The Bone Maker

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your friends are working unholy magic, aren’t they?” His eyes were pleading, as if he needed her to comfort him and reassure him that everything was perfect, she’d never do anything remotely morally ambiguous, and he didn’t need to worry about anything.

  “They’re saving the life of one who didn’t deserve to die,” Zera said carefully. She didn’t want to lie to him, but she also didn’t want to burden him with a truth that could endanger him. “I wouldn’t call that unholy.”

  “Word is that you found human bones in Grand Master Lorn’s palace.”

  “Word travels quickly,” Zera said. “And yes, Eklor had bones he’d taken from the plains.” Carrying the bandages, she strode back toward Marso’s bedroom. She had to hope that her trust in Guine wasn’t misplaced, and that his trust in her was intact. She felt vulnerable, which was not a sensation she liked. “Eklor’s still the bad guy. We’re still the good guys. You need to watch to make sure the bad guys don’t come to kill the good guys while we’re busy, okay?”

  Guine laid a hand on her arm as she went to open the door. “Tell me: are you working illegal magic in that room?” His voice shook, as if it unnerved him to question her.

  She raised both her eyebrows. “Are you going to try to stop me?” It would be inconvenient if she had to use a talisman to fight him—fight Guine? The very idea sounded ridiculous when she thought it. He was devoted to her, even if he wasn’t in love with her. But she’d do it if she had to, though she’d rather not drop all the sterile bandages on the clean-but-not-sterile marble floor.

  He hesitated, as if he hadn’t considered the matter all the way through.

  “You don’t need to approve,” Zera said, “but you do need to get out of my way.”

  “People aren’t meant to live after they die.” He looked terrified as he said it. “Such magic shouldn’t exist. It violates all the laws of nature and decency.”

  “The laws of nature and decency say friends don’t give up on friends,” Zera said. “No matter what tragedies happen. No matter how many years pass. People are meant to keep loving each other, even after death.” She might not have been sure about the ethics of what Kreya could do, but she believed in the goodness of her friend’s heart. Jentt was a part of her, and in saving him, she’d saved herself. Now she wanted to do the same for Stran.

  “If I died, would you try to save me?” Guine asked.

  Zera didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  “Even though you don’t love me?”

  “You’re my friend. Like Kreya. Like Jentt. Even when you’re behaving like this, the answer is still yes.” Maybe it was a choice no human should be able to make, but if it was available to her, she’d do it. Hey, Kreya, I understand now.

  And she also understood why Kreya said the knowledge would die with her.

  Guine wasn’t wrong. It was a terrible and wonderful power that no one should possess. She could think of six dozen ways to abuse the spell before dinner, and unlike Eklor, she wasn’t even trying to be evil.

  He let her go.

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “You don’t care if I’m using illegal magic so long as I’m willing to use it on you too? Impressive ethical gymnastics there.”

  “I assumed I was replaceable to you.”

  “Well, you aren’t.” She wasn’t certain how or why this should affect Guine’s attitude toward their breaking the law, but he was looking at her as if what she’d said changed everything. “You are important to me, a fact I would’ve thought was obvious. But maybe it wasn’t. A fact I can make obvious after the current crisis, if you’re willing to give me a second chance to be less of an asshole.”

  “I . . . misjudged you. Please—”

  “Apologize to me after,” Zera told him. “For now, go make sure no one comes to murder us while we engage in our ‘unholy’ behavior.”

  He still looked dazed.

  “Guine, I am trusting you with all our lives. Don’t make me think I’ve misjudged you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He fled down the hall.

  She pushed her way back into the room and shut the door behind her. Dumping the bandages on a chair, she locked the door. For extra measure, she withdrew a strength talisman, activated it, and shoved a wardrobe in front of the door. Jentt helped her. He didn’t ask any questions. Neither of them spoke.

  Kreya had already begun.

