Empire of Bones

by N. D. Wilson

  The transmortal turned and raised his spear in surprise. His mail mask was up and he had a black pointed beard. He clearly wasn’t worried about Cyrus, but there were stone giants right behind. As Crescens prepared to roll out of the Brothers’ reach, Cyrus slashed at him with the short bamboo rod. He missed, slipped, and fell.

  But Nolan didn’t miss. A black blade sprouted out of the transmortal’s chest, thrown from behind.

  The man dropped his spear and sat down in the mud, his eyes wide with pain and surprise.

  Nolan wrenched the long knife from the man’s back with gloved hands, and he looked at Cyrus with rain parting around his eyes.

  “You hold the tooth,” he said, and he raised his own blade. “Beside it, true tooth-forged steel strikes with the Reaper’s own bite.”

  Wrath’s jawbone nearly took Nolan’s head off, but he dropped to the ground just in time.

  “No!” Cyrus shouted. “No!”

  Justice bent to pick up Diana’s body. Cyrus dove over her, spreading himself as wide as he could. He dug into his pocket for the stone ball Quick had given him to mark the ones he loved. Not knowing how to open it, he squeezed as hard as he could, and drops of Quick’s blood fell onto Diana’s cheek. She was breathing. Barely, but it was there, hot on Cyrus’s hand. He quickly dabbed the blood onto her temples and then dragged stripes down her forearms. He climbed to Robert and Jeb and did the same for them. Jeb was coughing, but Robert was unnervingly still, and his breath was quiet.

  “You see?” Cyrus looked up at Justice. The monk bent over the bodies. Then he turned back to the courtyard. It was scattered with gilled bodies and dart-drugged transmortals, stirring slowly. The dragon was gone. Oliver was nowhere to be seen.

  Antigone was racing around the fountain hole, heading for Cyrus.

  “Stay with her!” Cyrus shouted to Justice. “Keep her safe!”

  Nolan was still dodging Wrath. Cyrus scrambled after them, and when Nolan doubled back, Cyrus was ready with blood on his fingertips.

  Wrath picked Nolan up with the delicacy of a backhoe, studied him, then dropped him in the mud and turned his orange and green eyes on Cyrus, waiting for a command.

  They had to find Rupert. But he couldn’t leave Diana.

  “Tigs!” Cyrus shouted. “Guard them!”

  Without waiting for an answer, Cyrus and Nolan ran toward the main door into Ashtown. Wrath followed, splitting stone stairs with each step. At the top, Leon had retreated into his shell and was still. Through the doors, Cyrus saw Radu Bey, back in his own form but bruised and bloody. He was grinning, watching four others nail Rupert Greeves up onto the door of the Galleria.

  “Radu Bey!” Cyrus shouted, every cell in him ready to explode with anger. He was quivering with cold lightning, with a feeling he had never had before, not even when he’d first struck with the tooth as a weapon. Slowing his breaths seemed like slowing time itself. His heartbeats felt years apart. Radu Bey and his crowd turned as Cyrus bent and picked up a short spear with a broken shaft but a head and throat of blackened, tooth-forged steel.

  “Good,” Nolan whispered.

  Cyrus inhaled and familiar words filled his mind, and for the first time, he knew their meaning. He felt Dan’s voice inside him, and he wondered if his brother was having his old vision, but this time his vision was real, and it was happening now.

  “The seventy weeks have passed,” Cyrus said. “I lost the tooth and hold it again. I am the one come on the wings of your abominations. I am called the Desolation, and even the dragons will shrink from me in fear. Now leave my Keeper be and back away.”

  Radu Bey took one step back, but not on Cyrus’s command. He was making room for another figure, walking through the crowd.

  It had the tall body of a woman, wearing cracked leather armor studded with smooth stones. But her hands had talons like a bird’s, and she gripped a single white bone. Her face was an empty-eyed skull thick with black crow feathers.

  The skull hissed wind instead of speech, but the sound took shape.

  “I bring the peace of carrion. I make the quiet of the lifeless. Babd Catha has come.”

  twenty

  SCATTERED

  ANOTHER WOMAN STOOD BESIDE BABD CATHA, wearing the same leather but with a scarred face and red hair and bare arms tattooed with large fish scales. She carried an ax.

