The Bone Palace

by Downum, Amanda

Savedra realized she was gaping, and took a gulp of brandy to cover it. Liquor seared her throat and sinuses and brought tears to her eyes. Ashlin sipped her own drink, lips twitching with amusement.

  Iancu’s dark eyes flickered as he studied them both, but it took more than aliases and disguises to dent his discretion. “Dinner will be late, I’m afraid. Many of the staff are helping with the pomegranate harvest, and we didn’t expect guests.”

  “That’s all right,” Savedra said, even as the brandy lined her empty stomach with heat. “We came to use the library. May we?” Asking permission was merely a courtesy, but Nadesda had trained her in politeness as well as poisons.

  “Of course,” Iancu replied in kind, collecting their empty glasses and returning them to the tray.

  He led them through the back of the house, pointing out useful rooms and stairs to Ashlin as they passed. It wasn’t the grand tour, but still meant to impress—the route took them through the great family room, lined with paintings and statues and costly heirlooms. Ashlin made appropriately admiring noises. The rear doors opened onto the columned porch and into the gardens. The space behind the house had been carved out of the hillside, and above the high walls a dark slope of trees brooded. It unnerved some of her cousins, but Savedra had always found the forest’s weight reassuring.

  Beyond the garden’s lavender-lined paths and trellised arches rose the library, imported red sandstone glowing incarnadine in the dying light. High windows shone amid the intricate redents. The main house was arched and columned and sprawling in classical Selafaïn tradition, but the library had been built years later as a wedding gift by an archon for his southern bride, crowned with ogival lotus-shaped towers in the ancient Sindhaïn style.

  “I’m glad you’ve come,” Iancu said as they climbed the broad red steps. “No one has visited the library in months, since Lord Varis and his friend were here. Your generation has no sense of history.”

  An old jibe, long become a joke, but Savedra didn’t rise to it this time. “When was Uncle Varis here?” she asked instead, trying to keep the sharp interest from her voice.

  “Four months ago, it must have been. At the end of Janus. He came without warning as well—clearly he has been a bad influence on you after all.”

  “And which friend did he bring?” She used the same carefully bland inflection he had.

  “I don’t know.” He paused at the top of the steps to sort through his keys, and the playfulness drained slowly from his voice. “She was hooded and cloaked the whole time, and offered no name. We’re all used to Lord Varis’s assignations, of course, but this one… I didn’t like her. She was a witch, I think. Not one of your Arcanost scholars, but a proper vrajitora. I even thought I heard a bit of the eastern mountains in her voice.”

  Iancu’s parents had crossed the mountains from Sarkany decades ago, and not survived long after settling in Arachne. Their orphaned son had eventually been adopted by a housekeeper at Evharis and risen high in the family’s confidences, but the wild lands east of the Varagas were in his blood. He’d kept Savedra up at night with stories of hungry wolves and bloodthirsty spirits and great smoldering wyrms who laired in the mountains by the Zaratan Sea. But there was no hint of exaggeration in his tone now.

  Savedra’s stomach chilled. “Do you remember what they looked at? I need to see it.”

  Iancu frowned as the brassbound door swung open. “I do. But you put me in an awkward position, milady. Lord Varis didn’t swear me to secrecy, but no member of this family should ever have to. Gossip is one thing, but it isn’t my place to betray a confidence, intentional or otherwise.”

  Savedra pressed her tongue between her teeth, biting back a hasty reply. Only her mother might blithely order Iancu in matters such as this. Even if Ashlin revealed herself, the word of an Alexios, princess or not, meant nothing to the steward of Evharis. There were already Severoi who thought Savedra a traitor to the House, though Nadesda’s approbation kept their tongues in check.

  The last rind of sun slipped behind the mountains, and the light cooled and greyed. Somewhere in the garden a cricket began a slow droning chirp.

  “Forgive me,” Iancu said, holding the door for them. “It’s not my place to keep guests standing on the front step, either.”

