The Bones of the Earth

by Rachel Dunne

  “Lanthe,” she called softly, and he lifted his head from the dice, came ambling over. He had the same sort of grace all knives did, loose easy movements that some people compared to dancers, but Rora didn’t know anything about dancing. Some people said knife work was its own kind of dancing, and maybe that was true.

  “Yeah?” Lanthe asked, hunkering down next to her. He was close enough to her age, and he’d probably been a knife longest of all the knives she’d been given to lead. Still meant he hadn’t been knifing much more’n a year before she’d left, but it didn’t take too long after your first contract to start thinking how a knife had to think.

  “What d’you think of this contract?”

  “Truth?” Lanthe asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Truth.”

  He sucked at his teeth, stared out over the other knives with her. “Seems a little stupid, going in somewhere dangerous with only one crazy bastard who knows anything about the place.”

  “But you’re still here.”

  “I go where the Dogshead tells me to.” He met her eyes, and she couldn’t quite read what was in them. “I do what the hilt tells me to.”

  Rora tapped her dagger against the seekstone, staring out over the knives, staring through the witch’s eyes at the dark storeroom. “What happened?” she asked softly. “While I was gone?”

  “A lot.”

  “Lanthe.”

  “Rora,” he said sharp, using her real name and not the name he would’ve known her by before, setting her apart. “I tell you true, you don’t want to hear half of it.”

  And he was right. She didn’t want to hear how many of her old friends—her old near-family—had died, or all the ways they’d been killed. Didn’t want to start thinking about how many of ’em she could’ve saved if she’d been around, or how much they must’ve hated her, thinking she was doing the killing. But they were still here, all these knives, listening to her, all because the Dogshead had traded them for a few pouches of Joros’s gold. Maybe they were only here to make a show of it, just waiting to get her and Anddyr in the same room so they could stick knives between their ribs, sneak back out the mountain to tell Joros they’d tried, done what they could, but Rora and his witch had died in the trying. They could go back to their pack, richer’n they’d ever been before, and they could try to make something good out of what was left. It wouldn’t surprise her, really. It was something she could see Tare doing.

  “Go,” Rora said, waving her hand back toward the dicing, and Lanthe left without another word. He’d been knife longest here, next to her—if Tare’d given orders to put a dagger in her heart, she probably would’ve given them to Lanthe.

  Stupid as it was, she wished she’d brought the snowbear cloak with her. It wouldn’t be doing any good back at the old crumbling-down estate, and she could do with a little warmth.

  For the last few weeks—ever since the Canals and she’d lost her ear and everything had gone to shit—it’d felt like walking out of the sunlight into a pitch-dark room: your eyes panicked and couldn’t pull anything out of the black. It was just you standing there with your breath in your throat and wondering if you were the only one there, wondering if you’d start seeing things before or after a knife was swinging toward you. It’d felt to Rora like she was just stumbling around that dark room, bumping and tripping over things she couldn’t see, her hands stretched out looking for something but not sure she’d recognize it even if she grabbed it. Finally she felt like her eyes were soaking in the dark, seeing the gray lines of the things in the room—and she didn’t like the shapes of the things she was starting to see.

  She’d wanted to leave Aro back at that old crumbling house with the rest of the pack, where he’d be safe and out of the way, but Joros’d insisted he come with. “If this fails,” he’d said, piling a threat on top of a threat, “you and your brother may very well be my last hope at keeping the Twins bound. If you fail in this, there won’t be any time to waste on fetching him—we’ll need to move immediately.”

  Even if she did hate having her brother put closer to danger, Joros’s words were almost some kind of reassuring. If he needed her and Aro as bad as it sounded, she felt like he’d at least try to make sure Aro stayed safe. But Joros told the knives how dangerous the mountain was, and how they’d be killed right away if any of the preachers got a sniff of ’em, and then he said that Rora needed to go in with ’em. Aro was important enough to bring along, but seemed like Rora wasn’t so important that he couldn’t risk her life. That made her five kinds of suspicious, and when she’d asked him about it, he’d just ground his teeth and said he wished he had any other option. Didn’t really do much for helping with the suspicion.

