He blinked, then nodded slowly. Fair enough. Money was often the most persuasive argument available.

The attendant stepped forward. "Your Excellency, the temple can provide for its own parishioners."

I looked at him. "Then you should have done so before a six year old began humming herself awake from nightmares."

The words didn’t rise. They didn’t need to. The room went silent, and his face flushed. Good. Let him feel something. It would be a pleasant change from whatever hymn he’d been taught to repeat.

"Arthur," I said, "clear the sanctuary."

The evacuation took longer than I wanted, not because people resisted, most were too confused and frightened to argue, but because of the children. Five of them had been in the chapel, all from different families. Two had begun humming when the bell rang. One boy stared at the tower with glassy eyes and refused to release his mother’s sleeve. Another child began crying only after the bell stopped, as though the quiet had finally given her enough room to be afraid.

I had the physician’s assistant check every one of them. No one was taken away alone, and no one was forced to speak. The mothers received food vouchers, temporary lodging instructions, and a Sonomi escort to the Mallow Street kitchen.

It wasn’t charity. It was containment. A very expensive form of containment, but containment all the same.

I didn’t notice Abi watching me from the altar until the final family had left.

"You have a strange definition of containment," he said.

"They were exposed to the sound."

"Yes."

"They need somewhere safe."

"Yes."

"They can’t go back to their homes if the sound can follow the ward lines."

"Yes."

"So they’re being contained."

Abi’s smile came faint. "Of course."

I disliked that smile. It felt too knowing.

The chapel doors closed behind the last civilian, Arthur gave the signal, and the locks turned. The remaining Sonomi guards took their positions, and only then did I let myself look properly at the sanctuary. The pleasant exterior had grown far less convincing without people inside it. The stained glass windows showed saints feeding children, blessing travelers, protecting soldiers, lifting the poor toward light, all of it beautiful the way old lies often were. The altar stood at the front beneath a carved statue of Saint Orison, hands raised in welcome, and at its feet sat three brass bowls.

They looked ordinary. They weren’t.

Abi walked toward them slowly without touching anything.

"Do you feel that?" I asked.

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"A resonance lattice."

"That sounds irritating."

"It is."

"Explain in words that don’t make me regret having an education."

His mouth twitched. "The bowls, the bell tower, the foundation stones, and the old aqueduct are all connected. They create a path for sound to move through the district."

"To carry the hymn."

"Yes."

"And the children?"

"The children aren’t the source. They’re receivers."

My gaze hardened. "Can the lattice be dismantled?"

"Eventually."

"Can it be dismantled now?"

He looked toward the floor beneath the altar. "No. Not without finding where the threads end."

Arthur approached from the side corridor. "Your Excellency. We found the first priest."

"Alive?"

"Yes."

"Voluntarily?"

He paused. "He says he’s only responsible for evening service."

"Does he look like someone who’s only responsible for evening service?"

"No."

"Then bring him here."

The priest arrived between two knights, older than the attendant, perhaps fifty, his robes dark blue rather than white, a silver pendant resting at his throat. He had the composed expression of someone who’d spent decades speaking to grieving people and convincing them the world’s cruelty had purpose. I disliked him immediately.

"Your Excellency," he said with a bow.

"Father?"

"Father Edric."

"Father Edric, why is there a resonance lattice beneath your chapel?"

His gaze flickered toward the brass bowls. "I don’t know what you mean."

"How unfortunate."

"Saint Orison’s is an old structure. It contains many relics and ceremonial objects from before my appointment."

"Then you’ll have no objection to us removing them."

His expression tightened. "There are proper channels for relic review."

I held up the writ. "The proper channel is in my hand."

"His Majesty did not sign that."

"No," I said. "His Highness and Her Majesty did."

That shook him, only slightly, but it did. Interesting. Perhaps the Emperor wasn’t aware of everything, or perhaps the people beneath him had stopped needing his approval years ago.

"Remove the bowls," I ordered.

Father Edric stepped forward. The guards moved before he reached the altar, and he stopped.

