The Bones of the Earth

by Rachel Dunne

  The man looked startled, and then he laughed. “If I’d seen a priestess, I’d’ve sent the blasted Parents a nice warm fire.”

  There was a woman in plainclothes, kind-faced, carrying a basket half her size full of warm bread. She went from person to person, the basket held out in offering, always a smile or a murmured word. Scal stopped her with a hand gentle upon her slim arm. “Have you seen a priestess?” he asked her, and her face changed. The smile falling into a frown, kind eyes looking him over with a deep suspicion, and he felt the muscles of her arm go tense. He moved away from her quickly, not knowing if he feared more her answer or the cry she might raise. He did not ask any others. He had only his own eyes, searching, always searching.

  The silent call rolled down the ranks, bodies rising, feet stepping. The rest was over. So much ground, still, to cover. The plainclothed fled to the back, and Scal was left amid a sea of black. He moved through it, like a stick floating atop the slow-moving tide, a part of yet separate. He did not pass unnoticed here. Some of the eyes were curious, some hard. Still, he passed untouched.

  And then the black sea changed. There was a line of big men, as big almost as Scal, who did not wear robes. They wore black leather, black chain mail, armor dyed and painted, and their scabbards and shields were the same color. Fighters, all, but no less a part of the black sea. Scal stayed back from them, and watched. They questioned those who tried to pass through their line, turned away many. He did not think they would let him pass.

  After night had fallen again and the column had stopped once more to rest, Scal stepped out of the sea. He went deeper into the trees, carving his own path beside theirs. It had been too long since he had slept, but a man could do much before his body would force him to sleep. Scal turned again to face the still black sea, and he did not leave the shelter of the trees, but his eyes searched.

  Forward, ever forward, past three giant carts, past the ranks of Fallen thick as fur, past the scattered black-armored swordsmen. The sky lightened, stretched shadows across the carpet of breathing shadows. They did not see him, any of them.

  Finally he saw. An uneven circle of red, dotted throughout with yellow like the heart of a flame. He knew the shape of her, even from so far away. Dim and dirty, but she was a single point of brightness amid the sea of black.

  Scal sat among the trees, and he watched. There were more swordsmen than he had thought. Working in shifts, taking turns to sleep. Spread, he imagined, in a broad circle surrounding the head of the great sea, the mighty of the Fallen. Guarding the Fallen leaders, guarding their captive parros and merras. There was no more than three lengths between any of the swordsmen, no unguarded gap through which he could slip. Even if he could, in his plain and dirty clothes, he would stand out. He could not get to her, not yet.

  At length they all rose, the Fallen stretching, yawning, laughing. He watched Vatri pulled to her feet. Her scarred face was expressionless as a mask, but Scal knew the shape of it. Knew the small signs, the things that others would not see. He searched the curves and folds and ridges of her face for fear, for pain, for abuse. He saw none. Only calm. Only peace.

  Scal stayed among the trees as they began to move once more. All the Fallen, the mighty rippling tide of the black sea. The three great carts, pulled by thirty men each, carrying strange-shaped things covered over with great pieces of black cloth. The stern line of black-clad swordsmen, marking where the head of the group ended and the milling body began.

  Scal stood, but stayed still.

  A black-robed man broke away from the sea, drifting into the trees to piss. Scal trailed after him, quiet as a breath.

  The man stopped near a tree. Whistling to himself as he untied his breeches. Muttering curses against the cold. Scal stood behind him, silent, looming. He knew the odds were small, as small as finding one certain grain of sand on a beach, but perhaps this had been one of the men who had taken Vatri. He did not think it was true, but it would be easier if he was.

  Scal did not have a sword or a knife. He had never needed tools to kill. It was a thing of hands, blood against blood. Tools only made it easier. His hands rose silent, reaching to wrap around the man’s neck.

  He wondered, if the man were to turn then, if he would look like Herrit. If his eyes would squint to see anything that was not scribbles on the page of a book.

