The Bone Palace

by Downum, Amanda

  But not all the clothing was the same size, nor all the colors those Isyllt remembered Lychandra to wear. How many tombs had been pilfered over the years?

  Among the glitter of jewels, she found a long lock of brass-blonde hair, braided and coiled and tied with silk thread. A lover’s token, the kind sweethearts exchanged. Had Forsythia kept a knot of her vampire’s hair in return? Isyllt wished she could have asked him, and didn’t know whether to weep or curse in her frustration.

  They emerged filthy and exhausted from a sewer access in Birthgrave. Not the sort of place Isyllt liked to be at midnight, but she was too tired and sore to be nervous. If anyone tried to cut their throats or purses, she would be perfectly content to let Spider eat them and throw the bodies in the river.

  No one tried, though, and they staggered into a better neighborhood and finally managed to waylay a carriage. The man’s eyes widened when she showed her ring, and she shoved Khelséa into the cab before he could decide to bolt. Spider ghosted inside as well, but Azarné had vanished.

  The carriage deposited them at St. Alia’s, Archlight’s own hospital—the driver didn’t wait, despite Isyllt’s promise of more payment if he did. Khelséa found a physician to inspect her ruptured eardrum, but Isyllt waved away offers of assistance. The hospital was unusually full, and she wanted sleep more than anything—dying in the night of the concussion was a risk she was prepared to take.

  Spider waited for her when she emerged; the building’s wards were too powerful for him to easily pass. He didn’t offer her his arm this time and she was just as glad, though she could have used it.

  “He thought I killed Forsythia,” she finally said when they reached Calderon Court. She could hear again, though her ears still rang like cathedral bells and her voice sounded queer and not her own.

  Spider shrugged. “I imagine lairing there hadn’t been good for his mind. Who knows what he thought, or why?” He met her eyes unblinking, but she didn’t know his tells enough to find truth or deception in his face or stance. He wasn’t telling her everything, though, and he’d silenced Forsythia’s vampire before she could learn more. “Does it matter? You have what you sought.”

  It matters to Forsythia. But that would hardly sway him. Nor could she say it had been too easy, though she knew in her gut it had.

  “No,” she said at last, wrapping her arms around herself. She couldn’t stop shivering. “It doesn’t.” He was a demon, with his own agenda—she couldn’t let herself forget that for a few kisses.

  He reached for her, but stopped at her flinch. “You should rest. I’ll find you again when you’ve mended.”

  And he was gone, with only a cool draft to mark his passage. Isyllt lingered on the steps, watching the eastern sky pale. The moon had set, and false dawn glowed above the rooftops. The Dragon’s fire, chasing the Hounds below the western horizon. The leader of the pack was already hidden by the city skyline.

  By the time the second hound had nosed beyond view, the sky was tinged with blue and her shivering had become a teeth-rattling tremble. Lights flickered to life in nearby windows. At last she turned, unlocked the door with shaking hands, and began the slow climb to her rooms.

  Spider was right: She had accomplished what she needed to. The queen’s jewels were found, and would be returned to her crypt, and Mathiros need never be the wiser. The vrykoloi responsible were dead, and she had the petty satisfaction of revenge for the attack on her and Ciaran, and more knowledge of vampires than she’d had before.

  But there was a dead woman moldering on a slab without justice, and Isyllt still didn’t know why any of it had happened.

  Sleep claimed her as soon as she pressed her face to the pillow, but it brought neither peace nor satisfaction.

  PART II

  Nocturne

  CHAPTER 8

  On the seventeenth of Hekate, seven days after the party, a carriage left Erisín through the Aquilon Gate, on the north road to Arachne. The coach bore no colors or devices, but everyone in the palace knew it carried Savedra Severos and was bound for her family estate. Four Severoi guards rode beside it—all the archa would lend her—and an octad of hastily hired mercenaries. Excessive, some said, but everyone also knew that banditry in the countryside increased with every wave of Rosian refugees driven south.

