The Bone Charmer

by Breeana Shields

  My fingers curl around a fistful of grass. I need to change the subject before he gets any additional information.

  “How about you, Declan?” I ask. “How is your new apprenticeship going?”

  He runs a finger down my arm, and gooseflesh ripples across my skin. “Boring. You’re definitely the most interesting part of my day.”

  How many times has he done this before? Carefully avoided my questions with sweet words? Gently pulled my attention to something besides how he spends his time? Suddenly I’m so proud of my bare wrist, so happy that my heart is wiser than my head.

  Ami stands and brushes the crumbs from her pants. “I better get going,” she says. “I’ve been away too long and Master Oskar is probably wondering where I am.”

  I climb to my feet and wrap Ami in an embrace. The thought of her leaving me alone with Declan fills me with trepidation, and I wonder if she can feel the pounding of my jackrabbit heart. But she must not, because she leaves without looking back.

  I sit beside Declan again. “So we were talking about how the trading is going.”

  “No,” he says, wrapping a lock of my hair around his finger. “I think we were talking about how beautiful you are.”

  I frown. “Why do you keep doing that?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Changing the subject. You won’t tell me anything about your life.”

  His expression shifts. I’ve knocked him off balance and now I just need to give him a gentle push. I trace the faint pink tattoo around his wrist. If he can lie to himself this well, then I can at least pretend long enough to get the information I need. “You know, it makes it hard to fall in love with you when you won’t let me in.”

  Alarm flashes across his face—just for an instant—but it’s enough for me to realize there’s something at stake for him. That he needs to keep me close for some reason.

  And I intend to find out what it is.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “My work is just so dull that I find it more interesting to talk about other things. Like you.” He grins, but my expression remains stony. I think of when he first told me about his apprenticeship—how he left out the fact that his kenning didn’t produce a clear result. He knew my mother would never break a confidence, and he used her discretion against me like a weapon. But it’s a weapon I can use, too.

  “Tutoring isn’t exactly riveting,” I say softly, “but I share stories with you all the time.”

  He runs his fingers through his hair. “True. So what is it that you want to know?”

  “Everything,” I say. “Where do you go every day? What do you do?”

  “I’ve told you all of this before,” he says. “I find rare artifacts for people with plenty of coin to spend.”

  “What kind of artifacts?”

  He swallows. “All kinds of things. Last week a man asked if we could find him a gaming board made of bone.”

  “A gaming board?”

  He gives me an odd look. “Yes. What’s wrong with that?”

  “It doesn’t bother you that people waste bones on something so trivial? When so many other things could be done with them?”

  He gives a humorless laugh. “I never took you for an idealist. The gaming board already existed, Saskia. I didn’t make it; I just helped find it.”

  I want to argue with him. To point out that if he finds and sells these items, he’s helping to ensure there’s a market for them, guaranteeing Bone Masons will continue to make them. But then I remind myself I’m not here to change him; I’m here to discover his secrets.

  “I guess that’s true,” I say, keeping my tone light. “Maybe I am too idealistic. I just wish things could be fair for everyone, you know?”

  His fingers close around mine and I resist the urge to pull away. “Your good heart is one of the things I love most about you.”

  I nearly laugh. Because right now my heart is full of so much darkness, it feels as if it’s been dipped into a vat of ink and emerged black and dripping.

  Declan’s thumb strokes a delicate pattern on the back of my hand. “What are you thinking?”

  My gaze drops to our intertwined fingers. And then a flash of color catches my eye. A single trickle of red on the cuff of Declan’s pants. Just one drop at an angle that would be hard for him to see. It looks sticky, like dried blood.

  I let the darkness in my heart spill out and spread until it overtakes me. I give Declan a lie of a smile—sweet and flirtatious. “I was just thinking about how I haven’t been to your house since we were matched. And I’m wondering if you’re ever going to invite me?”

  “You have to stop seeing him,” my mother says one afternoon when I walk through the front door.

  It’s not the first time she’s made the request and I’m certain it won’t be the last. I’ve spent every spare moment of the last few weeks with Declan. Taking long walks with him in the meadows and forests that surround Midwood, letting him tuck blossoms behind my ear, pretending to fall for him as I attempt to piece together the details of his life. How often he goes away. The possible towns and villages he could have visited based on how long he’s gone. Whether he seems happy or disappointed when he returns.

  But I’m not much closer to finding out who is helping him and why.

  I take in my mother’s drawn expression. The hollows under her eyes. The spell book lying open on the floor next to a cloth scattered with bones.

  “Why?” I ask. “Did you see something important?”

  “No,” she says. “I can’t see anything.” She massages her forehead. “This is too dangerous. We have to think of another way.”

  I touch her arm. “There isn’t another way.”

  Her glance falls to my wrist and the pale pink tattoo there. She wrinkles her nose. “That is an abomination.”

  I smile. It took me weeks to figure out how Declan had managed to trick his heart into falling in love with me. Every day, I stared at the tattoo with equal parts wonder and revulsion, watching it grow darker and darker and willing even a faint line to show up on my own wrist in response to the lies I told myself.

