by Sean Wallace
Salt lowered his head.
“I will go,” he said at last. “If only to prevent your crushing more dreams.”
Imago Bone rose with a look of gratitude, put his hand upon Gaunt’s shoulder.
“I regret I did not arrive sooner,” he whispered, then smiled ruefully. “The skeletal rooftops, they beckoned . . .”
“We’ll talk of it later,” Gaunt said. “No one can help being who they are.” She leaned against him, but could not bear to look at him, nor at Master Salt, who gathered broken ships, tenderly, bone by scattered bone.
“The first is found,” sighed the man upon the ivory chair.
An older man, shuffling through the chamber of mists, stopped and coughed. “Majesty?”
“Persimmon Gaunt. And her companion thief.” The voice was dim and flat. “They have found the first. Soon, all will be well.”
“The reports I bring, ah, belie such optimism.” The older man scuttled closer. His robes fluttered with no regard to the drafts. “The nobles, hmm, demand war with the Eldshore, if you cannot secure an alliance by marriage. I suggest you build ships, raise troops.” He raised a wrinkled hand before the king’s nose, then snatched at something only he could see.
He inverted the hand, revealing an enfleshment from the king’s memory, the tiny image of a red-haired woman, proud and bejeweled. She spat in the king’s direction. Her voice rose dimly: You are cold, with no soul within you. You shall never have me. Turning on her heel, she stalked off the palm and into nonexistence.
“Eldshore’s princess will marry me,” said the king, “once I am a better man. Once they make me a better man.”
“Strange, mm? – that you can sense their doings while I cannot.”
Mirthlessly, the king smiled. “You may have made them, sorcerer, but they belong to me.”
“Do not hope for too much, my king. War is in the air.”
“When you are here, Spawnsworth, the air smells of worse. Leave your reports and go.”
When the older man had retreated up a staircase, the king said in a toneless voice without conviction, “I will feel again.”
From the staircase descended the sounds of tortured things.
The journey to Lornbridge took two weeks, but they felt like two years to the thief Imago Bone.
Master Salt spoke only in grunts. Surely thousands of subjects were capable of grunting for their king; why should Rainjoy need this entity in particular?
Gaunt walked as though shouldering a treasure chest of guilt (Bone often pictured metaphorical treasure chests, feeling deprived of real ones) and there was a distance in her eyes even as she lay nights upon his shoulder.
So it was a relief, finally, to risk his neck reaching a well-guarded noblewoman noted for feathering suitors with arrows.
Seen through tall grass, the battlement looked sickly and moist in the moonlight. (Bone’s cloak, after a treatment of saps and powders, matched it.) He slithered beside it, scrambled halfway up, paused for heavy bootfalls to pass, then scurried atop. Time for one gulp of manure-scented air, then he was over the other side, hurling a ball of sticky grain as he dove.
He thudded on to a haycart exactly as the pigpen filled with squealing. By the time the guards investigated, the animals would have devoured the evidence. He slipped into courtyard shadows.
This was more like it: sparks of danger against the steel of brilliant planning. A shame he wasn’t stealing anything.
My beloved’s doing, Bone thought as he climbed atop a stable. When they met he was a legend, perhaps the greatest second-story man of the Spiral Sea. (The higher stories went of course without question.) Though she could pay little, he’d accepted enormous risk recovering a manuscript of hers from a pair of sorcerous bibliophiles, a task that had required another book, a tome of the coldest kind of magic. That matter concluded, he’d undertaken an absurdly noble quest, the accursed tome’s destruction.
Absurd nobility impressed Persimmon Gaunt.
Bone smirked, reversed his cloak to the side stained with berry juice, then leapt from the stable roof on to Duskvale Keep itself, clinging to irregularities in the russet stone. His slow corkscrew toward the highest window allowed him time to review six months of inquiries along the Spiral Sea, a process garnering nothing but scars, empty pockets, and a list of enemies who wouldn’t at all mind the damnable book for themselves.
Half jesting, half desperate, Bone had proposed consulting the court wizard of Swanisle.
