The Last Song in His Armor

How it begins

The guard asked Aster to repair a hinge. His armor asked her for help.

She heard the second request when she touched the breastplate with her tuning fork.

A woman's voice, thin and distant.

Please let them hear it.

Aster set down the fork.

Captain Davin Moss stood in the workshop doorway, rain darkening the shoulders of his coat. He had brought the armor wrapped in ordinary sacking, which suggested either excellent discretion or a problem the palace preferred not to put on an invoice.

“You heard something,” he said.

“Yes.”

“What?”

She studied him.

Instrument makers learned to distinguish a sound from the story a customer wanted attached to it. A cracked bell could be old age, bad casting or a person determined to ring it after being told not to.

“What did you expect?”

Davin looked at the wrapped metal.

“A song.”

“Whose?”

“I don't know.”

The voice came again, weaker.

Aster moved the breastplate beneath the window. Inside its lining, gold threads followed a pattern too deliberate to be decoration.

She recognized the first interval.

Her grandfather had taught her the melody before the court removed it from the summer ceremonies. A peace song, he said. Officially, an unfinished composition with no known words.

Aster struck the fork.

The threads brightened.

Davin closed the workshop door, then stopped with his hand still on the latch.

“May I?”

She nodded.

The courtesy mattered more because she could see how badly he wanted to control the room.

From inside the armor, the woman's voice became clear.

Not singing.

Reading.

Aster heard the opening terms of a treaty the kingdom claimed its enemies had refused.

Davin sat down heavily.

At the bottom of the breastplate, beneath the royal stamp, appeared a familiar family mark.

His father's.

Aster lowered the fork.

Outside, the rain continued falling on the workshop sign. For once, neither of them hurried to explain away the sound.