  The man fell bonelessly. Scal knew the place to put his fist, to stun only. It was very near to the place a fist should hit, if a man wished to kill. When Scal rolled the man onto his back, his even breaths clouded the air. He did not look like Herrit.

  Scal stripped away the man’s black robe. It was too small, stretching tight across his shoulders, showing his wrists and his calves, but it would do.

  Before he left, Scal stared down at the breathing man. Perhaps he had been one who had taken Vatri. There was no knowing. But his people had taken Vatri. The Fallen were the enemy. It would do the world no harm to have one less black drop among the sea.

  When Scal left the trees, he did not look back. Did not look at the man, who sat propped with his back to the tree. The ground was cold, and Scal had taken his meager cover, and he would sleep for a good while. Not being left to lie entirely on the ground might keep him from freezing before he woke.

  Scal pulled the black hood up over his head. Hiding his pale hair, hiding the scars that crossed his face. Hiding all the things that burned in his eyes. He stepped from the trees, stepped into the tide of the Fallen, and none noticed him. He was a drop, only, in the great black sea. He would watch, and he would wait.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It was warmer, at least, and that was about the best Rora could say.

  She’d gotten good at sneaking in her years living in the Canals, and she’d gotten even better at it when she’d started learning from Tare and the other knives. She could pick the pockets of any of the city guard, and she could follow a man, step for step, through his own home and never be seen.

  This was a different kind of sneaking, though, and it was a damned boring kind. The sort of sneaking where all they had to do was stay close enough to the column that they could hear the people, and far enough back that they wouldn’t be seen. Apart from the “not being seen,” the whole thing was a lot like walking through a forest with her brother and some people she didn’t like.

  She’d tried to convince them they needed more help, more bodies, more’n just her daggers to keep them safe—hoping, silently, that they could go back to Tare and Sharra, so she could explain everything that’d happened, and apologize till her tongue fell out. It was true, too, that there was probably fighting to come, and Rora didn’t fancy her chances against all the black-robes. But Joros’d said there was no time, that for as long as it’d take to go get more fists and knives, the damage’d already be done. So it was just her to keep them safe, and wondering sometimes if she cared enough not to just let ’em get killed on their own. If it wasn’t for her brother, maybe she would’ve—but even Aro was making her feel all kinds of stabby.

  Every once in a while, just to do something different’n walking with the bastards, Rora would ghost up through the trees toward the long column, walking along at the edges, unseen. She couldn’t see far through the trees, but it wasn’t hard to tell there was a whole shitload of people, stretching on ahead for forever. She climbed a tree once, tallest tree she could find, and got nearly all the way up to its swaying top, and even that high up she couldn’t see where the column started. She did see, though, the three huge carts getting pulled real awkward through the trees, taking a whole lot of people even to pull ’em, not to mention what it took to get them through and around the trees.

  She mentioned those carts to Joros, and his face got like a storm. “They found them,” he said, like that was supposed to make any sense. She still hated talking to the witch, and he was usually busy with Aro anyway, but she dropped back to ask him about the carts, too, and his face got pale. “Fratarro,” he whispered. “Or pieces of him. Flung to the far horiz
ons . . .”

  “I could burn them,” she suggested to Joros later when they’d set up camp. “Sneak in and burn ’em just like we did that hand, and no one’d see me—”

  “They would,” Joros interrupted. “Their ranks will be crawling with mages, and even if, somehow, you managed to make it past them, the limbs will be too heavily guarded. They won’t risk anything happening to them, and they’d kill you without a thought. I can’t take that chance. Not now.”

  The man was looking more frazzled by the day, and it probably didn’t help that his hair, which’d been half burned off before he’d found her and Aro, was starting to grow back but patchy, making him look crazier’n the witch acted. The merra leaving had, for some weird reason, made the cappo worried instead of acting like it was the thing he’d been hoping for ever since he’d met her. It didn’t make any kind of sense, and Rora couldn’t crack the puzzle since he spent most of his time quiet and brooding, ignoring the rest of the world. Maybe he was trying to figure a new plan, or maybe he was making up kids’ rhymes—there wasn’t any telling with him.