He’d expected scowls. Swanisle was notorious for persecuting the bards of its county Gaunt (a society of women compared to witches, and similarly treated) formerly by burning, today by exile. He’d assumed Persimmon left with her teachers, would seethe at the thought of returning. But she had assented with a strange look.
Bone should have worried more at that look.
Distracted by such thoughts, Bone froze upon hearing a bright swish. Presently, from afar, came a dim thunk.
Lady Duskvale was firing off correspondence.
There was not one keep at Lornbridge but two, separated by the narrow, abysmal Groangorge. Westward stood Duskvale Keep and eastward rose the sandstone tower of Mountdawn. For generations, Gaunt had explained to Bone, the youth of Duskvale and Mountdawn had swooned for each other, sighing and pining across the impassable deep.
Then, four years ago, the keeps’ masters paupered themselves constructing a bridge. The fortresses became one small town. Not merely did a stone span connect the castle; dozens of hundred-foot ropes, cables, and pulleys twisted overhead with messages, squirrels, nobles’ drying underwear.
Yet today the bridge was guarded, the ropes cut, the youth forbidden to mix.
Swish.
Thunk.
Bone smirked and climbed beside the topmost window.
“Oh, why does he not write me?” he heard a voice exclaim.
Bone craned his head. “Perhaps because—”
“Ay!”
An arrow shot past, a roll of paper wound upon the shaft.
This time there followed no thunk but a dim clatter upon the stone bridge.
“Perhaps,” Bone said, heart pounding, “because he is not as good a shot as yourself. Though I am pleased even you must aim.”
“Who are you?” the voice demanded.
Bone crouched upon the sill, and bowed. “Bone: acquirer of oddities.”
Lady Duskvale regarded him with hawk-dark eyes framed by stern cheekbones and black rivulets of hair. “Do you plan mischief ? I warn you, I will tolerate mischief with but one man, and he I fire arrows at. For you I have a knife for stabbing, and lungs for screaming.”
“I have no wish for mischief, stabs, or screams.”
“Are you . . . are you a messenger from Lord Mountdawn?”
“Better than that, my lady. I am Bone. I and the poet Gaunt have come to comfort Lornbridge. May I enter?”
“I would be more comforted with you outside.”
“Even a footpad’s foot may fall asleep.”
“One moment.” She nocked an arrow, drew, and aimed. Then she backed into the room. “All right.”
Bone leapt inside. “I admire your caution – and more, the strength of your arm – but it is not thieves at your window you must fear. It is the embodiment of sorrow.”
She raised her eyebrows, and Bone helped himself to a chair beside a small table serviceable as a shield. He drummed his fingers upon it. “Consider, my lady. In your father’s day, these keeps were famous for romance. Men and women pined hopelessly from across the gulf. But that has changed.”
“You mock me, thief ?” Duskvale’s fingers quivered upon the bowstring, as did Bone’s upon the table. “Of course it has changed.”
“Explain.”
“Very well, though my arm grows weaker. Four years ago my father and old Lord Mountdawn, rest their souls, heard identical whispers in their sleep, imploring them to build the bridge. For a time all was glorious. Yet if there are whispers now, they implore weeping. Bravos duel for
damsels, spurned paramours hurl themselves into the gorge. Only I and my love, young Lord Mountdawn, are spared these frenzies, for we are calculating and circumspect.”
A carrier pigeon fluttered through the window, alighting upon a perch near Duskvale. She regarded it and Bone, then sighed and set down her bow. (Bone released a long breath.) Removing a note from the pigeon’s foot Duskvale read, “‘Soon I must fight my way across the bridge to your side. Each arrow is a caress, but I would kiss the calluses of the hand that fired it. Dear one! Alive or dead, my bloody hide arrives in the morning!’” She looked up in vexation. “You are interrupting a private conversation, you know. Explain your purpose.”
“Are you aware,” Bone asked, “that your monarch was once called the Weeping King?”
“Rainjoy?” she mused. “I heard Father say as much. A sensitive boy crushed by the crown’s weight, weeping at the consequences of all commands.” She crushed Mountdawn’s note. “Men can be overwrought at times. But the king has changed. Now they call him Rainjoy the Stonefaced. What does it matter?”
“Did your father speak of the Pale Council?”
