Page 194 of The Sun He Buried

“Excuse me.”

He vanishes between two benches. I check my breath against my palm.

Mead. Not excellent, but everyone here has the same problem.

A younger man takes my hand when the next verse begins. He has silver eyes and a braid that reaches the middle of his back.

“You sing loudly,” he says.

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

He laughs. Good.

We turn. The silver-eyed man smells of smoke and bitter fruit. He knows every step and none of them try to kill me.

This is going very well.

He leans closer. His attention stays on my mouth. Then my throat. The hand around mine tightens.

“You’re very warm,” he says.

“The fire is enormous.”

“It’s not the fire.”

His other hand reaches for my wrist. Purple flashes beyond his shoulder.

Gone.

The silver-eyed man jerks backward. His hand leaves mine.

So does the rest of him.

One instant he’s in front of me. The next, the dark between the benches has swallowed his braid, boots, and unfinished sentence. A heavy impact shakes the nearest cups, and I blink at the empty floor.

“All right.”

The lyre keeps going. So do I.

I sing the next line louder. It’s the wrong line.

The grey-eyed woman finds my horn and gives it back. “You’re alone.”

“Everyone keeps leaving.”

She glances into the dark beyond me.

“Yes.”

“Is it the singing?”

“It may be.”

I sing louder. That solves nothing.

The next verse turns slow. The drum quiets. The lyre carries a low run beneath a voice near the hearth. I know this song too. Everybody in Gullither knows it, though our version leaves out the part where the woman cuts off her own hair and uses it to bind her husband’s body to the mast.