Ghoulish Song (9781442427310) (15 page)

Once outside, Kaile paused to catch her breath. The cool air was a relief after the stifling heat of the furnace room.

Are you okay?
Shade whispered nearby.

“I'm okay,” said Kaile, and she was glad to notice that it was true. She shifted her grip on her satchel and flute. “And I play better music when you're nearby.”

Of course you do,
said Shade.
That's how it works.
There was warmth and a smile in her words. Then she took a few steps, and both the warmth and the smile vanished. Shade began to pace back and forth.

“What is it?” Kaile asked. “What's wrong? Is it something worse than genteel relic curators who want to burn me?”

It's started,
Shade whispered, her voice urgent.
It's here. The flood. And there's music on the bridge—but the music won't hold it together. I can hear the flood and the music shivering in the flagstones, in whispers passed between shadows. I can hear it. We have to go back there.

“We won't do any good if we go back,” Kaile objected. “We're useless. We can't help. I'm not a bridge musician.”

It's my fault that you aren't. I should have stood beside you at the audition. But I'm with you now, and we have to get to the bridge.

Kaile looked for the Clock Tower. She was annoyed to discover that she couldn't actually see it from where they stood—she didn't know the way back to the bridge without using the tower as a reference point. It should have been visible from every single part of the city—especially Northside. This was high ground, built up tall and proud. It looked out over Southside, and turned up its nose at the dusty smells of Southside. But the buildings were too tall, and every brick and stone wall stood stiffly beside the next
one like Guard members marching shoulder to shoulder. Kaile couldn't see between them or beyond them. She didn't know how to get back. She felt hopeless, and sad, and tired. She felt like she needed to curl up and hide somewhere far away and safe from people who wanted to burn her for ghoulishness.

“I don't know the way,” she admitted.

I do,
said Shade.
I can hear it. I can follow the sound.

She set out, and Kaile followed her shadow.

A gatehouse stood over and around the entrance to the Fiddleway, just as in Southside—but the Southside gatehouse always stood empty. Here several members of the Guard looked down from the parapets. Sunlight glinted on their weapons and their gearworked limbs, and they shouted at the dense crowd of people who crossed the bridge below them. Kaile couldn't make out what the Guard were shouting. It sounded like guzzard bulls squawking to her.
Notice me. I'm important. Squawk, squawk, squawk.

The crowd underneath the gatehouse moved in only one direction. No one headed south. No one tried to cross the bridge. Everyone was leaving it.

Bells rang in the Clock Tower. Kaile had never heard the bells before. They only ever rang when something vast and terrible threatened both city and bridge.

Underneath the high sound of the bells Kaile heard the roar of the River's own voice.

She followed Shade. The two of them pushed against the current of people leaving the Fiddleway.

She looked upstream, and saw the River rise up and begin to climb the walls of its canyon in great, frothing waves.

She looked downstream, and saw the Baker's Cage.

Mother's still there,
she thought.
Mother's in the cage in the middle of the flood.

Kaile smacked up against this knowledge and stood suddenly still.

Hurry!
Shade called, her voice as loud as Kaile had ever heard it. The shadow moved deeper into the crowd, zigging and zagging as she tried to avoid stepping on her fellow shadows. Kaile followed, and tried to do the same.

Mother's in the Baker's Cage,
she thought, over and over again, to the same pounding rhythm as her footsteps on flagstones and her heartbeat in her ears.
Mother's in the Baker's Cage. Mother's in the Baker's Cage.

If the bridge fell, then it would tumble over and fall on the docks, and on the cage, and on Mother in the cage.

They passed through the gatehouse and came to the Fiddleway Bridge. The crowd around them thinned as more and more people fled into Northside. The sound of
bridge music grew louder. Every musician had remained.

The bridge needs music in the mortar,
said Shade.
It needs a song to tell these great big stones how to shift their weight. But the music isn't working, not well enough.

They found Luce Strumgut playing furiously on her lute. Bombasta sang just across from the sailor in a language that Kaile couldn't recognize. It was all the same song, the same one that the flute insisted on playing—but the singer's voice and the sailor's lute remained separate and refused to coalesce, even as they danced around the very same notes.

Great big stones shifted under Kaile's feet with a lurch and a scrape.

Bombasta's song faltered. Luce stopped playing to catch her balance. Then she spotted Kaile. Her eyes grew wide and startled.

“Take your grandfather's place,” the sailor ordered, and began to play again. “No one else is there.”

“She can't!” Bombasta protested from across the street. “She failed her audition!”

“The formalities don't much matter at this moment,” Luce argued. Her fingertips strummed across strings. “You just keep singing.”

Bombasta disagreed. “This is not a
formality.
That little girl can't hear the bridge, or her own shadow, well
enough to play here. We're having enough trouble orchestrating as it is.”

“Why are you having so much trouble?” Kaile demanded.

“We don't know,” said Luce. “We have no idea. Now ignore the singer, and take your grandfather's place.”

