“Are you asleep?”
Tiptoeing in, Zera crossed to the bed—
She halted as three shadowy shapes lurched away from the walls. They were murmuring wordlessly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement on the rafters above: more of them, doll-like monstrosities made of scraps of fabric scuttling over the beams.
Sucking in air, she let out a proper bloodcurdling scream, while her hands jabbed into her pockets to find talismans. The dolls shrieked back and rushed toward her, and she heard footsteps on the stairs.
A doll latched onto her leg.
Still screaming heartily, Zera activated a strength talisman and flung the doll across the room. It smashed into the wall just as Kreya rushed through the door.
The dolls halted as soon as they saw Kreya. Clustering around the foot of the bed, they chittered at her. Kreya’s face contorted in horror as if Zera had slaughtered a child. “Did you hurt him?”
Zera glanced at the doll she’d chucked across the room. It was collapsed, motionless, on the floor. “Um . . . is self-defense an excuse? Because it attacked me first.”
But Kreya didn’t rush to the doll. Instead she ran to the bed. She examined the linens from top to bottom, feeling along them, and Zera drifted closer, keeping an eye on the freaky dolls. They hung back for now, clustered together.
The linens looked . . .
“Kreya, what’s that?”
It looked as if the linens were covering a body.
Oh no, she didn’t. “You’re making a human-size doll? Aren’t your other horrors bad enough? Are you planning on giving all your visitors heart attacks?”
“He’s no doll.” Kreya blocked Zera’s view. “And visitors aren’t welcome. Why are you here? And how did you find me?”
If it wasn’t a doll, then what? “Please tell me that’s not a dead body in your bed. Because I cannot look the other way if you’ve become a murderer.” Zera may have retired from the official hero business, but she still honored the laws of Vos. She palmed the strength talisman, readying it if she needed it again. The freaky rag dolls were still staring at her, while murmuring in their whispery voices. She’d counted at least seven.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Kreya said as she finished her examination. Apparently satisfied, she exhaled.
“I was concerned about you,” Zera said loftily. “And now I’m even more concerned. What are these atrocities, and who is that in your bed?”
“None of your concern. And I did not hear so much ‘concern’ in your voice when I came to beg, on my knees, for your help.” Kreya sucked in air as if she was about to escalate to shouting, but then she seemed to deflate. “Unless you came because you reconsidered? I still need the talismans.”
“Why?”
“I told you I can’t tell you.”
“What can you tell me? Can you answer other questions? Like why this tower? Why are you alone? Why make these horrors? Why the corpse? I have questions, Kreya, and I’m not leaving until I have answers.” She thought she would have sounded more authoritative if her voice hadn’t crept up an octave by the end of her little speech. She was hot beneath her coat, and her palm was sweating squeezing the talisman.
With a significant glance at Zera’s hand, Kreya asked, “Do you plan to fight me?”
“If necessary. But that’s not why I came. Out of consideration for our past relationship, I came to make sure you’re safe, and I will do what it takes to ensure that.”
“You’d attack me to keep me safe?”
“Okay, yes, that didn’t make sense. But you have creepy dolls! And a corpse!”
Kreya sighed. “Put the bone away, Zera.”
Zera slid the talisman back into her pocket before she even considered why—she was still in the habit of obeying Kreya’s orders, even after all this time. That was almost more unnerving than the dolls themselves, and she nearly pulled the talisman back out just to prove that she wasn’t so pliable. But the dolls hadn’t moved any closer, and she couldn’t imagine Kreya as a threat to her. She left the talisman in her pocket.
Kreya was studying her, so Zera studied her back. Her old friend had many more lines around her eyes than she’d used to, as if her skin had been crumpled like a tissue, then inexpertly smoothed—far more lines than she should have had, at her age. Hard living, she thought. Off the top of her head, Zera knew of at least three creams that could help with that.
At last, Kreya said, “If you promise not to overreact, I will show you who this is, and you will understand why I need your talismans.”
Zera drew herself up. “I never overreact.”
