The Bonemender's Choice

by Holly Bennett

  GOLD IN THE PALM of the harbormaster of Niz Hana for the privilege of making berth. More gold for their safe passage through town and for directions to a carter who could supply them with travel gear. A ridiculous amount of gold for the brightly painted tented wagon Yolenka pronounced “perfect” and the mule (plus feed) to pull it. Dominic understood now why she had insisted they come laden with wealth. He shifted his weight on the hard platform that was the driver’s seat, trying to fit himself into the depression worn into the wood by some previous owner. He flicked the long reins impatiently (and without effect) over the plodding mule, and wondered yet again if this elaborate charade was not just foolishness.

  “Shouldn’t we have horses?” Derkh had protested. “We can hardly make a getaway with one mule.”

  He had voiced Dominic’s thoughts precisely, but Yolenka shook her head in adamant insistence.

  “Some traders, yes, are rich enough for wagons and horses both. Top craftsmen, demanded by kings. Men with names. Not little traveling bands like this. No one will believe.”

  She noted Dominic’s troubled frown.

  “You have army, then yes, ride down on Turga and fight. Maybe you win where others fail. No army? Then you need way to get inside. Worry about ‘getaway’ after.”

  “Dom.”

  Gabrielle’s hand rested light on his arm, joggling in the same mule-cart rhythm that rocked his body. Her green eyes held his in that direct warm gaze that seemed to look right into his soul.

  “You made the right decision.”

  Her offer to ride up front with him had been more than casual, Dominic realized. Gabrielle had played little part in their preparations so far, but Dom was suddenly very glad to have her along. Just her quiet presence renewed his hope and courage. She smiled at him now.

  “Sneaking around in disguise goes against your grain, I know. But this is Yolenka’s country, and you are right to put your trust in her knowledge. We’ll find a way to get out again.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE BOYS LOOKED SO DIFFERENT with their hair cut short, thought Madeleine. Luc seemed older, the lean firm planes of his face more prominent. Matthieu, though—the close crop exposed all his childish roundness, the brown trusting eyes and soft cheeks. She could look at him now and see him at five, a chubby charming pest, and the memory brought the sting of tears to her eyes.

  “How come they left your hair long?” Matthieu was rubbing his hand back and forth over the dark carpet on his head, fascinated with its bristly softness.

  Madeleine knew why. Because exotic foreign princess slaves sell better with long red-blond curls, that was why. She also knew why she and Luc had been chained by the ankle to their heavy iron bedsteads, on opposite sides of the room so that at the full length of the chain they could touch hands, but no more. Because exotic foreign princess slaves sell better when no other man has touched them. Still, for now they were better off than on the ship, and for that she was grateful.

  The room, with only a narrow slit of a window, a single lamp and a solid wood door, was every bit as dark as the hold of the ship had been. And it was hot. But it was dry and clean and, blessedly, so were they.

  Matthieu had looked so scared when, only a short while after they had climbed the narrow stone stairs to their cell, guards had come and taken him and Luc away. This is it, Madeleine had thought, her heart a frozen stone in her chest. The last I will ever see him.

  Then she had been taken as well, by two silent armed women, to an outdoor enclosure where her clothes were stripped off her and tossed onto a fire and she was scrubbed from head to foot with a stinging pungent soap that made her pale skin bloom into red blotches. And her hair—no wonder the boys’ hair had been cut! After coating her head in a thick oily concoction that reeked of herbs and lamp oil, it had taken the women most of the afternoon to comb, with painstaking thoroughness, the bugs and nits out of each strand of hair and finally to wash out the greasy mess. When at last she was brought back, Matthieu had hurtled into her arms. Madeleine understood what he didn’t say: He had thought she was gone for good.

  “Why did they bother to clean us up like this?” Madeleine was changing the subject, but she truly wondered. The long tunics they had been given were rough but clean, and so were the thin pallets on their bedsteads. Her skin and scalp felt almost sunburned from its harsh treatment, but already the fierce constant itching of wrists and ankles and neck she had endured on the ship was subsiding.

