The Bone Maker

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “I’ve been to the lower tiers,” Amurra began. She twisted her hands as if she were a nervous student in front of two harsh teachers.

  When did I go from being a friendly bone wizard to someone intimidating? Zera wondered. She hadn’t noticed the transformation happening, even though of course she’d worked for it. She tried to put on a more encouraging face and waited for Amurra to continue.

  “No one I spoke to knows Eklor is here, so at least it’s not common knowledge among the average citizens. I thought about slipping the information, you know, to see how people would react, but I wasn’t sure if that would be wise.”

  Kreya nodded. “You acted correctly. We don’t know what Eklor’s game is. Until we do, it’s better to be cautious.”

  “The great Kreya, advising caution,” Zera said.

  Kreya glared at her. “I’m always careful.”

  Zera laughed and then stopped. “Oh, you’re serious?”

  Gingerly, Amurra sat on the plainest chair, only occupying the edge, as if she were afraid of soiling the cushions. “People remember the war. Many lost loved ones. I can’t imagine they’d be happy to know Grand Master Lorn is sheltering Vos’s greatest enemy.”

  Lounging back on her sofa, Zera considered the matter. “We could reveal him and throw him off guard. Remind people of the war as loudly as possible. Demand to know his purpose here. Put him on the defensive.”

  “Not until we know where his army is,” Kreya said. “We wait for Jentt and Stran before we make any kind of move.”

  Fair enough. Twirling one of her bracelets, Zera thought more. “What if we’re subtle?”

  “Subtle is not our strong suit,” Kreya said.

  “Thank you for saying ‘our.’”

  Kreya grinned at her, and Zera grinned back.

  “I am serious, though,” Zera said. “What if we—subtly—remind the people how terrible Eklor’s war was? I could make donations to theater troupes, on the condition that they stage the tragedies and war dramas. Singers, always in need of more funds, could be encouraged to sing ballads in the streets.”

  Amurra perked up. “You could commission artists! A mural, memorializing those who were lost. Ooh, a mural on every tier.”

  “Statues, too,” Kreya suggested. “Place them in plazas and on street corners. Or at least encourage street performers, if statues would take too long to create. Buskers in every square, singing, dancing, playacting about the Bone War.”

  Zera loved all these ideas beyond measure. She rubbed her hands together. “This is going to annoy the shit out of Eklor.” And prime the public to reject him when he finally revealed himself from whatever corner of Lorn’s shadow he was lurking in.

  In the end, that could be as powerful a weapon as any sword or arrow. Zera called for Guine, as well as several of her servants. After a moment’s thought, she also called for Marso.

  “Why Marso?” Kreya asked. “He needs to rest.”

  Zera disagreed. “He needs a new hobby. Something to distract him from screaming his head off.” It would be good for him. All of them had heard his screaming, so no one objected.

  Once all her lovelies were assembled, she set their plan in motion.

  Now everyone had something useful to do while they waited for Zera’s contacts and Lorn to respond. And more important, Jentt and Stran to return.

  The worst thing about having been dead, Jentt thought, is the lost time. He’d died countless times, knowing each could be the last, but he had no memories of the days, weeks, months, even years before Kreya was able to wake him again. She had been accruing experiences, but he . . . had simply not.

  I have a lot to make up, he thought.

  Standing outside the city of Cerre, he filled his lungs to capacity. Pine trees. The dusty sweetness of fallen aspen leaves. A whiff of garbage, as the wind blew over the first tier behind him.

  After all this was over, he wanted to travel. See the world with Kreya. Sail the seas beyond the borders of Vos. Maybe learn to sail first. Taste food neither of them could name. Explore bits of the maps that were so obscure no one had bothered to label them.

  Leading two mountain horses, Stran joined Jentt to overlook the road, the pine forests, the mist-coated valley, and the expanse of peaks that lay before them. “Ready for an adventure?”

  “Oh yes,” Jentt said fervently.

  Stran grinned back at him.

