by Scott Hale
The Skeleton walked past her, and she followed after.
“This isn’t the only time I’ve seen her act weird.”
“All kinds of things are coming to her now that the Blue Worm is gone,” the Skeleton said.
“It sounded like she was talking to me, like, personally. It sounded like someone was using her to get to me.”
“Might be.” The Skeleton pulled his cloak shut, careful as always not to expose the black moss on his ribcage. “You’re one of the few survivors of Geharra. Might be someone out there doesn’t want you to talk.”
“I don’t think that’s—”
The Skeleton walked to the doors of Operations and pulled them open. “You coming?”
R’lyeh shrugged.
“You got your gear on.” The Skeleton growled. “Guessing Elizabeth didn’t fill you in.”
“No. She didn’t.” What’s wrong with him? she wondered. “She said I’m leaving today. I’m guessing to Rime to get Audra.”
The Skeleton cocked his head. “What?”
“I’m guessing—”
But it wasn’t R’lyeh to whom he was speaking. He picked at his glassy, vein-choked eyes and said, “Yeah, that’s right. Mr. Haemo didn’t have much of Audra’s blood, but all signs say she’s up in Rime. You, Elizabeth, and Miranda are going to go up to Rime and get her back. It’s best you all travel in a small group.”
“And you want me to go now?”
The Skeleton looked at her as if he was bored with the conversation. It was the same look he always seemed to have. You couldn’t see it, on account of him being only bone, but it was there. When it came to the Marrow Cabal, it was like he was going through the motions. His heart just wasn’t in it, literally and otherwise.
“Come here,” the Skeleton said, stepping outside onto the dock. “I want to learn you something.”
There was a part of Gallows that was rarely ever used. It was a narrow boardwalk that extended from the first level of the dock into the heart of the lake itself. Because of the constant, bloody mist that sat over that part of the lake, you couldn’t go much farther than ten or twelve feet without disappearing, along with the boardwalk, out of the sight of others. New recruits into the Marrow Cabal would sometimes dare one another to go out onto the boardwalk at night to see how far they could make it before chickening out.
Most of the time, people just assumed those new recruits made it all the way, because they never came back.
“It’s going to rain today,” the Skeleton said as he and R’lyeh went down a level and toward that very boardwalk. “I can feel it in my bones.”
R’lyeh couldn’t, but what she could feel were all the eyes of the cabalists on her as she and the Skeleton passed. To be walking with their leader was one thing, but to be walking with him to the boardwalk that led to Mr. Haemo’s Haunt was another matter entirely. To them, she must have either looked incredibly privileged or incredibly damned.
The nearer they came to the boardwalk, the slicker, more blood encrusted that part of Gallows became. Because people seldom went to this part of the town, it seldom saw any care. It was here that the blood level of the lake was highest, far past the supports which held up the town. Strange plants grew here, too, out of the human corpses left by the Red Worm that formed the town’s rancid beach. The foliage overwhelmed this part of the dock, creating a jungle of corpse-born flowers and weeds that, according to James, were most likely carnivorous and from the Adelaide line.
At the foot of the boardwalk, alone and away from Gallows proper, and surrounded by blood and the things that prosper from it, R’lyeh thought for one terrible moment that the Skeleton was going to kill her. It was the perfect place, wasn’t it? And Hex had just tried to kill her like thirty minutes ago, which no one seemed all that alarmed about. Was it because she had botched the Bedlam mission? Or did they finally see what she really was and what she was capable of doing? Could murderers be made sick by other murders?
“R’lyeh,” the Skeleton said. A cold wind blasted across the lake, causing his heavy, black cloak to whip around him. “What do you want?”
She cocked her head. “I’m not sure what… you mean.”
“Everyone has a part to play in this here Marrow Cabal. I want to be sure what I see for you is what you want for yourself.”
“I wanted to find Vrana. I mean, I still do, but… I don’t know.” She rubbed at her stitching. “I want to be good at something.”
“Good at something, or good for something?”
Raindrops started to patter on the sanguine surface of the lake. Distant thunder boomed, but lightning was nowhere to be seen.
