by Sara Wolf
“I made the mistake of telling him I saw you run out of the palace in a tizzy,” Malachite’s voice drawls as the pale beneather steps into the alley.
“Well, good morning to you, too.” I blink at Malachite.
“I’m fine,” Lucien insists to both of us.
“‘Fine’? You inhaled so much smoke, you were coughing up black!” Malachite argues.
“Could an injured person do this?” Lucien asks, promptly bracing his legs for what looks like a flip so quickly that he winces. He suddenly thinks better of it, and straightens. “All right. New plan—moving as little as possible.”
“Let’s go back to the palace,” Malachite growls. “You need to rest.”
“What I need is a friend, not a second mother.” Lucien chuckles. His obsidian eyes focus on me. “Who exactly are you looking for?”
“How do you know I’m looking for someone?” I sniff.
“You were asking vendors questions. The only time anyone does that is when they’re looking for someone.”
“For all you know, I could be looking for something,” I argue.
“Like what?” Lucien quirks a brow behind his cowl.
“A warm bowl of soup, maybe,” I offer.
“A sense of dignity,” Malachite counteroffers.
“A sense of humor,” I fire back at him. “Since you seem to have lost yours.”
“Lost? No,” Malachite scoffs. “You stole it from me right around the same time you tried to kill my best friend, sarvett.”
“Ooh.” I smile at his beneather word. “I like the sound of that one. What does it mean?”
“Conniving cave scorpion.” Malachite smiles back at me for once.
“Enough.” Lucien’s princely voice cuts between us. “As much as I enjoy watching you two fight over me like toddlers over a sweetround, I am supposed to be in bed. We have limited time before someone notices I’m gone.” He looks to me. “So. How can we help?”
“We?” Malachite squawks incredulously.
“By leaving me alone, and sleeping.” I turn on my heel. “Oh, and be sure to drink all the medicine the polymaths tell you to.”
“I will,” he agrees, catching up with my stride easily. “Just as soon as I’ve found who you’re looking for.”
“Because you’re nosy.” I sigh, trying not to notice just how close his body is to mine, his chest just behind my shoulder. I can almost feel his heat.
“Nosiness, caring.” He waves a hand. “It’s all the same thing.”
“It’s really not.”
“Now.” He ignores me imperiously. “Hurry up and tell me who you’re after. Your prince can find them. But your prince is also a very busy person.”
“If I do, will you leave me alone?”
“Verily,” he agrees.
“Gavik,” I say. “He’s in a gray robe—”
“Handing out bread, right,” Lucien finishes for me. “I know.”
I watch him walk to the mouth of the alleyway.
“Luc,” Malachite exhales. “We really don’t have time for this—”
Lucien lowers his cowl and raises his fingers to his mouth and makes a distinct, birdlike whistle comprised of three notes. There are nearly thirty seconds of quiet, Lucien and Malachite and I standing still in the alley. Suddenly, seemingly from out of nowhere in the dense crowd, a child emerges, grimy and no older than Crav’s twelve years. He grimaces like Crav does, too, but when he sees Lucien, his face brightens. This isn’t the first urchin I’ve seen Lucien with—there was a little girl he gave trinkets to, trinkets he’d stolen from nobles. How many of them does he know? And do they all look this happy to see him?
The prince kneels at the boy’s eye level and hands him a few gold coins, murmuring a question. The child points toward West Gate and then disappears into the crowd again.
Lucien turns back to me, a smile outlined in the dark fabric of his mask. “Gavik’s near the old brewery around West Gate. Come. We can still catch him if we’re quick.”
“Again, with the ‘we’!” Malachite exhales. Lucien just starts off, and of course Malachite follows. I trail behind the beneather, catching up with Lucien as best I can.
“You never told me your information network was comprised entirely of urchins,” I say lightly.
“Not entirely but mostly,” the prince agrees. “They don’t try to lie for their coin as much as the adults do. And they tend to notice things adults overlook. Besides, the city is hard on them most of all. It’s all I can do right now to ease that.”