  For all that Joros was silent, his witch’d taken up talking like it was his sacred duty. You couldn’t get him to shut up, ever since they’d come out of that damned mountain. She guessed it had to do with the foul black stuff Joros still thought he was taking, but Rora’d watched him burn it, and burn the second jar Joros’d given him, too. Good for him and all, being a better person, but the bastard’d still got her people killed, and now he was trying to corrupt her brother on top of it.

  It hadn’t been more’n a day out, soon as the witch could walk without limping, when he’d turned to Aro and with his face all solemn, he’d said, “You’ll have to learn.”

  Aro’d looked back at him with a mix of fear and excitement in his eyes, but Rora’d spoke before he could. “No. He’s not a witch. Just leave him alone.”

  Anddyr had frowned at her like she was speaking a different tongue. “He is a mage, Rora. You saw what he did. His powers are manifesting—atypically, to be sure, and I’ll admit I’m excited to study him more closely, but there’s no doubting he’s a mage. I think you’ve probably known that for a long—”

  She’d slammed him against a tree at that, hoping she could rebreak some of the bones his magic had knitted back together. It took her standing on her toes but she got her forearm pressed across his throat, and not gently neither. He gaped at her like a bulge-eyed fish but she’d snarled at him, “He’s not a witch.” She’d dropped her arm, but only to punch him in the gut for good measure, and then she’d turned to her good-for-nothing brother and shoved him, hard, away from the witch. “You fecking stay away from him, hear?” she said to Aro, but really that was for both of ’em.

  Joros’d watched it like they were just some weird-colored birds, different’n he expected but not all that interesting when it came to it.

  They’d listened to her for a while, Aro sulking, the witch going back to talking only to himself and sinking into one of his crazy storms, crawling around between the trees like he was looking for something and laughing over every leaf he found. But she’d woken up one day to find them huddled together, and the second after her fist knocked the witch over, she’d seen the fire dancing in Aro’s cupped palms.

  It’d taken Aro and Joros both to pull her off the witch, because she was damned determined to kill him, and it’d taken Joros’s fist on her own face to get her to stop fighting—Joros could throw a damn good punch, she’d give him that, one that’d made her body go to rags while her head spun.

  “He has to learn,” Anddyr’d said, spitting blood.

  “Like hells he does,” she’d said back, spitting spit.

  “It will kill him if he doesn’t.”

  And that’d given Rora a second of doubt. For all that the witch was a useless bastard, he usually wasn’t a liar.

  “It’s a wonder it hasn’t already. It needs to be controlled or locked away, or else it will consume him. Literally, Rora. He’ll burn.”

  “Shut your mouth,” she’d said, but without near as much of the confidence. Maybe it was because of the leftover spins from Joros’s punch, but she didn’t want to strangle the witch quite as much.

  “It’s true. I’ve seen it. They make us see it. It always happens somewhere, a child who tries to hide his fledgling powers, parents who don’t want to lose their only child. The masters take us to see the results if we . . . if we try to run.” He looked at her, but more like through her, like he was seeing some other person. “I was homesick. I wanted to see my parents, my sisters. I thought I could be gone and back before anyone noticed, but the masters always know. They took me the next day, to see what happens when a mage doesn’t learn control.” His eyes refocused, fixed back on her. “You’ve seen it, too. The night we found you. The whole village, destroyed . . .”

  “And you,” she said, “a trained witch, you did that.”

  “Trained, yes, but I was not in control of myself then. I . . . I was weak.” His eyes were big and half-crazed, but he held her gaze like he usually didn’t. “I am better now. Getting better. And Aro needs my help.”

  “We don’t need anything from you.”

  “Who says you get to choose?” Aro burst out all sudden, and it was so unexpected Rora could only stare at him. “It’s my life. I believe Anddyr when he says this could kill me because I can feel it, Rora. You don’t know what it’s like. I feel like water over a fire, and I could boil over any minute. How would you feel then, huh? If I died because you’re too stubborn?”