“Everyone knows of them,” Duskvale said impatiently. “Rainjoy’s wise advisors. They came from far away and never went among the people. But the people loved them, for they counseled compassion, and kept the king’s cruel wizard at bay. But they departed four years ago and this is of no consequence and my beloved is about to die for me.”
“Hear this: the Council did not come from a far land, nor did they return there. One member dwells nearby.”
“What?”
“They are creatures of magic, my dear, born of a bargain between Rainjoy and his wizard.”
“What bargain?”
“That Rainjoy, so wracked by conscience he could not function as king, should weep but three more tears in his life. Yet those tears would be given human form, so when Rainjoy wished he could safely seek the insights of sorrow.”
Duskvale fingered her bow. “Impossible.”
“No, merely quite ill-advised. I’ve met one such tear. Another dwells here. We will need your help, and your paramour’s, to snare it. Tell me, do you retain builders’ plans for the bridge?”
In the end it was the sincerity in Bone’s eyes, or (more likely) the desperation in Duskvale’s heart, that bade her send a pointed message to Mountdawn and then summon servants to make certain preparations. Bone was relieved not to relate stealing her father’s ship-in-a-bottle and rifling his memoirs. For it was Lord Duskvale who had owned the faux Darkfast Dreamweaver, its surging in harmony with the whispers of Lornbridge.
Soon the moonlight found the thief whistling, strolling across that great stone arch. At midpoint he squeezed a tiny sack of quicksap, which he smeared full across his gloves then applied to his shoes.
He descended the bridge’s side, enjoying the brisk mountain air, the churning murmur of the river far below, the tickle of vertigo. Presently there came a swish from the west and a thunk to the east.
At this signal Bone crawled underneath the span, hairs pointing toward watery, rocky doom. Where the plans indicated it would be, he discovered a square opening. He crawled inside.
Blue light surrounded him. “Who?” called a bleak voice, like a hollow wind through a shattered house.
The chamber was like a monk’s cell, a cold stone sitting room with a few books (with such titles as Ballad of the Poisoned Paramour and The Tragickal History of Violet Swoon), some decoration (withered roses), odd mementos (lockets with strands of hair inside), and a lamp (bearing not oil but a pale-blue liquid glimmering like glacial moonlight).
“I had gambled,” Bone said, shedding his gloves, “you would not wish to miss the romantic play of light upon the river. I am Imago Bone,” he added, changing his shoes, “and I bring greetings from the king.”
The quicksap discarded, Bone gazed upon Rainjoy’s tear. She resembled a spindly, large-eyed maiden in a white shift. She shimmered gently in the blue light, reflecting and echoing it. Her long white hair fluttered and frayed, blending into the chamber’s dim mists.
She regarded Bone with incomprehension. “Rainjoy abandoned us.”
“He would enjoy your counsel again.”
“I cannot give it. I am not his anymore, a slave, nameless . . . now I am Mistress Mist. This is my home. There must be love in the world, you see. Lonely were these keeps, but I whispered of this bridge, and they are lonely no longer. Still do I whisper of love.”
“You whisper of more than that. Men and women have perished.”
“I do not slay them,” Mist answered sadly. “In my presence they sense what purest love could be, and how far short they fall.” She frowned at Bone. “But you – why are you here? When your true love is elsewhere, waiting and worrying. Why while your precious moments with me? Do you abandon her for me? Do you betray?”
A chill enveloped him; he could not evade those eyes.
He thought of Persimmon Gaunt. Of course he would not betray her for this apparition. And yet – was he not flippant, unheedful of her? His dallying upon the rooftops of Serpenttooth nearly caused her death. Did he not repay devotion with childish disregard? Was he not cruel?
He did not deserve her, he realized, nor life. Better to end his existence now, than risk wounding her further. Bone yearned for the abyss at his back.
But even as the impulse for annihilation took over, his old lust for living cried out. He could not prevent his leap, but he modified the angle and, falling, grasped the ironsilk strand fired by Lady Duskvale.
The thread bent, rose, bent, held. It sliced his palm, and he trembled with the urge to release it, dash himself to bits far below. Fortunately the impulse weakened away from Mist.
