The Bone Cave

by Sarah Remy

  The desert woman snarled and spat again, straining against her bonds and the weight of the senseless man at her back. The man moaned but did not wake. He bled from deep scratches on his face and neck; half of his right ear was missing.

  “Once the rain passes we’ll tie them to a horse,” Faolan said. “I’ll send Drem with you as far as Wilhaiim’s gate, for caution’s sake.”

  “You know nothing of the desert if you think they’ll willingly tell Renault their tale, or implicate the temple,” Everin said. He was cold, and hungry, and tired. The woman’s ferocious expression hid desperation. She made him wish he hadn’t left the peace of the Downs.

  “Not willingly,” agreed Faolan. “But that’s Wilhaiim’s problem, not yours or mine. I suppose he’ll set the magus upon them, to draw out their every truth. Do you think Malachi will use forceps or sorceries to make them speak?”

  The woman snarled. She bucked helplessly in place. He legs were scabbed and brown, the long linen kilt she wore rucked up around her knees. There were indigo feathers in knotted hair, and sewed onto the sleeves of her snakeskin vest. Blood oozed from a deep gash on her collarbone. From the smell of her she’d been lying there in the dirt for several days, but he could see no mortal wound.

  “She fought bravely,” Faolan confessed, noting Everin’s scowl. “And was the last to fall. The other one is their leader; he was better at talking than fighting. We gathered up their curved swords, although the steel made our flesh welt and weep. You should take those back with you also. Tie them to your horse alongside the priest’s head.”

  “No head,” corrected Everin. “I’ll not desecrate a priest. Woman—” he switched from the language of his youth to the tongue he’d learned walking white sand “—what are you called?”

  She froze. Until then she’d paid him no attention, focusing her hatred instead on Faolan. For the first time she looked at him instead of past him. Whatever she saw made her go abruptly limp.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked. Surely the lesser sidhe had thought to give her water, or—despite her desert constitution—she’d have been dead days past. Sustenance was a different matter altogether. “Has she eaten?” he demanded of the sidhe.

  “She was offered flesh,” Drem volunteered dispassionately. “Human, rabbit, mountain fox. She would not.”

  Everin’s pack was worse the wear for the storm, but still intact. He shrugged it off and dug for hardtack. “Untie her hands.”

  “Are you sure?” Faolan looked doubtful. “She’s wily.”

  “Her hands,” Everin insisted. “She’s tethered and unarmed. She is one and we are ten. Her hands, and fresh water.”

  Drem used a knife to slice the rope around the woman’s wrists. The woman groaned as blood raced back into her hands in pins and needles. She shook her hands, hatred turning her yellow eyes lambent. Then she sat up on one hip, curling legs still tethered at the ankles to her fellow captive.

  “Here.” When Everin thought she could feel her fingers again, he held out the hardtack. “Let it soften in your mouth. It’s salty, like khaim, but much harder to chew.”

  She snatched the food. “What do you know of khaim, flatlander?”

  He liked the sound of her deep voice, the clipped vowels that meant she was from very far east indeed.

  “I’ve eaten my share of dune pig,” he answered. “When I rode with the sand guard. Where did you get the ponies? They’re not desert stock.”

  “Why do you consort with demons?” she returned. “Have you no fear for your soul?” She shoved the hardtack between her lips then puffed out her cheeks in surprise at the taste.

  “Water,” Faolan ordered Drem. Then said, to Everin, with regret, “The other one has worsened since I left. He’s near dead. I fear he’ll be of no use to you.”

  But Everin had noticed the way the desert woman kept herself between the unconscious man and her captors.

  “I think you’re wrong,” he said. “He may indeed be useful to us. Can you help him?”

  “Perhaps.” Faolan crooked a finger, summoning a lantern close. The desert woman jerked and put her hands up in defense. Faolan clicked his tongue.

  “Tell her to be still. I need better light to see his wounds.”

  “Be still,” Everin said. Drem appeared at his elbow with a small jug of water. Everin took the jug from the sidhe, offering it to the captive woman. “My friend means you no harm.”

