The Bone Maker

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Keeping her voice calm, Kreya said, “The bones rot. Unclaimed. Unmourned. If I were to take enough of them, I’d only need to cast the spell one more time. No more thefts. No more atrocities.”

  “Until the next time a bone maker figures out this spell of yours.”

  “I plan to destroy all record of it. The knowledge of the spell will die with me, when it’s my time. All I ask is for enough talismans to get me safely into and out of the forbidden zone. And then this ends.” She managed to keep her eyes from sliding to the shelf where Eklor’s journals were hidden.

  Zera laughed, shrill. “All you ask? You want to go back to the place where . . .” Her voice faded, and her eyes looked haunted. Kreya knew she was remembering. Because she was doing the same.

  It was the smell that Kreya remembered the most. A stench of rot that filled your nose and mouth until it was all you breathed. It was so strong it seeped into your eyes and made them tear. It felt like it was permeating your skin and you’d never be clean again. You felt coated in it. Even when the memory of the screams faded, she’d still remember that smell.

  It was the same smell that lingered on Jentt now.

  “I have to.”

  Fetching a towel, Kreya mopped up the spilled tea. She gathered the shards of the cup and deposited them against a wall where she wouldn’t step on them. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Zera finger a pocket.

  What would she grab? Strength? Speed?

  She could reach Jentt’s body faster than Kreya could stop her. She could set him ablaze. Or tear him apart. Or take him away. All before Kreya could react.

  Yet she didn’t move—not yet. “It’s called the ‘forbidden zone’ for a reason.”

  “Yes, because Guild Master Lorn is terrible at naming things,” Kreya said. “With stealth and speed, I can bypass the guards and cross the wall. With strength, I can carry what I need.”

  “And if I don’t give you the talismans? What will you do then?”

  “Continue to steal from the recently dead. Until I’m caught and killed.” Which would be soon without any talismans to help her, especially with the near-disaster at Eren. Word would have spread, and the villages would be alert now.

  “Or you could stop this. You must stop this,” Zera said, more serious than Kreya had ever heard her. “Jentt is dead. You must admit the truth, burn his body, and grieve, like everyone else in Vos. It’s not healthy or right to defy nature in such a way. Life ends, and you have to let it end with respect and—”

  Kreya cut in. “He died for you.”

  Zera sat down again, hard.

  “That arrow would have hit you. He took it to save you.”

  Faintly, Zera said, “He sacrificed himself for all of Vos.”

  “Generally, yes. But specifically?”

  “Low blow, Kreya.”

  “Yet true.”

  “I’m burning him.” Zera’s fingers closed around a talisman, and Kreya leaped forward, clapping her hand over Zera’s mouth before she could say a word.

  “I can burn them all,” Kreya pleaded. “Let me have the talismans I need, let me save Jentt, and I will burn all the bones on the plain. Give them the peace they deserve. Once I cross the wall, there’s no one who will stop me. I can do what should have been done decades ago, and then live out the rest of my life with Jentt, in peace, the way we were supposed to.” She stared into Zera’s eyes, her hand still pressed against her mouth. She heard her bird-bone creature near her ankles, its gears whirring. “Then after, I’ll destroy the spell. Dismantle the dolls. Whatever you want. Name your price, and I’ll pay it. Just let me do this. Please.” She hated having to beg. But it was far better than wishing for an avalanche or a plague. This hurt no one but herself. And clinging to pride was for the young, or at least those who didn’t have their priorities straight.

  Zera opened her hand, the one holding the talisman.

  Slowly, Kreya lowered her hand from Zera’s mouth.

  “One condition,” Zera said.

  “Anything.” With exceptions, Kreya amended silently.

  “I come with you.”

  Thirty minutes later, after they’d taken care of Zera’s horse’s needs, Kreya cleared off a table in her library and spread out a map of Vos. She’d bought it off a traveler years ago, and it was one of the most accurate maps she’d ever seen—exact elevations of all the mountains, bridges and paths marked according to accessibility, and zones rated by avalanche danger. Vos stretched across multiple mountains, and they’d have to traverse six of them, as well as skirt the broadest stretch of inhospitable valley, to reach the plains. She began to trace out a route with her fingers.