  She’d cut a slit in Stran’s arm. Coating the old soldiers’ bones with blood, she was pushing them into Amurra’s sternum. As Kreya chanted the words of the spell, the bones sank into Amurra’s flesh, like sugar dissolving into water.

  Bone after bone.

  A femur, a rib, a vertebra.

  Clavicle.

  Humerus.

  More ribs. Another vertebra.

  Last, Kreya pushed a skull into Amurra’s body, and it melted into her, jaw first, nasal cavity, empty eye sockets, crown, until every last trace of it was gone. Zera realized Kreya hadn’t answered Marso’s question—would it be enough?

  I guess we’ll see, she thought. Every bone had been used. It had to be enough.

  A sheen of sweat glistened on Kreya’s face. Zera wished she could help. She stood ready with the bandages. But Stran still needed to bleed.

  Silent, Marso had sunk to the floor to sit cross-legged beside the bed. He was stroking his chicken bones without looking at them, as if afraid to see what they’d say. She was oddly glad that he couldn’t read them as well as he used to. Somehow not knowing if they’d succeed or fail made this mean more.

  There’s beauty in trying, Zera thought.

  That was the difference between them and Eklor. When they lost a loved one, they . . .

  Well, he did try to save his own loved ones first, and only after he was stopped did he seek revenge. Like Kreya on the plains. Maybe they weren’t so different. They’d all crossed lines. We have yet to resort to attempting a massacre, though, Zera thought. So we’re winning.

  Staggering backward, Kreya gasped for air. “Done.”

  Jentt caught her and steadied her.

  Moving quickly, Zera pressed gauze against Stran’s wound. It was deep, and the blood still surged sluggishly from it. It would need to be sewn, and he’d need to rest. She readied the needle and surgical thread.

  Beside Stran, Amurra’s chest rose and fell. Color had spread to her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered open as if she were waking from a peaceful night’s sleep. She turned her head. “Stran?”

  His voice was choked. “Amurra.”

  “You’re going to kill that bastard, aren’t you?” she rasped. Her voice sounded as if all moisture in her throat had evaporated. She swallowed painfully.

  “Absolutely,” he swore.

  “I didn’t like dying.”

  “I won’t let it happen again,” Stran said.

  Kreya murmured, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  Amurra sat up. “What did you do, Stran? What did all of you do?”

  Jentt answered. “He shared his remaining life with you. Half of all his future years.”

  When Stran struggled to sit up with her, Zera poked him in the shoulder until he lay still. “I’m sewing you up. Don’t move unless you want me to miss.” Focusing on the wound, she knit together the flesh. Blood stained her fingers, but she ignored it. He lay still as she made neat, even stitches.

  But his wife did not lie still. She pressed herself against his side, turned his head so he faced her, and kissed him thoroughly. He smiled, she smiled, and it was a lovely moment that would have made Zera roll her eyes if she hadn’t been so focused on making sure he didn’t bleed out. Finishing the stitches, she cleaned the blood as best she could and then wrapped the wound in clean gauze, covered in bandages.

  When the two of them finally quit staring into one another’s eyes as if they’d each invented the sun, Amurra asked, “How many years?”

  “No way for me to know,” Kreya said. She sounded extremely tired, and Zera
was happy to see that Jentt had his arm around her, supporting her. Maybe they were past their issues, at least for now. Certainly there couldn’t have been a better object lesson for Jentt for how he should have behaved. At least something good has come out of this, Zera thought. She thought also of Guine and how she’d never told him he mattered to her. Of course, in that case, he was an idiot for not realizing it.

  “Can you ask the bones?” Amurra asked Marso.

  He hugged the chicken bones tighter. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. Stran agreed with her.

  “We have children,” Stran explained. “If we can’t take care of them, then we need to know to make other arrangements.”

  “Again,” Kreya said tiredly, “you could still die randomly.”

  “Marso, please?” Amurra asked.

  He sighed, and his shoulders sagged, but to Zera’s ears, it didn’t sound like a defeated or dejected sigh. More like relief, which was odd. She eyed Amurra and decided the woman was smarter than they’d given her credit for. She somehow knew she wasn’t asking too much of Marso.

