Books & Bone

by Victoria Corva

  Her best and most fearsome accessory was, as usual, her scowl. She pierced Ree through with a sharp gaze; Smythe flinched as it moved to him, and Usther raised her chin and straightened her shoulders, as she always did when she was nervous.

  Ree opened her mouth to speak. Andomerys sighed, and closed the door in her face.

  For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Smythe stepped up to the door, knocking smartly. ‘Andomerys? It’s me, your friend Smythe? I was a houseguest a couple weeks ago, do you remember?’

  Usther rubbed her face. ‘This is pointless.’

  ‘Chan-DREE-an Smyyythe.’

  Ree tugged her sleeves down, avoiding Usther’s accusatory glare. ‘Andomerys is one of the oldest and most powerful magic-users in town. And I trust her.’

  Usther snorted. ‘How old can she possibly be?’

  ‘Well, she moved in a year after I was born, and she doesn’t look any older now than she did then. So I really have no idea how old she is.’ She held Usther’s eyes this time.

  Powerful healers were said to stop ageing, and Andomerys was the most powerful healer she’d ever heard of.

  Usther’s mouth twisted to one side. ‘It would almost make it worth it to be a healer,’ she muttered. ‘But nobody properly fears healers.’

  Ree barely restrained a smile.’You do.’

  ‘Andomerys?’ Smythe pressed his ear to the door. ‘You can hear me, can’t you? Are you all right in there? Do you need —’

  Andomerys yanked the door open and Smythe yelped and tumbled into her house. She looked at Ree and jerked her head to one side. ‘Come in, then.’

  They walked in and huddled in her small, brightly furnished sitting room. There was one chair, which Andomerys took. Once again, Ree was stricken by how differently Andomerys lived. She was part of the community, but she made no attempt to look like it. She wore her bright colours and lived in a shack, not a tomb, and out the back she kept a garden full of all the herbs and poisons needed in healer’s work.

  Andomerys levelled her gaze at them. ‘Well?’

  Smythe found one of her cushions, fluffed it up and offered it to Ree. ‘Perhaps a cup of tea first? We have been through quite the ordeal and a spot of tea would not go amiss —’

  ‘No.’ Andomery’s voice brooked no argument, but Smythe still looked like he was about to say something more. ‘No tea. No chairs. No sitting. You aren’t staying, so just tell me what this is all about and then get out of my house.’

  It was impossible to forget that Andomerys had moved to Tombtown because she hated people. Apart from the town meetings, necromancers kept to themselves, and the dead didn’t need healing. Frustration oozed from her, from the set of her shoulders to the set of her mouth.

  Ree had already imposed on her patience too often in the last several weeks, but Ree liked Andomerys. She was smart and quick to cut through nonsense, and wise as a grey-hair (which Andomerys might in fact be).

  ‘Maybe just a small pot of tea?’ Smythe’s eyes were wide with pleading.

  Andomerys growled and waved her hand at her sparse kitchen. She kept it as clinical as her healer’s room. ‘Make it yourself.’

  ‘Jolly good of you!’ Smythe bustled into the kitchen and started clattering through the cupboards.

  Ree set aside the cushion and clasped her hands behind her back. ‘We … have been through some very strange things recently and could really use your advice.’

  ‘My advice.’ Andomerys sounded skeptical.

  A clatter from the kitchen. Ree glanced up to see Smythe trying to balance several pots which had fallen out of the upper cupboard. ‘Where do you keep the kettle?’

  Usther made a disgusted noise.

  Andomerys didn’t look away from Ree. ‘A hook beside the mantel.’

  Ree cleared her throat. ‘What do you know about the Black Oath?’

  Andomerys’s eyebrows raised. ‘Don’t. Tell me.’

  Ree showed her the red scar on her arms. And so let it be done.

  Andomerys sat up in her chair. ‘Start from the beginning.’

  And where was that? Did it start the day before with the Lich, or did it start weeks ago when she found Smythe in the embalming room?

