Brood of Bones

by A. E. Marling

  The woman looked like a skeleton wearing a skin suit. She revolted me, as did all the presumed Feasters, with their dull, sunken gazes of fright. Among them, the Lord of the Feast appeared healthy, even with his snowy face and seemingly paralyzed arms.

  Waving away the cup, I said, “Bitter bean only puts me to sleep.”

  “You don’t say?” He swallowed from his cup, which the woman then lowered in order to dab his mouth with a napkin. “Then you’re better off without. I’m convinced it’s no good for me, it’s too delightful.”

  The lepers with swords disturbed me, yet I worried more that the Lord of the Feast plotted to delay until the Bright Palms outside departed. My heart fluttered, beating two hundred and three times a minute, and I noticed I could count the silver links on his pocket-watch chain: thirty-seven. I also identified the twelve varieties of flower embroidered on his vest, from camassia to wisteria, a feat I should not have been able to achieve while awake.

  “I did not come to dither,” I said. “I know who you are.”

  “You do? Then please remind me, it’s been days since I introduced myself.”

  “You are the Lord of the Feast.”

  Maid Janny gasped, and a rustle of my gowns told me she hid in my silken train.

  His brows rose in surprise at my denouncement, yet as they stayed lofted for more than a second, I could tell it was feigned. “Do I have a surplus of heads? Do I stand thirteen feet tall? No, I am merely ‘Tethiel.’ That is, until I lift my hands.”

  One of his gloved fingers twitched, and the woman beside him winced. She was afraid, and I believed I should be as well, yet I still felt as if the thread of my fate thrummed under a goddess’ touch.

  Deepmand drew his scimitar over his shoulder, although his blanched face and bloodshot eyes suggested that only the stiffness of his armor kept his hands from shaking. The leper dandies reached for their blades, the fingerless one locking his wrist into a gauntlet attached to his hilt.

  “Don’t bother, my hearts,” the Lord of the Feast said. “The Spellsword could cut through you like wicker. But he won’t. He’s too wise, which is more than I can say for the Bright Palms outside. My dear Enchantress Hiresha, discovering me has only confirmed my good opinion of you. But one could interpret the presence of the Bright Palms as a discourtesy.”

  “They will only accost you,” I said, “if you fail to tell me what you know of the mass pregnancies.”

  “By threatening me, you’re doing just what I would do. You’ve disappointed me tremendously.”

  “Father.” A leper limped into the room, toward the couch and the Lord of the Feast. “They are loading furniture.”

  “Your furniture?” The Lord of the Feast gazed at me with blue eyes, which burned like icicles across my skin. “You haven’t told the Bright Palms about me.”

  “I will, unless you speak substance.”

  “And what will you tell them? That I’m serving cups of bitters?”

  “I will tell them of whom they must dispose.”

  “And ‘whom’ is that?”

  I had to stand up to him and stop his circuitous speech. After the Bright Palms ran out of furniture to load, they would leave. “You. They will kill you.”

  “Did you hear that, my hearts? Was it not a well-spoken threat?”

  The Feasters grinned, and one leper spoke in a hoarse voice. “Not veiled in the least, Father.”

  “How charming,” he said. “A man can never tell how much a woman cares about him until she threatens his life.”

  “You are mocking me,” I said.

  “I mock your faux pas,” he said, his tone still impossibly even and collected. “Only threaten those you know, or you may not hit upon what they most fear. You see, those five automatons outside could not catch me, should I ride away on Eyebiter, and even if they could, they still would not kill me.”

  I peered at his face for signs of trepidation or dishonesty, but only his left cheek quirked, hinting at amusement. He had to be a master at self-suppression.

  “The Bright Palms would never let you live,” I said.

  “They may be heartless, misinformed fools, but they mean well,” he said, “and it’ll not be a better man who kills me, but a worse one. My living harms fewer than my death.”

  “The argument of a carrion bird.”

  “Enchantress Hiresha, have you ever considered why Feasters—why my children—never break into homes? Never cast through windows?”