  “Keep back,” she warned Faolan through a mouthful of hardtack, in a passable version of the king’s lingua. “Come closer and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  “Brave cub.” Faolan tilted his chin. “Your companion dances with death. It’s possible I can save him from the end, if you let me near.”

  “Let him die.” She chewed, ignoring the water jug in Everin’s outstretched hands. “Galenos would rather suffer a gut wound again twenty times over than risk tainted succor from the likes of you.”

  Faolan slanted Everin an eloquent look. He set his lantern at Everin’s feet. “When the rain stops we tie her to a horse.” Then he bowed, backing away toward the mouth of the cave, taking the lesser sidhe with him.

  The dying man coughed. His breathing sounded wet, labored. His head lolled from side to side in the dirt. His legs twitched, making the woman’s feet bounce. She ignored his paroxysms, beckoning for the jug of water.

  The woman drank her fill as the man breathed the last of his life onto the ground in a gout of blood. She drained the jug in rhythmic gulps while his fluids sank slowly into the dirt. When she was finished, she tilted the jug upside down and watched a single droplet suspend from the spout.

  “In the desert we have a saying,” she mused as the droplet stretched, broke, and fell, “regret is wasted on the scorpion’s sting.” She came off the ground all at once, smashed the water gourd over Everin’s head. As he wobbled beneath the crash of it, she kicked out with her foot, striking hard just below his ribs.

  Fog gathered on the edge of Everin’s vision. He struggled to catch his breath, but she’d pressed all the air from his body with the strength of her attack. He collapsed onto his knees, wheezing, as behind him the sidhe shouted alarm. The hollow lit with yellow lightning as Faolan drew all at once upon the power of his torque.

  The desert wolf had a knife in her hand, Drem’s knife, bronze blade and bone handled. She must have filched it from the sidhe after her bonds were cut. She pressed the blade hard against Everin’s throat; his pulse throbbed alarm. Out of the corner of his eye Everin could see Faolan approaching.

  “Now he’ll kill you,” Everin wheezed. The mountain spun around him; he struggled not to pass out. “Such a waste.”

  “Not before I kill you,” she replied calmly. “Galenos was my brother, and a prince of the desert. He deserves blood sacrifice. You and I together will do nicely.”

  Dying on his knees in a smoky cave surrounded by mismatched enemies was almost as unthinkable as drowning in a summer storm on the side of a mountain. He’d not survived nigh two hundred years of suffering traded to the sidhe so his mother might keep her royal husband alive and on the throne only to be made part of a funeral rite.

  The sidhe knife was child-sized, made for small hands and an awkward grip. The desert bitch was nearly tall as Everin, and used to a scimitar’s graven hilt. It was a risk, but Everin had risked much more in the past for less than his life was worth.

  The bronze blade bit deep as he rose; the pain cleared his head. The woman pulled, trying to slice his vein, but his audacity had caught her off guard. The knife slipped, the pommel made slick with his blood. She gasped and dug the fingers of her other hand into the wound beneath his chin even as she wrapped her legs around his waist and buried the blade in the curve of his shoulder.

  “Bloody cur,” Everin grated. He pivoted, slamming sideways into the nearest swell of rock, crushing the woman forcibly between the bulk of his muscle and the flinty slab. Through the ringing in his ears he heard the sound of her ribs snapping. She howled. Everin wobbled a
step away from the outcrop then slammed forward again, abruptly cutting off her cries.

  The mist was back before his eyes, the sound of rain across the mountain pounding in time with his laboring heart. He pressed both hands to his bleeding throat as he collapsed, wondering if he’d finally misjudged a gamble.

  “You are a stupidly rash man,” Faolan said into Everin’s ear, wrapping cold fingers around his wrist. “Here now, let me see.”

  “I need her alive.” The sidhe blade in Everin’s shoulder hurt much worse than the slice on his throat. It was a bolt of screaming agony in a body slowly going numb. “Faolan, I need her alive.”

  “You have a strange way of showing it,” the aes si replied, droll. “Lie still. Drem’s gone for my kit. Today is not the day I discharge you of your promise.”

  Chapter 14

  “Why is it still alive?” Baldebert inquired, peering through the cell bars at the sidhe. The arch above their heads echoed his disgruntlement and from deeper in the dungeon came the answering shrieks and catcalls of Wilhaiim’s damned.