  There was a sense of inevitability about everything that had happened, somehow. It was all so connected, so tightly knotted, that it was hard for her to pull at one particular thread and say ‘this wouldn’t have happened if …’

  She didn’t really believe in fate. Her father had always taught her that life was what you made it. Even her mother, who had a direct line to a higher power, said choices were what mattered.

  But to Ree, looking at all that had happened and all that she feared was yet to come, could not go back to that moment in the embalming room and imagine that she would have chosen differently.

  She decided to start with them raiding the Lich’s library, and Andomerys visibly tensed when they described the flesh tentacle monster it had been creating. She left little out, telling of their journey into the past, their forced oath to the Old King, and their run-in with the man who would become the Lich. Occasionally, Smythe would chime in with a detail: ‘The brickwork was pre-moneric’ or ‘The King’s throne was clearly designed to be converted into a sarcophagus — which is quite morbid, but also very forward thinking!’ And Usther interrupted when they described the ritual to return them to their own time: ‘It was a magic unlike any that’s been attempted before and surely would have failed without my expertise.’

  When they were done, Ree felt empty. A tension had been building inside her ever since the Lich had transported them into the past, and now that they had returned and told the story, she felt it leave her like steam escaping from a hot sponge.

  Smythe, after poking around at the fire a bit and applauding when the kettle sang, brought them all cups of bitter black tea.

  Andomerys took a long draft of the scalding hot liquid and thrust the cup back at Smythe. ‘I’m calling a town meeting.’

  Usther spluttered over her tea. ‘What?’

  ‘No!’ Ree’s spine straightened at the thought. ‘It’s nobody’s business what’s happened to us. We just need a little advice, we can’t get the whole town involved —’

  ‘The town is already involved, they just don’t know it yet. This is too big for you young idiots —’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘— to deal with on your own. Now get my coat and follow me.’

  Smythe found Andomerys’ coat — a harlequin patchwork of different patterns and fabrics — and handed it over. ‘I’d quite like to go to another town meeting,’ he said.

  Usther raised her eyebrow. ‘Really? The last one almost ended in you being used as a blood sacrifice.’

  Smythe nodded, eyes bright. ‘Yes, it was all very exciting, but I think this one might be just as eventful, don’t you?’

  Ree rubbed her face. ‘I certainly hope not.’

  ‘Less chatting, more walking.’ Andomerys nearly growled the words.

  As they walked out, Usther said, ‘Just because I’m going to this poxy meeting doesn’t mean I’m going to tell them anything about the time warping ritual.’

  ‘That’s fine, Usther — if you don’t want to speak, I can just explain it —’

  ‘— and then I’ll raise a greywraith to rip your tongue out.’ Usther glared at Smythe.

  Ree fidgeted uncomfortably, her satchel full of books bumping uncomfortably against her legs. She ached to open them. She’d had no opportunity to study them properly and she couldn’t shake the hope that Wylandriah had written her book, and maybe one of them was in her pack right now.

  But the meeting … her father would be running this meeting, and she still hadn’t learned therianthropy yet.

  She was fast. She wouldn’t let him catch her. Besides, there were surely more pressing problems for him to deal with — not least the horrible curse on his daughter.

  Nonetheless, she wasn’t eager to flee her second town meeting in as many months.r />
  There have been three emergency town meetings in the history of the town. The first to strategise in response to the Semnian invaders in 6E70. The second to put down a roving horde of undead that adventurers had somehow disturbed. The third to plea for the life of a council member’s daughter.

  ~from A History of Tombtown by Emberlon the Disloyal

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  EMERGENCY TOWN MEETING

  To say that Ree was anxious about the town meeting would do a disservice to the vast, spreading vortex whirling inside of her. She clutched the edges of her rickety wooden seat, fingernails digging into the pitted wood.

  Usther, Smythe, and Andomerys were sitting in her row, expressions ranging from disdainful (Usther), jittery (Smythe) to fuming (Andomerys). The seats behind them were gradually filling up, while denizens either complained loudly about the interruption to their work or speculated about what sort of enormous danger had led to the emergency meeting.

