The gong for silence is sounded again. Ruti squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them, staring at Dekala with hawk-sharp eyes. Is she in love now? Has the soulbond turned her into Torhvin’s dutiful wife? Dekala smiles, and her face is gentle, free of the ice that so often coats her expression. “Hello, Bonded,” she says to Torhvin, her voice ringing out clear and sure.
“Hello, Bonded,” he returns. “My queen.”
“Soon,” Dekala allows, and Ruti shakes her head, feeling sick at all that might still happen. The wedding ceremony is due to begin now, and a cleric will enter to speak the vows. Sure enough, when she cranes her neck, she can see Orrin guiding a hooded cleric up the stairs behind the stage, helping him as he walks with unsteady legs. Orrin looks nearly as heartsick as Ruti feels, and he hardly spares a glare for Winda as he brings the cleric forward. “I wish …,” Dekala begins, and then falls silent.
“What is it?” Torhvin asks, solicitous. “Just speak the word, and I will grant you anything.”
Dekala smiles at him, her heart in her eyes. “It’s only that I have my aunt and uncle with me. I am so sorry that you have no family to accompany you in this moment.”
“We are both children of tragedy,” Torhvin says gently. “You are all I have.” He closes his eyes for a moment, then raises his face to the distant window where King Jaquil’s sleeping room is. “I went to see my brother today, of course. I asked him to intercede with the spirits for us.”
Dekala touches his arm. “I am sure that he will,” she says, her voice ringing out in the silence of the crowd. They move closer, struggling to hear each word. Ruti watches Dekala with narrowed eyes. “Won’t you?”
But she is not looking to Jaquil’s window. Instead, her eyes are on the stage, on Orrin and the cleric with him. Torhvin looks at her, bewildered, and Dekala offers him a cold, sharp smile. “I have brought you a gift,” she says.
The cleric removes his hood, and the people gasp in joyful recognition. There is no withered man beside Orrin, no ancient crone with the wisdom of the spirits in his eyes. Instead, a youthful man stands there, his face handsome and similar to Torhvin’s, a circlet resting on his forehead. He is dressed in white and gold, as befits only royalty, and he steps to the front of the stage.
The crowd shouts the same name, over and over again. “Jaquil!” they call, overcome. “Jaquil! Jaquil!”
Ruti moves, tense with what she knows will come next. Torhvin will not rest at this new development. “It is my pleasure,” Dekala says thinly, “to grant you and your people the restored health of your king.” She reaches out to Jaquil, guiding him to stand beside her, and he gives her a brief nod of acknowledgement. Dekala had been spirited away to Jaquil’s room for a conference after her argument with Ruti on the balcony, and perhaps more than once since Ruti’s descent into Lower Byale. Now, they stand before the crowd as allies.
“How?” Torhvin demands, his eyes wide and wild. “How did you—”
“It was an unnatural deed, waking up a man cursed into sleep,” Dekala agrees solemnly. “It took a vial of water from the Lake of the Carved Thousand, as well as my personal witch.” She reaches out to the crowd, to Ruti, and Ruti sings a near-silent chant for strength and leaps to the stage beside her. “But for Rurana, I knew that I must. I awakened the king on our very first day here.”
Dekala’s hand brushes against Ruti’s, a quiet reminder of skin against skin and the night before they’d departed to Byale. They had enjoyed each other thoroughly first, had explored each other’s bodies and kissed each exposed bit of them. And then, when they’d been lying together in bed, Dekala had whispered out a detailed, elaborate plan.
They had negotiated different parts of it in heated whispers, Ruti too willing to thrust herself into danger and too unwilling to let Dekala step into it herself. The soulbinding had been the most furious of those arguments, but Dekala had not yielded. I need this to govern effectively, she had said, and I will be queen.
She’d had no choice but to concede, to agree to a plan that hinged on a hunch about Jaquil and a determination on Dekala’s part that she would no longer be uncontrolled and Unbonded. And on Dekala’s palm now is a perfect circle, sewa and majimm combined into one as she turns back to Jaquil. “A terrible curse, it was, bestowed upon you by your brother Serrold,” she says leadingly.
“Serrold,” Jaquil says, his voice loud and authoritative. “Serrold was a perfect innocent!” he bellows, and the crowd roars in acknowledgement. “Serrold was like a child. Easily led, and my youngest brother knew that.”
The crowd quiets, sinking into confusion. Torhvin motions at two guards, and Dekala’s guards stand to stop them. Torhvin looks trapped, afraid, and Ruti finds that she likes him terrified. “Serrold’s betrayal was a tragedy,” Torhvin says smoothly. “But hardly enough to turn us against each other. I have done everything for you—”
“Then why was it your three witches who cursed me into slumber?” roars Jaquil, throwing a hand out at the witches still sitting on the stage. “Serrold had ambition, but you—you were the one to pit us against each other and emerge the hero. I have been asleep, yes, but I have never once stopped listening. I lay through your incessant gloating for years.”
“You are mad,” Torhvin says, his face stiff and his fists clenched. “The years asleep have taken their toll on you.”
The crowd is murmuring, uncertain, and Torhvin nods again to his guards. This time, it is the generals who stand, moving to flank Jaquil. “Our rightful king,” says one, looking to Jaquil in respect.
“Jata,” Jaquil says, and he embraces the general like a brother.
“No,” Torhvin snaps. “I have done everything for our people. I made us rich. I expanded your army, Jata!”
