it began to feel as though sound itself had become something we had to ration. Now, even the most flippant of the bards’ songs felt like a small act of defiance: to hear the music ringing out. To permit ourselves something more than bare survival.
Some of the songs were slow and sad; others were raucous, the notes sizzling and jumping like corn kernels in a hot pan. Several had lyrics bawdy enough to set us all laughing. And when I glanced away from the fire, I saw that even Zoe’s feet, hanging from the branch high in the tree, were swinging in time with the music.
“Did your twin have the talent for music as well?” I asked Leonard, when he and Eva stopped for a drink.
He shrugged. “All I have of her is a name on my registration papers. That and the town where we were born.” He fished the worn sheet of paper from his bag and waved it at me, laughing. “They can’t make up their minds, the Council. Can’t do enough to keep us separate, but then they make us carry our twins around in our pockets, everywhere we go.” He traced the paper as if he would feel the word under his fingertip. “Elise, it says. That’s what Eva tells me—she can read a little. But that’s my twin’s name, on there somewhere.”
“And you don’t remember anything about her at all?”
He shrugged again. “I was a baby when they sent me away. That’s all I know of her: those marks on paper, that I can’t even see.”
I thought again of Zach. What did I have of him, now? I had been thirteen when I was branded and sent away. Not long enough for me, and too long for him. During my years in the Keeping Rooms, he’d come to see me, but only rarely. When I’d last seen him, in the silo after Kip and the Confessor’s deaths, he’d seemed fevered, frantic. He had been hissing, cut loose, like the electric wires that Kip and I had slashed.
When the next song started, my mind was still lingering in the silo with Zach, hearing again the tremor of terror in his voice when he’d told me to run. Eva had swapped her drum for a flute, so it was only Leonard’s voice tracing the words. It was midmorning, the sun through the tree trunks casting stripes on the clearing. It took me a moment to realize what Leonard was singing about.
They came in dark ships
They came at night
They laid the Confessor’s kiss
On each islander’s throat with a knife.
Piper stood up. To my left, Zoe dropped quietly from the lookout tree to the ground. She moved closer to where we sat in a circle around the ashes.
“I heard they didn’t kill them all,” Piper said.
Leonard stopped singing, but his fingers on the guitar never hesitated, the tune continuing to unfurl from his hands.
“Is that what you heard?” he said. The music played on. “Well, songs always exaggerate.”
He went back to the song.
They said there was no island
They said it wasn’t true
But they came for the island in their dark ships
And they’re coming next for you.
“You’d want to be careful who’s listening, when you sing that song,” said Zoe. “You could bring down trouble.”
Leonard smiled. “And you haven’t got trouble already, the three of you?”
“Who told you about the island?” said Piper.
“The Council themselves are putting the word out,” Leonard said. “Spreading the news that they found the island, crushed the resistance.”
“That song you’re singing is hardly the Council’s version, though,” said Piper. “What do you know of what happened there?”
“People talk to bards,” he said. “They tell us things.” He strummed a few more chords. “But I’m guessing you didn’t need to be told about the island. I’m guessing you know more than I do about what happened there.”
Piper was silent. I knew that he was remembering. I’d seen it, too. Not only seen it, but heard the shouts and whimpers. Smelled the butcher’s block scent of the streets.
“No song can describe it,” said Piper. “Let alone change it.”
“Maybe not,” said Leonard. “But a song can at least tell people about it. Tell them what the Council did to those people. Warn them what the Council’s capable of.”
“And scare them away from getting involved with the resistance?” Zoe said.
“Perhaps,” said Leonard. “That’s why the Council’s telling their version. I like to think my version might do something different—perhaps help people to realize why the resistance is so necessary.