Chapter 47 Voice
The black pearl veil was a beautiful cage.
It draped from my forehead, a mesh of midnight-colored spheres that rattled softly with every shallow breath I took. It was designed to shimmer, but its true purpose was darker. It blurred my features, masking the grey pallor of my skin and the thin, ink-black lines that had begun to spiderweb up my neck. Through the mesh, the world looked fractured, as if I were peering through the eyes of a fly.
Klaus stood behind me, his hands steady as he fastened the silver clasp at the back of my neck. His touch was no longer the frantic, desperate grip of a dying man. Since I had pulled the rot from him, he had become a pinnacle of cold, lethal efficiency again. His skin was smooth, his sapphire eyes bright with a terrifying vitality.
I, however, felt as if I were composed of wet ash.
"You look like a ghost," he murmured, his fingers lingering on the cold pearls.
"I feel like a burial ground," I rasped. My voice was a shredded thing, a ghost of the siren song. Every word felt like I was swallowing a handful of needles.
"Keep the hum low," Klaus commanded, stepping around to face me. He adjusted the charcoal silk on my shoulders, his gaze scanning my face through the veil. "Don't reach for the deep notes. The Emperor doesn't need to be impressed today; he needs the Northern Lords to be sedated. Just give them a drone. Give them the weight of the water."
"And if I cough?" I asked, looking at the white handkerchief I had tucked into my sleeve—the one I knew would be black by the end of the hour.
Klaus’s jaw tightened. "Then I will provide the distraction. Do not speak unless I give you the signal."
He offered his arm. It was solid, unyielding. I took it, my fingers trembling against the heavy wool of his uniform. As we walked out of the tower, the sound of the iron doors locking behind us felt like the first handful of dirt on a coffin.
The Grand Council Chamber was a pit of freezing stone and arrogance.
It was circular, designed so that everyone could see everyone else—and everyone could see the Emperor’s empty, towering throne. The Northern Lords were already there, five men and two women who looked less like aristocrats and more like glaciers carved into humanoid shapes. They wore furs of white bears and necklaces of walrus ivory. Their skin was translucent, and their eyes were the pale, washed-out blue of old ice.
They didn't smell like the court. They smelled of pine, frozen mud, and the metallic tang of unsheathed steel.
"The Arch-Duchess Nerissa," the Herald announced, his voice echoing in the vaulted ceiling.
A ripple of cold interest moved through the Northern Lords. They didn't bow. They simply stared, their gazes trying to pierce the black pearl mesh.
Klaus led me to my seat at the obsidian table. I sat down, the charcoal silk of my skirts hissing against the stone. I felt the weight in my chest shift—the oily, black sludge of the Blight. It felt like mercury sloshing in my lungs.
"We have heard of your witch," a Lord named Hrolf growled. He had a beard like a frozen thicket and hands the size of dinner plates. "They say she made the Starving Ones sit like dogs. They say she broke Lady Vespera with a whisper."
"She is the Voice of the Empire," Klaus said, his voice flat and authoritative. He didn't look at Hrolf. He sat with his hands clasped on the table, a sentinel of shadow. "She ensures that the Emperor’s peace is... felt."
"We don't want peace," a woman with hair like spun frost said, her eyes fixed on my veil. "We want the fishing lanes cleared of the black rot. Our nets are coming up full of dead things, Falkenstein. Things that don't belong in any ocean. If your Emperor can't fix the water, why should we pay the blood-tax?"
The temperature in the room dropped. The Northern Lords began to murmur, a low, rhythmic sound like ice grinding against a hull. The aggression was a physical pressure, a sharp, biting wind that made the torches flicker.
I felt the Anchor bond flare.
Klaus’s hand went to his chest. Even though I had taken his pain, the connection remained. He was absorbing the room’s hostility, but I was the one who had to act.
He gave me the signal.
I closed my eyes behind the pearls.
I took a breath. It was a mistake. The air hit the rot in my lungs, and for a second, I thought I would choke right there in front of the glaciers. I bit my lip until I tasted salt, forcing the black bile down.
I hummed.
It wasn't a melody. It was a vibration, low and resonant, that I felt in the soles of my feet before it left my throat. I didn't reach for the sapphire light. I reached for the dark silt of the bottom. I reached for the silence of the trenches where nothing lives and nothing moves.
Mmmmmm-nnnnnnnn...
The sound rippled through the room.
The Northern Lords stopped their murmuring. Lord Hrolf’s hands, which had been clenched into fists, slowly opened. The woman with the frost-hair blinked, her gaze going glassy and unfocused. The tension that had been a vibrating wire in the room simply... went slack.
It was working.
But the cost was a physical flaying.
As I sustained the note, I felt the black veins on my neck throb. The Blight in my chest responded to the magic, swirling like a storm of ink. It felt like I was trying to sing through a throat full of thorns. The taste of stagnant salt filled my mouth, thick and cloying.
Hold it, I told myself. Just another minute.
I looked at Klaus through the mesh.
He was watching me with an expression that made the pain worse. It wasn't pride. It was a raw, naked agony. He saw my shoulders shaking. He saw the way I was clutching the edge of the obsidian table until my fingers turned white. He saw the black fluid beginning to leak from the corner of my eye, a single, dark tear that was hidden by the black pearls.