Chapter 3: The Minstrel's Mask
The capital stank of roses and rot.
Lyra tightened her stolen lute's straps, its weight a clumsy counterpoint to the bone flute hidden beneath her threadbare cloak. She'd renamed herself Marrow, a jest only Aria's ghost seemed to appreciate, hissing laughter in her skull whenever a street vendor called it out.
"Minstrel licenses!" A pinch-faced clerk barked at the city gates, flanked by soldiers scanning the crowd. "No beggar's ballads in the Spider King's streets!"
Lyra's palms slickened. She'd seen the notices nailed to charred husks of rebel camps: All musicians must register. Unlicensed performers will have their hands crushed. But the real threat stood to the clerk's left a hulking man in a wolf-pelt cloak, his gloved fingers drumming a dagger's hilt. Captain Rask, Veyl's shadow, whose face haunted the epics of slaughtered clans.
"Purpose?" The clerk eyed her lute's chipped edges.
"To serve the crown's glory," Lyra recited the phrase she'd heard a silk-clad troubadour use ahead of her. She bowed, her hood slipping enough to reveal the ash-brown dye she'd rubbed into her hair. "Through song."
Rask stepped forward. "Let's hear one."
The air curdled. Lyra's throat tightened as the bone flute stirred against her ribs, its hum low and warning. She plucked a D-major chord, the safest melody she knew The Lay of the Willow Bride, a wedding staple.
"Soft her sighs, bright her tears—"
Rask's dagger stilled.
A memory flashed: Aria teaching her this same song, their fingers tangled over a lyre. "It's not about love,"her sister had said. "It's about the knife behind the vows."
Lyra's voice faltered. The lute's strings warped, her A string snapping with a twang.
"Pathetic." Rask sneered. "But the king's in a charitable mood. Take the license."
He tossed her a copper token stamped with a spider, Veyl's sigil. Lyra clutched it, the metal searing her palm like a brand.
"Charitable," the flute mocked as she melted into the crowd. "He reeked of fear. You reek of her."
Lyra ignored it. The streets writhed with noise, blacksmiths hammering swords into shape, criers bellowing news of the upcoming Royal Court Competition. She paused at a poster:
SEEKING MUSICIANS OF UNMATCHED SKILL
Audition for King Veyl's personal ensemble
Survivors will be richly rewarded.
The last line dripped with menace.
"Sister, we've arrived," the flute sang.
A hand gripped her elbow.
Lyra spun, reaching for her dagger, but found herself staring at a young man in a healer's moss-green tunic. His hair, the deep brown of freshly turned earth, fell into eyes that held too many winters for his age. A scar split his left brow, a blade's kiss gone wrong.
"You dropped this." He offered her the minstrel token, his voice a raspy baritone. When she didn't move, he pressed it into her hand, his fingers calloused but gentle. "Careful, Marrow. Spiders bite those who fake their nests."
He vanished into the crowd before she could speak.
Lyra exhaled. The man,Kael, her mind supplied, though she couldn't say how she knew left no trace but a sprig of dried wolfsbane tucked into her lute's strings. A warning or a weapon?
She arrived at the Drunken Crow Inn as dusk bled into night. The common room heaved with musicians tuning oddities: a harp strung with human hair, a drum stretched with scaled hide. A red-haired woman plucked a dirge on a fiddle carved from antlers, the notes sharp enough to draw blood.
Lyra claimed a corner table. The flute writhed, eager.
Not yet, she told her. We wait.
But the Crow had other plans.
"New meat!" A hulking man with a double-flute slammed a tankard onto her table. "Play us a jig, little minstrel. Let's see if you're competition or kindling."
The room hooted. Lyra's pulse thundered. She'd need to feign mediocrity, but the flute hissed:
"Crush him."
She played the first harmless tune that came to mind, The Miller's Joy, a tavern staple. But the flute's influence slithered through the chords, twisting the major key into something hungry. The tankard cracked. Ale seeped across the table like a spreading wound.
The flutist paled. "Witchcraft."
Lyra stood, but the crowd blocked her exit.
"Let her pass."
Kael leaned against the stairwell, arms crossed, a healer's satchel dangling from his belt. His gaze cut to the flutist. "Unless you'd like your lungs studded with the holes you can't seem to fill with music?"
Grumbling, the crowd parted.
"Why help me?" Lyra whispered as Kael steered her upstairs.
He paused at a moth-eaten curtain serving as her door. "You've got her eyes. And his cruelty in your cadence."
"Whose?"
But he was already gone.
The audition began at dawn.
Lyra stood in the castle's shadow, her number 13 painted in tar on her wrist. The gates groaned open, revealing a courtyard where previous hopefuls' instruments lay shattered on the stones. A boy with a lyre wept over his snapped strings.
"Next!"
The throne room stole her breath. Veyl lounged on a dais, his crown a circlet of fused black diamonds, his tunic slit to reveal a collarbone jagged as a mountain range. But it was the walls that froze Lyra's blood, they pulsed, veined with glowing crimson threads, as though the castle itself were alive.
"Well?" Veyl swirled wine in a goblet. "Amuse me."
Lyra's fingers found the lute. She chose a victory march, something to flatter his ego…
No.
The flute's command left no room for protest. Her hands shifted, plucking a discordant minor scale. The throne room darkened. Wine sloshed from Veyl's cup as he leaned forward.
"Where did you learn that?"
Lyra couldn't stop. The melody deepened, notes slithering like serpents. The walls shuddered, threads brightening to blinding red. Veyl stood, his goblet clattering to the floor…
And began to laugh.
"Marvelous," he breathed. "A song that hurts. You'll play it again tonight. Privately."
The guards ushered her out. Lyra stumbled into sunlight, her stomach heaving. She'd passed.
"Told you," the flute crooned.
But as she turned toward the servants' quarters, a hand yanked her into an alcove. Kael pressed a blade to her throat, his eyes wild.
"Who taught you The Drowning Dirge?"
"I don't—"
"That song was Aria's. Only hers." His blade trembled. "And you stink of Veyl's magic. So tell me, songbird spy or suicide?"
Lyra opened her mouth, but shouts erupted down the hall. Kael cursed, shoving her away.
"Find me at the Weeping Oak tonight," he hissed. "Or I'll bury you with the king's other mistakes."
That evening, Lyra sat on a too-soft chaise in Veyl's private chambers, the flute's song coiling through incense-thick air. The king watched from his bed, shirtless, a fresh scar curving over his heart.
"Louder," he murmured, eyes closed. "It almost… numbs the ache."
Lyra played until her lips bled.
When she finished, Veyl tossed her a velvet pouch. Coins clinked—and something else. She peeked inside.
Aria's silver earring, still crusted with blood.
"A gift," Veyl said. "For tomorrow's final audition. I do hope you'll wear it."
Back in her cell-like room, Lyra emptied the pouch. The coins were counterfeit. The earring held a folded slip of parchment:
I know what you are. Meet me in the crypts at midnight.
But as Lyra reached for her cloak, the flute hissed a warning.
She turned.
Aria's ghost sat cross-legged on the bed, translucent fingers plucking a melody from the air the same lullaby Lyra had failed to play for Rask.
"Sweet sister," Aria said, her voice echoing from the flute itself. "Did you really think you could play the hero?"
Lyra reached for her, but her hand passed through smoke.
Aria smiled. "Let's see you lie to this crowd."
The door burst open. Captain Rask filled the doorway, his sword drawn, eyes black with rage.
"The king's dead," he snarled. "And your flute just sang it's confession."