The Bones of the Earth

by Rachel Dunne

  All the old man gave her was a shrug, and then he turned away, the swordsmen with him. He stopped, just as the shadows from the leaving torch started to creep back over Rora, and he said to the man with the light, “Leave them the torch. We’re not monsters after all.” There was a bracket on the wall that the torch fit into, close enough to drive the shadows from the cell but far enough away there was no hope of reaching it. It was a weird kindness, and one she didn’t trust. They did leave after that, going up the tunnel in darkness. She didn’t think it bothered ’em too much.

  Somehow, after all the time alone in the dark, being in the light with another person almost felt worse, and that was a twisty sort of feeling. Made her hate the damn black-robe even more, for messing with her thoughts. She sat against the wall, just watching the boy who hadn’t moved from near the door, standing there with his skinny arms wrapped around himself. He was dressed for the cold better’n she was, but he was already shivering hard, just staring out at the torch.

  “Kid?” Rora called soft. Her voice sounded strange—it was different, talking to someone who was trapped just like she was.

  “The torch won’t last more than an hour.” It wasn’t much more’n a whisper, but the room had that way of making every sound loud.

  Rora couldn’t think up much of a reply to that, so she tried, “The dark isn’t so bad.”

  “It is.”

  “They’ll probably be back for you before the torch dies. Hells, they’ll probably be back for you in minutes, when they realize their plan isn’t going to work.”

  “Rora,” he said, still calm and quiet, but the word sounded deeper, somehow. “Do you remember what I told you before?”

  You won’t die, so long as you hear the truth when it’s given. “Yeah.”

  “I’m not part of any plan Valrik has for you. I won’t tell you to stay here. You should run from here, as far and as fast as you can.”

  There was quiet again, as Rora tried to think of what to say to that. Kid had a way of dropping his words like stones into a calm pool, and the only thing you could do was wait until the ripples died. “That’s my plan,” she finally said. “Getting to the running’s the hard part, though.”

  “You’ll get the chance.” He finally turned to face her, big blue eyes like flecks of ice in his pale face. “When it comes . . . remember your brother.”

  She had to focus on breathing normal. “Do you know, is he in here?”

  “No.”

  “No he isn’t, or no you don’t know?”

  “No,” he just said again.

  A growl snuck between her teeth. “Lot of help you are.”

  The boy walked to lean his back against the wall across from her, so they were sitting staring at each other, both curled into tight balls. Didn’t say anything, just watched her with those too-old eyes.

  “You a far-eye?” she asked. She hadn’t meant to, but the light made her want to fill the room with words. In the dark, you could hide, stay secret and quiet.

  The boy tilted his head at that, and it almost seemed like he smiled. “I’ve never heard it called that.”

  “But you are?”

  “I . . . see more than what most people see.”

  “Oh, so you’re just a grifter.”

  “What?”

  “You read people. Make good guesses at their fears and dreams and all the things that make ’em up, and then you throw on a good voice and spout important-sounding nonsense. It’s a good trick, a good way to fleece people.”

  The smile had faded fast from his face while she’d been talking, till he looked almost pained. “It’s not like that.”

  “’Course it’s not. But I don’t blame you for it—my life’s been made up of fleecing. We all do what we have to to get by.”

  The boy looked down at his knees. “You’re not how I thought you’d be.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s few enough twins wandering around, have to make sure we’re different. Otherwise I might end up going with the wrong brother.”

  He laughed at that, a laugh like she hadn’t heard from anyone in a long time, and for the space of a laugh, he looked like a kid—happy, fearless, young. A corner of Rora’s mouth tilted up at him. There was silence again, but it wasn’t the kind of silence that begged for filling.

  “Tell me about your brother?” He asked it timid as a mouse, but his eyes still looked young, and they were full of the curiosity that poured out of kids.

  Rora sharpened her eyes at him, remembering her suspicions—that the black-robe had just left the kid here to pry for information, that the kid was trying to twist her thoughts. She could already feel it happening . . . But the boy knew her name, and he hadn’t given it to the black-robe. When she’d been a kid, Rora’d never been above a good fleecing . . . but that didn’t mean all kids were like she’d been. Etarro, even with his far-eyes, he looked innocent as anything. Still, any kid who’d known a hard life learned the right faces to make to get something . . .

