Idris was certain the sound of the lashing rain was a remainder from his dream, but Lila’s shaking hands persuaded him that he was awake. The second sound he heard, before she opened her mouth, was the long, low blast of a dragon horn.

“Now?” he whispered. Lila nodded.

“The Queen is enchanting the water from the baths as we speak,” she said, as Idris grabbed a coat and his stiletto. “She is going to flood the street; the rain is helping, as are some of Braemar’s own water adept. There has been no word from Willard but I trust he will keep his promise.”

“Lady Riette?” Idris said, snatching up the cane.

“Standing ready, as is Judge Kurellan.” Lila clutched the sewer key to her chest. “Sir Idris, I… I will defend you as best as I am able.”

He put both hands on her shoulders, kissed her brow. “I know. You are my dear friend. Everything will be well. Come.”

It was frightening, how sudden the panic set in and how the adrenalin directed his thoughts. There was no noise outside, just like before, but he felt the approach of the dreadful presence in the pit of his stomach and he knew it, now, to be the aura of the Spirit Glass dagger. Lila ushered him out of the captain’s office, into the rainy street.

The guards at the gate stood three deep, just as he had directed, with a second line looking into Braemar proper, waiting for assassins. Behind him, Riette stood at Cressida’s back as the Queen, standing straight and tall, arched her fingers in perfect casting stance, her mouth slightly open as the water aria swelled in the bells around the road.

Idris felt the rain trickle down the neck of his coat, settle in his thin shirt, and he knew those cold fingers too well. He had been here before.

“I have had a thought, Lila,” he whispered. “Follow me.”

He walked down the street to the ranks of soldiers and he called, “Judge Kurellan?”

Kurellan turned, frowned.

“You’re not in position, whelp,” he said.

“I can give you more resources,” said Idris, “if the men will protect me.”

Kurellan shifted his jaw, sighed heavily. “You want thralls? Here? Again?”

“I would feel better.”

A soldier, somewhere, muttered, “Damn Puppeteer.”

“Listen!” Kurellan snapped suddenly, his face flushed and ruddy. “Sir Idris is a member of the noble court! He saved this city! You speak of him with respect in your words! Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” chanted the soldiers.

Idris felt a swell of warmth in his heart as the old judge directed men around his position, so he could kneel comfortably and focus on his work.

“You do what you must,” said Kurellan, and he turned to face the gate again.

“It will feel hot for a moment, gentlemen,” said Idris, placing his knees firmly on the cobblestones, “but that will pass. Do not engage anything with grey light in its eyes and it will not harm you. They are here for your protection.”

“Say ‘yes, sir!’” Kurellan ordered into the awkward silence.

“Yes, sir!” the men shouted, with a moment’s pause.

Idris did not have his carpet, or his water and wine, but it did not matter. Raw necromantic energy spread through the cobbles like capillaries. He imagined he could see it, pulsing silvery and bright through the stone and the puddles. Closing his eyes, tightening his shoulders, he breathed deep into his stomach.

The death aria, this time, was pure, and it knew him. He had played it once, conducted its melodies in more trying times. The rain on his back, dripping from his fringe, all of those sensations were part of the performance. He followed the tune, out into the field beyond the gate, where bones shivered beneath the earth – bones of the twice-killed and the once, bones of friendly soldiers and enemies. There were split skulls, broken femurs, ribcages cracked open like walnut shells, spines splintered.

Skeletons were difficult. The lack of muscle to automatically do what muscles did was trying on Idris’s energy. He had to remind the bones how bodies fit together, how they walked and fought. He had to give them purpose beyond reanimation.

“Hurry up, whelp!” said Kurellan from beyond the music.

Idris pursed his lips like he was whistling, and he felt the death aria pass through him as he breathed out; he almost heard it on the wind, outside of himself. He thought of individual human bones, the sockets they fit into, the way they connected and twisted. The sound of his heartbeat became the beat he gave to his creations, full and vibrant.

One hand, he formed into a palm-up pentagon. The other, he pressed in a claw-like grip on his own collarbone to amplify his call.

“Rise,” he said.

He felt it thrum through the bones in his own fingers. Fiercely, he clenched his left pentagon into a fist and he slammed the knuckles, hard, onto the stone.

The force of his own punch knocked the wind out of his chest, but in the next breath the aria dragged itself deep into his lungs. His coat steamed with the heat; his body shook. He could not see the field, but he felt the bones shifting, coalescing. In the puddles beyond his fist, he saw a green, sickly light.

“You work so damn slow!” said Kurellan, unsheathing his sword.

Idris closed his eyes again.

“Rise,” he whispered, letting the heat hurt the back of his throat.

Each construction tugged an invisible thread that was wrapped around his heart. There, one full skeleton. To the east, another, waiting for an arm. He worked, a benevolent spider, feeling every twitch on his web, tasting the sweat in his mouth. Fizzy lights blurred his eyelids, but he pressed on.

“Obey,” he said, and he imagined the man with the broad shoulders in the black cloak. “Fight,” he said.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

There was a shiver, all through his threads. Gently, he let out all the air in his lungs and relaxed his stance, and he opened both of his hands and snapped them into fists again.

The aria whumphed in his ears, made him dizzy and disoriented, but he was giddy. The job was done. And it was done well. No overwhelming push of air, no burning, no pain.

He took a moment to regain his composure, then he staggered to his feet and reached out a hand for Lila, who pulled him from the group of soldiers by his now-bruised left hand.

“Done?” said Kurellan, seeing him move.

“Done,” said Idris breathlessly, watching the gate, now. The green glow was sneaking around the gates’ cracks. “Let us see how he deals with a real necromancer,” he whispered, following Lila’s pull towards the bathhouse.

Braemar’s famous bathhouse was comfortably the size of a barn, and made from ocean rock that seemed to bleed blue when the rain drenched through it. Idris could already see the water from the house speeding out of the windows, towards Cressida, in thin ropes. Lila sprinted up the steps, closely followed by Idris.

“You are the Court Necromancer,” said the soft voice in the centre of Idris’s brain.

It stopped him dead, made him clench his teeth.

“But you are only a boy,” the voice whispered.

“Sir Idris?” said Lila, by the door.

“Go,” he said, waving her on. He turned back to the gate.

“I see your little skeleton army,” the voice said, “and it is nice to know you can do something, hmm?”

The gate rattled; the soldiers jumped.

Idris wondered how he could respond through the aria – he had never tried. Instead, he thought hard about the black figure, the Spirit Glass.

“Oh, I hear a thought in your head,” said the voice. “Interesting. How difficult is it, being raised above your station like this? You cannot even communicate with me.”

“Idris?” said Lila again.

“One moment,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” the voice said. “Your small rebellion will not affect years of planning. I will pass.”

“Behind!” Riette roared from far away.

The door of a house across the street burst open. The gate clattered once more.

“Hold!” shouted Kurellan. “Open the gate!”

“Sir Idris, please!” said Lila.

People began sprinting down the street towards the group of soldiers, knives raised. Basement doors slammed open, revealing hidden spies; there were more people than Idris had expected.

Then the gate was open, and he could see.

His skeletons, engaged in fighting with more black-clad warriors, and the man in black, in the centre. He lifted the glowing green dagger and plunged it into the wet earth.

“Lila, down!” Idris shouted when he saw the shockwave.

A green, screaming, ear-canal itching pulse washed straight into his brain, shoved him backwards. The skeletons shivered. Some exploded from the strain. The Braemar soldiers could not hold their footing. Kurellan squinted into the light.

Faces. So many faces.

Idris blinked the stars from his eyes, trying to focus. In the chaos, the clashing of steel and meeting of bodies and dismembering of skeletons, he could not tell where he was. Suddenly, Lila grabbed his wrist, threw him backward and swung her sword towards a running figure, catching it at the shoulder and hewing the arm clean off. Blood sprayed.

“Go!” she screamed at Idris.

He fled up the stairs. When he turned to check for Lila, she was pulling her sword out of a second assailant’s chest, her shoulders heaving.

How had the black figure amassed so many followers in such a short span of time?

No. He said this was years in the making.

So why now?

Idris dropped back to his knees, gritted his teeth.

“What are doing?” said Lila frantically, watching him.

“Fresh corpses are easier,” he replied, lifted his right hand and breathed deep and long.

With the faces, the aria felt different. There was the odd, high-pitched screeching, the tainted low notes. Idris frowned, breathed again, and listened intently to the call in his bones. It took mere moments to pull the two men who had rushed Lila back to their feet and send them into the fray. As soon as he was done, Lila was dragging him up.

“He needs to follow us,” Idris said as they finally reached the bathhouse doors.