"Your Excellency, I strongly advise against that."

"Why?"

"The blessing will be disrupted."

"There’s no blessing happening here."

His expression changed, not much, a small tightening around the mouth, a flicker of irritation beneath the priestly calm.

"Some things aren’t meant for those outside the faith to understand," he said.

I looked at him for a few breaths and said nothing. Righteous people had always loved saying this. Some things weren’t meant for others to understand. Some people had no right to question. Some sacrifices were necessary. Some suffering became acceptable once it was given a holy enough name. I’d heard variations of that sentence in too many forms, in too many places, and it was almost funny how little it ever changed.

"No," I said at last. "Some things are simply too ugly to explain plainly."

The priest stared at me. Then the bell rang again, and this time it didn’t come from the tower.

It came from beneath the floor. The three brass bowls on the altar began to vibrate, and a thin sound filled the sanctuary, soft enough to be mistaken for wind through a cracked window, except there was no wind, and the sound turned into a voice.

"Father."

My body moved before I thought. My hand went to my sword. The voice was Spiro’s, perfect, too perfect, the same hesitant tone he used when he was trying to ask for something without sounding like he needed it.

"Father," the voice came again from beneath the altar. "It hurts."

For one dangerous instant, every instinct in me pulled toward the floor, toward the sound, toward the possibility that my son was trapped below in a chapel I’d walked into without checking every hidden passage first.

Then I saw Arthur. His hand had moved toward the altar too, not his sword, the altar itself, and I understood he’d heard a child as well. Not Spiro. His own, a younger sister perhaps, a daughter, someone dead or lost.

The priest smiled. Barely. But he did, and that was enough.

"Do not move," I said.

Arthur froze. Abi’s eyes flashed violet, and the sound stopped so abruptly it left the room ringing with its absence.

I looked at the priest. "You’ve been using borrowed voices."

His expression returned to calm. "I don’t know what you mean."

"Then you’re either a liar or an idiot."

His gaze sharpened. "Your Excellency."

"I’ve been called worse."

Abi stepped beside the altar, and the air around the brass bowls bent slightly. The small vibrations stopped. One bowl cracked down the middle with a sharp sound, and Father Edric flinched.

"There," Abi said. "The surface anchor is broken."

The floor beneath the altar shuddered. A line appeared in the stone, then another. Dust spilled across the steps. Captain Arthur drew his sword, and the guards moved into formation. Father Edric smiled, not because he was pleased, but because something had finally gone according to plan.

The altar split down the middle. A narrow stone stairway opened beneath it, cold air rising up from below, carrying the smell of damp earth, old incense, and something metallic enough to bring blood to mind. At the bottom of the stairs, a red light flickered once, then twice.

The fourth bell hadn’t rung, but somewhere beneath the chapel, someone had begun to sing. Not a child. Not yet. A man’s voice, low, controlled, familiar in a way that made my skin crawl.

"The second hymn does not begin with the choir," Father Edric said.

Arthur stepped closer to him. "What does it begin with?"

The priest’s smile widened. "With the person who believes he can correct it."

I stared at him for a moment, then drew my sword. Not because I intended to kill him, that would have been too easy, but because I wanted him to understand he’d made the most irritating mistake of his life. He’d mistaken my arrival for part of his ritual.

How presumptuous.

"Arthur," I said.

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"Take Father Edric outside. Keep him alive."

His expression stayed very calm. "Yes, Your Excellency."

"Abi."

"Yes, brother?"

"Break every sound thread leading toward the city. Gently."

He raised a brow. "Gently?"

"There are people tied to them."

His expression softened for a moment before he nodded. "Understood."

I stepped toward the open stairway. Cold air brushed my face, and the singing below stopped. Then a different voice spoke from the dark, not Spiro, not anyone I knew, a young boy’s voice.

"Grand Duke," it said. "The others are waiting."

My grip tightened around my sword. Behind me, Arthur cursed softly, and Abi went still. The red light below flickered again, and from somewhere much deeper beneath Saint Orison’s, a bell began to ring.