The world was spinning chaos. She braced herself and her feet finally caught on a step midway up the stairs. She clung there a moment, fighting the wind.
‘SMYTHE!’ She screamed his name but her voice was swallowed in the noise of the storm.
The denizens had tried. The stairs were thick with practitioners. Kylath lay a few steps down, her cheek pressed to a step. Tarantur sat up, his eyes hazy, among the corpses of three minions. She could see her father cradling her mother’s limp form at the base of the steps.
Ree spotted black lace; she hurried to Usther’s side. The older girl was collapsed in a half-crawl, panting, her eyes burning with determination even as the wind leeched the vitality from her. No minions supported her.
She looked up at Ree’s touch and tried to say something, but her words were snatched by the wind. Ree thought she was saying, ‘I’ll kill him myself,’ but the effort of it seemed to have drained the last of the rage that sustained her. She closed her eyes. Ree hugged her close; her body was like ice. Downstairs, she could see her father trying to get her mother out of the room, but he could barely stand himself.
Everyone that had ever mattered to Ree was dying in this room, or just beyond it in the streets. Ree’s eyes burned at the unfairness of it all. She loved this town. Even when it hated her. Even when it tried to change her. This was her world. Nobody got to decide for her that she was worth more.
She turned her eyes to the dais, where the portal was growing, the green light spreading and spilling down the steps.
Then all the sound cut out. Her gaze swung to the black iron doors. The Lich glided in, faster than she had known it could move, its robes as gleaming and whole as they had been in the past. Larry followed it, still dead-eyed and awkward-limbed, but fleet now, animated by a greater power. They breezed past the denizens, past Ree where she cradled Usther against her chest, unfettered by the wind or by the orb of angry souls encasing the portal.
As the Lich crested the dais, magic gathered in its withered palms. It whipped a long tail of black energy at Smythe; Smythe twitched his hand and a spirit leapt from the portal to absorb the brunt of it. Larry stood at the edge of the portal, swaying, blackened teeth bared. A red light was in his eyes.
Smythe called more spirits from the portal, and more, a flood of screaming souls. They crashed into the Lich again and again in wave after wave of spirit fury. That he had the power to give them substance was boggling: a soul needed a body to have form. The Lich staggered back, then flung a dart of red light at Smythe’s chest. Smythe tried to block it, but too slowly; it broke across his chest. His eyes went wide.
Ree laid Usther aside and hurried back up the steps, screaming unheard into the wind. She barely knew why she was running, whether it was to stop Smythe or to save him, but she couldn’t watch him sway there, stunned, as if about to collapse. The Lich gathered red, steaming energy in its palms, but there were still too many steps between Ree and the dais.
Smythe’s knees buckled. He swayed there a moment, just on the edge of consciousness. How he had resisted a direct curse from the Lich, Ree didn’t know. The Lich drew its hands back, focusing its energy into another spear.
And Smythe flew forwards, arms outstretched, as all the wind and spirits suddenly tightened around the Lich in a spinning cocoon, tighter, tighter, suffocating its magic and then squeezing. Smythe lifted his hands and the spirits rejoined the whirling orb around the dais. The Lich hung frozen a moment, then crumbled into dust in the wind. A faint shade of red hovered in the air where it had been, then was sucked into Smythe’s mouth.
Ree kept climbing, though her lungs felt withered and dry. The Lich was the most powerful necromancer in living memory. And Smythe had killed it.
How could anyone possibly stop someone with that kind of power?
As she crested the dais and into the eerie silence, Smythe shook his head at her. ‘It’s almost done.’ His voice held a tinge of regret.
And then, almost in slow motion, Larry appeared behind him. The red light was gone from his eyes, but his teeth were bared in a feral snarl and his hands hooked into claws.
Ree barely had time to shout before Larry wrapped his arms around Smythe and tipped him, screaming, into the portal.
Ree’s fingertips found feathers as she screamed the song; in a blur of wings and magic she was across the dais. The portal was closing even as Smythe disappeared below the surface, and then wingtips became hands and her arms wrapped around Larry’s torso, and she was heaving with all her strength but it wasn’t enough.
The portal closed with a crack of thunder and a pulse of energy. Ree rolled across the floor, her hands empty. Tears burned in her eyes. She choked, her lungs suddenly too thin to draw breath. She rolled onto hands and knees, her eyes sweeping the dais. The portal was gone, and in its place, the golden tablet lay small and steaming. The wind died. The spirits vanished. But her eyes snagged on the limp form of Wandering Larry, blown to the other side of the dais.
Ree scrambled over to him, turning his shoulders. ‘Larry …?’
He groaned and rolled aside, revealing a very rumpled scholar with glasses askew beneath him.
Ree’s chest seized. The black veins were fading from his face and he was slowly returning to his normal colour. She reached for his face with trembling hands. He was utterly and completely still.
‘Smythe …’ His name was barely more than a breath.
His eyelids twitched.
