The Bone Charmer

by Breeana Shields

  I’ll look like a liar.

  Latham’s help was a shiny object I never should have touched. I didn’t realize it was a weapon until it sliced into me and left me bleeding. Until it was too late.

  The guard returns with the spell book and the box of bones and sets them in the middle of the table.

  “Explain this,” Norah says.

  The silver box glitters. I resist the urge to reach for it, to trace my fingers along the raised pattern of the vines and roses one final time.

  I swallow and thread my fingers tightly together. “I found them in the training room and took them for practice.”

  Master Kyra slides the box toward her and lifts the lid. Her eyebrows arch. “These didn’t come from my training room.”

  I lift my gaze to hers. “They did.”

  A flicker passes over her expression, and for just a moment I think she might believe me. And then she sighs. “You had so much promise, Saskia. You didn’t need to resort to this.”

  “I’m sorry I took the practice bones,” I say. “It was a mistake. But you have to believe—”

  “Practice bones? The bones we use in the workshop for study are practice bones. These”—her mouth thins as she looks at the box—“these are something else altogether. We never train with intensifiers.”

  “Latham told me they were practice bones. He said they’d help me progress faster.” My gaze skips from Master Kyra to Norah to Master Yaffa, desperate for one of them to believe me. “How would I have known how to use these on my own? How would I have known about any of this if he hadn’t told me?”

  Latham clears his throat. “Perhaps you learned about it at home. Your mother is a Bone Charmer as well, is she not?”

  Fury snakes through my veins. “You know she is. You trained with her.”

  Latham goes very still. “Oh,” he says softly, “I think I understand what this is all about.” He turns to the others. “Della Holte and I had somewhat of a rivalry during our days as apprentices. I considered it friendly competition, but I’m afraid Della didn’t always see it that way. Perhaps she’s aired her grievances to her daughter? Perhaps that’s why my name was the first one to come to Saskia’s lips when she was feeling cornered.”

  I fly to my feet. “How dare you? How dare you pin this on my mother when you’ve done nothing but scheme and connive since I got here?”

  “Scheme and connive? I only realized who you were a few moments ago. Though I should have known as soon as you stepped into the room. You’re an exact replica of your mother.”

  He said the same thing the day I met him. Yet he looks entirely innocent; his expression is as smooth as a pebble plucked from the bottom of the Shard.

  “Someone must have seen us together,” I say. “There has to be a way to find out that he’s lying.”

  “There is a way,” Norah says. “Yaffa?”

  Master Yaffa pulls out a velvet cloth, a sewing needle, and a set of bones. “Let’s have a look through your past, my dear.” Relief floods through me. I’ve never been more eager to offer up my blood. I watch Master Yaffa’s face as she does the reading, try to interpret every movement, every twitch. Is she seeing Latham offer to tutor me? Is she watching as he finds me in the workshop and asks me to come to his office? Tension coils inside me.

  When Yaffa finally opens her eyes, her expression is blank for several long breaths. And then she turns to Norah and gives a subtle, sad shake of her head. How could she not have seen him in my past? How could he possibly have managed to trick a First Sight Bone Charmer?

  The last of my hope trembles and tips. And like a goblet of spilled wine, it bleeds away drop by drop until there’s nothing left.

  Norah sighs and massages her temples. “I’m sorry, Saskia. We have no choice but to ask you to leave Ivory Hall. Your apprenticeship is terminated.”

  Saskia

  The Tutor

  I’ve heard my mother cry three times in my entire life. Once on the day Gran died. She held it together until I went to bed that night, until she dried my tears and listened to my memories. Later, when she thought I was asleep, I heard the muffled sobs from her bedroom—uncontrolled and forsaken.

  She sounded exactly like a child who has lost her mother. The realization sunk in and rippled through me like a stone thrown into a tranquil lake—my mother was someone’s child. She must feel like an orphan now.

  Twice, I heard her cry over my father. The day he died, and again on the day we had his death ceremony and hung his body on the family tree. It was the day she pressed her last kiss on his temple, gazed on his face for the final time.

  But I have never—until this moment—seen my mother cry.

  It’s as if her grief couldn’t find full expression until it eased into relief. Silent tears creep down her cheeks as she empties the bag I laid at her feet. As she counts my father’s bones to make sure they’re all here. And they are, including the one I took from Audra’s house.

  The bones lie spread out on the floor between us, and so does the memory of my father. The ghost of his laugh. The faint smell of paint that always clung to him.

  “You shouldn’t have done this alone,” she says, dabbing at her face with the hem of her sleeve. “You could have been hurt. Or killed.”

  “But I wasn’t. So what do we do now?”

  “We’ll inform the town council and let them handle it.”

  Her gaze falls to my hands and I see her register the new tattoo that has appeared on my knuckle. “Oh, Saskia,” she says sadly.

  Shame shudders through me and I move my hand beneath me so the tattoo is covered. “I didn’t hurt anyone,” I say. “I only wanted to.”

  A crease forms between my mother’s eyebrows. “Why would I think you hurt someone?”

  The question takes me off guard. My thoughts slow. “The tattoo … I guess I always assumed it was for violence of some kind.”

