SONG of EMBER

60

MY SISTER, MY FRIEND

🙜

Ky threw her arms above her head, claws curling into her palms; only after the shock of impact had passed did it become clear that she had pierced her tongue with a fang—the taste of her own blood sullied her mouth.

Ten winters of wandering and the consecration of all the waterfalls and rivers along that lonely path had not rinsed away the lingering scent of sage and bitter pine from her knowing, the voice which carried with it the power of a thousand voices. None other had ever seized her hair—flung her to the ground so carelessly.

Bilious terror and shame rose up together in Ky’s throat.

Had the cruel fingers not been so tight, she might have retched for fear. Instinct took hold, and she pressed herself lower into the mud; the rooted urge to submit, half-untangled by the solace of simple things, flooded back like the stormtide.

After all…

She was only a Little Fish.

A thick talon pricked the neckline of her sodden dress, peeling it away from Ky’s bruised shoulder. Condemnation without words. She fell still as a shadowy face bent close to hers, moist breath laden with the dregs of crushed berries and rotten flesh.

“Why does Ky of Clan Veli not smile to see her only kin?”

So long had it been since Ky had bothered to speak her own tongue that for a moment she scarcely understood the whisperings. She had spent so much of her life hearkening to the tongues of men, and so much time beneath the mountain conversing with one, such that even a few of her thoughts and wishes were now patterned after human speech.

The black eyes glittered, bony fingers loosening.

Ky coughed, spittle and lake water spraying across her sister’s hollow-cheeked face. Sil twitched and bared her much longer fangs, each as lustrous as an ocean pearl—but her lips remained thinly curled.

“Speak.”

The undercurrent of a threat compelled her, daring her to keep silent.

Ky managed a strangled whimper.

At the sound of it, Sil stood with a swiftness, her water-dark hair trailing in the mud. Ky coughed once more and slowly followed, pressing her fingers to her throat and swallowing hard. Her heart pattered in her breast, head throbbing—

And she was gathered into a chilled embrace.

Ky gasped as Sil’s arms pressed her close, red hair draping over her shoulder and the crushed scent of sage stifling her senses. Habit overtook her, and she wrapped her arms about her elder sibling in turn.

“Oh my halfwit sister! So long it has been. Can you be well, after all this weary wandering?”

“I…” Ky stood limply in her fierce embrace, baffled. “I… am… not well.”

Sil let out a faint cry—the anguish of it shivered Ky’s bones.

This was familiar.

This was… right.

She is cruel, but she does love you. You remember, now—she who sang to you, cradled you, when you were merely a squalling babe. Love is not gentle, nor kind. It is cold, and strong, and dutiful.

Slowly, insidiously, the fear was quelled by a trickle of reluctant relief…

He would not understand such a love. But then, that would be asking a bird to understand the care of a viper which looked after its own, yet devoured the nests of things with wings. The man had only seen the huntress of Sil Veli. Not the elder sister. Not her faithful warden—

“Did he give this to you, sister?”

A cold finger pressed against Ky's face, below her eye. It traced the faint ridge of scar tissue until it reached her chin, and stopped there. The silence stretched on so long that the crickets began cheeping in the tall grass again, and her toes sank softly into the mud.

She pressed her lips together, heartbeat quickening.

“Keep your secrets, if it please you; I shall be hearing them all soon enough—the Council of Whispers will accept neither silence nor lies. Whether you sing or scream the truth is up to you, as always.”

A shudder worked its way through Ky's body, from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet. She retreated, sloshing through the mud as Sil drew herself up to her full imperious height.

“What do you think our elders did to me, when I returned that moonless night without my ward? I have suffered greatly for the vow I took.”

“Sister, I did not know—”

“If I return empty-handed once more, they shall cut off my hair before all the clans.”

“Sister, I—”

“SILENCE!”

Ky dropped to her knees with a squelching splash, writhing and groveling like an eel in the muck. Tingles of pain lashed her spine, the word numbing her throat and binding her voice within her lungs. The air thrummed, twisting darkly about her like the fingers of the demon beneath the mountain.

“You knew of that possibility before you ever ran from me. How could you not? Selfish, selfish sister. At last this thankless hunt has come to an end. I have given up everything—” Her snarling lip twitched, and Ky jumped. “—for an upstart halfwit! Turning and turnings of the tide, and ever on you fled before my earnest supplications. Even I, now, am weary of the chase. I confess, I almost left you to the mountain’s cold embrace.”

