The queen grins. She hasn’t retreated like her attendants. She tenses to jump. I eye the fifteen feet between us. “She’ll never make it.”
“You’ve forgotten something,” Ailesse says to me. “A matrone wears five bones, not three.”
Five?
I never forgot—I never knew.
The queen leaps. Her arc is tremendous.
I release Ailesse and take a defensive stance. Ailesse rushes to the drop-off of the ledge toward her mother.
The queen is halfway across the chasm.
BOOM.
Chunks of stone burst in the air. I’m thrown on my back. Dust clouds choke my lungs. I push up to my feet, coughing. I wave away the smoke.
I can’t find the queen.
And Ailesse is gone.
18
Ailesse
I CLING TO THE CHASM wall, my hands tied. I’m barely able to keep purchase on the thin outcropping of rock. Rubble rains down on me. My muscles tense. Fingers cramp. If I fall, how long will it take before I hit the bottom and shatter every bone in my body? Don’t think like that, Ailesse. I’m not ready to die.
“Mother!” My ragged cry doesn’t echo. It’s swallowed by the settling debris and thick air.
All I see above me is a veil of dust, dimly lit by torchlight. How far down the wall did I slide? I glance across the chasm to the opposite wall to find my bearings. When I was standing with Bastien on the ledge, I saw another tunnel below ours. That’s where Marcel must have placed the black powder. But no sign of that tunnel exists anymore. It’s either fully collapsed or I’ve plunged far below it. I whimper at the thought.
My feet dig at the wall, groping for a foothold. Each time my toes catch a ridge, it crumbles away. I heave a panicked breath. If only I had my ibex bone.
Stop, Ailesse. Pining for what I’ve lost isn’t going to help me. I briefly close my eyes, trying to feel the strength and balance of my ibex grace. My muscles must remember.
I steadily drag one leg up until my toe finally grips a foothold. I carefully set my weight on it, my calf cramping. I slide my other leg up, but my foot can’t find purchase. The other foot slips, and my knee slams the wall.
“Mother!” I hate the sob that rips from my lungs. How weak she’ll think me. My legs dangle uselessly, my hands tremble. I can’t hold on much longer.
“Ailesse!”
My head snaps up. My mother’s voice is faint. I can’t tell if she’s near or far due to the way the catacombs eat sound. “I’m down here!” I instinctively shout. But she doesn’t need to hear me or see me to gain a sense of direction. She still has her tooth band from a whiptail stingray and the skull of a giant noctule bat. She pried the latter from her crown when Bastien wasn’t looking. Between the two bones, my mother has a sixth sense and echolocation. Even if she can’t see me, she’ll find me. As long as I can hang on.
My hands grow clammy. My grip is sliding. I squeeze with all my might. Elara, help me.
My vision blurs, shimmering with silver. A hazy form appears. Ghostlike, transparent. Its wings take shape and unfurl.
The silver owl. The same one I glimpsed for a moment in the secret chamber.
The owl screeches, and a surge of strength flows into me.
“I’m here!” my mother says. I startle. The owl vanishes. So does my newfound strength. I gasp, my mind reeling. What just happened?
“Ailesse!”
I look behind me at the opposite wall of the chasm. The dust thins. My mother’s lithe figure descends. She must have been blasted back to that side of the tunnel from the force of the explosion.
She eases down a rope—the severed pulley rope. She’s extended it to its full length. “I’m going to swing out for you.”
I nod with a steadying breath. This torture is almost over.
She kicks away from the wall and propels across the fifteen feet between us. She grazes my wall, but her rope hangs askew, throwing off her aim. Her momentum pulls her back to her starting point before she’s able to reach me. She tries again, but her body suddenly twists when she’s halfway across. An arrow whizzes by her.
“Careful!” I cry. Jules must be above with her bow.
My mother doesn’t look worried. She hovers against her wall of the chasm, waiting for a gap between the arrows. Jules is firing blindly, so my mother has the advantage. She’ll sense the arrows as they fly.
“Hurry,” I beg, my body trembling with exertion. My fingers feel like they might break if I have to hold on much longer.