  “Why are you?” the Masterhealer responded coolly. Of all of them he stood as far away from the cell as was possible in the narrow space, arms folded tightly across his chest. “In Wilhaiim espionage is a hanging offense.”

  “How many times must I say it?” Baldebert sounded genuinely provoked and not at all like the waggish sailor Avani had come to know. Mayhap, she thought, the crown’s new prisoner rattled Roue’s ambassador more than he liked. Or mayhap it was the pain of his swelling nose. “I was not spying. I but wanted to walk unshepherded amongst my sister’s newest subjects and observe.”

  Russel disguised a snort as a cough. The soldier stood at attention beneath a guttering torch bracket, hand on her sword as if she believe the sidhe would somehow leap through the bars and tear to pieces not only her unwieldy charge but the king and his two private guardsmen and Mal, as well.

  The two Kingsmen held pikes at the ready, the better to pierce the prisoner from afar if it did indeed slip its bonds. Mal’s sword hung forgotten on his right hip. He’d sheathed it once the cell door was secured thrice with thick chain and padlocked. Then he’d set his silver wards about the perimeter of the cell before allowing Renault and his guard down into the dungeon catacombs.

  “He appears more dead than alive,” Renault mused. “Near emaciated. Will he eat, do you think? Shall I send for meat, and a shift to cover his nakedness?”

  “I doubt it cares much for decency, Majesty,” Master Paul offered. “No more than does the bear or the house cat.”

  “I care for decency,” replied the king. “And I do not intend to make him a pet upon my hearth. Eric, go and find meat, and cheese, and tunic and trews.”

  “Ai, will you compel it to dress in court uniform, Majesty?” Avani wondered out loud. “I do not think it is naked for lack of choice. A blanket for comfort might be kinder. And fresh water. Who knows how long it’s been in that hole with only dew for drink.”

  “Water, then. Victuals, blanket, and clothing, Eric. We will let the barrowman make his choice.”

  “Cut off its head before it burrows out and disembowels us all in the night,” Baldebert suggested as one of the Kingsmen strode away, pike balanced precisely against his shoulder blade. “There is no cage yet built will keep one such as this contained for long.”

  “We found it stuck fast down a trapper’s pit,” Mal said dryly. He stood close to the bars as to be foolhardy, intent on the sidhe. His mind was closed to Avani but she could guess from the avid slant of his body that he was near overjoyed with their prize. “Look at its hands. I think we need not fear just yet.”

  Renault and Baldebert stepped together up to the cell. The Kingsman shifted uneasily. Russel was watching the Masterhealer. Paul stayed safely out of the way, but his brows rose in surprised realization.

  “It’s been declawed,” the priest said. “Recently, by the look of the wounds.”

  “Mutilated,” Mal corrected. “Not just the talons taken, but the finger bone, from the last joint up. I noticed first when we levered it from the hole. From the look of it I’d say a cleaver and chopping block.”

  “A painful operation, and still bloody,” Master Paul said. Avani couldn’t help but be startled by his sympathy. For all that he was a man at home in the sickroom, in Avani’s experience the Masterhealer was not given to displays of empathy.

  “Aye.” Mal hummed thoughtfully. The sidhe, squatting at the end of its chain, stared impassively.

  “I did not expect a barrowman to be so small,” Renault admitted. “Or quite so ugly. The old tales speak of men and women seduced and carried away into the mounds, entrapped by sidhe guile and beauty, or bested in combat and taken prisoners of war.” He cleared his throat. “This one no more resembles your Liam than a frog does a bird.”

  It may have been Avani’s imagination but she thought the sidhe’s dull black glare sharpened. Although it did not move so much as a single muscle she knew at once that they’d caught its attention.

  “Hush,” she warned the king. And then continued, “The greater sidhe—the warriors and the princes, the silken-haired maidens in the ballads—I think they are the aberration. From what I can tell, barrowmen like this one are far more plentiful.”