Sil glanced around the lake, and Ky noticed her drawing heavy breaths, lips parted gently to catch the drift of a passing scent. Long, aching moments crept by, one after the other, and Ky slowly burrowed her fingers into her arms as she waited for the inevitable confrontation, but the silence stretched on into many silences.

At last, Sil turned away and began combing out a tousled braid in her hair.

Ky almost dared to relax as there was no further mention made of the man.

This may be easier than I thought… surely she expected to find him here, with me. If she accepts that the man has moved on, or perished, then I will go with her, and he can find his own way in the world—

Sil tsked her tongue gently, brows pulling together in a look of vague concern.

“I am tasked to bring you before a gathering of the clan, to speak on the many matters in which you have transgressed—or present them with the skin of your head, should all else fail, as it has been done since we fashioned ourselves from the froth of a stormy sea.”

Ky’s scalp prickled. Her fingers reflexively twitched toward her hair, and she forced her hand away. Sil’s face twisted, her mouth tight.

“Well, my sister?” Something like sorrow—or pity—softened her beneficent voice. “What say you to that?”

The calm in her words made Ky weak with dread; perhaps she could take flight along their path to the ocean. Yet where would she flee from there? What would happen if she was caught again? If Sil failed in this, would they send more elders to fetch and reprimand them both?

Can I really mean so much to any clan, that they would have this fatherless daughter back again at such a cost?

Ky twitched her ears and sniffed, wondering if it was more hurtful that she should be coveted more by a clan than a sister, or that her sister might covet her so fiercely as to deceive her in this.

Her fingers tapped her thigh…

She recalled the cold touch of the Lonely One as he snatched at her legs, hoping to yank her down from her perch and devour her twice over. She recalled how the man had put a pretty sword through his siren heart. She recalled that one man alone could never hold sway against an entire siren clan, nor would he know where to find her.

“Surely you are freed from your vow of wardship—for I am grown. Can I not go my own way?”

A small, sad voice cried out in protest: I don't want to be alone again!

“But you are Unbecome,” Sil murmured. “And the Unbecome must always and ever have a ward… it is your own doing, you know. You had your chance. More than one chance did you have.”

The accusation stung her. Old ways, old rituals crept in like the tides, stilling her tongue and stifling her thoughts. It was, of course, her own doing. She had failed to end Bren’s life. Failed to sup his blood. And Sil knew far too much about the man she had so recently abandoned—that last remark could only be a warning.

Now and then, Sil could be dissuaded from something she had set her mind to, if Ky only made herself pitiable enough; it may yet be enough to spare him.

“I will return with you,” Ky whispered, inclining her head, “as you well knew I would.”

Sil watched her carefully for several moments, her mouth flat and her eyes empty—and then smiled a long, thin smile.

“Then I shall put everything to rights, and what was once between us shall be again, forever,” breathed Sil, curling a hand around her tattered sleeve. “This I promise my sister.”

Unease writhed in the pit of Ky’s stomach, but her head was already bowing to the wise and effectual murmurings. She did not want to think anymore; thinking had only brought conflict, pain, and confusion—and not only to herself. What a fool she had been to run so far away, when it was all for nothing in the end.

“Yes,” Ky relented. “All shall be as it once was…”

But what might once have been shall never be.

She would no longer sing for the man. Perhaps one day, when the pain had dulled and the memory of his face and voice had faded into darkness, she would sing again for the moon—but the moon cared not for her melodious words; the moon did not smile upon her, or whisper its secret admiration. It was assured of its own worth.

The moon was cold, and distant.

She knotted her fingers, swallowing a lump of regret.

Not like him.

He was warm… and close…

“Sister!”

Ky blinked several times as Sil’s scowling face reappeared.

For the first time she looked upon her sister’s aspect in full—her nose was swollen and bruised, and slightly crooked. Flakes of dried blood clung to her lip and streaked her face. The sight of her displeasure ought to have withered Ky's resolve, but a ghost of Ember’s hand pressed into hers, and she suddenly found she could not shift her attention from Sil’s crooked nose.

A strange thing, to glimpse such a blemish upon the face of one who had always appeared as nothing less than absolute perfection.

Ky forced her expression into one of calm disinterest.

“Have you heard nothing I have said?”

“Forgive me,” Ky whispered, the words barely slipping past her lips. She straightened the remaining sleeve of her limp dress and swallowed hard. “My thoughts wandered.”