I scoff, but the sound has no teeth. My unheart feels somehow warm. Proud. I shake it off, and a sudden jostle in the thronging crowd shakes me, too. I stagger back, losing Lucien and Malachite quickly in the swarm of heads. They might be tall, but I can barely see over the sea of people.
“New God’s tit,” I swear. Someone else bumps into me, this time so hard that cobblestone rushes up to greet my face. I brace myself, but something catches my hand at the last minute, and I make a frantic clutch onto it for dear life. I blink up at the help, only to see black leather. Lucien’s hand, holding my elbow. He pulls me up, the smile under his mask so lopsided, it makes my unheart skip a beat.
“Don’t fall behind,” he says.
I’m so stunned that I can’t get words out, and the few words that start to come are cut off by the feeling of his gloved hand slipping into mine. He holds my hand, guiding me through the crowd as I stare at his back disbelievingly. The old affection for him starts to rear its head, my whole body punctured pleasantly by the fizzy, sugary sensation.
not again, the hunger demands. never again. he is tricking you with the promise of love, and you will fall for it again because you are weak.
It’s just a hand. Just one moment. One moment can’t hurt, can it?
you asked for moments two weeks ago, the hunger snarls. and he ruined you for it.
The hunger’s right. I rip my hand from his, and he thankfully doesn’t try to grab it again. Soon, we’re at the foot of West Gate, a much busier place than South Gate, but the area near the old brewery is relatively calmer. Lucien stops in front of it, the air ripe with the viscous, pungent smell of yeast.
“There!” Lucien points at a figure in gray in the distance. “That’s him.”
“Finally,” Malachite says. “Can we stop cavorting and go back to the palace now?”
“By all means.” I wave my hands. “Go on.”
“Not even a thank-you kiss?” Lucien smiles. The word “kiss,” coming from him, stabs right into my lungs. That’s not what he really wants, is it? Nothing can go back to the way it was between us. I know that now. I can’t change the past. All I can do is move forward—with him, with everyone. I pause, and then hold out the diary page to him.
“Here. This is my thanks.”
Lucien takes it, his dark eyes bewildered, but as he reads the lines, his gaze grows sharper until he looks back up at me. “This is the song—the one Muro sang that day in the throne room. Where did you find this?”
“Fione gave me Gavik’s diary. That was inside it. I thought you should know.”
He looks back down at it, and then hands it to me. “What does it mean?”
“I’m about to find out,” I say, raising my chin toward Gavik. There’s a quiet as Lucien looks between Gavik and me, and then he exhales. It quickly turns into a cough, the sound racking his body as he doubles over. Malachite shoots a worried look at me, and I reach into my cloak and pull out Lucien’s handkerchief. I unfold Y’shennria’s picture from it and hand it to him.
“I’m returning this to you in your hour of need.”
The prince’s dark eyes flash as he looks up. “That was meant as a parting gift for you.”
The feel of his hand in mine just moments ago, the pride in my chest welling up for him. The warmth that spreads through my
body simply because I see him. No matter how badly I want to be ruthless, I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to rip us apart all the way. I’m hopeless.
weak. disgustingly weak and pathetic—
“Yes. Well.” I clear my throat. “I’m returning it.”
Lucien’s gaze softens. No. No, Zera. Stand strong. You will not love him again. You can’t. Your heart is more important than anything in the world—than even love.
“I’m returning it,” I correct myself, sniffing haughtily, “until you can find me a better parting gift. Something made of gold and with a few more gems on it, preferably.”
Malachite bristles. “You insolent little—”
Lucien suddenly laughs. The sound is amused, but not in that hollow way he reserves for nobles. It’s sincere, and light, and yanks at the very marrow of my resolve. Malachite looks as shocked as I am.
Lucien smiles at me, taking the kerchief from my hand with the slightest of bows. “Very well. I’ll keep an eye out.”