  Poking her head over Kreya’s shoulder, Zera pointed to a peak. “We climb here, use a flight talisman to cross to here, repeat here and here, and we’ll be there in less than two days. Spend the night in between in”—she checked the distances by spreading her fingers—“Avioc. Oh, yes, they have a darling inn that is supposed to have delectable wildberry pie.”

  “No flying,” Kreya said. “It’s far too visible, and memorable. And certainly no inns.”

  “My overland trekking days are over, my pet. And I swore off sleeping on the ground years ago. We can afford to do this civilized.” She tapped the map with her fingernail. “I require pie before I desecrate a mass grave.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  She now remembered why she’d never let Zera plan their adventures.

  Obviously, this would have to be a stealth mission. Both of them were recognizable, even more so now than when they’d first made the trek to the plains, and they didn’t need any curious fans figuring out their destination. No flying. No inns. They’d bypass all towns, stick to the less traveled trails, and climb where they needed to. “I estimate two weeks—”

  Parroting her, Zera said, “Don’t be absurd. If you want to go overland, then I am summoning my servants to carry supplies, because I am not subjecting myself to the kind of situations I tolerated in my youth.”

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “I am not. You need me, so I set the conditions. This time, I will journey comfortably.” She paused. “I am joking about the servants, yes, but I’m not traveling by foot or even by horse, as charming as Merridia is. And I’m absolutely not sleeping on the ground. Those days are long over. I swore to myself that I would never again suffer like that.”

  “Think of it as a recreational camping trip, with hiking.”

  “You know I hate camping.”

  Yes, Kreya knew that—she remembered how much Zera had whined last time about every burnt dinner, every rock under her bedroll, every truncated night of sleep due to bugs or snakes or bears—but . . . “You’re the one who wants to come.”

  Zera smiled gaily at her. “And you’re the one who needs me.”

  “I only need your talismans. Give them to me, and you don’t have to endure any of this.”

  “This isn’t me being spoiled,” Zera said.

  Kreya snorted.

  “I’m serious. This is me being practical. If we wear ourselves out on the journey, we’ll be diminished when we arrive at the wall. I know myself well enough to know I don’t have the stamina I used to, and I would venture to guess you don’t either. You want us at our best for the difficult part? Then we do it my way.”

  That . . . actually made sense. “So what do you suggest?”

  She spread her arms theatrically. “Like I said. We fly.”

  “Huh.”

  “I have talismans.”

  “And will they keep us from being seen as we soar majestically through the air? You know there are towns and villages and farms between here and the forbidden zone. All it would take is for someone to look up.” Only a handful of people in Vos had the kind of wealth to purchase a flight talisman, and combined with the gossip undoubtedly caused by Zera’s absence from Cerre, it wouldn’t take a genius to guess their identities if they were spotted as they flew.

  “So we fly at night.”


  “You have experience with that? Controlling your trajectory at night? What’s to keep us from crashing into a mountainside we can’t see?”

  “Lights?”

  “Again, someone could look up, especially if we’re using the lights from the houses to navigate.” It was too risky. There was, however, an alternative to flight that didn’t involve either walking or horseback riding and would allow them to keep a low profile, both literally and figuratively. “Come with me.”

  Scooping up a lantern and lighting it, she led Zera downstairs, past the bedroom where Jentt lay, over the broken cleaning construct, and then down farther into the cellar. She hung the lantern on a hook on the wall and surveyed the mess.

  Beside her, Zera surveyed it too. “You live alone. You have nothing but time on your hands. And yet you live in squalor.”

  Stepping over a broken cart, Kreya tried to remember where she’d stored the old crawler. It shouldn’t be hard to find—the thing was enormous. “I have other priorities.”

