Page 74 of Leviathan's Song
I was mostly comfortable in our routine, except for the occasions Côvon or Doldir would come over to talk to me, but Levi didn’t usually tolerate them nearby for very long. They set my teeth on edge, anyway. Côvon filed away the contract I returned to him, without even a brief glance at it, and went back to yelling instructions to the workers. Doldir mostly just slunk around, looking shifty, but one time he’d snuck off with my construct drawings until I’d tracked him down and demanded them back. I didn’t mind his curiosity, but I wasn’t going to allow him to derail the project.
The work was exhausting, keeping track of every gem, plan change, and project update, not to mention the day in and day out energy spent modifying gems into amulets that would magically link the pieces of the construct together, making it a functioning golem. I hadn’t even seen the heartstone yet. Khonlos said the Alliance was keeping it guarded and hidden until it was ready to be installed.
Levi helped where he could. He stepped in occasionally to mediate disputes between sprites and the rest of the workers when emotions ran hot or lent a hand puzzling tricky bones together when the lorelei were growing weary at the end of the day. I’d mentioned bringing in some orcs or trolls to help relieve some of the workload, and Côvon had shut me down immediately. No races without representation in the Alliance were allowed on the project.
Levi had kept busy with his own work, too—mostly writing music for a performance troupe based in Dry Gulch and others that purchased his original works—but I also knew he was paying close attention to the workers around us.
We worked most days at the warehouse, though he left occasionally to run errands or meet with his own clients or stop by my shop to help Sidney with something or other, and at night we’d taken up temporary residence together in a small apartment nearby. We spent our meager free time visiting nearby concerts or exploring, and he was teaching me to cook seafood. One night, after Levi had been gone longer than usual, I came back to the apartment to find he’d created a tiny reading nook for me with cozy blankets, pillows, and tea from home. Stolen moments learning about each other was our normal.
We even ventured home one weekend and tried to intermingle our friends by inviting Sidney to the guys’ apartment to meet Jordan and have a movie night. It ended up being acompletedisaster. Levi startled Sidney into shifting, and she attacked him, and then Jordanran away. Apparently, he’d known Sidney from childhood. It had been over a week, and hestillhadn’t come home. She was still too grumpy to talk to me about it.
One evening, as Levi put the finishing touches on an elvish stew he’d found a recipe for somewhere, I sat at the small kitchen table, toying with a heartstone shard, pressing my energy into it this way and that. It was the one Arvad had slipped me the night I delivered the stone guardians.
“Levi, will you sing something for me?” I asked absently. I heard the stirring stop and glanced up to find him staring at me quizzically over his shoulder.
“Sing?”
“Yes, please. I have an idea that’s been nagging me for weeks. Do you remember how I had to ask you to pause for a moment when I was rebuilding the amulets I’d lost in the pond? Your enchantments were interfering with the stones when I powered them up.”
His eyebrows knit together in confusion, and he reached to turn off the heat for the stove. “You want to make an amulet with a lure in it?”
I shook my head. “The opposite, actually. Your enchantment doesn’t always pull; sometimes it pushes. I’ve been thinking a lot about our older golem, Domm, and how the old magic was woven into its heartstone. It didn’t just power the construct; it also contacted the dryads and possibly that stag... What if I could use your enchantments as a type of warning, or deterrent, in the Leviathan construct? Then it wouldn’t be strictly melee, simply destroying whatever intruders it came across. I could try to make it send out a wave of repulsive magic first, andthenit would attack if the intruder didn’t heed the warning.”
Levi gave me a small grin as he set two bowls of stew on the table and sat. “Only you would have compassion for the kelpies, Empress.”
“It’s notonlykelpies that could wander into the golem’s exclusion zone,” I muttered with a frown, lost in the mental minutiae of how I could potentially get this idea up and running. I’d already spent weeks toying with the idea, but I hadn’t been able to pin down some of the smaller details.
His grin spread farther at my tone. “I think it’s a great idea. There are some old battle hymns that used to be sung by the mer as war songs with a similar purpose. I think they could suit this project quite well.”
It took a few beats of silence before I realized I was staring at him with a silly grin and made myself refocus. We spent some time playing with the heartstone shard, and after several attempts I was able to embed Levi’s enchantment into it. It still felt like something was missing, and I wondered for the hundredth time if it was fae magic. Domm’s extra magic had felt distinctly fae when I’d tried to update his heartstone.