“You gave the Diri the secrets of kuduwaí,” Jata says scornfully, and Ruti quirks a smile. “You are a traitor to our people.”
Torhvin stares at him in dismay, and Ruti can see the moment he pieces together her shouted accusations, all but ignored, and what she had casually revealed before she’d been thrown into the pit. “You would believe the ravings of a Markless witch over me?” he says disbelievingly.
Jata reaches into his robes and emerges with the knife that Ruti had taken from Lower Byale. “I believe what I can see,” he says. The knife glows red-hot, eternally aflame. “The army will not stand with a traitor.”
Torhvin laughs. It’s a wild laugh, furious and on the precipice of madness. “This is obscene. A farce! My men have been turned against me by this … these worthless vipers from Zidesh!” He gestures at the courtyard, calling attention to himself again. The people speak in angry murmurs as he twists around, his eyes falling on his witches. “But I will not yield. Look at the riches of my kingdom! Look at my people! The spirits have chosen me, not my brother. Not this usurper.” He throws a hateful glare at Dekala, who stands placidly with Ruti. “The spirits have given me everything, and they will not take kindly to traitors seizing it away from their chosen one.”
There is an uncertain murmur in the crowd, a grudging acknowledgement of the splendor that surrounds them. Dekala exchanges a glance with Ruti, a quiet look rife with meaning. Ruti nods, her heart beating fast as she looks over at the three witches behind Torhvin. “Challenge me with your witches, then,” Dekala says. “See who it is the spirits choose.”
Torhvin needs no further cue. He is upon Dekala in an instant, a spear in his hand with a wickedly pointed edge. He wields it with the same grace as he had the stick, and the three witches begin to chant.
Ruti chants back. She sings Dekala as she has once before, finding a melody in Dekala’s movements. Dekala seizes a spear of her own, spinning it around her wrist as the crowd watches avidly, and slices a long slit into her dress and throws Torhvin back. He stumbles, but the witches sing him forward again, and Ruti feels them like an enduring pressure on her song. The spirits respond to her, but they are muted, distracted by three voices tugging them in another direction. It’s as though there is something silencing her song, pressing down on it to stamp it out. With no offering, there is nothing to draw their attention.
Torhvin lunges forward and Dekala swivels in a deadly dance, blocking his blow and slicing into his shoulder. Ruti sings, struggling through the murkiness that surrounds the spirits, trying with all her might to shore up Dekala’s fighting skills. But Dekala is on her own, Ruti’s song all but ineffective. Torhvin’s jumps are longer, his movements faster, and even Dekala is slipping up, fighting as hard as she can against an opponent with a boost from the spirits. Ruti’s voice cracks, her throat hoarse, and she sings anyway, the melody faltering.
Torhvin moves as swift as an antelope and slams into Dekala, throwing her violently onto the ground, and he rears back with his spear, eyes dark with murder. The witches sing in a madrigal with growing power, and a whirl of energy surrounds them and protects them as they sing. Ruti, her chanting weak, is unprotected at the edge of the stage.
And then, a voice from the captivated crowd, a single cry that Ruti recognizes as Kewal. “Sing with her! Stop the prince!” he shouts. “For Rurana! For Lower Byale!”
Abruptly, Ruti is no longer alone in her song. Chanting is a magic that comes instinctively only to a few, but there is strength in the echoes of her song, in the power that comes with dozens of others thundering out her song with her.
The Markless of Rurana, left alone in their catacombs, must spend much of their time singing. They pick up her melody with ease, lending it the power of many, of voices learning to fight for the first time. And with them comes, to Ruti’s surprise, other voices. There are too many singing for it to only be the Markless who have infiltrated the audience—no, others have joined in, whether out of defiance or just because of the sheer energy of the crowd. They do not know that it is a Markless who began the song, because Ruti had painted every palm with ash before she’d left.
Ruti is still one witch singing against three, but she can feel her confidence growing with the song that echoes hers. Torhvin’s spear thrusts down toward Dekala and Ruti gives Dekala speed enough to roll away. Ruti still feels the weight of the three witches’ song like a heavy cloth surrounding her, pressing her into darkness, and she turns her melody cutting and dissonant instead. It slices through the pressure of the witches’ chants, opening up the skies to Ruti again, and she can feel the spirits intimately once more.
Hello again, she says silently, I need your strength. She calls for the Spotted One’s grace, the Scaled One’s speed, the Toothed One’s sheer strength, and the Maned One’s power. She calls on every spirit she knows, cries to them to right this injustice and gift Dekala the skill to defeat a false, cruel prince.
Torhvin, dodging one of Dekala’s blows, slams the blunt back of his spear into Ruti and throws her off balance. Dekala cries out Ruti’s name, distracted, and Torhvin bears on her again. Ruti keeps singing, teetering at the edge of the platform. A strong hand catches her arm and pulls her back. The Regent’s grim face meets hers as he steadies Ruti. “How long must we watch this?”
King Jaquil shakes his head. “Until the spirits decide. We can’t interfere with their will.” Ruti leans back against them both, singing as loudly as she can as the Markless in the audience echo her song. Dekala drops to the ground and sweeps Torhvin’s legs out from under him, sending him tumbling, and Torhvin stabs up blindly at her.
Ruti sings to the Toothed One, to the massive creature that can kill a man with only a snap of its jaw. Help her, she sings, timbre growing deeper with the chant, and Dekala deflects Torhvin’s blow with more force than she’s ever swung her stick before. Torhvin’s spear flies backward and impales one of the witches. The others stop singing abruptly.