  “I will end all of you,” Cyrus said, and he believed it. “Is the girl still alive? I know you need a sacrifice. Where is she?”

  The skull spoke again. “Where is my son, Quick, whose power wakes the stones?”

  Wrath did not need to be told what to do. He had seen, and he had judged. He stepped around Cyrus and raised his stone jawbone.

  And then Babd lifted her raptor hand and pointed a single talon. The stone giant froze. Wrath shook and shivered.

  “No.” Cyrus shook his head. He couldn’t fail now. He had the Brothers. He had taken the tooth. But Rupert had been nailed to a door, and Diana was hurt outside, and who knew how many others had fallen.

  Cyrus charged, shouting something in Latin that Antigone would have corrected. He raised his spear, and then Nolan grabbed him and pushed him to the ground. The pale boy was on top of him, forcing his head down, covering it with his own body.

  Babd hissed and Wrath shattered. Every shard of the Brother’s huge bulk flew back toward Cyrus and Nolan in a storm of stone, spinning them away across the floor. Shrapnel ripped up tile, stripped walls, and tumbled the great shattered doors out into the courtyard.

  Leon bellowed terror, but his chain was broken.

  Nolan was limp on top of Cyrus. The transmortals were silent, but the skull was laughing like midnight wind.

  Cyrus rolled out from under his friend. Nolan’s back looked like he’d been sanded by an avalanche. His eyes were open but unfocused. Another friend fallen.

  Cyrus turned and faced his enemies, dizzy, his ears ringing, shrapnel splinters dotting his arms.

  He could see Babd. And Radu Bey.

  He could see Rupert Greeves nailed to a door.

  How many could he kill before they took the tooth from him? Before Babd shattered him like she’d just shattered Wrath?

  It didn’t matter.

  Cyrus shoved the bamboo rod into his belt and picked up Nolan’s sword with his left hand. Gripping the spear with his right, he charged.

  On the other side of the crowd, he saw the flash of the golden patrik and heard Niffy’s shout. Babd turned and Cyrus threw.

  The scaled woman slid in front of the spear, and the blade split her sternum. She smiled, raising her ax, and then seemed surprised as it fell from her hands and she sank to her knees.

  Cyrus was ready to die. He was mortal. His life was meant to be spent. And it was meant to be spent now.

  Niffy’s Irish cries proclaimed the same. Ancient black blades whirled on both sides as lambs without fear ravaged lions, as undying devourers felt bones unknit and strength unmade and lives torn away.

  Mortals need not fear death. It is as common as birth.

  The lesser immortals fled. Only the great ones stood.

  Babd deflected Cyrus’s blow with a breath. His sword slid away from her and sparked on the floor as her talons plunged into his shoulder and a needle pierced his throat. Twisting, he brought the sword back up and took her claw off at the wrist. Radu’s chains swept out Cyrus’s legs and pulled him down. Babd bent over Cyrus, raising her bone and hissing a curse, but Niffy sliced at her back. She brushed aside his sword, but he leapt, locked his thick legs around her, and slammed her to the floor across Cyrus, and Cyrus was already swinging.

  Babd Catha’s feathered head rolled away from her body, and the storm crow crumpled, sizzling at the wound.

  Cyrus rose slowly. Only Radu Bey remained beside the hole in the floor where he and his army had emerged. Niffy and Cyrus circled the sorcerer, watching the blood dragon in his chest writhe in anger.

  “Cut the beastie out,” Niffy spat, “and we face a grimy mercenary prince
and a coward.”

  Radu Bey lashed his chains, and lightning crackled between the final links.

  “Today I took the head of a Smith,” Radu said. “I am owed only two more to complete my own crest.”

  You have pain.

  The dragon’s voice was in Cyrus’s head. He gripped his sword.

  So many have fallen. Give me your pain, your anger.

  “I have laughter,” Cyrus said. He thought about his father and running with him on the cliffs beside the sea. He pictured his mother awake after three years of sleep and smiling with her short dark hair; Dan, who had kept him alive on waffles for two years; Antigone, who had laughed with him and bossed him through the darkest times; Diana, who had taught him how to fly; and Rupert, who had tried so hard to die alone. Hot tears rolled down Cyrus’s face, and the fire of a loved life flowed through his limbs, wiping away weariness with a fierce fury. He looked back at Rupert, head hanging, body propped up against the door with thin blades through his arms, like an insect pinned.

