House of Blood and Bone

by Kimberley J. Ward

  Nessa raised her eyebrows. “Work? Plans?”

  “Yeah,” Hunter became oddly animated, sitting bolt upright, excitement pouring off him in waves. “Just before you fainted and caused a wee bit of commotion—”

  Cheeks reddening, Nessa muttered, “Haven’t I told you to stop mentioning that already?”

  “…I was engaged in conversation with a delightful pair of lads.”

  “The identical twins? I remember.”

  Hunter nodded. “Bo and Luca. Don’t ask me which is which. I doubt I’ll ever figure it out. Anyway, they work in the warehouses down by the docks and are in need of a pair of extra hands. Being the kind and ever-helpful chap I am, I kindly offered mine and Orm’s services for the day.”

  “I’m sure Orm is over the moon that you did so.”

  “I haven’t done an honest day’s work since…” Orm paused, having to give it some thought. “…Well, since ever.”

  “Then it’s about time you did, my old friend,” Hunter laughed. “However, I have the feeling that the work isn't all that honest, considering the type of people who are running the operation.”

  “So, what are you doing?” Nessa asked hesitantly, fearful that Hunter had also volunteered her services too.

  “Dunno yet. The fun is in the mystery.”

  “Probably something boring and tedious,” Orm grumbled. “And it’s most likely hard work.”

  Nessa gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Orm. When you’re finished for the day, you can tell me all about external magic and, ah…um…”

  “Internal magic,” Orm helpfully supplied.

  “Yeah. You can tell me all about internal and external magic. Isn’t that something to look forward to?”

  “I s’pose. But I’m going to be drunk.”

  “I expect nothing else.”

  “Very, very drunk,” Orm warned.

  “Of course.”

  “But, in the meantime,” Orm said, rising from the bed, making the wooden frame sigh with relief as his weight left it, “you can practice what I’ve just taught you. By the time Hunter and I return, I expect it to be second nature, doable in a blink of an eye.”

  “Wait, what?” Nessa looked to him and Hunter. “You’re going now?”

  They gave twin nods.

  “And you expect me to stay here all day and wait until you come back?”

  “Pretty much,” Orm said.

  Nessa looked out the window, measuring the time by the angle of the sun. “But it’s only early in the morning. You could be gone for hours.”

  “Which gives you plenty of time to practice.”

  Gazing at Hunter beseechingly, Nessa said, “That isn’t fair. This isn’t fair.”

  “It’s only for today,” Hunter murmured, wincing a little at her growing displeasure. “Once we know that everything’s safe, you’ll be able to tag along with further excursions. Besides, it’s not like you have to stay in your room all day. You can always join Jerome downstairs for a meal and share a drink or two. Maybe have a chitchat, find out some more useful titbits. From the sounds of things, you were getting somewhere with him at the den.”

  Nessa flung the brooch away. It landed on the sideboard with a clatter. Orm and Hunter flinched and stared at her with wide eyes.

  “Ah, yes,” she said through clenched teeth, “that delightful little chitchat with our landlord who has a darker side to him. You know, that was the first time since arriving in this damn city that I’ve heard anything remotely related to Arncraft. Don’t you find that strange?”

  “Well…” Hunter began.

  “I thought one of the main reasons for coming here was to learn why the king attacked that town,” Nessa snapped, her repressed irritation and anger bubbling and boiling to the surface. “And yet, all I’ve seen you two do is try and infiltrate an underground criminal network. Why, I keep asking myself, when there are so many more useful things we could be doing? For three weeks all you’ve had me do is memorise facts about the Twelve Houses. I know their history. I know who their current Riders are. I know which coats of arms belong to which House. I’ve learnt everything I can about their dragons: what colour they are, how old they are, their names and everything else there is to know. I know enough about them!”

  “That’s important information,” Hunter insisted.

  “But I need to know other things too,” Nessa argued. “I need to be doing more than just going over the same stuff again and again. I should be learning everything there is to learn about the Old Bloods, about magic. You should have started teaching me that already,” she told Orm. “Yet every time I try to bring it up, you just brush me off.”