More chunks of limestone fall from above. Another section of the tunnel is caving in. My mother scrambles sideways and scales the wall with impressive ability—another grace from her bat skull. She doesn’t wait for the rubble to clear. She launches for me again, taking advantage of the distraction. My chest swells. She must love me, or she wouldn’t endanger herself like this.
She lands closer to me this time and grasps a protruding stone to anchor herself. She’s two feet away, her waist level to my head as she hangs by the end of her rope. I could reach her leg if not for my bound hands.
She scans the nearly smooth wall around me. She can’t find anything else to grab on to. “We need to cut your hands free.”
“How?” The rock I’m clinging to isn’t sharp enough to saw through my rope.
“I have a small knife. I’m going to toss it to you.”
“But I can’t let go to catch it.”
“Find a foothold to distribute your weight, then open one hand.”
My heartbeat thrashes. Blood pounds behind my eyes as I try not to panic. I grapple with my feet once more, struggling to find purchase. Nothing. With one last burst of adrenaline, I pull up a little higher and my right knee knocks against a jutting stone. I wrench my leg up and balance my knee on it. I’m not fully secure, but some of the pressure eases off my hands. “I’m ready,” I say, sweat dripping down my face.
My mother holds her rope by one hand and pulls a thin knife from a concealed slit in her dress. “On the count of three.”
I nod, praying I can grab it.
She exhales in concentration. “One. Two. Three.”
She drops the blade. I lean into the wall. Release one hand from the rock outcropping. Grasp for the hilt.
My mother’s aim is exact, but my hands are bound too tight. The knife glances off me, nicking my skin as it tumbles into the darkness.
Three more arrows zoom by. I clutch the rock outcropping again. One arrow almost strikes my head before it pings off the wall.
My fingers slip off my handhold. They’re down to their last knuckle grip. “Mother!” I cry.
Her eyes fill with pain. She shakes her head. She doesn’t know how to help me. Her rope jerks down a foot before it catches still again. She glances up. “They’re cutting the rope.”
I feel blood drain from my face. My mother can leap a chasm with her bat grace, but she can’t spread wings to fly out of one. How will she save herself? Or me?
We stare at each other. The brief moment suspends. I can’t breathe, can’t think. We’re both going to fall and die. Then my mother’s expression changes. It’s subtle, only a twitch of her jaw. A flicker of remorse in her eyes. If I wasn’t her daughter, I might not notice.
“The bone flute,” she says urgently. “Did he give it to you?”
“Pardon?”
Her rope drops another fraction. “Bastien said he would give me you and the flute. Do—you—have—it?”
My heart sinks to my stomach. No, it crashes to the depths of the pit. I’ve been a fool. She doesn’t love me. She came for the flute. “No,” I whisper. “They destroyed it.” I almost told her when she first bargained for the flute, despite Bastien’s knife at my throat, but I feared she wouldn’t make the trade just for me. I was right.
Odiva growls in sheer frustration, nothing like herself. “I won’t let you take her, do you hear me?” she yells into the pit.
The rope dips a third time. Our eyes meet. Hers are shining. With anger or sad
ness, I can’t tell. “I have tried, Ailesse. This is the only way.”
“What do you mean?” Tears scald my cheeks.
She pushes off the wall toward the other side of the chasm. The rope breaks, but she doesn’t fall. She lets go and grips the jagged stones of the opposite wall. With perfect dexterity and remarkable speed, she climbs out of the pit. And leaves me to my death.
I choke out a sob. This can’t be happening. This is cruelty, pure and cold and heartless.
This is the end.
My grip is about to give way when hands close over my hands. Warm. Strong.
I look up. Bastien’s face swims into focus. It isn’t flushed with anger, but pale with fear.
He leans down, precariously dangling from a ledge I’ve been unable to reach. He grasps one of my wrists and holds it fiercely. Chalky dust falls from his hair as he saws my bonds apart with his knife.
I don’t understand, can’t comprehend. He can’t be rescuing me. It’s unfathomable.
He sheathes his knife and opens his hand to me. I hesitate to take it. My mind is black, already sucked into the depths below. How can I return to a world where I mean so little? It would be so easy right now to let go and give my soul to Elara.