  “I know trust comes hard to our kind,” the boy said, and then a big shiver rolled through him, the sudden breath out through his chattering teeth making a cloud in front of his face.

  A few years ago, when Aro’d been younger than this boy, before either of ’em had really made much of themselves with Whitedog, a hard winter had hit Mercetta sooner’n anyone’d expected. Most everyone had been caught unprepared, so that even a lot of people topside had died, and it’d been even worse in the Canals. People’d frozen to the ground, frozen into the canals, so that anywhere you walked, staring eyes in white faces followed you. They’d survived it somehow, she and Aro, but they’d spent it curled together for warmth and still shivered through it all, bone-deep shaking that made your muscles ache. Just one of the reasons she hated the cold so much.

  But the kid, Etarro, he was shivering just the way she’d been all those years ago . . . the same way Aro’d shivered inside her arms.

  Rora held out an arm. “C’mere,” she said quietly.

  The boy didn’t stand right away—he wasn’t wrong, about the trust thing. But he did stand, and he put his back to the wall next to her, and he curled under her arm. He didn’t have much warmth to him—hells, he felt cold as the stone floor, half-ice—but Rora didn’t need more warmth. She’d survive this cold; she’d survived all the other cold places that’d come before it.

  “My brother,” she said to the top of the boy’s head, “is a good kid. He . . . he still believes the world’s a good place, no matter how much it shows him it isn’t. Sometimes I wish I could be more like that . . . but most of the time, I wish he was smarter about things, wish he could see how the world really is.”

  “Wish you didn’t have to take care of him so much,” the boy said softly into her side, and Rora didn’t answer that. That wasn’t something she’d ever say . . . “My sister’s the same. She’s the strong one, she always has been. They say when we were babies, she slept from sunrise to sunset, a perfect little nocturnal thing right from the start. I cried a lot. When I was a baby, I mean. I always wished I could be strong like her, not scared of anything, even if she’s not exactly . . .”

  “Warm?” Rora suggested into the pause, but he didn’t answer. Maybe that was something he’d never say out loud either. After a while, she said, “You told me to run from this place . . . why haven’t you? Why’re you still here?”

  “I’m needed here.”

  “Something you’ve seen, huh?”

  “Yes, but . . . not how you mean. Avorra needs me. We keep each other balanced. Without me, she’d tip. Without me . . . she’d mean nothing.”

  That made Rora go quiet, ’cause it gave voice to something real similar she’d never had words for. She’d spent all her life taking care of Aro, keeping him safe, fixing his messes, cleaning up after the stupid shit he did . . . but when it came down to it, she wasn’t taking care of him for his own sake. She was taking care of him because she needed him . . . because, without him, she’d tip into something not human
.

  In the silence that fell between ’em, a silence of cold truths and dark fear, the damn torch ran out of room to burn and the whole cell went black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Keiro spent much of his time walking across the plains and the hills, his only companion young Cazi trilling in his ear. The tribe remained enthralled by Saval, which left a sour taste in Keiro’s mouth; the man had even seemed to win over Yaket, and the two would frequently sit together trading stories. Each day felt like a reminder that Keiro was no longer necessary, that there was no place for him here. Even Nerrin was often barred from him, Saval preferring to keep her at his side. “You never know when she’ll be needed,” Saval had said with the sort of smile that made Keiro’s hands curl into fists. He hated those violent feelings, and so he tried to avoid them—which meant avoiding Saval, and Nerrin by extension. He could sneak her away some nights, show her all the beautiful surprises the Plains had to offer. It was good, when he could put a smile on Nerrin’s face, when he could chase away her fears and her madness for a short time. But too often, when he tried to wake her in the deep night, she would startle awake from some nightmare and grow trapped in her own madness, convinced Keiro was a horror of some sort, and he would have to leave before her terror woke the whole tribe.