  Orm looked guilty even as he sputtered a weak, “I do not.”

  “You do too. Just now, instead of explaining about internal and external magic, you declare that you’re abandoning me for an unspecified period of time, running off on some fool’s errand to help a bunch of people you’ve just met. You should be helping me.” Nessa sniffled, fighting against the lump at the back of her throat. “You should be helping me. But all you’re doing is keeping me in the dark, keeping things from me. I’ve tried to be patient through all of this,” she waved a hand, indicating to her room and all that it represented to her.

  “I’ve silently gone along with you as you’ve tried to further your agenda: gambling dens, pubs, parties. I’ve listened to the endless drunken rambling of men, trying to glean something of use, and I’m sick to death of it all. I’m sick to death of either being left alone here, or having to be escorted by one of you wherever I go, all because of some perceived threat. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty damn sure that neither the king nor any of his cronies are running around the Stickworks looking for me.” Nessa buried her head in her hands and allowed her loose hair to fall around her shoulders in a dark curtain. The lump at the back of her throat turned into sobs.

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Hunter or Orm cleared their throat, Nessa didn’t know who, and there was a quick, whispered conversation. The bed creaked as someone crawled across it, and Nessa held herself still, refusing to react as an arm wrapped around her shoulders.

  “Alright,” Hunter said softly, resting his cheek on the top of her head, “something else is going on here. What is it?”

  “I just gave you a list of reasons,” Nessa grumbled. “Do I have to repeat them?”

  “No, but there’s something else that was excluded from that extensive list.”

  Nessa shrugged. Her anger, as quickly as it had come, vanished, leaving her feeling deflated and forlorn. “It’s nothing.”

  “Come on, Nessie. Tell us. Otherwise, we won’t be able to sort the problem out.”

  “No.” She sniffled. “I already feel stupid enough.”

  “Don’t say that,” Hunter murmured, nudging her shoulder with his. “We don’t think you’re stupid. A bit mental, yeah. As scary as the Nine Devils when you’re angry, also, yeah. But certainly not stupid.”

  Nessa shifted and peered through her fingers, trying to gauge how sincere Hunter was. His amber eyes were earnest, filled with worry, and his brow was furrowed in consternation. She looked over at Orm, finding him standing by the window, staring down at the street several floors below, his attention far away, his eyes filled with a million thoughts, his arms crossed, his thumbs tapping nervously against his linen-clad biceps.

  “We’re your friends,” Hunter said, sensing Nessa’s hesitation. “We’re on your side no matter what. You can tell us anything.”

  “I can’t help but feel so useless, so incredibly unready,” Nessa confessed in a whisper, letting her hands fall onto her lap, feeling oh-so vulnerable. “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t shake the sense that something looms over us, something big and scary. Something that’s rapidly approaching. Worse yet, I don’t think I’m strong enough to face whatever it is. I’m incomplete. Don’t you understand that? I have so many questions, so many missing pieces.” She gazed into Hu
nter’s wide eyes. “I want to remember. No, I need to remember. Who I am, what I am; these are things I should know, and yet I don’t. Why can’t I remember, Hunter? What happened to me?”

  Hunter was shaken. His face paled and his lips parted in shock.

  “I want my memories back,” Nessa insisted gently. “Else I’m not really myself. If I’m not myself, then I’ll never be able to fully trust anyone.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Hunter looked like she had slapped him.

  “I don’t think I even trust myself.”

  Chapter 25

  Stunned by her own words, Nessa barely registered Hunter’s arm slipping from her shoulders, or Orm grabbing the solitary chair that sat by the dressing table, which also acted as her makeshift desk, and setting it down in front of the bed.

  “Right,” Orm muttered, slouching back as much as he could in the little, old chair, making its joints let out a high-pitch screech of protest. “Right. Okay. Yeah. I think, since we’re clearly having a candid moment between the three of us, I’ll be forthright and say that I maybe haven’t handled all of this in the best way.”