  Joros’d been whispering to his witch a lot before they’d come to the mountain—and sure, those two were always whispering, but it’d felt . . . different this time. She’d seen how much they looked at her when they whispered, and she couldn’t count high enough to say how many times Joros had told her she’d be fine, Anddyr’d take care of her.

  There were pieces that just didn’t fit together right.

  Something caught her eye—well, not exactly, but something in what the seekstone let her see got her attention. There was someone else with the witch. It was too dark to make him out clear, no matter how much she squinted or how hard she pressed the stone against her palm, but the witch wasn’t alone . . . and there was no way to spin that to mean anything good. Either he was found and about to be dead . . . or he was meeting with someone on purpose. Maybe someone Joros’d told him to meet, someone he’d known back when he lived in this cold fecking place . . .

  She hated the seekstones, but now she was cursing whoever’d made them for not making ’em better—what use was seeing out of someone’s eyes if you couldn’t hear what their traitor lips were saying?

  The other person didn’t stay long, getting up and leaving the miserable witch alone again, and Anddyr picked himself up not too long after. Rora tucked the seekstone into a pocket and tucked her anger away, too, let it sit at a simmer. Boiling anger didn’t do much good, unless what you wanted to do was get a lot of people killed.

  She went and crouched down next to Lanthe and the others throwing dice, and she spoke quiet—talking just to him, but loud enough the other dicers could hear, loud enough everyone in the storeroom could probably hear if they were listening close . . . and she was sure they were all listening. She said, “You see anything go strange with the witch—not his usual strange, mind, but bad strange—if you see anything . . . don’t ask permission first. Just do what needs doing. Hear?”

  She gave him a hard eye, and he gave it back to her, but there was maybe something like respect in his look—or at least something less like he thought she was stupid. “I hear,” he said.

  She wasn’t a kid anymore. She’d learned plenty since the last time she’d tried to lead, and she’d make sure this time didn’t end with bodies dead and buried.

  The door to the storeroom opened, and there were a dozen daggers ready to be thrown. One did get thrown, zipping through the air and then clattering to the ground like it’d hit a wall, even though it’d only hit the air in front of the witch’s face. Still, it was only Anddyr, and Anddyr was alone, so the daggers got put away, and the knives all made a sudden point of not looking at the witch. Knives were good sneaks, the best in Mercetta, but most times they were shit at being sly.

  The witch didn’t even seem to notice them, which was all to the good. He stood a little hunched over, one arm wrapped around his belly, and when he did start walking he moved slow and jerky like he didn’t quite know what he was doing. That was good, too—it let her catch him by surprise when she asked, “Who was it you were talking to?”

  He gave her a big-eyed blink, his face pale and shadowed, but he sharpened a bit when she stuck her hand between them, the seekstone sitting on her palm. “Oh,” he said softly. He reached out like he’d take the stone from her, pulled his hand back. “There are some here who ar
e . . . not as loyal as the Ventallo would hope.”

  “The who?”

  “The Ventallo. The . . . packheads of the Fallen.”

  She didn’t let it show how surprised she was that he’d put it in a way she could understand—hells, he was probably talking down to her with it. She put her anger away again, put the seekstone away, too. He didn’t try to stop her keeping it. “So who was it?” she asked again.

  “Someone I knew from before. Someone . . . good.”

  Rora didn’t like that pause, but there was only so much pushing she could do. Joros’d probably ordered the witch not to tell her anything, and she knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t, go against an order like that. She wouldn’t get anything useful out of him, and that set her teeth to grinding.

