The border of Cressida’s kingdom was marked by a series of guard posts and a wooden wall, running from riverbank to riverbank; from Idris’s recollection of the map in Cressida’s private meeting room, it was roughly fifty miles long, with checkpoints on the bridges. The Queen was not generally paranoid, but the reality of the war taught her much. Soldiers stayed and manned the border for six months, after which time they travelled to other posts, closer to home. This rotation was due to leave by the end of spring.

Each tower was hung with aria bells, and through them, Idris heard his music. It rang, sonorous and cold, in his bones. Kurellan shivered and tutted at them as they got out of the carriage.

Captain Farley was a tall, surprisingly willowy man, with a ruddy red beard that Idris was oddly envious of. He met the two courtiers at the carriage steps and shook their hands with a warm, hard grip.

“We received the Queen’s missive only two days ago, but we have managed to secure some accommodation for you,” he said, leading them into the guard barracks.

“We will not be staying long, Captain,” said Kurellan.

Idris followed silently behind, filtering out the invasive sound of the death arias from the normal, industrious music of the barracks. Soldiers sat in full leathers, polishing saddles and fletching arrows, telling jokes and conducting drills – all with the mournful tune of the death aria floating behind them. He was not sure how they ignored it, but he knew if he and Kurellan were going to stay the night that he would not be able to sleep so close to the bells. The sound was homely to him, but it drilled into his marrow, made him agitated, as if he was wasting the aria by ignoring it, or it was whispering secrets in his ears.

“Ah...” Captain Farley hesitated, close to the wall, turning to the two noblemen. “And, how am I to address you, Sir...”

“Sir Idris will do,” said Idris.

“Sir Idris, what can we do here to make your stay... productive?”

Idris looked out through the arrow slits in the wall. Beyond were the trampled grass and wildflower wastes of an old battlefield.

“I will have ample resources, I think,” he said softly; he was never certain how loud his voice was when the arias were strong, so he tried his best not to shout. “Oh, but please do assist my attendant, Lila, with anything she requests. And I would like to see the rooms you have provided for us. I will retire before I begin my work; Kurellan here will give you numbers and requirements. You merely need to tell me what kinds of thralls you need, and I will supply you.”

Farley’s cheeks paled slightly at this, but he nodded busily. “Of course, of course... yes, Your Honour, Judge Kurellan, let us discuss your needs.”

“One last thing?” said Idris. Captain Farley hesitated. “Would one of your men shoot down a bird, for me? Any kind will do.”

“A... a bird, Sir Idris?”

“Please. Try not to hit the wings. Bring the corpse to my rooms.”

The captain looked unnerved, but he nodded regardless.

The room Idris was provided with was bare, but he filled it quickly with the contents of his trunk. He stacked it with books and tools, crystals and scrolls, and hung his travel bells by the window, where they could catch the aria clearly. He had just completed his set-up when a soldier knocked on the door and sheepishly presented a bloody raven to him.

“Perfect. Thank you.”

Idris took the corpse and dismissed the soldier, and settled at the desk to write a letter.

Cress,

The old man and I have arrived safely, with little excitement. I expect our work here will be done by the time you get this message, and we will already be on our way home. Please heat some of that delightful blossom tea for me. I will debrief you when I arrive.

No blue flowers yet, although Lila has assured me that the fae likely have shades of all sorts. Perhaps I will step into a fairy circle, for fun.

Yours, in service,

I.

He tied the little scroll to the dead raven’s leg, then laid the still-warm body on the desk. The soldier had made a clean shot through the torso, so the wings were undamaged, exactly as Idris asked.

He took a deep breath, right into the pit of his stomach, and cleared his thoughts, so every sound in the world was the sound of the death aria, buzzing in his blood, moaning in the bells. The first command was always the most important and the most difficult. Any stutter or hesitation, he could lose control of the whole enterprise. With his fingers in the pentagon shape, he pressed them to the chest of the bird, and spoke.

“Deliver,” he said, feeling the heat on the back of his breath.

