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He smiles then. “You need me alive, Alosa. Otherwise I’d already be dead.”
“If I have to ask you one more time, I’ll start singing,”I warn. “What should I make you do first? Break your legs? Draw pictures on the walls in your own blood?”
He swallows. “My men outnumber yours three to one. I’m not going anywhere, and that voice of yours will do you little good when you can only control three at a time.”
“Your men won’t be able to do much fighting when they’re asleep in their beds. My girls are already locking them in their rooms.”
His eyes narrow.
“Pity you didn’t catch my spy in your ranks, and it’s a shame you didn’t notice her switching out all the locks on the doors. Yes, they lock from the outside now.”
“They’ve been alerted. My men on watch—”
“Are all dead. The four men on this roof. The five in the streets. The three on the butcher’s roof, the tanner’s, and the supply store.”
His mouth widens so I can see his teeth. “Six,” he says.
My breathing stops for a beat.
“I had six on the streets,” he clarifies.
What? No. We would’ve known—
A bell tolls so loudly it will wake the entire town.
I swear under my breath.
“The little boy,” I say, just as Vordan reaches underneath his pillow. For the dagger I’ve already removed. “Time to go, Sorinda.”
Get up.I direct the words at Vordan, but they are not an ordinary command spoken with an ordinary voice. The words are sung, full of magic passed on to me by my siren mother.
And all men who hear them have no choice but to obey.
Vordan rises from his bed at once, plants his feet on the floor.
Where is the map?
His hand goes to his throat and pulls out a leather cord hidden beneath his shirt. On the end is a glass vial, no bigger than my thumb, stoppered with a cork. And rolled up inside is the final map piece. With it, my father and I will finally travel to the siren island and claim its treasure.
My body is already alive with song, my senses heightened. I can hear the men moving below, shrugging on their boots and running for their doors.
I pull the vial at Vordan’s neck. The cord snaps, and I place the entire necklace in the pocket of the ebony corset I wear.
I make Vordan go out the door first. He’s barefoot, of course, and wears only a loose flannel shirt and cotton trousers. The man who locked me in a cage does not get the comfort of shoes and a coat.
Sorinda is right behind me as I step into the hallway. Below, I hear Vordan’s men throwing the weight of their bodies against their locked doors, trying to respond to the warning bell. Damn that bell!
My girls haven’t reached the upper floors yet. Men from this floor and the one below spill into the hallway. It doesn’t take them long to spot their captain.
I sing a series of words to Vordan in no more than a whisper.
He shouts, “Outside, you fools! It’s the land king’s men. They approach from the south! Go and meet them.”
Many start to move, heeding their captain’s call, but one man shouts, “No, look behind him! It’s the siren bitch!”
That man, I decide, dies first.
Vordan must have warned them against a situation like this, because the men draw their cutlasses and charge.
