by Sarah Remy
“It belongs to His Majesty,” Baldebert said, catching the direction of her gaze. “That pretty bauble probably saved your life. He lent it to me, for walking the streets unnoticed. He said it was old magic. I don’t know how it works. No one sees me but I wish it. Are you coming or not?”
“Liam’s gone missing,” Avani confessed. She wiped Paul’s blood from her hands onto her trousers.
“Missing?” Baldebert’s yellow stare sharpened. “For how long?”
“A day, maybe two. I came to ask the armswoman what she knows of it.”
“I think we can assume nothing good. All the more reason to catch her and shake her until she talks. No, not that door. We’ll be seen. This way.”
He stepped over the Masterhealer’s corpse and walked his gloved fingers along the circumference of the stained-glass window. He hummed as he searched, then he smiled. A latch clicked softly and the entire window swung inward.
“This place is an architectural marvel,” Baldebert said. “The temple roof alone should be an impossibility.” He stepped through the open window. “I wager she’ll be heading out of the city, through the north gate. Tell me, have you ever stolen a horse?”
There was a small stable attached to the temple grounds; five roomy box stalls beneath a hay loft. Two of the stalls were empty. A lass worked nearby in the shade of a pear tree, polishing tack with a bar of yellow soap. She paid them no notice at all until they galloped her two remaining charges out of the building and away. Then she rose to her feet, soap fallen from her hand, and began to shout.
“Stay close,” Baldebert murmured when they slowed to navigate a merchant and his cart stuck sideways in a crooked street. “This gewgaw has an as yet undetermined radius and it’s rubbish at covering loud noises. We’re only two of the king’s companions out for a midday ride, but soon enough the guard will be looking for temple horses.”
“And a murderer. They’ll find Master Paul soon, if they haven’t already, and the alarm will go out.”
“We’ll catch her before then. She’s on foot and in no hurry. The woman’s bloody sure of herself and become more rash with each murder.”
“You think she killed Farrow, and Lady Belmas.” Avani couldn’t believe it. She’d known the armswoman from almost her first day in Wilhaiim, and appreciated her blunt kindness. “But why would she?”
“Not just Farrow and Belmas, but Michael and several more if I’m right.”
“Michael?” Avani frowned. “Oh, ai, the one called Moonstone, the young man from Whore’s Street? What do you know of him?”
“He was my friend,” Baldebert said. In front of them the merchant was struggling with his cart and pony. People loitered in the street, laughing and shouting advice. Passersby skirted around their horses without appearing to realize their way was blocked. Baldebert regarded the commotion with an impatient scowl. “In a place where I have few. He left my bed early one morning and by the next he was lying stiff and cold amongst rotting cabbages. I swore to myself I’d understand why.” His frown deepened. “Until Farrow I believed it confined to the city. I’ve wasted too much time.”
“You think she has Liam.” The shock of Paul’s death had muted Avani’s panic, but now fear came roaring back. “I think she has Liam. But why?”
“Possibly he came upon her duplicity before you or me. As I said, she’s grown careless.”
“She wouldn’t dare harm him. Not Liam.”
Baldebert’s brows rose beneath his yellow curls. He opened his mouth on a reply but was spared from answering by the crash of the merchant’s cart overturning and the resulting chaos. Baldebert swore and waved a hand back in the direction they had come.
“This will never clear! We need to find another way.” He jerked his horse around pointing its head at a nearby cross street. “If you’ve any sorcerous tricks up your sleeve, my lady, now would be the time.”
Chapter 16
The hound’s soft snoring kept Liam and Parsnip company until the dawn broke. As the sun rose the shadows in the Bone Cave receded, chased away by watery daylight. Bear rolled onto her back, wriggling in the dirt.
Parsnip laughed to see the dog’s antics then caught her breath in pain.
“Let me see.” Liam crawled forward. He’d managed to doze in the night, but was continuously chased back to wakefulness by dreams of ghostly children.
“I told you, it’s nothing.” But Parsnip lifted her chin, baring the stripe of red at the base of her throat. The slice wasn’t dangerous but the deepest cut, just above the lass’s collarbone, still oozed blood. Liam could tell by the way she held herself that it stung.
