The Bone Maker

by Sarah Beth Durst

  She’d seen his army on the plains. Fifty statues wouldn’t be enough to defeat it. Five hundred wouldn’t be enough. “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “We don’t need to defeat his army. We just need to hold them back long enough to get all the bone workers Eklor is trying to surprise on our side. Then they can defeat them.” If they could buy the other masters enough time to recognize the danger, gather their strength, and defend themselves, that could be enough. She hoped.

  It’s always about time, isn’t it? she thought.

  “Okay—will these statues be enough to hold his army back?”

  “Not yet.” Luckily, though, Zera was not the only fifth-tier citizen with a statue garden. She didn’t even own the only house with skeletal pillars. Calling across the salon, Kreya asked, “Zera, do you think your neighbors would be willing to give up their statues?”

  “Not likely,” Zera said. “Unless we bought them all, of course. And before you ask, even I don’t have access to that much gold. My neighbors have expensive tastes.”

  Kreya considered options. One, she could make do with what she had. She nixed that immediately, having just told Amurra that it wasn’t enough. Two, she could ask Jentt to steal them. She rejected that idea as well. She wanted the largest statues for her stone army, so theft wasn’t practical. Three, she could threaten Zera’s neighbors and force them to cooperate . . . “What do you think we should do?”

  Zera gawked at her.

  “What?”

  “You’re asking our opinion,” Zera said. “It’s refreshing.”

  Marso spoke up. “Everyone in Cerre has been hearing the music, seeing the plays, and retelling the stories of the Bone War for days. They remember us, and they remember him. I think Zera’s neighbors will listen to reason.”

  “We can’t rely on people.” She thought of the villagers from Eren who had burned her tower and would have burned her and Jentt if they could have. She thought of Marso, who’d been pushed away by the guild, disbelieved and denied to the point where he tried to shred his own mind. She thought of Eklor . . . Okay, he was a lousy example of how to treat people.

  Glancing across the room, she saw Zera’s followers, clumped together, cowering, eyeing Kreya and her friends as if expecting them to breathe fire.

  No, she thought. It’s up to us. Again.

  She’d thought they were done, but she’d been wrong. There was no “done.” Not until the day you died. And sometimes not even then.

  “Forgive me,” Guine said, extracting himself from the clump of scantily clad followers and servants. “But you should have more faith in the men and women of Cerre. We can reach out to all our neighbors. Maybe we aren’t warriors or bone workers, but we can convince people to help.”

  Zera blew them a kiss.

  Kreya opened her mouth to say she couldn’t expect ordinary people to grasp the severity of the situation and rise to the challenge. But then she shut it. Maybe it wasn’t her call to make. Maybe they should have a chance to have a say in their own fate. She gave a tight nod to Guine.

  It was Marso, to Kreya’s surprise, who spoke again with his old confidence in his voice, this time to Zera’s friends. “Go to every palace on the fifth tier. Tell them we need their statues. And when you’re finished, go to the theaters and the music halls on the other tiers. Tell them to help spread the word: the bone guild is in danger.”

  Guine and Marso’s idea worked.

  In the wake of Guine and his friends, Kreya approached Zera’s neighbors, especially those who sported the largest sculpture gardens, and with the owners’ blessing, she carved bones and installed them in their statues. Jentt accompanied her, carrying the bag of fresh animal bones.

  Statue after statue.

  Garden after garden.

  She installed her bones in them all: sculptures of giant men and women, soldiers, wild animals, mythical monstrosities. Any statue that looked as if it could fight, she inserted her magic. “You have a new purpose now, my beauty,” she whispered to a marble carving of a wild boar.

  At last, they reached Grand Master Lorn’s palace. She still had unused bones—Zera’s collection had been extensive—and she knew exactly how she wanted to use them. Every muscle felt as if it were quivering, but she couldn’t stop now.

  The guards recognized them instantly. “Master Kreya! Master Jentt!”

  “We need Lorn’s pillars,” Kreya said bluntly.

