by Scott Hale
He passed through the foyer—two guards outside the front door, as ordered—went down the hall that led to Hex’s side of the house. The rooms attached to the hall were shut, locked up tight.
Hex has a lot of skeletons in her closet. How long will it take until you join them?
The Skeleton rounded the corner. He shook off the Black Hour’s threats. About a month back, it had stopped showing him disjointed images and started speaking in full sentences. It had developed a consciousness, or maybe it had borrowed a little of the Skeleton’s. He couldn’t say.
The Skeleton stopped. Hex’s room, or rather Hex’s jail cell, sat behind the double-locked door ahead. Except the door wasn’t double-locked. It was open. And the two of the Marrow Cabal’s finest? They were gone, too. And there was something else.
The Skeleton took a step forward and strained his non-existent ears. There was someone in the room with Hex, talking with her. He broke into a sprint, his fingers outstretched, clawed. He didn’t need a weapon to kill a thing anymore. His hands were better for it, anyway; a sword could only split a soul; with his hands, he could grab it whole.
The Skeleton burst into the room. A mountain of wasting muscle barred his path between him and Hex’s bars. It was Warren, and he was looking at the Skeleton as if he were offended he was here.
“What are you doing?” the Skeleton asked, planting his feet to stop himself from pouncing.
Hex lingered behind the bars of her cell. The strands of her blue hair were pasted to her forehead, because sickness made the best adhesive. She looked better than before, but not by much. There was a glow to her eyes, too; specks of sapphire that burned like embers. They hadn’t gone out since she’d tried to kill R’lyeh.
“Keeping watch, Bone Daddy,” Warren said. He smiled, stepped out of the Skeleton’s way. “I’m going to get some sleep.”
The Skeleton put his hand on the big man’s chest.
As if stabbed through that spot with a sword, Warren immediately stopped. His face contorted. Air caught in his throat. A seed of chaos from the Black Hour’s heart had buried itself into the big man’s brain.
“Atticus,” he said, shaking.
The Skeleton let go of Warren. Behind him, Hex backed away from the cells, so she, too, couldn’t be touched by him.
“Goodnight, Warren,” he said, having so successfully reduced the mountain of muscle to nothing more than a whimpering puddle.
Warren looked back at Hex. She gave him a half-hearted shrug and waved him on.
“I’ll be fine,” Hex said, her throat somewhere between sore and dehydrated. “Can’t do no worse to me.”
Warren nodded. He moved as if to intimidate the Skeleton, then moved past him, instead.
The Skeleton waited until they were alone. When it was clear that the coast was clear, he went to the corner of the room, grabbed a stool, and took a seat in front of Hex’s cell. King Edgar had done the same to him once, when he was locked up underneath Ghostgrave, before he let loose the flesh fiend. It felt good to be on the other side of the bars for once.
“Warren said you sent R’lyeh away,” Hex mumbled. She wandered around the cell and then sat on the edge of her bed. “That was smart.”
“Best hope we have getting Audra to come to our side,” the Skeleton said.
“Something’s taken over new management of the Children of Lacuna.” Hex leaned forward onto her knees. “It wanted me to kill her. I think it might be the same thing that took her friend—Vrana.”
“Yeah, the girl being marked made it easier to send her away. That, and she’s a Night Terror.”
“You going to tell her it’s the same Witch?”
“Maybe not.” The Skeleton shrugged. “Not until we know it is.”
Hex nodded, pinched the bridge of her nose. “What do you want, Gravedigger?”
Gravedigger? Haven’t heard that in a while.
“Come in here acting tough with Warren, and now you want to be cordial? You got me locked up. Warren said you’re saying I’m sick. What do you want?”
“See if you’re still sick.”
Cut her open, and you can find out for yourself.
The Skeleton shook off the suggestion.
Hex laughed. “Don’t you like it this way? With me out of the way?” She leaned forward, pointed her finger at his heart. “Bet your ticker is happy. Bet you two are getting real chummy nowadays.”
