The Bone Maker

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “Good work,” he told it.

  It purred.

  She smiled again. My Jentt.

  Sidestepping the construct, he let himself into the bathroom. She washed her hands and bound her cut with clean cotton—she’d have another scar to add to her collection, a spiderweb-like array on her palm—while he filled the bath. The water came from a tank of rainwater collected at the top of the tower and traveled through pipes, warming as they passed the stove. If you wanted a hot bath, you could boil individual pots of water, but this worked well enough for a lukewarm soak. She’d stolen the idea from the guild headquarters in Cerre. They’d had far larger stoves, furnaces, that heated the water more effectively, but she was still proud of her contraption. Jentt had helped her install it a few years ago, when he’d lived for a full month.

  He undressed and submerged himself in the bath. She watched him bathe, drinking in the sight of him, which, she thought, was probably as creepy as the rag doll constructs watching him come back to life. Stopping her ogling, Kreya crossed to the window and opened the bathroom shutters.

  Outside, it was predawn gray. Lemon yellow teased at the ridges of the mountains.

  “You know I’m naked, don’t you?” Jentt asked. “What will the neighbors think?”

  “You know we have no neighbors.” She loved how easily she slipped back into saying “we.” She rolled the word around in her mind: We, we, we. Leaning out the window, she inhaled. It was perfect crisp fall air, smelling of pine.

  “The birds might be scandalized.”

  She heard water splash and knew he was climbing out of the tub. He padded across the floor, and she felt his arms wrap around her waist. “Should we scandalize them properly?” she asked.

  He laughed softly and kissed her neck.

  They made love on the bathroom floor. He didn’t say a word about the bruise on her back, but he was gentle. She loved him all the more for that.

  Outside, the sun rose.

  At sunset, they climbed to the top of the tower and leaned side by side against the water tank to watch the sun kiss the western mountains. Golden light spread over the slopes, while half the mountains were already in shadows.

  “You can’t keep doing this,” Jentt said, “especially without working talismans.”

  “I’ll get more talismans.”

  “How? You haven’t taken a commission in . . . Years? It must be years. Have you even been asked? Does anyone know you’re here, or do they all assume you’ve joined me in the great silence?”

  Kreya didn’t answer that. Instead, she leaned her head against his shoulder. The sun was staining the sky a burnt amber, and the rocks were glowing rose. “I’ll find a way.”

  “You’ll get yourself killed.”

  “Not if I’m careful.”

  “You need someone to watch your back. When I’m dead, do you speak to anyone? Anyone at all? Because I feel a hermit vibe from this tower that wasn’t there a decade ago.”

  “I haven’t hosted a dinner party in a while, if that’s what you’re asking. Last time I invited all the woodland creatures, but the squirrels trashed the library. I won’t even describe what the raccoons did.” She kept her voice light but couldn’t bring herself to look at him. It was going to happen any time now. She’d seen the weakness in him as they’d climbed the last set of stairs. His arm was limp around her.

  “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “Half the guests left in a huff because I served venison.”

  “You need to let me go.” He kissed her silver hair, and she felt his breath warm on her scalp. “Leave this place. Be around living people again.”

  “You’re living.”

  “You know this can’t last forever.”

  She knew far better than he did. But she wasn’t going to say that out loud. “All I need are enough bones, and it can last. Not forever. But enough.” She wondered if it would ever be enough, or if everyone, when they died, felt their life was too short, too fast, too unfair. Turning her head, she studied his profile. He was watching the sun spill onto the mountain ridge.

  “So we’re hoping for a natural disaster? Earthquake? Avalanche?” His voice was light, and she knew he was joking. Her Jentt would never want any harm to befall anyone.

  “Body recovery would be difficult. How about a plague?”

  He nixed that. “Chance of contagion. How about a war?”

  “Already did that.” Kreya touched his cheek. “I didn’t like what it cost me.”

  “But if we’re noncombatants this time . . .” His voice failed him as the joke ceased being funny to either of them. He swallowed. She felt his breath shudder against her.