I fight the flush moving up my cheeks and round on my heel, striding toward Gavik with the page clutched in my hand.
16
Flesh will
Feed its
Furnace
Gavik hears my footsteps on the cobblestones and looks up. His bread basket is nearly full this time, a few drifters gathered around it as he hands them the loaves. In that moment I remember his true name—it was on the pipe wall where the valkerax skeleton was, too. The Man Without Mercy. If only they could see him now. When Varia is done with him, he’ll have plenty of mercy—one way or another.
“What are you doing here?” Gavik asks, his voice suspiciously lacking irritation. Perhaps sensing the impending conflict between us, the drifters take their bread and scatter as I approach.
“I have a gift,” I say lightly, throwing the diary at him. He catches it in his basket, picking the breadcrumbs off as he opens it. His aged face contorts as he scans a few pages.
“This—this is my diary.”
“And here I thought you were the clever minister of the bunch,” I say. I point at the ancient page where he’d copied down the translation of the hymn, and he squints at it. “You’re going to tell me what this means. It’s called the ‘Hymn of the Forest.’ Half your diary is in code, so I couldn’t figure it out myself. Which is why I’m here.”
Gavik knits his brows. He reads through the hymn and then shakes his head.
“That is indeed the song about the Bone Tree I know. Part of it, at least. The other parts—it must be in these coded passages, along with why it’s so dangerous.” He frowns. “I can— Yes, this looks like something I can solve. But it will take time.”
“You made up the code in the first place.” I snort. “Don’t you know it already?”
“I don’t remember anything of my old life. All of it is hazy, except that one sentence of the hymn. This code looks complicated. However,” he says with a sneer, “you’re correct. If I wrote it, I can unwrite it. But I need time.”
“I don’t have time.” I fold my arms over my chest.
“We have all the time in the world,” he mutters. “After all, we are immortal.”
“I’m going to teach the valkerax how to Weep as fast as I can. It’s starting to learn. Varia will have the Bone Tree sooner than you think.”
“You can stall,” he says. “You can stall for just a few hours. The command doesn’t let me do anything but hand out bread until sunset.”
“The valkerax is wasting away,” I insist. “It’s dying much faster than anyone thought, and if I can’t teach it, I don’t get my heart—”
“You hate me,” he asserts. My frown is deep, and I watch his hand dart into the basket and offer a loaf to a ragged passerby almost automatically. The passerby takes it, but Gavik’s watery eyes never leave my face. “I hate you. But we are both bound to one person. That person has our leashes. We have a common enemy, Zera, no matter how much you wish to deny it.”
“She’s going to give me my heart,” I argue. “She has a sense of morality, unlike you—”
“That doesn’t mean she is innocent,” he says resolutely.
I burst out in cruel, frigid laughter. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take you seriously, considering this is coming from the man who drowned innocents.”
“Something is not right,” Gavik snaps. “I know that. I know that the same way I know that one and only line of the hymn. I can prove it to you. A few hours, that’s all I ask. I know you don’t trust me; I don’t expect you to. But at the very least, you should know what kind of person your witch is before you go handing her the key to a valkerax army, don’t you think?”
“She’s just going to use them to force a standstill in the war.” I fight with everything I have against his logic—I don’t want to agree with a genocidal coot.
“I can assure you, as someone who spent his life chasing power,” Gavik says, “when absolute power presents itself, there are no ‘justs’ anymore. It is all or nothing.”
He’s not wrong. He’s not wrong and I hate it. My heart is all that matters, right? So why am I even entertaining the idea of stalling out the valkerax teaching for him?
Varia’s thrashing in her bed. Her voice murmuring about the Tree. My own nightmare. Lucien’s worry on his face and Fione’s denial on hers. The coincidences, piling on top of one another.
If something’s wrong with my witch, then where does that leave the people who love her? My friends?
former friends, the hunger corrects oily.
This. This can be my parting gift to them.
“Fine,” I bark. “You have your day. Make sure you don’t waste it.”