The Skeleton growled. He stood up, undid his cloak, and dropped it on the ground.
With a gasp, Hex said, “Atticus, it’s getting—”
“Worse?” The right side of the Skeleton’s torso, from his clavicle to the bottom of his sternum, was covered in a thick, black moss. The ribs there were gone, completely overtaken by the overgrowth. Where his heart had once been, the Black Hour’s was now suspended, its beating being what kept it afloat; a machine of perpetual and perpetually polluted energy.
“Does Mr. Haemo know?” Hex asked
“He’s not happy about it, but the blood keeps him quiet.”
“For now.”
“Until it’s time.”
“No.” Hex waved her hand. “No. We are sticking to the plan with Audra. What you and Herbert and that fucking bug are up to—”
“Then get better. Let me and mine go. I’m done being your symbol.”
“And if I don’t? What’re you going to do? Sabotage everything we’ve worked for?” Hex went to the bars, pushed her arms through them, as if daring the Skeleton to touch her. “Go, if you want to go. I can’t stop you.” She grabbed at him.
The Skeleton took a step back.
She smiled, dug her teeth into her lip. “You can’t die, Atticus. Nobody’s pulling your strings. You just like to pretend. Give you something to get good and bothered about. Hate me if you like, but when you’re with me, you’re right. When you were left alone?” She nodded at him. “You came back nothing but bones.
“Get that shit out of your chest.” Hex hit the bars and backed away. “Keep me in here until the end of the week. I need to know I can trust myself. Are your friends here?”
The Skeleton picked his cloak up off the ground. Touching it, he still could hear Blythe dying in its threads. “Soon, I expect.”
“How’s your wife and son?”
The Skeleton shook his head and said, “Seeing shepherds everywhere they look.”
“Ever figure out what they see when they see you?” Hex plopped down onto her bed. “Might be a shepherd yourself. Wouldn’t that be a son of a bitch?”
The Skeleton slipped out of the house at 3:30 AM. The two guards stationed outside it gave their usual respects. This early in the morning, Gallows was dead. Those that weren’t asleep in bed were most likely asleep at their posts. The blood lake, that final portrait of Geharra’s and Alluvia’s people, was quieted, too. All that was left were the beasts that hunted in the dark, the things they killed, and the Skeleton himself, who still couldn’t figure where he fit into the fold.
On his way to Operations, he reviewed the state of things. The Disciples of the Deep were deeply entrenched in the Heartland. Reports from his scouts in the field stated that the Disciples were co-existing with members from the Holy Order of Penance. The takeover was taking its time, but it was taking; whereas the Holy Order demanded faith, the Disciples only asked that the people watch, and listen. Miracles were being performed on a daily basis across the Heartland, from the Blasted Woodland to the foothills of Kistvaen. Generally, the miracles were always the same; some sort of feat performed with the assistance of the vermillion veins. It was a show that should’ve gotten old, but it hadn’t, because gods didn’t dull.
The Holy Order of Penance had mobilized an army, and it was now currently stationed on the western banks of the Divide. There were reports that the Mother Abbess and Holy Child himself were headed to the frontline. Whereas the Disciples of the Deep were peacefully integrating into each town and village, the Holy Order was resorting to violence to force out the invader parasites.
Last week, fifty people had been killed in Cathedra, most of whom were self-proclaimed Disciples. All signs seemed to point to war; a war Penance seemed desperate to start. Eldrus, on the other hand, wasn’t interested in taking the bait. The city-state had an army of its own, and yet it was nowhere to be found.
The strangest thing the Skeleton had read reports of were the vermillion nests scattered across the continent. They were sometimes a mile long, and looked like deadfalls, except they were teeming with vermillion veins. At first, the Skeleton had thought it was King Edgar’s new Nameless Forest coming to fruition, but the way the scouts described the scene, it sounded as if the veins weren’t growing in these places, but rupturing out of the ground, as if something was being awoken.
