harlyn, Orson, Ames, Odi, Finn, Yrsa, Tess, Cerys, Queen Delja, Toril, Elder Ward and several of her own. A wild debate raged within, questioning her abilities, her motivations, her moral compass and everything in between. Each word echoed, ricocheting off the walls of her mind. Shaking her head, as though she could rid herself of the doubts, Roh made a decision. She went to the side table and took up a piece of parchment. There, cringing at her poor handwriting, she scribbled upon the page with her talon:
I, Rohesia of the Bone Cleaners, request an audience with Queen Delja the Triumphant.
Chapter Twenty
The next morning dawned with enchanted hues of violet and rose gold spilling through the chamber window. When the knock sounded at her door, Roh was ready. Washed and dressed in simple clothing, with her boots polished and laced tight, she gave herself one final glance in the washroom mirror. Her eyes went straight to the line of gold around her head. Her dark curls escaped beneath it, hanging past her shoulders. The circles beneath her eyes were darker than ever.
An audience with the queen … She hadn’t thought of anything but this very moment since she’d scrawled the words on the parchment. Now, her chest felt like a hollowed-out cage, dozens of insects flitting about inside, rattling her thoroughly as she followed the messenger from the competitors’ quar
ters. She did so in silence, listening to the music that skittered across her skin. Somewhere in Talon’s Reach, Odi was playing the piano again. There was no one else whose melody could be so sorrowful and astounding; Roh imagined his half-gloved fingers dancing across the bone keys.
They did not, however, take the pulley system to the ground floor as she expected. They went up, the music growing louder as they passed level after level, until they finally came to a stop at the very top.
‘Where are we going?’ Roh asked quietly.
The messenger looked startled, as though she didn’t know whether or not she should speak to Roh. ‘To the queen’s private quarters,’ she whispered back, in a tone that told Roh she ought to know. The pulley system opened, revealing a brightly lit foyer and two formal guards standing either side of a pair of silver doors.
‘Her Majesty is expecting the bone cleaner,’ the messenger told them, nodding to Roh.
Without a word, the guards opened the doors and the messenger led Roh into a grand hall. So, these are the queen’s quarters … Roh stared in wonder at the pristine white walls, the shining blue marble beneath her boots and the chandeliers of bones above. However, it was something that glimmered at the end of the hallway that caught her eye. She squinted as she and the messenger drew closer.
Is it …? Roh had to stop herself from clamping a hand over her mouth in shock. It was. A veil of water, much like the one she’d seen in the first trial and then in the outskirts of Talon’s Reach. An enchanted portal to the seas surrounding Talon’s Reach and Saddoriel. The queen had one of her very own …
‘This way,’ the messenger said, turning left.
Roh wanted to protest, the veil and the current beyond calling to her with its shimmering turquoise blue, but she had no choice other than to follow the messenger, each step bringing her closer to Odi and his music.
You can do this, she told herself, clenching her fists to stop her hands from trembling. The messenger pushed another door open, and pine-green walls greeted them, lined with silver architraves, but Roh’s eyes went straight to the source of the music, where the ornate furnishings had been pushed to one side to make room for a piano. Odi sat at the stool, straight-backed, his wrists poised over the keys, music pouring from his fingertips.
Roh started. It was not the piano of their making. This one was black and shining, the polished twin to their creation.
How …?
‘It’s why the Prince of Melodies has been hunted so ferociously by the Jaktaren,’ Queen Delja’s voice sounded.
Roh whirled around. On a chaise longue in the corner, surrounded by plush velvet cushions, sat the queen. Her wings were hidden, a sketchpad and a stick of charcoal in her hands. Her crown rested on a small dark table to her right. Roh met the bright lilac gaze that latched onto her and didn’t look away.
‘The instrument was brought to Saddoriel over a century ago,’ Queen Delja continued. ‘Only the Jaktaren and I know of its existence. For decades it has sat here, untouched, because something so beautiful should not be played by anyone but a master. For an age we waited for a musician worthy of it. Your Prince of Melodies has been on the ledger since he was six years old. A child prodigy, they called him. But I instructed the Jaktaren to wait, wait until he was of age, until he reached his full potential.’
Roh was reeling. The queen had had a piano all along? Why had she not stepped in and told the council she possessed a flawless, finished version of what Roh and Odi had created for the trial? It could have meant one less competitor challenging her reign. Not to mention it was thanks to her that Roh had received the details of the final trial. Apparently, Queen Delja was a riddle of secrets and contradictions …
Somewhere behind Roh, the messenger left, the door clicking closed behind her and momentarily snatching Roh’s attention away from the queen. Her gaze trailed to the ceiling and she blinked slowly, not quite able to believe her eyes. The entire ceiling was glass, transparent glass, revealing the sea above. The current pushed against it as a school of flame angelfish swam above it, the deep blue beyond utterly mesmerising.
‘Your Odalis evaded us for a long time …’ Queen Delja’s melodic voice made Roh’s skin prickle, but she faced her again.
