The Bone Palace

by Downum, Amanda

  “We can stay the night in Valcov,” Iancu said. “Get you looked at by a physician.”

  Savedra shook her head; her eyes ached with the threat of tears. “I want to go home.” It was foolish and childish, and she winced at the sound of the words. She waited for the others to talk sense into her, but instead they exchanged calculating glances.

  “It will mean riding at night,” Iancu said at last, “but I admit I find the idea appealing.”

  “Let’s go then,” Ashlin said. “The sooner we get under cover the happier I’ll be.”

  Savedra glanced back as they urged the horses on, and saw winged shadows circling the towers of Carnavas.

  It must have been a harrowing ride back to Evharis, but Savedra didn’t recall much of it. She had confused flashes of clinging to the saddle, and later slumping over her horse’s neck, and finally of Iancu carrying her up the steps into a confusion of light and warmth and concerned voices. She regained her senses inopportunely, as the physician appeared to clean and stitch her wound. Ashlin pressed a glass of brandy into her hand, and the world dulled once more.

  It wasn’t till well past midnight, after an awkward one-armed bath that nearly lulled her into sleep and drowning, that she remembered the jewel she’d found in Carnavas. She picked up her ruined coat, meaning to drop the filthy thing in a rubbish bin, and something small and glittering fell out of the pocket and rattled across the floor.

  Savedra crouched to retrieve it from the shadows under the bed. She’d drunk several glasses of medicinal brandy during the stitching, and the movement nearly toppled her.

  A ring. A woman’s ring, a brilliant pigeon’s blood ruby in a delicate gold band. The setting was clogged with grime, the stone dull with it, but there was no mistaking its beauty or its worth. Such a ring would be costly anywhere, but in Selafai it would only grace the hand of a mage.

  Was it hers? The mysterious missing Severos sorceress?

  She staggered off her knees at a knock on the door, and the ring vanished into the pocket of her robe.

  Ashlin entered before Savedra reached the door. The princess was freshly bathed as well, her hair and shirt both damp and clinging to her skin. She went straight for the brandy and poured herself a tall glass. From the smell of her skin, it wasn’t her first either. The talon scratches on her face had scabbed dark and angry red.

  “Are you all right?” Savedra asked, after watching the princess pace several circuits across the rug.

  “I lied,” Ashlin said, jerking to a halt. She set down her half-empty glass and brandy splashed against her fingers. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes shining. “I don’t envy you. I envy Nikos.”

  Savedra opened her mouth and closed it again. “What do you mean?”

  Ashlin closed the space between them. The heat of her skin was a furnace, and the smell of brandy clinging to her reminded Savedra how much she’d drunk herself. It also reminded her that she wasn’t wearing anything beneath her robe; her good hand clenched at the collar.

  “I watched you come to harm, and I couldn’t bear it.” She cupped Savedra’s cheek with one calloused hand. “It’s you I want, Vedra.” She took the last step, pressing the length of their bodies together. The princess was hard and lean against her, lips soft and demanding.

  “I don’t like girls,” Savedra whispered when she could breathe again. But there was no denying the attraction, not with the sharp beat of her pulse, the heat and hardness of her traitorous flesh. She tried to pull away, but a bedpost trapped her.

  Ashlin’s laugh caught in her throat. “Neither do I. But I like you.” She shifted her hips and Savedra gasped. Lips and tongue traced the line of her throat.

  “Nikos will never forgive me,” Savedra whispered, even as she arched into the touch. Pins and combs fell away beneath Ashlin’s insistent fingers and the damp cloud of her hair enveloped both their faces.

  “He will. He loves you. It’s me he won’t forgive, and I hardly care.” Teeth scraped her earlobe. “I want you, Vedra.”

  A turn and gentle push and the edge of the bed met the back of Savedra’s knees. She sat, and Ashlin’s knee pressed between hers. With a scramble and shrug Ashlin cast her shirt aside and crawled forward, forcing Savedra back against the featherbed.

  Curiosity and envy made Savedra raise her face to her breasts, but the shudder and moan that answered her only made the pressure at the base of her spine build all the more. “This is madness,” she murmured against clean soap-scented skin. A nipple brushed her mouth, taut and creased. “Not to mention adultery and treason.”

  Ashlin pulled away, and she nearly whimpered with pain and relief, but the princess only stripped away her trousers, and then Savedra’s robe. The sour-sweet musk of her was alien but not unpleasant. Savedra slid a hand along the silken skin of her inner thigh, driven by curiosity and the insidious desire to feel Ashlin shudder again. This much she could trespass—

  Ashlin knelt above her, one hand teasing her nipple rings while the other closed around her erection, calluses scraping tender skin. Savedra opened her mouth for a denial, a refusal, but all that came out was a groan. Not like this, she wanted to say, memories of the Black Orchid and the hijras’ temple house thick as opium smoke in her mind. But Ashlin was already taking her inside, all warmth and wet and rhythmic pressure, and she could only sob.

  It was quick and awkward and drunken, and Ashlin swore in Celanoran when she came. It was enough to make Savedra laugh, which in turn became a breathless shuddering gasp as her own climax took her. She was crying, and both of them were slick with sweat and tears and fluids.