  “Your friends approached us with your request, and we’ll tell you the same as we told them: Grand Master Lorn has not returned from the bone guild headquarters. Without his approval, we cannot grant you access to his palace, but we will notify him of your request when he returns.”

  That was very polite, but she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. The army on the plains, hidden beneath the earth, had been vast. Eklor had had many years to build it up. She needed every statue she could get.

  She peered at the closest guard. “I remember you. You helped me burn the bones.”

  “Yes, Master Kreya.”

  “You saw them for yourself,” Kreya said. “Do you believe Eklor means no harm?”

  “I . . .”

  The other guard asked, “Do you mean harm to Grand Master Lorn or his property?”

  “Yes,” Kreya said.

  The guard was not expecting that answer. Her stoic face twitched in surprise, and Kreya felt a stab of sympathy. The guards’ job was to keep uninvited visitors out. They hadn’t signed up to be asked to decide who to trust to save the world.

  Jentt jumped in. “What she means is: she intends to harm Eklor, the monster who deceives our grand master and threatens the lives of our colleagues.”

  “So she don’t mean to harm Grand Master Lorn or his palace?”

  “I will most likely destroy his palace,” Kreya said.

  Jentt shot her a look. “You’re terrible at this.”

  “I need the pillars, and I had enough of diplomacy at guild headquarters.” She turned back to the guards. “Let me do what needs to be done. Meanwhile, you evacuate the building. It will most likely collapse without the pillars, since they’re holding up the ceiling, and I don’t want to be responsible for unnecessary deaths.”

  This did not reassure the guards. “We cannot allow—”

  Jentt cut him off. “You have a choice: Take a risk and trust yourself. Help us. Or close your eyes to the obvious truth—Eklor is offering a fool’s dream. A second chance at life comes at a terrible cost, and Eklor is making the innocent pay. Worse, he’s using that dream as a trap.”

  “You know we could force our way in,” Kreya said. “This is a courtesy only.” Of course, if they had to force their way in, they’d use resources they couldn’t spare fighting against people who weren’t their enemy. She’d rather the guards cooperated.

  The two guards stepped back to confer.

  “Do you ever try tact?” Jentt whispered.

  She gave him a tense half smile. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  For a second, her vision clouded. Kreya rubbed her eyes. Overtired? she wondered. It had already been a long night, but tomorrow would be longer still. She had to keep pushing herself. The more statues she could prepare, the fewer innocents would die. She hoped.

  When the guards stepped forward again, they looked resolute. The female guard spoke: “We are deeply sorry, Master Kreya and Master Jentt, but our responsibility is to Grand Master Lorn and without his approval, we cannot grant your request.” They looked scared at the possibility this might end in violence, yet they also stood firm.

  Kreya opened her mouth to argue more, but Jentt drew her back. “Not the right battle to fight,” he whispered. Replying to the guards, he said, “We respect your dedication to your duty.” He kept pulling her down the stairs.

  She wanted to race back up and force their way in. He stepped onto one of the cloud lifts. “Jentt, the pillars in there are twice the size of the ones in Zera’s palace. You know ho
w useful they would be—”

  His lips close to her ear, he whispered, “That’s why I stole their keys.”

  Ahh, he’d been the blur that had clouded her vision—it hadn’t been exhaustion. She should have realized it. Leaning forward, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  After they broke apart, he said, “East of the palace. Servants’ entrance.”

  Using the cloud lift, they skirted around the grand master’s palace. Jentt spotted the servants’ entrance, tucked behind several topiaries. He swung the bag of spare bones over his shoulder as if he were carrying supplies for the kitchen, and he strode with purpose down the path. Kreya followed.

  In seconds, they were inside, and Jentt had slipped the keys back into one of his many pockets. With Grand Master Lorn on the third tier, the palace was nearly empty. Kreya heard the clink of pots and dishes from the kitchen, as well as a low hum of chatter, but once they reached the grander halls, it felt abandoned.

  They used speed and stealth talismans to dart through anyway, and Kreya added carved bones to the massive skeletal pillars, using up the last of the supply. She gave these colossi her strongest, deepest carvings, throwing every bit of power she could into them.