  Nessa looked at him, more than a little surprised. Hunter stared at his friend too, his eyebrows shooting up and disappearing into his mop of unbrushed hair.

  “Handled what the wrong way?” Nessa croaked.

  “This,” Orm waved a hand at the window, at the crowd of buildings outside. “Coming here. Arncraft. You. I haven’t forgotten about you, Nessie. I see I haven’t done right by you so far, causing you distress.” Orm pulled a flask out from his trous’ pocket and unscrewed the cap, swiftly taking a hefty swig. His throat worked as he swallowed several mouthfuls.

  Nessa turned to Hunter for an explanation, a bit of guidance, but he seemed just as perplexed as she was.

  “You see, Nessie, after we found you, you were so scared and confused,” Orm said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “It was an easy decision to allow you time to re-adjust, to recover from your ordeal. I never thought I’d have to teach you about magic and what it means to be an Old Blood. I thought—expected—Chaos to be the one who would guide you into that world. But…ah…since he isn’t here anymore, that responsibility has fallen to me. To be blunt, that terrifies me.”

  “Why’d that scare you?” Nessa asked. “You’re pretty damn proficient with magic, in my opinion.”

  “Thanks, Nessie,” Orm smiled sadly, “but truth be told, my skills aren't quite what they should be.”

  “But you can do all kinds of things. You can start fires, make disgusting, magical drinks, and conjure us awful scrambled egg from I-don’t-even-know-where.”

  “Them and a handful of other things, too.” Orm nodded. “But they’re little more than parlour tricks compared to what Chaos could have taught you. I can talk your ears off when it comes to magic. However, when it comes to helping you perform it, I worry I’ll be of little use. That’s why a part of me thought that last night’s rendezvous could be useful to us. Life-changing, in fact.”

  “Life-changing?” Nessa mused. “That sounds intriguing, doesn't it?” She glanced at Hunter, catching his slight nod whilst deep in thought. Nessa felt a smidgen of relief knowing that her spontaneous words hadn’t driven an irretrievable wedge between them. Nessa would have never been able to forgive herself if she had damaged one of the few friendships she had, if she had hurt one of the handful of people who mattered to her the most.

  “Life-changing?” Hunter muttered. “How so, my friend? Pray tell.”

  Orm shot Hunter a warning glare, then shrugged. “Perhaps ‘game-changing’ is a better way of phrasing it.”

  “What do you mean?” Nessa asked with a perturbed frown. Something had been conveyed in Orm’s glare, a message solely for Hunter. It made the skin on the nape of her neck prickle with uncertainty.

  “Think about it, Nessie,” Orm said, his whisky-coloured eyes brightening, softening as he turned his gaze away from Hunter. “The three of us stand no chance of getting anywhere close to King Kaenar. We need help. Quite a lot of it too, I reckon.”

  “Like an army?”

  Orm venomously shook his head. “No. No. Not an army. Definitely not an army. Many people have tried to take that monster of a man down with armies and rebellions and whatnot. It never ends well.”

  “They all tend to die,” Hunter clarified, his tone oddly hollow.

  Nessa grimaced. “Oh.”

  “No, we don’t want to rally up an army,” Orm continued, “that would take too much time and require more resources than we could ever hope of getting our grubby, little hands on. No, what we need is a small, select group of highly skilled people. Our best chance of success is keeping the element of surprise. We need to keep everything top secret. Keep it underground. Where better to scout out potential accomplices than places like the den?”

  “Well,” Nessa said hesitantly, thoughts—possibilities—whirling around in her head at a hundred miles an hour. “I suppose it kind of depends on what particular set of skills you’re looking for…”

  “Whoever’s in charge has done all the hard work for us,” Orm said, his eyes sparkling with excitement, one foot tapping away like a merry, little drum. “There’s already a network in place, filled with all kinds of useful links and connections. They know all kinds of things, have access to places we could only dream of. Moreover, they have influence.”