  Luc shrugged. “Lots of those pirates were out there getting cleaned up too. They didn’t burn their clothes, but they dumped ‘em all into big vats of boiling water, and they scrubbed ‘emselves raw just like us. Maybe Turga doesn’t like bedbugs in his house.”

  A heavy tread and the sound of a key opening the door’s padlock interrupted them. As the door was pulled back, a thick aroma wafted into the room. Meat and spices—something sharp that licked at the nostrils—and a sweet fruity...Madeleine’s mouth filled with saliva and her stomach cramped sharply. She knew she must have the same hawklike intensity on her own face that she saw on Luc’s and Matthieu’s as they stared at the large tray carried in by yet another stranger. They barely noticed him leaving as they clustered around it.

  “What is this stuff?” asked Luc. It didn’t look like anything from home; that was certain. Fist-sized packets of something wrapped in steamed leaves of some kind, heaps of a tiny bright-yellow grain, shriveled orange-red chunks that Madeleine hoped were dried fruit, greens so dark they were almost black.

  Matthieu bent over the tray and took a deep fervent sniff. “It’s food, Luc. Real food that a person would actually want to eat.”

  There was very little talk after that. They fell on their dinner, and until it was gone Madeleine did not think once about slave auctions or home or the chain on her ankle. She just ate.

  BREAKFAST WAS NOT so sumptuous, but it was wholesome and plentiful: bread and fruit and a bowl of creamy-looking stuff that was too tart for pudding, too liquid for cheese and too cold for soup. They debated over this for some time until Matthieu solved the problem by scooping a generous layer onto his bread and wolfing it down. It was good that way, they agreed—odd, but good.

  But as the day wore on, the novelty of being clean and well-fed was no longer enough to fend off reality. Good food, however cheering, would not change their fate. The chain rubbed and dragged at Madeleine’s leg, no matter how she sat or lay, making an angry red weal around her ankle. The dim shadows pressed on her—she was smothered by this constant confinement in constricted dark spaces. And the future was still a lurking terror. Madeleine fingered a tress of golden hair, let it twine around her finger like a morning glory. It would turn to the light like an eager plant, if only there were any. Her hair had felt rough and dry after the delousing, but that morning one of the silent women had come again and dressed it with a light fragrant oil and then brushed it into glossy health. She had made Madeleine rub the oil into her skin too. It was not a kindness; Madeleine understood that. They just wanted to keep her beautiful.

  When the sun had lowered in the sky enough to pierce directly through the window, Madeleine stood and walked into the stream of light. She wanted to bathe her face in sunshine, to let the light penetrate and warm the dark hollow of her heart. But the chain brought her up short, so that she could not turn into the light, but could only stand with her back to the window and let the sunshine play on her head and shoulders.

  That was where she stood when the key grated harshly in the lock and the door was pulled open.

  Madeleine jumped, startled by the sudden intrusion. She had heard no footsteps—and a quick look confirmed that Matthieu and Luc were also taken by surprise.

  Then she saw who it was, and her stomach tightened into a knot of fear.

  SHE COULD NOT know it, but for one brief moment when he entered the cell, the sight of Madeleine made the man known as Rhus doubt his course. Backlit in a shaft of brilliance, her hair a golden blazing halo, she looked to his fevered br
ain more like a spirit messenger of the sun than a slave girl. But then she took a hasty step away, and the fire dimmed back into human hair and flesh.

  It was a risky move, stealing the key and coming here, but he was done for anyway—had been the moment he hurried off with that painted whore instead of heeding Zhirak’s shouted recall to the ship. His tyrant uncle could rail at him all he liked, as he had railed at Rhus’s late return. It made no difference to him now. In the meantime, Rhus meant to satisfy his appetites while he still could. And high on his list of appetites was this girl, who had caught his eye her first day on board and tormented his thoughts ever since.

  Sliding his long knife from its sheath, he backed first the young lad and then the meddlesome older boy into their respective corners. He laid the blade flat and hard against their lips and mimed the cut throat he would give them if they made a sound. Then he swaggered back to the young miss, pressed now against the wall as if it could swallow her up.

  Oh, and wasn’t she the pretty thing, pale and delicate as a new moon and hair to drive a man wild. Only the wide blue eyes unnerved him, like the sky itself accusing him.