  Rumors and speculation chased each other through the court: Savedra had quarreled with the prince; she had quarreled with the princess; her famous loyalty couldn’t withstand an assassin’s gun pointed at her own head. Ginevra Jsutien displayed her wounded cheek with brave fragility, and was cosseted and made much of by her peers. She spoke no word against Savedra, but her silences were eloquent.

  The prince saw Savedra off, though their farewells were stilted. Of the princess there was no sign; she had taken ill the day before. Maids had heard her fighting with Nikos, and rumors of another pregnancy or the unlikelihood thereof circulated with knowing glances and shaken heads.

  The carriage kept a leisurely pace till the city walls shrank behind it, then the driver urged the six Medvener Bays into a gallop. The countryside rolled by, coastal scrublands giving way to brush, and the wooded hills drawing ever closer. The wind from the north was heavy with the tang of pine and graveyard cypress and the distant bite of snow.

  Inside the cushioned cab, Savedra brooded. She ought to be pleased her plan had worked so well, or at least happy to see her childhood home again. Glad of a respite from court and politics. And she was, but still her thoughts spiraled down to frets and worries with every idle moment.

  “Your face will set that way if you don’t stop frowning. And you’ll wear a hole in your skirt.”

  Savedra blinked and dragged her hands away from the hem she’d been picking. Ashlin lounged on the opposite side of the carriage, one booted foot drawn up on the bench. Every so often she tugged the window open, slitting her eyes against the cold wind. It had taken some argument to convince her to ride in the carriage instead of remaining with the outriders after they left the city walls, but even in confinement her mood had improved since they left the palace. Savedra had seen her smile more in the past several hours than in two months in Erisín.

  The princess wore mercenary armor in patchwork black and brown, and her hair had been trimmed to a rougher shape than her usual sleek bob and dyed a dark nut-brown. The color wouldn’t fool anyone who saw her pale eyelashes, but it made her green eyes all the more striking. She’d even pierced her ears again and hung them with gold and silver hoops, the wealth of a successful sellsword. It didn’t look like a disguise—more like a disguise had been stripped away to show the truth. Ashlin would never have agreed to leave the palace for her own safety, but the ruse had caught her interest, as had a trip to the library at Evharis. It wasn’t an invitation an Alexios was likely to receive.

  “If you mean to keep me penned in this rattling box, you could at least offer more conversation than my horse.” Metal flashed with her smile; a silver stud kept the hole in her nostril open in the absence of her wedding jewelry.

  “Sorry.” Savedra’s own smile was wry and lopsided. “You might be better off with the horse.”

  “My guards used to say that the only useful thing a horse couldn’t do is dice. I don’t suppose you have any of those on you?”

  “I’m afraid not. And the bouncing wouldn’t help.” The ride was actually quite smooth—the coach was well sprung and the roads maintained, but the constant soft rattle made her spine ache; her ears ached from the clatter of hooves and wheels. She’d never cared for riding especially, but the sight of nothing but the dim wood-and-upholstery interior of the cab might be enough to drive her ahorse after another day. “I imagine there’s a deck of cards here somewhere, though.”

  After a bit of searching she found one in a door pocket, along with a charcoal nub and scraps of paper smeared with old scores—the coach’s last occupants had taken their tarock games seriously. The cards were worn soft at the edges, faces faded. They whispered as Savedra shuffled, a muted his
s instead of the sharp slap and crack of crisp stock. Teaching her to play for money was one of the myriad ways Varis had corrupted her as a child.

  Thinking of her uncle nearly made her frown again, though she kept her face smooth this time. A visit to Evharis was only half an excuse to keep Ashlin out of harm’s way; Savedra and the princess had both been with Nikos when Isyllt Iskaldur came to the palace, shaken and bruised and grey as paste, to report that Lychandra’s jewelry had been recovered and the thieves dealt with. Nikos had been pleased with the timely handling of the situation, but it was clear that Isyllt was still troubled.

  The idea of blood-drinking demons creeping through tombs was troubling indeed, and Savedra still wondered what knowledge of them Varis was hiding. After a quiet inquiry around Phoenix House, she’d learned that he’d been distracted lately, underslept and much more subdued than usual. It might be nothing but one of his countless affairs, but the confluence of events sent unease worming through her gut. Between family intrigues and machinations at court, she had learned to trust that sensation.

  She concentrated on the blur of cards, and wondered if she could read the future from them the way some fortunetellers claimed to.

  Ashlin pushed the curtain aside and tugged the window open. The cold draft pricked gooseflesh on Savedra’s limbs, and cut through the scent of oiled mail and leather and warm flesh that she hardly noticed anymore. She caught a glimpse of low grey sky and hills dark with winter-brown oaks; soon the road would rise into the pine and juniper forests that skirted the mountains. When the carriage was unpleasantly cold the princess shut the window again and leaned back against her seat, blowing her tousled fringe out of her eyes.

  “Should I leave my hair this way?” she asked, brushing at the dye-dulled strands.

  “No,” Savedra answered immediately, lifting the latch that held the narrow plank table to the wall. Hinges creaked as it lowered. “It’s hideous. You have beautiful hair. What you ought to do is grow it out.”

  “All it does is tangle and get in my eyes.”

  Savedra lifted a hand to her own wild hair, bound up for travel and still frizzing free of its pins. “I have no sympathy. Anyway, you have maids to style it for you.”

  Ashlin frowned. “No one’s brushed my hair for me since my mother died.”

  “Let Nikos do it—he spent long enough learning to brush mine.”

  The princess’s frown twisted sideways. “Probably not. I might let you, though. I trust you around me with knives, after all, so why not combs?”

  “Combs don’t attract attention,” Savedra said automatically, slapping cards onto the table, “and are just as easy to poison.” One of the first attempts on her life had been a gift of poisoned combs. She was careful now to buy her own, and never from the same shop.

  Ashlin’s eyebrows climbed. “Is it safe to be trapped in a carriage with you?”

  “Probably not. It’s a good thing you have a sword.” She collected her hand and winked over the cards. “Your move, Your Highness.”

  They stopped that night at a crossroads inn to eat and change horses and catch a few hours of sleep, rising before dawn to continue. The lieutenant Cahal took Ashlin’s place in the carriage the next day, a dark-haired Celanoran who had come to Erisín with the betrothal party three years ago. Half the ostensible mercenaries riding with the coach were the princess’s own guard, and the other half Captain Denaris’s handpicked soldiers. The lieutenant was hawk-eyed and quiet, and a cutthroat tarock player. Savedra might have to pawn her pearls soon.

  “Am I being careless with her?” Savedra asked while Cahal shuffled. She’d tried to keep her worries to herself, but the soldier’s calm and obvious loyalty invited confidences.

  Cards blurred from hand to hand before he answered. “I’ve ridden with the princess since she was sixteen,” he said at last. “When she was younger, no one could have been more careless with her health than she was. That’s most of why she isn’t heir—too much like her mother.”

  Savedra had asked once why Ashlin, the firstborn, wasn’t Crown Princess of Celanor; the princess had said only that a crown suited her younger brother better.

  “Did you know the queen?”

  He shook his head. “I was too young. She spent little time in the castle by the time I was training there. But I saw her sometimes—bright and fierce and beautiful. A wildling warrior of the old Clans. They call the castle at Yselin the Eyrie, but it was always a mew to her.” He gave a rueful shrug, a soldier speaking of things that weren’t his to know but everyone knew anyway. “She died in battle when Ashlin was thirteen. No king or queen or prince of Celanor had fallen so for generations, not since Dhonail and Siobhan, but Nemain wouldn’t leave the defense of her clanhame to her soldiers when brigands came raiding.” Another shrug. “Ashlin worshipped her, and by the time she was sixteen everyone thought she’d kill herself the same way.”

  He grinned wryly, black eyes glinting. “Her Highness has mellowed a great deal since then. In some ways your palace intrigue is good for her—makes her think before she rushes blindly in.” He dealt a new hand. “So, no, I don’t think you’re being careless with her. Coddling only makes her angry, anyway.” This shrug was sympathetic and long-suffering.

