Bone Swans: Stories

by C. S. E. Cooney

  When he answered, after clearing his throat, it was in the slow, measured sentences that made most people suck their teeth and stamp the ground with impatience. Hyrryai Blodestone merely watched with her flickering eyes.

  “Shursta Sarth is not yet twenty-five. He has one sibling, born lame. A fisherman by trade. Not a very successful one. Big as a whale. Stupid as a jellyfish. Known to his friends, if you can call them that, as ‘Sharkbait.’”

  Hyrryai was nodding, slowly. Shursta’s heart sank like a severed anchor. He had hoped, of course, that the story told of Shursta Sarth in the Astrion Council might be different. That somehow they had known more of him, even, than he knew of himself. Seeing his crestfallen expression, Hyrryai took up the tale.

  “Shursta Sarth is expected either to win a one-year bride at games, do his duty by her, and watch her leave the moment her contract ends, or to take under his wing a past-primer lately put aside for a younger womb. However, as his sister will likely be his dependent for life, this will deter many of the latter, who might have taken him on for the sake of holding their own household. It is judged improbable that Shursta Sarth will follow the common practice of having his sister removed to the Beggars’ Quarter and thus improve his own lot.”

  Shursta must have made an abrupt noise or movement, for she glanced at him curiously. He realized his hands had clenched. Again, she almost smiled.

  “Your sister made the purse?”

  He nodded once.

  “Then she is clever. And kind.” She paused. The foam hissed just beyond the edges of their toes. A cormorant called.

  “Did you know I had a sister?” she asked him.

  Shursta nodded, more carefully this time. Her voice, like her face, was remote and cold. But at the bottom of it, buried in the ice, an inferno.

  “She was clubbed to death on this beach. I found her. We had come here often to play—well, to spy on mesh-mates meeting for the first time. Sometimes we came here when the moon was full—to bathe and dance and pretend that the sea people would swim up to surface from the Nine Drowned Cities to sing songs with us. I had gone to a party that night with a group of just the sort of dashing, handsome young men we would daydream about meshing with, but she was too young yet for such things. When she was found missing from her bed the next morning, I thought perhaps she had come here and fallen asleep. I thought if I found her, I could pretend to our mother I had already scolded her—Kuista was very good at hanging her head like a puppy and looking chastised; sometimes I think she practiced in the mirror—and she might be let off a little easier. So I went here first and told nobody. But even from the cliff, when I saw her lying there, I knew she wasn’t sleeping.”

  Shursta began to shiver. He thought of Sharrar, tangled in bladderwrack, a nimbus of bloody sand spreading out around her head.

  “She was fully clothed, except for her shoes. But she often went barefoot. Said even sandals strangled her. The few coins in her pocket were still there, but her gemmaja was gone. I know she had been wearing it, because she rarely took it off. And it’s not among her things.”

  A dark curiosity moved in him. Unable to stop himself, Shursta asked, “What is a gemmaja?”

  Hyrryai untangled a thin silver chain from her hair. If she had not been so mussed, if the gemmaja had been properly secured, it would have lain across her forehead in a gentle V. A small green stone speckled with red came to rest between her eyes like a raindrop.

  “The high households of the eight kinlines wear them. Ours is green chalcedony, of course. You Sarths,” she added, “wear the red carnelian.”

  Shursta touched the small nob of polished coral he wore on a cord under his shirt. His mother had always just called it a touchstone. His branch of Sarths had never been able to afford carnelian.

  “Later, after the pyre, I searched the sand, but I could not find Kuista’s gemmaja. I was so…” She hesitated. “Angry.”

  Shursta understood the pause. Hyrryai had meant something entirely else, of course. As when calling the wall of water that destroyed your village a word so common as wave was not enough.

  “So angry that I had not thought to check her head more closely. To see if the gemmaja had been driven into…into what was left her of skull. To see if a patch of her hair had been ripped out with the removal of the gemmaja—which I reason more likely. But I only thought of that later, when—when I could think again. Someone took the gemmaja from her, I know it.” She shook her head. “But for what reason? A lover, perhaps, crazed by her refusal of him? She was young for a lover, but some men are strange. Did he beat her down and then take a piece of her for himself? Was it an enemy? For the Blodestones are powerful, Shursta Sarth, and have had enemies for as long as we have held house. Did he bring back her gemmaja to his own people, as proof of loyalty to his kinline? Was he celebrated? Was he elected leader for his bold act? I do not know. I wish I had been a year ago what I am now…. But mark me.”