  Gently, she said, “It’s time to go downstairs.”

  “I’d hoped—” He stopped. Tried again. “To see. The sun. Set.”

  “When you wake again, we’ll watch sunset after sunset until you’re sick of them.” She helped him to his feet. We waited too long, she thought. They stumbled toward the stairs. He fell against the doorway.

  “Open windows. Please. I want. To see it. Tonight. In case, last time.”

  Haltingly, they stumble-walked down the stairs. She guided him into the bedroom. His jaw opened and closed as if he wanted to say more, but speech had left him. With her assistance, he lay down on the bed, on top of the linen sheets. She kissed his forehead, his nose, his lips.

  She then crossed to the window and opened it.

  A drop of sun remained. Blood red on the ridgeline. Above, the sky was a fierce orange, and the rocks gleamed like bronze. “See? We didn’t miss it.” Kreya turned back to Jentt as she spoke those words.

  He lay lifeless on the bed.

  Chapter Three

  Kreya stood by the window, her back to the bed, while the rag dolls wrapped her husband in the linen sheets. The night breeze smelled sweet. Closing her eyes, she breathed it in and tried not to choke on the loneliness that burned in her throat. Her hands curled into fists.

  Behind her, the dolls murmured to one another, and Kreya wanted to scream with every cell in her body. But she didn’t. She merely stood, eyes shut, facing the window, as her constructs finished covering his body.

  Every time he died again it was harder to take. This can’t go on, she thought. Not emotionally. And not practically, since she was out of talismans. She couldn’t steal more bones without them.

  Jentt had joked, but he was right: they needed a natural disaster. Nothing else would provide both the quantity of bones she needed and enough chaos to steal them. But it was too terrible to hope for the deaths of many to save the life of one, and as badly as she missed Jentt, she couldn’t wish that fate on anyone.

  I don’t want anyone to have to feel like this.

  There had been so much loss already. She’d seen it firsthand twenty-five years ago. In the Bone War. Hundreds had died at the hands of Eklor’s grotesque army before Kreya and Jentt’s team began their final attack. We’ve already had a war in my lifetime. I’d never wish for another.

  So much death.

  So many bones, she thought.

  “Don’t think about that,” Kreya warned herself.

  It wasn’t a new idea, but it was a bad one. When she’d first started down this path to save Jentt, she’d promised herself to never consider it. She’d bring him back with bits of stolen bone from nearby villages instead—which was exactly what she’d been doing ever since she’d cracked the secret.

  But that was before she’d used up all her talismans. And before she’d nearly been caught.

  Before those bones were no longer available to her.

  She opened her eyes. The stars speckled the sky, and the mountains were full of shadows. In the war, hundreds had died, and their bodies had rotted on the plains beyond the mountains. Due to the severity of Eklor’s infraction, it was ruled illegal to venture onto the plains, even to burn the dead. The guild master supported this, both in words and in action—by funding the construction of a vast wall and assisting in supplying it wi
th armed guards, in perpetuity. Eklor had been one of their own, before “the unfortunate incident” (as the guild phrased it), or before he became a homicidal maniac (as Kreya would have put it), and Kreya suspected the guild had donated a lot of gold in the aftermath to deflect blame and assuage guilt. Also, to keep ordinary people from realizing the depths to which he’d sunk—and the full extent of the horrors that an immoral bone maker with enough skill could commit.

  They figured it out anyway, Kreya thought.

  Regardless, the law remained: it was punishable by death to cross into the so-called “forbidden zone.”

  “A bit of an on-the-nose name,” she said out loud.

  The rag dolls crooned as if they’d understood her.

  “Do you think Guild Master Lorn drops his voice an octave when he mentions it? ‘My friends, we need to guard’”—Kreya lowered her voice—“‘the forbidden zone!’ ‘Be afeared of’”—low voice again—“‘the forbidden zone!’ He absolutely says ‘afeared.’ And all his sycophants nod along and then send more soldiers to guard the dead. Asshole. Those people deserved for their ashes to rest in their own Cliffs of the Dead. Their families should have gotten proper goodbyes.” It was the guild master’s cowardice that had prevented them from having the peace they deserved.

