Books & Bone

by Victoria Corva

  The archer tore into his last piece of bread and stood up. He towered over Ree, knife in hand: a casual threat. ‘We carried you all day —’

  ‘I carried her—’

  ‘— and kept your worthless necro body in one piece. Used some pretty pricey potion on you, too.’ He knelt and put the tip of his knife to her cheek. ‘I want a return on my investment. Tell me where to find the best treasure. Kings or better.’

  Ree went very still. They’d come to it, then. If she didn’t tell them something now, he would surely kill her. There was a barely controlled hatred in his eyes: he was tired after a day of running, after days more in a hostile crypt that she symbolised. He would not tolerate waiting, but if she told him where to go, he would have no reason to keep her alive.’

  She licked her lips: it was like sandpaper on sandpaper. They started to bleed. ‘There’s a tomb,’ she said. ‘A big one. A king so old, we can’t even read the writing in his tomb.’ They were both up now, and staring at her intently. ‘His tomb is up on a raised dais,’ she said, picturing it in her mind. ‘The walls, the floor, are all a gleaming black marble.’

  ‘Get to the point.’ The archer put the slightest pressure on his knife. It pricked; a bead of blood ran down her cheek. She could see the knife now, a blur at the bottom of her vision. Cold against her skin.

  ‘Wall to wall treasure,’ she whispered. ‘The whole room gleams with it. It’s the most treasure I’ve ever seen in one place.

  The swordsman whooped. ‘Loot!’ he cried and punched the air. ‘We’re gonna be rich, Jon!’

  But the archer remained focused. ‘The location,’ he pressed.

  ‘The central mausoleum.’ Movement flickered at the corner of Ree’s vision; a flash of brown cloth. ‘If you follow the passages south, you can’t miss it.’ She was guessing now, just filling time. She had no idea where they were.

  The archer stared hard at her face. ‘And how do I know you’re not just another lying piece of necro filth?’

  The swordsman cried out and the archer leapt back. A brown robed figure stood there, his dark skin striking in the firelight. A long sword was in his hand, dull but held with practiced ease. The swordsman scrambled away from him, clutching his hand; his own sword was trapped beneath the newcomers feet.

  ‘Emberlon.’ Ree almost sighed his name, but the Archivist didn’t spare her a glance.

  ‘I wouldn’t try it, if I were you,’ he said. He flicked the sword and it moved like a snake; he cut the knife from the archer’s hand. ‘I trained long and hard with a sword, under better tutors than you will have the chance to meet. But if you won’t take my word for it, perhaps you’ll listen to theirs.’

  Minions shuffled in, packing the room behind him with flaking flesh and marble eyes. They were poorly made and weakly summoned, barely holding together.

  To the adventurers, there was only one frighteningly confident man and a small army of undead. They backed up against the wall.

  ‘Leave,’ Emberlon said, his voice hard. Ree inhaled sharply; she’d never heard him use that tone before. The authority in his voice was a physical thing. The adventurers looked like they’d been whipped. ‘And if this girl dies, know that the gods wait in judgement.’

  The adventurers left, scrambling over each other. Emberlon’s shambling minions went to block the passage behind them.

  He turned to look at Ree, the strength going out of his eyes. Now he looked frightened.

  ‘He stabbed me,’ Ree said, stumbling over the words. ‘He stabbed me twice, for being a necromancer.’ Tears came to her eyes now. ‘Emberlon, I —’

  ‘Andomerys!’ Emberlon half-roared the words with a volume that made Ree jump.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ The silk-robed healer pushed through the pack of minions, looking harrassed. She looked at Ree, and her normally rosy cheeks paled.

  ‘He stabbed me,’ Ree said. ‘Andomerys, he stabbed me here —’ she raised her hands, revealing the wound, and Andomerys ran to press her hand into the gap.

  ‘Calm,’ she whispered. Magic accompanied her words, a warm glow as comforting as sleep. She fixed Ree’s eyes with hers. ‘Calm, now.’

  Ree’s eyelids grew heavy as the pain faded. ‘He killed Larry.’

  ‘You can tell me later,’ said the healer.

  The last thing Ree saw was the healer sharing a worried look with Emberlon. She said something, but her words were muted, as if spoken underwater. Then darkness came. Ree went with it willingly.

