Find Me Their Bones

by Sara Wolf

  “It’s not reacting to the painkillers the same way the last one did,” he mutters. “Unusually willful.”

  “I could try to dance for it,” I quip. “I’ve been told that takes all the fight out of people.”

  I smirk, thinking of Y’shennria and how exasperated she was when she taught me to dance. Yorl doesn’t bite. He’s quiet the whole time we walk up the stairs, and even when we part at the top, his emerald eyes are deep in racing thought.

  “You’re not going to do that whole body part thing—” I start.

  “I will do what is necessary.” He interrupts me coldly without looking up. “Better the valkerax be in pain than die and give us nothing.”

  “Is it…really that bad?” I swallow, my throat dry.

  “You’ve seen how weak it’s getting,” Yorl says, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “The Bone Tree’s command is eating away at it like the basest acid. It will not survive aboveground much longer.”

  I watch him go back down the dark stairs with a twisting in my stomach.

  “The tree of bone will always call to the chime strong enough to become its roots.”

  That one sentence, among all the gibberish, haunts the space between my ears. I know the tree of bone. Varia’s after it. A chime—the valkerax uses that word for witches. Based on what the valkerax said, can the Bone Tree call to a witch? How? And why would it? It’s an Old Vetrisian magical relic, for the gods’ sakes, not a person with sentient thought.

  Would it—could it—try to use a witch for its own purposes?

  I shake my hair free of dust. No, it’d be foolish to take anything the valkerax says in those throes of pain seriously. It’s under so much stress and agony. If anything of what it says while suffering from the Bone Tree’s command were true, then Varia wouldn’t need me to teach it to Weep in the first place. Gibberish. That’s all it is.

  I’m walking past a dark alley tavern when I see a familiar figure in a gray robe backed against a wall by half a dozen angry men. Gavik. The men palm wooden clubs and the hilts of swords, the air thick and tensely wound, like an invisible nest of threads pulled tight enough to cut.

  “—not as dense as you think we are!” One of the men gets in Gavik’s gaunt face. “I saw you with my own two eyes, that night in the black market!”

  The men behind him shift, some of them nodding along, others grunting. Gavik refuses to blink—staring down at the shorter man over his nose. Is the man talking about the night Gavik made the raid on the black market here in Vetris, the one Lucien showed me? The one that traded vital food and supplies beneath the radar to escape the crushing taxes Gavik had enacted?

  “Don’t waste your energy on the wrong man.” Gavik sneers, his words slurring as if he’s…drunk? I squint, and sure enough, I see him tottering from one leg to the other. “Whyever would an archduke be here, in a disgusting alley, with a disgusting pack of sniveling dogs?”

  “That’s it!” the man in his face barks, pulling out a club. “Get him, boys!”

  The men descend like ravens on a corpse, the dull smacking sound of heavy blows meeting flesh resounding. Gavik, as self-contained as he is, as I always saw him be in the palace, isn’t immune to the pain. Pain is the great equalizer. It makes us all look foolish and weak. It makes us all cry out the same, and Gavik is no different. He bellows like a wounded buck, and in the glimpses between the men’s flying limbs and flashes of swords, I see him gnashing his teeth, blood and spittle running down his chin.

  I wait.

  Varia’s magic is too strong even for me—I can’t bring out the monster much further than a few claws and teeth. I’m sure letting the archduke wander free among the people of Vetris means Varia’s taken precautions against him turning, but one can never be too sure with the hunger. I’m the only one who could feasibly stop him if worse came to worst.

  But…neither do I stop the men. All I can see is the boy I first met when I came to Vetris, his terrified face as he was forced to ascend the stepladder into the water coffin on Gavik’s orders and drown. My wrist aches with the phantom memory of the pain when Gavik, that same fateful black market night, ordered one of his men to shoot me with a crossbow.

  “I wonder if the West Star is out tonight,” I murmur lightly, looking up at the glittering sky between the alley’s roofs. The cries of pain ricochet, and I almost laugh.