  “The implication is that you forbid them?” I considered it remarkable how fast I had thought of that reply.

  “I care for my children too much to give them what they want. But on the night of my death, my sons and daughters will celebrate by breathing terror through keyholes and killing thousands in their beds.”

  I was sure of it now: He was delaying, while my heart hammered my ribs at an unsustainable pace, and heat built inside my gowns to the point where I clung to consciousness.

  “Maid Janny, pick up the ottoman. Unless this fop speaks of the pregnancies, we are leaving.”

  Before my gowns could finish sliding off my seat, Janny hefted it and ran out of the inn.

  The Lord of the Feast stood. “Before going, you should know that though I am safe from the Bright Palms, these, my seven dearest children, would be strangled. If they come to harm, then tomorrow, on the capital building in every nation, words painted in blood will tell how enchantresses cannot cast spells when awake. That they sleep naked with every sword they enchant.”

  My heart stopped mid beat, and for two-thirds of a second, I feared it would never start again. Then it bludgeoned my insides while my mind reeled, scrambling for a clue as to how he could have learned of our shame. I felt as if he had robbed my thoughts.

  He continued. “Each department chair in the Mindvault Academy will receive a letter detailing how you broke the Propriety Pledge, resulting in the death of one Faliti Chandur.”

  I faced him with open mouth and tearing eyes, wishing he could have done something more civil, such as threatened my life.

  “Don’t look so surprised. I have many children, who smell fear in many fascinating flavors.” His tongue peeked out to touch his upper lip, which was painted a deep red. “I feel I’ve forgotten something. What was it? Ah yes. Without my intervention, the women of Morimound will birth fiends that will enslave this city for twenty generations.”

  A jolt ran down my spine while tears mixed with sweat in my eyes. “What will they birth? How must I stop it?”

  The Lord of the Feast nodded to the woman beside him, and her rat-bone hands drew a folded handkerchief from his coat pocket then lifted it toward my damp face. Spellsword Deepmand held up a gauntlet to block her from touching me.

  The crimson-suited lord closed his eyes, for a moment. “The Bright Palms are moving away from the inn. You should go.”

  I wiped my face with my gloves. “I cannot depart until I know how to save my people.”

  “Elder Enchantress, we should leave.”

  “Listen to your Spellsword. He is wise with fear.”

  I needed the Lord of the Feast’s information concerning the mass pregnancies. I wanted it more than fistfuls of rubies. However, I had a hard time focusing on him, as my heart had beat so much adrenaline into my blood that my vision blurred, and I could not risk crossing him further, not when he knew so much about enchantresses.

  On the way out of the parlor, I stumbled over my gowns and would have fallen on my head if not for the cane. When I reached the carriage and found myself still alive, I did not faint. I merely fell asleep extremely fast.

  In my laboratory, I realized that my heart had almost exploded, and I had nothing to show for it. I wanted to believe the Lord of the Feast had bluffed his way out of my threat by denying that the Bright Palms could kill him, yet I had not spotted evidence of the lie and still could not in the mirror.

  He might have spoken true, and if so, my errors in judgment had offended the one person who seemed to know anythi
ng about these pregnancies.

  “You faced the Lord of the Feast and didn’t scream or nothing.” Maid Janny padded my brow with a damp cloth. “Are you made of marble?”

  “I believe I did sweat,” I said.

  “No more than normal.”

  My less-than-erudite statement left no doubt that fatigue once again clogged my mind. I staggered into my manor to see a servant woman stooping over her belly to sweep crystal from the broken windows.

  “My girl, did I not tell you to leave those shards alone?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you wanted me to.”

  Now that I squinted at the woman, I noticed her sickly complexion and spindly limbs, which seemed inadequate to support herself without the help of the broom. She was Alyla Chandur, whose mother I had killed.

  After swallowing twice, I said, “Alyla. Ah, what are you doing here?”

  “Our house was empty, except for Yash, and mother never liked me being alone with him.” She held the broom handle before her as if she could hide behind it. “I guess we weren’t alone. Mother was still there, in a way.”

