Page 80 of The Gilded Ones

“Get used to wha?” Britta asks.

She’s on the other side of me, Ixa’s helmet perched on her head. He can’t wear it when he’s not in battle form, so she’s been slinging it around like a toy. Britta can be very childlike sometimes.

“She means Ixa changing form,” I explain.

Britta whips to me, her eyebrows knitted in a frown. “Say that again,” she demands.

Now it’s my turn to frown. “Say what?”

Britta takes off the helmet, looks down at it. “That’s odd,” she says.

“What’s odd?” This back-and-forth is very confusing.

Britta puts the helmet on again and turns to me. “Say anything – anything at all,” she urges.

“Anything at all,” I reply, shrugging.

She takes off the helmet and looks at me. “Yer voice, it’s different when I put the helmet on.”

“All right…” I have no idea what she’s babbling about.

Belcalis is getting annoyed. “Enough of this,” she says. “There’s an entire nest of deathshrieks down there preparing themselves to slaughter a nearby village. Whatever this is, it can wait till later.”

Adwapa nods. “She’s right. We should be getting ready to kill them all. I know I am,” she says eagerly. Months of raids have encouraged Adwapa’s irreverence towards death, although she always kills only her quota of deathshrieks and not a single one more.

“I like conserving my energies,” she always says when we tease her about it. Her sister is the same way.

Beside me, Britta nods. Then she turns back to us. “It’s just…what if this is the answer to the voice problem?” she asks.

I shift towards her. “How?”

She and the others always feel my voice calling to their blood now, even when I’m specifically addressing the deathshrieks and not them. They tried putting on cochleans the way the deathshrieks in the marsh did, but it didn’t work. My ability just keeps getting stronger. I’m always scared now that I’ll say something that gets my friends hurt or, even worse, killed.

“When ye spoke while I had this on, yer voice sounded strange,” Britta explains. “I could hear it, but it was almost…normal. Usually, when ye use yer voice, it sounds deep – like there are multiple people talking at once. This time, it just sounded ordinary. I think it’s because the helmet is made from yer blood.”

I turn to her, excited now. “So perhaps wearing helmets from my blood will prevent my voice from overpowering you!”

“It might.” Britta shrugs.

“It’s worth a try!” If helmets will keep me from mistakenly harming my friends, I’ll gladly bleed myself dry if I have to.

Belcalis nods. “Then let’s test it after the raid.” She looks down at the outcropping and the deathshrieks gathered there. A bright blue bird is flying above it, black eyes distinctly reptilian in the darkness. It’s Ixa, giving the signal to attack.

“But first, let’s go kill some deathshrieks, shall we?” she says, rising.

I sigh, raising my sword. “Let’s.”

The first thing I do when I get back to the Warthu Bera is ask Karmoko Calderis to make a few helmets for my friends, in addition to my infernal armour. The karmoko is only too happy to fulfil my request, since this means she gets to test out more designs.

All it requires is some more bloodletting on my part, and in less than a week, I have the four gleaming new pieces of armour. We decide to test them by the lake one evening after our lesson with White Hands.

“Hurry,” Adwapa says excitedly as I pull them out of my pack. “Let’s see if they work.”

“They’re so pretty,” Britta adds, marvelling at hers.

Say what you will about Karmoko Calderis, but she has a smith’s talent coupled with an artist’s eye. Each helmet is so unique, you don’t have to wonder who it’s for. Britta’s is inscribed with horned bears, Belcalis’s has actual horns protruding from it, and both Asha’s and Adwapa’s feature wings on each side.

“Can you hear me?” I ask once everyone’s wearing theirs.

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