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“Did your song raise its voice when you first heard the sickness was here?”

Vaelin remembered the despair he felt at Sister Gilma’s likely fate but realised it hadn’t been coloured by the blood-song “No No it didn’t Does this er?”

“Hardly It means that, for whatever reason, this is where we are both supposed to be”

“This is…” Vaelin fued “Who can say, brother? Of destiny I know little but to say I’ve seen so much of the rando Weis you, re it as well as hear it”

“How?” Vaelin leaned forward, discoe he knew coloured his voice “How do I sing?”

Ahestured at the workbench where his partly carved block still sat, untouched since his first visit “You’ve already started I suspect you’ve been singing a long ti can make us reach for many different tools; the pen, the chisel… or the sword”

Vaelin glanced down at his sword, resting within easy reach against the edge of the table Is that what I’ve been doing all these years? Cutting h life? All the blood spilled and lives taken, just verses in a song?

“Why haven’t you finished it?” Ahm Lin enquired “The sculpture?”

“If I pick up the haain I won’t put them down until it’s done And our current circumstance requires my full attention” He knew this to be only partly true The roughly hewn features e fah to make him conclude the finished version would be a face he knew Perversely, the arrival of the Red Hand had been a welco the nore one’s song, brother,” Ahm Lin cautioned him “You recall the harm I did when I called to you the first ti was silent”

“That’s right And as it silent?”

The king’s fragile neck… The whore’s dangerous secrets… “It called onterrible When I couldn’t do it ht it had deserted uide Without it you are vulnerable to others who can do as we do, like the Volarian woman Trust me brother, you wouldn’t wish to be vulnerable to her”

Vaelin looked at the h profile of the unformed face “When the Red Falcon returns,” he said “I’ll finish it then”

Twenty days after the Red Falcon’s departure the sailors rioted, breaking out of their uards andfor the docks in a well planned assault Caenis was quick to respond, ordering two co in Count Marven’sstreets Cu down dozens of sailors as their attack on the docks faltered in the face of disciplined resistance and they went reeling back into the city Caenis ordered an immediate counter attack and the brief but bloody revolt was all but over by the tie Meldenean, the biga crudely fashioned club at the lithe brother as he danced around hi out to leave cuts on his ar into the ave a roar of pain fuelled rage and redoubled his efforts, his useless clubonly air as Caenis continued his vicious dance Vaelin unlih the Meldenean’s neck from forty paces One of his better feats of archery

“Not a ti over the Meldenean’s corpse and drawing his sword Within the hour it was done, nearly two hundred sailors were dead and at least astheinal thirty chosen men from their days in the Martishe They herded the sailors back into their warehouses and Vaelin had the surviving captains brought to the docks Forty men or so, all with the blunt and weathered features common to sea captains They were lined up on the quayside, kneeling before hi up with sullen fear or open defiance