The Skeleton crossed the wooden platform to Operations and tore off the lock from the door. He had forgotten the key and didn’t want to go back home. Navigating the pitch-black building, bumping into what seemed like every table and chair, he finally made it to his desk at the back and dropped into his seat. He sat there a moment, gathered himself, and then lit the candle.
You can’t stand her.
“Who? Hex?” The Skeleton rummaged through the drawers for the notes from Herbert North. He had read them a thousand times over, but even still, that wasn’t enough. Everything needed to be accounted for. He wasn’t smart enough. Not yet.
Hex hates her brother so much she tortures him. She’s adopted you and yours for when he’s not around.
“What’s between her and Ichor has nothing to do with me.” He stopped looking for the notes, buried his skull into his boney palms. “I can’t be myself, not with you inside of me.”
You’re exactly what you’ve always been. Flesh makes fiends of us all.
The Skeleton ripped a dagger out of the drawer. “I’m going to cut you out.”
Then how will you save them?
“I don’t need you.”
You did back then.
“Not anymore.”
Not right now, you mean.
“You need me.”
A nice thought, isn’t it? Indulge, and I’ll show you our intentions.
“No, you won’t. You can’t show me nothing.” He pressed the dagger past his ribs, directly into the Black Hour’s heart.
Don’t be stupid. You could drop a nuclear bomb on us and we still wouldn’t flinch.
“Don’t know what that is.” The Skeleton shoved the dagger into the Black Hour’s heart, but it kept on beating.
You will, or something like it, when all else fails. Pillage the graves of cities, and see what you will see.
The doors to Operations flung open and snapped back against the walls. The Skeleton’s eyes widened as dawn crept inside the building. In the doorway, four or five cabalists stood, their weapons drawn, their hands shaking.
“Sir?” one of them called out.
The Skeleton scratched his corneas. What time was it? How long had he been speaking to the heart? He stood and stepped out from behind his desk.
“What is it?”
“There’s, uh, there’s—”
A second soldier: “Something’s coming.”
And a third: “It’s… it’s—”
Finally, the fourth blurted out, “A giant bat, sir. We’re under attack!”
The Skeleton stormed out of Operations and joined the crowd of cabalists at the edge of the platform. Across the lake, beyond the edge of Gallows and past the sentry towers, a gigantic, twenty-foot bat was tearing across the countryside, crawling on its hands at a rate of twenty or thirty miles per hour. On its back, hanging onto its blood-encrusted fur, were what appeared to be at least sixty or seventy children in school uniforms.
Over the cries of the cabalists, a buzzing could be heard. The Skeleton tore his gaze away from the sight of the feral bat and saw that Mr. Haemo was hovering above him, his skin cloak hanging looser than usual off its insect body.
“Don’t see that every day,” Mr. Haemo said. He landed beside the Skeleton, and the rest of the cabalists ran to the lower level of the platform. “What? Do I stink or something?”
“That’s Camazotz,” the Skeleton said, pointing to the bat, which was now on the outskirts of town, navigating the bloody, body-choked swamp that surrounded it. “The vampyres from the Orphanage are here to help. Do you mind sharing your blood well with the bat?”
“Share with Cammie?” The mosquito laughed. “No, not at all. Don’t think she’d give me a choice, anyway. Home girl and I go way back.”
Camazotz barreled past the guard towers. The humungous, sore-swept bat went headfirst into the blood lake and waded forward, sending wave after wave of gore like bloody baptisms onto the children on its back.
“Must be nice to finally be out of the Nameless Forest,” Mr. Haemo said.
“Must be,” the Skeleton agreed.
Camazotz stopped directly below where the Skeleton and Mr. Haemo stood. A child amongst the tens of children on her head came to their feet, waving. She was wearing a green dress with a red collar, and the slits in both of her palms were gawping.
“Hi there,” Gemma shouted to the Skeleton.
And the Skeleton nodded back.
“Nice place.” She levitated upward, off Camazotz’s head, until she was on the same level as the Skeleton. “Hope your men don’t mind us.” She extended her hand to shake the Skeleton’s, and when he went for it, she pulled it back and said with a grin, “Too slow, Old Bones.”