  They passed the road sign for Arachne as afternoon shadows stretched into evening on the third day. Every other time Savedra had made the trip it had been a leisurely journey of half a decad or more, but neither she nor Ashlin were in the mood for leisure now. The carriage veered off the main road onto the narrower path that led to the Severoi’s hillside estate. They were high in the hills now, near the crux of the Varagas and Sindrel mountain ranges, at the edge of the Sarken border. Miles to the west, the Herodis thundered down from the heights, surging black and icy toward Erisín and the sea.

  The ride roughened as the road sloped, and by the time the horses clattered to a stop Savedra’s teeth ached from clenching her jaw and sharp pains pierced through her shoulders and back. She swore like a dockhand as Cahal handed her down, and was rewarded by the amused crease of his eyes. Her left leg had fallen asleep, and stung with pins and needles as she dragged it across the cobbles.

  She raised a hand against the sun, and forgot her aches and complaints as her eyes adjusted. The sun slanted across the western mountains, gilding the sharp peaks of the Varagas and blinding the windows of the house. Shadows gathered thick in the lower forests. The air tasted of pine and woodsmoke and dead leaves, and Savedra breathed deep with a sigh. She’d played in these woods with her brothers and the household children, and sulked in them during the miseries of her adolescence. Phoenix House and the Gallery of Pearls might be more a home to her these days, but Evharis would always carry a weight of memories.

  Ashlin dismounted, stroking her sweating horse and drawing aside her scarf to bare wind-flushed cheeks. She shaded her eyes as she studied the hills and terraced orchards, and the wilder trees beyond. “I’ve missed the forests,” she said quietly.

  Stablehands appeared, hesitating at the sight of mercenaries. Before Savedra could identify herself the great doors swung open and the familiar gaunt form of the house steward descended the steps. Savedra smiled and stepped forward, trying in vain to shake the wrinkles from her heavy skirts. As a child she would have run to him, but dignity and her still stiff leg kept her from it now.

  Iancu Sala blinked when he saw her, surprise foreign on his creased aquiline face. “Vedra!” He hurried to embrace her, stooping to do so. “I had no word you were coming. Is everything well?”

  “I’m fine, Iancu. It’s—It’s complicated.” She smiled wryly.

  “Ah.” He brightened, straightening his immaculate jacket. Any Severoi vassal was well versed in complications. He gestured the stablehands forward, and sent another servant to prepare rooms and extra portions for dinner. Cahal led the other riders toward the stable, while Ashlin fell in beside Savedra. If Iancu thought a mercenary out of place in the family house, he gave no sign.

  “How is the archa
, and your father?” Iancu asked as he took their cloaks. He poured an ewer of lavender-scented water into a basin by the door and let them wash the dust and sweat from their faces. The hall always smelled of lavender and wood polish and wax.

  “They’re well. They would send greetings, if they weren’t pretending to ignore this trip.” They followed him into a parlor, where Savedra sank into a chair and nearly moaned with pleasure at a seat that didn’t move. Ashlin paced behind her, maneuvering her sword carefully around the furniture.

  Iancu’s heavy brows arched, but he only moved to the sideboard to pour plum brandy.

  “Sit down,” Savedra told Ashlin. “My feet ache just watching you.”

  “You need to stretch too, or you’ll regret it in the morning.” In compromise, she leaned against the arm of a couch, angling her sword aside.

  “Excuse my manners,” Savedra said, accepting a glass from Iancu. “Iancu Sala, steward of Evharis, this is—”

  A heartbeat’s pause while she scrambled for a suitable name, but Ashlin filled it by standing and bowing gracefully. “Sorcha Donelan, King’s Talon and Captain of the Royal Guard.” Her lilting accent, faded after years in Erisín, came to the fore. “At your service and that of your house.”

  Iancu’s eyebrows climbed higher, but he returned the bow with all due dignity. “The hospitality of Evharis is yours, Captain. You’re a long way from home.”

  “Farther every day, it seems. But it’s my honor to escort the Lady Savedra wherever she goes.”