The Mortar Throne

The Mortar Throne of Vael has stood nine generations, and in the last one, no one has been able to repair it. Cael Brannick is twenty-three, a stonemason's apprentice with lime burns and a chisel callus thick enough to stop a blade. Three years he has worked the crooked arches in the capital's undercroft, pressing trowel to joint under Lord Aldric Vane's cold watch and fellow apprentice Pip's barks. His younger sister Wren waits in the city above; Archivist Lyle keeps the ledgers of every stone ever set. The work is slow. The work is dying. Then the arches start to grow. Not settle. Not crack. Grow. Pale root-veins pulse through the seventh keystone, and in the mortar's grain Cael hears Maren Fell's voice, the master who died on the job two winters ago. Her stasis form is locked in the deep stone, her echo singing the Shard-Singers' harmonics into the joints. The Root-mind is waking, and it wants the throne finished. Captain Grath commands the guard and orders the restoration complete before the equinox. Keth Varnis, whose name is never spoken aloud in Vael, wants the throne sealed forever. Between them, Cael holds the trowel. Seren Dusk and Theron Ash, the Shard-Singers, can coax the stone to listen, but listening means letting the Root-mind in, and Maren's echo means the dead have a say in what the living build. A child in Vael waits for a king to sit the throne. The Root-mind waits for the final keystone so it can be free. Maren's stasis form, four hundred meters down, waits for someone to remember the name she was buried under. One season left. The trowel is in his hand. The mortar is wet. Every joint he sets is either a foundation or a coffin.