R’lyeh hesitated and then said, “Both, I guess. I, uh—” She dug into her pocket, took out the vial of Thanatos, and handed it to him. “Sorry.”
The Skeleton took the vial. He opened his cloak—hints of the black moss, now denser than before, across his ribs—and stowed it. “What’d you want that for?”
“Don’t know,” R’lyeh lied.
“You’re mad no one’s making a big fuss about Hex and you.” The Skeleton started down the boardwalk.
R’lyeh followed after, saying, “Wouldn’t you be if it was the other way around?”
“Don’t know,” the Skeleton said, mimicking her. “You got to remember, though, that you’re a Night Terror. Asking others to feel bad for you is like asking someone to feel bad for a snake because the rat fought back.”
The bloody mist began to close around them. R’lyeh stopped.
The Skeleton stopped, too, and turned to face her; blood dotted his white bones, and the kicking wind made it smear. “Smart,” he said. “You know when to follow, and when not to.”
“I haven’t seen Mr. Haemo for months.”
“Consider yourself lucky, then.”
“What’s he doing?”
The Skeleton laughed. “That’s top secret. Get to the center, and you’re welcome to find out.”
Something splashed in the blood beside R’lyeh. She leaned out and saw a strange reflection in the lake. It was a skyscraper that was almost identical to the illustration Herbert North left for the Skeleton. A raindrop rippled the scene, and when the blood was calm again, the image was gone.
“I’m going to be straight with you,” the Skeleton said. “These days, I find myself relating more to monsters than men. You’re young, but you’re not human, and so that don’t bother me as much as it should when I have you out there in the field, risking life and limb.
“I see some of myself in you. Someone doing something they don’t really want to do for the sake of someone else. I have to use you. I’m sorry about that. But you’re using me, too, to find your friend, so I figure fair’s fair.”
“Makes sense,” R’lyeh said.
The sound of wings traveled through the air. Something was flying farther ahead in the impenetrable pink mist.
The Skeleton flung the hood of his cloak over his head. “Let’s elaborate on our meeting yesterday. The Disciples of the Deep are gaining ground. King Edgar’s soldiers are cutting through the Heartland, kindly forcing the conversion of the towns and villages. The vermillion veins are now part of the Disciples’ holy rite. There’s no uprooting them now. The Heartland is infested with the things. We have to stop what they’re raising, instead.
“Penance has an army. The Mother Abbess and Holy Child are leading it personally. There’s rumors the army even has angels in it, but I don’t believe that myself. I know you hate Penance, but if we have to choose, they might be our best bet.
“Anyways, it may come to war, and the Marrow Cabal can’t fight no war. We have a few hundred at best, but our weapon is information; subterfuge and shit. If the two cities come to blows, it’s going to be in the Heartland, which means Penance or Eldrus are going to sweep over Gallows here like an unstoppable wave.
“But that’s not all. The Nameless Forest isn’t right, anymore. Monsters pour out of it every day, and spellweavers, I hear, are popping up all over.
And that desert, the Ossuary, down south, might actually have something living in it. People are fighting like children over whose god can beat up the others’, but I expect the real battle is the one going on behind it all; the one no one is paying much attention to. I admire that, and us Marrow Cabal need to be like that, if we’re going to make a difference.
“So you’re going to go to Rime, and you’re going to sweet-talk King Edgar’s sister out of their custody. Get your people to join us, if you can, but bring Audra back. Her entire family was murdered. You can bet she has something to say about it and who might’ve done it. We’re not the only one tracking her. The Winnowers’ Chapter from Penance has been hot on her heels, supposedly. Few of our people brought back some of their flyers from the area.”
“That’s fine,” R’lyeh said, plainly.
“I like Herbert’s theory about the difference between Night Terrors and Corrupted.” The Skeleton ran his fat, black tongue over his teeth. “But I got my own. Care to hear it?”
R’lyeh nodded.
“Difference between yours and my kind is that you all like killing. Hell, it’s what you live your life by. You ever known a Night Terror to be squeamish about cutting someone’s throat?”