  Ree’s gaze flitted frequently to the black iron doors. She couldn’t decide whether it would be better or worse when her father finally arrived. Surely anything was better than the spinning nausea and swimming head she had to deal with now — but then, her father was not best known for his patience and clemency.

  Her mother arrived first, catching Ree’s eyes and looking a question: ‘Is this about you?’ To which Ree could only blanch and sit back in her chair. Emberlon did not arrive at all, and that was a worry all its own when it was possible the Lich was still riled. She tried to assure herself that he was on a collection, but to little effect. If somehow the Lich had gotten him, it would be entirely her fault.

  When her father arrived, it was in full state with the rest of the council. His heavy brocade robes trailed his legs, and he clasped his staff before him. His eyes didn’t seek her out, and neither did those of the council. They made their way to the dais, spreading out behind the sarcophagus and placing what books and notes they had brought with them upon it.

  Usther leaned in to her. ‘Always such a warm greeting from your father.’

  Ree shrugged. ‘Better than fury and mind-snares, I suppose.’

  ‘You travelled through time and saw that therianthropy does exist.’ Her voice was low. ‘He’d be a fool to try and stop you now.’

  She still couldn’t do the magic. And it still wasn’t what he wanted for her. She doubted something as trivial as time travel would derail her father’s plan for her.

  And then, just like that, the meeting was beginning in a room that was now familiar from two different incarnations. She could see at once the grandeur of the Old King’s throne room and the age-worn town hall she had always known.

  Smythe leaned in on Ree’s other side. ‘I don’t suppose your father is feeling more kindly toward me? You know, now that I’m a prodigiously talented summoner and no longer an interloping upworlder?’

  ‘You’ll always be an interloping upworlder.’ She gave him a smile and an apologetic shrug as her eyes swept the crowd. She wondered if anyone other than the council knew why they’d been summoned today.

  Smythe winced and Ree instantly regretted her joke.

  ‘He’s glaring at me,’ Smythe said. ‘He looks like he wishes someone had managed to curse me at the last meeting. He looks like he wants to curse me now. It’s, um … it’s not very encouraging.’ Smythe looked down at his hands. ‘He must know, somehow, that I’m the reason you got into trouble.’

  Ree blinked. ‘In what way is it your fault?’ She was the one who’d gone to the Lich’s wing, knowing it was forbidden. And she was the one who’d agreed to the Black Oath. She was also the one who’d been so preoccupied by the boy in the crypt that she’d walked right into the Lich even though she knew his schedule. She might like to blame Smythe for all that, but if she was honest, she knew it was all on her. She had grown up here. Smythe was a recent immigrant, and an apprentice practitioner. There was so much he didn’t know — could hardly be expected to know.

  Smythe glanced up at her face, then back down at his hands. ‘Well. I ought to have protected you, of course. You know … fisticuffs, black magic, er … that sort of thing.’

  His shoulders were high and hunched, his head hanging. Guilt written so clearly into the lines of his body. Ree almost reached out to comfort him, but caught herself and stilled her hands. She had no desire to display any kind of affection, least of all in front of the whole town.

  Her eyes flicked up to the dais. Her father frowned down at her.

  ‘Smythe,’ she said, and to her own surprise her tone was warm rather than irritated. ‘I’m the one who knows this place. I should have done a better job of protecting you. I’ve been trying to protect you since I met you — and I’ve been doing a poor job of it.’

  ‘But I’m the summoner. I have magic. That makes me the protector.’ His eyes met hers, then skittered away.

  Ree thought of the books in her satchel, waiting in Usther’s tombhome. ‘Maybe not for much longer.’

  Andomerys leaned across Smythe. ‘Will you two stop?’

  Ree’s cheeks heated, but before she could make a response, Usther leaned in. ‘If you say the word “protect” one more time, I will eject my lunch. And I’ll make sure it lands on you!’

  A resounding boom echoed from the dais. Ree looked up as her father set his staff aside. Kylath, the youngest council member, stepped forward with her lips pursed. Her red-rimmed eyes found Ree in the crowd; her lips twisted downwards.

  Ree sat up straighter and raised her chin. She was asking for help and giving a warning; she was not on trial.