  In total, there were twenty-four.

  When she finished, she surveyed them. In the shadowy hall, they looked both menacing and beautiful. Coming up beside her, Jentt kissed her neck. “Ready to wake them?” he asked.

  “We have to evacuate everyone from the palace first,” she said.

  “On it,” he told her.

  He zipped away.

  She walked between the pillars. If this worked . . .

  For one beautiful moment, she let herself bask in hope and silence. It was the first time she’d been alone in weeks, the first time she’d held still when she wasn’t asleep, the first time she’d allowed herself to breathe without a hundred thoughts tumbling through her head, and it felt almost peaceful.

  And then Jentt was back. “Everyone suddenly found themselves in the topiary garden.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s do this. Are you ready?”

  Was she? Such an interesting question. Years ago, she’d felt ready for whatever the world would throw at her. With Jentt by her side, she’d felt as if she could face anything and of course good would triumph and happiness would be her reward. But then she’d lost him, and everything she’d thought she knew about the world—all that certainty—had drained out of her. Now, could she ever say she was “ready” again, knowing how badly it could all go and how much was beyond predicting or controlling?

  Hell yes, I can.

  She took his hand in hers. “Ready.”

  “You know, if we pull this off, there will be ballads about us today.”

  “There are already ballads about us,” Kreya said. “Best we can hope for this time is that they’ll rhyme.” She faced the pillars. “Vasi rae. Lindar rae. Abrutri inari rae!” She released Jentt and raised both her hands over her head as she called to them, “Follow me, my friends! Fight for me! Fight for the bone workers of Cerre!”

  For a moment, nothing happened. And then, slowly, the pillars lurched forward. Chunks of ceiling rained down as they yanked themselves off their perches. Kreya and Jentt backed toward the massive doors.

  More pillars ripped themselves from the floor and ceiling. Their skull faces were sightless, but still Kreya felt as if they were focused on her. She guided them out of the grand master’s palace. Their massive stone feet shattered the marble as they walked, and the first through the doorway smashed into the door frame. Stone and gold plummeted onto the steps below. Jentt waved an apology to the guards, but Kreya ignored them, marching to the cloud lifts.

  They rode ahead, with the behemoths marching behind them. As they passed the other palaces, Kreya awakened the statues in their gardens. Soon, they filled the gold-flecked streets of the fifth tier. Reaching Zera’s palace, Kreya ordered her statues to halt.

  She woke those inside and led them out to join the others. “It’s a simple plan: the statues defend the guild, and while they hold back the army, we slip inside and alert the bone workers. Then the bone workers fight the army while the five”—she glanced at Amurra—“six of us find Eklor. Any questions?”

  Amurra raised her hand. “What about the persuasion talisman? How can we be sure the bone workers will listen?”

  Good question. They still didn’t know how powerful the talisman was. But she’d seen Eklor’s grip on Lorn slip when his son told him about the bones. “Enough proof should break through whatever hold he has on them.”

  “If they need proof, we’re about to have a lot of it,” Zera said. “Just have to make sure they’re paying attention.”

  Stran asked, “Marso, can you predict where Eklor’s army will emerge?”

  “I . . . I don’t . . .”

  Kindly, Kreya stopped him. “Not necessary. They’ll emerge as close to the headquarters as possible. He’ll want to keep as much of the element of surprise as he can before he attacks. He won’t want the bone workers to be ready to defend themselves.” More quietly, she said, “It’s what I would do.”

  It was disturbing how easy she found it to predict his actions. She liked it better when she couldn’t imagine his thoughts and feelings so easily. I am not like him, she thought. There are lines I have never and would never cross.

  “Okay, great, we need to make sure the bone workers see the army, ideally before they’re crushed by it,” Zera said. “You’re right that that should weaken the effects of the talisman—no talisman, even one made by a genius, is all-powerful. We weaken the effects, free the bone workers, grab Eklor, end the war. Piece of cake.”

  Taking a breath, Kreya looked at all her friends. This felt similar to the moment in the abandoned farmhouse, before they began their assault on the plain. They’d prepared as best they could, felt full of self-righteous optimism, certain they couldn’t fail. Not knowing what they were truly walking into.