“You are the definition of ‘overreacting.’”
“I react the exact appropriate amount to a given situation.” Yes, she had screamed at the animated dolls, but look at them! “You must admit, we have been in some unsettling situations.”
“Like the mountain lion? Remember that?”
Of course she did. She wasn’t about to be drawn into reminiscing, though. This wasn’t a reunion. This was . . . a check-in visit, to assuage Zera’s guilt over refusing to help. I won’t let it become anything more. She was done with giving her friendship and trust to someone who was willing to disappear from her life without a backward glance.
“I never understood why it targeted Marso,” Kreya continued. “He had zero meat on his bones. If he stood still, you’d have mistaken him for another skeleton. I never saw him eat.”
Zera kept her eyes on the rag dolls. “You didn’t know? He used to carry dried venison in his pockets, instead of talismans. He nibbled as we traveled.”
“Truly? I thought he just absorbed nutrients from the air, or whatever bone readers do.”
“He couldn’t eat if he thought anyone was watching him.”
“Huh. Wonder if he ever got over that.”
“I . . .” Zera shut her mouth. She truly didn’t know. She’d kept in touch with him and Stran for the first few years after the war, but they’d drifted apart, each consumed by their own life. She’d had her business, which needed to be tended and grown. Stran had had his new family, which also needed tending and growing. And Marso . . . She didn’t know.
“You aren’t having regular lunches with them?” Kreya asked. “Then why am I the target of so much of your anger? When did you last see Stran or Marso?”
“That’s different,” Zera said. “You left!”
“I had a good reason.”
“You always have a good reason! But did you ever once consult the rest of us, to see what we thought or what we felt?” Zera was shouting again, and it felt good. The rag dolls, though, became more agitated as her voice grew louder.
She stopped herself.
All the dolls and Kreya were watching her, and she felt shivers run over her skin. She drew herself taller and wrapped her coat closer around her.
In a tight, quiet voice, Zera said, “You had to grieve—fine, I can understand that. But you abandoned us to do it. After abandoning us on the battlefield.” She hadn’t intended on unearthing the same argument they’d had in Cerre—This isn’t why I came, she thought—but Kreya still didn’t seem to understand. Or maybe she did, and didn’t know how to change. In truth, Zera wasn’t certain what she wanted Kreya to do or say to fix the way she felt. All in all, it was a very unsatisfactory way to feel. She usually knew exactly what she wanted and then got it.
“I did abandon you then, and I’m sorry. But I wasn’t grieving,” Kreya said softly.
“Of course you were. Your husband died!”
Kreya moved to the bed. Slowly, she unpinned the linen and began unwrapping the fabric from the corpse’s head. Zera inched closer, unable to help herself. The cloying scent of dried flowers only partially masked the aroma of decay. It was an unmistakable scent. Even though she hired people to process animal carcasses for her now, she had never forgotten the odor. It crept through all other scents, souring them.
Shifting in front of Zera to remove the fabric, Kreya blocked her view. And then she
stepped back. She’d only unwrapped the linen from around his head, but it was enough. Zera would have known that face anywhere. Even in death.
“Jentt.”
“Yes. I wasn’t grieving because I hadn’t yet said goodbye.”
Zera stared at him, his face ashen but oddly . . .
“He’s not very dead.”
“Oh, right now he’s very dead.”
“I mean, he looks as if he died a few days ago. Not twenty-five years ago.” She knew death, as much as she tried to surround herself with life. All the guests she encouraged, all her servants, lovers like Guine—they were to balance out the death that dominated her work, her memory, and her dreams. “Kreya, dearest, tell me: why does he look as though he just died last week? It doesn’t make sense. I saw him fall on the plains twenty-five years ago. We all did. You did.”
Kreya didn’t answer for a while. She stared at her late husband’s face. With one finger, she stroked his sunken cheek, and then she began lovingly rewrapping the linen.