  Ree woke gradually. She was on Andomerys’ healing table. There was a pressure on her stomach. ‘Andomerys,’ she croaked. Her voice was hoarse with sleep. ‘We have to go back — I left Larry —’

  Andomerys looked alarmed. She passed her hand over Ree’s eyes. ‘Sleep,’ she ordered, and Ree did.

  She flickered in and out of consciousness. She remembered seeing her father, and him calling frantically for her mother; she remembered Emberlon at her bedside, a handful of scry-bones in his palm; and then, at last, a bird-like girl with slicked-back hair.

  ‘Usther!’ Ree tried to sit up, but a flash of pain across her belly quickly put her down again.

  Usther looked up from the rat skeleton in her lap. She’d been making it dance: a small, macabre puppet. ‘Are you really awake this time?’ she asked, wrinkling her nose. ‘I really can’t abide all this “only half-conscious” nonsense. And don’t bother telling me what happened; I saw it all. I saved you, when you think about it. When I saw you spying on those horrible men, I sent for Emberlon. I’d no idea you’d get yourself stabbed, but I’m hardly surprised.’ She shook her head. ‘Exceedingly boring of you. I hope you’ve quite got it out of your system.’

  In that moment, Ree forgot that she was furious with Usther for betraying her. Though the pain of it made her grit her teeth against a screech, she reached out and seized Usther’s hand.

  ‘Thank you. Really.’

  Usther shrugged her pointy shoulders. ‘I’ve always wanted a debt from you,’ she said, but her disinterest was too studied. Ree studied her more closely; the shadows under her eyes were purpling, and her skin was more sickly than ashen. She’d been worried.

  Perhaps, they really were friends, in whatever twisted way that might be.

  Ree cleared her throat. ‘So, where’s Smythe?’

  They were in Andomerys’ back room. Even if Andomerys heard, she would be the last person to tell, but Usther still glanced around the room and leaned in close to Ree before saying, ‘He’s still in the library. I fed him and watered him, so he probably won’t die. He’s practising.’

  ‘Alone?’ Ree tried to picture Smythe, surrounded by the trappings and entrails of the Craft. Smythe, in a black robe, with shadowed eyes. She shook her head; it didn’t make sense.

  ‘Oh don’t look so tense,’ Usther rolled her eyes. ‘It’s just summoning — either he will, or he won’t. A ghost is hardly going to eat him if he loses control. He’s actually got rather a knack for it.’ She screwed up her face, as if the words pained her. ‘He’s smarter than he looks. Or acts. Or speaks. Ugh — I hate him.’

  ‘But he’s learning the Craft?’

  ‘Taking well enough to it. Better than Emberlon did, or so I hear. In a week or so, I think we can safely call him an acolyte. The absolute lowliest of acolytes.’

  Ree took a steadying breath. ‘Then we can take him to the council. They’ll pardon him if he’s a practitioner and swears not to start a blood war with us — not that he could.’

  ‘So long as you tell no-one that I was involved, I don’t really care.’ Usther looked pained. ‘Can you imagine what Symphona would say about me if she heard I took that idiot as an apprentice?’

  Ree raised her eyebrows. This was not the first time she’d heard Usther fretting about Symphona.

  Usther glared. ‘Stop that. Symphona’s not stupid, like the other acolytes, and she’s accumulating power at an impressive rate.’

  ‘Pretty, too,’ said Ree, who thought Usther’s change
of heart toward this particular acolyte might have less to do with power than she was letting on.

  Usther’s eyes narrowed. ‘Say that again and I’ll sew your lips shut.’

  Ree grinned. Though it hurt to laugh, she was glad to do it. Then she remembered. ‘Usther. About Larry —’

  ‘Emberlon told me.’ Usther didn’t meet Ree’s eyes. ‘He was a bizarre relic of a creature, and an utter nuisance, and I suppose we’re all better off now that he’s gone.’ She still didn’t look up. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap. ‘But — when you can walk again — we can go collect him.’

  Her research, Smythe’s training, all of that would have to wait. He was so much more important.

