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I haven’t shouted like this in a long time. The vibration the sound makes in my throat is vindicating.

Chapter Thirteen

Mordred

Aveline just shouted at me, and it’s clear she doesn’t know how loud it was. I know. I hear it still, and under it, I hear her heart running faster than ever.

I’ve been selfish with her. I’ve told myself that I was being careful, that I was protecting her, that I would put it right soon. All the while, I took her choices away, one at a time. I gave her a room, a bath, and my scores, and I called it kindness. I gave her those things so she wouldn’t ask what I was keeping from her. The letters on the floor are what I kept, and now she’s found them.

I’m afraid to look at her face. I’m afraid that when I do, I’ll see the thing I’ve seen on every human face that ever learned what I am, except that on hers it will be worse. Because she’ll despise me without my voice having affected her judgement.

I know Callum’s handwriting from where I stand. There’s nothing left to hide about what Nivallia has asked of me these past six months.

I walk closer to the hearth so the light from the fire will fall over my hands. I’ve learned where she needs me to be. That’s one of the few things I’ve learned for her and not for myself.

“They sent you as a gift,” I sign. “The man who sent you wanted me to sing for the city again. I didn’t ask for you, I promise. And I haven’t answered their pleas.”

She watches my hands until they stop. She’s always filled my silences before, with a smile or a thank you, or a tilt of her head that let me off easy. She does none of that now. I hear her breathing, short and even, and I know this was the first of her three questions and the easiest. My answer changed nothing in her expression.

“That’s one answer,” she says. “I asked you three things.”

“The second is long,” I sign. “You can’t read my lips. Let me write it.”

“Then write.”

I get the pen and paper from the desk, sit in the chair by the hearth, and write for a while. Aveline remains standing. After a minute, she starts pacing, her arms crossed over her chest. When I’m done, I hand the piece of paper to her.

A Cantor’s song has different modes. Each one does a different thing. Every one of them helps if it’s short, and harms if it goes on too long. That’s the rule, and I’ve never found a way around it.

She reads it and lifts her eyes to my mask. I know she’s waiting for the rest, so I take the paper back and write some more.

Healing closes wounds and cures sickness. If it goes on too long, the healed become dependent on it. Their bodies feel weaker without it. Old pain comes back sharper, small sicknesses become unbearable. They come to believe they’re dying unless the Cantor sings again.

I hear the rhythm of her heart change while she reads the words. It hurts to know that it isn’t enough, and I have to tell her everything.

Lament brings grief to the surface. It lets a person mourn what they’ve buried. If it goes on too long, they’re trapped in the grief and live every loss again, and again, and can’t come out of it.

“Go on,” she says.

Confession forces a secret out. It can expose a lie or a crime that must be exposed. If it goes on too long, everyone within reach begins confessing, and every private shame comes out whether it matters or not.

Devotion calms people and binds them together. It can steady a frightened crowd or give a divided one courage. If it goes on too long, the attachment turns to obsession. They become possessive. They can’t choose for themselves anymore.

Those are four of them, and there are others. I’m telling you these so you understand that a Cantor doesn’t sing one song. My song isn’t harmless because I mean kindness by it. I’ve never sung a note in my life that couldn’t become a harm if I held it long enough.

She holds the last page longer than the previous ones. Her hand is steady on it, but her breath isn’t.

“The people think they’re dying because you used Healing on them,” she says.

“Yes,” I sign.

“Your singing hurts them.”

“It didn’t begin that way.”

“Then tell me how it began.”

I write again, this time slower, filling a whole page.