The Hanging Choir

The elder Vyr court of Aelvyrenn — the household who directed the great engine that cracked their own god, and who now tend the Riven King, hold the city's silence, and damn the human salvage-trade below as a second wounding of a debt only they understand. Proud, grieving, guilt-paralyzed, and certain they are the world's only true mourners.

The Choir is the Still Court: what is left of the Vyr who drew down Vallen's power to build Aelvyrenn's lift and cracked him doing it — a household of un-aged singers who keep the city mid-breath and keep the Riven King, who directed the great engine himself, from failing entirely. Their doctrine is guilt turned into rite. They will not say what the engine was for. They will not expose it either — confessing what the Vyr did to the humans' god is a shame the Court has spent four centuries swallowing rather than speaking, and their silence is the only thing keeping the plan the Menders now pursue from being named for what it is. What they WILL say, loudly, is that to dig Old Work out of the Vale and sell it down the coast (the Deepening) is to sell off a dying body piece by piece for silver — a second wound laid on the first. They are not wrong about the wound, and they will never say why they truly care, because the why is the confession they fled. To the humans of Highbridge they are insufferable sky-zealots who would let the living starve to keep a graveyard quiet; to themselves they are the last ones keeping faith with a debt no human even knows is owed. Both true.