Books & Bone

by Victoria Corva

  ‘Who —?’

  ‘Smythe. Please.’ Ree rested her back against the door. It juddered as Larry pounded on it. ‘I’m struggling to remember a time when you weren’t talking.’ Her legs still ached from two days of hard travel and all she wanted was to stagger into her bedroom and fall asleep on her nice comfy stone shelf. ‘Would it be alright if you just read your book while I sort out a place for you?’

  Smythe froze. ‘I — yes. Of course. Jolly rude of me, to pester you with questions. I was just going to ask — nevermind.’ He hunched his shoulders, leaving Ree with the unpleasant sensation of having scolded a puppy.

  It wasn’t that she disliked his chatter. She just didn’t feel equipped to cope with it.

  But she’d agreed to help Smythe. She owed him her life.

  And he was a scholar. He appreciated learning on its own merits, not just in pursuit of power. There were precious few of those in her life.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, relenting. She lit a candle and handed it to him. ‘I appreciate it. Now — ack!’ She stopped as she was about to turn into the main room.

  Usther sat at the table, legs crossed and head cocked. ‘Who’s this?’

  Ice formed in the pit of Ree’s stomach.

  An archer loosed at me today — the arrow tore my hawkskin and I fell tumbling from the sky, hitting tree branch after tree branch in my cumbersome human shape. I ripped my best blue robe, and lost quite a bit of my actual skin.

  The limitations of the therianskin are well-warned in the stories my masters sang to me as a child. But I cannot help but feel frustrated at the vulnerability. I think: what is the point of wearing this skin if a pinprick can expel me from it? Why become a bear, or a wolf, if I cannot crush my enemies beneath my paws and crunch their skulls between my teeth?

  I feel the necromancers could help me with this. Their magic is all about holding broken things together, after all, and its scent is akin to the scent of therianthropy. But I have no allies in this community. They are too cold, too ambitious, too self-absorbed for friendship.

  I could ask the King to step in and send me an advisor, for if my power grows, so does his. But it may be wiser not to. I do not trust a necromancer not to smile while she stabs me in the back.

  ~from the journal of Wylandriah Witch-feather

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SPECTRE-PUNCHED

  Ree had spent a lot of time, energy, and social currency saving Smythe, and now he was striding toward an executioner with his hand outstretched.

  ‘Chandrian Smythe, Third Rank —’

  Ree stepped in front of Smythe, cutting him off. ‘It doesn’t matter. What are you doing in my house?’ She masked herself in cold annoyance, hoping it would hide the fear clambering up her throat. If anyone found out about Smythe before she could get the council on her side, he would be killed. ‘Don’t you have anything better to do than break into my house? Spy on other practitioners? Insult passers-by?’

  But Usther’s gaze was fixed just above Ree’s shoulder. Her colourless eyes were bright. ‘So this is your secret,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘This is why you were running around in such a hurry.’ She bared her teeth at Smythe and said, ‘Oh, Ree. You are in so. Much. Trouble.’

  Ree tried to remain calm, though her pulse slammed in her veins. ‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ she said coldly. Behind her, Smythe shifted nervously.

  ‘You brought an upworlder home.’ Usther nearly purred the words. ‘Oh, this will be very good.’

  ‘Sorry — good?’ Smythe said. His voice cracked a little at the end.

  Usther smiled in a way that made Smythe duck back behind Ree.

  Ree scrubbed at her face. She needed to shut Usther up until she could talk to the council. Which meant talking to her father, first in a long list of things she didn’t want to do. She wanted a book, she wanted to think, she wanted ten minutes where Smythe wasn’t talking …

  Something howled and pounded on the door.

  ‘Shush, Larry!’

  Ree breathed out through her nose, thinking fast. She looked between the two of them, Smythe looking properly afraid for the first time since he’d mistaken her for a minion, Usther looking like a cat presented with a live mouse. There was a terrible feeling of inevitability about all this, but Ree pushed it back.

  ‘There’s nothing to be gained here,’ Ree said, crossing her arms. She rolled her eyes, giving Usther every drop of bored disdain she could muster. ‘I’ve already spoken with the council. They know he’s here. We’re waiting for the verdict.’