  She turned to him and set her strong hands about his wrists.

  “Mark me when I say I shall not rest until I find Kuista’s murderer. Every night she comes to me in my sleep and asks where her gemmaja is. In my dreams she is not dead or broken, only sad, so sad that she begins to weep, asking me why it was taken from her. Her tears are not tears but blood. All I want is to avenge her. It is all I can think about. It is the only reason I am alive. Do you understand?”

  Shursta’s own big, brown, blunt-fingered hands rested quietly within the tense shackles of hers. His skin was on fire where she touched him, but his stomach felt like stone. He said slowly, “You do not wish—you never wished—to wed.”

  “No.”

  “But your grieving time is used up and the Astrion Council—your family—is insisting.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you chose a husband who…who would be—” He breathed out. “Easy.” She nodded once, curtly. “A stupid man, a poor man, a man who would be grateful for a place among the Blodestones. So grateful he would not question the actions of his wife. His wife who…who would not be a true wife.”

  Her hands fell from his. “You do understand.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded again, her expression almost exultant. “I knew you would! The moment I held your mesh-gift. It was as if you knew me before we met. As if you made my sorrow and my vengeance and my blood debt to my sister into a necklace. I knew at once that you would never do. Because I need a husband who would not understand. Who would not care if I could not love him. Who never suspected that the thought of bringing a child into this murderous world is so repellent that to dwell on it makes me vomit, even when I have eaten nothing. I mean to find my sister’s killer, Shursta Sarth. And then I mean to kill him and eat his heart by moonlight.”

  Shursta looked up, startled. The eating of a man’s flesh was taboo— but he did not blurt the obvious aloud. Had not her sister—a child, a girl child—been murdered on this beach? Taboos meant nothing to Hyrryai Blodestone. He wondered that she had not yet filed her teeth and declared herself windwyddiam, a wind widow, nameless, kinless, outside the law. But then, he thought, how could she hunt amongst the high houses if she revoked her right of entry into them?

  “But.”

  He looked up at that word and knew a disgustingly naked monster shone in his eyes. But he could not help it. Shursta could not help his hope.

  “But you are not a stupid man, Shursta Sarth. And you do not deserve to be sent away in disgrace, as if you were a dog that displeased me. You must tell me what you want, now that you know what I am.”

  Shursta sat up to shuck off his rucksack again. Again he removed the lace purse, the necklace. And though his fingers trembled, he looped the long strand around her neck, twice and then thrice, before letting the hooks catch. The teeth jutted out about her flesh, warning away chaste kisses, chance gestures of affection. Hyrryai did not move beneath his hands.

  “I am everything the Astrion Council says,” Shursta said, sinking back to the sand. “But if I we
d you tomorrow, I will be a Blodestone, and thus be more useful to my sister. Is that not enough to keep me here? I am not so stupid as to leave, when you give me the choice to stay. But I shall respect your grief. I shall not touch you. When you have found your sister’s killer and have had your revenge, come to me. I will declare myself publically dissatisfied that you have not given me children. I will return to Sif. If my sister does not mesh, you will settle upon her a portion worthy of a Blodestone, that she will never be put away in the Beggars’ Quarter. And we shall be quit of each other. Does this suit you, Damisel Blodestone?”

  Whatever longing she heard in his voice or saw in his eyes, she did not flinch from it. She took his face between her palms and kissed him right on the forehead, right between the eyes, where her sister’s gemmaja had rested, where her skull had been staved in.

  “Call me Hyrryai, husband.”

  When she offered her hand, he set his own upon it. Hyrryai did not clasp it close. Instead, she furled open his fingers and placed her mesh-gift into his palm. It was a black shell blade, honed to a dazzle and set into a delicately scrimshawed hilt of whale ivory.