The bird’s dead, glassy eyes lit with a grey fire. It croaked, scrabbled to its feet, its movement less bird-like and more controlled. With the aria in it, it was not a bird, anymore, really, more an extension of Idris’s will. He felt the connection, taut like a bowstring; with all of the magic in the air, it was so strong that it would last all the way back to Veridia, and he would know innately if anything happened to it.

“Remember,” he commanded, and he thought of the palace in vivid, dream-like detail. The bird watched him intently. Idris projected the image through the aria, in snatches of song, until finally, he presented the memory of Cressida’s chamber window. “Obey,” he said.

The raven hopped up onto the sill and took off in a flurry of black feathers.

The aria sung in Idris’s chest for a few moments after, and he allowed himself to revel in its vibrations for a second before he sighed, letting out the last little notes he had harnessed and did not need. It was rather liberating to work without Kurellan’s piercing gaze on his back.

“A raven is a touch on-the-nose,” he murmured to himself. He wondered if the soldier had felt embarrassed, bringing a necromancer a carrion bird.

There was no sense in starting to raise soldiers until the evening. Instead, he ate a small afternoon snack and called Lila to walk out into the battlefield with him.

There was work to do even before the arduous task of necromancy. First, Idris had to see what he was working with – whether the corpses were complete, or degraded, or pure bone; whether there were weapons for them or armour, or nothing – and Lila was particularly adept at recovering bodies for him to use. The guards let him and his attendant out into the field, with a wagon carrying the preparation materials. It would double as a way to carry any bodies they found to a central location.

In days past, the field was likely grassy and filled with animals. The war had razed the fresh greenery and left muddy, ruched tracks in its wake, but to their credit, the soldiers who cleared the site had buried most of their dead and there were no bones left behind. The usual littered remains of battle were either grown over completely or had been picked up by the victors; no rusted swords or broken helmets lay around, but here and there Idris saw a broken arrow or a piece of torn cloth. In the quiet aftermath, war was different to how he remembered it.

Using his travel bells and crystals, Idris identified where the mass grave was, in a series of mounds closer to the start of the forest, marked by old banners from both sides. Tattered and torn, Queen Cressida’s House Naga banner fluttered in the cool breeze, beside the banner of House Orrost, emblazoned with a black, winged horse against a golden background.

He sighed, touched the earth. Even without the detection from the bells, he could feel the aria’s deep pull; the bells were humming in his hand, itchy with vibration.

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“Here,” he said to Lila. “Here is good. Mark it with torches, please. We will set up the table at sundown.”

“Sir Idris...” Lila shivered, sighed. “I don’t mean to boss you about, but...”

“No, you are quite right to feel uneasy about this, Lila.” Idris looked at the banners, again, and felt cold. “I do not like it, either.”

“Why would Her Majesty ask this of you?”

“It is for the best. That is why.” He stood to his full height. “No more questions please, Lila. Let us do our work and do it well, hmm?”

“Yes, sir. Apologies.”

They carried the short table from the wagon, dug it into the dirt and packed soil against the legs so it would not tip; Lila drove torches down by the mound. The whole walk back, Idris hoped Cressida was right, and this endeavour was worth both of their time.

*

The soldiers avoided Idris for the rest of the afternoon. He walked the barracks for as far as he was comfortable, looking out at the battlefield, with Lila by his side. She did not often get to watch him work, and she had questions that he did his best to answer. Most attendants were understudies to their courtiers, but necromancy was not a common discipline and she was not attuned to it. In fact, she was not attuned to anything, except that she was quite handy with a bow, and deadly with a short sword; Idris had almost spit out his tea when he had seen her lop the head off a practise dummy one afternoon, not long after they met.

“You breathe the aria in and it...” She tried to remember how he put it, her face wrinkled in concentration. “Fills you. Gives you its power and its energy. And the singing and the speaking, the hand movements... it strengthens it, and gives it shape.”

“Correct. Shape and purpose, remember that.”

“Of course.”

“Without direction, the aria just... is. And is quite harmless, actually.” Idris leaned on his cane, squinted into the afternoon sun. “But with a well-trained vessel -”

“Like you, Sir Idris?”

He smiled slightly. “Like me, yes, or Her Majesty, or Magus Arundale – the aria is much like any other kind of energy, that can do wonderous things.”