  Silently, she prayed to Morrin and any gods who might be listening that Usther was gullible today.

  Usther’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve already spoken to the council,’ she repeatedly flatly.

  Ree shrugged.

  ‘And they’re just letting you wander around with a potential witch hunter?’ She referenced the many different factions in the upworld who took it upon themselves to kill people just because they might have dug up a few bodies or dabbled in black magic.

  That was all of their greatest fear, of course. Adventurers killed them because they were between them and their coveted ‘treasure’. Witch hunters killed them on principle, and went out of their way to do it.

  Smythe peered over Ree’s shoulder. ‘I’m a historian, actually, quite a well-known —’

  ‘Do shut up.’ Usther stood up and brushed down her robes. She was wearing a very impressive robe with trailing spider lace cuffs. Her eyes were sunken into her face, shadowed and hard to read, but they were fixed not on Smythe, but on Ree.

  Ree could see her lie growing smaller in Usther’s eyes. It seemed vanishingly likely that the ruse would work, but to admit her lie would only spur Usther on. ‘Are you finished posturing?’

  ‘When you have power like mine, who needs to posture?’

  Under other circumstances, Ree might have smiled at that, but her gaze was still locked with Usther’s and there was nothing funny about her expression.

  ‘You know …’ Usther began. ‘I don’t think you did tell the council.’ Her shadow twitched in the candlelight, seeming to pulse larger and larger. ‘Don’t you think someone should?’

  Ree took a step back, one hand on the table behind her. ‘Smythe, go into my room.’

  ‘Uh — which room is that?’

  ‘Any room!’

  Usther’s eyes filled with shadow. ‘Handing in an upworlder will put the council in my debt. Show them I’m a responsible and civic-minded denizen. It’s only practical.’ Her voice had the hint of a deep death echo as her power gathered.

  Ree bumped into Smythe. ‘You need to leave.’

  Smythe’s hands caught her shoulders, so warm she startled at the touch. ‘I don’t think I should.’

  ‘Gods’ weep, just go —’

  Usther lifted her hand. Ree acted on instinct, diving aside.

  Usther blew gently across her palm. Dust stirred and coalesced into a faded creature of tattered flesh and rags, gliding at Ree. Ree snatched at her herb pouch, but too late. The spectre collided with her, pinning her to the wall as if by a strong wind.

  Usther smirked and lowered her hands. ‘No hard feelings, I hope.’

  Spectres were only the weak cousins of greywraiths. The summoned essence of a body pulled from gravedust, weaker even than a lesser minion like Larry. To use one against her was a slap in the face, and yet …

  Ree gasped for breath. Her fingers twitched toward her pouch, but the spectre had transfixed her. ‘Us-ther …’ Her lungs squeezed, devoid of air.

  Smythe got up from the floor, where Ree had knocked him. ‘Now see here, you can’t just —’

  ‘Effet.’ Usther waved a hand at him; another spectre smashed him into a chair, then disappeared in an explosion of dust. She didn’t spend the magic to keep him pinned; she barely spared him a look. To Ree, she said, ‘He’s only an upworlder. And the council will be so very pleased that I’ve exposed him.’ She walked to the door. ‘If you stopped to think about
it, you’d realise what an excellent plan it is. I’ll be back soon with the council.’

  The door slammed shut. Ree struggled against the spectre, but it only breathed in her face. All she could smell was mould and old cloth. It fixed her with a milky-eyed gaze.

  If she was a necromancer, like her father, she would dispel this creature with a snap of her fingers. If she was a healer, like her mother, she would burn it away in a blast of radiant light.

  But she was only Ree, and her dreams of a magic more powerful than either were still only dreams. The spectre continued to pin her, snatching her breath in its phantasmal wind.

  ‘Ree!’ Smythe scrambled to his feet. There was a purpling bruise under one eye, and his glasses were askew. He skidded to a stop in front of where the spectre pinned her, hands opening and closing. ‘What do I do?’

  Ree tried to draw breath, but the spectre pressed her further into the wall. ‘ … Pouch.’