  The great ones are free. The Burials are open. Do you not fear?

  “Would that be wise?” Cyrus asked. “Because I am not. And I have this Irish brother to plunge into death with me.”

  “Aye,” Niffy growled, spinning his own black blade. “In and out again. As many dips as she takes.”

  “What can you do, dragon, to erase the life and the laughter I’ve already lived and already laughed?” Cyrus asked. “What can you do to frighten one as foolish as me?”

  Radu Bey lashed a crackling chain at Cyrus’s head, but he caught it winding around his blade.

  “What can you do?” Cyrus asked again.

  Radu dropped to his knees and spun, giving his flesh to the dragon. The huge spiny tail snapped forward, hurling churning orange fire and barreling Niffy headfirst into the wall.

  Cyrus jumped forward, and the dragon turned, snapping huge jaws. Cyrus swung, and the black blade shattered Azazel’s teeth and severed the forked tip of the dragon’s huge tongue.

  The dragon backed away and Cyrus pressed forward, sword raised.

  The tail lashed, flinging fire as cover, and the dragon turned, slithering down into the jagged hole in the floor.

  Cyrus dropped his sword and dove, grabbing on to the spikes of the smoking tail and dragging behind it down into the darkness.

  Slowly, Rupert Greeves raised his head. His eyelids fluttered and the corner of his mouth twitched up.

  “What,” he asked the world, “can you do to erase my laughter?”

  Cyrus slammed against a wall and splashed once more into deep water. He had his arms and legs around the tail now, and it twisted and thrashed as the creature raced through the water, down the long tunnel, toward light that poured in through a crack in a broken wall.

  The creature smashed into the crack and through, scattering rubble. For one second, Cyrus glimpsed the inside of an empty, spherical tomb, and then the dragon leapt into a hall made of people. Cyrus blinked in horror, unsure if he was now dreaming as the tail dragged him across walls of people and through the dangling hair of hundreds of women. The dragon raced on until it reached a wide room lined with arches formed by sleeping people.

  The long tail vanished in Cyrus’s clenched arms as Radu Bey resumed his human shape. Cyrus thumped to the floor and tumbled. With chains dragging, Radu disappeared.

  From the floor, Cyrus looked up at the wall of people, at the dangling hair and arms, and he shivered. Beside him, there was stack of old men, facedown. Cyrus sat up. Lying across their backs, there was a girl.

  She had a straight cut on each cheek, black feathers in her hair, and fish scales painted onto her arms where the sleeves of her letter carrier’s uniform had been torn off.

  Cyrus recognized her face, even though he had only ever seen it carved in stone.

  He jumped to his feet and felt her neck for a pulse. Her skin was cold and damp, but her heart was beating. Barely.

  Out of all the people trapped in the walls and the ceiling and the altar, Cyrus chose her. He slid his arms beneath her shoulders and knees and picked her up. From somewhere in the labyrinth of bodies, Radu Bey roared, but the voice in Cyrus’s head was sharper.

  Thief! She’ll die if you take her.

  Cyrus turned in a circle. He could hear rattling chains. Radu Bey was returning. Cyrus quickly crossed the room to one of the human arches. He could see nothing through it but darkness, but he could hear the sound of falling water. It led somewhere.

  She dies now!

  Cyrus backed away until he could rest Mercy’s legs on the altar, freeing up one arm. Then he tugged the bamboo cane and tooth up out of his belt and set it on her stomach. He grabbed her limp hand and closed it around the silver knob.

  With the loss of the tooth, his body sagged. Pain dragged daggers through him. His vision blurred.

  He scooped up Mercy’s legs and staggered for the arch.

  Fool.

  “Yep,” Cyrus said, and he stepped through.

  Dan had been holding the dream patiently, watching for any kind of news. He sat at his metal table, and he stared at the empty black water around him.

  Pythia sat beside him, but she didn’t like to be seen. Not by Cyrus, at least.

  Dan yawned, sleepy even in his sleep.

  Pythia elbowed him and pointed. A low bank had appeared in the water, a bank made of bones. Mobs of stone statues rose to the surface around the little table. They floated toward the bank, then quickened, climbed out, and walked into fog.