  Kylath threaded her sharp-nailed fingers together. ‘I call this emergency town meeting to order. I know many of you have questions. That is only natural, given the abrupt manner of this gathering.’

  From the crowd, Mazerin the Bold yelled, ‘Did a boar get into the crypt again? I’ve still got my trusty bone spear!’ The reedy necromancer hoisted a yellow-white, serrated spear into the air.

  ‘No …’

  ‘Have we decided to kill the upworlder after all?’ This from Symphona, standing with her arms crossed. Her cloud of curly hair was pulled into a messy knot atop her head. Wings of draping black fabric fell from the shoulders of her robe.

  Ree’s eyes flicked to Usther, who was staring at the other girl like she was the secret to immortality.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Kylath.

  Mortana, wyrdling innkeeper of the Bone & Brew, raised a clawed hand. ‘Is it about the adventurers who entered the eastern tunnels a few days ago? Because I killed them and I have the right to their bodies. I’m going to make up a very nice broth from —’

  Tarantur put one tattooed hand on Kylath’s shoulder. ‘I think that’s enough guesswork, for now.’ He smiled his thin-lipped smile. ‘Do you mind if I step in, Kylath?’

  Kylath looked like she minded very much, but Tarantur’s smile only widened as he continued, ‘Many lives are at risk. We wouldn’t interrupt your craft for anything less.’

  A murmur passed through the crowd. ‘Our lives?’ asked Mazerin.

  ‘Your lives.’ Tarantur spread his hands. ‘The Lich has been disturbed in its wing. Thanks to the quick action of our denizens, it appears the initial danger has passed, but it is nonetheless possible that it will make an attempt on the town, or deviate from its usual paths. Be on your guard, and for safety it may be wise to travel in pairs or groups when going beyond the bounds of the town.’

  Ree glanced around, catching many grimaces and wrinkled noses at the prospect of teamwork. Necromancers were rarely team players. Were the benefits of living together in the town not vastly superior to living separately, she doubted this town would ever have happened at all.

  Tarantur’s spidery smile returned as he surveyed the crowd. ‘Yes, it is quite concerning, isn’t it? To be so weak and vulnerable in the face of such a terrible power. Should any of you require —’

  Ree’s father cleared his throat. Tarantur’s eyes flicked to him, and something hard and cold
passed between them. Then Tarantur bowed his head and stepped back.

  ‘If we are wise, there is nothing to fear.’ Ree’s father’s voice was quiet, but still cut across the wide chamber. His long black hair flowed gently past his shoulders; his robes were a respectable black crusted with fresh blood. ‘We are the most powerful town in all the world.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘We will endure, and rise above.’

  Something about his words struck Ree. She could feel the pride swelling in her chest. And she would join them soon — when she learned therianthropy, not even the Lich would be able to stand against her.

  Usther’s chin was raised; Smythe’s eyes were shining. But Andomerys’ lips were pressed into a flat line and she held her shorter arm in a tight-knuckled grip.

  Her father went on to explain safety measures denizens should take until the danger with the Lich was past, with interjections from the rest of the council. Ree worried her lip with her teeth.

  ‘Lucky we went together, wouldn’t you say?’ Smythe murmured.

  Ree looked at him sidelong: his eyes were on the stage, but there was a quirk to his lips that was only for her. She thought of Smythe using his magic to disrupt the Lich’s ritual, of his terrible power and the blackness of his eyes when he called it. He was a more frightening person than she had ever imagined when she found him crouching over a shattered jar misidentifying organs.

  But he was smiling at her, like he so often did, and it loosened something in her she hadn’t known was tight. ‘Lucky,’ she agreed.

  His fingertips brushed hers, and though he was no longer as warm as he had once been, her breath still caught at his touch. Their eyes met for a moment, then Smythe folded his hands in his lap and Ree looked back up at the dais.

  Kylath nodded along with Ree’s father’s instructions, then folded her arms with a flourish of the trailing sleeves of her robes. ‘There is also the matter of Reanima and Chandrian Smythe, which is possibly more pressing than finding a “safety buddy” when you want to harvest corpses.’