  ‘Pouch. Pouch? Pouch!’ Smythe’s eyes lit on her belt, where her hands still twitched helplessly. ‘Can I just … ahh … right.’ He reached through the spectre’s ghostly rags to fish in Ree’s pouch. ‘Ahh … terribly sorry about this, old chap,’ he told the spectre. He withdrew the herbs, hesitated, then threw them. The herb clouded around the spectre. It drew slightly back.

  ‘Be at peace,’ Ree wheezed. The spectre’s eyes closed; it faded into nothing. Only a pile of grave mould on the floor marked its passing.

  Ree staggered; Smythe caught her by the arms, bracing her. ‘We did it! Rather impressive stuff, I should say. Would you mind if I took notes on — what are you doing?’

  Ree shunted him back and into her bedroom. ‘Stay in here. Shut the door. Don’t make any noise.’

  ‘Wait. What? Why? Ree! Where are you going?’ His brown eyes were round with alarm.

  She felt the pull of it. The desire to sit down and explain everything. To try to make sense of the mad world of necromancers he’d bumbled into when he first had the bright idea of excavating the crypt. To spend one day not running around trying to put everything right.

  His gaze sharpened. ‘Why are you helping me?’

  She wished she knew. What did she really owe him, now? He’d saved her life; she’d saved his. She was crazy to even try. She tore her eyes from his and snatched up her father’s spare staff from the corner. She pulled up her hood and ran for the door. ‘I’m going to convince the council to let you live,’ she told him, not trusting herself to meet his eyes. ‘Before Usther gets them to kill you.’ She slammed the door behind her and ran out into Tombtown’s dusty streets, praying to Morrin and the slumbering dead that she wasn’t too late.

  Tombtown is very welcoming of strangers. Normal-ers, less so. As nearly all denizens immigrated from the upworld — often with angry villagers or righteous priests on their heels — there is a tolerance for the odd and the outcast which is rarely seen in settlements of its size. Necromancers are accepted yes, but so are the cursed, the ugly, the poor — if they can find their way here and survive the journey. On one famous occasion, the town agreed to let an ex-dancing bear take up residence. Its chains were removed and it was given a tomb not far from the central mausoleum as a den, and food was left for it periodically.

  It is not empathy the denizens lack: it is forgiveness.

  And any who wander the long halls of the crypt had better not resemble those upworlders that hounded the denizens into hiding.

  ~from A History of Tombtown by Emberlon the Disloyal

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE BONE AND BREW

  Ree made it about three feet before she collided with a wall of cold flesh and greenish skin. ‘Larry!’

  Larry flopped on the floor like a beached fish. Ree grabbed his arm, dragged him to his feet, and raced off after Usther with her father’s staff still in-hand. How many minutes had she lost, pinned to the wall by Usther’s spectre? Five minutes? Fifteen? How long would it take Usther to turn the council against her?

  Ree had meant to do this carefully. She’d have spoken to all the council members individually, starting with her father. She’d have introduced them all to Smythe, because who could believe such a goofy imbecile was any more dangerous to the town than Larrry was. She’d have explained that she owed him, but would avoid the encounter with the Lich …

  She skidded around the corner, narrowly avoiding a necromancer in heavily singed robes. ‘Watch it!’

  ‘Sorry!’

  She ran on. She could hear Larry crash into the necromancer but couldn’t stop to survey the damage. At this time of day, most of the council would surely be at Mortana’s tavern. She saw the sign of the skull and flagon and burst through the door.

  Mortana looked up from a bar strewn with ingredients and alchemical equipment. She was a sallow-skinned necromancer with wild ocean-spray hair and eyes with a vicious red tint. She was also a wyrdling, the only one Ree had ever met, with two small horns peeking through her hair and a heavy, copper-scaled tail that dragged behind her. ‘Everyone’s tearing around today. Can’t I get ten minutes of peace?’

  Ree didn’t point out that Mortana ran a tavern, and that people were necessarily a part of that. She was fairly certain that the tavern keeper’s only reason for doing so was to spy on the customers.

  ‘The council —’

  Mortana groaned and rolled her eyes. ‘The council this! The council that! That snooty acolyte was after them as well. When I told her to pipe down, she knocked over the spiders’ eyes I was brewing, and they were nearly potion-ready!’

