Theodor joined us. “Looks lovely, of course, Sophie.” He turned quickly to Sianh. “Have we heard from the raiding party we sent northward yet?”
“They came back this morning. They ran afoul of some guards near—oh, what dull name do you have for it?”
“The fort at Dunn Creek,” Theodor replied.
“Yes, the Dunn Creek fortification. They did not manage to return much in the way of supplies, so I confess my disappointment. They were supposed to be on a raid to capture muskets from the magazine there. Instead they got caught up in an exchange of fire—”
I exhaled with near-motherly concern, and Sianh raised an eyebrow as he continued. “Which happens with fair regularity, and which they handled well enough to assuage my confidence in this rag-and-bones army, but I did not wish to risk manpower on sniping at a few Royalist guards.”
“They’re all right?” I asked.
Sianh snorted with almost aristocratic grace. “They are on latrine duty for disobeying my orders to avoid engaging with the Royalists at—what was it—Dunn Creek. We must fight like foxes,” he added. “Swift, flexible, and utilizing the supplies in other people’s chicken coops.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Fig tapped the door frame, shifting his weight in a pair of too-large shoes.
“Go ahead,” Theodor said.
“Something Commander Balstrade and Sastra-set Alba think you need to see. Right away.”
I glanced at Theodor, whose face remained impassive, but newly etched with taut lines of worry. “Very well.”
We followed Fig to where the others waited, at the crest of the hill overlooking the ocean. “Lookout post spotted them about fifteen minutes ago.” Kristos handed Theodor the glass. “It’s a West Serafan vessel.”
“Then they’re showing their hand. Finally!” Alba said. “That’s a relief.”
“You have a strange idea of relief,” Sianh said.
“We assumed that they would be coming into this war on the side of the Royalists. We had all but a writ of guarantee. Now we can see what, precisely, they intend to do.” Alba folded her hands and watched the ship maneuver closer to the harbor, though the artillery placed on the shore and on the high bluff next to us countered any possibility of landing.
Kristos didn’t look relieved, no matter what Alba might say. “From what I can tell, there’s no soldiers on board—at least, none above deck. Just musicians.”
I felt myself go cold, right down to my fingertips. “Musicians.” I took the glass Theodor offered. Three Serafan women stood on the deck of the ship, one harpist, one with a recurved Serafan violin, and one holding a sheaf of paper. Sheet music. “What do they expect to do from there?” I handed the glass back to Theodor, hand trembling.
Theodor looked to the horizon, sweeping his glass in a broad arc. “There’s no one else out there.” Eerie calm stretched on the sea, silent and punctuated only by this one bobbing Serafan vessel.
“This isn’t right,” I murmured. “Sianh, this isn’t how you said the Serafans used casting in battle.”
Sianh grunted in uncomfortable agreement, and Theodor squinted at the ship. “They’re too far out. Anything they’re doing—it can’t reach us.” He looked to Sianh and Kristos. “Right?”
Kristos nodded. “It must be some sort of… rehearsal.”
“No,” Alba said, plucking the glass from Theodor’s hand. “It’s too great a risk to come within range of our cannon for a mere rehearsal.”
“But do we even fire?” Kristos replied. “It doesn’t look well, firing on a civilian ship. And,” he added, countering Sianh’s immediate argument, “there’s nothing we can see that suggests it’s anything but.”
Sianh’s mouth tightened. “I would make the guns ready in any case.”
Theodor sent Fig with the message to the artillery emplacements along the cliff. “Still. What do they expect to do? We’re too far away for their casting to work.”
“What’s that?” Kristos’s question was simple, but it dropped a weight into my stomach. Silently, we passed the glass from hand to hand. I looked through the opening like a keyhole into a door that led to an answer I wasn’t prepared for.
Sailors set panels around the musicians—no, not panels, I understood as I squinted through the glass. Convex shells made of taut canvas on frames. As they worked, the square of the deck began to look more like the front of the cathedral in Fountain Square, or the basilica in the House of the Golden Sphere.
“Acoustics,” Kristos said. “They’re going to project the sound toward us. Amplify it. Using those shapes.”
Fear rose like bile in my throat. Shot and shell I’d been prepared for; this was something different, an unknown horror. I remembered the strange manipulation of my emotions in the Serafan magic show at the summit, the insidious creep of reactions not wholly mine coupled with heightening anxiety. That was what the casters had intended us to feel then; what could the aim of this manipulation be?
Theodor chewed on his lip. “We need to get back to the camp. To warn everyone.”
“And say what?” Kristos ran a hand through snarled hair. “We don’t know what this is, what to expect—”
The musicians began to play.
The melody, thin and sweet like a slow-oozing line of treacle, flowed toward us. It was simple at first, not complex or layered, but almost pretty. Repetitive. It grew stronger, and my head began to throb. The harpist and the violinist played together while the third woman—some sort of caster-conductor, I surmised through the growing haze behind my eyes—directed them as they deftly drew black curse magic into the strains of music. It glittered in a sickly black fog, and I could see the path of the sound in its billowing folds.
“Back to camp, now,” Theodor said. Kristos didn’t argue. As we climbed away from the lookout point, the syrup-sweet melody intensified, plucked on the harp strings and echoed by the increasingly aggressive strain of the violin. Kristos narrowed his eyes, fighting the same dizzying whirl in his skull that I felt. Like turning too fast, like falling, but without moving at all. Next to me, Alba leaned over, face paling and beads of sweat glistening at her temples. She stumbled and gripped a tree for support, then doubled over, heaving.
Nausea gripped me, too. Theodor held my arm and helped me toward the officers’ tent even as his lips grew pale and he swallowed, hard. I bit back bile.
Sianh stumbled toward the officers’ tent. I thought he might have some plan, but instead he fell to all fours in the grass and vomited. I turned away, already sick.
“How—how can they do this?” I trembled. “They can make us feel—not only emotions but—” I stopped, overcome by a wave of nausea. This was a vertigo of confusion and fear, heightened, made visceral and sustained.
Up and down the rows of canvas, soldiers gripped their bellies and upended their stomachs, burrowed heads in hands and closed their eyes. Those who tried to stand promptly stumbled and fell or were overtaken by the persistent, rolling nausea. I sank, shaking, to the ground. It helped to avoid movement, to hold perfectly still. I closed my eyes. Better yet, gazing into nothing, into velvet darkness. I started—was this what they wanted? For us to all choose oblivion? Could I drive myself into a self-chosen death this way?