“Ham-handed bastard,” Liam swore. “Blade like that—he might have taken more care.”
Parsnip sniggered nervously. “But why? I’m sure he means to kill us in the end.”
Bear whined agreement.
“Well, he won’t, if I’ve anything to do with it.” Having assured himself that Parsnip’s wound wasn’t life-threatening, Liam climbed to his feet. Near the grille the ceiling was low enough he had to duck his head, but the natural roof quickly opened up away from the wall.
The Bone Cave was less a cavern than a hump in the soil, an earthen blister grown up above the ground. Cracks in the roof allowed for splinters of light to filter in, along with the faint whisper of fresh breeze; the grass and heather that grew on the mound above had also spread below and mottled the ceiling in green-and-purple flowers. The air was unusually dry; Liam supposed that was the work of the temple marks carved north, south, east, and west into the wall.
The same magic must also keep back the smell of rot, because although the majority of the bones interred in the old shepherd’s cave were burned clean, some were still clothed in flesh.
“Aug’s balls.” Parsnip had not quite made it to her feet. She froze in a half crouch, staring beyond Liam into the cave. “That one’s fresh.”
“Goodwife Farrow.” Liam stepped gingerly around scattered bone to take a closer look. The corpse sat propped against the wall only a few feet from where Liam had chased restless sleep, just past the reach of starlight. He shuddered to think he might have rolled into the dead woman all unknowing. “I’d stake gold on it. Look at her belt, and her bonnet. That’s Farrow’s work, I wager.”
He thought the dead woman had been pretty in life, long-shanked and strong, with a ready smile and merry, dimpled cheeks. Theist magic had protected her from the indignity of rot, but her corpse seemed shrunken, the skin drawn tight against the bone, dimples pulled to creases. Her smile was stretched into a grimace, the hands folded on her lap flexed to clasp against the fabric of her skirt.
“Do you suppose he killed her?” Parsnip asked. Liam knew she was thinking again of Holder’s scythe. “Killed her and hid her here with the children?”
“I don’t see blood or wound,” Liam said. “Could be he locked her in here to starve.”
“What about those?” Parsnip, at last on her feet, gripped Liam’s hand and pointed.
More corpses lay abandoned on the cave floor, whole and in pieces, withered and pale as to be invisible at first in the receding shadow and against bone and sand. Barrowman corpses, unnatural in size and shape. Liam counted six bodies, and an assortment of limbs. He couldn’t tell from looking how long they’d been dead; the same magic that dried Goodwife Farrow had turned the dead sidhe into husks.
“Five more, here.” While Liam gaped at the barrowmen Parsnip had let go of his hand and slipped further into the cave. “Human, these. Chopped up, like chickens for a stew. Missing pieces. Can’t see their heads anywhere. Has he taken them?” She mumbled a quick prayer for the dead. Liam could hear the chatter of her teeth between the hushed words.
“If he has, he’s not taking ours,” Liam promised.
The ground was so littered with mismatched skeletons he had to clear a path with the toe of his boot before taking a step for fear of stumbling over an arm bone or hollow-eyed skull. Many of the bones from the theists’ fires were blackened
, others a startling white, and some the color of sand. Some were contained in piles. Most were scattered as if by foraging animals, likely mice or raccoons come in through the grille. If the temple had meant to keep the tomb sacred by sealing the front entrance, Holder had put that hope to rest by punching a hole in the back end.
When Liam reached Parsnip he linked their fingers again for courage while he tried to make sense of the corpses. He hadn’t a vocent’s skill for it, but some things were obvious.
“Not children, those. But I suppose they wouldn’t be; they’re too new. Grown men and women by the size of them. Look at their clothes.” The bodies were all dressed in cheap gauds and sheer silk, a bawdy caricature of court finery. “It’s as the guards at the gates said: he’s been taking them from Whore’s Street.”
“But why?”
“That’s the question,” agreed Liam soberly.
As they crept further away from the grille the daylight became faint. Parsnip clung to Liam and jumped every time her foot sent bone rattling. At the center of the cave, beneath the apex of the earthen roof, they found a makeshift chopping block. An overturned barrel, familiar for the stamp of the royal militia burned into one wooden stave, and laid neatly atop the brown-stained head, a woodsman’s hatchet.