Evlorasin doesn’t want to talk today. It wants to be in the silence. And so do I, frankly, but we all have jobs to do.
I distract it as best I can without really damaging its teachings up until now—I ask it all sorts of harmless questions. What it’ll do when it’s free, where it will go. Evlorasin wants to fly, mostly. It loves flying. I’m a little surprised—I didn’t know they could fly, and I spend an exorbitant amount of time grilling Yorl about it when I die for the first time. It works like a charm—at least for a while. He gets so caught up in telling me about every Old Vetrisian text that talks about them flying that he nearly forgets to give me my next vial. He remembers eventually and snarls at me for distracting him. I apologize profusely, and we walk into the arena again together.
“What did you mean?” I ask Evlorasin. “When you said the tree of bone will always call out to the chime strong enough to be its roots?”
The valkerax thrashes its tail, clearly irritated that, for the third time in a row, I’ve interrupted its silence.
“We are like the river over stones; we say many things that are true and do not recall them.”
“You were in a lot of pain,” I agree. Evlorasin snorts out a violent breath of air through its nose.
“Pain is nothing and everything. The Starving Wolf knows this, too.”
I feel the valkerax move the air as it circles around me, a puff of hot breath wafting against my shoulder. There’s a long, heavily breathing pause, and then Evlorasin speaks.
“The song that calls to us comes from the tree of bone.”
“Right,” I say softly. The song means the hunger. The hunger that forces Heartless and valkerax to obey commands, that feeds on our own doubts and fears.
“A tree cannot grow without the sun or the rain,” Evlorasin hisses. “The tree of bone is no different. Sun is not its food. Water is not its nourishment.”
“Then,” I murmur, “what is?”
“Power.” The wyrm’s whiskers beat the air. “Power all around, floating like clouds and falling like earth. Power that cannot be held by a tree without hands. A chime must hold it, offer the cup of it to the lips of the tree.”
I knit my brows in the darkness. A chime must hold it. By power, Evlorasin means magic, doesn’t it? Which means the Bone Tree needs magic. Magic from a chime—a witch.
“We can hear its hungry cries,” Evlorasin growls, low in its throat. “It has not been fed sun or rain for many moons. It hungers for a great, grand chime, ringing clear and loud and sweet into the world. It will call to this chime, as it calls us and pulls us below the earth.”
My whole body feels suddenly stiff. The first thing my mind flashes to is Varia’s magic. My wounds. It takes her magic seconds to heal me—it’s stronger and more potent than Nightsinger’s magic by miles and miles. When I was burned alive by witchfire, my bones nothing more than ash, it took Varia’s magic not hours to heal me. Killing a Heartless by fire is known to slow down their healing significantly. The witchfire started roughly at sunset. But Varia’s magic had me alive again during that same sunset.
She is wildly powerful.
Varia’s nightmares about the Tree—it’s calling to her. If what Evlorasin says is true, then everything lines up.
The Bone Tree wants Varia’s magic. And it’s calling to her.
I walk out with Yorl after the session, feeling his tail whipping the air beside me as we ascend the stairs.
“We can’t afford to waste time like you did today.” The celeon’s voice has a snarl in it. “The valkerax might sound improved, but that doesn’t mean it’s any better physically. Death is not—”
“The Bone Tree feeds on magic from a witch, right?” I lilt. Yorl goes quiet, letting go of my hand. I may be able to find my way on my own now, but it’s the gesture that hurts the most. What little trust I’ve built with him feels suddenly strained, but I press on. “The Bone Tree is more like an Old Vetrisian relic, you said. They pumped so much magic and polymath engineering into it that it’s developed a mind of its own. What if it’s manipulating Varia? Is that possible? She’s a strong witch, and if it’s hungry—”
He stops me on the stairs, something slightly sharp poking into the empty void of my chest. A claw from Yorl’s paw. He’s pointing at me. I can’t see his gaze, but I can feel those huge emerald orbs on my face.
