The orchestra played the battle hymn, one Saturday knew, for Maire had taught it to her. Saturday’s voice soared above the confusion like a trumpet calling men to battle. The noise in the hall stopped. Men stood and began to sing. This was a song they knew, one they had marched to, one they had known since they were children. Women sang. High along the walls, the Gharm sang. The huge hall howled with sound, as every voice joined until there was only one huge unison chorus of outrage and fury and determination over the body lying so quietly and the two working over it and the Gharm gathered weeping around them.
• • •
• In the castle of the Cause, above Cloudport, there was laughter when the cymbal crashed. Men had been waiting for that crash, tossing their heads to make their coup markers flutter, nudging one another as the time drew near. When it came, they pointed out the handless woman, the fountains of blood, roaring with laughter. When the audience screamed, started to run, the laughter grew in volume.
Then something happened they had not expected. Maire Manone was on the platform beside the fallen Gharm woman, binding up Stenta Thilion’s handless arms. The Commander was beside her. And there was a girl on the stage, turning to face them, as though she saw them, and she was singing the Ahabar battle hymn, with the horns and drums of the orchestra taking up the music behind her. And suddenly, as every voice in the great hall came alive with that same hymn, rising in a torrent of song, the laughter in the castle of the Cause fell away to a titter and then to silence. It was as though every eye in the hall saw through the stage to those there in Voorstod, to those conspirators, to those who had done this thing, and pledged them everlasting hatred and death.
Jep, his face wet with nausea and horror, crouched at the foot of the pillar and heard Saturday singing. Even while he retched, he could not keep his eyes away from the prophet, that one who had wanted to torture him earlier, that one with the deep-set eyes and the slit-lipped mouth. For a moment, only a moment, Jep saw terror slip across the aged man’s face. Other faces were equally fearful, the kind of fear, Jep told himself, of a child in a tantrum who destroys something irreplaceable and suddenly realizes he has gone too far. In the past he has been indulged or perhaps only overlooked. But what he has done now cannot be overlooked. What he has done cannot be explained away. What he has done has damned him, utterly, and so what Voorstod had done this night had damned them all, and even the prophet Awateh knew it.
• • •
• Saturday, Maire, and Sam sat against the wall in the Queen’s small audience room. They had been brought there for safekeeping, so the Commander said, inasmuch as the world had seen them, and heard them, not only here in Ahabar but in Voorstod as well. Some madman or madmen might try to hurt them for saving the harpist, for singing, or just for having been there, so they had been brought here, where it was safe. Stenta Thilion was elsewhere, among the doctors.
Sam was in a state of shock. Despite what Maire had said, he had disbelieved her. Even when he had believed her, he had told himself it wasn’t as bad as she said. People got hurt during these kinds of disputes, but surely, he had said to himself, no one would purposefully hurt a child or a woman or someone obviously noncombatant and innocent. Those hurt were usually soldiers, or the equivalent, he had told himself. Innocent bystanders sometimes got killed, but never on purpose.
Now he knew that they did get killed, purposely, for no military or strategic reason, purely for terror and hatred. Still he kept telling himself his own dad would not be part of this.
But the word Maire had breathed as she went over the railing had been Phaed. She had said it as though she recognized his presence. Had she, indeed, recognized Phaed in this bloody work?
Maybe she’d only assumed, Sam told himself. Maybe she hated Phaed so much for other things he had done that she assigned all manner of evil to him as a matter of course. That had to be it. Poor Maire, to be so full of hate for her husband. He pitied her. He told himself he pitied her.
At the other end of the room, the Queen was talking to several of her counselors. “You will want to send certain representations to Authority,” old Lord Multron was saying.
“No,” the Queen responded, her voice strident as brass as she turned away from the old man toward the Commander. “There will be no more representations to Authority. I require complete mobilization of the army by morning. They are to occupy Green Hurrah and cut off all access from Skelp. They are to cut off routes from the peninsula. They are to put guards on every inch of coastline. Our seagoing forces are to blockade Voorstod from the water. Not one rat from Voorstod is to be able to crawl out of that rat hole.”
“Your Sublimity,” faltered Saturday, rising from her chair. “I must still go in.”
The Queen looked at her blindly, not seeing her.
“She must still go in,” said Maire, expressionlessly. “One of ours is still held hostage there.”
Maire’s dress was clotted with blood. She had torn strips from that dress and had bound the arms of the harpist, had saved her life, though no one knew how long Stenta would live. The musician was old and frail. All her