  ‘He needs to be laid to rest,’ Ree said. At least five centuries old, he’d been a fixture in her life. Larry, trying to nibble her shoulder. Larry, gargling loudly when she was trying to hide. Larry, knocking all the books from the shelves in the library. Her eyes stung. She blinked quickly to clear them, turning her head so that Usther wouldn’t see. ‘He deserves at least that much.’

  And probably much more. Though she liked time alone, she’d have gone half-mad by now if she hadn’t had Larry to chat to. The crypt would be a lonelier place without him.

  Now there was an ache in her belly quite separate from her wounds.

  ‘We’ll find him and lay him to rest,’ Usther said, and now she met Ree’s eyes. There was no sarcastic quirk to her lips, nothing but sadness in her pale eyes. ‘I swear it.’

  Society, in its unending idiocy, has deemed the Craft abominable, sacrilegious, and grotesque — all without even the most basic understanding. How can it be sacrilegious when the gods still receive the soul of the deceased? The soul departs the body on death! A dead body is only a material! If it is abominable, it is only because society has decided to view it as such.

  Take a simple minion: magic animates the body. The better conserved the body is, the less magic is required to animate it. It’s a useful puppet, and one that can take a large amount of punishment before it loses use. Sudden trauma, such as destruction of the brain or heart, will sever the magic animating it. Bodies destroyed in this way cannot be salvaged. The cost to the practitioner is too high.

  ~from An Upworlder’s Guide to the Craft by Nerezeth the Unyielding

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  500 YEARS LATE TO THE FUNERAL

  Ree leaned heavily on Usther as the taller girl led her to a chair in the secret reading room. She settled gingerly, wincing at the twinges and aches that movement sent shooting through her abdomen. After a week under Andomerys’ care, the wounds were sealed and healing well, though two puffy red scars marked them and maybe always would.

  Smythe hovered by the wall, frantically stuffing books back onto the shelves. The reading room was in complete disarray; pillars of books swayed in the centre of the room, and various other books were scattered across the floor, open and with notes in Smythe’s flourished handwriting stuffed into the pages.

  ‘That doesn’t go there,’ Ree said. Her tone was sharper than intended, but after everything she’d been through, she had little patience for her library looking like it had been picked clean by a stampede of hungry scholars.

  Smythe froze. ‘You, uh, you can tell?’

  Usther perched on the edge of the other seat and crossed her arms. ‘If you would let me bring some minions in here, I’d have them put everything to rights very quickly.’

  An image of Larry bumping into the bookshelf flashed through her mind. ‘No minions!’

  Usther raised her eyebrows.

  Ree pressed a hand to her abdomen and took a steadying breath. ‘They can’t read,’ she muttered, which was probably true. ‘Just … no minions.’

  Usther’s lips pressed into a thin line. ‘We’ll give him a proper send off. There’s no need to get so …’ She flapped a hand. ‘Emotional about it.’

  Ree stared into her lap and said nothing.

  Smythe turned. A few books tumbled from the teetering pile in his arms. ‘Sorry but — you’re talking about Larry, aren’t you?’

  Ree nodded once.

  Smythe shook his head. ‘I can’t believe he’s really gone. I mean, gone gone. I suppose he was already dead, just not dead dead.’ He sat on the floor beside Ree, scattering yet more books. A frown dragged at his mouth, and Ree wasn’t sure whether it was sadness or a touch of necromancy that made his skin so sickly. ‘He was a really good chap, wasn’t he? I mean, he was a bit uncivil, trying to bite me all the time — but he was, I don’t know, good company? He sort of made all of this —’ he waved a hand, as if taking in the tomb itself ‘— less frightening. I remember when he —’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about Larry.’ Ree twisted her skirts with white-knuckled fingers. ‘I’m here because my father has agreed to meet with you, to see if you’re really an acolyte. If he’s satisfied, he swears he’ll get the council to give you their protection. You can join the town.’

  ‘Oh, well — that’s splendid.’ He smiled, but the action lacked his usual shine. ‘And he’s quite nice, is he? Your father. You know — a bit like you?’

  Ree thought of her father, more undead than human, with his burning eyes, and the way he seemed to wear quiet rage like a cloak. ‘Reanima,’ he would say, and somehow he turned her name into a judgement.

  ‘No.’ Ree smoothed her robes with trembling fingers. ‘Not like me at all.’