  Zera picked up a shield and blew dust into the air. “This is the Shield of Lothmenan, worn in battle by the legendary . . . what’s-her-name. You know, historical legend woman. It’s priceless, and you have it leaning against a barrel of undoubtedly sour wine.” She laid the shield down and waded into the room. Opening a trunk, she peered in. “You let moths and moisture destroy masterpieces—”

  “Possessions don’t matter to me as much as they do to some people.” Maybe she should have taken better care of her belongings, but after Jentt’s death, she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to care. Later, she’d always said. Later, when she didn’t have to worry about finding more bones. Later, when Jentt was with her every day and she wasn’t consumed with fear of a permanent goodbye. After she brought him back, then she’d tackle all the tasks she’d postponed.

  “You’re trying to insult me to deflect from yourself, but I see you. This is how you express your pain, through a lack of care for yourself and your belongings.” Zera picked up a rusted scythe. Cobwebs clung to its handle.

  “Cleaning just isn’t important to me.”

  “Obviously.”

  Aha, there it was! Kreya climbed over an on-its-side wardrobe and pulled aside a carpet to reveal her prize: a crawler. Made of metal and wood, the crawler was—like everything else in the cellar—not in the best of shape. The carriage, an orb large enough to hold two passengers, was disconnected from the eight spiderlike metal legs. Seven, she corrected. One leg was missing. She began searching for it. If she could get the contraption operational again, they could take a much more direct route across the cliffs, rather than needing to follow roads. That could cut their travel time in half.

  Given the choice, Kreya would take a construct over a talisman any day. Constructs didn’t run out of power anywhere near as fast as a body could burn through a talisman. Just look at her little friend still scrubbing her stairs.

  Zera was still complaining. “I detected an odor in the tower, but I assumed it was from Jentt. If it’s you, we’re going to fix that before we travel togeth—whoa, is that a crawler? Neat. You know those are considered old-fashioned now. The bone makers in Cerre have been working with the mechanics’ guild on new cable cars that—”

  “It’s fast, it can climb, and it can conceal us—if I get it working again.” Crawlers, especially old ones, were common enough to be unremarkable. Or, at least, untraceable.

  “What are the odds of that?” Zera asked.

  Undeterred, Kreya scanned the basement until she spotted the missing leg: wedged between two crates. She freed it and held it up triumphantly as she climbed back to the crawler.

  “Wonderful.”

  Despite her sarcasm, Zera—with the use of a strength talisman—carried the pieces of the crawler outside and spread them out on the grass between the pine trees. Removing her coat, Zera cleaned the inside of the carriage, while Kreya worked on the mechanics.

  Forgetting that Zera was there, Kreya sang to herself as she worked. She was on her third ballad when she realized that a voice was singing along with her, softly. She broke off and looked over at Zera, who then stopped singing.

  “We had a nice harmony going,” Zera complained.

  “I don’t . . .” She didn’t know how to explain that she’d never sung where anyone could overhear. She must have gotten even more used to being alone than she’d thought, if she’d so quickly forgotten that anyone else could hear her.

  “I had no idea you could sing. You shouldn’t do the soprano bits, but your alto register is quite lovely.” Zera demonstrated a high trill, then a lower warble. “I’m a soprano. Guine has been helping teach me to harmonize better—I have a tendency to steal the stage.”

  “I’d never have guessed,” Kreya muttered.

  “Are we going to try to get along on this journey, or are you going to keep sniping at me? I recognize that you don’t approve of who I’ve become, but it will be tedious cooped up inside the crawler with you if you don’t try to hide your opinions.”

  Kreya raised her eyebrows pointedly. “Like you do?”

  “My opinions are truths.”

  She almost laughed. Zera was still so . . . Zera. “Just help me attach the undercarriage.”

  Working together, they lifted the orb onto the base, and Kreya scurried around, connecting it. Finishing, she stepped back and surveyed their work.

  “Much better than hiking,” Zera said, satisfied.

  Kreya wondered if she’d still feel that way when the crawler was inching up a near-vertical slope and they were dependent on their handiwork for their lives. She hoped so.