“Where’s the Arachne?” the Skeleton asked.
Camazotz bucked in the blood. The Orphans on its back hopped off and disappeared into the sanguine waters.
“Yeah, bad news.” Gemma floated down from the air and landed beside him and Mr. Haemo. “They went a different way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lotus convinced them to side with King Edgar. All three thousand of them.”
“Gemma.” The Skeleton made a fist. “Where are they now?”
“Good question.” She smiled, shrugged. “Headed for the Heartland, I imagine.”
CHAPTER XI
R’lyeh was literally freezing her ass off. Sitting there in the snowdrifts outside the Night Terror village of Rime, she could feel her butt cheeks hardening into two crystalline hunks. All it would take was one bad bump into something and they’d surely shatter. She looked to Elizabeth and Miranda for support, but they didn’t so much as move; they were about an hour away themselves from turning into full-blown ice sculptures.
The razor-sharp wind cut across the drift, sending wave after wave of stinging snow at them. R’lyeh pulled her furs and faerie silk cloak closer. Overhead, the sun shone brightly through a cloudless sky, and yet not even a fraction of its warmth reached them. It was bullshit.
Rime was about a quarter of a mile from where they waited. The village was a wooden sprawl of coffin-shaped buildings that had been built on (or unearthed from) the desolate plains that surrounded it. Dozens upon dozens of people moved through and out of the village, into the rickety woods behind it, or toward the tundra further still. There was a storybook quality to it; be it the wood the buildings were made out of, the fires that blazed so closely to them, or even the damn snow glittering on every rooftop. Dream-like and comforting, it called to R’lyeh’s mind the tales Mom and Dad used to read from the Old World children’s books she had liked so much.
It was obvious that the place had no problems with its obviousness. Caldera had Kistvaen to protect it, and Alluvia had the Elys to shield it; Rime, on the other hand, had the elements, and the assumption no one would be stupid enough to risk hypothermia to come all the way up here and attack it. And yet here they were—R’lyeh, Elizabeth, and Miranda—three women who took orders from a psychotic Lacunan and a walking, talking Skeleton.
When it comes to stupidity, R’lyeh thought, we probably have it in spades.
“You’re g-g-good g-g-going in alone, y-y-yeah?” Elizabeth asked.
The morning sun’s brightness flared; its light bounced off th
e snow and blinded them. Together, they moaned in pain and buried their heads into the crooks of their elbows.
“No, n-not really,” R’lyeh said, peering out from behind her arm.
“L-l-listen, we would come, but I d-d-don’t think we’re g-g-g-g-g—”
“Going?” Elizabeth teased.
“Fuck you, it’s c-cold,” Miranda snapped back. “We’re not g-g-g—”
Elizabeth snickered.
“—going to find two Lord animals nearby.” Miranda shoved Elizabeth face-first into the snow. “Cold, yeah? Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said, her face splotchy and red, the snow melting down it. “You’ll do fine, R’lyeh. These are y-your people.”
They are, aren’t they? And yet to R’lyeh, it didn’t feel that way. The snow crunched beneath her as she crawled back to the top of the snowdrift. Rime was a quarter of a mile away, but even from this distance she could say that, yeah, Elizabeth was right—these were her people. Here, a bear skull, there a seal skull; Night Terrors wearing the heads of foxes and wolves moved in packs around the woods, animals and the efforts of their foraging slung over their shoulders and across their backs. In the plains, Eels in heavy furs rooted through the snow, checking traps and for the still edible, frozen dead.
Yeah, these were her people; not people she knew, but people she was supposed to belong to. And she couldn’t have been any less excited to join them.
R’lyeh said, “Y-you sure I should g-go alone?” and shook the snow off her octopus mask. The hollowed-out cephalopod had been coated and reinforced to prevent wear, but even the cold was taking its toll on it. “Why c-can’t—” she checked the Cruel Mother’s talons, took up Vrana’s ax, “—you two sneak in? Knock s-someone out?”