  He tossed the bones on the carpet, and his eyes shifted, taking on that looking-elsewhere expression he wore when he was seeing more than what anyone else could see. He rocked side to side, and his lips moved without sound.

  All of them watched and waited.

  Mist rose above the bones, and images flashed within, too fast for Zera to see and too jumbled for her to make any sense of. But Marso was enrapt. The silence felt like the moment before a vase fell and shattered on the ground. It was the breath before the scream.

  At last, he looked at them. Smiled. “Eighteen years.”

  Stran let out a gusty sigh. “It’s enough.”

  “We’ll see our kids grow up,” Amurra said. “We’ll be there for them, through their childhoods. It is enough. Thank you, Marso. Kreya . . . There are no words.”

  Kreya straightened. She had more color back in her cheeks, now that she’d rested for a few moments. “First we need to survive Eklor’s—”

  Jentt interrupted. “Read us. How many years do we have?”

  “Does it matter?” Kreya asked him. “Would you live any differently if you knew it was eighteen years or eight months?”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Kreya said. “I plan to use every day to its fullest, no matter how many we have left, because I lived too many days waiting for things to be right again. I spent years with my heart in the past and the future. From here on, I just want the present.”

  “I need to know,” Jentt said.

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Fine,” Kreya said, clipped. “If you need to know.”

  Marso gathered the bones, whispered to them, and then tossed them again. He swayed, his lips moving as the mist rose, and Zera thought about stopping him. She knew that haunted expression in Kreya’s eyes, and so she wasn’t surprised when Marso opened his eyes and answered:

  “Three years.”

  Kreya had known it would be short. Frankly, she’d feared it would be less.

  She felt Jentt rock backward as the words hit him, as if he’d been struck. But she merely let the knowledge sink into her. She’d used up bits of her life for years, resurrecting him piecemeal. It didn’t surprise her that she hadn’t had much left to spare. Actually, it felt right. Of course she should pay a price for defying the laws of the universe.

  “Only three,” Jentt whispered.

  “What do we do?” Zera asked.

  Kreya thought the answer was obvious. “We live. We live and we love, and we do our best not to stop doing either before our time is up.”

  Wrapping his arms around her, Jentt pulled her close. “I’m sorry.”

  “Just try not to get hit with an arrow this time.” Kreya rested her cheek against his shoulder and breathed in the wonderful scent of him. He wasn’t angry anymore, which was a small miracle. “And don’t mourn our deaths before they happen. We have time.”

  Amurra let out a gasp. “Time! How much time since I died? The army—did it come? Eklor’s army! The construct, the little scout, found it! Did it tell you? Do you know?”

  “The construct that murdered you kind of made that clear,” Zera said.

  “I tried to tell someone before I died. My, that feels so strange to say.”

  Stran kissed her golden hair. “Don’t think about it. You’re alive now.”

  “I’ll always think about it,” Amurra said. “I was dead. No more days with you. Never returning home. Never seeing Vivi, Jen, Nugget . . . We’re naming him Evren.”

  “Whatever you want,” Stran said.

  “I want to not die again,” Amurra said. “I want no one to die. What is Eklor planning, and how do we stop him?”

  Key questions, Kreya thought. She liked Amurra even better after death. She had a practical streak that was even more noticeable. “All the bone workers from across Vos will be gathering tomorrow morning to receive his ‘miracles.’”

  “But we destroyed his stash of bones,” Stran said. “That should slow him.”

  “Only if he intends to work the spell,” Kreya said. “We don’t know that he does. In fact, I doubt it. The resurrections were bait for his trap. I think it’s more likely he’s lured them to the guild headquarters with the promise of a miracle, and then he’ll use his army to massacre them.”

  Jentt nodded. “Makes sense.”

  Amurra shuddered. “It’s horrific. How do we stop it?”