He saw Gaunt leaning over the bridge’s side. “I am sorry . . .”
“What?” she shouted.
He shook his head, cried instead: “Pigeon!”
Gaunt raised her arm. From the Mountdawn side of the chasm a pigeon fluttered to alight upon Bone’s shoulder, a poem of Gaunt’s affixed to its leg. Bone shrugged the bird upward and it fluttered into the hidden chamber. Presently Bone heard a sad voice, reading.
Love floating skyward is earthly no longer
Braced with selfishness, ardor is stronger
On solid ground let rest love’s wonder –
And so your bridge we break asunder.
“Picks!” Bone shouted, and at once there sang a chorus of metal biting stone.
“No!”
A large silvery blob, like a pool of mercury ignorant of gravity, flowed from beneath the bridge and oozed upward to the span. Blue light rose from that spot, and, although Bone could not see her, he heard Mist shout, “I concede! The bridge will be mute without me. Please do not break it. Keep it, and find love if you can. I will go.”
A voice like lonely seabirds answered, “They snared me likewise, sister. For we cannot destroy as they do.”
“Yes, brother. They ruin themselves, and each other. We only awaken their sorrow.”
“But the last tear will defeat them, sister. The last is the strongest of all.”
“The second is found,” said the king in the room of mists.
Framing the ivory throne, twin pillars of rainwater poured from funnels and spilled into a pool with a swan’s outline, wingtips catching the water, nose aimed at the throne’s foot, a drain where the heart should be. Just as they believed distress strengthened the spirit, the royal house of Swanisle believed chill weather quickened the flame within a man.
The king rose, undressed, and waded in, his pensive expression unchanged.
From beside the throne his companion said carefully, “This poet is, ah, resourceful.”
“Of course. She is a bard of Gaunt.”
“Mm. Never forget, majesty, her ilk caused you great pain.”
The king shivered in his pool. It gave him a look that resembled passion. “Great pain. And great wonder. I remember how every spider in its shimmering, dew-splattered web was an a
rchitect of genius to be cherished, not squashed. I remember a defiant spark in the eyes, a stony strength in the limbs of every maiden men declared ugly. I remember the disbelieving child in the faces of condemned men, a child whose mind might yet encompass creation, were that infinite head still upon that foreshortened neck. I remember knowing these things, Spawnsworth, but I can no longer feel them. But they will help. Soon.”
“Soon,” the wizard murmured, scratching his chin. His robe quivered, jerked, as though pained by needlepricks.
Nightswan Abbey formed the outline of a soaring bird, and, although its crumbling bulk no longer suggested flight of any kind, the music pouring from its high windows did much to compensate.
A crowd of the young and elderly gathered beneath the sanctuary windows every evening to hear the sweet polyphony, as the purple sunset kissed the first of the night’s stars. The sisterhood could sing only within these walls; all else would be vanity. Even so, during the last four years their music had rekindled some of Nightswan’s fame, long dimmed in this age of grim, conquering kings.
It was as if those hundred mortal throats conjured the spirit of the Swan Goddess of the Night and the Stars, she who plunged into the sun, seawater glistening upon her wings, to cool its fire and make the earth temperate and fit for life, she whose charred body fell back into the sea, to become Swanisle.
The music ceased and the listeners drifted away, murmuring to one another – all save four, who slipped among the bushes. Soon, two re-emerged, one casting a line to a window, the second glancing backward. “They will not flee,” Gaunt whispered. “They are contemptuous, certain their sister will humble us. I am uneasy.”
Bone shrugged. “We will handle her. We’ve seen worse, we two.”
Gaunt did not reply.
They ascended to the vast sanctuary, slipping behind the winged marble altar of the Swan. In the pews a lone nun prayed. Her white cap, cut in the outline of a swan, enhanced the rich darkness of a robe embroidered with tiny stars. The intruders made hand signals: they would pause until she departed.
Then the nun looked up, her face still shadowed by her hood, and sang in a voice sweet as any of the abbey’s chorus, yet with an unexpected pain, as though a delicate aperitif were served too hot. The first stanza was muted, but her voice rose with the second: