Page 1 of A Fractured Song

Chapter

One

Marieke splashed water onto her face, taking a moment to consider her reflection in the looking glass above the basin.

She looked tired.

She had no business looking tired, she told herself sternly. It wasn’t as though she was traveling, or preparing for examinations. Life in her parents’ home didn’t involve much idleness, but it wasn’t particularly arduous either.

The trouble was that she wasn’t sleeping very well. She’d been home for a month, and she still found it difficult to settle. During her waking hours, her mind was consumed with the questions that Gorgon’s death hadn’t answered.

And at night, when she laid down, supposedly to sleep…well something else filled her thoughts in those moments. Or rather, someone else.

To be fair, Zev crept into her thoughts during the day as well. Such as right now, as she stared at her dripping face in the looking glass and wondered if he thought about her half as often as she thought about him. Was he also kept awake by memories of the passionate kiss they’d shared in theunguarded moment of relief that came after surviving Gorgon’s attack?

She hoped so. She felt no noble desire for him to be free of the emotional turmoil in which she found herself.

In fact, she thought, her brow creasing in an irritated scowl as she stared at her reflection, she hoped he was positively pining. In her less generous moments she was still annoyed with him for walking away from her. For declaring—quite reasonably—that whatever was going on in Oleand wasn’t his fight, and then leaving it at that, as if their own situation didn’t even merit being addressed.

But her annoyance was softened by the memory of those cloud-gray eyes when he’d said goodbye. He’d been conflicted, she was sure of it. Walking away hadn’t been easy for him, and it wasn’t as simple as doing what he wanted. And it wasn’t as though they would never see each other again. She grabbed a nearby towel with a decisive motion. She would make sure of that.

Her face dry, and her mind as awake as it was likely to be, Marieke made her way out to the kitchen of her family’s home.

“Good morning, Mari.” Her mother’s bright voice greeted her, and her father smiled absently without looking up from the letter he was reading.

“Good morning,” Marieke said, the greeting encompassing them both. She hastened to her mother’s side, carrying the milk pitcher to the table as her mother did the same with a plate of eggs.

“It’s certainly nice to have your help around the place again,” her mother commented.

Marieke smiled in response. “It’s nice to have you cooking my meals for me again.”

“There’s always a role for you at my clinic,” her fatherreminded her, lowering the letter. “We could use your initiative and hard work around the place.”

“Not to mention my songcraft?” Marieke challenged.

“No.” Her father lifted the letter again with a sage expression. “Except maybe for cleaning. You’d have to undertake much more rigorous study before I’d let you get your magic anywhere near my animals.”

Marieke laughed. “Wise man.”

He was absolutely right to be cautious, since using magic on animals was a nuanced and specialized business which she wasn’t equipped to do. Naturally she refrained from mentioning that her decision not to specialize in that type of songcraft had been motivated by a desire toavoidspending her life assisting her father in his role as a horse doctor and farrier.

“Well, as I told you when I came home, I’m not here to stay, I’m afraid,” she said, settling at the table beside him. “Just for a little while.”

“Yes, but that was a month ago,” her father said in a practical spirit. “And it doesn’t seem to me that you have any clear plan about what to do next.”

“It’s a shame that earning that place on the delegation to Aeltas didn’t raise the further opportunities you hoped.” Her mother’s tone was softer and more sympathetic. “I’m sure you acquitted yourself well.” She frowned slightly, the expression sitting poorly on her pleasant face. “Besides which, you’d think they would feel they owe you something after your place on the delegation almost got you killed.”

Marieke laughed weakly. “I don’t think that means they owe me. And perhaps opportunities will come up yet.”

She hadn’t told her parents that she’d gotten on the wrong side of the Council of Singers by pursuing unpopular lines of inquiry. In fact, there was a great deal she hadn’t told them about her most recent time away from home, and she didn’tfeel inclined to share any of it. No need to alarm them with her suspicions that some sinister magic continued to target their country.

After all, even she was beginning to doubt herself. In the month she’d been home, she’d made a point of seeking every opportunity to get news from the capital. She knew from discussing it with her parents that the series of accidents that had befallen singers previously—accidents which turned out to be attacks orchestrated by Gorgon—had been big news locally. Yet there’d been no whisper of any further incidents of that nature since she’d left Ondford. Perhaps she’d been wrong to read some kind of deeper, more sinister magic into Gorgon’s attacks. Perhaps he really had been acting alone, and the threat was now over.

There was no obvious improvement in the fertility of the land, but after all, no one had ever confirmed a connection between Oleand’s increasing barrenness and any kind of magic. Maybe her conviction that it was connected to the long-ago deaths of Oleand’s former monarchs was nothing more than a sign that she’d become too suspicious.

“That letter has you engrossed,” she commented to her father, who was once again poring over the parchment.

“Yes,” he said. “It was delivered with the market cart early this morning. It’s from an old neighbor who lives up near Bull Creek now.” He glanced up at Marieke’s mother. “I think I’ll have to move things around today and pay a call to him.”

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