The Canticle of Whispers by David Whitley Page A

where you were. So I chased her down. It took me a long time, but I found her in the end.” He sat down, with a new confidence. “Her name is Miss Verity, and she’s the Director’s secretary.”
    Mark gasped. He had met Verity; she had been the woman who had unlocked his cell door and led him out of Agora. But more than that, Verity was Lily’s aunt, the one who had brought her to Agora in the first place.
    â€œIf you can contact her—” Mark began, but Pete frowned.
    â€œI promised I’d leave her alone, once you were back in Agora,” he said, doubtfully. Mark folded his arms.
    â€œI didn’t promise her anything,” Mark said, with steely determination. “I’ll tell you what to write. She’s got a lot of explaining to do…”

 
    C HAPTER S EVEN
    Resonances
    I T HAD BEEN such a relief to sleep in a bed again.
    It was hardly a typical bed—a niche carved out of the stone wall and stuffed with cushions. But after days of sleeping on a rock floor, it was heavenly. And Lily was so tired that she did sleep, despite the aches and pains, and despite the fact that it was never quite dark in the Conductor’s rooms.
    As she awoke, slowly and heavily, this was the main thing that occupied her sluggish thoughts—the people of Naru lived in constant half-light. Glowing lumps of crystal, like smaller versions of the Hub, were set in every wall, the light dancing in their smoky depths and rippling over their faces like watery reflections.
    She had wanted to keep on sleeping. She had been dreaming that she was back in Agora, with her friends. And Mark had been embracing his father, and Ben and Theo were dancing, and Laud had smiled and taken her by the hand. She would never have thought that she would long for Agora’s crowded streets and corrupt, grasping people. But at least there, she understood how people behaved—what drove them, and made their lives complete.
    Down here, it was like staying in a madhouse.
    But the Choir had begun to sing again, a harsher melody this time, with loops and whirls, and sudden piercing top notes. She couldn’t sleep through that. So instead, she had risen, and put on her freshly washed dress and apron. She was glad that she had talked the Conductor out of giving her Naruvian robes to wear, although she was beginning to see why they might dress in this way—in a world of stone and dim light, only the brightest colors stood out at all.
    Thoughtfully, she looked over to where she had dumped her pack, and then knelt down to open it. It was nearly empty—her food had been eaten long ago, and the hunting knife that she had taken from Wulfric, her Gisethi guide, was still sheathed and untouched. But among the few strips of cloth that would have served as bandages, she found what she was looking for—the letter from her father, rolled and tightly bound with ribbon, a tiny pair of brass scales, and a small, irregular crystal made of the same smoky material as the resonant crystals that dotted the walls. She stared at this last object for a moment.
    â€œMaybe…” she murmured to herself. As an experiment, she held it close to her mouth and began to quietly attempt a tune. She hadn’t sung anything since her days as a tiny girl in the orphanage, and her voice was still croaky from lack of sleep, but after a moment or two, she managed a passable few notes. But no hidden voices emerged—this crystal was definitely Naruvian, but it held no resonance.
    â€œWell, that would have been far too easy,” she said to herself, slipping the crystal and letter into her apron pocket as she got up. She paused before putting the scales away, feeling the shapes of the two symbols carved onto the pans of the scales. One, a lily flower growing out of an open book, was a symbol she knew very well. It was also carved onto the brass ring that she wore on her finger—her signet ring, her personal sign. The