  Lady Tarroux would, surely, help anyone in pain. And here I am, just enjoying myself.

  evil, the hunger cackles. evil down to your core.

  “No,” I argue softly. “I’m not the evil tonight.”

  When the men finally run out of steam, they spit on his crumpled body and walk off. Blood seeps between the cobblestones as I approach the figure of Gavik slumped against the wall.

  “My, my, my.” I lean next to him on the wall, my eyes on the warm lights of the tavern opposite us. “I had no idea this place served just desserts.”

  It’s merciful the men didn’t stay, because my eyes catch the wounds on Gavik’s legs mending already. The bruises fade from deep reddish purple to green, to yellow, and then to nothing. The cuts close up, sewing skin against skin. Gavik just shudders and holds himself.

  “I thought you were supposed to be dead,” I try. “Don’t the common people know that you’ve been declared murdered?”

  Gavik says nothing, his voice rasping in his injured throat with a weak noise.

  “You’re right,” I agree. “Why would the nobles tell the common people anything? And why would the common people care about one murdered noble, when their sons and daughters are poised to go off to war and experience the same a thousand times over?”

  My instincts hone in on a shadow in the corner of the woodwork, just outside the tavern. An opportunistic vulture, waiting for the right time to strike.

  “Unfortunately, he’s not dying tonight,” I call out to it. “And his soul is emptier than his pockets. So move along.”

  The shadow rescinds, and I sigh lightly and look down at Gavik.

  “It’s cruel of Varia, isn’t it? To send you out here and not give you a new face? You’ve been starving and torturing and killing these people and their loved ones for years. They’re bound to know what you look like. You’re a smart man. The first thing you’d do is put on a mask. Which means Varia must’ve commanded you to keep your face clear.”

  Gavik coughs, the sound wet but healing. His breath reeks of stale wine.

  “It’s a song,” he rasps.

  I wrinkle an eyebrow. “You’ve certainly gotten worse at conversational segues since your time away from court.”

  He leans his head against the wall, gray hood falling to reveal the bloodstained skin of his old, drained face as his watery eyes move to me.

  “I know how I remember the Bone Tree. It’s a song.”

  “It must’ve been a terribly memorable song,” I lilt.

  His creaky voice warbles out, low and off tune, the lyrics echoing among the alley’s walls. “The tree of bone and tree of glass, will sit together as family at last.”

  My unheart clenches. A tree of glass. Like the one in my dream. I keep my face cool, composed. “What sort of song is that?”

  He narrows his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t remember any more of it. But I heard it a long, long time ago. And it was important. I pursued it—I must’ve. I couldn’t remember anything of my human life when I first woke up as a Heartless. But over time, the single line of that song broke through my mind. I caught myself humming it, and then the words came. After that, the memory of the Bone Tree flooded in.”

  I frown. “What sort of memories about the Bone Tree are kicking around in that hateful old skull of yours?”

  “None.” His watery eyes dim, and he looks down at the bloodstained cobblestones. “I don’t remember anything about it. But I remember it exists and that it’s dangerous. A terrible, dangerous we
apon.”

  I blow out air. He’s not technically wrong. I realized that, too, the moment Varia and Yorl told me what the Bone Tree is, and does.

  “I know that,” I bite. “What’s your point?”

  “Varia can’t have it,” he insists.

  “She’s going to get it,” I say. “And I’m going to help her.”

  “You have to stop,” the archduke insists. “I don’t remember—” He slams his fist on the ground, knuckles skinning themselves and healing all in a second. “I don’t remember why, but the Bone Tree is terribly dangerous. More so than you think, more than anyone knows.”

  Doubt starts to creep in, but my unheart burns. Of course it’s dangerous. But it’s the one path left to my heart. It’s the last road left open, the last one I can walk on my own. Mother’s face lingers, an outline that I know can be filled in so easily, so warmly, if my heart returns to my chest.

  “You don’t say,” I drawl. “It’s almost like it’s a tree that can control all valkerax.”