  She’ll close ‘em soon enough, he thought, and felt his lips flare across his face in a greedy smile. Her mouth he would close for her.

  MADELEINE COULD NOT KEEP herself from shrinking away from the Fox, but she knew it was useless. She could go nowhere, do nothing. She didn’t even have the option of trying to fight back—it was Matthieu he would kill, not her, and that was a risk she could not take.

  The man’s eyes swept her up and down, glittery and wild, and the narrow lips peeled back from his teeth.

  Like he wants to eat me, thought Madeleine. Her stomach lurched, disgust and fear rising like vomit up her throat.

  She didn’t mean to make that pathetic frightened mew as the tattooed hand reached for her, but the sound slipped out and that was what spurred on Matthieu.

  “Stop it! Leave her be!” he yelled and launched himself at the Fox.

  “Matthieu, don’t!” Madeleine shouted, but the Fox was faster. He had Matthieu in the corner, his knife pinned across his throat. Matthieu’s eyes were huge, his face drained of color.

  “Matthieu, you must stay quiet.” Madeleine forced herself to talk quietly, though her voice shook with brimming tears. “Whatever happens, don’t move. Don’t say anything.” Don’t look, she wanted to add, but the Fox was already turning back to her, his sharp cheekbones flushed red with anger, sweat starting out on his forehead.

  He slid his knife lingeringly alongside her throat and nestled it behind her ear before plunging his other hand into her hair, grabbing onto a fistful and pulling her hard against his body.

  He trembled as he pressed against her and fumbled at her clothes. The hard hands, when they found and grasped at the bare skin under her loose tunic, were so hot she felt seared. His face too, seemed to throb with heat against her cheek. He pushed her to the ground, and when she resisted he slapped her, hard and fast, on the side of her head, and then brought his face so close they were nose to nose. Breathing heavily, he pressed the knife into her neck as he barked out an angry command. A stream of spittle escaped his lips. Madeleine smelled something awful on his breath, something swampy and putrid, and she gagged and flinched back.

  Luc’s voice shattered the air. Not bothering with words, he screamed. It cut through the despairing silence in the cell and blared like a shrieking trumpet into the hallway. Madeleine heard him suck in a breath, and then the clarion blared again, louder than any voice she had ever heard.

  Blared, and held, and was cut short into a bubbly gurgle, and was gone. Only Matthieu’s voice, a strangled bleating whimper, disturbed the room.

  No. Please, great gods, any god, please no. Turning her head to look was like fighting a strong ocean current. How could it take so much effort and will, simply to turn one’s head?

  Luc lay spread-eagled on the floor, his throat gaping, blood pouring out in a red sheet. Eyes blind and staring. Gone.

  The Fox wiped his blade against his backside and turned back to Madeleine. She didn’t see him—she was pulled into a tight ball, sobbing in breathless searing gasps of pain.

  RHUS TURNED BACK to the girl—and stopped.

  Heavy boots pounded up the stone stairway. Curse the gods and the gods’ whelps...the string of disjointed curses came out in a thick mumble, along with another strand of spit. Something wrong with his tongue. He wiped at his lips, swallowed painfully and tried to think. There was no time for the girl—the mouthy little bastard had buggered that up. Now he would have to make up some excuse for killing him, and quick.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  TURGA STARED MOODILY into the purple depths of his goblet. The wine had not lifted his black spirits; it was hard to imagine anything that would.

  Bad enough that his profits leaked away with each day the auction stayed closed. It could be weeks, even months that he had to keep those children. And they had to stay healthy and strong—he couldn’t just toss them into a basement dungeon and feed them scraps, not if he wanted a decent price at the end. Then that idiot Rhus had tipped the scales toward disaster by destroying a third of his merchandise. Turga could only pray he hadn’t done worse.

  He should never have hired the man, cousin or no. That was Turga’s first mistake—letting family obligations outweigh good judgment. And they should have left Rhus behind in Baskir when he didn’t promptly obey the callback. Second mistake. The man was worthless, a turd on Turga’s heart.

