Chapter 64: The Girl Who Sang First

Kai raced up the eastern hill through the darkness towards the tower of the Silver Moon, with his confession still tucked inside his vest. Mira was right behind him, and Garrick, Sunny and Elowen caught up with them halfway up the hill, because Mira had pounded on every door in Hale’s house on her way out.

The tower’s door was standing wide open when they got there. All of the priestesses were gathered in the round room with the moon pool, and every one of them was silent once more, cowering along the curved walls just like they had been on the night Kai first met them.

High Sister Aurel was sitting at the edge of the pool with a wet rag pressed against the side of her head, and blood had stained the neck of her robe. She got to her feet the moment she saw Kai, even though one of the younger sisters tried to pull her back down.

"They came during our song," High Sister Aurel said. "There were four men, with their faces covered. They knew exactly what they were looking for, and they were gone before we could stop them."

"Did anyone get hurt?" Kai asked. "Other than you?"

"No one else was hurt," High Sister Aurel said, and her voice broke. "But they took Lysa."

Kai felt the cold rush all the way through him. Lysa was the freckled girl who had sung first, the first person to sing a single note inside this tower in forty years, and she was the reason the Silver Moon had agreed to vote for him at all.

High Sister Aurel held out a crumpled piece of paper, and Kai read it aloud for everyone, because Elowen couldn’t read it and nobody else seemed able to speak.

The Silver Moon will not sing at the Conclave. If it sings, the girl will never sing again.

There was no name on the note, but the paper was thick and expensive, and it carried the same faint scent as the note that had come with his new pair of shoes.

"Draven," Mira said, and she said it like a curse.

"If we do not sing today, we cannot vote," High Sister Aurel said. "It has been our way since long before any of us were born. The Silver Moon votes with its song, or it does not vote at all."

Kai thought about Princess Seris’s notebook and the five filled-in circles, and how there would only be four of them left if the Silver Moon didn’t vote. Then he thought about the freckled girl who had thanked him for missing, and the circles stopped mattering at all.

"We’re getting her back," Kai said. "Tonight."

"How?" Garrick asked, gripping his hammer. "She could be anywhere in the city."

[No, she could not. Kai, she believes in you]

It took Kai a moment to realize what Syraphim was saying. She had always been able to tell where his believers were and what they were doing, from Tobin falling out of bed three days down the river to Mira checking on him twelve times while he slept.

"Can you find her?" Kai whispered.

[All of your believers burn like small lights to me. Hers is very dim right now, because she is scared. But it is still there]

"Where is it?" Kai whispered.

[West of you, and low, much lower than the street. It is cold where she is, and she can hear water nearby. That is all I can tell you]

Kai repeated every word of it to the others, and Sunny walked over to the tower window and looked out towards the river, where the lanterns of the docks were glittering in the dark.

"West and underground, with water nearby," Sunny said. "That could be half of the lower district."

"Then we need more people looking," Kai said.

He sat down on the cold stone floor of the tower and used Minor Voice for the second time in three days. He told all of his believers that a girl had been taken from the tower of the Silver Moon, a freckled girl who had only ever wanted to sing, and that she was being held somewhere underground near the river. He asked the fishermen to search the boathouses and the widows to search the cellars along their streets, and he begged anyone who had seen four men dragging something heavy through the dark to please tell someone.

Then, for the first time, he spoke to just one of them.

(Lysa, it’s me, Kai. We’re coming to get you. Don’t be afraid)

[Her light just grew brighter. She heard you, and she knows you are coming]

Kai let out a long breath and opened his eyes, and he found High Sister Aurel standing over him with her hand pressed against her heart.

[Faith gained. High Sister Aurel: +6%. Status: Hopeful.]

It didn’t take long at all for someone to find her. Less than an hour later, they could hear a woman screaming all the way up the hill, and the screaming was getting closer.

"SWEETHEART!" the fish woman yelled. "SWEETHEART, I FOUND HER!"

The fish woman came bursting into the tower with her basket still hanging from her arm, red in the face and completely out of breath, and two fishermen from the docks followed her in. One of them was holding a torn strip of the same gray fabric that the priestesses wore as veils.

"The old salt cellars," the fish woman said, bending over to catch her breath. "Underneath the fish market. Nobody’s used them in years, but my cousin’s son saw four men go down there with a sack, and he found this caught on the gate."

High Sister Aurel took the strip of fabric in both of her hands and held it against her chest.

"It is hers," High Sister Aurel whispered.

The fish market was deserted at that time of night, and somehow it smelled even worse in the dark than it did during the day. The old salt cellars lay underneath the market, down a set of crumbling stone steps behind the stalls, and an old rusted iron gate blocked the way down. Kai could hear water dripping through the rocks somewhere below, and at the bottom of the stairs, he could see a lantern flickering and hear men talking in low voices.

Garrick didn’t wait for anyone to come up with a plan, and he simply grabbed the gate with both hands and ripped it right out of the wall.

The men below stopped talking at once, and then all four of them came charging up the narrow stairs towards him with clubs in their hands.

Kai pointed his finger at the first man coming up the stairs.

"Minor Smite," Kai said.

The beam of light flew right over the first man’s head and struck a rotten wooden beam that was holding up the roof of the stairwell. The beam cracked and came crashing down behind the four men in a shower of dust and old salt, and they barely stopped in time to keep from being crushed by the falling timber. Once the dust had settled, they realized that the pile of wreckage had blocked the way back down, and that the only way out was up the stairs through Garrick.

All four of the men dropped their clubs at the same time.

"Good," Garrick said, sounding slightly disappointed.

Sunny and the fishermen tied the men’s hands with their own belts, and Kai climbed over the fallen beam and headed down the rest of the stairs, with Mira close behind him. At the very bottom, in a damp little room full of empty salt barrels, Lysa was sitting on the floor with her hands tied in front of her and a rag stuffed in her mouth.

She was humming, and even with the rag in her mouth, she was still humming the moon hymn, badly out of tune, like someone trying very hard not to cry.

Mira got to her first and pulled the rag out of her mouth, and Kai used a knife one of the fishermen had handed him to cut the rope around her wrists. The second her hands were free, Lysa threw her arms around Kai and squeezed him so tightly that he could barely breathe.

"I heard you," Lysa said, crying into his shoulder. "I heard you in my head, and I knew you would come. I kept singing so that you could find me."

"You did amazing," Kai said, and his voice was shaking. "You did amazing."

[Faith gained. Lysa: +19%. Status: Found.]

Elowen followed them down the stairs and knelt in front of the girl, turning her blindfolded face towards her.

"Did the men say anything to you?" Elowen asked. "Anything at all that you can remember?"

Lysa wiped her nose on her sleeve and nodded.

"They were told to keep me here until noon," Lysa said. "Once the Conclave was over, they were going to let me go." She looked up at Kai with her teary red eyes. "And a man came to look at me right after they brought me here. He had silver hair and very nice shoes. He told me to pass along a message if anyone ever found me."

"What message?" Kai asked.

"He said that he didn’t think you would find me in time," Lysa said. "But that it didn’t matter, because he always has another bet."

Kai looked around at the others, and none of them had anything to say.

They brought Lysa back up the hill to the tower just as the sun was beginning to rise. The moment she stepped through the door, every priestess in the room lifted her veil and began to sing, and the moon hymn filled the round room and spilled out of the tower windows and down over the waking city.

Through Divine Echo, very faintly, Kai heard a soft voice that sounded like moonlight on water.

"Thank you, little god," the Lady of the Silver Moon said.

Kai sat down on the steps of the tower and watched the sun rise over the rooftops of Veyrath, and for the first time since Celestine had laid her hand on top of his, he felt like he could breathe again.

[Kai, you have not slept in two days]

"I know," Kai whispered.

[The Conclave is at noon]

"I know," Kai whispered.

[341 days. The Conclave begins in six hours]