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Lihta was alone now, gazing out at the night. The eleventh bell struck, and somewhere in the distance rose the faint chorus of the townsmen assembling for their hopeless battle against Remismund’s men.

Then, in the high strings, something began to glide down, a bird returning to earth in many turns, here lifting a bit, but always going lower, until it faded entirely.

Then, alone—almost imperceptibly at first—Lihta began her final song.

When comes again the light of day,

My love, I will have flown away . . .

Her voice was tears made sound, but now Muriele heard it, the triumph embedded in the despair, the hope that could die only when belief in hope died. It was the melody from that day, the one that had decided her to commission the piece.

Lihta’s solo voice was joined by a single flute and then a reed, and then the croths with their sweeping glissando elegance. It no longer mattered what words she sang, really—it was only the fear, and the grief—and as the vithuls and the bass vithuls joined her voice, the desperate courage and determination. Tears poured down Muriele’s face as Remismund reappeared, unheralded by any music, but swaggering into hers. Lihta was standing by the window, wringing her veil in her hands as he took hold of her, and for an instant it seemed as if the music faltered, as if Lihta’s resolve had failed.

But suddenly her voice rose, climbing ever higher while below her the music arranged itself in a mountain, like the very foundations of the world and there, there it was, the perfect chord that brought rushing everything that had come before, the beginning meeting its end, its completion . . .

Its triumph.

Lihta leaned up as she sang, as if to kiss him, slipped the veil around his neck, and hurled herself out the window. Surprised, his hands occupied with her, Remismund had no time to react. Both plummeted to the street. And though Muriele remembered that the stage was not really very high, and that she suspected some sort of mattress lay disguised beneath the window, it did not seem so now. It seemed as if they fell, and fell, and died on cobbles far below.

And still the harmony hung there, Litha’s voice taken up by the instruments as if to show that even death could not silence that song. A march began behind it, as the townsfolk rushed upon Remismund’s men, who, disheartened by his death, fled or died.

And when silence finally settled, it lasted for a long time, until someone shouted—no one important, just a person high in the gallery. But it was a ragged, glorius, triumphant shout, and then someone joined him, and then all the Candle Grove came to its feet roaring.

Everyone, that is, save Robert and Hespero.

Leoff gazed at the dumbstruck audience, then turned his regard to the praifec, whose glare was the match for any basil-nix. Leoff bowed stiffly, and heard a single loud cheer. Then the crowd seemed to explode. He knew that this was the greatest moment of his life—the like of which he would never know again—and felt not so much pride as the most profound contentment imaginable.

He still felt it half a bell later, when—as he was congratulating his musicians and blushing from a kiss Areana had impulsively given him—the guards came.

Robert’s guard dragged Muriele and Alis unceremoniously through the crowd and pushed them into the carriage that was to carry them back to their prison. But all the way back to the castle, she could hear them—the people—singing the Hymn of Sabrina. She couldn’t stop crying, and when the gag was finally removed, she sang with them.

That night, she could still hear them through her windows, and she knew that once again, the world she knew had changed profoundly—but this time for the better.

It felt—for the first time in a very long time—like victory.

That night she slept, and dreamed, and the dreams brought not terror—but joy.

CHAPTER SIX

YULE

ASPAR WINCED AS THE leic pulled the needle through his cheek a final time and tied off the gut.

“That’s done,” the old man said.