Ysabet drew the Stone Shepherd’s flute from her coat with her left hand and wiped a smudge of cave clay off its side. It was a plain, heavy little pipe carved from shed horn-stone, drilled with only three finger holes that did not make music a human ear could carry across a room.
She set it on a dry ledge at the level of Pip’s mouth plates. “Remember what the shepherd told us on the hill. It won’t budge solid wall, and it won’t put the guards to sleep. Only loose stone that’s tired of being propped the wrong way.”
Pip braced four feet on the wet grit and lifted its two front feet to steady the pipe against the healed membrane ridge inside its sideways jaw.
When Pip blew, no clear whistle came out to echo in the Hollow Choir. Instead there was only a soft, dry rush of air—three slow breaths spaced like the resting pulse of a herd animal lying down at dusk—and a faint, low vibration that Ysabet felt in the soles of her boots rather than her ears.
At the top of the blocked sluice, a flat grey limestone slab that had been balanced edge-on against the cracked pillar stopped buzzing.