  Suddenly, to my utter horror, I feel something tug on my breech cuffs. I look down to see Gavik…begging. On his knees, folded in half, his hands clinging on my boots and his face downturned. I stagger back in alarm.

  “Please.” His voice is thin, all traces of sneering superiority gone. “You must stop helping her find the Bone Tree. I don’t know how, or why, but I can feel it—if she finds the Tree, it will mean disaster.”

  An archduke. Not just any archduke—the most powerful archduke, the most influential noble in Vetris. The most proud, arrogant man in all of Cavanos, the man who hated me with a burning passion as Y’shennria’s niece and an outspoken girl, now begging me.

  He could be lying. But why would he? He’s lost his memories. He’s lost everything. Is this some bid to make me pity him, to get his heart back eventually? I killed him, for the gods’ sakes. He should be consumed with revenge and fury toward me, but this… Is he truly that scared? Scared enough to beg?

  And if he’s this scared, then shouldn’t I be, too?

  I shake him off my boots like a slug.

  “Don’t you dare ask me for favors,” I growl down at him. “Not after everything you’ve done.”

  I leave him in the alley, his song ringing eerily in my head.

  The tree of bone and the tree of glass, will sit together as family at last.

  Two trees. Not one, but two.

  My nightmare was about two trees. Running through the broken shards of the palace’s stained glass Hall of Time, the shards ripping at me, my hands reaching for two rosaries with naked trees on them, like the one Y’shennria carried. I remember it as if it were real. I remember it for the terrible certainty it made me feel.

  A certainty that, if I didn’t reach those twin rosaries, something horrible would happen.

  If she finds the Tree, it will mean disaster.

  Ido my best to keep Gavik’s unsettling words out of my work. Wine helps, but working with the valkerax is better. It’s easy to lose a scared archduke’s nonsense within more nonsense. But my questions still linger, my nightmare still lingers, unsettling me down to the bone. Gavik said he had the urge to keep a diary coursing through him, and he seemed convinced on our first re-meeting that he’d have written about the Bone Tree somewhere.

  On one of the rare nights Varia returns to her apartments, I lean in the doorframe of her bathroom. She’s languishing in a full silver tub of rose- and violet-perfumed water spiked with goat’s milk, the petals swirling in the murky white.

  “You…wouldn’t happen to have Gavik’s things on hand, would you?” I ask. “I want to frame some of them for posterity.”

  Varia sighs, leaning her head against the tub so her sheet of wet hair hangs over the lip.

  “Fione and I agreed it would be cathartic for her to burn it all.”

  “Everything?” I try to sound as uninterested as possible, but Varia catches on. She sits up, turning to look at me with mild irritation.

  “You expect a girl who’s been abused by her uncle to keep even one thing of his?”

  “No,” I blurt. “Obviously not.”

  Now I look like the horse’s arse for asking. Of course I wouldn’t deny Fione her catharsis about Gavik’s mistreatment of her. But I still can’t keep myself from feeling disappointed. a friend only in name, wishing for her pain over your curiosity. The hunger laughs.

  Seemingly satisfied with my answer, Varia relaxes back into the tub, pulling her slender living wood leg out of the water and rubbing it down with a bar of gold-flaked Avellish soap. It’s easy to forget sometimes that she’s only two years older than I am—my technical nineteen years and her twenty-one feel so far apart when her body looks so much more mature than mine. It’s hard to feel around her age when she’s a princess. And my witch.

  “Your Highness?” A maid’s voice filters through the apartments. “A letter has come for Lady Zera.”

  “What rich fool would waste paper on me?” I trill, plucking the letter from the maid’s offered tray. The parchment is thick and creamy—high grade—and the wax seal on the front is embossed with a serpent. Just one.

  Lucien.

  I should throw it in the fire to keep up appearances. The maid would surely tell everyone she could that she saw Lucien’s Spring Bride (the mere sound of those words strung together stings, nowadays) throwing his letter away like trash.

  I should throw it away. For my heart. To keep him at arm’s length, mile’s length. To make sure he has no hold over me ever again.