Hope lodged in her heart, jagged and hot. Her thumb swept across his icy cheekbone. She started to say something more when her arm caught fire. She screamed and fell back, clutching her arm to her chest as shadows streamed from the Oath’s mark on her arm. It crawled under her skin, a pain more intimate than fire as her body seized and jerked, as if she could buck her way free of it. Dimly, she was aware of Smythe writhing beside her. The Oath had come to claim their lives in punishment for failing the ritual.
It was burning her away, she knew. Not her body, but her soul. The stuff that animated her, the life she would have had. And though she’d never wanted the ritual to work, never wanted to trade the lives of her neighbours for her own, she felt regret like ice beneath the consuming fire.
And then, like snapping thread, it ended. Ree gasped and lurched upright, rubbing her chest. The mark on her arm was healed, no longer a wound but a ropey white scar. And so let it be done. Her skin was greyer than she’d ever seen it. Across from her, Smythe stirred. His mark mirrored hers, his skin just as grey and strange, though fading even as she watched him.
Ree scrambled over to him on hands and knees, her entire body aching like she’d been pummelled with bricks. They reached for each other at the same time.
‘We’re not dead.’ Smythe’s eyes roved her face. His hands gripped hers tightly.
‘We’re not dead,’ Ree agreed, and she didn’t try to stop the smile that rose, warm and bubbling, to her lips. In spite of everything. In spite of Smythe. They were here and whole and everybody was alive.
Smythe reached a tentative hand to her face, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. The brush of his touch made her shiver, but not unpleasantly.
Beside them, Larry dragged himself to his feet, gargling furiously. The movement broke Ree’s daze. Worry and anger warred in her. ‘Smythe,’ she whispered, her eyes wide. His hand still hovered at the side of her face. ‘That was wrong. That was so wrong.’
Shouts from below. Ree got up and ran to the stairs; denizens picked themselves off the ground and climbed to the dais. She spun and met Smythe’s eyes. ‘You have to leave.’ The words came out forceful, rough with fear.
Smythe blinked, as if freed from a mind snare. He ran his tongue over cracked lips. ‘I can explain —’
Ree’s father charged up the stairs, Tarantur just behind him. Ree shoved Smythe to the other side of the dais. ‘Run!’
They looked at each other, and a thought hung suspended between them. Once, she would have run with him. Then Smythe disappeared over the other
side of the dais.
Larry howled and lurched after him, but Ree remained rooted to the spot. She re-pinned her hood to her hair and flicked away the melting frost still rimed on the front of her robes. She wiped the flaking paint from her forehead, drew a shuddering breath, and turned to face her neighbours. ‘He’s gone,’ she said as they charged toward her, curses in hand. Her voice was heavy with tiredness, a tiredness she felt deep in her bones. The ritual really had taken something from her. She felt simultaneously stretched thin and pressed under a weight, as if she would either snap or be crushed at any moment.
Her father’s eyes were burning. He opened his mouth to demand something of her, but she raised a hand to silence him. ‘He’s gone,’ she said again. She closed her eyes. ‘Just let it go. Can we all just let it go?’
EPILOGUE
A warm breeze ruffled Ree’s hair. She stood, wringing her hands, at the top of the observatory tower. She loved it out here, where the mountains touched the sky, but there was an absence about it now. ‘Are you ready?’ Her eyes nervously roved the gathered watchers, all blinking and squinting in the unfamiliar sunlight.
‘Why would we have to be ready?’ asked Ree’s father. He held his staff with both hands and stood straight-backed and open-eyed in defiance of the sunlight. Every now and then his eyes twitched.
‘Festering rats, this sunlight is disgusting.’ Usther clutched her head with both hands. ‘Urghh, I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Ree’s mother. She was wearing robes that had once been white and were now more of a cream, a special outfit in honour of the occasion. ‘I don’t regret the life Morrin has given me, but I do miss the sun at times.’
Andomerys heaved a long, frustrated sigh. ‘Are you going to do the thing or not?’
‘We’re ready,’ said Emberlon. He nodded in a way that was almost a bow.
There was definitely an absence. A hole in the conversation for an excitable word of encouragement, for something that would make everyone groan. Ree wondered when she would get used to it.
She lifted the crow skin from her pouch, letting it unfold across her palms. As she gathered her power about her, her eyes met each of her friends and family in turn. It had never been easy with any of them — would never be easy — but each of them had been a part of her journey. Become part of who she was.
The skin fluttered in her hands, filling with magic. She closed her eyes as she drew herself into a calm pool of magic and poured into the skin.
She opened her eyes and beat her wings. Her watchers were stunned — all but Usther, who put her hands to her mouth and whooped. Ree cawed a laugh and climbed up into the sky, each beat of her wings lifting her up, up. As she spread her feathers, she caught an updraft of air and spiralled higher, her gaze sweeping the ground below as her family pointed and cheered. She climbed and swooped and climbed again, then circled down and flew between the watchers, tweaking Usther’s hair with her beak as she went.