  “It sounds like, out of all those reasons,” Nessa mused, “influence is the most important one to you?”

  Orm grinned. “Never underestimate how influence factors into things. A man can be as poor as dirt, but if he has charisma, a powerful presence, then he’s as rich as he needs to be. There’s many a man and woman who have risen through the ranks of society by doing little more than saying a few sweet things to just the right people.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  “A lot of dangerous work has already been done for us.”

  “How so?”

  “First off, the network has been around for a number of years.” Hunter was the one who said that, finally emerging from his glum mood.

  “Around eighteen years, according to Jerome” Nessa remarked with a small smile, reminding them. On awakening from her faint, after finding herself tucked safely in her bed back at Jerome’s guest house, Nessa had given them a debriefing of what she had learned during her short time at the den.

  “Around eighteen years,” Hunter agreed. “That lengthy period of operations means they have a secure and trusted system.”

  “Which is good?”

  “Oh yeah,” Hunter nodded enthusiastically. “It means there’s no leaks. Everyone there has been vetted for us, and we know that they can keep their mouths shut. Another added perk is that they hold no esteem for the king. None of them are loyal to him or to his minions. It’s as perfect, or as near to it, as we can hope for.”

  “Well…” Nessa searched for the right thing to say. Was she meant to be encouraging? Approving? “For putting a team together for a coup, that’s all, ah, quite useful I suppose?”

  “Besides,” Orm said, “there’s a small chance that someone from the network might be able to help you with your mental block.”

  “My memory loss?” Nessa shifted, muscles tensing. Anticipation and something else, something not too dissimilar to fear, snaked through her veins. “Is that…is that what’s really wrong with me?”

  “It’s one possibility.”

  “A mental block,” Nessa muttered, tasting the term. She cast her mind back to the forest, to just after she’d been found by Hunter and the others, and had overheard them talking about her. Hadn’t Chaos mentioned something about a mental block? It all started to make sense: how the ghosts of memories would sometimes rise, only to be forced back down before she had a chance to grab a hold of them; how things would seem both familiar and foreign to her at the same time. “What does that really mean?”

  “Simply put, it means that someone, a very skilled and pow
erful magic user—”

  “Margan or Shadow,” Hunter summarised darkly.

  “…has, during your imprisonment, entered your mind and built, for a lack of a better way of describing it, a wall. This wall then locks away anything that the ‘builder’ wants hidden from the recipient of this manipulation. Anything from specific feelings to a memory, or…”

  “Or all of my memories,” Nessa finished. “But why all of them? Why not just one or two?”

  Orm spread his hands. “I can’t be completely sure. Maybe the mental block was done in a rush. Perhaps they didn’t have time to pick and choose the things they wanted you to forget. Possibly, just possibly, a more sinister—”

  “Orm,” Hunter cut him off. “I don’t think this is the best way to be explaining things. It’s a rather sensitive subject.”

  Placing her hand on Hunter’s arm, both in way of quieting him and showing that she appreciated his concerns, Nessa urged Orm to continue.

  “A more sinister thought is, if they took away all of your memories, basically making you a blank slate, then you’d be easily manipulatable, more compliant in whatever plans they have for you.”

  “Considering that I’m here with you,” Nessa croaked out, “I’m clearly not as compliant as they had hoped to make me.” The thought of being made into a “blank slate” was too unnerving to even contemplate.

  Orm laughed, a short and humourless bark. “Indeed. Who knows what they had in store for you if you hadn’t escaped.”

  Nessa didn’t want to think about that, finding the possibilities almost endless, and all of them unpleasant to say the least.

  “So, if this wall was built in my mind,” Nessa murmured thoughtfully, almost earnestly, “hiding away my memories, then does that mean they’re still there? They haven’t been erased. Is there a way of breaking down this mental block?”

  “Well, yeah,” Orm admitted after a heavy pause, his eyes darting between her and Hunter a couple of times. “Yeah. There is a way for the mental block to be broken. Before I say any more, though, I must urge you: don’t get your hopes up.”