“‘So the slant-eyed pig has a Singer of his own,’ her song said, the hollow laughter that coloured it making me tremble. She was powerful, I could sense it, her song was stronger than mine. Shin-Lah may have been able to match her but not I, the rat had met a cat and was helpless before it. ‘What can you tell me, I wonder?’ she sang in my mind, the song plunging deeper, reaching into memory and feeling with brutal ease, dragging up all my hate and my scheming. My intended betrayal seemed to make her exultant, fiercely triumphant. ‘And the Council told me this would be difficult,’ she sang. Her gaze lingered on mine for a moment longer, ‘If you want the Merchant King dead, tell him to reject our offer.’” Then it was gone, her intrusion into my mind withdrawn, leaving behind a chill of certainty. She was here to kill Lol-Than if he refused whatever they proposed, and she wanted to kill him, the outcome of the negotiations meant nothing to her. She had travelled across half the world for blood and would not be denied it.”
Ahm Lin’s face was tense with remembered pain. “Sometimes the song lets us touch the minds of others, in all the years since I must have touched thousands, but never have I felt anything to compare with the black stain of that woman’s thoughts. For years afterwards I had nightmares, visions of slaughter, murder practised with sadistic precision, faces screaming or frozen in fear, men, women, children. And visions of places I had never seen, languages I couldn’t understand. I thought I was going mad until I realised she had left some of her memories with me, either out of indifference or casual malice. They faded over time, mostly. But even now there are nights when I wake screaming and my wife holds me as I weep.”
“Who was she?” Vaelin asked. “Where did she come from?”
“The name spoken by the interpreter was a lie, I sensed that even before I heard her song, and the memories she left gave no clue as to name or family. As for where she was from, it meant nothing to me at the time but the delegation presented greetings from the High Council of the Volarian Empire. What I’ve learned of the Volarians since leads me to conclude she would have been most at home there.”
“Did you do it? Did you tell the Merchant King to reject their proposal?”
Ahm Lin nodded. “Without a moment’s hesitation. Shocked as I was, my hatred was undimmed. I told him they were full of lies, that their scheme was an attempt to spend his treasure and save their own. In truth I had barely any understanding of what they had proposed or if their word was true. As always, however, he trusted my verdict implicitly.”
“And did she keep her word?”
“At first I thought she had betrayed me. Lol-Than gave them his answer the next morning after which they boarded their ship and sailed away. He appeared to be in fine health, and gave every impression of remaining so. Disappointment and fear crushed me. For the first time I had lied to the Merchant King. Surely, I would be discovered and an ugly death would follow. A month passed as I worried and fought to conceal my fear, and then Lol-Than slowly began to sicken. It was nothing at first, a small but persistent cough that of course no one would dare to mention, then his colour became paler, his hands began to tremble, within weeks he was coughing blood and raving in fits. By the time he died he was a wasted bundle of bone and skin that couldn’t remember its own name. I felt no pity at all.
“He had a successor, of course. His third son Mah-Lol, the two older brothers having been quietly poisoned in early manhood when it became clear they lacked their father’s acumen. Mah-Lol was truly his father’s son, highly intelligent, exceptionally well educated and possessed of all the cunning and ruthlessness needed to sit on a Merchant King’s throne. But, to my great delight, he knew nothing of my gift. Lol-Than’s illness had left him in no state to enlighten his son as to the nature of my role at court. To Mah-Lol I was simply an unusually trusted secretary, and he had his own man for that. I was consigned to a bookkeeping position in the palace stores, moved from my fine quarters and paid a fraction of the salary I had received before. Apparently, I was expected to kill myself in shame at my fall from royal favour, as many of Lol-Than’s now redundant servants had already done. Instead, I simply left, telling the guard at the palace gate that I had an errand to run in the city. He barely glanced at me as I walked out. I was twenty-two years old and a free man for the first time. It was the sweetest moment of my life.
“Freedom brought a change in my song, made it soar, seeking out wonders and novelty. I followed its music across the breadth of Mah-Lol’s kingdom and beyond. It guided me to a stonemason in a small village high in the mountains, who, lacking sons or apprentices, agreed to teach me his craft. I think he was disturbed by the speed with which I learned, not to say the unusual quality of my work, and he seemed relieved when it became clear he had no more to teach me and I moved on.
“The song guided me to a port where I took ship to the east. For the next twenty years I travelled and worked, from city to city, town to town, leaving my mark on houses, palaces and temples. I even spent a year in your realm carving gargoyles for a Nilsaelin lord’s castle. I never wanted for anything, in lean times the song guided me to food and work, when times were fraught it sought out peace and solitude. I never questioned it, never resisted it. Five years ago it guided me here, where Shoala, my most excellent wife, was struggling to keep her late father’s shop going. She had the skills but richer Alpirans don’t like to deal with women. I’ve been here ever since. My song has never signalled a need to move on, for which I am grateful.”
“Even now?” Vaelin wondered. “With the Red Hand in the city?”