  My mind kept circling the problem, looking at it from every angle, trying to find a solution. Tattoos always show up with emotionally intense experiences. Maybe I needed to have an emotional moment with Declan, something that would convince my body and my heart I was falling for him, even if my mind knew it was a farce.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something. Like looking for a lost object, and knowing you’ve seen it somewhere recently, but not being able to think of precisely where. And then one day, I remembered the blood on Declan’s pants. My mind snagged on that drip. I thought of sitting at my father’s elbow and watching him mix colors on his palette—how a few drops of white paint could turn a shade from deep sapphire to cerulean, and a few more from cerulean to the pale blue of the sky right where it meets the horizon.

  What if that drip wasn’t blood? What if it was paint? Maybe Declan spilled it as he was getting ready to blend two colors—many drops of white mixed with bloodred for an early love tattoo, fewer and fewer drops of white each day, so that the tattoo looks as if it appears gradually.

  “It may be an abomination,” I tell my mother. “But it’s a clever one.”

  It was my father’s final gift to me. A set of his paints and his most delicate brush—one with bristles so fine, it leaves a line that is barely detectable, perfect for painting a single blade of grass or a fake love tattoo.

  The pure look of triumph on Declan’s face the first time he saw my painted wrist was worth the hours of experimentation to get the color and line just right—pale enough to be brand-new, yet dark enough to be seen. And thin enough not to feel raised when touched.

  “You’re playing with fire, Saskia,” my mother says.

  “Maybe,” I say. “But fire provides warmth and food and life. Sometimes fire is the only way to survive.”

  She swallows. “We could try something else.”

  I
shake my head. I’ve had this conversation with her too many times to count. “We can’t go to the town council. I’ve haven’t figured out who helped Declan avoid the truth serum yet.”

  “No,” she says, “that’s not what I meant.”

  I tilt my head and bite the inside of my cheek, sure she’s about to offer up some variation of me leaving town.

  “I could teach you to read bones.”

  The sentence is like a goblet dropped from slippery fingers. It lands with shattering surprise and stuns me into silence. I must have misheard. “What are you talking about?”

  She crosses her arms and cradles her elbows in her palms like she’s trying to stay warm in a chilly room. “The kenning doesn’t change your natural abilities,” she says. “You could still learn.”

  “You said it was impossible for me to be a Bone Charmer in this life. You said the kenning was final and I could never have a binding ceremony.”

  “And all of that is true. But those are legal restrictions, not physical ones. The Grand Council will never recognize you as Bone Charmer. Teaching you would violate my code of ethics—I could get in a lot of trouble if anyone finds out—but you still should be able to learn. And it’s a safer plan than this one.” She waves a hand toward the painted tattoo on my wrist.

  Safer? I think of the prisoner killing those three innocent people because I trusted my blossoming magic. Of the months afterward, when I tortured myself by imagining their bodies hanging in a faraway Forest of the Dead. Of their names tenderly carved into the trunks of their family trees. Of their families grieving because of me.

  “You have Second Sight, Saskia,” my mother says, her voice more urgent now. “I’m almost sure of it. Think of what that could mean.”

  I could spy on Declan. I could see what he’s doing without getting close to him.

  There’s nothing safe about me learning bone charming. But maybe there’s nothing safe about me rejecting my power either. Maybe my fear is not so very different from Audra’s. We’re both trying to avoid pain by controlling fate—her by obsessing about the power of the bones and me by shunning it. But rejecting magic hasn’t protected me. Rakel is dead. Declan is a traitor. My life is in danger of disappearing entirely.

  My gaze slides to Gran’s bone. It’s nearly healed.

  “We’re running out of time,” my mother says softly, as if she can see the thread of my thoughts. A lump forms in my throat. She must not think this reality will be the one to survive. I press a hand to my forehead. If there was ever a time to take a risk, to embrace my power, it’s now.

  “All right,” I say, “how do I start?”

  Her shoulders relax and the tension drains from her expression. She sits on the floor near the bones and pats the space beside her. “Come,” she says, “let me show you.”

  Saskia

  The Bone Charmer

  I stand on the dock, waiting to board the ship that is supposed to take me back to Midwood. The pier is full of just as much color and life as the first time I was here—the rich, mouthwatering aroma of roasting meat, vendors brandishing merchandise and shouting out prices, seagulls shrieking overhead. And yet it feels different than it did a few months ago, in the same way that the tree house Ami and I built when we were children felt different when we slept in it again years later. It’s the sensation of realizing that the place is just as it always was, and you’re the one who changed.

  For years I’ve dreaded becoming a Bone Charmer, hoped against all odds that my mother would say something different at the kenning. But now the magic feels part of me, and the loss of that identity is visceral. Like a flower just beginning to bloom when a storm breaks apart the petals and scatters them on the wind. I’ve been unmade.

  A throat clears behind me and I turn.

  Bram.

  “What are you doing here?” Shock hardens my voice, and the words come out with more bite than I intended.