  “Has the bricker laid her in the floor yet?”

  I regretted my words as soon as tears welled over her lashes to roll down her cheeks. She wobbled her head from side to side.

  “We couldn’t pay him, the bricker said he wouldn’t do it for less than five silvers. It’d be a bigger job, he said, because of her tummy.”

  “Mister Obenji will attend to the arrangements.” I reached out to pat Alyla’s arm for comfort, yet I was uncertain that would be proper, as her mother had died to my negligence. I cringed; feeling like an inch-long splinter had been shoved under my thumbnail.

  “I’m so glad my brother isn’t here to see this.” Her tears dribbled onto her belly.

  Maid Janny stepped up to her and hugged the girl, making the motion seem natural and easy. Of course, Janny had an unfair advantage over me: I could not hug anyone in these gowns.

  I offered what support I could by gripping the sleeve of Alyla’s blouse. The gesture seemed wrong, somehow. “You may stay here, of course. However, keep away from these shards. If you slipped and fell on your baby, er, I mean, I do not like to think what could happen.”

  “I will! Thank you, I will! Oh, should I call you ‘Miss Flawless?’”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “Wait, where is your father?”

  “He’s down in Stilt Town.”

  “Why is he not with you?”

  “He said...what he said was he had to break your wall.”

  “The Flood Wall?”

  A memory smashed into me of Abwar of the Ever Always leading a mob downhill, and I wondered if it had happened yesterday or today. I wished to believe the mob had since come to its senses and dispersed.

  “Deepmand, can you see the Flood Wall from here?”

  “I admit a suspicious amount of dust in that direction, Elder Enchantress.”

  “Drive me there. Morimound cannot lose its greatest defense.”

  On the ride downhill, I dreamed of my meeting with the Lord of the Feast. He had mentioned that the mass pregnancies would lead to the enslavement of Morimound, for hundreds of years, which sounded like the doing of a god. I hoped he was mistaken about that or had lied. I might not be able to detect his prevarications due to the control he kept over his face: Not once had I spotted signs of fear, even during mention of the Bright Palms.

  Stilt Town swarmed with men, and ladders piled against the Flood Wall. Pick-axes swung, and hammers broke off stones piece by piece, which were then stacked into baskets on pulleys. I could not believe what I was seeing. Morimound was destroying its one hope; without the wall, the Seventh Flood would come in only a matter of time, maybe as soon as next month. I tried to tell the men this, in a calm and dignified tone.

  “Morimound faces sufficient disaster in the mass pregnancies. We must not remove the Flood Wall.”

  Few heeded me, amid the shouts of, “For your daughters!” and “Unwall the wall!” Mud prevented me from leaving the carriage, as did my shaking muscles and lightheadedness; the exertions of my heart at the morning’s meeting had left me exhausted.

  I needed the city guard to stop the disassembling, yet most of them manned the pick-axes and carried away baskets of rubble. Neither could I gather much support from the acolytes; many gathered around Abwar of the Ever Always as he sacrificed oxen, goats, chickens, and even pet dogs. The bloodied mud surrounding him sickened me.

  Dark stains and grime covered his green and white robes. “The Wall is spittle in the face of the Ever Thriving, Always Dying! We are not above His will! Forgiveness will come only when the Wall is ground to gravel.”

  The possibility that my wall had angered a god heated me into a stupor. An irrational fear grew in me that I would sweat until my tissues shriveled to nothing, like the fleshless Feasters I had witnessed today.

  Even after I regained my aplomb, the guards would not listen to me, and neither would the civilians, perhaps for good reason. I pictured the Loom of Life, where a black thread of my fate severed all the other strands in Morimound’s weave. My wall might have doomed the city, as could my dealings with the Lord of the Feast.

  I knew I could concede nothing to him, should we ever meet again. If we did reconvene then I would have another chance to detect his lies, and I could not afford to miss any information that might save Morimound’s women. In addition, I wished to test whether I would have the same physical response: A surfeit of adrenaline had evoked greater wakefulness than I had ever felt outside my dreams.