  Which meant that the bones were still there, even after twenty-five years, waiting for her.

  She knew Jentt would agree with her about the guild master. She also knew he would hate what she was thinking about doing. He never wanted her to risk herself.

  One of the rag dolls let out a trill, to signify they’d finished rewrapping her husband. And as if the finality of that act signaled the start of a new one, Kreya made the decision to cross yet another line she’d sworn never to cross. “Sorry, Jentt. But that asshole’s cowardice might save your life. And besides, if I get myself killed, you won’t ever know.”

  Pivoting, Kreya strode past her husband’s linen-wrapped body without looking at him.

  A little voice inside whispered, This is a stupid idea. That same little voice had told her not to keep the books that let her save Jentt. It had told her not to study them, not to steal her first bone, not to pervert nature by violating the permanence of death. By now, she was an expert at ignoring it.

  What she couldn’t ignore was the fact that if she was going to cross the mountains and sneak past the guild’s soldiers over the barrier wall, she’d need power. Lots of it.

  Her first step had to be to acquire more talismans. In truth, that had to be the first step in any plan. Even if she wanted to continue stealing shards of bone from nearby villages, she’d need new talismans. If I get to the wall and chicken out, they’ll still be useful, she thought, climbing the stairs to the library.

  Crossing to her desk, she checked her stash of gold: pathetic.

  “Can’t buy them.” Besides, even if she had enough to buy from the traveling merchants that crisscrossed the mountains, the quality wouldn’t be as high as the ones she’d had—the ones made by her old friend Zera. The majority of bone wizards created talismans that only lasted for short spurts, but Zera . . . Her talismans could weather multiple uses and be used for sustained lengths of time before they cracked. She was an artist.

  Years ago, Zera had been their team’s own bone wizard, supplying them with a steady stream of talismans, culled from nearly every animal imaginable and carved with elaborate spells of her invention. She’d also been Kreya’s closest friend.

  Had been. Past tense.

  “Maybe it’s time for a reunion.”

  The bird construct whirred behind her.

  “You’ll have to keep watch over the tower while I’m gone. Keep watch over Jentt. It’ll take me a few days to reach Cerre.” Zera lived on the fifth tier of the city. Or she had. It was possible that Zera had moved. Or died. But Kreya didn’t think that was likely. “I’d have heard. Zera’s a famous hero, after all. People love to gossip about famous heroes.”

  She cringed, remembering some of the gossip from back in the day. A few of the “songs” about Kreya and Jentt had been appalling.

  Kreya hauled out her travel pack. She began to stuff it with the essentials for travel: leather-reinforced pants, underthings, climbing gear . . . only to pause, once more second-guessing herself. Visiting the city wasn’t the same as hiking across the mountains. Kneeling in front of a chest, she opened it and rifled through until she found a silken shirt and embroidered slippers, the only fancy clothes she still owned. She pulled them out and laid them on her desk, on top of the strewn papers.

  Touching the fabric, she remembered the last time she’d worn this: on a visit to the Tririan Waterfall. She and Jentt dined in the glass-globe restaurant, suspended in the middle of the falls itself, with the water cascading all around the glass. The spots that discolored the shirt were from drops of water sprayed by the falls when they’d crossed the bridge into the globe. She remembered the waiter had apologized, but she hadn’t cared. She’d been too transfixed by the way the curve of the glass and the spray of the falls caught the sunlight. It felt like being encased in a million rainbows.

  She couldn’t wear it again, not without Jentt. She put it back in the chest, along with the embroidered slippers. She’d worn those on their first wedding anniversary, before the war.

  Zera would have to take her as she was.

  If she takes me at all, Kreya thought.