  “No,” she says softly, “it’s a rare tattoo, so we don’t talk about it much, but it usually means the owner has been betrayed. Saskia, what happened tonight?”

  I think of the handful of times I’ve seen this tattoo before, and in a single wave, facts rearrange themselves in my mind. Like the tide pulling out seaweed and leaving shells behind.

  “We can’t inform the town council,” I say. “Declan was there.” Saying it out loud is a fresh shock. I assumed the tattoo appeared as a result of me picturing my hands around his throat, but it must have come from his betrayal.

  “Declan was where?”

  “At the shadow market.” I swallow. “Not buying. Selling.”

  Her mouth tenses. I can see the cords in her neck. “Your father’s bones?”

  Guilt rises in my throat. For being the bearer of bad news. For not seeing Declan for who he is. For failing to be the daughter my mother wanted. “Yes.”

  Her gaze drops. She traces a slender finger along my father’s shoulder blade the way she might have done when he was alive.

  “You’re not surprised,” I say.

  “No,” she says. “I guess I’m not.”

  “Yet you matched me with him anyway.” It’s what I wanted at the time, but she is my mother. She is a Bone Charmer. She should have known better.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “How, Mother?” I ask. “How is it complicated?”

  She doesn’t answer, and her silence is thunderous inside my head.

  “Why would you do this? Which one of Gran’s bones told you to ruin my life?”

  A sensation ripples up my spine. I think of the day of the kenning. Of my mother’s voice as she cradled the broken bone in her palm. We’ve done this before.

  The same words sit on my tongue now—I taste them like bitter medicine. I can feel the echo of a similar moment trembling deep in my bones, and my mother’s expression tells me she feels it too. Does this mean she was wrong when she said my timelines were different? In another reality, could we both be sitting in this same place having this same conversation?

&
nbsp; I touch her wrist just above the love tattoo that has only grown darker since my father’s death. “You matched me with a criminal. You put my life in danger. Don’t you think you at least owe me an explanation?”

  Silence stretches between us—dense with a lifetime of half-truths, and lies, and things left unsaid.

  My mother sighs. “What is it you want to know?”

  “The truth.”

  “It isn’t as simple as that—not when it comes to bone reading. There are many truths, some more likely than others, all of them changeable, constantly shifting. Today’s truth might be tomorrow’s lie.”

  “Don’t speak in riddles. You’re not surprised that Declan was selling stolen bones. Why?”

  “You forget that I’ve been performing readings on Declan since he was born. I know his character. He’s a follower, not a leader. A boy who was always standing on the cusp between good and evil. He could have tipped either way.”

  I wonder what that must be like, peering into the same people’s future over and over again, knowing what they’re capable of, what they might do. What they could have done but didn’t. Does she judge each person in town on choices they never made? Like she judges me for breaking Gran’s bone when I didn’t? Not this version of me, anyway.

  “So why did you pair me with him?” My voice sounds soft and small. Like a plea.

  I want her to say the bones showed her Declan and I could have had some great, sweeping love story, that he would have made me happier than anyone else, that I was the person who could pull him away from that cusp and fashion his life into something honorable and good.

  But that’s not what she says.

  “Pairing you with him led to this moment, didn’t it? To finding your father’s bones? To uncovering the truth?”

  “You used me to get the outcome you wanted?”

  “No,” she says, “it wasn’t like that.” But it was. I can see on her face that it was.

  Sorrow blooms inside me. I was so worried at the kenning that my mother would match me as a Bone Charmer, nervous that she wouldn’t care about my wishes. It hadn’t occurred to me that she would give no thought to my safety, when safety was all I really wanted.

  “Declan could have killed me,” I tell her. “He still could.”

  “We’ll report him to the rest of the town council. They’ll either sentence him to death or send him to Fang Island. He won’t be a danger to you.”

  “It won’t work,” I say. “Someone on the council is helping him.”

  Her brows arch. “What makes you think that?”

  “The truth serum. He lied after he took it. He was selling Papa’s bones on the shadow market. Obviously he knew something about how they disappeared from the bone house.”

  Her features rearrange themselves as understanding washes over her. Someone in that room must have made sure Declan’s keras was full of something else, something harmless. She presses a hand to her forehead. “None of my readings implicated anyone on the council.”

  I stand and drum my fingers on the mantel. The fire in the hearth crackles and one of the logs tips, sending sparks flying. I think how the warmth of the flames comes at a cost—they consume and consume without ever being sated. A hunger that never goes away.

  “It seems as if the truth has shifted,” I say. “Now we’re out of options.”

  “No,” she says. “I can fix this.”

  “Forgive me if I’m having trouble trusting you right now.”

  “Saskia.” She closes her eyes. Her jaw tightens. “Please don’t be angry with me. The decisions I have to make are impossible. You had many paths. I chose the one that would produce the best results for the most people.”

  “Just not the best path for me.”

  “The kenning doesn’t take away your choices. It’s meant to give you direction.”

  Her excuses and platitudes scratch at the back of my mind. This is the fate I wanted, so I should be angry with myself. But she’s not only the Bone Charmer, she’s my mother. She should have protected me.