  Through the narrow window, Turga could just see the crude outbuilding tucked against the wall where Rhus was locked in isolation. There he would live or die as the Veil decreed. Better for him he should die, thought Turga, than face my justice. He hoped the ravenous worm who devoured the unworthy dead made a particularly unpleasant end to all men who knowingly spread their sickness. The thought of Rhus tramping all over his compound with a burning head and raw throat goaded Turga into impotent fury.

  Turga had been in the midst of lambasting Rhus for the death of the slave boy when he noticed the man was swaying on his feet. He eyed him sharply. Was that hangdog stance and slick pallor merely fear of the punishment to come, as Turga had assumed? As if in reply, Rhus slowly crumpled to his knees. His throat worked as he swallowed slowly. A string of saliva escaped his mouth and hung in a glistening thread.

  “The Hewer take you, what is wrong with you?” Turga had taken three hasty steps backward before the words were out of his mouth.

  Rhus shrugged, armed his mouth dry and offered a brief ghastly smile. “Guess the Veil caught up with me. Sorry, boss. I was hoping it was just a sore throat.”

  Turga would have the shed torched and Rhus inside it once he died. Maybe even if he didn’t die. That was the first cheering thought he’d had all day.

  MATTHIEU NEEDED HER, she knew that. She could feel him watching her now, knew his stricken worried eyes had hardly strayed from her huddled form in the two days since Luc’s death. She needed to pull herself together for his sake.

  But if she turned from the wall, she had nowhere to look that wasn’t a reminder of what had happened. Luc’s empty cot, the chain snaking away from its leg. Bloodstains where he had lain with the life gushing out of him. He had kissed her, and now he was dead. Madeleine wished she were dead as well.

  “Maddy, please. You’ve got to eat.” Matthieu’s hand on her shoulder was steady, his voice gentle and coaxing. “C’mon now. This is really good—just have a little taste.” He didn’t sound scared, Madeleine realized. He sounded almost like a grown-up. And something about that—her little brother taking on the job of looking after her—touched her, so that she forced herself to roll over and sit up.

  Her head throbbed behind her eyes as she moved. Too much crying, or too long without food, she guessed. Though in all honesty, she didn’t feel hungry.

  “Thanks, Matthieu,” she whispered. She took the cup he offered her and sipped. Her throat hurt too. Justine’s voice came back to her t
hen, something she had said when Madeleine was little, carrying on over some childish hurt: “Hush, now, you’ll make yourself sick with crying.” I guess you really can, thought Madeleine. She turned her attention to the bread her brother was holding. She didn’t really want it, and it hurt to swallow it, but she ate it anyway.

  She and Matthieu were family—the only family they had left. If he could be strong for her, she could do the same. She would eat and try not to think about the stain on the floor, and maybe the pain that squeezed her heart so fiercely it made her whole body ache would loosen its grip.

  “YOUR PARDON, BOSS.”

  It was Zhirak, one of very few who would venture to interrupt Turga in his current state.

  “What is it?”

  “Traveling peddlers at the gate—new ones. Foreigners, most of ‘em. I thought you might be interested.”

  “Why, who are they?” Though he had a pirate’s dislike of paying for his comforts, Turga had the foresight to treat fairly those within his gates. As a result, Rath Turga enjoyed a steady trickle of traffic from merchants and craftsmen hoping to increase their trade.

  “Dancing girl, blacksmith—he’s a jewelcrafter too, some very fine, unusual pieces. You might be able to pick them up cheap if he’s yet to make his name. The girl—she’s the real thing, boss, and I don’t mean just beautiful. Seems like she’s dancing even with her feet planted on the ground, you know? Thought she might cheer you up...”

  Turga grunted. He was hardly in the mood, but moods could change. “They a pair?”

  Zhirak shook his bald head. “Don’t think so. But there’s another guy, husband or maybe just bodyguard. Keeps a close eye on ‘er and his hand to his sword.”

  “Right. Quite the little crew. Any more?”

  “Two. The dancing girl’s musician—thin dreamy type. And a remedy woman.” Zhirak hesitated, and then added cautiously, “Ain’t my business, boss, but I wondered if she might have anything for...” He finished the sentence with a vague gesture toward the window.