  Ree could see the tavern keeper was building up to a rant. She could hear her tail sweeping the floor behind her. ‘Mortana, I just need —’

  ‘No.’ She put her hands on the bar and leaned forward. ‘I never wanted the council in here in the first place. If you’re here to buy something, stay. If not, get out.’

  A hundred options flashed through Ree’s mind. Her hands clenched and unclenched; she gritted her teeth. She considered suggesting Mortana’s access to the alchemy books be curbed, or reminding Mortana of all the council notes that had mysteriously turned up in books Mortana returned. Smythe’s life was hanging in the balance, and her nerves burned that Mortana dared obstruct her.

  But she was also not keen on conflict, and very short on time. She hesitated; her eyes flitted to the double doors that led to the back rooms of The Bone & Brew.

  Mortana’s eyes narrowed. She started to gather power. ‘Ree. Don’t you —!’

  Ree darted around the bar, just barely whipping out of reach of Mortana’s clawed hands. She barrelled through the doors, tripped down the step, and tumbled into a low-ceilinged room with a large, pitted table at the centre, and four surprised necromancers sitting around it. Her father’s staff flew from her grasp to skitter across the floor and fetch up against a familiar pair of muddy black boots.

  ‘Reanima.’ Ree’s father plucked the staff from the floor and laid it on the table. His charcoal hair was tied in a neat tail at his neck. His robes were pressed and wrinkle-free; his eyes were black and without whites. Years of the Craft had kept him young, but had also traded much of his life with unlife. His skin was the colour of a rain-soaked sky, and veined with ink. ‘How nice of you to join us.’

  ‘I told you she would.’ Usther perched on a barrel in the corner, legs and arms crossed. ‘She’ll do anything to protect him. A rather pathetic defender, I must say.’

  Ree swallowed heavily. She pushed herself to her knees, then to her feet. She bowed low to the dark-haired man. ‘Pa. This isn’t what it looks like.’

  ‘And what, exactly, does it look like, Reanima?’ He lowered himself back into his seat while the other council members murmured. Ree winced at the use of her full name, as if pricked by a thorn. While her mother only used it when she was annoyed, her father refused to shorten it. Each time he spoke to her, he brandished it like a whip: a reminder of what a disappointment she was, of the dreams she’d betrayed.

  They weren’t my dreams, she wanted to say. That
isn’t me.

  ‘I found a boy,’ said Ree.

  Usther snorted. ‘He looked plenty grown up to me.’

  ‘In a Third Era embalming room. He was just studying.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet her father’s eyes, so she looked at each of the other council members in turn. ‘We talked. He didn’t attack me. Didn’t even want to. He wasn’t hurting anyone.’ Ree said it as firmly as she could. Kylath, one of the younger council members, pursed her black lips. Bahamet the Eternal, who was nearly a Lich himself, only twitched slightly in his seat.

  ‘You should have made him leave,’ said Kylath. Her mouth twisted. ‘We have no need of upworlders coming here and disturbing our dead.’

  ‘Better yet, you could have killed him.’ This from Tarantur, with brown-grey skin, a rat-like dart to his eyes, and spell diagrams tattooed across his face. He was far from the most powerful necromancer in town, but was close to the most knowledgeable. People whispered that he’d once marched an undead army on the capital of Assur in the northern valleys.

  Kylath made a face at him, but Tarantur only shook his head. ‘Without secrecy, we are nothing. If those out there knew about us, they’d send their armies in after us to dig us out of the tombs and burn the bodies.’

  ‘Adventurers find out all the time,’ Ree said impatiently. ‘We’re still here.’

  ‘No, that’s not the same at all. You see — you see, adventurers are greedy. They think “I have found this tomb, and I can keep its treasure for myself.” Governments are greedy too, but they need not be secretive about it. They think “I own everything in this country anyway. If the people find treasure, I will just take it from them.” It’s not worth the risk.’

  ‘That’s not what Smythe is like.’

  ‘And you know him well, do you?’ Kylath narrowed her eyes. ‘After just meeting him, you trust him with our town, our way of life?’