Page 42 of A Fractured Song

“What do you mean?” Zev asked sharply.

Svetlana passed a look of indulgence over the two of them. “Did they pull you in with threats about magically binding bargains? If so, it was a hoax.”

“Elf bargains aren’t real?” Marieke asked, feeling foolish. She and Zev had taken it so seriously when Rissin tried to bargain with them for information.

“Oh, they’re real enough,” Svetlana said. “I’ve dealt with elves up on the surface before—maddeningly slippery they are to communicate with. Down here they’re not so insufferable, though. They have to adapt to the environment, and they’ve learned that the magic of the canyon isn’t predictable like it is on the land above. It’s wild magic down here, pure magic. It responds to no law, not even the laws of elf bargains.”

Rissin leaned back in his chair throughout this explanation, his expression smug and his gaze on Zev. Marieke saw that the Aeltan was watching the little elf with narrowed eyes, clearly irked at having been taken in.

“I see you feel no shame in your lies being exposed,” Zev commented.

Rissin was unfazed. “You see that, do you? Such human folly, to imagine that you can see what we feel or do not feel. And to what lies do you refer? We weren’t the ones who mentioned the bargain magic,” Rissin reminded him with an unrepentant shrug. “That was you. Why would we correct you when your error was in our interests?”

Zev shifted, clearly ready to retort, but Marieke spoke over him.

“I didn’t risk my life coming down here to bicker with mythical creatures,” she said shortly. After the exertions of the day, her hunger was becoming more insistent, and it was making her irritable. “I’m not interested in an argument about whether lies of omission count as dishonesty.”

Zev fell silent, more chastened by her words than she’d expected.

“What did you come down here for, then?” Svetlana asked,regarding Marieke with interest. “And why did you ask for me by name?”

“To be frank, Rissin is right,” Marieke said. “I used your name in hopes it would make him hesitate toeliminateme, as he so gracefully put it. But I really did come down here looking for you.” She would have waved her hand if it was free, but it was still bound, so she had to settle for making a sweeping motion with her chin. “All of you, I mean. Your whole settlement. I came because I want answers that I don’t think I’ll find back in Ondford.”

“Do you?” Svetlana raised an eyebrow, her reaction difficult to read. “Answers to what questions?”

“Well, the elves are one question,” Marieke said, her eyes sliding to Rissin. She still couldn’t fully believe that the little creatures were real. “Since you obviously knew about them.”

“Naturally.” Svetlana was very much at her ease. “We’ve been doing business with the elves for a long time. But that wasn’t really a question.”

“Is it true that the singers who orchestrated the coup tried to wipe out the elves?” Marieke blurted out.

“Of course it’s true,” Rissin said, his affronted tone unconvincing. “Do you accuse us of lying?”

“Spare your mock outrage,” Zev said, eyeing him. He was clearly still put out about having nearly been swindled by the elves.

Svetlana ignored all this, her gaze fixed on Marieke. “Do you think it’s true, singer Marieke?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Marieke said frankly. “About a lot of things.”

Svetlana nodded thoughtfully, studying Marieke’s face for another moment before she spoke. “That’s something, at least.” Her eyes passed to Zev. “What about you, young man? What do you think?”

Zev let out a sigh, shifting position slightly. He somehow managed to look calm and commanding in spite of being seated with his hands bound behind his back.

“I doubt the elves are lying about it,” he said. He turned his head to Marieke, addressing his next words to her. “The very fact that you’d never heard of elves—that I thought them only a story—supports it as well. The first council probably thought they’d succeeded, or they would have tried to paint the elves as evil instead of pretending they didn’t exist.”

“Like they did with the monarchs,” Svetlana said, nodding. She looked quite impressed. “Well articulated, young man. I agree that they likely thought they’d managed to kill all the elves—they wanted the elves to disappear, so that’s what they made them do. Once they took power, the singers would be able to get rid of official records of elves. From all I know, they were always inclined to be reclusive when it came to humans, and even back then, most people would never have seen an elf. It would only take a few generations for any surviving stories to devolve into legends and bedtime stories, like the ones you’ve apparently heard.”

Marieke digested this for a moment before responding.

“What do you mean, like they did with the monarchs?” she asked eventually, looking at Svetlana.

But it wasn’t the woman who answered. One of Rissin’s companions chuckled.

“She means that the singers might have been able to wipe us out of the records, but they could hardly wipe out the monarchs.”

Rissin made a noise of disdain. “They wouldn’t wish to. No doubt it served their purposes well to keep every record of the old royals’ frailties and vices.”

“True enough records,” the other elf pointed out, and Rissin nodded.

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