  “You did a matchmaking reading on me, Mama. Paired me to someone you knew couldn’t be trusted. And now I’ll live my life alone. How does that leave me choices?”

  She stands and takes a step toward me. “I didn’t know he couldn’t be trusted.” Her voice is high and thin. “I said I wasn’t surprised. Declan’s future has always been challenging to read no matter how expensive and well prepared the bones. He’s always had more potential paths than other people—”

  “And did his paths at the kenning show he’d apprentice as a criminal?”

  She bites her lip and a shadow passes over her face. Realization snatches the breath from me like an icy gust of wind.

  “He didn’t have a clear kenning, did he? Declan is a leftover.” I can see from her expression that it’s true. “You matched me to someone whose future you couldn’t see?”

  “I saw him on one of your paths,” she says. “It was enough.”

  “Obviously not.”

  “You broke the bone, Saskia!” she shouts. “You left me no options!”

  “No,” I say, “I didn’t. And like you said, we all have choices.”

  She sighs and catches one of my braids in her fingers, twisting it around her palm. “You won’t live your life alone, sweetheart. Those convicted of crimes aren’t allowed to remain matched. If we can’t trust anyone in Midwood, we’ll report Declan to the Grand Council. You won’t have to see him again.”

  “I have no intention of breaking things off with him,” I tell her.

  She lets go of my braid and rears back as if slapped. “That’s ridiculous. Of course you will.”

  “My life will be in danger the moment he knows I’m suspicious of him. I have to keep seeing him.”

  “Unacceptable,” she says. “I’ll send you somewhere far away until this is resolved. I have an old friend who lives in a village not far from the capital. You’ll be safe there.”

  “I’m not leaving,” I tell her. “Whoever Declan is working with killed Rakel. They could kill you next.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Her voice is steady, but her eyes call her a liar. Her earlier tears left crooked paths down her cheeks and they shimmer in the firelight. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  I give a brittle laugh. “You weren’t worried when you spoke Declan’s name at the kenning.”

  “Saskia—”

  I hold up a hand to stop her. “You said yourself that I have choices. I’m making them now. I will keep seeing Declan. I will use him as he’s used me—for gathering information, for getting closer to whoever did this. And once we know the full scope of his crimes, and who else is involved, then we’ll report him to the Grand Council.”

  “Saskia, please …” Her voice trails off as she follows my gaze to Gran’s finger bone.

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter if my life is in danger,” I say. “Maybe we’ll both get lucky and this reality won’t be the one to survive.”

  Ami and I are sitting at the edge of the Shard, our toes tracing patterns in the water when Declan ambles toward us, grinning. His face is a picture of innocence.

  I knew seeing him again would be difficult. But even so, I’m not fully prepared for the raw, blistering anger that pushes up my throat. For how painful it is to swallow this rage that burns like a flame. But I know even the smallest error right now could put me in danger, so I force my fists to unclench, my mouth to curve into a smile.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he says, leaning down to drop a kiss onto my forehead. His lips are dry and chapped. Their texture makes me think of shedding snakeskin.

  “Well, here I am.” My voice sounds all wrong to my own ears—high, strained.

  A crease appears between Declan’s brows. He hears it, too. It’s as if I’ve stepped too close to the edge of a cliff and I can feel the ground giving way beneath me, the rocks shifting and tumbling into the chasm beneath. I have to regain my footing, make him believe that I’m exa
ctly as I was when he last saw me.

  But I don’t know if I can.

  How can I pretend to be friendly toward him when I know what he’s done? When my whole body is aching with the need to hurt him as badly as he’s hurt me?

  I think of my father’s palms on my cheeks. Of the way he used to look at me when I did something to make him proud. Of his bones displayed for sale in the shadow market.

  My resolve hardens into something shaped like a blade.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” I say, patting the ground beside me. “Sit with us.”

  A grin spills across his face, and my stomach lurches. I glance at Ami. Her expression is soft and warm—like melting butter. I haven’t told her about Declan—I didn’t want to put her in danger—and now I’m glad. I focus on matching my expression to hers. I offer Declan an apple and a few slices of cheese from the picnic basket beside me.

  “Thanks,” he says. “So what have you girls been up to this morning?” I take a bite of bread the moment the question leaves his mouth. I want Ami to speak first—I know what her answer will be, and I want to see Declan’s reaction.

  Ami sighs. “Master Oskar and I have been working on preparing Rakel’s bones. It’s so sad what happened to her.”

  Declan’s eyes spark with interest and I grind my teeth together. “It’s a tragedy,” he says. “I was in the Forest of the Dead paying my respects a few days ago and saw that her family tree is empty again. It must be so difficult to be in contact with her bones day in and day out after what happened. I’m sure you’ll be relieved when you’re finished.”

  Declan has artfully wrapped a series of statements in a blanket of sympathy, and though nothing he said contained an actual inquiry, the comments practically beg for answers. I have a feeling he’ll get them.

  “It has been really hard,” Ami says. “I keep imagining Rakel’s last moments—how scared she must have been—and it makes me feel like crying every time I touch one of the bones. But we should finish in a week or two, and then the bones will be turned over to her family, and I won’t need to relive it every day.”