  The Masterhealer scoffed. “I am less frightened today than I was yesterday. Beg your pardon, Majesty, but the fuss made had me expecting a legion of inviolable knights come up from the bowels of the earth. This is naught but a grubby dwarf in a funny hat.”

  “You are a fool,” Baldebert pronounced.

  Paul executed a quick bow in Renault’s direction. “If you’ll excuse me, Majesty. I’ve a busy day ahead and I know I leave this particular puzzle in hands more adept at dirty work than mine own.”

  Renault dismissed the theist with a wave. Master Paul swept away, bare feet slapping stone. Once the Masterhealer was gone, Russel shifted minutely against the wall.

  “That man was pretending tranquility,” she said. “I could see the pulse fluttering in his throat from here. Where do you suppose he’s run off to all a-tither?”

  “He’ll be hiding his cleaver,” replied Baldebert. “And scrubbing bloodstains from the temple chopping block.”

  “Surely not.” Avani set a palm against the cell bars. The metal was cold, rusted in places, but solidly build. The cell was stone, one of many built into the old catacombs one level beneath the cold-rooms and two above the sewer. It was empty of everything but the sidhe prisoner and the chain that ran from its ankle to a bolt in the wall. The buzz of old magic used jarred her teeth; not Mal’s wards but deeper sorceries woven into the stone.

  Mal wasn’t wrong. Renault’s dungeons were secure, the barrowman well and truly imprisoned.

  Eric the pikeman returned trailed by two wide-eyed footmen. From the way they peeked sideways into the cell as they unloaded a basket of food and linens onto a portable canvas table Avani guessed news of the sidhe’s confinement would be all about the city before evening set in, the truth of the matter made much more elaborate by word of mouth.

  Renault must have come to the same conclusion because as soon as the provisions were laid out to his satisfaction he clapped his hands. Only Avani saw the barrowman flinch at the sudden noise.

  “Enough goggling,” the king said. “As of this moment our unlooked-for captive is my lord vocent’s provenance, and a boon. Mal, I need to know if this creature has any connection to Farrow’s death and the disappearance of the goodwife, and I need to know what he’s about running free aboveground. Don’t be gentle. Now is not the time for supposition; I’ve serial murders and rogue sidhe both too near the capitol. It won’t be coincidence. It never is.” Renault shook his head. “The rest of us will leave you to it. Admiral, you wished to walk my city as a native. I believe that can be arranged to your satisfaction and without the use of subterfuge.”

  He chivied Baldebert from the cell, Kingsmen and servants only steps behind. Russel separated from the wall. She tossed A
vani a nod as she sauntered away into the catacomb. The king’s perambulation brought more shouts and pleas from occupied cells as he passed. The mix of vitriol and anguish in those desperate cries was difficult to hear.

  “Roue’s dungeons were not dissimilar,” Mal said when he and Avani were alone. He didn’t turn around. “Although less full. Prisoners of war are made indentured servants there. Hardly better than slaves, but mayhap a life more pleasant than one spent in a stone cell.”

  “I’m sorry.” She knew from his delirious ravings that he’d found his brief imprisonment disconcerting. In his fever he’d begged for Liam’s release and again and again for the lad’s safe return home across the water.

  “It was but a day and a night.” As she’d done, Mal clasped a cell bar. The barrowman shifted, rattling chain. “We were treated better than this one will be. Easier for it if we spoke a common tongue. I am not positive these little ones verbalize at all.”

  “Faolan could—”

  “He is one of them, Avani. What makes you think he will help us with this? I wager we can be sure he will not. The aes si have always worked toward one goal; to walk as gods again beneath the heavens, and rule again over mortal creatures.” He let go of the cell bar, awarding Avani a tight smile. “This is a gift indeed, one of their foot soldiers fallen into our hands. Language is an obstacle, but not one impossible to overcome. It’s my job to work around it.”

  Avani had busied herself sorting through linens to keep from staring too long at the barrowman. She stopped.

  “You cannot kill it simply for the purpose of compelling its ghost, Mal.”

  Mal’s green gaze grew hooded. She had the sudden, certain knowledge that she’d somehow hurt him but didn’t know how to take the insult back. On a whim she forced a tendril of affection through their faulty link. If he felt her apology he gave no sign.