“Maybe that’s her,” I whisper to Bram.
He touches my shoulder lightly. “I’m right behind you.”
The woman is tall and slender with raven hair that falls past her shoulders. Rubies shaped like teardrops dangle from her earlobes and she wears at least a dozen thin gold bracelets around each wrist. But as we approach, she pushes back from her chair and saunters away.
Bram and I exchange a look. Did she spot us coming?
We keep our distance as we follow her. We weave through the shadow market, trying our best to both catch up with the Bone Handler and to stay out of her line of sight. My breath stills when she glances over her shoulder. But she must not suspect us, because her pace stays the same. Slow. Measured. Like she’s not running from anyone. Finally she stops at a set of booths tucked into a corner. They appear to be workrooms instead of display areas. Thick curtains block their contents from view. The woman pulls back one of the panels and horror pushes up my throat.
The sight is nothing like either the bone house in Midwood or the one in Kastelia City.
Floating inside glass urns filled with liquid are severed body parts. Feet. Hands. Individual fingers and toes. All with bloated flesh that is starting to separate from the bone.
I gag.
Bram makes a choked noise. His face is ashen.
I don’t even want to think about how these body parts were taken. It horrifies me that there’s a market for this—people willing to buy the stolen bones of the living.
“It must be some kind of acid,” I say, looking over the containers. “She’s trying to accelerate decomposition.”
“I guess the Forest of the Dead is too slow when you’re trying to turn a profit.” Bram sounds as repulsed as I feel.
An image flashes through my mind of Latham running from my house in Midwood with my dead mother cradled in his arms. A wave of nausea rolls through me. He wants me to know what he did to her. I stuff my knuckles into my mouth.
Grim determination settles inside me.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, my voice catching on the words. I don’t care about completing the bone games. I’m going to go back to Latham’s shop and heal the bones to get the future I choose. I’m going make his every nightmare come to life.
I grab Bram’s hand and hurry back the way we came. And then we round the corner and freeze.
Latham stands near a booth filled with weapons. He’s squarely between us and the exit. He’s grown a beard since I saw him last. It’s dark and trimmed close to his face.
“Hello, Saskia.”
Bram’s hand tightens around mine. But I feel strangely calm, as if Latham and I are just keeping an appointment we made long ago.
Latham lifts an eyebrow. He sweeps his hand around the booth. “Were you looking to purchase something? Anything I can help you find?”
“No,” I say, “I’m all set.”
He tips his head to one side. “So, which way did you decide to go?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I saw two distinct paths for you. I’m wondering which you chose?”
A cold trickle slides down my spine as I think of the vial of my own blood on the shelf in his shop. The vision of Norah plunging a needle into my arm.
“You’ve been doing readings on me.” It’s not a question.
He laughs. “Would you have expected anything less?”
No. I wouldn’t have. I touch the pendant in the hollow of my throat and think of all the times I’ve had to remove it for training. All the times I’ve woken in the morning to find it lying on the floor or tangled in my blankets.
My mouth goes dry.
It’s as if I’ve walked off the edge of a cliff. I’m falling. Flailing. Bracing for impact.
I take a step back. “Please. Just let us go.”
He frowns. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Get away from us!” I scream. We’re in the middle of a busy market made of glass—visible to throngs of people both inside and out—and a crowd of curious onlookers have started to gather. Someone will intervene. Someone will stop him.
But no one does.
I’m like a bird in a cage. People might pause and stare, but none of them are going to unlatch the door.
I take another step back. “So what now?” I’m stalling for time. “What did the bones tell you about how this ends?”
My eyes flick to where a bone-carved sword rests on a high shelf, and a ping of alarm goes through me—it looks familiar. Latham follows my gaze. Takes a step toward the weapon. Runs a slender finger over the bone-carved hilt.
“Come here, Saskia.”
I try to remember the details of my nightmare—the quality of the light in the room. Bright colors, and weapons made of bone. Where I’m always standing when the sword falls. The details are hauntingly similar.
I swallow. “I think I’ll stay where I am.”
His hand drops back to his side. He leaves the sword where it is.
“Aren’t you tired, Saskia?” He asks the question softly, almost tenderly. And it nearly breaks me. Because I am. I’m so, so tired. Is that it then? I’m so exhausted that I simply give up? No. I refuse to choose that path.
“I’m not too tired for justice,” I say.
He gives me an evaluating look. “Justice? I think you mean revenge.”
“In this case, they’re the same.”
“Are they? You’d choose vengeance over seeing your mother again? When it would be so easy to bring her back? I must confess, I’m astonished. I had no idea you were so cold.”
Even though I know he’s trying to manipulate my emotions, I’m still stunned by how effective he is. The thought of abandoning my mother forever when there is any other option—it feels like vinegar poured over an open wound. I make an involuntary sound, and I can see that it pleases him.
“You never found your mother’s bones.” His tone is light. Conversational. “It was important to you.”
It was more than important to me. It was vital. And the reminder of my failure is a vice around my heart.
“Perhaps you didn’t know where to look.” His fingers trail lazily across the weapons on the shelf—bone knives, arrows, throwing stars.