  “I’m sure absolutely nothing will go wrong,” Zera said with a straight face.

  Shooting her a sharp look, Jentt reached toward Kreya and took her hand. “It will be different this time.”

  “Yeah,” Zera said more seriously, “we’re older, wiser, and cuter.”

  Kreya wanted to believe that was true. Not the cuter part, although it did momentarily make her smile. No, she wanted to believe they weren’t just making all the same mistakes, underestimating their enemy and overestimating themselves. Closing her eyes, she saw Jentt fall, pierced by an arrow, as fresh a memory as if it were yesterday. She couldn’t bear losing him again. Not when she knew how little time she had left to gift him, if he fell. And if she fell? Leaving him alone? Or if Zera fell, after Kreya had just found her again? Or Stran and Amurra, leaving their children alone?

  “This time, we aren’t going in order to be heroes,” Stran was saying. “This time, we’re going for the people we love. That’s why it will be different. That’s why we’ll win.”

  It was a beautiful thing to say, and Kreya let it warm her. She reached out her other hand, and Zera took it. Stran took Zera’s and Amurra’s, Amurra took his and Marso’s, and Marso took hers and Jentt’s, completing the circle. Kreya felt as if strength were flowing between them. She let it fuel her.

  “Let’s save the world,” Kreya said. “And this time, let’s finish the job.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Their mistake was simple: they believed Eklor hadn’t changed.

  Kreya and the others assumed he still only wanted to target the bone workers. If he had, then Kreya’s prediction would have been correct. He would have ordered his army to attack the guild headquarters on the third tier as soon as all the bone workers were gathered within. Kreya’s statue army then could have descended from the fifth tier and surrounded them, fighting from the outside while, warned by Kreya’s team, the bone workers fought from the inside, squeezing the enemy between them.

  But he had changed.

  Now
he hated them all.

  Not a single citizen of Cerre had sided with him against the Bone Workers Guild. Not one man, woman, or child had shown a drop of understanding of what he’d suffered and what he’d achieved, or at least not that he perceived. The people of this city—every man, woman, and child—had cheered and celebrated Eklor’s defeat. They had turned the execution of his apprentice into a festival, and they had glorified the five so-called heroes who had destroyed his dreams of justice. And so, he determined, they should all pay the price for their lack of compassion for his pain.

  His army had crept close to the city through the mists and then clawed their way through dirt and stone, climbing high within the mountain itself, both using the existing tunnels and creating new ones. As dawn touched the peaks and ridges and bathed the rocky slopes in lemon-gold, hundreds of metal, bone, and decaying flesh soldiers burst into the city of Cerre, not on the third tier, where the guild headquarters were and where Kreya’s team expected them, but instead on the first and second tiers, through the homes of ordinary people.

  The part-machine, part–flesh-of-the-dead soldiers ripped through the walls of kitchens and bedrooms. They destroyed shops and schools and markets. Several climbed to tear down the arches that held the aqueducts. Hundreds of gallons of water flooded the streets.

  And as they destroyed the city, they killed its people.

  Ensconced safely within the guild headquarters, the bone workers had no idea of the massacre in progress on the lower tiers. They were enrapt, seduced by the persuasion talisman and by their own fears and desires, listening to Master Eklor spin promises of a deathless future: the lure of immortality for themselves and their families.

  But on the fifth tier, high above, Kreya and her team heard the screams of the dying.

  And it didn’t matter if they felt hopeful or hopeless, youthful or every bit of their age, trained or not, strong or not, ready or not. The war was no longer in the past. It was here, now.

  “Shit.” Kreya selected a few more choice words as well.

  As horrible as it was, though, there was the tiny whisper of satisfaction at the fact that her first instinct had been right. Eklor had assembled an army, he had brought his soldiers to Cerre, and he wasn’t seeking redemption any more than a croco-raptor was seeking to apologize to his dinner. If she were lucky, if they were all very lucky, she’d be able to say “I told you so” to Grand Master Lorn.