Page 24

“You’re not unwell?” he signs.

“No. Only tired. Go on, I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Rest,” he signs. “I’ll come back soon.”

He takes his cloak from the hook and goes out. I stand in the doorway and watch the light from the lamp at the front of the boat move away from the dock and shrink over the water until I can’t see it anymore. Then I close the door, turn around, and stare at the door I’ve never walked through before. I have some time.

I cross the living room and wrap my hand around the door handle. He’s never opened mine without asking for permission first. He turned his face away from me in the mirror when I stood there with my skirt pulled up. He’s allowed me into every room in this house but this one, and I’ve never asked for it. If I go in, there’s no going back.

I open the door, not knowing what to expect. The room beyond it is dark and neat. A canopy bed stands against the wall, hung with black curtains tied back with cord, and the covers are pulled straight without a wrinkle. A tall desk faces a narrow window. Through the glass, I can see the pale plants in the garden under the lamps. On the desk, there’s a pen, a stack of paper, a row of books, and a score with fresh ink on it. The wardrobe is black wood with carved doors. Everything is in its place. It looks like a room no one has ever been careless in.

I go to the desk first. The score is one of his, and the top line is a woman’s part. Below it, he’s written his own part on the lower staff. There are places where he’s scraped the ink away and written the notes again. I put my finger under the first bar and hum it with my other hand against my throat. Then I remember I’m not here for this. The desk drawers hold pens, blotting sand, sealing wax, and folded papers covered in his writing. I leave everything as it is.

I walk to the bed, run a hand over the covers, and try to picture him in it, on his back with the mask still on, looking up at the black canopy. I can’t picture it. I don’t know if he sleeps at all. Mordred told me he doesn’t need human food, so maybe he doesn’t need sleep either. Maybe he lies here with his eyes open or sits at the desk and writes, and composes until I come out of my room, and the bed is only another thing he keeps because a house should have one. I know the shape of his hands and the way my chest feels when he sings with me, but I don’t know what he is. A Cantor. But I have no reference for his species, really.

I open the wardrobe. His coats hang in a row, black and dark gray, with high collars and tarnished gold at the cuffs. Behind them, the cloaks hang longer, and behind the cloaks, on the floor of the wardrobe, there’s a wooden box with a plain lid. It isn’t locked or even pushed to the back. When I lift the lid, I see that I’ve found what I was looking for.

I carry the box to the bed and read every card and letter in it, look at every drawing.

Some are in Callum’s handwriting. I know it from the contract I watched him sign, from the way his letters lean. The rest are different, some written with care, others in such a shaking hand that I have to guess at the words. I understand what they’re about before I’m halfway through the pile.

They call him a god, and they beg him to sing. They write about pain, about people who can’t stand, sleep, or work, who are certain they’re dying without knowing of what. They keep asking him for Mercies.

Callum asks more directly than others, and he asks more often. He writes about the children and about how faithful Nivallia has been. He writes that the gift they sent was given freely and is his to do with as he pleases, that he asks only for a sign the gift was accepted, and that he asks him to sing. I read that page twice before I understand that the gift is… me.

One note is different from the rest. It’s a single line, written like a verse of a song, about something given in silence that the Voice can’t take. I read it three times and don’t understand it at all.

I sit on the edge of Mordred’s untouched bed with the letters spread around me. It’s all clear now. Like the light of day, which I haven’t seen since I was lowered underground.

Callum bought a woman to give to his god. To the monster he believes is a god. He bathed me, fed me, and put a wedding dress on me so I’d walk to the cage on my own feet. He pushed me in when I didn’t accept my fate. He did it because the people I saw in the streets, the ones who stopped and held their sides, and pressed their hands to their hearts, are in pain. The pain is Mordred’s to take away, and he won’t.

He won’t, and he knows they’re asking. How long has he known that these people are suffering?

The first week, I asked him whether I was his wife or his servant, and he wrote that he didn’t know why they’d sent me.

I try to be angry at Callum and find that I’m not. Because all the anger I have is for Mordred. My hands grip the edge of the bed so tightly that the wood hurts my palms. I look at his neat covers, his now open wardrobe, and the box he didn’t even try to hide better.

I gather the papers, carry them to the living room, and sit in my chair by the hearth. I spread the letters on the floor around my feet, on the low table, and across my knees, where the light from the fire falls on them. I face the door, because I can’t hear the boat come in, and I keep one foot on the stone floor to feel his steps when they approach. Then I keep reading. The cards sent by the children of Nivallia are the ones that break my heart.

Half an hour later, Mordred comes in with a lamp in one hand and a covered tray in the other. He stops when he sees me.

I don’t look away from his mask. I wait until I see his head turn down, until I see him look at the floor around my chair, at the letters on my knees. Then I speak, slowly and as clearly as I know how, so he can’t pretend he missed a word.

“Why did they send me?”

He doesn’t move.

“What does your singing do to them?”

He sets the tray and the lamp on the table without looking at either one. He reaches up behind his head to the clasps of the mask, and I watch his fingers check them one by one. It’s a habit I’ve learned by now.

“Why did you hide their pleas from me?”

He lowers his hands and looks at the letters again, then at me. He knows what he told me when I asked what I was to him, and he knows Callum’s notes prove it false. He lifts his hands to sign, and I know the shape his fingers are starting to make, because I taught it to him. It’s the shape for wait.

I’m on my feet before he finishes it. The papers slide off my knees onto the floor.

“Tell me the truth!”