“Reach for me!” Bastien says. His eyes are wide and desperate. He’ll die if I die. Now I understand why he’s come for me.
“I can’t.” I curse every tear streaking down my face, every quaking muscle in my body. “My mother abandoned me.”
“But I won’t.” The panic leaves his voice. It’s steady now, sure. It paves a solid foundation beneath me.
I gaze into his eyes. The sea blue is deep, enveloping, beautiful.
Is it possible Bastien isn’t saving me just to save himself?
I can save him, too.
All I have to do is find the strength to reach.
“Ailesse,” he says. “Pull yourself up. Take my hand.”
I imagine myself a warrior, the Ferrier I always wanted to be. I imagine Elara’s Light coursing through my veins. I picture the silver owl, her wings outspread and championing me.
I set my jaw. And I reach.
19
Sabine
I RUSH INTO THE COURTYARD of Château Creux. Sweat slicks my palms as I glance around the moonlit cavern. Odiva and the elders aren’t back yet. The ravine entrance to the catacombs is a little over seven miles away from here, but even in the dark, they should have run that distance in an hour with their graces. It’s been three hours since I left them. Traveling through the catacombs might have slowed them down. Injuries could, too.
So could failing to save Ailesse.
My shoulders fall. Did you really believe anyone else could save her, Sabine? I drop my head and tuck the nighthawk under my arm. He’s unnaturally stiff, and he’s lost his warmth. My stomach squirms.
I did this to him.
“Sabine?” Maurille, a middle-aged Leurress, steps out from another tunnel. Lines of worry cut across the bronze skin of her brow.
I startle and angle away. My bow and quiver thump against my back, and I poke the nighthawk’s feathers out of view.
“Are you all right?” The beads woven through Maurille’s rows of ebony braids clack against each other as she tilts her head. She gave me two of her best beads after my mother died, ones made of red jasper. I later threaded them onto my necklace beside my fire salamander skull. I don’t know why I’m acting so guarded around her. Maurille was my mother’s closest friend. “I haven’t seen you since Ailesse . . .” she starts to say, then shakes her head and sighs. “I hope you know that wasn’t your fault.”
People only say such things when it probably is. “The matrone is rescuing her,” I reply. “She’ll be back with her soon.”
“You must be eager to see your friend again.”
I give a small nod. I am, but I should have been part of the rescue. I should have already obtained all my graces. The nighthawk grows heavy, and I immediately regret the thought.
Maurille comes closer. I shuffle back a step. “What is it you have there?” she asks me.
My muscles tense to run, but I root my legs. I returned home because if Odiva does rescue Ailesse, she won’t be of any comfort to her. Ailesse needs me. “A bird,” I confess.
“Sabine, you’re shaking.” Maurille frowns. “When is the last time you ate?” She reaches for the nighthawk. “Let me help you cook that.”
“No!” I whisper-shout, and pull away. “Please, I don’t want anyone to eat it.” The elders say we must honor our kills by not wasting any part of them, but I can’t bear the thought of the nighthawk becoming a meal. “I chose this bird.” Because he was unfortunate enough to cross my path.
Maurille’s eyes widen. “Oh.” She peers around me to take a better look. “You killed him for his graces?” Her brows crinkle. Sacrificial animals are rarely this small, though my fire salamander was much smaller.
“He’s a nighthawk. He’ll give me better vision in the dark,” I say, compelled to justify myself. His other abilities—increased speed, jumping farther, and having the sight to see the dead—are obvious. All birds see with more color than humans, and one of those colors is the color of departed souls.
“Well . . . that’s wonderful.” Maurille’s smile is too wide and tight. “Would you like any help preparing the grace bone?”
A flush of nausea grips me. “No. I’d like to do it myself.” It’s the only way to salvage my dignity.
Maurille sucks in a breath. At first I think I’ve offended her, but then she turns to the tunnel leading outside. She’s sensing something. Her bracelet of dolphin teeth gives her keen hearing.
“Are they back?” I ask.
She nods.
