“Did your song raise its voice when you first heard the sickness was here?”
Vaelin remembered the despair he felt at Sister Gilma’s likely fate but realised it hadn’t been coloured by the blood-song. “No. No it didn’t. Does this mean there is no danger?”
“Hardly. It means that, for whatever reason, this is where we are both supposed to be.”
“This is…” Vaelin fumbled for the right words. “Our destiny?”
Ahm Lin shrugged. “Who can say, brother? Of destiny I know little but to say I’ve seen so much of the random and unexpected in my life as to doubt there is such a thing. We make our own path, but with the song’s guidance. Your song is you, remember. You can sing it as well as hear it.”
“How?” Vaelin leaned forward, discomfited by the hunger for knowledge he knew coloured his voice. “How do I sing?”
Ahm Lin gestured at the workbench where his partly carved block still sat, untouched since his first visit. “You’ve already started. I suspect you’ve been singing a long time, brother. The song can make us reach for many different tools; the pen, the chisel… or the sword.”
Vaelin glanced down at his sword, resting within easy reach against the edge of the table. Is that what I’ve been doing all these years? Cutting my path through life? All the blood spilled and lives taken, just verses in a song?
“Why haven’t you finished it?” Ahm Lin enquired. “The sculpture?”
“If I pick up the hammer and chisel again I won’t put them down until it’s done. And our current circumstance requires my full attention.” He knew this to be only partly true. The roughly hewn features emerging from the block had begun to take on a disturbing familiarity, not yet recognisable but enough to make him conclude the finished version would be a face he knew. Perversely, the arrival of the Red Hand had been a welcome excuse for delaying the moment of final clarity.
“It’s not advisable to ignore one’s song, brother,” Ahm Lin cautioned him. “You recall the harm I did when I called to you the first time? Why do you think that was?”
“My song was silent.”
“That’s right. And why was it silent?”
The king’s fragile neck… The whore’s dangerous secrets… “It called on me to do something, something terrible. When I couldn’t do it my song fell silent. I thought it had deserted me.”
“Your song is your protection as well as your guide. Without it you are vulnerable to others who can do as we do, like the Volarian woman. Trust me brother, you wouldn’t wish to be vulnerable to her.”
Vaelin looked at the marble block, tracing the rough profile of the unformed face. “When the Red Falcon returns,” he said. “I’ll finish it then.”
Twenty days after the Red Falcon’s departure the sailors rioted, breaking out of their makeshift prisons in the warehouse district, killing their guards and making for the docks in a well planned assault. Caenis was quick to respond, ordering two companies of Wolfrunners to hold the docks and drafting in Count Marven’s men to seal off the surrounding streets. Cumbraelin archers were placed on the rooftops, cutting down dozens of sailors as their attack on the docks faltered in the face of disciplined resistance and they went reeling back into the city. Caenis ordered an immediate counter attack and the brief but bloody revolt was all but over by the time Vaelin got to the scene.
He found Caenis fighting a large Meldenean, the big man swinging a crudely fashioned club at the lithe brother as he danced around him, sword flicking out to leave cuts on his arms and face. “Give up!” he ordered, his blade slicing into the man’s forearm. “It’s over!”
The Meldenean gave a roar of pain fuelled rage and redoubled his efforts, his useless club meeting only air as Caenis continued his vicious dance. Vaelin unlimbered his bow, notched an arrow and sent it cleanly through the Meldenean’s neck from forty paces. One of his better feats of archery.