  They moved past him into the cool gloom of the library. Light from the high windows cast diffuse streaks across the polished tiles. The steward took a match from a table by the door and struck it—not to ignite a lamp, but a spell. The flame died quickly, but light kindled in a glass globe set on the wall, then in another, spiraling upward one by one until their pale gold glow filled the tower. An extravagant sort of magic, and one that required renewing every month, but it meant that no candle or oil lamp ever endangered the library’s collection.

  Savedra was familiar with the royal palace’s library, and had seen the one in the Arcanost, and knew that both collections dwarfed this one. But the sight of the shelves lining the walls never failed to impress her. A wide marble stair spiraled around the room, its landings positioned under the windows where tables and chairs might catch the best light. Pointed arches led to the smaller domes that budded from the sides of the tower—the bindery, secure vaults, and the librarian’s rooms. The last librarian had retired over a year ago, half-blind and rheumatic, and the family had yet to appoint another. Iancu had taken up the duties, as he did with any left lying unfulfilled.

  Savedra turned back to Iancu, who lingered by the door, obviously preparing to excuse himself. “Can you tell me this, at least? Varis was researching the vrykoloi, wasn’t he? Demons and blood magic and their history in Erisín? The sorts of thing an eastern witch might be interested in.”

  The last was a blind strike, hastily cobbled together from Iancu’s old bedtime stories; she didn’t expect it to hit home. But he flinched, left hand rising in a warding gesture before he clenched it at his side again.

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” he said. “And you should be careful what you speak aloud, especially so near the mountains. But if you wish to research such things, the index is all you need.” He bowed shallowly. “If you’ll excuse me, I must see to your men, and to dinner. It should be ready within the hour.” He hesitated for a heartbeat as he turned, then squared his shoulders and stepped into the gathering dusk. The door echoed shut behind him.

  The books were missing.

  Savedra and Ashlin searched for an hour before they were certain of it—not misshelved, or set aside, but gone from the building. Demonologies, treatises on blood magic, certain family histories, and those were only the most obvious. Checking the entire catalog was a task for more than two people and one evening.

  Iancu returned just after the hour to call them to dinner, but when Savedra explained the problem he immediately joined the search. Books were not removed from the library, not even by archons, and none had been stolen in living memory. Another hour passed, revealing at least two more missing volumes, and night had settled thick and heavy against the windows. Finally Iancu collapsed in a chair, slumping with a despair Savedra had never seen in him before.

  “I can’t believe it,” he muttered against his hands. “Not of Lord Varis.”

  Savedra could hardly believe it herself. Varis respected little, certainly, but of the things he did, she would have ranked knowledge and her mother among the very highest.

  “I understand this is an unpleasant situation,” Savedra said, kneeling beside him, “and I have no desire to make it worse. But please, will you tell me everything you know about Varis’s visit? It’s important.”

  He gave her a wan smile and brushed her hair lightly as he had when she was a child. “I shouldn’t, but I will. After dinner, though, or the cooks will be even more annoyed with us.”

  Dinner was duck in pomegranate sauce with tabouli, delicious even cold, but they ate in frowning silence. Even a good bottle of Ombrian siyah did nothing to lighten the mood, though Savedra was enamored enough of the vintage that she took another bottle with them
when they retired to Iancu’s private study.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t much I can tell you,” the steward said, after activating the room’s silence. “Lord Varis came, as I said, in Janus. He was quieter than usual, perhaps, more withdrawn. I thought that had to do with his companion, since she took such care to hide her face.”

  “Do you have any idea who she was?”

  “None, though of course everyone speculated. Some thought she was just a melodramatic actress, while others decided she must be a member of a great house, one who couldn’t be seen associating with a Severos. The kitchen staff had a wager going as to whose wife she might be.”

  “Did you speak with her?”

  “Hardly at all. She was never rude, but she rarely spoke, and even more rarely to anyone but Varis. He was… solicitous of her privacy.”

  “But you didn’t like her.”

  “No.” He shook his head, pinching the long arch of his nose. “I knew it was foolish even then, but something about her made me uneasy. You think me superstitious, and perhaps that’s so, but between her accent and the nature of her studies I thought her a witch from the mountains. Not all magic is as civilized as it is in Erisín.”