  It was easier to stay away from the tribehome, to leave them to their stories and their new preacher and the mysterious mage. He always expected to hear footsteps following—Poret’s or Yaket’s or Nerrin’s. But no one ever followed after him. Always, though, there was Cazi. The young mravigi always found him, flowing smoothly through the grass to twine his body around Keiro’s ankles. The little beast had a way of lightening Keiro’s mood, no matter how dim. He hooked his claws into Keiro’s leg and hauled his slim body up to Keiro’s shoulder. The mravigi’s claws, once small but kitten-sharp, had grown with the rest of his body and now had more power to puncture. Balanced carefully on Keiro’s shoulder, both front and back claws gripping to keep from falling, Cazi was as large as Keiro’s head. It made Keiro proud, and slightly sad, to see the mravigi growing so quickly, his scales darkening to gray.

  He continued on to the hills, idly hoping he might find Tseris and discuss Saval with her. If not, though, the hills had something of a curative property for Keiro’s mind and heart. Whether it was the palpable traces of his faith made real, or the simple fact that the hills had been so little touched by humanity, he couldn’t deny they’d become, perhaps, his favorite of the many places his feet had taken him.

  At the edge of the hills, Cazi’s significant weight abruptly launched itself from Keiro’s shoulder. That was nothing unusual—the mravigi was constantly spotting mice in the grass, or wanting to stretch his legs, or taken by sudden fancy that required his presence on the ground. What was unusual was that Cazi didn’t land on the ground. His wings, which had grown in proportion to the rest of his body, snapped out sharply and caught at the faint wind that rustled the grasses. He dipped, nearly going snout-first into the dirt, but two frantic flaps of his wings righted him. As his snout pointed instead toward the sky, wings flapping with determination, one small red eye met Keiro’s, and it was full of triumph. Cazi’s mouth opened as he rose, wings beating, and a high scream of joy ripped from his throat.

  The ground dug into Keiro’s knees; he didn’t remember falling, but he knelt, watching with his hands clutched over his mouth. A delirious laugh made it past his lips. Cazi, the only winged mravigi, some miracle Keiro hadn’t been able to crack—flying! The first Starborn to touch the sky since Patharro had wrought their destruction.

  The little mravigi was clumsy at first, dipping crazily through the air, nearly plummeting a few times—but his wings, his beautiful wings, always righted him, catching the air and sending him soaring. He grew more graceful in a short time, his form drawing circles in the air, looping and spinning, plummeting a-purpose with wings folded tight to his sides only to snap out at the last instant, skimming just above the waving grass.

  In all his life, in all his wandering, in all the marvelous things he had seen, Keiro had counted seeing the mravigi sing together on the full-moon nights as the most wondrous thing he had ever seen. But this . . . seeing Cazi fly topped that tenfold.

  He was so enthralled with watching Cazi that he didn’t see the other mravigi until they had already surrounded him. It startled Keiro badly, and another laugh burst from him. “Tseris!” he said, recognizing her among the half dozen who stood with uptilted eyes, watching Cazi soar. “Oh, Tseris, do you see him?”

  “I see him,” she said softly, her red gaze never leaving his distant shape.

  Cazi eventually returned to the earth, trying ungracefully to land on Keiro’s shoulder, his wing-flaps stirring up clouds of dust. He eventually gave up on it and fell instead into Keiro’s waiting arms. Keiro hugged the Starborn tight, laughter bubbling through him, and Cazi replied with a series of excited trills. Keiro pressed his forehead against the rough scales of Cazi’s head, feeling how the mravigi vibrated with joy.

  “Come with us, Godson,” Tseris said. “There is a thing that must be done.”

  They walked, Keiro at the center of the ring of Starborn. Cazi struggled from his arms, launching himself into the air once more to glide above their heads. Keiro watched him with a broad smile, but the other mravigi seemed to be pointedly ignoring the young one’s antics.

  When they came to a tunnel into the earth, Cazi was reluctant to leave the sky, needing to be coaxed by Keiro and, finally, by a few unwontedly harsh words from Tseris. He made a sad chirrup as they filed into the earth, Keiro and the Starborn. There was plenty of room for Cazi to fit in through the tunnel, for he was still small, not yet close to full grown, but he walked with his wings folded tightly against his sides, as though newly worried about damaging them.