  “So many,” Dan said.

  Pythia put her finger to her lips, watching every shape closely. There had been no Babd Catha, and she sat back and crossed her arms happily.

  “They’re not all out yet,” Dan said. He pointed at three shapes drifting toward them, low in the water, just below the surface.

  Dan leaned forward over the table.

  The shape was Rupert Greeves.

  After him, a girl floated, her lips parted, pooling dark water. Her face was haloed in a swirl of red hair.

  Diana Boone.

  At first, the last shape looked like a cross. But then Dan could see that it was actually two shapes together. A girl—the girl—had her face just barely above the water. She was clutching the tooth to her chest. Completely submerged beneath her, carrying her, Dan saw the shape of Cyrus.

  Dan turned away from his brother, unable to look at his battered and swollen face.

  Alan Livingstone had known that they would likely be too late, flying in from Africa. But he hadn’t been prepared for what too late might look like.

  His twin boys, George and Silas, went silent at the first sign of smoke. But as they circled low, approaching to land, smoke was the least of what they noticed. Huge holes had been punched in Ashtown. The kitchen was gone. The Brendan’s rooms were gone. The courtyard was cratered and dotted with bodies. The front doors were in splinters, and the pillars beside the main entrance had toppled down the stairs.

  When they had landed and were walking solemnly up the slope toward what had once been the kitchens, they saw Big Ben Sterling talking to some sheriffs who had arrived by boat. He was doing an excellent job of keeping them out of the buildings.

  Inside, they found a limping, wounded monk with a Mohawk collecting the O of B’s dead and wounded with help from Arachne and Antigone Smith.

  Alan Livingstone was a hard man, and his boys just as.

  John Smith was a headless body. Robert Boone had leapt from a third-story window already mortally wounded. John Horace Lawney VII, and Gunner beside. Little James Axelrotter had been crushed by falling stone, but he was still breathing. Somehow.

  All those were grief, but it was the barely breathing body of Rupert Greeves that broke Alan’s heart.

  Antigone Smith sat by the broken doors overlooking the destroyed courtyard of Ashtown. When Wrath had exploded, Justice had collapsed, melting into a boulder dotted with embedded blades.

  Antigone felt the same. Cyrus was gone and she had turned to
stone, unable to feel her own small wounds. Damaged Diana sat beside her, trapped in the shocked daze of loss.

  Together they looked at the future, and it showed them nothing.

  The sun set and the moon rose, and still they sat. Finally, Niffy joined them, with a glass of something the color of the autumn. He made them drink and he told them everything he had seen of Cyrus up until the end.

  And Jeb came on crutches and sat with them, and he stared at the moon with dry eyes and thought about his father and said nothing. And Dennis Gilly sat with them and cried more than anyone. And Arachne sat with them and let her spiders drain out of her bag and flow down the cracked steps in search of food. And she was sad, though she tried not to show it, and they knew it was because Gilgamesh had broken his promises to her and to all of them, and had vanished in the first wave of the attack.

  All the while, Antigone wandered through thoughts that she had never allowed herself to think. And she pushed them away like rotting fruit and focused on a new day, with a new sun and fresh smells and a young wind bringing back her brother, the brother who could never be taken from her, because he had already been written.

  Beneath the bright moon, in one of those muddy places where land becomes liquid, not too far from where Antigone sat in the smell of smoke and the memory of harm, two tons of Leon eased himself into Lake Michigan and sank into cool forgetfulness.

  He never wanted to see people again.

  EPILOGUE

  CYRUS SMITH COULD HEAR A WATERFALL. And birds. And insects. And … monkeys? He slowly managed to force his eyelids open. He was staring straight up at a thick green jungle canopy.

  A girl’s face appeared above his own. She had deep brown eyes and cuts on her cheeks, but the black feathers were gone from her hair. She didn’t need them. Her hair was already black enough.

  “You’re the sacrifice,” Cyrus mumbled.

  “No,” she said. “I’m Mercy. I thought you were going to die. I gave you your stick back. I was going to bury you with it.”

  Cyrus shut his eyes again. Both of his hands were on his chest. He clenched his fist and felt his fingers close around the bamboo cane. He felt for the silver knob on top. The jolt of cold when he touched it told him that the tooth was still inside.