The ground was cleared of bone in a circle around the barrel, the sand made rusty by dried blood.
“It’s a charnel house.” The chatter in Parsnip’s teeth had spread throughout her entire body. She quivered against Liam’s side. He remembered being not much older than she, terrified on the Downs as Stonehill’s dead rose in the night. He’d felt helpless, adrift, useless until Malachi had put a weapon in his hand and with it, the illusion of safety.
“Holder’s not so very clever.” Liam tugged Parsnip across bloodied sand. He took his hand from her own, replaced it with the woodsman’s hatchet. She gasped in surprise at the weight of it. “Shouldn’t have left this behind. Wouldn’t have, I wager, if he’d known how very good you are with an ax.”
The lass stood openmouthed, staring down at the weapon in her fists. He saw her teeter on the edge of refusal, close to breaking. Then she nodded, chin firming. Slowly the tremors ebbed from her body.
“Aye.” She nodded. “He comes back, you just point me at him. Sir. It’s heavier than I’m used to, but not so heavy I can’t do him damage.”
They inched their way around the rest of the cave and were baffled by what they found. Stacked amongst the remains of Wilhaiim’s children were pieces of armor: iron chest plates, vambraces, greaves, and gauntlets, even knee and elbow cops. Enough separate pieces, Liam thought, to put together at least four suits. Sabatons were lined up in a precise row next to four iron helms as though waiting on a soldier and his page for dressing.
Parsnip stooped for a better look. “Hard to tell for certain in this light,” she said. “But I’d swear if anyone asked these are direct from the tower.”
Liam could see well enough not to question. “They are,” he confirmed. “Looks very like Holder’s been thieving from the royal armory.”
“But why?” Parsnip repeated. She rubbed a fist thoughtfully under her nose. “Do you suppose he means to clothe his straw men in steel?”
“Mayhap.” But Liam hesitated, caught by an unsettling thought. There were tools intermingled with bone and armor: chisels of varying sizes, a large auger, and a set of blackened tongs. He’d seen similar before, in Holder’s barn, amongst the detritus of an ironworker, and what was it the man had said?
Ferric soldiers, my da called them. Great-grandfather bred the Hennish cattle, aye, and his brother was one of only a handful accomplished enough at the forge to smith the Automata.
“Oh, hells.” On a hunch Liam reached for a helm. It was heavier in his hand than it should be. When he lifted the visor they saw why. “I think we’ve found their heads.”
Parsnip recoiled away from the shriveled skull. “Gah!” She crossed herself quickly. “The man’s cracked, he must be.”
“Mayhap.” Liam rotated the helm. The head had been severed at the neck with a single solid strike, likely from Parsnip’s new hatchet.
“Put it down!” Parsnip insisted. Then, reluctantly asked, “The others, too?”
Liam set the helmet back on the sand. He gave the others a cursory inspection, lifting the visors, revealing the grim visages behind steel. “Aye.” His keen gaze snagged on a lighter smear of shadow further along the wall. His brain registered the man-shape just as his heart jumped into his throat.
“Where are you going?” demanded Parsnip. “Don’t go too far out of the light, it mightn’t be safe.”
“Stay there, lass.”
She made a rude sound, promptly dogging his heels. “I’m not yon brindled hound to be told when to heel and when to run. Besides, last time you told me to ‘stay’ it didn’t end well.” She stopped when Liam did, stepping on the backs of his boots. “Oh. Oh, no. Liam, that’s not—”
It was near as tall as the ceiling and protected from sand and trailing flowers by a loosely wrapped collection of fabric. It had talons instead of feet, gigantic six-toed metal paws tipped with nails like daggers, flexed into the sand as if for balance. Bronze cogs and chain sinew peeked from beneath loose folds. There was a familiar and stomach-turning smell of oil and damp earth.
Liam stretched out a shaking hand and yanked the swaddling away. It fell to the ground with a muffled hiss.
“A walking machine.” Liam exhaled. “Aye, Parsnip, I think it is. One of the old Automata.”
