Belltoller’s eyes are like two slips of agate set in a damp log. ‘Hilarious. I mean the boys. The Southerners. Fallon’s son, and the other attachment.’
Kinghammer nods. ‘Popular topic this morning. Everyone wants to state their case before I have both legs in my breeches.’
The Deadsingers chuckle, a single, soft slither of mirth.
Belltoller doesn’t. She steps closer, almost silent, the soft boots of her trade barely scuffing the stone.
‘Every second we have them here is a risk. It draws eyes to us. First Hesper, then her.’
‘I know that, Bell. I was thinking that myself. Ice says the boy is here to try and save his mother.’
Belltoller hisses between her teeth. ‘Of course. That’s all little boys ever think about. Mum and Dad can’t die, because they are theworldand the centre.’
She waves an arm, the wood charms at her wrist clashing. ‘We have a mountain of mothers and fathers, Hammer. A mountain that we need to keep safe. We don’t do that by pulling them into another war.’
‘Scared of a fight, Bell?’
Her face drops, the composure broken for a second, before that glacial calm reasserts itself. ‘Of course I am. You should be too. And don’t you dare imply I’m a coward. After what I did for you? For this city? For our people?’
Kinghammer raises his hands like he’s gentling a horse. ‘Easy, we’re still on the same side. We want the same things.’
‘Do we, Hammer? Or do you want to be something impossible? You cannot be a ruleranda fatheranda friend. No matter what we owe the Fallons or anyone else, that isdone. That kind of sympathy is weakness. It’s water in the rock – the slightest shock and we’ll shatter.’
He grimaces. ‘Ice says we owe it to them. That we can’t not help, not if we want to keep our conscience clear.’
Belltoller’s eyes flash, the agate running with hill lightning. ‘My conscience is clear. I will see the rest of the world break before we put our people into danger.’
She runs her hands through her hair and sucks her teeth. ‘This is precisely the problem. Icecaller is too soft for the work and you are becoming too gentle for it. Peace has dulled your edge.’
‘Careful, Bell.’
‘Careful? The time for careful is long past. We need action. We need to put ourselves first. You need to remember where the centre lies.’
‘It’s a big world, Bell.’
‘Don’t fucking patronise me. Pay attention to what that world is doing to us. We are already tainted by what happened in the South. What’s your name, Kinghammer? What’s the name of your daughter? Either one?’
She raises an eyebrow, and waits. He does search for it, reflexively, but finds only the hole which swallowed the words, oily and slick in his mind.
She sees it on his face. ‘Exactly. The world has come for us already, and that waswithour borders sealed.’
‘Shattering,’ the singers say. ‘The falling of one into another, and the making of a third. The breaking of the gold, and the singing of the dark. The mother, and the eye, and the sweet thread of sorrow.’
Kinghammer snarls. ‘Spare me.’
‘Sorry, my lord,’ the left Singer says. ‘It comes unbidden.’
‘Sorry my lord,’ the right Singer says, then softer. ‘Amethyst. Cat bone. Flint.’
‘What?’ Both Belltoller and Kinghammer, briefly united in confusion.
‘I said apologies, my lord,’ the right Singer smiles. The geometrics on her hands seem to twist in the morning light as it crawls down the wall.
Kinghammer snorts. ‘I suppose these two mystic coots agree with you?’
Belltoller nods. ‘The singers have listened. To the wind, the dead, the things that move between the dead. They can see the path we are being pulled down. They tell me it has death at the end of it.’
The twins chatter like mice in the walls. ‘Death coming to meet you, death coming to move you, to make you dance. To be a poor father, a headless mother.’