  “I’m sorry, ma chrí,” Ashlin said when their trembling stilled, holding her close and stroking her sticky hair. She was soft and pliable now, all the hardness of bone and muscle melted away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t—”

  She wiped away tears with her thumb. “Didn’t I? I shouldn’t have pressed.”

  “We can’t do this again.” It might have sounded more convincing had her face not been pressed against Ashlin’s collarbone, her hand cupping her hip. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Ashlin whispered into her hair. “I don’t know.”

  They lay together in silence, until pain and fatigue and brandy rolled over Savedra like a wave, and sucked her down into the dark.

  She dreams of black wings.

  Wings spread wide to catch the wind, the dying sun warm on her back. Wings folded tight against night’s chill, pressed close to her mate in their nest. Wings shredding cold fog with every stroke, moisture beading on iridescent feathers. A dozen birds, a dozen images, all of them her.

  The air is cold, but the last of the sunlight soaks her feathers. She has flown far and farther still, and the setting sun calls her to roost, to tuck her head and sleep, but her mistress’s will overrides those instincts. The light fades and she flies on.

  By the time she reaches the human camp she is merely a darker shadow in the night, blotting the stars as she passes. The humans take no notice—the air is foul with their dust and smoke, their mammal sweat and waste, thick enough to clog even her dull nose. Death rolls off them in a cloud, visible to her carrion sympathy and the alien magic with which her mistress has infused her.

  The latter sense leads her to her quarry, one tent among the hundreds sprouting like fungi from the field. A man sleeps within, his fire banked but heat still glowing from the coals. Gaunt-cheeked and sunken-eyed, hands gnarled and scarred. He twitches with restless dreams.

  Another raven, still her. Now she glides above narrow alleys, searching the harsh stone streets below for prey. She is no owl meant for night flying, not made to fall ghost-silent from the sky. But it isn’t mice she hunts tonight, and humans are deaf and dull, blind to the skies above them. The one she follows now never looks up, though it twitches rabbit-wary at every sound. Pale, this one, and underfed, as are all those her mistress hunts. She doesn’t understand it—the streets are full of p
lumper quarry, slower and easy to catch. But hers is not to question, merely to stalk as she is bidden and wait for the scraps her mistress will share.

  Another image—

  Savedra woke dizzy and lost, hands clenched in the covers to stop her spiraling fall. Her wounded arm throbbed, and the taste of blood sickened her.

  The images began to fracture. She had seen Mathiros, and a strange woman on a foggy street, and a dozen other things besides, but they were already unraveling like smoke through her fingers.

  She rolled over, groping for warmth to reassure her, but found only cold sheets and rumpled covers. Evharis, she remembered, as the unfamiliar surroundings sank in. Ashlin.

  She lay awake until dawn, sick and dizzy with dreams, and with the enormity of what they had done.

  CHAPTER 11

  Kiril heard crying before he opened the library door. Phaedra had come once more uninvited, but his annoyance at her intrusions faded at the sound of tears. No, he corrected himself as his hand closed on the handle, not tears—no wet sniffles or hiccupping sobs, but a high mournful keen. The dead couldn’t truly weep.

  She lay in a heap beside the hearth, perilously close to the unscreened fire. Books and parchment scattered around her, torn and crumpled pages drifting like snow. Kiril locked the door, hands tightening at the sight of mangled books. He held back a curse as he crouched beside her, gathering her hair and skirts away from the fireplace. Even in the shadows and red light he recognized the books: her books, her work that hadn’t been destroyed at her death. Some he’d taken during the careful sack of Carnavas and others he’d stolen from the Arcanost later. Murder he could stomach, but the loss of knowledge sickened him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, gentling his voice. Phaedra rocked and moaned in his arms, face contorted in the firelight.

  A cold draft and movement in the shadows made him glance over his shoulder, already tensing to deal with some new intruder. All his dark-sharpened eyes found were an open casement and a bird perched on a chair beside it. A raven, huge and glossy. It mantled, oilslick rainbows rippling across its wings, but remained on the chair-back. A quick touch found his wards intact; her pets could pass through them as easily as she did. His nape prickled at the thought.

  Phaedra’s keening died and she gulped air she didn’t need. Awkwardly, he cradled her to his chest and stood, carrying her to a chair. His back and knees screamed, but she was lighter than a living woman, dry of so many of life’s fluids. He left her curled against the cushions and bent to retrieve what he could of the books. A few scraps of paper curled and fell to ash in the hearth, but most of her violence had been to rip out pages. Many of those he thought he could salvage, or at least rewrite. He shoved the survivors into his desk and lit a lamp. The raven regarded him with one black eye, its gaze canny for even a clever bird.

  “What happened?” he asked again, risking a stretch past the bird to close the window.

  “Someone was snooping around the castle.” She rubbed her face though she had no tears to wipe away. “Pawing through our things.”

  That made him stiffen. No need to ask which castle, or who else she meant by our. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. No one the birds had seen before. They fled west, so I imagine they weren’t Sarken.”

  “Fled from what?”