“Hopefully, Her Majesty will make it so that he has to,” said Lila, unlocking them.

The sewer maintenance gate was just inside the main doors, to the left. Idris watched the carnage from the top of the steps. The green faces screeched through the gate in a never-ending torrent, the rain cutting them into faint ribbons. The Braemar guard pushed hard and firm against the assassins that had come from the city and the new forces that the man in black had brought with him from the gate. In between that, Idris’s skeletons hacked and slashed without a moment’s thought for their own safety and the man in black, curious and unscathed, tilted his head to see what Idris was doing.

Wouldn’t you like to know? Idris thought.

He was sure the black figure smiled.

“I would,” the voice said, “yes.”

Their moment was interrupted by Kurellan’s broadsword, whooshing towards the black figure’s neck.

The black figure stepped back, raised the dagger. When the broadsword hit it, a green spark burst from the blade. Kurellan winced in its light, stepped back.

“Inside,” said Lila, pulling her bow from her back.

“Lila –“

“I will follow, but I will draw him here.”

She nocked an arrow, squinted down the shaft and let loose.

The arrow whizzed behind the black figure’s head. He turned just in time to see Idris slip through the sewer gate and away.

He wanted to wait for Lila, but he knew for the plan to work, the black figure had to be isolated and without a chance to call for help. He hurried down the steps, into the dank dimness of the sewer tunnels. Curious, he reached up and touched a weaver mark, glowing in the wall, and at his touch the mark lit to a bright yellow, illuminating the tunnel.

The sewer was wonderfully crafted, for what it was. It was as tall as two men, just wide enough for Idris to touch each wall with his fingertips and perfectly round, with a clean-cut channel down the centre where the wastewater ran. Rainwater was already swirling through from the street above. When Idris glanced into it, he saw some swirls of blood in it, too. The weaver magic cut back on the smell, and yet he sneezed at the mustiness of the rock and the clogging scent of the moss on the walls.

Idris started walking. He wanted to get in deep, to a recess or side room that he could lure the black figure into. From there, the death aria was fainter, and he could not hear the black figure’s voice or feel the dagger. The sounds of the battle above were swapped for gurgling water and quiet drips, and the echo of Idris’s footsteps. Every now and then, he would pass beneath an arch and find another weaver mark to light the way ahead. After some time, he paused, turned back. There was no sign of Lila.

There was an ominous rumble above him and the ground shook.

The tremor jerked him into the wall, and he waited against it until the shake passed. Water shivered from the ceiling; some of the weaver magic glowed gold and silver in long threads in the brick.

“What was that?” he whispered. Cressida’s magic could not do that. Louder, he called, “Lila?”

There was no response. The ground shook again.

When he breathed in next, he could taste the arias in the air. There was no other way to describe the fizzing, heady sensation he drew in. For a moment, he thought he could hear what Cressida did, or that there was a fae melody on his lips, but there was something new in the way the arias smashed into each other, like paint mingling in a deluge.

“Idris!” Lila cried.

She sprinted down the sewer’s tunnel, sword in hand.

“Is he coming?” said Idris, reeling from the strange sensations.

“Willard,” she said, sheathing her sword and grabbing his wrists. “Willard came, with… with giants, I think –“

“Giants?”

“There is so much… The Queen flooded the street –“

There was another tremor. This time, bricks fell to the ground.

“No other way?” Idris said. Lila shook her head.

“He has to come this way.”

“Lila,” he said, glancing at the ceiling again, the weaver magic crackling, “it is not safe for you down here, now –“

“I protect you,” she said firmly, but he held her shoulders tight.

“Goodness yes, you do. Nobody looks after me like you do.” He swallowed, shook his head. “Cressida is not teasing when she says you are perfect, you know.”

Her eyes filled with tears immediately, but she did not cry. She held his wrists and pursed her lips.

“I will hold the door behind him,” she whispered.

“Good girl. Thank you.”

“I will wait until you return.”

“I appreciate it.” He smiled, so she knew he was doing this willingly and with a glad heart, so she did not second-guess what happened next. “Go. Quickly. I fear this place is caving in.”

“Family first,” said Lila, her grip white.

“Family first,” Idris agreed.

She let go, took two quick steps backwards and then, as if she was dragged, she turned and fled back down the sewer. Idris watched her the whole way, until her footsteps were gone and she was out of sight, and he watched the masonry crumbling above his head.