Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1)(73)

“Earthshakes,” I whispered, and I looked up, picturing the vast weight of the rock that hung over our heads.

“Just so, my lady,” Pierre replied, and the glass balls settled gently back onto a table.

Shivering, I wrapped my cloak around me tightly. The earthshakes came often. Sometimes they were hardly noticeable, but there had been times when I’d been knocked off my feet or seen our house and barn shake so badly I was certain they would collapse. I had always been afraid of the quakes – any rational person was – but my fear took on another level as I considered the implications of having a half a mountain worth of rock dangling over my head.

“You shouldn’t worry, Cécile,” Tristan said from where he’d stood silently in the corner. “Not so much as a stone has fallen in my lifetime or even my father’s.”

“I’m not afraid. Much,” I amended, seeing him roll his eyes. Blast this cursed connection between us. Nor did the sense of confidence radiating from him do much to chase away my fear. He hadn’t said that rocks never fell; only that one hadn’t fallen in a long time. That meant it was possible, and I didn’t have troll magic to protect my head from falling objects.

With greater understanding, I examined the chart once again. “This line,” I said, “it shows the motions then?” Pierre nodded. I traced my finger along the line, noting the dates where the line spiked. Many of them were burned into my memory. “Our barn nearly collapsed during this one,” I murmured, tapping one of the spikes and remembering our panic as we ushered all the animals out. It was the highest one on the chart, which went back only thirty years, if I was reading it correctly. “Do you have one that goes back further?”

“I have charts going back nearly five centuries, my lady. It is an old craft, and one made exceedingly relevant by the Fall.” Pierre’s stool rolled across the floor and he extracted another chart from the cabinet and smoothed it out on the desk.

“How old is your father?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat at the sight of a spike in the line that eclipsed all the others.

Tristan cleared his throat. “Forty-three.”

The spike was fifty years ago. “What happened?”

Tristan shrugged, but I could feel his discomfort. “We are better prepared, now.”

“Did rocks fall?” I demanded. “Couldn’t they catch them?”

“It happened in the middle of the night,” Tristan replied. “A portion of the city was lost – you walked through it when you came through the labyrinth.”

I blanched, remembering the crushed rubble of homes on either side of the tunnels. “Did trolls die?”

“Four hundred and thirty-six lives lost – crushed to death in their sleep.”

A shiver ran down my spine. They wouldn’t have even seen it coming.

“There are worse ways to go,” Tristan muttered.

Uncomfortable silence stretched until Pierre broke it. “Perhaps she will feel better once you show her the tree.”

“I somehow doubt that,” I muttered.

Tristan smiled. “Have a little faith, Cécile.”

We took our leave from Pierre’s little house. “You come visit me when Tristan starts to bore you, my lady!” he called from behind us. I turned to wave goodbye and had to hurry to catch up to Tristan.

A laughing group of children carrying books ran by and we were treated to a chorus of “Good morning, my lord,” along with many curious glances in my direction.

“Where are they going?” I asked, smiling at their antics.

“To school,” Tristan replied. “We’ll start here.”

He stopped next to a low, circular stone wall that stood in the middle of the street.

I turned back around to watch the children, girls and boys, disappear into a stately building. “Truly? The girls, too?”


“Truly,” Tristan replied, but his attention seemed elsewhere. “They all attend until they’re ten, and then they start learning their respective trades. But look here, Cécile. This is the tree. Or part of it, rather.”

With a wistful backwards glance, I turned to see Tristan standing on the stone wall, staring at empty space. “Where?” I asked, looking into the circle. There was nothing but stone.

“Here.” He clasped my hand and pulled it forward. Immediately, it was enveloped in liquid warmth. I jerked my hand back. “I can feel something, but I can’t see it.” My eyes searched the empty air, trying to find a glimmer of what he was looking at. Reaching into the magic, I ran my hand up as high as I could reach, even on my tiptoes, but I could not grasp what was in front of me.

“No, I suppose as a human, you wouldn’t.”

“But trolls can see it?”

“See isn’t precisely the correct word – we can sense it’s there. Me better than most, because the magic is predominantly mine.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling more than a little let down. I’d thought he was going to show me something impressive, but all I’d done was warm my fingers in a column of magic. “I could see the magic girders in the mines – they were all lit up.”

Frowning, he let go of my hand and cracked his knuckles. “Good idea.” Reaching out, he touched the magic and it burst into silver light.