Page 56 of A Fractured Song

“I’d be surprised if they were selling talismans to humans,” Trina said. “They don’t do that—they couldn’t keep their existence secret if they did.”

“They sold them to Gorgon,” Zev pointed out.

Trina stared at him. “Really?”

“That’s how he carried out his attacks on singers in Oleand,” Marieke confirmed. “The attacks definitely involved magic.”

“Wow.” Trina leaned back, lost in thought. “Svetlana has kept that quiet. Gorgon knew all about talismans, of course. But I have no idea how he would have persuaded the elves to sell them to him. He wasn’t nearly as charming or convincing as he thought he was.” She sighed. “Or at least, I never thought so. Others evidently did.”

Her eyes were sad as she looked up at them. “Whatever you think of us, we were all devastated to learn that Gorgon had not only gotten himself killed, but managed to bring down multiple others of our community with him. Most of the ones he recruited were similar age to him, really young. He was only a few years older than me. We were never close, but we still grew up together.”

“I’m sorry,” said Marieke, her tone subdued.

Zev studied Trina’s face, seeing something more that she wasn’t saying.

“He tried to recruit you, too, didn’t he?”

She started, her eyes darting to him with a wariness that was confirmation enough.

“I wasn’t part of his plan to attack singers,” she said.

“I didn’t say you were,” Zev responded calmly. “But did he want you to be?”

Trina studied him for a moment, then let out another longsigh. “Yes,” she admitted. “And I considered it. The thing is, not all of us are happy to live down here forever, cut off from the world outside. I’m loyal to my community,” she clarified quickly. “I don’t have any desire to serve either of the usurping councils. But…” She shrugged. “That doesn’t mean I agree with Svetlana and the other elders, who all bemoan the lies of the councils but don’t have any interest in doing anything about it. To them, living apart and refusing to submit themselves to the governance of the councils is enough. I don’t see it that way, and I’m not the only one.”

“Which is how Gorgon found others like him, willing to take the fight to the singers,” Marieke said softly.

“Yes.” Trina frowned. “But their plan was no better than Svetlana’s lack of a plan. They were just murdering people. That’s not the tale he told me when I was considering joining.”

“What tale was that?” Zev pressed.

“He said that the murder of the royals had cursed the land—although that part he didn’t come up with, to be fair. That was what that girl said.”

“What girl?” Marieke asked sharply.

“I forget her name,” Trina said, looking surprised by the tone. “I was only ten or eleven at the time. I mean, Gorgon wasn’t much older, but I remember him being very taken with her. We were all pretty excited. It’s such a rare thing for us to have outsiders come here.”

“But who was she?” Marieke insisted.

“She was an Oleandan who said she was sympathetic to our cause,” Trina said. “She knew about how the monarchs were slaughtered and how both Councils of Singers were lying about what happened, which got everyone’s attention. We thought we were the only ones who knew or cared about that. She claimed that the land had been cursed ever since, and that the existence of Sundering Canyon was proof of it. I guess becausewe live here, she thought we’d want to help convince everyone about the land being cursed on account of the councils.” Trina looked glum. “But as usual, our leaders weren’t interested in anything that would get them involved with the world above. They want to be left alone to disapprove from a distance.”

“But some of the young people, like you and Gorgon, feel differently,” Zev said.

“Yes.” Trina nodded.

“But that must have been Jade,” said Marieke, her voice excited as these pieces came together.

Trina brightened. “Jade! That was her name. Do you know her?”

Marieke shook her head. “We never met. But I’ve heard of her.”

“Well, she left when she realized we weren’t interested, but I’m sure that her talk of the land being cursed is where Gorgon got his idea. He talked more with her than the rest of us did.”

“What was his idea?” Zev asked.

“When he first tried to recruit me, he claimed that the curse on the land meant that the magic of the land was rising up against singers, to punish them,” Trina said. “I’ll admit that caught my interest. He talked as if we were going to find instances of this happening and use them to prove to everyone that the singers were the problem. Then the plan changed to finding a way to actuallycausethe magic of the land to turn on singers. I even swallowed that for a while. By the time I realized that his plan was actually to attack singers in inconspicuous ways and try to make itlooklike the land had turned against them, I was no longer on board. I couldn’t work up the courage to tell anyone what I’d been part of, and next thing I knew, Gorgon and the others had left. I’d never fully committed, and he hadn’t told me the whole plan. I didn’t know enough to stop it, anyway.”

There was a defensive note in her voice, but Zev couldn’t find it in him to blame her for what Gorgon had done.

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