Sil absently wound a lock of Ky’s damp hair around her finger, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. “Tomorrow we depart for Mist-Bound Cove by way of the river run. It shall be a tiresome journey to the holdings of Clan Veli. Tonight, my sister, we shall remain here… and feast.”

Ky went rigid as Sil trailed her claws down her bared arm, until their fingers clasped together, cradling her small hand in two larger, bonier ones.

“But where is the third member of our party?” Sil cast her a cunning glance; the night air thrummed with her words, each casual lilt and shift in tone laced with hidden meaning. “Do you not wish for your vengeful plaything to join us, sister? You, who covet him so…”

“I covet nothing,” Ky assured her, haltingly.

It would be best to convince Sil that the man had perished beneath the mountain, but now it came to it, she found she could not speak the words. Never before had she told her discerning sister such a brazen untruth.

“The heart of a man, sister—that is what you covet, is it not?”

Ky shifted her gaze to the wide lake, blearily searching the rushes for some small distraction from Sil’s words.

A fluttering moth.

It circled a reed which swirled in the subtle currents of the lake, swaying quietly—both of them danced together, softly and serenely, glowing beneath the light of a rising moon. She pressed her tongue to her teeth and swallowed blood.

“There… is no man.”

A cold slap stung Ky’s cheek, and her skin tingled with a flush of shame; suddenly she was grateful that Ember was not present to witness her cowering—to see the truth of herself; the self she had forgotten.

“All these many moons, Sil of Clan Veli has searched for her lost ward, and this is how she shows her undying gratitude? With lies!”

“I do not lie,” whispered Ky, very softly. “The man of whom you speak has forsaken me—perhaps he has gone to greet his ancestors. I would know not if he had. For I am truly alone.”

That, at least, was no lie.

Sil sniffed, wincing as she twitched her nose, and tilted her head.

Her glance was thoughtful.

White-hot pain wrenched Ky’s shoulder.

She stumbled and cried out in surprise as the sleeve of her dress tore clean away. Sil clenched a fistful of limp fabric; her fingers spasmed, and her eyelids twitched. It reminded Ky of the way she wrung the necks of little birds.

Denial caught in her aching throat, and any song she may have sung to allay Sil’s suspicions died there.

Be small, be still, be silent.

When the sirena sang again, it was with a gentler tone.

“His scent is fresh upon you… have you forgotten that I, too, am knowing well the rhythm of his song?” Her dark eyes sparkled like wet river stones, and she shoved the tattered wool under Ky’s nose. “How often you spite your own tongue, sister. By my oath to the clan, I should bind you with these profane rags and leave you to starve: it may yet be a better fate than that which our elders shall offer. Fret not—if you come willingly, then I shall speak cunning words on your behalf.”

Ky’s breath hitched and she gathered the muddy skirts about her waist with faltering fingers; her grip would have failed if her claws had not snagged the fabric. She remembered Sil’s bony grip on her arm as the Elder quailed before them—no one had spoken on his behalf. She remembered the terrible screech he had uttered when the fishes came to devour him—his bones sinking and settling upon the ocean floor, one by one, in a cloud of inky blood—

“Sing now for Ember of the Oracles,” she crooned, imparting power upon each word, “and let us greet him with your happy news: that I shall tell the Council all has been atoned, and you will be spared their wroth.”

The compulsion arose in a chorus: Speak! Sing! Shout!

His name leapt to her tongue unbidden.

She bit down on it, horrified.

My sister did not come for me—she came for Ember.

She had known this, but she had not understood it.

The understanding resounded in her mind like a wicked clap of thunder.

She did not come for me—she came for him. For whomever I may have found in my wanderings. For whatever curiosity I might lay at her feet next. She is only ever happy with that which I may bring to her. It isn’t me that she loves. The thought staggered her. It was never me…

Ky had always plied her with inconsequential things—a pretty shell, a feather, a stone, a bit of gossip—and yet always Sil wished for more than what was given, and expressed dissatisfaction if it was not. She loved that which she took from others, even her only sister—pity, subservience, blood. Had she ever loved Ky, herself?

Grief sprang to her lips in a broken cry.

“He is gone away from this place!” Her breaths, quick and frantic, sapped her quavering words of any influence they might have exerted. She pulled away as the strangling scent of bitter herbs consumed her.

“How unlucky for you.” Damp breath washed over Ky's forehead, rank with rotting flesh. “He cannot have wandered far, and I would have him. Summon him for your own sake, Sister—and if he will not come, then we will hunt him down, together. The three of us shall seal our pact in blood.”