  “And you never heard a name?”

  Iancu pinched his nose again, as if against a headache. “He called her my lady, and darling, but he calls the gardeners darling, so that hardly signifies. And once…” The lines on his brow deepened in thought, and Savedra was disconcerted by how old it made him look. He ought to be as timeless as the house. “I thought I heard him call her Phaedra once, or say the name. She didn’t respond to it, though, so I wasn’t certain. And it’s hardly an eastern name. I suppose I didn’t expect it to be hers.”

  It was Savedra’s turn to frown, turning her wine glass between her palms and searching for answers in the dark ripple. “I’ve heard that name recently.” It was a perfectly normal Selafaïn name, though not one that had been in fashion lately, so where… “Phaedra Severos. She wrote an essay on blood magic. I saw it mentioned in the Phoenix Codex.”

  “I don’t know of any Phaedra Severos,” Iancu said. From the steward of Evharis, it was practically a denial of her existence. “When was this essay published?”

  She shrugged. “Four sixty something. Before I was born.”

  “No sense of history,” he muttered with a fleeting smile. He set aside his glass and rose, unfolding long limbs from his chair. He removed a copy of the Codex from his great oaken desk and handed it to Savedra. “Where did you see the reference?”

  After several moments of flipping and squinting and muttering imprecations, she finally found the footnote she remembered. “ ‘On The Transfer of Magic and Consciousness via the Sanguine Humor,’ by Phaedra Severos. Published by the Arcanost in 463.”

  Iancu frowned and took the book from her. “How odd. I’ve never heard of this woman.”

  “Neither have I,” Savedra said, “but I don’t know all my cousins. Perhaps she died.”

  “Death is no reason not to exist,” he said. “Certainly not to Evharis.”

  “She might have married in, or out.” Which was still no excuse, as Iancu’s glower told her. “There must be records.”

  “Unless those are missing too.”

  * * *

  And so of course they were.

  The library’s great clepsydra dripped past midnight before Iancu finally located an intact record—the book had been taken to the bindery to be restitched, and that may have saved it. Phaedra Severos was the daughter of Ilisavet and Leonidas Severos, born in Medea in 441. Which meant that her family was a distant and apolitical branch of the Severoi and it was no wonder Savedra had never heard of them, and also that Phaedra had probably been a very talented mage to be publishing articles for the Arcanost at twenty-two. In 464 she married a minor Sarken margrave named Ferenz Darvulesti. Beyond that, she didn’t appear to exist.

  Could she have been here four months ago, helping Varis steal books? If that were the case, she appeared to have stolen all traces of herself.

  CHAPTER 9

  Isyllt’s bruised skull healed, and the ringing in her ears faded in the next few days—all the better for Kiril and the Arcanost physicians to harangue her about the poor care she took with herself. She reported to Nikos and saw the stolen goods returned quietly to the Alexios crypt. The prince praised her speed and discretion, and rewarded her from his personal coffers. The silver griffins lay in a warded box beside her bed, winking whenever she lifted the lid—not the most she’d ever been paid for her service, but the first time the money hadn’t come through Kiril and the royal accountants. She spent the first coin on a box of expensive sweets and had them delivered to Khelséa.

  The matter was closed, as far as Nikos and Kiril were concerned. Not that either of them were happy not knowing the hows and whys of the theft, or what else the wayward vrykoloi might have done before Isyllt found them, but silence and discretion were too important to risk with further inquiry and exploration. Isyllt didn’t speak of her desire to investigate Forsythia’s death, because she knew she would be refused. Her oath to the Crown allowed her the leeway to do her job as she saw fit, but a direct order from the heir couldn’t be easily ignored.

  She had other duties besides those of a Crown Investigator, as well. Her loyalty was first and always to Kiril and the Crown, but she was also an alumna of the Arcanost, and the regents believed in using their students as long and as often as they could. So in between any government work she taught necromancy and entropomancy to small advanced classes, and picked up stray lectures for the beginning courses.