  She didn’t like any of this, not a piece of it. If it’d been just her, maybe she would’ve left, quietly snuck out the way she’d come in, gone back to face things she could at least see the shape of. But it wasn’t just her. There were all the knives, following her but just looking for some weak point they could stick her. Maybe staying wasn’t the smart thing to do, but running before there was any danger was the coward thing, and knives weren’t cowards. Knives knew when to run, but it wasn’t till after there was blood. They wouldn’t respect her for trying to keep them safe, and they wouldn’t follow her after it. They’d tell Tare, too, and Tare’d smile that smile she had, the one with hate behind it, the one Rora’d seen before but never had aimed at her. And Joros would be furious she hadn’t even tried, would maybe do worse than whatever he had planned inside the mountain, but Aro would put his arm around her and tell her it was okay, he understood, he was glad she was smart and safe . . .

  No.

  There came a point when things would happen however they were supposed to happen, and the best you could do was be ready. She knew her knives were ready, each of them sharp and hungry, and she knew where to put a blade to stop things from going to shit.

  “Right,” she said, the word coming out heavier than she’d planned. She asked the witch, “You got a plan, then?”

  He nodded, looking like tears might come pouring out of him any second, and that didn’t put any kind of confidence in her. “The Ventallo meet every night . . . all of them. They gather in one place, so we can . . .”

  “Kill them,” she finished when his voice stopped, his throat working like the words’d got stuck. He nodded, looking sicker. “How long?”

  “A few hours until they gather. We’ll need time to hide in the chamber, but we don’t want to be too early.”

  “Right,” she said again, and turned away from him. Let him prepare however he was going to; Rora put her back to a wall and got out her daggers. They were already sharp, sharp as fear and hate, but it wouldn’t do ’em any harm. The sound of whetstone along the blade was a familiar old comfort, but it didn’t do anything for the way her heart was pounding. She had the taste of Canal mud in her mouth, and the memory of her weak little hands scraping away mud to push down small bodies, to hide ’em away where no one could see how bad she’d done, how wrong everything’d gone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The road spread before Scal like a pale arm reaching. Layered with snow and with ice, crystals cracking beneath his boots, each step like bones crunching. He had been walking through the long snows and the long nights and the days like punishments, the sun rebuking him for his cowardice. He could almost feel the Parents glaring with their displeasure as his slow feet took him south. Once, he had told Vatri he did not think the Parents would waste their time, to focus on one mortal. If he had been wrong about that, he did not know how she was able to bear their attention.

  Behind him Modatho prayed. Each prayer a gasp. A sob. The snows had given him to Scal, the parro finding him somehow after the long race through the cold, away from Aardanel. Scal had not thought the parro would live. Not thought he would keep pace. Not thought much, truly. Scal’s feet were heavy with guilt and with grief, snow grinding beneath his heels. He barely had thought enough to keep himself living, and walking. He still was not sure that he should be trying.

  Scal found himself wishing that one of them would fall. Truly, it did not matter who. Yet Modatho was still there, following slow. Praying. Desperate as they walked, more desperate when the sun fell. Some men clung to life, clutched it hard. Too scared it might slip away. Some men feared what might come after.

  “Parents be praised,” Modatho rasped all sudden, and the fear was melted from his voice. Scal lifted his eyes from the snow covering the ground. Ribbons, red and yellow, were hung against the sky, dancing in the wind.

  A village. Scal knew it, even from the distance. Berring. Fiatera’s last extended finger before the wild North laid claim to the land. He had been there before, in his fourth life, stood at the village’s outer edge and stared back into the cold breath of the snows that had birthed him. Before Joros had made him, he had never dared step into the village. It had not been cowardice. It was not cowardice to be afraid of a thing worth fearing.

  The ribbons flew, and the sound of song reached them over the ice. That made it midwinter, or near to it. The year’s longest night, and all across Fiatera the people would be celebrating. Centuries ago, it had been on the longest night that the Parents had cast down their headstrong children. The day was remembered and celebrated. And, too, the people of Fiatera showed their own strength: they fought back against the lowering dark, shining their lights through the long night.