The short distance his enchantment could travel from the shard was dissatisfying, but maybe that was simply because of the tiny size of the stone? There were a lot of variables here, and this wasn’t something I’d done before, or knew of other golemancers creating in recent times. But it did remind me that one of the amulets Levi originally sold me was an enchantment amplifier, so I sent a spectral message to Sidney to ask if it was still at the shop. I couldn’t imagine it would have sold already.
Instead of simply replying like a normal person, she just showed up at the shipyard without any warning the next day, landing clumsily on my desk in an awkward jumble of black and white feathers. She startled Levi, who swore under his breath. I glanced around to see if anyone else had seen her enter, but no one paid any attention to my corner of the warehouse.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered as she shook out her feathers and folded her wings back.
She made a gagging motion and then dropped a thumb-sized amulet on my desk with her beak. “Delivery.” Her voice was higher pitched in this form and kind of tinny sounding.
“Gross,” Levi muttered quietly.
“Shut up, it’s a built-in pocket,” she replied, miffed. “Figured I’d just bring it to you. Plus, I’msupernosy,” she told me—like I didn’t already know—eyeing the construct as she spoke. “Huh. Mecha-Leviathan. I wouldn’t have seen that coming. You think they’d let me ride it?” Just then, one of the lorelei rounded the beast’s skull, stepping into view. “Gotta go, I miss your face!” she called, launching herself off my desk and out a nearby window, up near the rafters.
I blew her a kiss as she left and earned myself an odd look from Khonlos as he approached my desk. At least it was only him. I knew the mer wanted much tighter security around the project. I held up the stone and explained its purpose to him—it boosted the effect of ‘spoken’ enchantments, a very niche amulet—and the best location for the sprites to embed it. He took the stone and left without any questions. I guess he didn’t get paid enough to care about stray birds.
When he was gone, I turned to look at Levi, knowing how he felt about the items his mother had left him. But I didn’t even need to voice my question. His expression was soft as his gaze traced my features before focusing beyond me to the skeleton. “I think it’s a perfect use for it,” he said. His magic was warm sand and gentle waves, and I adored him.
* * *
The damp chillof the predawn air did more to help wake me up than the cup of coffee I clutched for warmth. Côvon had informed us last night that the heartstone was being delivered tomorrow, and there were still a billion things left to finish, so as much as I would have preferred to lounge in bed with Levi, another early morning was necessary. He groggily followed me to the warehouse, pausing to chat momentarily with one of the few lorelei already arriving for the day.
I took a small detour, bypassing the entrance to round the side of the building with the open bay doors where the spine of the great leviathan snaked out onto the dry-dock. Even these bones, much smaller vertebrae compared to the enormous skull housed within the building, dwarfed me by a foot or more. I tried to imagine what the animal had looked like in real life, coiled below in the murky depths, watching, waiting, feeling for prey in the water with the special sensory organs lining its skin. I shivered.
Try as we might to repurpose its bones, this construct would be a pale comparison to the savagery and predation of a real animal hunting its next meal. It would have its own special version of a sensory organ, at least. The heartstone would detect and locate the magic of other creatures, just like the sentries did on my parent’s property.
I shook myself from my distraction and padded quietly alongside the spinal column to the open bay doors, vaguely inspecting each inlaid amulet and wrapped wire as I went. It was a neurotic habit mostly, because we’d been over each amulet and connection repeatedly at this point, until I came to an empty socket in a connection piece and stopped. I blinked, staring dumbly at the empty metal bracket where the connecting amulet should have been resting, and the skin prickled on the back of my neck.
Suspicion pulled my gaze to the enchantment amplifier that had belonged to Levi’s mother, only to find that it too was gone. I bristled, outraged at the lack of protection Côvon had provided this project, and the heinous greed required tostealfrom it. I’d barely had time to process those emotions when I flinched, my heart suddenly pounding at the sound of wood creaking nearby and the soft whump of a lid closing. Doldir scurried around the front of the leviathan’s skull with his arms full of iolite gems, his eyes widening when he saw me, clearly not expecting anyone to be at the worksite yet.