“Did he or did he not die on the plains?” Zera demanded. She’d mourned him for years. Missed him. Reviewed every last second that led to his death. If he’d survived and Kreya had hidden it from her . . . from all of them . . . from the world! All of Vos had mourned the fallen hero, who had sacrificed himself for everyone. If she’d kept him secret—
“He did die that day.”
Zera exhaled. At least that bit of the past was preserved. Speaking of preservation, though . . . “How did you do it? Keep him so . . . fresh?” It was a terrible way to refer to someone they all had loved. But it was a valid question. His body wasn’t chilled, and he wasn’t submerged in formaldehyde. He should have decayed much, much more.
“I know how to bring him back.”
For once, Zera had no words.
“It took me many years to learn how. And it’s not an easy process. It requires . . . an ingredient that is not easy to come by, and so far, I have not been able to obtain it in enough quantities to sustain his life for long. But if I could, then I could bring him back permanently!” Crossing to Zera, Kreya took her hand. “That’s why I need the talismans. So I can use them to obtain what I need.”
Zera felt . . . She didn’t know how she felt. As if the world had tilted, sliding everything to the side. Such a thing shouldn’t have been possible. She’d never heard of it. A bone maker’s power was to animate the inanimate. It created a false semblance of life. Never life itself. But here was Jentt, with a face only a few days dead, as proof. “What do you need? What ingredient could possibly work such a miracle?”
Kreya took so long to answer that Zera thought she wasn’t going to. But then she did.
“Human bone.”
“Excuse me.”
Zera made it as far as the stairwell before she vomited. Hand against the grimy wall, she knelt and emptied her stomach. When she finished, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. She rose shakily.
She sensed Kreya hovering behind her. “Tea?”
Her mouth tasted as vile as what Kreya had done. It was unthinkable, a crime against man and nature, a perversion of the natural order. Everything they’d been taught, everything they’d believed, everything they’d fought for . . .
“You’ve become a monster,” Zera spat.
“I know,” Kreya said calmly. “Come upstairs and have some tea.”
Looking at Kreya, she saw Eklor’s army of atrocities and the plain littered with the dead and the dying . . . It was Eklor’s arrogance and his willingness to violate the laws of both nature and Vos that had led to the Bone War. “He used human bone.”
“I’m not him.”
“But you’ve crossed the same line he did. You’ve become the very horror we all fought against. The very horror that Jentt died to defeat.”
“For very different reasons.”
“You’ll be burned to death,” Zera said.
“Someday, yes. But not today. Unless you wield the torch.”
Zera wondered if it was going to come to that and wished wholeheartedly that she’d stayed cocooned in her lovely human-corpse-free palace in Cerre. Casually putting her hand back in the pocket with the strength talisman, she said, “Explain to me why I shouldn’t.”
Chapter Five
Kreya guided Zera upstairs. She kept her voice soft and calm, even though the fear of what Zera was going to do or say was enough to choke her. “A nice cup of tea will help.”
“Will it really?” Her voice had a note of hysteria. “Because it won’t erase the sight of your not-so-recently-deceased husband. Or the knowledge that you’ve done what’s forbidden.”
She had a point. “It will settle your stomach and clean your mouth.” Lightly, Kreya added, “Your breath right now is worse than a wild boar’s.”
When Zera didn’t even display a flicker of annoyance at that insult, Kreya felt her nerves ramp up. She didn’t let it show, though. Entering the library, she led Zera around the stacks of books and across the threadbare carpet. She knocked a pile of blankets off the one cushioned chair.
Zera sat, which Kreya thought was at least better than her running out of the tower screaming. Or burning it all down.
Kreya crossed the library to the fireplace. She’d had a low fire going already, and the kettle had water. She hung the kettle over the fire, just above the flame. Her hands were shaking, and she tried to hide it as she busied herself searching for a clean cup.
She located one without chips, but it wasn’t entirely clean. She contemplated taking it down to the sink, but that would require leaving Zera alone. Not going to risk that, she thought. Instead, Kreya wiped the cup with a stray towel that smelled of mildew and hoped Zera was too distraught to notice.
“It’s my duty to stop you,” Zera said.