  “Elder Enchantress,” Deepmand said from the carriage door, “I must insist we return to the manor before sunset.”

  His concern was reasonable, as encountering the Lord of the Feast at night would place me entirely in his power. His presence in Morimound unnerved me to no end; every dusk would be like sleeping on an executioner’s block, wondering if the axe would fall and he would attack the city.

  More Bright Palms could counter him, yet summoning them would require time and—given his reaction today—would likely infuriate him.

  As the carriage skated over the city streets, I watched the sky. It changed to pink, and I began to resent the pedestrians slowing me. Children flocked across the street, playing a game in which they touched a brick from each age in the city’s history. Dots of glaze marked the clay blocks, with blue for the Seventh Age, green for the Sixth, and so on. The children scrambled everywhere to find the older bricks, which bore marks of red and black.

  I shook my cane out of the window. “Go home. Your mothers will be worried.”

  Women at a well set down their urns of water to shriek at me. “There she is!”

  At first, I thought they approached to thank me, or compliment me, yet they beat the sides of the carriage with their fists and shouted without any social nicety.

  “What have you done to us, Enchantress?”

  “Do we carry the seed of the Always Dying?” A woman clawed at her own belly, weeping. “Can you tell us that much?”

  I cowered as far back in my carriage as the silk harnesses would allow, unable to say anything.

  By the time we crossed into the Island District, the sky had darkened to red, and the lanes had all but cleared. We raced through parks alongside flowers closing their petals for the evening, and I discovered my left hand to have a death grip on my cane.

  The sun had dipped out of sight behind the banyan trees, yet I still believed we would reach the manor before it set. A cadence of hooves on bricks behind the carriage prefaced a rider passing us, yet I did not recognize the implications of the man until I saw his lurid red coat.

  “Enchantress Hiresha, I request your presence in my realm.” The Lord of the Feast leaned from his saddle toward my carriage window. “I must show you something.”

  My heart began to race, and I banged my cane against the carriage roof to urge Deepmand to drive the horses to a gallop.

  The Lord of the Feast said, “Can you outr
un your fears?”

  The thudding of my blood began to clear my mind, and I remembered that Feasters grew more dangerous if one fled from their magic. I glanced at the sunset, wanting to think that the Lord of the Feast could not cast both day and night, despite what rumor told. I wished to disbelieve it so much.

  In trying to escape, I might die, yet by following the Lord of the Feast, I endangered many. I did not know which peril should be preferred, yet I had to choose.

  “Spellsword Deepmand, slow the team to a walk.”

  The fop’s horse lessened his pace as well, and the animal gazed in at me with a single black eye.

  I straightened myself, pulling my arms from their harnesses. “I cannot follow you into your realm. My place is in Morimound.”

  “It’s not far.” He nodded to the purpling sky. “Just ten minutes away.”

  With deep breaths, I hoped to keep my heart rate below the point where my teeth throbbed from excessive blood pressure. Being under the stars beside the Lord of the Feast was the most frightening experience I could imagine, yet after his threats in the inn, I believed a refusal might endanger more than merely myself.

  By agreeing, I reasoned, I might gain some concessions. “First, tell me why I should trust you.”

  “I keep all my promises.” The corners of his eyes creased in amusement. “A man’s death threats are only as good as his word.”

  “Then, will you swear to my safety in the night?”

  “My children will not harm you, except with my leave.”

  “That is no assurance at all!”

  “I never give more.”

  I wished for my magic. If I could enchant when awake then I could protect myself by Lightening him to the weight of cattail fluff and letting the wind carry him away.

  “Spellsword,” the Lord of the Feast said, “I believe there is a perfectly dreadful fountain on your next left. Be a good heart and drive to it.”

  Over the clop of hooves, I heard Maid Janny weeping and Deepmand trying to comfort her. The carriage stopped near the sound of water trickling. When my hand opened the carriage door, I noticed my fingers did not shake; I had settled into the serenity of knowing that my fate this night had been decided by a goddess before my life’s first breath.