Chapter 9.2 — Songs on the Nareth

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They gathered at dusk when mirrors like to practice. The ford wore sunset unfairly well; gold made apology into art. Cohort and wardens stood staggered along the stones, feet sure, lines loose enough to bend. Thalen passed among them with a nod and a hum, not issuing orders so much as reminding lungs they had work. Cerys stood on a flat rock with the lantern at her feet. She did not raise hands to command. She watched the water the way a midwife watches a woman who has forgotten the child inside her knows how to be born.

The humming grew. Low at first, belly-deep. The mirror-intonation threaded out of the marsh like a thought that wore mist for shoes. It reached for the ford—not with heat, with neatness. Gates like clean cleavers work best when they meet no knots.

Cael waded to the seam where deepest became shallow enough to argue. He unspooled a length of rope, tossed one end to a woman on a boulder, looped the other around his waist. The copper circlet at his forearm cooled an inch. He was not frightened. He disliked that he was not. Fear keeps men honest; confidence makes them sloppy. He chose steady.

“Breath on me,” he called. “Short. Then long. Then shorter.”

They followed. Near. Far. The line learned itself in a moment because the bodies along it had already practiced a harder rhythm in winter and siege: staying.

Thalen’s pipe did not sing. He set its mouth to his lips and simply breathed, marking beats no instrument could bear. Cerys’ lantern brightened as if pleased by the company.

Cael sang.

Not with words first. With sound. The river’s vowel. The hill’s consonant. The farmers’ patience baked into syllables like crust. He did not sing at the mirror-song or over it. He sang under it, a floor refused to be folded. Children know this tune without being taught. So do old men who lift their wives from chairs when the knees that earned them creak.

The cohort joined, not in harmony or pretty thirds. In labor. Boots dug. Palms gripped. The rope bit and believed in the bite. The humming in the marsh shifted; whoever sang there tried to tidy their edge to cut through the new noise. They failed, the way a knife fails to shame bread for being soft.

Words found the notes.

“—Keep the water should it turn,
Hands to hands, and shift, and learn,
Stone by stone and breath by breath,
We are bridges under death—”

The men who had scoffed at songs learned their own throats. The line thickened without closing. The ford gripped back.

On the far bank the fog bunched and unrolled. A figure appeared—maskless, gray-clad, slender as a doubt. He did not raise a blade. He raised both hands, palms out, and a mirror-surface slid over the water between his wrists. A slit opened low as a mouth that meant to drink.

Cerys bent, fingertips to the lantern’s rim. “Truth,” she whispered, not as command. As invitation. The not-flame breathed longer.

Cael stepped to the seam.

The copper circlet cooled again, then warmed—twice. He could have read its warning with his eyes closed if his skin hadn’t already decided. He lifted his voice a length. Not louder. Truer.

“—One for wheel and one for plow,
One for Sunday, one for now,
Name the fear and thread it thin,
Let the river carry sin—”

He did not know where that last line came from. He knew better than to own it. Some songs use your mouth and pay in safety. He let it.

The mirror-singer across the ford flinched, as if the vowel hurt where he lived. He altered his pitch. The slit in the water widened, then wavered. Thalen added a countermelody so old the bones of it had moss. Someone began clapping on the farthest stones without being told. Lioren never clapped; he stamped his heel, and the rhythm learned iron.

The slit closed.

Not all the way. Gates never like to admit they were wrong. A thin seam remained, troubling the surface like thought. Cael held the chant steady until his thighs burned and the rope told him it had nothing left to give. On the rock, Cerys lifted her head.

“Enough,” she said.

Enough is a sacred word when a priest means it.

The Cohort let the last notes go the way a farmer lets soil fall between his fingers to check the moisture. The ford stilled into something that would remember how to be water in the morning.

The figure in gray on the far bank lowered his hands. He was young. They were always younger than the doctrine that taught them. He looked directly at Cael and smiled with a politeness that made the back of Lioren’s neck itch.

“You sing old,” he called. “It will not save you forever.”

“It only has to save us long enough,” Cael answered.

“Long enough for what?”

“For us to decide what we’re saving,” Cael said.

The young man bowed. A small, perfect court bow. Then he was mist.

Thalen sank onto a stone and laughed into his hands until it turned to crying and back again. “Gates hate to be fed honest work. It gives them indigestion.”

Lioren clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to bruise. “You did tolerably, bard.”

“Keep insulting me,” Thalen sniffed, “and I’ll write you a ballad in a minor key.”

Cerys’ lantern dimmed itself. “He’ll try again,” she said.

“I know,” Cael said. He unlooped the rope, fingers slow now that speed wasn’t a virtue. The copper circlet chimed once, as if to mark a lesson rather than a victory.

He looked downriver. The water there did not lie. It did not tell the truth. It went where it should and asked no blessing. Somewhere in that sound his father spoke—a memory without a face, a warning without a threat.

Count bridges when water lies to you.

“How many?” he asked the air.

“Enough,” Cerys said again, hearing whatever he hadn’t said.

He nodded, grateful for silence that had learned logic.