“Or...”

“Or, in my case, morbid and unnatural things.”

Lila did not disagree, but she pursed her lips and put her hands behind her back.

“The bells, they simply tell you where the energy is strongest,” she said.

“Oh, the bells can do nothing alone. Arias collect where their energy is most prevalent and needed. Water arias over streams and rivers, for example.”

“I remember.”

“That is why I spend all of my time in places like this. Morbid is as morbid does.” Idris sighed. “The sun is setting. We should be on our way.”

“My role when you work is…?” said Lila, following him dutifully.

“You are my eyes, my ears. When I am within the aria, I am particularly vulnerable. And, of course, you know I am a clumsy fighter.”

“Oh, you hit right hard enough,” she said, shrugging.

“From you, that is quite a compliment.”

“You get scared, is all.”

“I have delicate magician hands,” he said, half-smiling. “How do you expect me to position my fingers just so if my knuckles are bruised? Either way, this is good experience for you, if you intend to be my attendant for a little longer. Did you bring a weapon?”

“Are you expecting to be attacked?”

“You never expect an attack, no.”

“I have my sword in the trunk.”

“Fetch it, quickly. Then meet me at the gate.”

“Certainly, Sir Idris.”

Idris wandered across to the gate, gazed out at the field again. Kurellan wanted thirty thralls. It was going to take a lot out of him, but he wanted to put in an honest effort.

The sky was lapis draconis orange as Idris and Lila walked out to the grave. Idris put his coat on the wagon they had left there, rolled up his peasant sleeves and knelt on the rug that Lila lay out, while she lit the torches and prepped his table. She set down the water skin and the wine, tipped some water into the bowl, left the towel beside it, and knelt beside the rug, looking back towards the barracks. Ahead, the trees cast dense shadows as the forest thickened in the darkening night. Beside the trees, it was calm and quiet, save the continuous groaning of Idris’s bells, which Lila had set hanging from Cressida’s banner.

Idris looked at the banner, the sea serpents, the beautiful blue. He thought of his best friend, his truest friend, who cared so little about his deformity both inside and out that she elevated him too far above his station and he wished so earnestly that he could repay her.

This work, it would allow her to flush out a traitor in their midst. It had to be good.

He breathed deep and closed his eyes.

Arias this strong made him feel like the glass bells, like every tiny distinction in the sound hit a different part of him, made him hollow and perfect. He was a glorious acoustic chamber; it was his only purpose.

They were also dangerous, if he did not concentrate.

Opening his eyes, he put both hands palm up, made pentagons with his fingers, took each breath deep into his stomach and let it out slowly. From the corner of his vision, he saw Lila trying not to watch him. The tension in his arms and back, the shaking of his shoulders, was already making him sweat, even in the cool dusk.

He took his time. He wanted it to be right. Beneath the earth, he could feel the bodies. They were in various states of decomposition, some with missing limbs. He felt them like his own phantom foot, as if each part only required wishing into being to be whole again. If he delved deep enough in the aria, he knew which severed arm belonged to which corpse, which missing eyes had dissolved into the earth around them.

Thirty. He could do thirty.

With another, forceful breath, he exerted his will.

“Rise,” he said.

It felt like hot coals in his mouth. The aria soared and roared in his ears; his fingertips ached. The bells on the banner shivered and shook.

The earth rumbled.

“Rise,” he said again, the aria molten on his lips, sweat dripping from his hair into his eyes.

The first movement was a scratching, scrabbling hand, pushing aside the sod.

Idris half-wanted to tell Lila not to look. Her eyes now were fixed on the barracks in the distance, her hand on her sword hilt, her back to the disturbing grasping of dead hands scraping out of the soil. The thought, though, was death to his concentration, so he pushed it aside and made himself empty and sound-made once more.

And then, beside him, Lila moved.

She knelt up, tall, her eyes trained on the wall.

Idris could not ask her what she saw – any words he made would be taken by the aria, turned into commands – but he knew his time was limited. Either he raised these thralls now or not at all.

“Obey,” he said, firmly. His heart pounded, thick, in his throat.