  It took a few more hours to load the crawler with supplies: dried venison, nuts, berries, jars of water, a cache of weapons, extra unused animal bones in case of repairs. Kreya said no to additional cushions, as well as no to Zera’s request to “just hop on home for a few items.”

  She didn’t say no, though, when Zera insisted on anonymously gifting her horse Merridia to a local farmer, even though “local” was many miles away. There were too many wolves, bears, and other predators to safely leave the horse here untended. Zera promised she’d use a bit of a speed talisman to both deliver Merridia and return.

  At least Zera isn’t so self-absorbed she fails to care for her horse, Kreya thought.

  Climbing the stairs to the bedroom, Kreya retrieved the rag doll construct that Zera had tossed across the room. While she waited for Zera to return, she sat on the bed beside Jentt’s body and repaired the construct—the problem was the bone that animated it had been knocked out of alignment. She reset it, placed her fingertips on it, and closed her eyes. “Insa anira. Ori ranna. Insa anira-lee, anira-ra, anira-nee.”

  It shuddered under her fingers and then sat up. Opening her eyes, Kreya noticed that the other rag dolls were clustered around, some on the bed and some by her feet. She gathered them into her arms, and they swarmed all over her, patting her hair and stroking her back. “I’ll be gone for longer than usual, little ones. You’ll keep him safe, won’t you? And yourselves?”

  After she patted each of them, they dispersed, up into the rafters and back into the shadowy corners of the room. She turned to Jentt, still wrapped in linen, still motionless, still dead. “I know you won’t approve of this, but you don’t get a vote. Not until you live again. And then you can fuss at me all you want, and I’ll love it.”

  She checked all the locks on the window shutters and repaired the locking mechanism on the front door, the one that had allowed Zera inside without any effort. After she was certain it was functional, she exited the tower.

  Zera returned shortly after, and they were ready to embark.

  “Go on,” Zera said, wiggling her fingers. “Do your thing.”

  Getting down on the ground, Kreya lay on her back under the contraption. It was fueled by three bones: one from a goat, another from a mountain lion, and the last from a horse. The lion bone was cracked, and the horse bone had tiny fractures running through it, but
they still had power vibrating through them. She wished she’d been able to afford a fresh river lizard bone—that would have really given the crawler a jolt. These would do the job, though.

  “Do you have one more adventure in you?” she whispered to the crawler. Do I? she wondered.

  She laid her hands on the bones, fingers spread to touch all of them, and said the spell to animate it. Through her fingertips, she felt it begin to shake. It hummed, vibrating, as its eight metal legs began to click and twitch.

  “Watch out!” Zera shouted.

  Kreya rolled to the left as one leg slammed down. Its point pierced the dirt where she’d been. Reaching under, Zera held out her hand, and Kreya grabbed it and scrambled up toward the tower, out of the way, as the crawler lurched side to side on its spider legs.

  “What did you do?” Zera cried as she shoved Kreya back behind her. She pressed a talisman into Kreya’s hand, and Kreya glanced at the markings—speed.

  “Give it a minute.”

  “Oh? Is that how long it’ll take to crush us?”

  The crawler careened closer to them, as if drawn by their voices. It tipped, unbalanced, as it strained to walk on only two of its legs, then the other legs seemed to remember what their purpose was. It scuttled backward toward the cliff.

  Zera squeaked and clutched Kreya’s arm.

  Kreya shook her off. “It’ll be fine.”

  It tottered back even closer to the cliff.

  “Probably,” Kreya added.

  Then it lurched forward again, before settling in a squat, motionless except for a purring kind of vibration. The hatch popped open.

  Kreya started for it. “All right, let’s go.”

  “Are you mad? Didn’t you just see that?”

  “It was just getting its bearings. Think how discombobulated you’d be if you were asleep for twenty-five years.” Crossing the clearing, Kreya climbed into the carriage. It gave a shake as it absorbed her weight. Looking over her shoulder, she beckoned Zera. “Perfectly safe! Until it breaks, and we plummet to our deaths.”