  Modatho broke into a ragged run. Slower, Scal followed.

  Berring was in the midst of celebration when they stepped between the first of the few huts. Modatho led, his hands clutched over his chest, around the flamedisk hung there. Joy swelled when the villagers caught sight of the parro. The celebration reached out a hand to draw him in, cheering and prayers of thanks. They would not likely have a true priest here. Only an old man or woman who was good at telling the old stories. The few dozen families of Berring were grateful beyond telling for a priest, and on solstice night no less.

  After a time they saw Scal, and their joy dimmed. They would be used to seeing Northmen. It was not a thing they could avoid, living at the edge of the snow. But mistrust ran strong as a current beneath ice. It was a current he had swum wide around before, for Scal had heard tales. Berring was not kind to Northmen, who so often raided their homes. Berring was certainly not kind to a single Northman, and Scal, too, bore the convict’s cross, though on the wrong cheek.

  “My friend has brought me safely here!” Modatho rasped. Generous, in his salvation. “He’s a true follower of the Parents, and surely blessed by their hand for his actions! He—he is the brother of my heart!”

  The village swelled once more, voices raised, cheering. They surged forward, mouths wide, eyes bright with fire. Instinct put Scal’s hand to his shoulder, but there was no sword there. The villagers swallowed him, bearing him forward with happy hands. Their joy was a ringing between his ears. Their smiles caught on his face, and stuck.

  Food, enough to fill the hungry nights wandering the snows. Enough to fill all the hungry nights of all his lives. Drink, to make his head light and his laughter ring. Prayer, long prayer and heartfelt, Modatho leading with tears bright on his cold-red cheeks and all the other voices rising to join. Lanterns burned, and candles, and children ran with twists of blazing straw until the flames tickled their fingers, screeching with delight as they dropped the fire to melt hollows into the snow. They sang all the longest night, among dancing points of light like fallen stars.

  Scal had sought to make something different of his fifth life, to let it begin where the second had ended. To wipe away the stains of his hard third life, his bloody fourth. To be a good man, who followed the whispered words of a dead priest. Who let himself be guided by the Parents’ fire and not the cold ice. To be the kind of man to bring a smile to that dead priest’s face. To accept absolution from the forgiving Parents and live his life in their hands. To be more than the man he had been made
into.

  He had thought that working in Aardanel for the rest of his days would be the way. It was what his life would have been, if not for Iveran. It was the life he should have had. But that was not a true thing. He would have left Aardanel with Brennon when they were old enough. Walked slow through the snows and the ice, with nothing but themselves. Stumbled into Berring and been greeted by the villagers. Feasted, and drunk, and celebrated the new lives they had bought for themselves, paid with strife and toil and bravery.

  Scal looked at Modatho, who had stood at his side as Scal sought to remake the paths of his missed and wasted lives. He had named Scal “brother.” Always the snows took, without mercy, but for all they took they gave in equal measure.

  At length the sun beat back the darkness, reaching light like spears through the black. There was a great cheer, tired but triumphant. They had seen the night through. Lived the long dark and come out its other side. A woman touched Scal’s arm, and her child put his small hand into Scal’s. They led him to their home, where her husband was building up a fire. Scal slept on the hearth, wrapped around himself, warm for the first time in a very long time.

  When the village woke again there was more celebrating. Three days, in the middle of winter, given over to rejoicing in the Parents’ triumph over the Twins. On this, the last of three days, there was a frenzy to the air. When the sun rose again, things would be as they had been before, and Scal did not need to be told that life in Berring was not easy. So they took joy while joy could be taken, and Scal with them. He sang, in a voice that was not suited to it, and prayed, and carried shrieking children on his broad shoulders. They fit there better than his sword ever had.

  It was during a prayer led by a joyous Modatho, all others on their knees with heads bent and fists pressed to foreheads, that a weight slammed against Scal’s shoulder. He tumbled to the packed snow, surprised. He was a large man, and not easy to move. Not even caught unawares.