Beside me, Bram reaches into the pouch at his side. I hear the snap of a small bone, but nothing happens.
“Would you like to know what I did with them?”
My voice sticks in my throat.
It’s a game, a trick. I think of Latham’s question months ago. Would you like to embrace your mother one final time?
And my answer. A tight whisper. Yes.
But the moment she reached me, he stabbed her in the back. So now I clamp my lips shut even though I want to answer, long to beg him to tell me.
“No?” he says. “Not even a little curious?”
The sound of his voice ties my stomach into knots. I wish he’d stop talking. I can’t think with his voice in my head. Can’t plan. Latham’s gaze flicks to Bram and understanding drops into my mind like a stone in a lake. He wants me to let go of Bram’s hand. To separate us so I’ll be more exposed. But I won’t do it.
“I’ve heard Bram’s teaching skills are being put to good use once again,” Latham says, continuing his one-sided conversation.
“Don’t you dare, you worm.” Bram’s voice is infused with heat. My stomach clenches like I’m bracing for a blow.
Latham expression is smug as he turns to me. “Have you gotten the hang of it yet?”
“Stop it!” Bram shoves his entire fist into the pouch at his waist, and a dozen bone snap at once.
But Latham just laughs. “Tell her.”
Bram tugs on my hand. “Let’s go.”
I don’t move. “Tell me what?”
Bram stares at me. His mouth opens, and then he snaps it shut.
“Tell me what?”
“It took me a while to catch on too,” Latham says, “but once I did, it was such a useful skill. It made breaking the lock on your father’s bone box a breeze. Bra
m is a good teacher. You’re lucky to have him.”
My heart slows, seems to shudder to a stop. My vision fractures.
I let go of Bram’s hand and take a step back. “You helped him?” My voice comes out high and shrill. “You helped him steal my father’s bones?”
Bram’s expression is haunted. “Saskia, no.”
“So he’s lying?”
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t know who he was then. What he was capable of.”
I didn’t think that Latham could hurt me any more than he already has, but I was wrong. I think of Bram showing up in Midwood after my mother died. I asked him how he found out what had happened. How he knew to come.
Master Latham let me know…. He’s kind of taken me under his wing this year.
Declan sold my father’s bones in the shadow market. But Bram helped Latham steal them in the first place.
I take another step away from him, but then I freeze. I’ve just moved closer to Latham, who laughs darkly.
“What if I told you that on one of your paths—maybe even this one—you come to me willingly?”
“I wouldn’t believe you,” I say.
He smiles. It’s the smile of someone who knows something I don’t.
He picks up a large bone flute from among the cache of weapons and artifacts. He turns it over in his hands, and a flash of color catches my eye. A yellow-orange sunburst.
Time seems to slow. Still. Turn backward.
I am a little girl, no more than seven. The wind whips through my hair as my mother pushes me on the swing hanging from the tree in our backyard.
“You should try it, Mama,” I say, tipping my head back so that my long hair brushes the blades of grass at the bottom of the swing’s arc. “It feels like flying.”
And she does. She climbs onto the swing and I put my hands on her knees and give her a push. Her laugh mingles with the birds chirping in the branches. She swings back toward me and I push her again. The fabric of her skirt bunches around her knees. A flash of yellow-orange. A tattoo on her thigh.
“What’s that?” I ask as she flies away from me.
“I always thought it looked a bit like a sunburst.” She smooths her skirt over her legs. Swings back in my direction.
“How did you get it?”
“It appeared when your papa surprised me with this house. Our first home together.” Her toes drag in the grass and she comes to a stop. “It was a burst of pure joy,” she says, touching her fingertip to my nose. “Kind of like right now.”
The memory fades. But I still remember the glow in my chest. The way warmth spread through me.
And now Latham is holding a bone flute with the same sunburst tattoo.
Bone flutes are used to control animals, and they’re made from the bones of the same type of creature they are meant to command. But what if a bone flute were made from a human bone? What if that bone belonged to my mother?
Latham watches as the realization floods over me. As it turns my blood to ice.
He smiles. He puts the flute to his lips and begins to play. My mind goes blank. And then, distantly, I hear a familiar lullaby—one both my mother and Gran used to sing to me.
Come with me to the dreaming place
Where the owls call and the children race
Come with me to the dreaming place
And stay by my side for-ev-er
“Come, Saskia,” my mother says. I see her in front of me, arms outstretched. Joy leaps in my chest.
“Mama?” I stand and take a step toward her.
“I missed you,” she says.
A sob chokes my throat. “I missed you too.”
“Saskia!” A shout pierces the air and the music stops. My mother wavers. Starts to disintegrate.
I look around, confused.
“Saskia!”
Bram’s face swims in front of me. His hand closes around my arm. “Come with me.”
The music starts again. Come with me to the dreaming place….
My mother grows more solid. She opens her arms.
I’m yanked violently to the side. Bram’s face. Come with me. My mother’s. Come with me.
The music stops abruptly. A cacophony of noise erupts around me. Voices shouting over one another. Things being knocked to the ground. I feel as if I’m waking up from a dream—the images of my mother slowly breaking apart, ethereal and impossible to hang on to. Followed by the sinking disappointment she was never here at all.