  My fingers peel under the envelope before I can stop them.

  There is a derelict grain tower by the West Gate with a perfect view of city and stars alike. Your prince requests you join him there tonight, at the fourteenth-half.

  I look up at the maid waiting expectantly.

  “Shall I fetch you a quill and parchment, milady?” the maid asks, wide-eyed. No one would dare refuse to respond to a missive from the prince. She knows that. The whole court knows that, down to the last stable boy.

  I stare longingly at the ink spirals of his large, neat handwriting. We exchanged letters like this not two weeks ago. How my blood had warmed at the sight of his words. I was a fool then. He is a fool now. There’s a whole world of women waiting at his feet, none of them murderers and none of them liars. A true love—a real love—based in truth and kindness, instead of deceit and darkness, is out there somewhere for him. Her name could be Lady Tarroux. It could be anyone. All I know for certain is that it’s not me.

  I turn to the maid with an Y’shennria-perfect smile. “No. That won’t be necessary.”

  The maid starts. “But, milady—”

  “I think it’ll make a lovely piece of kindling,” I say airily, walking over to the fireplace. My fingers hesitate, the letter hanging above the flames.

  My heart is mine, and mine alone. I will not let him have it this time.

  The letter tips from my hand and falls gracefully into the fire, the flames consuming it eagerly and instantly, leaving nothing behind but ash.

  10

  The Dream

  Without End

  Whoever said it’s easier to destroy things than to build them was a scammer, and I want my coin back.

  I should be sitting in the castle, worrying about the valkerax. I should be thinking of what to do after I get my heart back. How Crav, Peligli, and Y’shennria are. But here I am, against my own sound judgment, tucked behind a brick wall and watching the broken tower near West Gate like it holds the key to all my problems.

  Whichever natural disaster destroyed this tower was a very angry one—scorch marks blaze black across the crumbling parapets. The blackened stone looks familiar somehow, and then it hits me: Ravenshaunt, Y’shennria’s ancestral home that was consumed by witchfire. She showed me the ruins of it when she retrieved me from Nightsinger’s woods and brought me to Vetr
is. They’re the same marks. That means this tower, too, is a survivor of the Sunless War.

  In my shadowed hiding place, I go still. Y’shennria. The truth Fione revealed to me—the idea of Y’shennria baring her throat for the Heartless as a lure away from her child freezes my blood. From here, my view of the West Gate is clear. Soldiers tromp through the streets, the clash of their swords in practice combat reverberating from their camps just outside the wall. Caravans loaded with grain and other dried rations come into Vetris in a constant stream, the lawguards unloading their contents and taking inventory. The molten glow of the blacksmiths’ forges never goes dark.

  I promised her. I promised Y’shennria I’d stop the war. And yet it grinds its gears just in front of me.

  If I teach the valkerax, if Varia gets the Bone Tree and controls it without an issue, if it works the way Yorl and she say it will, if Varia isn’t lying about using it only to stop the war—all these ifs. I try to imagine an army of white valkerax swarming over the white walls of Vetris, easily, effortlessly, like serpents over a forest floor. A hundred copies of the valkerax below the South Gate, no—thousands of them, just as large, just as riddled with teeth and claws.

  Such a thing would, in no uncertain terms, stop the war cold.

  I can still stop the war and get my heart. I can still do everything I told Y’shennria I would. I just have to trust that what Varia says is true.

  trust is a comforting delusion, the insipid sister of hope.

  Lucien is waiting in that broken tower. I can’t see him, but I know he’s there, dressed as Whisper, no doubt. He’s waiting for me. Whatever he wants to say couldn’t be said in the palace, which is why he sent the letter and arranged this. Who does he want to avoid in the palace? He and the whole court know I’ve been taking shelter in Varia’s apartments since Y’shennria’s disappearance. Could he not just come speak to me there?

  Unless he doesn’t want Varia to hear it.

  But why? She’s his sister. He loves her. The admiration in his eyes when I see them together is undeniable. He trusts her, doesn’t he?