Bombasta made wide and frustrated gestures with both hands. “You aren't the conductor here! Nibbledy will pitch an absolute fit!”

“I've survived the Master's fits before,” Luce calmly said. “And if we can't all play together soon, then none of us will survive the next hour. Stop talking and sing.” Her fingertips picked out a quick flourish as she looked down at Kaile. “Girl, either get away from here and climb to the highest ground you can find, or else take old Korinth's place and play.”

Kaile nodded. Then she ran. Shade ran with her.

“Heed your shadow!” Luce called after her.

Kaile found the empty circle of brick beneath a lamppost. Grandfather had come here every day to play his bandore. Mother had sent Kaile to this spot with a warm pastry on cold days, because Grandfather would play without noticing his own hunger, or the cold. Sometimes Kaile had stood here for a long time beside him, listening, forgetting she had come for any other reason but to listen.

The bridge creaked and crunched again, struggling to hold itself upright against the rising floodwaters.

If the bridge falls, it'll fall on the docks,
she thought.
It'll fall on the cage. Even if Mother doesn't drown in the flooding, she'll be crushed by the falling bridge. We have to hold the bridge together.

She stood in Grandfather's place and tried to steady her own breathing. She would need a steady breath to play.

Wait,
Shade whispered.

“Wait?” Kaile asked, incredulous. “You rush me out here, onto a bridge that will probably collapse and kill us both, and now you tell me to wait? There's no time for waiting!”

The music isn't working, you silly sack of guzzard gizzards.
Shade sharpened each word and poked them at Kaile.
I can hear how it isn't working. I can hear why. Listen. Not to me. Don't listen to me. Listen!

Kaile listened. She heard musicians of every kind. She heard them sing and play to the north and the south. She heard them struggle with a song whose separate fragments stubbornly refused to combine into a single piece of music.

Then she heard discord. She heard one strain of the song work against the others, forcing them apart. And she heard what direction that discord was coming from.

“There,” she said, pointing at a rough and battered house across the street. It looked abandoned. The door and the windows were all boarded up.

There,
Shade agreed.

The doorway had been sealed a very long time ago, and not very well. Rotting boards crumbled when Kaile pulled them away, and rusty nails broke in half. The latch also broke when she shoved hard against the door with her shoulder.

Kaile crossed the threshold.

The flute flinched in her hand.

She looked around, startled. The inside of the house was flame-charred and empty.

“The flute knows this place,” she said.

Light the lantern,
Shade whispered behind her.
It's too dark in there for me.

Kaile fiddled with the lantern flint. “Not much oil left from last night,” she said, worried. The wick still caught. Shadow puppets leaped out across the soot-stained walls.

One shadow stepped out of the dark and stood separate in front of them, confronting them both.

You have a piece of her,
this shadow whispered.
You're carrying a piece of her.

“Who are you?” Kaile whispered back—but it was Shade who answered.

That's Iren's shadow. “The lovelorn girl from the long bridge fell,” and her bones washed up on the Kneecap. You're holding one of them. She left her shadow behind, in this place, when she fell.

The shadow shouted back at them.
Iren wasn't lovelorn! No broken heart ever broke her head. There was fire. The house burned. She jumped from a high window. She risked drowning rather than let herself burn. She jumped, and she sang as she jumped. She was a Fiddleway singer. She sang to bind her own courage together, but the song broke mine. I was scared. I let her voice cut us apart, so she fell without me. She drowned without me. I stayed. I'm still here. I'm always here.

“I'm sorry,” Kaile whispered. “I'm so sorry.” She was relieved to hear this version of the story. The flute and its music had always felt stronger to her than a girl who died of heartbreak.

You've brought a piece of her back,
Iren's shadow whispered, sounding hopeful.
She's still trying to sing for the bridge.

We all have to hold the bridge together,
Shade insisted,
or else there won't be a here for very much longer. Both of you follow me.

Shade moved between charred and ruined pieces of furniture, found a staircase, and began to climb by lantern light.

Kaile hurried behind.

Iren's lost shadow came last.

They followed the sound of discord up to the very highest room.

The ghoul crouched there beneath a shattered window frame.

It stood. It had grown huge and hulking since Kaile had seen it last. Rags of riverweed and rotting sails trailed behind it and caught in the glass shards of the ruined window.

It climbed up here,
Kaile realized.
It's made of people who fell off the bridge—or who jumped off the bridge, or were pushed off the bridge—and now it's clawed its way back on.

The ghoul filled the room with itself and its singing.

THOUSANDS OF DROWNED BONES
fit themselves together to form a single figure, using the song as both muscle and sinew. Claws of carved fishhooks made deep grooves in the wooden floor. Several skulls sat on its wide shoulders, each jaw open, each one singing.

The ghoul paid no mind to its new audience. It went on singing its own discordant version of the flood song. The sound scraped the ceiling and tumbled across the floor. It spread across the bridge to strike sideways at all other Fiddleway music.

There must be several former bridge musicians in there,
Shade whispered.
They all know the song. They know how to sing it. They know how to twist it.