  “You’re not dying!” She shouted it like saying it the loudest would make it truest, and Joros’s fingers dug into her shoulder in warning. They were still sneaking, after all, still staying hidden, unknown to the column not so far ahead. She ground her teeth and then said quieter but just as fierce, “You’re not dying.”

  “But what if I am?” Aro had his soft eyes on, the look like he was a sad little puppy that just needed saving and petting and love. “Isn’t it worth learning a bit, just in case?”

  “No,” she’d said, and she’d stomped off and done some sulking of her own. She’d glared at them every time, over the next days, each time Aro and Anddyr huddled together, the witch teaching her brother how to flick his fingers and mutter. Rora would’ve never guessed she’d miss it, but she almost wished the merra was there to start screeching, “Abomination!”

  Hard as it was to believe, those were actually the good times, when Aro and the witch put their heads together to mutter and flutter their fingers. Anddyr was changed since they’d come out of the mountain, and he was a lot like a normal person most of the time . . . but then one of his storms would hit, and he’d screech and rave and claw at his own skin, try to run away like he was being chased by monsters, fall to pieces if any of them tried to touch him. Sometimes the best they could do was sit and wait for it to pass, sitting in a loose circle around the witch, Aro with his hands up and his lips always moving and quiet tears on his cheeks as the witch pounded and clawed at the invisible bubble he’d taught Aro to make. “It should be the first thing you learn,” Rora’d heard the witch say, all grim, “because you’re going to need to use it.” She hadn’t really thought it was necessary at first—they could’ve pinned him down just as well with their own hands, and maybe kept him from hurting himself when he was at his maddest. But then he started trying to throw fire and lightning at them, and she was glad for the shield. She got to hoping her brother was learning well and learning fast, because there was no part of her that wanted to find out what’d happen if one of the witch’s storms lasted longer’n her brother could hold up the shield. If Joros noticed the ways his witch was acting different, he didn’t say anything—his eyes were always fixed ahead, or staring like he was trying to see through the trees, trying to see all the black-robes he’d turned against.

  Rora took to doing even more scouting, mostly because if she didn’t see her brother learning magic, she could pretend it wasn’t happening. Not that t
here was much to scout, just the endless column of people trudging through the trees. The people near the back looked like common folk—farmers and cooks and craftsmen—and there were a good chunk of them not even wearing black robes. Just normal people caught up by a moving group, most like. This many black-robes, they’d need plenty of bodies just to keep ’em fed and clean and clothed. She ranged farther up, seeing how it got to be more black-robes the closer she got to the head of the column. She didn’t know how far ahead the head was, but it had to end somewhere, and if the pattern held it’d probably be thick with black-robes like mayflies up front.

  And then Rora near ran out of trees to hide in.

  It wasn’t that they ended all sudden, like the trees had in the North—it was mostly that she’d stopped paying good enough attention, which was a fool thing to do and like to get her killed. She ghosted back a bit, into a nice thicket of trees, and then she shimmied on up one of ’em. From higher up, she could see the forest dribbling away to brush and tall grass, and the long column of black-robes winding through the grass like a snake. With the trees gone, though, she could finally see its head, far up but not as far as she might’ve guessed. There were still a bloody lot of the bastards, and it was going to be a lot harder to keep sneaking after ’em with only grass to hide in.

  It took her a while to make it back to the others—she’d gotten farther up than she’d thought—but she got to interrupt one of the witch’s lessons, so it wasn’t all bad. Joros listened to her with his jaw getting tighter every word, until she thought for sure his teeth would pop.

  “Couldn’t we cloak us?” Aro asked the witch, looking hopeful and proud, and then like he’d been kicked when Anddyr shook his head.

  “They have mages of their own, enough mages that one of them would likely see through any disguising we might do.”

  “So then what do we do?” Aro asked, looking between her and the witch and Joros, but no one had an answer for him. They made camp while they still had tree cover, and because there wasn’t much point in going more without a plan.