  * * *

  Cherished Nugget, Shursta began his missive, It is for charity’s sake that I sit and scribble this to you on this morning of all mornings, in the sure knowledge that if I do not, your churlishness will have you feeding burnt porridge to all the grayheads under your care. To protect them, I will relate to you the tale of my meshing. Brace yourself.

  The bride wore red, as brides do—but you have never seen such a red as the cloth they make in Droon. Had she worn it near shore, sharks would have beached themselves, mistaking her for food. It was soft, too, to the touch. What was it like? Plumage. No, pelt. Like Damis Ungerline’s seal pelt, except not as ratty and well-chewed. How is the old lady anyway? Has she lost her last tooth yet? Give her my regards.

  The bride’s brothers, six giants whose prowess in athletics, economics, politics, and music makes them the boast of the Blodestones, converged on me the night I arrived in Droon and insisted I burn the clothes I came in and wear something worthy of my forthcoming station.

  “Except,” said one—forgive me; I have not bothered to learn all their names—“we have nothing ready made in his size.”

  “Perhaps a sailcloth?”

  “Damis Valdessparrim has some very fine curtains.”

  And more to this effect. A droll scene. Hold it fast in your mind’s eye. Me, nodding and agreeing to all their pronouncements with a fine ingratiation of manner. Couldn’t speak a word, of course. Sweating, red as a boiled lobster—you know how I get—I suppose I seemed choice prey while they poked and prodded, loomed and laughed. I felt about three feet tall and four years old again.

  Alas, low as they made me, I could not bring myself to let them cut the clothes from my back. I batted at their hands. However, they were quicker than I, as is most everybody. They outnumbered me, and their knives came out. My knife—newly gifted and handsomer than anything I’ve ever owned—was taken from me. My fate was sealed.

  Then their sister came to my rescue. Think not she had been standing idly by, enjoying the welcome her brothers made me. No, as soon as we’d stepped foot under the Blodestone roof, she had been enveloped in a malapertness of matrons, and had only just emerged from their fond embraces.

  She has a way of silencing even the most garrulous of men, which the Blodestone boys, I assure you, are.

  When they were all thoroughly cowed and scuffling their feet, she took me by the hand and led me to the room I am currently occupying. My mesh-rite suit was laid out for me, fine ivory linens embroidered by, she informed me, her mother’s own hand. They fit like I had been born to them. The Astrion Council, they say, has eyes everywhere. And measuring tapes, too, apparently.

  Yes, yes, I stray from my subject, O antsiest (and onliest) sister. The meshing.

  Imagine a balmy afternoon. Warm, with a wind. (You probably had the same kind of afternoon in Sif, so it shouldn’t be too hard.) Meat had been roasting since the night before in vast pits. The air smelled of burnt animal flesh, by turns appetizing and nauseating.

  We two stood inside the crone circle. The Blodestones stood in a wider circle around the crones. After that, a circle of secondary kin. After that, the rest of the guests.

  We spoke our vows. Or rather, the bride did. Your brother, dear Nugget, I am sorry to say, was his usual laconic self and could not find his way around his own tongue. Shocking! Nevertheless, the bride crowned him in lilies, and cuffed to his ear a gemmaja of green chalcedony, set in a tangle of silver. This, to declare him a Blodestone by mesh-rite.

  You see, I enclose a gemmaja of your own. You are no longer Sharrar Sarth, but Damisel Sharrar Blodestone, mesh-sister to the Gleaming One. When you come of croning, you, too, shall take your seat on the Astrion Council. Power, wealth, glory. Command of the kinlines. Fixer of fates.

  There. Never say I never did anything for you.

  Do me one favor, Sharrar. Do not wear your gemmaja upon your forehead, or in any place too obvious. Do not wear it where any stranger who might covet it might think to take it from you by force. Please.

  A note of observation. For all they dress so fine and speak with fancy voices, I cannot say that people in Droon are much different than people in Sif. Sit back in your chair and imagine me rapturous in the arms of instant friends.

  I write too hastily. Sharrar, I’m sorry. The ink comes out as gall. I know for a fact that you are scowling at the page and biting your nails. My fault.

  I will slow down, as if I were speaking, and tell you something to set your heart at ease.