‘We captured his brothers easily enough,’ the queen was saying. ‘Both talented in their own right. We should have known the lair would use them to call to him. All those years of effort.’ The queen lowered her sketchbook and placed the charcoal on the table by her crown, her fingertips smudged with black. She had drawn two young cyrens, both with wings outstretched behind them, similar to the statues of Dresmis and Thera, outside the hall. She surveyed her work, the corners of her mouth turned down, not in criticism but perhaps in sadness … The queen seemed to remember herself. ‘You requested an audience with me, Rohesia?’
Roh took a few steps forward and bowed deeply, unsure of which of the queen’s many masks she would see today. ‘Your Majesty,’ she began, fighting to keep the quaver from her voice. ‘I am here to get my human back.’
‘Your human?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty. He was taken at the conclusion of the second trial.’
‘You wish to demand property of the crown?’
‘He is not property of the crown, Maj—’
A door Roh hadn’t noticed swung open and Elder Colter emerged from another room. ‘Any human who enters Talon’s Reach becomes property of the crown. Thus is the Law of the Lair,’ he stated, hands clasped before him, robes billowing. ‘Furthermore, this human is a particularly special case. The Prince of Melodies has been on the Jaktaren ledger for years, and sacred is the ledger.’
Roh let her gaze flick from the council elder to her monarch, tucking her hands behind her back to stop herself from wringing them. ‘The Queen’s Tournament is the Law of the Lair, also.’
‘It is.’
She steadied her nerve. ‘The rules state that the human must remain with me for the duration of the tournament. For the duration of the tournament, he is my property. Not the crown’s.’
The music faltered. A stumble of notes beneath what Roh imagined to be quaking fingers. But she couldn’t look at Odi – she couldn’t take her eyes from Queen Delja, whose talons extended and retracted slowly. A vicious hiss cut through the tension, a horned serpent appearing from the hem of Queen Delja’s gown, wrapping itself around her ankles. It hissed again, staring at Roh with its molten-gold eyes.
Roh swallowed. ‘Majesty, the laws are contradictory.’
‘You dare speak to our queen in such a way!’ At the sound of Elder Colter’s outrage, four guards charged through the door from which the elder had emerged, surrounding Roh with double blades.
I’ve made a grave error. This time, she couldn’t help glancing back at Odi, who was still playing, albeit more quietly; his eyes were on her.
Roh looked away to find the queen’s gaze boring into her as well. She tilted her head as she studied Roh, as though she could see right through her, right to her core.
Roh exhaled shakily. Gods, Yrsa set me up. She cursed herself. She hadn’t stopped to consider it. Why not? Because a human had clouded her judgement. Judgement that had served her well up until this point. Or, well enough, at least. In a tournament of deceit and betrayal, how had the notion of a trap not crossed her mind? Panic rose in her throat. Stupid, so damn stupid. Roh’s knees threatened to buckle as the queen stood from the chaise longue and seemed to glide towards Roh, positioning herself so they were eye to eye. The guards lifted the pointed double blades instantly.
‘The bone cleaner is right,’ the queen allowed, her voice sharp. ‘For the duration of the tournament, the human is hers.’
Roh didn’t dare move, even as the music ceased abruptly behind her and Elder Colter and his guards gaped openly at the queen. Roh couldn’t remember the last time a song had ceased playing in Saddoriel, incomplete. Without looking in her retinue’s direction, Queen Delja waved a hand of dismissal and the council member and guards left them.
The queen ignored this. ‘You understand why I had to do it, don’t you, Rohesia? That it was expected of me? Sacred is the ledger.’
Roh blinked, feeling slowly coming back into her limbs. Did she understand? What in the name of Dresmis and Thera is she talking about? Why is she explaining herself? But now was not the time to disagree. Roh nodded quickly. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
The stool scraped against the marble floor and Odi came to stand beside Roh, filling the void that had pulsed in his absence. Roh didn’t dare to look at him yet. She focused on trying to find the words, the excuse to leave. As she opened her mouth, her eyes fell upon a leather-bound tome that peeked out from the cushions on the chaise and she stilled.
The Tome of Kyeos. Or at least, one of its many volumes. It was calling to her, in rhythmic whispers. The rest of the world around her was gone. She took a step forward. A song filled her mind and the turquoise waters above shimmered against the glass, as if in time to the melody. She knew those words …
‘Hush, hush, little cyren, so strong yet so small,
For down in deep Saddoriel, we let no tears fall.
Oh hush now, little nestling,
One day you will find your song …’
But who was singing? The tome itself? Why would it sing a nestling nursery rhyme to her? She was just about to reach for the book when —
‘Your mother always had a fascination with it, too,’ Queen Delja said quietly.
The blood rushing through Roh’s veins froze and she snapped from her trance, all notes of the children’s song vanishing, leaving her cold. My mother? What does Cerys know of the Tome of Kyeos?
Queen Delja’s expression gave nothing away. ‘Just like the lair, the tome and all its volumes are a living, breathing thing. It has its own will. She never saw it. Not in the end.’
‘How …?’ Roh’s voice was small, as though in the presence of new information about her mother, she had returned to the bewildered state of a young nestling. ‘How?’
A Lair of Bones Page 29