My heart leaps, and I race for the tunnel—then through the tide-carved corridors, up the ruins of the castle, and under the collapsed archway to the crumbling stone staircase. I stop halfway up the flight. Odiva stands above me. Waning moonlight shines down on her. The ends of her raven hair are coated in chalky mud.
I forgo the usual courtesy I pay the matrone and call out, “Ailesse?” I crane my neck to look around Odiva. I wish I already had my night vision.
“Is that for supper?” she asks flatly, eyeing my nighthawk.
I don’t answer. There’s no point. “Where is she?”
The four elders step into view. Their faces are drawn. Pernelle’s eyes are wet. I don’t see Ailesse. She should have been the first in their party; she would have run down to see me. Unless she were badly hurt or— “She didn’t escape?” I sag back a step. No one denies it. “What happened?”
Odiva raises her chin, but slightly averts her gaze. “We need to focus on what will happen—ferrying night is in thirteen days. We must find a way to fulfill our duties.” She looks at each of us in turn. “We are going to craft a new bone flute.”
Milicent exchanges a pensive glance with Dolssa. “Forgive me, Matrone, but how will we make a flute without the bone of a golden jackal? They’re all but extinct.”
“They aren’t even native to Galle,” Dolssa adds. “We would have to leave these shores. How could we do so and return within thirteen days?”
“Where is your faith?” Odiva lashes out in a sudden burst of anger. “Tyrus will provide for us. He demands his souls, and this is the last time I can . . .” She briefly lowers her head. The prayer I overheard her whisper last night surfaces to mind. The time is nearing an end. Grant me a sign, Tyrus. Let me know you honor my sacrifices. The feverish gleam in her eyes cools as she smooths out her sleeves. “The golden jackal is sacred to Tyrus. We must appeal to him.”
Pernelle openly stares at Odiva. Roxane and Dolssa hold themselves statuesque and tense. Milicent gives a curt nod. “Of course, Matrone.”
Odiva’s chest broadens with regained composure. “We must make haste. We cannot neglect the next ferrying night. A war has broken out in the north of Dovré. Rumors of many dead are running rampant. Every Leurress of able age will hunt until we find the jackal and make
the new flute.” She descends another step and levels her black eyes on me. “That means you, Sabine.”
“But . . . what about Ailesse?” What’s the matter with all of them? Why are we even talking about wars, golden jackals, and bone flutes?
Roxane presses her quivering lips in a tight line. Pernelle wipes at her eyes. Odiva looks up at the Night Heavens like she’s searching for the right words. “Ailesse is dead.”
“What?” Every muscle in my body turns to ice. “No . . . you’re wrong. That can’t be.” A gust of wind whips through the skirts of the elders’ dresses. My heart squeezes, struggling to beat.
“I am sorry, Sabine.” Odiva places a hand on my shoulder. “It might have been better for you if Ailesse had never been . . .” She shakes her head.
“Born?” My eyes narrow. “Is that what you were going to say?”
Her raven brows pinch together. Milicent hastily steps forward to prevent another outburst. “You forget yourself, Sabine. You mustn’t talk to the matrone that way. Of course she doesn’t regret Ailesse’s birth. Ailesse was her heir, the child of her amouré.”
“That does not mean I loved him,” Odiva murmurs, so quietly I wonder if any of the elders’ graced ears can hear. She brushes past me to the castle, but not before I catch her pulling out her hidden necklace. I glimpse it clearly for the first time—a bird skull with a ruby caught in its beak.
If this were any other moment, I’d question why she has another bone—she should only have five—but all I can do is gape in amazement as she walks under the archway of Château Creux. How can she be so heartless about her own daughter? How can any of this be happening?
Ailesse can’t be gone.
“Oh, Sabine.” Pernelle comes down and embraces me. My arms hang stiffly by my sides. “We did our best, but Ailesse’s amouré made the tunnel collapse, and it was Ailesse who fell. The matrone tried to save her, but it was too late. The pit was deep, you see, and . . .” Her voice hitches as her tears spill over. My eyes sting, but I hold back my own tears. None of this makes sense. Ailesse isn’t dead. I would know it. I would feel it.
Bone Crier's Moon Page 14