Locating a canister of tea leaves, Kreya opened the top and sniffed it. “It isn’t.”
“Decency demands it.”
“It doesn’t.” She scooped dried leaves into the cup.
“The law demands it.”
She located a spoon and checked it for cleanliness. Close enough.
“There are lines we do not cross, Kreya, and for good reason. Bone readers—if they try to twist the truth of what they see, it drives them mad. Bone wizards—if we carve talismans that affect the mind, it’s a straight path to prison. And bone makers . . . You saw what Eklor made, how he twisted your art. Using human bone. There’s a reason it’s forbidden.”
At least Zera was still sitting. Kreya tried to formulate the correct arguments. It had been a long time since she’d spoken to anyone but Jentt, and even longer since she’d had to explain herself to anyone. “When I first realized what was required for the spell to work, I reacted the same way you did.”
“I’m so glad. At what point did you change from a reasonable reaction to ‘I’m going to commit an atrocity’?”
“When I realized that the spell worked.”
The kettle whistled, and Kreya removed it from the heat, poured the boiling water into the teacup, and carried it to Zera. She couldn’t hide her shaking hands as she gave it to her. Zera studied her. “I see fear, Kreya. You know what you’re doing is wrong.”
“I know what I’m doing is dangerous. So yes, I am afraid.”
“Afraid of me?”
“Afraid of failure.”
Zera sipped the tea and grimaced.
Kreya retrieved a small pot of honey from a dusty table, beside a pile of scrolls. She added a dollop of honey to Zera’s cup and then took a breath and said, “Would you like it if I said I’m afraid of you? You could save me or destroy me.”
So far, Zera hadn’t moved from her chair, but Kreya was aware of how much power her old friend had tucked into her coat. Without talismans of her own, Kreya had little defense. Her run-down contraptions were no match for a bone wizard at the height of her strength.
Zera stirred her tea. “Have you been murdering people? For their bones?”
“What? No!”
“I
t’s not so shocking a question, Kreya, considering what you’re doing. So you’re stealing them, then.”
“I never had any involvement in their deaths.” What kind of person did Zera take her for? She still had a moral compass, though she was aware she had fudged certain boundaries. Still . . . she was no murderer!
For one thing, Jentt never would have stood for it.
“I swear, I haven’t changed that much,” Kreya insisted.
“Except for the fact you’re a thief now,” Zera said. “That’s a new hobby for you. Or should I say ‘profession’?”
“And what about you? You’ve taken up a career as a decadent profligate. What happened to the Zera who wanted to make the world a better place for all? Do you ever even leave the fifth tier?” Kreya remembered Zera used to talk derisively about bone wizards only interested in amassing wealth. She’d said she wanted power and wealth so she could use her influence for good. How much good was she doing, surrounded by her fake waterfalls and fake lovers?
“I’m here, aren’t I? Though that was an obvious mistake.”
“Clearly a mistake,” Kreya agreed. “I didn’t invite you to come and judge me. I asked you to help me.”
“Help you break the law?”
“Help me save a friend.”
They glared at each other.
Kreya broke the stare first. “I don’t enjoy stealing bones. That’s why I wanted . . . I have a plan. One that will hurt no one. And one that will bring Jentt back for good. But I can’t do it without enough talismans.”
“What plan?”
Kreya hesitated again, just as she had in Cerre, weighing the risks. Zera had already seen Jentt. How much worse if she knew it all? Perhaps more damning, it wasn’t as if Kreya had a chance of executing her plan without Zera’s help. She looked her friend in the eyes and hoped the term “friend” still applied.
“There are human bones unburied and unburned beyond the mountains. On the plain.”
Zera shot to her feet, dropping her teacup.
The cup shattered. Tea splashed onto the carpet, Zera’s hem, and a stack of books. Kreya didn’t move. By the window, her bone-bird construct whirred anxiously. She knew her dolls would be in the stairwell, listening, ready if she needed them. She also knew they wouldn’t be enough if this went sour. Zera’s coat had many pockets.
The Bone Maker Page 6