  Kreya turned to Zera. “Did you find spare bones for me?”

  “Plenty,” Zera said.

  Next question: “Do you mind if I destroy your palace?”

  Zera blinked. “Sure.”

  She didn’t ask any questions, which was like the Zera of old, trusting Kreya. She felt the weight of that trust, and she silently swore not to squander it this time. Years ago, she’d taken Zera’s friendship for granted, and then in the aftermath of the Bone War, she’d assumed she’d lost it. This time around, she was going to treasure it as it deserved to be treasured. “Your pillars,” she explained, because Zera deserved answers even if she didn’t ask, “the ones carved to look like skeletons, I’m going to turn them into our army.”

  “I love you,” Jentt said.

  She smiled. “I know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  For her first warrior, Kreya chose a stone pillar carved like the skeleton of a rampant lioness. She studied it for a moment. Felt its strength. Behind her, Zera and the others were evacuating the palace. Once she took the pillars, it was likely the ceiling would collapse.

  “Can it be done?” Jentt murmured behind her.

  No one had ever used bones to animate a stone statue. Most constructs were machines, compilations of gears and useful attachments. Or else they were powered devices like cable cars or lifts. She was the only bone maker she knew who had ever used bones with dolls. The techniques should be the same, Kreya thought. “Yes.”

  “Kreya . . .”

  “You don’t need to say it.”

  “I do, though. I have left too much unsaid.”

  She waited, and she felt the weight of the silent seconds while Jentt searched for the words he wanted. It was a strange sensation to know exactly how much time she had left. Every moment felt like it had to matter. There were so many moments she’d wasted in the past. So many moments she’d simply forgotten or that had blended into other memories.

  She didn’t like how much pressure it put on each moment. And so she forced herself to still, to breathe, to wait until he was ready to speak. It was only a handful of seconds, but choosing to take them felt somehow rebellious.

  It made her want to kiss him.

  And so she did, brushing her lips against his cheek and then his mouth. He kissed her back hungrily, as if he were afraid he wouldn’t ever kiss her again. He felt the moments slipping away too.

  When their lip
s parted, she asked gently, “Do you still need to say whatever you need to say?”

  “Yes,” he said, and drew a breath. “I’m sorry. Deeply, truly sorry.”

  “Me too. I should have told you about the cost.”

  He studied her. “You don’t mean that.”

  She smiled. “True. I would have lied to you until we died. Sometimes honesty is cruelty, and love is lies.”

  “That’s shitty relationship advice.” But he was smiling too.

  “Good thing I’m not a role model. I’m just a hero past her prime who, very literally, loves you as much as she loves life itself. And I’m trying to learn from my mistakes. So how about we save the day before we walk off into the sunset?”

  He passed her the first bone, the femur of a black bear. Taking it, she drew her knife and then activated a speed talisman. She’d been carving bones for so long that she didn’t need to think—her hands and muscles knew what to do. And so they moved faster than she could think, carving symbols into the soft bone. Three bones for the first pillar. She installed them with wire, tying true bone to the spines made of stone. The second pillar was a twelve-foot upright lizard. She used four bones on it. Methodically, she worked through every pillar in the great room before she moved to the jeweled skeletal statues in the yard. Sweat dripped from her, and her muscles shook. She’d never worked so fast or so hard, but she didn’t allow herself to slow, reactivating the talisman as needed. Jentt stayed beside her, passing her bones, forcing her to drink water at intervals.

  Mountain lion bones.

  Croco-raptors.

  Owl.

  Elk.

  Wolverine.

  One statue, she laced with a hundred mice bones. Another she infused with the strength of a dozen badgers. Another carried eagle bones.

  At last, when her muscles ached and her head throbbed and she’d lost all sense of time, she finished, with bones installed on every statue in Zera’s garden and every pillar within the palace, over fifty statues total.

  Quietly—who knew how long she’d been standing there—Amurra asked, “Will it be enough? If Eklor’s army comes . . . will it be enough to defeat them?”