And then I look up and my nightmare comes to life. Latham stands in front of me, a sword in his hand. His eyes are bright and eager.
A small, round table sits between us. I can use it as a shield. If he can’t reach me, he can’t kill me.
I put a hand on the silky wood to keep him from moving it out of place. He gives me that shrewd smile again, as if he’s still playing the bone flute and I’m still dancing to his tune. What does he know that I don’t?
A raven flies into the room, frantic and shrieking. It dives for Latham. Aims for his eyes.
Relief cascades over me. Talon must be close.
The bird’s sharp beak draws blood. Latham grunts and slashes the sword in the air. He misses. Tries again.
And then a desperate, injured squawk. An explosion of black feathers and innards. My stomach pitches. I taste bile at the back of my throat.
Latham advances on me, but I keep one hand on the table between us. I won’t let him get close enough.
He raises the sword.
“Saskia, watch out!” Bram’s voice cuts through the air. But I don’t take my eyes off Latham. Dimly, I wonder why Bram doesn’t break Latham’s bones—snap his humerus so the weapons slips from his hand. Sever his femur to topple him. A faint memory flits at the edge of my awareness. Did Bram already try and fail? Maybe that’s the knowledge that keeps twisting Latham’s lips into a smirk.
The sword swings downward. I see it like I’m traveling along a path in a vision. Disconnected from myself. Moving slowly, as if time is a bit of molasses dangling from a spoon, stretching and stretching but never landing.
The sword falls, but it isn’t headed for my throat or my heart or my lungs.
The blade slices through the slender red tattoo at my wrist. Pain seizes me, white-hot and blinding. I scream. My hand detaches from the rest of my arm. Blood spatters my cheeks and pools on the table. There’s so much of it.
I feel suddenly cold.
Black spots rush into my vision and the world goes dark.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Voices float toward me from a distance. I try to open my eyes, but the effort is too much.
“What if she never wakes up?” That must be Jacey. Her words are soft and shot through with worry.
“She will.” Tessa’s voice. “She has to.”
My wrist throbs.
The surface beneath me shifts, and my head lolls to one side. An arm under my neck. Someone is cradling me. I force my eyes open. Bram’s face hovers above mine. I blink, confused. My dreams sometimes start this way, but I’m never this disoriented. Never in this much pain.
I try to stretch. To open and flex my hands, but something feels off.
My hand.
Everything comes rushing back and I let out a whimper.
“Don’t worry,” Bram says. His face is tight. His mouth thin. “You’re safe now.”
We’re outside, in some kind of alley. It’s dark out—the only light comes from a barrel fire burning nearby. Bram must have carried me out of the shadow market. When I realize my head is resting in the crook of his elbow, my broken heart aches. He helped Latham. Taught him the magic he needed to steal my father’s bones.
“Put me down.” Pain flashes through Bram’s eyes, but he complies, gently setting me on the ground.
At the sound of my voice, the others hurry to my side. They’re all here, their faces illuminated by firelight—Tessa, her face tear-streaked and swollen; Talon, who looks like he hasn’t slept in at least a week; Jacey and Niklas, who ar
e leaning against each other as if they might fall over otherwise.
I gather my courage and look down. My arm is wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. My hand is missing.
“No,” I say softly. “No, no, no.”
Tessa lets out a choked sob. “I’m sorry, Saskia. We tried … We tried so hard to stop him, but we couldn’t do it. He was wearing some kind of armor, so Bram couldn’t break his bones. Talon tried with the raven, but …” I think of Latham’s blade arcing through the air. The burst of black feathers. “He was too strong.”
All of my time spent worrying and I never once considered that Latham didn’t actually need to kill me to finish what he started. He didn’t need every bone in my body, just a few.
We must not have moved very far from the shadow market, because I can still hear the din of corruption in the background—customers bartering for a better deal on stolen bones, Breakers calling out bets on who will die in their next snapping battle, the barking of Mixers advertising drugs for sale.
I lift my head, and Bram helps me sit. The sky spins, and I squeeze my eyes closed. A wave of nausea rolls through my stomach. A distant ache pulses at the wound, and I can tell whatever pain spell Tessa administered is beginning to wear off.
“I can make you a new hand,” Niklas says. His voice is tentative. “I’ve studied how to do it in training. The bones wouldn’t be yours, of course; we’d need a donor. But it would function.”
I don’t want a new hand. I want my hand. But the earnest expression on his face unravels me and I nod. “Thank you.”
They all look so bleak that guilt twists in my stomach. I never should have let them come with me to the Mandible District. Not when I knew it was a trap.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I’m so very sorry.”
Niklas touches my knee. “No, I’m sorry. Saskia, I saw that bone flute the first time we were in Latham’s shop. I wasn’t sure it was human, but I suspected, and it sickened me. I should have mentioned it. If I’d had any idea …”
I think of how studiously Niklas avoided entering the shop after that first time. His haunted expression as his gaze swept across the room. But how was he to know? The shelves were full of horrors—broken bones suspended in nutrient solutions, strange weapons. He couldn’t have suspected the flute was carved to control me.
The Bone Thief Page 25