  They mounted and set off. So close to the city, there was a steady stream of travelers on the road. Jentt bought a bag of apples from a farmer who gawked at both of them in obvious curiosity—you could practically see him trying to figure out who they were, where they were going, and what they planned to do. Neither Jentt nor Stran enlightened him. Later, the farmer might realize he’d met legends. Or maybe not, Jentt thought. Maybe he had better things to do than muse over the identities of two strange travelers, such as sell his fruits in the market, meet with old friends in the city, and return home to a family who loved him.

  A quarter mile from the city, they activated the speed talismans that Kreya had built into the bridles, and they galloped like wind through the pine forests, beneath waterfalls, and past orchards and farms.

  They stayed in an inn under false names, and Stran swore they weren’t recognized, though the musicians played several of the old ballads about the Five Heroes of Vos, which Jentt didn’t think was a coincidence. At dawn, they continued on.

  “Did you ever think you’d be the father of three?” Jentt asked midmorning.

  “Never thought I’d want anything but the battlefield,” Stran said. “At least until I was on one, and then I knew I never wanted to see another. You ever see yourself as a father?”

  “Once. But I missed that chance. Apparently I can cheat death but not time.” He and Kreya had never talked about whether or not they wanted kids. Before the war, it had felt like they had eternity to decide. After . . . well, he was dead. “Probably would have made a terrible dad.”

  “Nah, you’d have been great. It’s not hard. All you gotta do is love them every second of the day and make sure they don’t burn themselves on the kitchen fire, fall off a cliff, fall out of a tree, have a tree fall on them, get trampled by farm equipment, or eat anything poisonous. Actually, parenthood is extraordinarily stressful. Babies come out so tiny and helpless. Horses plop out and are able to walk instantly, but not babies.”

  “Regrets?” Jentt asked.

  Guiding his horse around an outcrop of boulders, Stran said, “None. Except for not asking Amurra to marry me the second I met her. I wasted a year thinking she couldn’t possibly love me before finally she cornered me and told me the wedding would be in two weeks, unless I said no. I didn’t say no.”

  Jentt laughed. “Wish I could’ve been there.”

  Stran grinned. “Her parents insisted I wear silk. And bells. Tiny bells sewn into the fabric. Couldn’t even sneeze without setting them all off.”

  “Now I really wish I could have been there.”

  Even fueled by bones, it took them another day to reach the plains. They rode straight for the outpost at the wall, stabled their horses, and presented themselves to the head guard, who was barely more than a boy with an uneven mustache.

  Stran introduced himself first, and the guard’s eyes bulged.

  “I . . . I would need authorization from the grand master . . .”

  Jentt stepped forward and presented the official paperwork that they’d obtained before they’d left—Kreya had been correct that Lorn would grant them permission without a fuss, even if he refused to meet with her directly. He wanted them to cooperate with whatever his agenda was, and that required them to believe Eklor’s claims.

  Gawking at Jentt, the young guard lost his ability to speak.

  “We need shovels,” Stran said, helping him out. “Can we borrow two?”

  Sweat poured off the poor boy’s forehead. “Sh-sh-shovels?”

  Stran patted his shoulder. “No worries. We’ll find them ourselves. Assign some
one to feed and water our horses, will you?”

  As he passed him, Jentt also patted his shoulder. “And sit down before you faint, hit your head, and split it open. Dying isn’t as fun as it sounds.”

  They located a less overwhelmed guard, one who was too young to recognize who they were or comprehend what their presence meant, and obtained the shovels. Crossing the plain, they aimed for the tower, or what was left of it. They left the horses chowing down on oats—they deserved a rest after the journey here—and they took several of the guards with them.

  Witnesses or backup, depending on which it would turn out they needed.

  A mile from the wall, on the way to the tower, Jentt saw a scorched tree. Around it, the grasses were shriveled and blackened. “Definitely a fire here,” Stran noted.

  “But what did it burn?”

  Eklor could have set the fire to make his claims more plausible. It didn’t mean he’d actually burned anything.

  One of the guards piped up. “Bones, sir! There are human remains here.”