  Other than the bride—who is what she is—I have perhaps discovered one friend. At least, he is friendlier than anyone else I have met in Droon. I even bothered remembering his name for you.

  He is some kind of fifth or sixth cousin to the bride. Not a Blodestone. One of the ubiquitous Spectroxes. (Why are they ubiquitous, you ask? I am not entirely sure. I was told they are ubiquitous, so ubiquitous I paint them for you now. Miners and craftsmen, mostly, having holdings in the mountains. Poor but on the whole respectable.) This particular Spectrox is called Laric Spectrox. Let me tell you how I met him.

  I was lingering near the banquet table after the brunt of the ceremony had passed from my shoulders.

  Imagine me a mite famished. I had not eaten yet that day, my meshing day, and it was nearing sunset. I was afraid to serve myself even a morsel for the comments my new mesh-brothers might make. They had already made several to the end that, should I ever find myself adrift at sea, I might sustain myself solely on myself until rescue came, and still be man enough for three husbands to their sister!

  I thought it safe, perhaps, to partake of some fruit. All eyes were on a sacred dance the bride was performing. This involved several lit torches swinging from the ends of chains and what I can only describe as alarming acrobatics. I had managed to eat half a strawberry when a shadow dwarfed the dying sun. A creature precisely three times the height of any of the bride’s brothers—though much skinnier, and black as the sharp shell of my new blade—laughed down at me.

  “Bored with the fire spinning already? Hyrryai’s won contests, you know. Although she can’t—ah—couldn’t hold a candle to little Kuista.”

  I squinted up at this living beanstalk of a man, wondering if he ever toppled in a frisky wind. To my surprise, when I opened my mouth to speak, the sentence came out easily. In the order I had planned it, no less.

  (I still find it strange how my throat knows when to trust someone, long before I’ve made up my own mind about it. It was you who first observed that, I remember. Little Sharrar, do the grayheads tell you that your name means ‘Wisdom’? If they don’t, they should.)

  “I cannot bear to watch her,” I confessed.

  “Afraid she’ll set someone’s hair on fire?” He winked. “Can’t really blame you. But she won’t, you know.”

  “Not that. Only…” For a moment, my attention wandered b
ack to the bride. Red flame. Red gown. Wheels of fire in the night. Her eyes. I looked away. “Only it would strike me blind if I gazed at her too long.”

  What he read in my face, I could not say (although I know you’re wishing I’d just make something up), but he turned to follow her movements as she danced.

  “Mmn,” he grunted. “Can’t say I see it, myself. She’s just Hyrryai. Always has been. Once, several years back, my mother suggested I court her. I said I’d rather mesh with a giant squid. Hyrryai’s all bone and sinew, you know. Never had any boobies to speak of. Anyway, even before Kuista died, she was too serious. Grew up with those Blodestone boys—learned to fight before she could talk. I wouldn’t want a wife who could kill me with her pinkie, would you?”

  My eyebrows went past my hairline. In fact, I have not located them since. I think they are hiding behind my ears. My new acquaintance grinned to see me at such a loss, but he grasped my forearm and gave it a hearty shake.

  “What am I doing, keeping you from your grub? Eat up, man! You’re that feral firemaid’s husband now. I’d say you’ll need all your strength for tonight.”

  And that, Nugget, is where I shall leave you. It is morning. As you see, I survived.

  Your fond brother,

  Shursta Blodestone

  * * *

  He was reading a book in the window seat of his room when Shursta heard the clamor in the courtyard. Wagon wheels, four barking dogs, several of the younger Blodestones who had been playing hoopball, an auntie trying to hush everyone down.

  “Good morning, Chaos,” a voice announced just beyond his line of sight. “My name is Sharrar Sarth. I’ve come to meet my mesh-kin.”

  Shursta slammed his book closed and ran for the door. He did not know if he was delighted or alarmed. Would they jostle her? Would they take her cane away and tease her? Would she whack them over the knuckles and earn the disapprobation of the elders? Why had she come?

  The letter, of course. The letter. He had regretted it the moment he sent it. It had been too long, too full of things he should have kept to himself. He ought to have expected her. Would he have stayed at home, receiving a thing like that from her? Never. Now that she was here, he ought to send her away.