She felt … powerful. Like she’d always wanted to feel. She’d finally done what she’d always said she would, what everyone had told her was impossible. She was a true mage, and on a path she had chosen for herself. But more than that, she felt … free.
Free, but not whole.
The failed Oath had taken much from her. Smythe was gone, and so, if the council was to be believed, was half her soul. Half a soul for half a curse. Andomerys had not yet found a way to put it back.
She cawed again and climbed high with three sweeps of her wings, only to plunge back down through the tower. She cupped her wings and took off along the roof of the passage, flying over the town with its shiny new cobbles and hive of minions working to rebuild, flying past the secret library where Usther had become a teacher.
She winged over the reaching hands of hungry undead and sailed past a skeleton sentinel that followed her progress with the creak of turning bones. She circled an embalming room with shattered jars and an overturned table, and with a strong beat soared down the long lonely tunnels where the Lich had once held sway.
She swooped low through the door into the library where she’d found her magic, only to land heavily atop a shelf, panting.
There was a boy in the crypt.
‘No, not — the other one, man, the other one! Don’t tell me he didn’t teach you to read, old chap, not after all the magic he poured into you.’ Smythe pulled a book from Larry’s hands and nudged him back across the room. The smile faded from his face as his eyes met hers.
‘Is it you?’ His voice was hoarse. He looked rooted to the spot, like he was afraid he would startle her. His eyes were sorrowful with hope. ‘Are you her?’
Ree spread her wings. She stepped from the shelf in a swirl of robes and feathers. ‘Hello, Smythe.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has been a long time in the making, in part because it is a Russian doll stuffed with all the other books I wrote learning to write.
I would not have made it this far without the encouragement, support, and feedback of so many people. Writing is hard, but friends make it easier.
First to Joh, my partner and companion, who stays up late to talk through thorny plot problems, who loves my characters as much as I do, and who challenged me to write a story about necromancers when I was certain I had no more story concepts left in me. Thank you.
I owe a debt to Kaitlin, whose keen eyes miss nothing. Your critiques always struck to the bone, and you somehow understood exactly what I wanted this novel to be. Every writer needs someone like Kaitlin reading their books.
Hannah Jones, you were the first cheerleader of this book back in its ungainly foal state. When I might have given up on this story, your words kept me going. There would never have been a BOOKS & BONE without your encouragement in the early days of TOMBTOWN.
Thank you to my beta readers Caroline Barnard-Smith and Angelica Fyfe, two savvy commenters who knew exactly when to praise and when to pick. You and Kaitlin all put up with my inconsistency and craziness as I tried to get a final draft together, and I’m so glad you did.
Thanks also to my family, who have encouraged me in the mad endeavour of novel writing for so many years, who endured a complete cessation of contact every November as I willingly drowned myself in NaNoWriMo, and who I’m delighted can finally see my name in print.
Thank you to my Kickstarter supporters, who made publishing a reality and not just a dream.
And thank you, reader. I can hardly believe that you exist, and I am so, so grateful that you picked up my book, and that you made it here to the end.
SPECIAL THANKS
I could not have afforded to publish BOOKS & BONE without the support of these fine people, as well as many others. You heard my plea and you answered with messages of encouragement and pledges to fund.
So, without further ado and in no particular order, thank you to:
Eloísa Valdes, Jake, Doug, Twang Darkly, Lily ✾ V, Holly J, Sam R, Emma Maree Urquhart, J Tordiff, Scott V A Hunter, Rowan Sherwin, Dagmar Baumann, Jamie Bradway, Jasmine Lea Scanlon, Jack Corus, and Jonathon Miller.
Thanks also to The Selkie Delegation, Alex, Queen of Spoons, Paul Woolcock, Alyssa Alford, Caleb Karth, Jhaydun Dinan, Brian D Lambert, Heather Landon, Chimerae, D Moonfire, Corvus Robotica, and Nentuaby.
Thanks to Shelly Leonard, Robin Hill, @tayatrancends, Andrew Wooldridge, June Taylor, Krysta Banco, Michelle Yeargin, Unconventional Emma, Dzmitry Kushnarou, Paco Hope, and Sambience.
Thanks also to Algot Runeman, Kaitlyn Quach, Rob & Jenny Haines, Jade L Johnson, Alex Claman, Tessara Ahlin, Lyn Thorne-Alder, Mr Lee Phelan, Paige Kimble, Robin Sturgeon Abess, Sebastian Müller, and Mira Strengell.
And thanks to Justin Myers, Luke Challen, Sario, Victoria Johnsen, Kynerae, Elgen, Kat Armstrong, Toby Rodgers, Katre, Allison L, Hilary Hennell, Rev Ali Boulton, Neil Boulton, and Rebecca Fyfe & Robert Fyfe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victoria Corva writes things and reads things and reads thi
ngs out loud, and sometimes she gets paid for that, which is nice because it means she can feed her cat.
She lives in Wiltshire with her partner and her furry familiar and as many books as she could fit in her small flat.
She is anxious and autistic and doing just fine.
To find out more about her and read more of her work, visit https://victoriacorva.xyz
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