  The trip to Cerre started with a trek down the mountain by switchback trails, followed by a cable car ride across the crevasse of Triault and another up the slope of Androus. She then hiked the highway of Renntak, which had been cut into the rocky side of the massive Mount Eirr. She could have hitched a ride, but that would have required talking to people, and she was in no mood for that. Better to have the company of her own mind and memories than to bear the weight of others with all their curiosity, indifference, and expectations for her behavior. She kept her coat with many pockets tight around her, acutely aware of how empty those pockets were and how useless they’d be if she ran into trouble. But the journey went smoothly, and she arrived in Cerre without incident five days after she’d left.

  The famous city was carved into the stone, with its renowned aqueducts creating its shape: arch after arch in multiple tiers, like an elaborate cake. Its people lived in houses that jutted out of the mountain, with more rooms carved into the rock—the richest in vast palaces that put the word “cave” to shame. Diamonds, rubies, and emeralds adorned nearly every building, though Kreya had heard rumors that most of the gems had been replaced with glass to fund the hobbies of the aristocrats. Regardless, it still glittered, dripping with the illusion of wealth, in the morning light.

  “Hate this place,” Kreya muttered.

  She adjusted the pack on her shoulders and trudged toward the first gate.

  Every tier had its own gate, to separate the wealthy from the riffraff. The first gate, which led to the lowest level, was only loosely guarded. Farmers, goatherders, travelers, and visitors flowed beneath the blue-painted arch while three red-clad guards watched for anyone who looked suspicious—or, more accurately, anyone who irritated the guards enough for them to stir from their cushioned benches. Kreya kept her head down and lips pressed shut.

  The number of people in the first tier made her skin crawl. It felt as if everyone were chattering at the same time, oblivious to the fact that it meant no one was listening. Shopkeepers were hawking their wares to passersby. Passersby were gabbing to one another, or else shouting at one another to move out of the way. Kids were running through the streets and splashing through the fountains without any heed for, well, anything.

  She used to love coming to the city with Zera and Jentt and watching all the people. Now she couldn’t help but look at everyone and wonder what loss they were hiding. All of it—all the rushing, all the shouting—felt tinged with frenetic desperation.

  Or maybe it’s just me, Kreya thought.

  She passed by the second gate using a false name, one of se
veral she’d used before. The guards found it in their records and let her pass. The second tier was for the middle class: merchants, academics, and artisans, for the most part. The bulk of the people of Cerre lived split between the first and second tiers.

  In the third tier were the headquarters of the guilds who ruled Vos, as well as all the institutions of higher learning. The University of Cerre and the Great Library were both in the third tier, sheathed in their gold (i.e., painted yellow) walls and diamond (i.e., studded with glass) décor, as well as the teaching hospital and the official guild headquarters of the bone workers, the glassworkers, the mechanics, the merchants, and so forth. It was calmer than the first two tiers, with fewer people clogging the streets and fewer shops for anyone to linger over. People came to the third tier purely to study and work.

  She’d spent over a year of her training in that library, reading up on the great bone makers of the past. Passing by its doors, she was tempted to go inside. She wondered if any of the librarians she remembered were still there and if they’d remember her—and if they’d remember her as the student she’d been or as the mythic (and missing) hero she had become.

  Afraid it would be the latter, she didn’t stop.

  At the fourth gate, her belongings were searched, including every pocket of her coat. She waited while they compared her face to a sketchbook that held the likeness of everyone approved for entry into the fourth tier.

  The sketch was old, but it passed, under a different false name.

  The wealthy lived in the fourth tier, and it showed.

  Kreya was able to ride a moving platform, powered by bones, to the fifth gate. The fifth and final tier held the true elites: Those with unfathomable wealth, fame, and power. The masters of the various guilds. The owners of the theaters. The heads of the financial powerhouses. And several of Vos’s most valued and beloved bone workers, such as Zera.

  This gate wasn’t a vast arch like the others. It was a single door of thick iron, with guards on either side and above it. She suspected there were other guards, archers, positioned out of sight, awaiting the signal of the gatekeepers.