The night watch guard's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

The first pair came back at the fourth bell short one man. The guard counted them at the post door and saw the gap at once. The smallest cat set his lantern down and would not look up. His partner said the older guard had stopped on the moor path to listen. A thin song had drifted in from the water. He had told her to keep walking and stepped off the path. She had raised her lantern the way she was trained. He had not come back to the light. The guard pulled every cat off the wall and formed them at the gates. She lit the tall floor lantern and took it herself. "We walk to the lake," she said. "No pairs split. No one steps off the path." She heard the notes before they reached the moor, faint marks moving in the air like ink dropped in water. She made the cats stopper their ears with wax from the post kit. She did not stopper her own. She needed to hear where the song thickened. They found the broken lantern at the water's edge. Its frame lay cracked on the stones. The glass panels were shattered around it, the wick still warm. Beside it lay his whistle, the cord snapped clean, as if he had reached for it and been pulled before he could blow. The guard knelt and closed her hand around the whistle. The song rose off the water in a slow curl. A pale shape moved under the surface further out, watching. "He is not in the water," a low voice said from the reeds. The mermaid cat rested her arms on a flat stone. Her crown caught the moon. "I did not take this one. He heard me and ran the wrong way." She tilted her head. "I keep the ones who come to me. He did not come." The guard stood. She knew the singer by every account in the watch book. She did not thank her. She turned her cats away from the lake and lifted her lantern high. "Fan out along the shore," she said. "Lanterns up. Call his name every ten steps." They moved in a slow line through the grass. The song stayed behind them, quieter now, losing its grip. The guard listened past it for anything human. For a long stretch she heard only her own boots and the cats' small breathing through wax. Then a bell rang. Not the castle bells. A single dull clang from further up the rise, then another, steady as a signal. The guard turned toward the sound. A squat stone tower stood against the sky, its door hanging open, a faint light in the upper window. The bell rang again. She started to run. The cats ran with her, lanterns swinging, and the song at the lake fell away behind them for good.