  The other guards bowed their heads and murmured a prayer that their souls had reached the great silence. Crossing to the guard, Jentt knelt beside a charred rib cage. The burned bones lay beside a rusty sword with a Vosian hilt. “One of ours,” Jentt said.

  Stran huffed. “Proves nothing. Not until we find his soldiers burned to a crisp.”

  Very true. Standing, Jentt said, “Stay alert, everyone.”

  The guards saluted. Clutching their weapons, they fanned out, tromping across burnt grass that crackled under their footsteps.

  Closer to the tower, the meadows had been torn up. Ugly scars of dirt and rocks ran in five lines radiating into the rubble. Collapsed tunnels, Jentt thought.

  Another point in Eklor’s favor.

  Again, though, it could all be a show staged by Eklor to hide the truth.

  “You really think his army is buried under there?” Stran asked.

  “You really have to ask that?” Jentt said.

  “Fair enough. Let’s prove those tunnels are as empty as his promises.”

  At random, they picked one of the lines of dirt. Assuming that the machines and soldiers had returned to the chamber at the end of the tunnel, then the best spot to dig should be at the end of the line, farthest from the tower. “Here?” Jentt suggested.

  “Sure.” Stran swung his shovel off his shoulder and planted it in the churned-up dirt. “You use speed, and I use strength? Winner buys lunch?”

  Jentt grinned. “You’re on.”

  They activated their talismans and began.

  Dirt flew. Rocks were tossed. Jentt felt sweat pour off his body. He felt his muscles strain. He inhaled the dirt-saturated air, and he had never felt more alive. Beside him, Stran was shifting massive amounts of earth but at half his speed. Jentt pushed himself harder, faster. He flew, his shovel a blur.

  At last, they reached bedrock.

  “Halt!” Jentt called.

  He slowed himself. His body still felt like it was vibrating.

  “Tired?” Stran said.

  Jentt grinned back. “Never.” He turned in a circle to look at the hole they’d dug. They’d cleared enough that they were well below the level of the meadow. Deep enough that they’d reached what had been the floor of the chamber. The air was cooler within the shadows of the hole, and it smelled like rich earth. “See any monstrosities?”

  “Not a one,” Stran said.

  Heaving himself out of the hole, he got to his feet. Several dozen guards from the wall were there, spread in a semicircle, gawking with mouths dropped wide open.

  “No trace of Eklor’s army so far,” Jentt reported to them. “You’re witness to this.”

  Starting with one, then spreading to the rest, the guards applauded. Jentt and Stran exchanged glances and started toward where they knew the next tunnel used to be. Trailing behind, the guards followed, jovial, joking back and forth, happy not to find any horrors. They don’t get it, Jentt realized. The fact that nothing had clawed its way out of the earth to attack them wasn’t a good thing.

  If the army wasn’t here—either broken or intact—that meant it was somewhere else.

  The question was where.

  He didn’t know what Eklor had planned for his army, but it didn’t take a genius to know it would be bad for Vos. And for their dreams of a peaceful future.

  Determinedly, Jentt and Stran began digging out the next tunnel and chamber. They’d promised Kreya they would search as thoroughly as possible, and that was exactly what they were going to do: remove every excuse, rationale, or argument that Eklor could make. Force Grand Master Lorn to withdraw his protection.

  As the hours passed, their audience grew in size as more guards gathered to watch, cheer, and make bets on who was the more effective shoveler. And as the hours passed, they still found no trace of any inhuman soldiers.

  It was late into the night of the third day when they began on the fifth and final tunnel. Stars speckled the blue-black sky, and many of the guards carried lanterns so that both they and the two diggers could see.

  And that was when they found the remains of Eklor’s army.

  Jentt hit the first crushed soldier with his shovel.

  “Stran!” he called.

  His friend jogged closer. “Everyone, clear this dirt!”

  Together, Jentt, Stran, and the guards from the wall cleared away the dirt to expose a tangle of burnt bones and scorched metal—a fused-together mass made of the unnatural bodies of his constructs.

  “He didn’t lie,” Stran said, shock in his voice.

