Hefertus burst forward. “There are keys! It’s an organ.” He looked over his shoulder at Adalbrand, his eyes boyish with excitement. “Come look at this, brother! I would wager no one has played these pipes in a thousand years.”
I hadn’t even noticed the ivory keys at the far end of the room. I’d seen keys just like that once before on the great pipe organ in Saint Rauche’s Citadel. They came in layers.
“Hefertus played when he was in training. He was said to be gifted,” Adalbrand said from beside me. When I glanced at him, he looked amused, but the amusement was painted over a troubled energy. His eyes darted from Saint to Saint as if he could not place any of them either.
“Look,” Sir Coriand sounded breathless. “Their mouths are the pipes. Imagine the hands of a master here. What would Master Harkumenus’s Fifth Choral sound like played on that instrument?”
“Forget the music,” Sir Sorken said in a happy rumble. “Imagine the craftsmanship. To carve each one perfectly on the outside and also on the inside so it can sing the note? I thought the fountain was a marvel.”
“This is truly a miracle,” Sir Coriand agreed.
“I don’t like this,” Sir Adalbrand muttered. He seemed to be moving his body at an angle, as if to shield me with himself. I didn’t think he even realized he was doing it.
This man is honor carved right through. Let’s see how honor deals with this next thing, hmm, sweetmeat? Let’s see how you manage with your vulnerable soft flesh. This is going to be so delightful that it almost makes up for being trapped within a canine cage.
Did he know something I did not?
Within the ring of hundreds of ivory figures piled one upon another was a smaller ring. And now my heart truly stopped — or at least stuttered. Because these statues were familiar. Once again, they were us.
They stood — towering over the humans they reflected — on swaying lacework platforms. Those platforms hung from chains in the roof — chains constructed of something that looked like ivory stone, but stone would fracture under so much tension.
I scanned them, tension running up my spine. Everything within me screamed at me to run.
There was the Seer, missing her head. It sat at her stone feet with one of her hands. And there was the Hand of the God — not depicted as a pile of dust as one might think, but rather hanging from a carven noose, his neck plainly broken. Each of the statues extended one hand and held it out flat, facing upward — except the dead, whose hands had turned to face the floor. Leading up to each one was a stairway of lacy white stonework and bones that looked human. These stairs swayed with the platforms, like ships upon the high seas, and between the statues there were more chains hanging like the long moss that flows from the branches of trees in the deep south. They tinkled lightly against one another whenever they swayed too far.
I glanced behind me to the door, gripping my sword tightly.
Too late to run, oh, it’s much, much too late. Look!
I looked.
On the ground, and lining both sides of the path on which we trod, reaching as far back as the feet of the steps to the pipe organ, washing up in shoals that nudged the ankles and knees of the Saints, were cups. Tall and thin, squat and wide, stemmed, fluted, belled, cabochon, carven, enameled, bejeweled or plain as a farmer’s water ladle, they lay waiting.
Upon his platform, the Majester raised a cabochon cup and then slotted it into the hand of his statue. It fit with a click. And suddenly the poem made sense.
“Choose a vessel,” it had said. Easy enough.
Is it, though?
“Be careful,” it had said. Not as easy.
Caution laughs at you, little treat. She whispers in my ear and we giggle together.
I was being mocked by my own dog.
“Who’s a good boy, then?” I whispered grimly.
Brindle’s tail thumped against my leg.
Still not me.
“But which one is the cup?” the Inquisitor asked, aghast. Not too bright, our Inquisitor.
In the distance, Hefertus sat down at the instrument. I hadn’t even noticed the stone lace bench that was fitted beneath the six rows of keys. They seemed like too many for one man to play.
Unless that man had six arms. I spy with my diabolical eye someone with six arms.
I wasn’t in the mood to play games.
