When the Hollowed woman said the name of her valley, the Choir answered her, and Mourner felt the answer go through the walk like a second heartbeat under the flags.
It was dusk in the cistern, although no sky could be seen. The Watch had lit their lamps along the north wall and the prince had set his beside the Clerk’s board. Mourner knelt at the foot of the cistern’s stair, with her hands folded on her knees and her back to the damp stone, and she had been there for most of the day, listening. She had heard the prince speak to the commander about the Hasp goats. She had heard the Clerk count the strokes by touch. She had heard the commander say her own name, the one she had been given and had given back, and she had heard her say that she wanted another.
Now she said the valley’s name, very softly, in the broad soft vowels of the Hasp river-farms. Hasp.
The Choir sang it back.
It did not sing it as a single syllable. It sang it as the Hasp people had once sung their own names at the ford: a long rising note on the first breath, and a little fall on the second, and then a small catch in the throat that the valley’s children had been taught before they could write. Mourner heard the catch. It was the same catch that Mourner had heard in the Ostrane roll, in the Tallowmere…