  “You didn’t show up for the evening meal, and Tessa said all your belongings were gone. I couldn’t get any of the instructors to tell me anything except that you were headed home.” His jaw is tight. “Is it true?”

  I swallow. “Half true. I’m not going home.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Shame climbs up my throat at the thought of admitting I was expelled. Despite our history, I hate the thought of Bram’s opinion of me diminishing even more.

  I watch as a small girl in pigtails kneels at the edge of the dock and sets a little wooden sailboat into the water. She drags it along, turning it in slow circles, making it fly above the water before plunging it beneath the surface. And then she lets go. The little boat drifts out of reach and she starts to cry. The girl’s father leans over and plucks the sailboat from the water, and sets it dripping into her eager fingers. She sniffles and wipes away her tears with the back of her hand.

  I think how nice it must be to have someone to fix your mistakes, to whisk you away from the brink of heartbreak. To reach out with strong hands and give you back the things you’ve lost.

  Bram is still watching me expectantly, waiting for a response.

  “I got kicked out,” I tell him, frustrated by how hard the words are to say aloud. “One of the instructors set me up. He wanted me to get expelled from Ivory Hall. I have to find out why. So I can’t go home. I need to find someone who practices dark magic.”

  His head jerks back. “Wait. What? Have you lost your mind?”

  His comment makes me feel small and naive. My blood spikes with fire. “Goodbye, Bram.” I spin on my heel and storm toward the ship as fast as my feet will carry me.

  He runs after me. “Saskia, stop.”

  I don’t.

  He catches my wrist and spins me around. At first I think he’s about to yell at me—his eyes are wild and angry—but something about the look on my face makes his expression change. The hard lines around his mouth soften. His eyes go liquid. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

  My heart picks up speed. A war rages inside me—I don’t know if I dare tell him the truth. If even Master Kyra—one of the most fair-minded people I know—didn’t believe me, why would Bram? I haven’t exactly earned his trust. But I feel utterly alone, and it makes me braver than I might be otherwise. “Master Kyra claims I was using dark magic. It’s what helped me reach so far into the future when I saw you get hurt.”

  “What do you mean she claims you were using dark magic? Either you were or you weren’t.”

  I tell him about Latham. About the practice bones and the larger intensifier. I explain that Latham made me believe he was helping me, convinced me that he wanted me to succeed. I wait for Bram’s expression to harden in disgust or suspicion. But it doesn’t. He only listens intently, brow furrowed and lips pursed in concentration.

  “Do you think Latham is out for revenge?” Bram asks. “For something that happened between him and your mother?”

  “That’s what I assumed at first,” I say, “but now I think it’s more than that. If he only wanted revenge, he could have set me up without taking so much time to tutor me. There’s something else going on. I feel it in my gut.”

  Bram taps his fingers on his leg. It’s a gesture I’ve come to recognize—something he does when he’s mulling things over, as if his thoughts are searching for a rhythm to shape them.

  One of the ship’s crewmen lowers the gangplank and shouts out the boarding call. I touch Bram’s arm lightly, and his eyes lift to meet mine. “I have to go now. Will you tell the others I said goodbye?”

  He doesn’t answer, so I turn and hurry up the walkway. But his footsteps are right behind me.

  I spin to face him. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  He gives a hard laugh. “No?”

  My gaze flicks toward the gangplank. The crewmen will raise it soon and it will be too late. “You have to go back to Ivory Hall. If you disappear, they’ll terminate your apprenticeship.” />
  “I might be able to help.” His hand closes around my elbow and I freeze. He tracks my gaze, and his eyes fall to the tattoos on his knuckles. “Or are you afraid I’ll murder you in your sleep the moment we’re alone?”

  My cheeks prickle with heat. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not afraid of you.” But I don’t want to tell him the rest of the truth—that for once I’m not focused on his tattoos, but at the way my skin sparks under his fingers.

  He moves toward me and I back away until I’m pressed up against the railing with nowhere to go. He puts one palm on either side of me, his fingers curled around the silky wood. He’s so close, I can feel his breath on my face. My pulse races.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he says. “If you promise to hear me out, I promise not to kill you without a good reason.”

  His eyes, I realize, are more hazel than brown. His irises are flecked with gold, like the inside of a rock that’s been split open.

  I swallow. “What would be a good reason to kill me?”

  One corner of his mouth lifts. “I’ll let you know.”

  The ship begins to move away from the dock. It’s too late for Bram to return to Ivory Hall. “Fine,” I tell him. “I’ll hear you out.”

  “I think I know someone who can help us.”

  My mind snags on the “us.” Something flutters softly in my stomach, like wings unfolding. But then I take in the rest of what Bram is saying. “I don’t know. After everything that happened with Latham, I need to be careful who I trust.”

  “If you’re going to go searching for information on dark magic, you’re going to have to trust someone. And most of your options will be bad ones.”

  He’s not wrong.

  “Her name is Esmee,” he says in a rush, as if he can sense an opening in my hesitation. “She’s a friend of your mother’s.”

  This pulls me up short. I study him warily. It’s exactly what Latham said to get me to trust him. Why does everyone assume invoking my mother will earn my confidence?