  There were more Starborn gathered in the main cavern, more than Keiro usually saw at once. He guessed they had burrows beneath the earth, down the many branching tunnels they’d dug through the years, places they could stay safe and hidden. Aside from Cazi and Tseris, the other Starborn had shown no interest in Keiro, had even outright avoided him at times. He harbored no anger for that—he must be the first human they had seen in centuries, and so their distrust and uncertainty were more than understandable. Now, though, they gathered in a mass, like a sky full of glowing stars . . . as many of them as there had been on the first night Keiro had met his gods. The chamber was loud with the dry scraping sound of scaled bodies moving against each other, with the low cacophony of countless voices whispering. Beneath that, there was something strange in the air.

  The mravigi parted before Keiro and Cazi and their escorts, Tseris leading the way through the murmurs and the baleful eyes, to the far end of the chamber where Sororra and Fratarro sat, the great white Starborn lying before them. Red eyes watched their approach, the Twins awake and even Fratarro looking somber, and Straz, first of the mravigi, showing all his centuries in his eyes. Cazi quailed before their regard, or perhaps he, too, could sense the strangeness that hung in the cavern. Keiro leaned down to scoop up the young creature, cradling him against his chest. It seemed to bolster Cazi’s courage, and it bolstered Keiro’s as well.

  They stopped before Straz, before the Twins, and the other mravigi faded back so that it was only Tseris and Keiro, with Cazi in arms. As Keiro knelt, the silence that fell was sudden, and absolute.

  “Forgive me,” Tseris said to him, quietly and full of grief. “There is a thing that must be done. Already, we have waited too long. It . . . it will be harder, now. Still.” Her eyes met Keiro’s, soft and sad. “It is a thing you should see.” She stood then, her weight shifting to her back legs and long tail lashing for balance, and her powerful jaws wrapped carefully around Cazi’s neck. The young mravigi gave a startled scream as he was lifted from Keiro’s arms, and Keiro made a move to snatch him back, but something stopped his limbs like a puppet with cut strings. When he looked up, Sororra’s eyes were on him, hard and uncompromising, and h
is own stillness was written in them.

  The goddess held out a hand, broad as Keiro’s chest, and Tseris set Cazi down in her blackened palm. Her fingers held the mravigi tight, but careful, holding only tight enough that he could not flee. He tried, of course, for he was a fighter, and loathsome of being restrained. Keiro couldn’t say why, but there was a heaviness in his chest that made breathing hard.

  Sororra lifted her hand, bringing Cazi close to her face. “He is big,” she said softly, her chains clanking as her other hand lifted to tilt up the young Starborn’s chin. In the quiet of the cavern, Keiro could hear Cazi whimper.

  Tseris, returned to Keiro’s side, bowed her head. “I was moved to wait. The fault is mine.”

  Sororra glanced to her brother. “It seems . . . unkind. He has known the air.”

  Fratarro’s cheeks were wet with tears. “It is as it must be. We cannot draw our Parents’ sight. Do it. It will be hard, but it will not grow easier with waiting.”

  “As you say.” Sororra lowered her hand, bringing Cazi even with mighty Straz’s head. It felt as though her other hand were wrapped around Keiro’s chest, and his heart was like thunder in his ears. His jaw was clenched too tight to let out the scream that burst within him.

  “Forgive me,” Tseris said again, to Keiro alone. Softer, a whisper wound in grief and regret, she said, “I did warn you to stay away from him. To spare you this.”

  Sororra’s hand shifted, tightened. In the light of red eyes and the starlight glow of a hundred mravigi, Keiro saw, emerging above her curled fingers, Cazi’s wings, stretched and frantically fluttering. In an instant he saw them no more, Straz leaning forward over Sororra’s hand, and there was the smallest, saddest snap.

  The unseen hand released Keiro’s chest and he fell to his knees, a wrenching gasp of a sob tearing from his throat. When he found air once more, he released it in a cry of anguish, and another voice, high and sweet, screamed with him in agony.