The ferric soldier looked as much beast as man. Its head was a fine steel barbut, its torso plate and hammered bronze. Vambraces sheltered cord and cog arm muscles, its gut was a mess of gear and chain. A spread of iron ribs kept the machine-work in place and also served as a base for an array of dangerous-looking, blade-sharp hooks.
Beneath a bristling pelvis the metal man turned to clockwork animal. Its limbs were a more refined version of Pumpkinhead’s bird legs: backward jointed, steel rod tightly wound about with multiple lengths of chain link. A legion of metal thorns sprouted from its hocks, and from the blunt end of the long, jointed tail that fell from the end of its metal spine and coiled in the sand against one clawed foot.
Parsnip, to Liam’s great surprise, leaned closer to get a better look. “Take me and shake me,” she said, awed. “It is! Would you look at that! I never thought to see one in my life.” Before Liam could stop her she patted the iron monster on one metal calf. “It’s cold! Like ice! What do you suppose he’s doing with it?”
Liam could see what Parsnip could not: the desiccated head half hidden behind the barbut’s T slit. Flat black sidhe eyes, gone cloudy in death but kept from jelly by the spells around the cave.
“Don’t touch it,” he cautioned. There were patches of rust on the Automata’s breastplate alongside brighter strips where blight had been polished away. The barbut, too, looked new. Liam suspected neither the helm nor its grisly occupant belonged originally to the Automata.
Parsnip snatched her hand back. “Will it wake again?” she wondered, falling back on a nervous squeak. She took several hasty steps away.
“How could it? Holder’s no vocent to work bone magic on the old machines.” But the words rang hollow; both Liam and Parsnip had seen the straw men walk. Liam had no doubt the two were somehow connected.
“Come away, back to the grille,” he urged. “I feel safer in the light.”
He wished he was brave enough to cover the ferric soldier again with its wrappings, if only to hide its blank stare. But the fabric was heavy and the Automata taller even than Liam, and the prickling at the back of his neck warned him to move away.
Parsnip, fortitude depleted, beat Liam handily back to the grille and sun-warmed sand where she sat with the hatchet across her knees and her head turned toward the Automata.
They dozed, off and on, for how long Liam couldn’t say. It was the brindled hound who first alerted them to company. Her low growl shook Liam out of a heat-induced d
oze to immediate wakefulness. He reached for a knife that wasn’t there. Parsnip jerked midsnore. She jumped to her feet, hatchet at the ready.
Bear turned restlessly in her hollow, teeth bared, the fur along her backbone ruffling in threat. A surge of hope brought Liam to his feet, for surely the hound wouldn’t react in such a way to greet her master.
“Who is it?” Parsnip hissed.
“Can’t see.” Liam pressed his face against the grille but could glimpse nothing above the ground line. By the angle of the sun and the fall of shadows morning had passed into afternoon.
Bear began to bark and snap.
“Give me the hatchet,” Liam told Parsnip. “Just in case.”
The lass looked from the hound to Liam and back again.
“Nay,” she decided. “I’ll wager you’ve never swung an ax against a man in your life. I’m trained to it. It’s better in my hands.” With an apologetic grimace, she stepped back into the cave and faded into the gloom.
Bear’s alert stopped abruptly. The hound, tail wagging once again, pounced upon a haunch of raw meat tossed down from above. She tucked into the treat at once, worrying it with teeth and paws, grumbling low in her throat.
A pair of dusty boots followed the meat into the hole. Liam gripped the grille in relief. The boots were attached to a familiar and welcome form.
“Hound’s soft in the head,” Armswoman Lane said, bending to grin through the bars at Liam. “I always told Holder he was breeding that line too close. Here, lad, move back. You’re in my way.”
“Hurry,” Liam said. Relief made his knees weak as he retreated. “Holder’s like to be back any minute now.”
Lane laughed as she turned the padlock in her hands. “Man’s busy with his precious black cattle this part of the day, seeing to their comfort in the heat. We’ve plenty of time.” The lock clicked. She pulled the heavy chain through the bars and dropped it on the ground near the hound. The grille swung open at her touch; she ducked her head as she stepped over the threshold.