  On the eighteenth of Hekate she spent the last two hours of the morning in a frigid lecture room that reeked of brine and squid. Several dozen squid lay on slabs of ice all around her, and one unlucky specimen on the dissecting table in front of her, next to knives and bowls and vials. Glass and steel and pale flesh glistened under her witchlight.

  “As I hope you’ve already learned in lyceum, squid use their ink to confuse and escape predators. Scribes, cooks, and alchemists all have different uses for it. In spellcraft, the ink is a valuable component in charms of illusion, distraction, and obfuscation.” Had she been in a happier mood, she might have dragged answers out of the students, amusing herself with their wide eyes and stammering, but her head was still tender and the stink and cold weren’t helping.

  “Squid ink can be purchased at any alchemist’s, but you never know when you may need to harvest your own.”

  Her voice carried to the top of the narrow amphitheater, over the rough susurrus of a hundred students breathing and coughing and sniffling, and the rasp of pens and charcoal against paper. Teaching wasn’t the worst profession she could imagine; had any other mage but Kiril trained her, it might have been hers. Exorcists and ghost-whisperers were eight for an obol in Erisín, but true entropomancers were rare and much coveted by the Arcanost. It might still become her profession, if she crippled herself doing something stupid. She kept her left hand—ungloved for fine control on the dissection knives—from twitching, but couldn’t stop the wry twist of her mouth.

  “The squid must be fresh,” she said, lifting her forearm-length specimen carefully by the mantle and shaking it so the spotted flesh rippled. Her magic spread through the corpse, lending shape and animation where it would otherwise be limp and gelatinous. One tentacle twitched, groping cold and wet for her fingers, and someone in the upper tier hissed in revulsion; Isyllt didn’t try to control that smile. “If the meat has turned pink or smells like a fishmonger’s gutter, throw it out.” Half the class leaned back in their seats, grimacing, while a few leaned forward. Some days her purpose was to mark those with strong stomachs and curiosities, but today she wasn’t hunting baby spies.

  “There are two places from which to extract ink—the main sac in the body, and smaller deposits behind the eyes. To reach the primary sac, pull the tentacles and head away from the body cavity—the intestines will come with them. You’re looking for a n
arrow silvery bag.” The squid came apart in her hands, easier for her than it would for the students. With the tip of a knife, she teased the brighter piece out of the gelid white guts and held it up.

  Movement at the top of the room caught her eye. There were always stragglers slipping in late, and students from the University or Lyceum trying to sneak glimpses of sorcery—rarely finding it as exciting as they hoped—but this thin, dark-clad skulker was familiar. Isyllt didn’t comment as Dahlia eased the door shut and slipped into the shadows of the farthest row, or even give the girl a second glance. The school employed runners, most of whom were children, but in theory any urchin shouldn’t be able to walk in from the street.

  “The ink can be mixed with any number of media, depending on your purpose. Linseed for writing or painting, vinegar for cooking, blood, wine, ashes, grease or oil for unguents, and so forth. For today’s purposes, we can simply puncture the sac and squeeze it into a dish.” Blue-black ink seeped under her fingernail as she did so, and the pungent ocean-smell of iodine cut through the air.

  She had the attention of the whole class, but she still felt Dahlia’s gaze, interest sharp as needles on her skin. Whatever reason had brought the girl here, curiosity held her now. Isyllt remembered being in the girl’s place all too well, and found herself standing a little straighter and brightening her witchlight.

  “Next, the ink behind the eyes. First squeeze the head to remove the beak. Perhaps I could find a volunteer?”

  After her demonstration, Isyllt summoned the students down to the floor and set them on a squid of their own. When they were engrossed with the task—or slumped in chairs breathing shallowly and trying not to vomit—she scrubbed her hands on a towel and waited by the lower door for Dahlia to join her. The girl moved soft as a mouse, not taking her eyes off the dissections in progress. Isyllt studied her torn stockings and tattered gloves out of the corner of her eye and tried not to frown.

  “You said to find you if I learned anything about Forsythia,” Dahlia murmured, her lips hardly moving. Now she looked at Isyllt, and her wide slate-blue eyes were hard and serious. “Do you still want to know?”