Page 50 of Skysong

‘Still going out for your night-time strolls, then, Andala? Even when it’s night all the time? Suppose that means you can stroll whenever you like!’ Ildrie laughed, and Andala marvelled inwardly at the girl’s penchant for positivity, even when the sun had literally stopped shining. ‘I’ve just been fetching more wine,’ Ildrie continued. ‘They can’t get enough of it upstairs. And half the guests are still here from the ball as well – too scared to go home in the dark or some such, as if they’ve never seen night-time before. Fools, the lot.’

‘Don’t let them hear you say that,’ Andala murmured. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go—’

‘What you doing now, anyway?’ Ildrie said, tilting her head and regarding Andala as if something had just occurred to her. ‘There’s no lady up there for you to be lady’s maid to anymore, is there?’180

Andala swallowed the biting reply that wanted to spring to her lips. ‘No, there isn’t,’ she replied carefully. ‘But there are still things for me to do. You’d better get them their wine, Ildrie, you don’t want them all getting sober.’

Before the girl could say anything more, Andala pushed past and made her way up the stairs to the palace proper.

She made a beeline for Kitt’s rooms, keeping her head down to avoid any more conversation. There was hardly anybody in the halls, anyway. All the nobles were sticking together in various chambers, as if to find safety in numbers against the threat of the night.

At Kitt’s door, she knocked quickly and then let herself in. The room was dimly lit. It was something of a relief after the blaze of torches in the halls. Kitt was at his workspace, as she’d thought he would be. He’d hardly left since it had happened. He was trying to work out some solution, some way to get around the fact that Oriane would not sing. Andala hadn’t had the heart to tell him that she didn’t think it likely he could invent or experiment his way out of this one.

‘How goes the work?’ she said anyway, crossing to his paper-strewn desk.

Kitt glanced up at her, then sunk his head back into his hands, staring at some diagram in front of him. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days; his clothes were rumpled, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t even know how to begin to tackle this. Everything I’ve been researching has to do with how we survive the night, but to be honest, Andala …’ He blew out a long breath. ‘We won’t survive it. Not for long, anyway. The cold, the crop failure … Our only real chance is—’

‘Oriane.’181

Kitt nodded. ‘Oriane.’

‘Is she … How is she today?’ Andala had not been back inside the ballroom, where Oriane was still being kept. Kitt had been in and out, examining her at the king’s request. Tomas seemed to hope he might discover some way to make her sing.

Kitt sighed. ‘She’s all right, I think. It’s hard to tell. She’s much the same, just … just a bird, really. Every time I look at her … I see more of the skylark and less of Oriane.’

Andala swallowed hard. She could not let Kitt see how much that news disturbed her. ‘Is she … Is she eating? Drinking?’ She paused. ‘Does she need to?’ Andala herself had never had to do so as the nightingale. She spent such little time in that form that it had never been necessary.

‘I don’t think so,’ Kitt said, shaking his head slowly. ‘Much as she looks like a regular bird, that’s not what she is. If you believe what those Order of the Sky folk say, she’s a goddess. And I suppose goddesses don’t need food or drink – not in their divine forms, anyway.’

Goddess.Andala had never liked that word. She changed the subject swiftly. ‘So what do we do? Is there anything wecando?’

‘That’s what I need to work out. Tomas has had other physicians examining her, too, hoping to find some way to get her to sing, but they’re all terrified to hurt her, of course. It’s one thing for her to stop singing, another entirely for her to die. Skies know what kind of place we’d find ourselves in then—’

He stopped abruptly at the look on Andala’s face.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘That was crude of me. I know you care for her. I care for her, too.’

Andala just stood there. She should have said something, should have denied it, but she didn’t trust herself to speak.182

‘I don’t want them prodding and poking at her, trying to force her to sing, any more than you do,’ Kitt went on, brushing his papers aside to clear a space on the desk. ‘We need a new way to approach this. It’s not really about Oriane herself, is it? It’s about the song. The skylark’s song.’

Andala pulled a chair over to sit by him. ‘Yes, and?’

He dragged a hand through his hair, then pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment, dipped his quill rapidly in an inkpot. His movements were erratic, almost manic. It must have been longer since he’d slept than she thought.

‘What if we could recreate it?’ he said. ‘There’s power in the song itself – there must be. The sun doesn’t rise when she transforms; it only rises when she sings. If we can somehow trick the sun into thinking she were singing …’

‘Then it may rise without her.’ Andala tapped a finger on the desk, her mind working. ‘But how would we do something like that?’

Kitt thought for a moment, then grabbed an open book that had been discarded on his haphazard desk. He flicked through some pages and read a little, nodding to himself. Then he scribbled two words on the parchment and pushed it towards her. Andala squinted at what he’d written.

‘Sturnusvulgaris?’ She looked at him dubiously. ‘Is that some kind of spell?’

Kitt huffed a laugh. ‘I don’t think our answer lies in witchcraft, no. It’s the name of a bird. A common starling. You’ve probably seen one before – little shiny black thing. They’re everywhere around here, hence the name.’

‘And … its song sounds like Oriane’s?’

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