  But . . . he couldn’t have told the truth. Could he? He had to have a nefarious plan. Jentt refused to believe his murderer could be reformed. There had to be another explanation.

  “He could have sacrificed these soldiers to hide the fact that the rest of his army lives,” Jentt said, but the words rang hollow. As mangled as they were, it was impossible to count the number of undead soldiers in this sunken tunnel, but given the size of the tangled mass . . . It would have been hundreds.

  To destroy so many . . .

  It was possible that Eklor had herded all his soldiers into one tunnel to crush and burn them—certainly that’s what this was supposed to look like, and he’d specifically said he’d gathered them before crushing them. But it was also possible that he’d only destroyed a portion of his forces. After all, the other tunnels had been empty.

  “This could be a decoy,” Jentt said. “To throw us off the scent.”

  “Then let’s find the scent,” Stran said.

  They spent several hours with lanterns combing the area, looking for evidence of which way any potential remaining army could have marched—without luck. If Eklor had found another way out with any additional soldiers, he’d destroyed all trace of it.

  Returning to the guards, Jentt and Stran found them piling the burnt bones of Vosian soldiers into the newly dug pits. They’d left the mangled mass of undead soldiers where it had been found and marked off the area with flags.

  Under his breath, Stran said, “We proved the opposite of what we came here to prove.”

  “Looks like we did,” Jentt said. Certainly the guards would testify that Eklor’s army had been destroyed, exactly as Eklor had claimed. Grand Master Lorn would feel even more justified in his trust of Eklor. Still . . .

  He wished it were possible to tell exactly how many had been destroyed here. Was it truly hundreds in that mangled mass? Or was it a much smaller number?

  “There has to be something we’re missing,” Jentt said. “I can’t believe he’s reformed.”

  “The ache in my shoulder says he hasn’t,” Stran agreed.

  This was a setback, though, undeniably. “Maybe Zera will have uncovered some useful information.” She was supposed to be looking into possible ways Eklor could be blackmailing the grand master.

  “Kreya will have a plan,” Stran said, certainty in his voice.

  “She will,” Jentt agreed. “And this time,
we all survive. Together.” He clasped his hand on Stran’s shoulder. “Consider that a promise.”

  Zera plopped onto the couch in the room she’d given to Kreya. Her many silk scarves fluffed out around her, and her jewelry clinked like wind chimes. She’d been to seven parties in six hours, and if she ever saw another rare, exotic shrimp wrapped in rare, exotic antelope steak, she might vomit all over someone’s rare, exotic rugs. “It’s his son,” she said.

  Frowning in concentration at a bone she was affixing to a new cat-size mechanized construct, Kreya didn’t glance up. “Who?”

  “He’s ten years old, and his name is Yarri. Cute as a fat rabbit. He likes to play ring ball, or whatever that ridiculous sport is called, you know, the one with the targets on sticks . . . Anyway, everyone agrees that he’s a bright, charming, and delectable child, and isn’t it so sad that he is oh-so-very sick.”

  Kreya put down the construct. She twisted in her chair. “Grand Master Lorn has a child.”

  “A very sick child. A few people I talked to believed he might already be dead, but they hadn’t been invited to view the pyre, so that was roundly dismissed as gossip.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yep.” Zera liked that she didn’t have to spell it out to Kreya.

  Stretching her arms up, Zera felt the ache in her back ease. She twisted her torso and then her neck, rolling it around in a circle. Grand Master Lorn had a son who was likely to die. If Eklor had convinced Lorn that he’d conquered death—and the very fact that he was alive was convincing proof of that—it would explain why Lorn was committed to protecting him. But it didn’t explain what Eklor wanted in exchange for a promise to save Lorn’s son. Or what Eklor’s plan was in lieu of saving the boy.

  She didn’t for a second believe he planned to help anyone, least of all the son of his enemy.

  We need proof that his army exists, Zera thought. If we can’t prove Eklor has nefarious plans, then Lorn will never believe us over hope for his son.

  Without proof . . . all they had was their paranoid suspicions about Eklor. And a reason to distrust Grand Master Lorn. “Any word from Jentt and Stran?”