“I don’t… know.” R’lyeh thought back to Alluvia, to Caldera. “Not everyone fights.”
“But they would, I bet, just like waking up in the morning. Have to, even if you don’t want to.” The Skeleton stepped forward, his boney hand outstretched. “Can’t say that about humans. Some don’t have the disposition. Show me a pacifist Night Terror, and I’ll say that I’m wrong, but I bet you can’t.”
“Deal,” R’lyeh reached out, as if to shake his hand on the matter, but stopped herself. The last time she had touched him, he had filled her head with awful things. His touch was poison—the kind no one, not even herself, could be immune to.
The Skeleton laughed, retracted his hand. “Elizabeth and Miranda are going with you because they do like killing, and they do it real well. That, and I don’t want them around when my guests show up in a few weeks. I’m afraid they won’t behave.”
“Guests?”
The Skeleton ignored her. “Got any questions? They’re ready to head out, it looks like.”
R’lyeh turned around. At the end of the boardwalk, where the corpse-plants swayed, Elizabeth and Miranda waited on horseback, with a third horse behind them. In that dampening mist, they looked like bloody ghosts risen from the grave, ready go out again for that battle they’d been fighting forever.
“A couple,” R’lyeh said, facing the Skeleton.
But he was already ahead of her, going farther down the boardwalk. She had seconds at best before he would be gone, out of reach to anything with blood in its veins.
“What’s that growing on your ribs?” R’lyeh belted.
The Skeleton, not stopping, said, “Time.”
What the hell does that mean? She took a few steps forward, shouted, “What will you do with Hex?”
Now, he was half there; a faint image of a shambling beast bumbling down the boardwalk. “Whatever I want. Now that she’s out of the way, we’ll be… doing things our way.”
“What? What do you mean?” R’lyeh didn’t dare take another step forward. “Haven’t we been?”
The Skeleton laughed and slipped into the mist. “No,” he said. “Have you?”
And with that, the Skeleton was gone.
R’lyeh’s head was swimming with questions that had never been given a chance to surface. What’s really growing on your ribs? What about Hex? She had a chance to ask the leader of the Marrow Cabal anything, and that’s what she decided on? She should have asked why he chose her, why he really chose her. She should have asked about Vrana, and how he was really going to get her back. Because she was beginning to think he didn’t care, or that he didn’t have a way to save her from the Witch.
But she didn’t ask, did she? R’lyeh turned back towards Gallows and headed down the boardwalk to Elizabeth and Miranda. She’d had months to do something about Vrana, and all she did instead was whatever the Marrow Cabal told her to do. She wanted to save her, she did, but did she have to be the one to? Something told R’lyeh Vrana wouldn’t approve of the Marrow Cabal; she probably wouldn’t let her keep killing Corrupted, either. Here, she could be good at something, good for something; back in Caldera, she’d just be another thirteen-year-old Night Terror, underestimated and underused.
R’lyeh didn’t like the way she was thinking, so she thought about something else, instead. A swarm of mosquitoes cut across the boardwalk and wound into the sky, as if they were doing their best impersonation of a flock of birds. She waved to Elizabeth and Miranda, and they waved back enthusiastically. Maybe to them this was just any old mission, but to R’lyeh this was something more.
“Wouldn’t have picked me if I wasn’t a Night Terror,” she mumbled, minding the slick spots on the boardwalk. “Need to stop forgetting I am one.”
R’lyeh stopped at the end of the boardwalk. Elizabeth and Miranda parted to let the third horse pass in between them. It came right up to R’lyeh and lowered its head into her shoulder.
“Have a way with horses, yeah?” Elizabeth said.
R’lyeh nodded and petted the horse. It reminded her of the one that used to visit her in Alluvia, and the horses she and Vrana rode back home from Geharra.
“We’ll be gone a month and a half, maybe more,” Miranda said. “If you need anything done, I hope you did it yesterday.”
R’lyeh’s thoughts lingered on Vrana. “No,” she said, bitter betrayal constricting her throat. “No, I’m ready.”