  Usther got up and stretched, each bone making a brittle clicking sound.

  Ree glanced at her. ‘That sounds like a skeleton trying to put itself back together.’

  ‘Was that meant to be wit? I couldn’t quite hear it over the sound of you whining.’ Usther cracked each of her knuckles in turn, baring her teeth at Ree all the while. ‘I’m off to get supplies for Smythe’s performance.’

  ‘You mean bodies,’ said Ree.

  Usther rolled her eyes. ‘Well, since one of us is sensitive about the Craft, I thought I’d be politely oblique.’

  Ree rubbed her face. ‘Look, just meet us in the ampitheatre in a few hours.’

  ‘And what are you going to do in the meantime? Sulk about Larry?’

  Ree glared at Usther in a manner that would make Smythe squeak. ‘For a start,’ she said coolly. ‘And I’m going to make Smythe put my library back together.’

  Usther smoothed back her hair, picked up her pack and headed for the secret door. ‘Sounds dull, I’m sure you’ll love it. Idiot,’ she addressed Smythe. ‘Try not to forget everything I’ve taught you while I’m gone.’

  Ree breathed out through her her nose. ‘What percentage would be too much? Or would you prefer I drill him in summoning rituals while you’re gone?’

  ‘I won’t forget,’ said Smythe. ‘Did you know that I’m the youngest ever —’

  ‘We know!’ Usther and Ree said together. Then Usther was gone and the door was grinding closed behind her. Ree and Smythe were alone.

  Ree could feel Smythe’s eyes on her. She stared resolutely into her lap.

  ‘Ree, um — about Larry, and the adventurers —’

  ‘There’s a system,’ Ree said.

  Smythe blinked. ‘Pardon me, but … a system?’

  ‘For the books.’ Ree gestured at the shelves, still avoiding Smythe’s eyes. ‘If you can sort them into piles by subject, I’ll teach it to you.’

  ‘Oh. Well, all right. Actually, I’m rather good at telling a book’s subject at a glance. Although most of these books are in ancient languages — but I’m a scholar, of course! I won’t let it deter me. I remember a time when —’

  Ree let Smythe chatter, occasionally interjecting to correct his sorting. Her thoughts were … she didn’t know. They were organising the library but her brain still felt scattered and pillaged. A few weeks ago, she had been consumed by a desire for action — first for Smythe, then for therianthropy. But in the days she’d spent recuperating, she’d felt … empty. Scoured, even.

  Larry was dead. And he’d died saving her
— she couldn’t stop thinking it. They’d been about to kill her, before he arrived. His sacrifice had created a crucial pause in which they’d rethought the wisdom of killing her. Or killing her quickly, at least.

  She tried to remind herself that he was already dead — that he was a husk, a vehicle for magic and nothing more — but no matter how many times she went over the facts, it never took. When people died, their souls departed the physical realm and went to the spirit realm. This was known — it was why necromancy had never been able to resurrect a person with all their memories and personality intact. Only program and puppet their bodies. Minions were just that — puppets.

  But that image in her head, that firmly defined line between a person and a minion … it didn’t leave room for the Larry she’d known. For a creature that was clearly both a minion and a person. For a friend.

  So … with poor health and the drive to do little more than mourn, she’d let Smythe and Usther take over. Because Smythe needed to be free and safe — it was clearer now than ever that he had no intention of leaving.

  Smythe had nearly put the library back into order when Ree started to worry about the time. ‘Leave it for now,’ she said pushing herself to her feet, one hand on her belly. In her current state, it might take them an hour to get to the ampitheatre. She walked carefully toward the door.

  Smythe dropped the books he’d been carrying and rushed to Ree’s side. ‘Here, lean on me. I’m sure you’re quite fearsome even half-stabbed, but …’ He offered her his arm.

  Ree stared at him a moment. Nobody had ever called her fearsome before. If anything, people thought she was cowardly: a pathetic non-practitioner, a rat scurrying through the passages. Sometimes, she even thought of herself that way.

  She lowered her eyes as she took Smythe’s arm, somehow feeling warmer. They exited the library and Ree directed him toward the ampitheatre, down a passage of crumbling stone interspersed with alcoves for sleeping dead.