Mourner had sung through the whole debate. She had sung through Korrin’s shaking voice and Pell’s floury arms and Gaunt’s fist pressed to his eyes, and she had sung through Harrow’s stone and Tallow’s range and Ysra’s door, and through Tamsin’s ewes and Tobin’s quiet, and she had not once stopped, because a Mound that stopped singing while the Dead were being argued over was a Mound that had left the Dead to be argued.
She had the names she had been given. She had the names she had since been given on the Mound and in the bone-room and at the long bench in the Hall. She had kept every one of them alive by singing, and she had learned, over three years, that a name kept alive was the only kind of name the Hold was ever going to be able to pay.
When the Chamber turned to her at last for her vote, Mourner did not stand.
Her Form sat in her chair at the ring’s far end, with the face turned toward the lamps. The face drifted, as it always did. It drifted a little toward Tallow, who was speaking, and then toward the Keystone, and then back toward the Regent at the table’s end, who had not yet been asked to say anything at all. Mourner did not glance at any of them directly. A Mound did not look at the living when she was singing. She looked at the names.