The ground before him was littered with bodies, crawling out like new-born creatures. Some still wore their armour, broken and eroding; others were shedding it like a snake sheds it skin.

“Remember.”

He called to mind the barracks, sent it through the aria to the half-submerged corpses, their eyes now grey with fire and purpose.

Lila reached out a hand, shook Idris’s shoulder, and flinched immediately away.

“We have to go,” she said, her voice muffled beneath the aria’s call. “Sir Idris, we -”

“Work,” he said, his final command laced with intent. Work in the barracks. Do whatever was asked.

“Idris!” Lila said sternly, shaking him hard, again.

The aria burst from his lungs. He gasped, falling onto his outstretched hands, and dragged in normal air. But there was no time to even turn to Lila and demand an explanation; she grabbed his wrist and pulled him, crawling, to the wagon’s side.

There was a quick, wet slap over his face. Blinking himself back into reality, he saw Lila, the bowl in her hands now empty.

And he saw it.

The barracks was aglow. Shouts carried over the still air, orders and alarms. A bell rang.

He could hardly ask; his throat felt charred. “An ambush?” he whispered.

But the glow was curious. It was not the orange of burning buildings or lit beacons.

It was, somehow, green. Sickly. Otherworldly.

Idris was sure he was imagining it, that it was some residue of the aria that had not left him, but Lila was staring, too. Swords clanged.

Someone screamed.

“Was that...?” Idris breathed, exhausted and horror-struck. “Was that me?”

“You?” said Lila. “No. No, it...”

But she did not sound sure.

Beside them, the thralls were gathering themselves, some already marching towards the barracks. To the left, Idris saw a shape. He was not sure what it was, man or beast, but it was incredibly still and yet exuded some kind of overwhelming force that made Idris want to faint. It filled him with inexplicable dread.

“Down,” he hissed, pushing Lila to the wagon.

“You first.”

Together, they crawled beneath the wagon and gazed out, into the dark. Idris pulled in breath, confused; Lila cursed.

“The torches,” she said.

If they stayed there, whatever the shape was that they saw and whatever was in the barracks was going to come for them next.

“Lila,” whispered Idris, “listen. You go to the barracks, find Kurellan. Get him out, understood?”

“But you -”

“I’ll go into the forest. I can hide well there. Raise a thrall to protect me if I have to. You must find Kurellan. I’ll make my way back come morning, I swear it,” he said. “I am too slow and too tired to make the run now.”

“My job is to protect you,” said Lila firmly, her face drawn, eyes shining.

“And a fine job you have done, and I admire you for it. But with my leg, I will slow you.”

She hesitated, looked out again. The sounds were louder, fiercer. Whatever war waged in the barracks, it was worsening.

“I’ll come back for you,” she said. “How will I know where you went?”

“My bells. Listen for the bells. I will return by morning, make no mistake.”

Lila nodded, wrung Idris’s hand briefly.

“I will run, and find Kurellan, and see you come sunrise,” she whispered.

Idris smiled. “No doubt. Thank you, Lila.”

For a moment, they watched the shape, still as it was, dark as it was, beyond the wagon, and then it moved, stepping back.

“Now,” Idris urged, and Lila shoved her way out and began sprinting towards the barracks.

Idris watched her for only seconds, and then he rolled out from under the wagon. He forced himself to his feet, already feeling the discomfort in his hip and knee, his shirt wet with cold sweat and dirt. Shaking, he grabbed the glass bells, hot with vibration, and walked into the trees. He glanced back. The thralls ambled towards the wooden wall, and Lila flew before them, head down, lit by the unnerving green glow.

There was, in his gut, the terrible feeling that somehow he caused this.

Quickly, he headed into the forest.

He walked for longer than was probably necessary, using the trees as supports. His cane was back with the wagon and his metal leg felt heavy and useless. Carefully, he stepped over roots and twigs, moving deeper and deeper into the foliage. The aria bells in his hand whistled with earth magic, taking the songs from the trees and twinkling with fae whisperings. There was no comfort in it, though.

The green glow. What was that? Surely, that was not a by-product of his work?

And, as he turned to look over his shoulder once more, something snapped around his left ankle, and the world went upside-down.