R’lyeh handed the ax to Elizabeth to hold and mounted the horse. Taking the reins in her hand, she thought: Vrana will be okay. What was her boyfriend’s name? A-Aeson? He’ll save her if I can’t. Probably already has.
CHAPTER VII
Autumn-colored leaves washed across Caldera, the wind they rode in on cool and constant. In the fields, harvesters worked at the dwindling crops; their scythes and sickles slickly slicing through the tall, browning stalks. At the village center, children prowled and scowled and said their goodbyes, for the workday was done and evening had come. Out of the wilds and the haze of routine, Night Terrors poured; from the artisan tents to the Archive itself came a veritable ark of animal-headed people, some worn-down or others hyped-up, but all eager to go back home. There were still traces of the Witch’s attack on the village; parts of the ground were still tainted, and some houses were still scorched from the flames, but the Calderans didn’t pay these reminders much mind. They were a forward-thinking people, and to them, time was mostly mulch.
So Aeson thought, and so Aeson knew, as he stood outside the house of the elders, watching the village wind down for the night. With every passing week, fewer and fewer villagers had shown any concern about Vrana’s return. Aeson knew that regardless of what she had done for them, the village, hell, the whole world, she, just like anything else, would be forgotten, too. Forgotten, just like the elders had probably hoped to forget how Vrana had been born.
Aeson clenched his fists and moved at a brisk pace away from the house. He was damn sure Vrana had no idea about the circumstances of her own birth. How could they keep that from her? He moved past house after house after house, banging his hand against the sides of them. He always knew the elders hid things from him, but they had gone too far this time. If Vrana had telepathic potential, then of course the Witch would’ve taken interest in her. They could have done something, but instead they ran her across the continent like their little lab-grown lapdog.
“Fuck,” Aeson whispered under his breath. He felt sick to his stomach. It wasn’t just the rage that made him nauseous. It was the question he kept asking himself, the one that made him cringe; the one he worried would come between him and her if they were ever together again.
What exactly was Vrana? How many parts Worm?
And from here until she was in his arms again, how many times would he pick
her apart, oddity by oddity, searching for every seam the Blue Worm had used to stitch his love together?
Aeson spit and again: “Fuck.”
Bjørn was banging away on his anvil; first to rise, last to quit, the Bear always seemed to be in a perpetual state of blacksmithing. His workshop of late had become increasingly crowded and cut off from the rest of Caldera. The stone hut was stuffed with more weapons and armor than the village knew what to do with, and the creations were arranged in such a way that they formed an almost impenetrable wall of leather and blades. Things had been that way ever since R’lyeh’s letter arrived. Bjørn and Aeson had very little in common, but the same couldn’t be said for their grief. They both wanted to hurt those they couldn’t keep out.
Aeson stopped outside the workshop. He slipped his hand into his pocket to make sure the registry from Enaar containing the names of those born on Lacuna was still there. Anguis had told Aeson he had one more thing for him, a book, but he would deliver it later, after Aeson had made arrangements to leave. Despite wanting to save Vrana, Aeson almost fought with Anguis about whether or not he would even be allowed to stay, but he didn’t. He knew they wouldn’t let him stay. He knew too much already, and now that he was beginning to truly understand his people, he was a liability. The only way to gain their trust again would be to do everything they asked of him and not die in the process.
With a throaty belch, Bjørn slammed his hammer into the piece of metal laid out across the anvil. He reared back, brought the hammer down again. The metal flattened; a harsh chime shivered out of the steel and pierced the air. Bjørn straightened up, dropped the hammer. His old muscles tented and tightened over his quivering frame. He sighed, gripped the side of his mask, took it off, and placed it on the anvil. His hands groped at nothing in particular.
“I see you standing there,” Bjørn said. He ran his fingers through his long, dirty, white hair until his infamous mullet fell into place. “Watched you walk off with the Snake. You looked pissed. What did he tell you?”
Aeson stepped up to the workshop, a wall of spears between him and Bjørn. “You were there, weren’t you?”