  She sat up, trying to smooth her tangled hair. “My birds drove them off. I should have burned it, should have razed the stones to the ground.”

  He drew a breath. Let it out again. “Mightn’t it be wiser not to draw attention to the castle? To you?”

  “It’s difficult to draw attention to my past these days.” She gave up on her hair and tugged her gown straight instead. Wine-red velvet today, a modern style. Varis’s work, no doubt. “You wrought that very well indeed. But not, apparently, well enough. We’ve had enough invasion, enough destruction and callous looting. The bones of Carnavas belong to my family now, and they may guard their treasures as they see fit.” Her wild rage cooled, settling into an angry chill.

  “Be as that may, a little discretion would be wise. You won’t find revenge as a pile of salted ashes. Varis and I have no desire for that fate either.”

  “No. No, Varis doesn’t deserve that. He was always so kind to me.”

  “He worshiped you in university,” Kiril said, weary enough for unhappy truths to spill. And you repay him by making him a party to treason. But that was unfair—Varis had begun this. Phaedra’s magic had kept her from true death, but Varis had found her and nursed her back to sanity and kindled in her the desire for revenge.

  Phaedra blinked. “He never said anything.”

  Kiril nearly laughed. You never see what’s right in front of you. Isyllt had told him that years ago, her voice heavy with exasperation and resignation. And he, to prove her point, still hadn’t realized what she was speaking of. If he had—

  Kiril sank into a chair across from Phaedra and rubbed his temples against a growing pressure there. His eyes felt as though they’d been scraped out with a spoon and shoved back into his sockets. “Of course he didn’t,” he said, forcing his thoughts to different history. “He has a heart, you know, under all that velvet gaud. And he’s never handed it away for the breaking.”

  Which was why their own affair had been so brief. Or perhaps Varis had simply been unable to love someone already sworn to the Alexioi. Whatever the reason, he had broken with Kiril publicly and melodramatically before he left for Iskar, before Kiril had to do the leaving. It had been a kindness, just as his leaving Isyllt had been; that never seemed to make it easier for anyone.

  The raven croaked and Phaedra stood, shaking out her wrinkled skirts as she crossed the room. “I know, darling,” she murmured, stroking its cheek with one knuckle. “Such a long way you’ve flown for me. And I’ll ask another journey of you still.” She slipped a knife from a skirt pocket and nicked the soft brown skin of her wrist. Blood welled, slow and dark and heavy. The bird bobbed its head to the wound, drinking till the edge of its beak glistened crimson.

  The creation of familiars was an old practice, but Phaedra’s birds were closer to her than that. She had been them, and they her, until she had found a new body to claim. Kiril could scarcely imagine what that had been like—it was a wonder she had any remnants of sanity left.

  Phaedra glanced up to find Kiril watching. Her eyebrows rose. “Care for a taste?”

  “And become one of your pets as well? No thank you.”

  “I don’t think you would,” she said after a thoughtful pause. “Not easily, at least, or from such a small amount.”

  “But it would start the process. The spread of your power and will and consciousness into me. I did read your articles when you were at the Arcanost, you know.”

  She smiled. “Then you know how much a taste could benefit you. Haematurgy can heal as well as harm, unlike your necromancy. My power can make you strong again.” She wiped a bead of blood off her wrist with one finger, and raised the finger to his lips.

  He caught her arm before she touched him, staring at the slick crimson stain seeping along the whorls of her fingertip. “The cost is not one I feel like paying today.” Even with the headaches, the weariness and aching joints, the tender, bruised feeling that still accompanied any use of magic? No, he told himself firmly. Even so, her offer wasn’t worth it.

  “But some day. You will.” She swayed against him and he held her carefully away.

  “We’ll see.” He removed his hand and stepped back.

  She smiled again, then licked her finger clean and turned back to her bird. After a few more coos and caresses she opened the window, through which it vanished with a flurry of black wings. When she sat her movements were unusually heavy—almost clumsy.

  “Are you all right?” Kiril asked. As much as her demon grace unnerved him, its absence was more unsettling.

  “Weak,” she admitted. “Tired. I had thought to postpone it, but I need to hunt tonight.”

  “Hunt?”

&nb
sp; “Living blood regenerates. Dead blood doesn’t. I need a living source every so often, and I didn’t imagine you wanted to bleed for me.”

  “So you hunt, like a vrykola. With them?” Her silence was answer enough. Her quiet journeys into the underground had intrigued him when they were at the Arcanost together. Without her work, he would never have formed his own fragile ties to the catacombs. But now her renewed involvement brought only trouble, and his unease hadn’t faded. Varis’s schemes were dangerous enough—who knew what plots the vrykoloi whispered in her ear?

  “Do you stalk the slums like they do,” he asked, his voice inflectionless, “taking those who won’t be missed, or whose families have no recourse to search for them?”

  “You wanted me to be discreet. Would you rather I stalk the Octagon Court?”

  “I didn’t realize you were making such a habit of murder.”

  She flinched, then stiffened. “Will you play games of conscience with me, spymaster? How many other women disappeared because of you? How many other murders did you clean up for him?”

  “None. None like you, that is.” Dozens of murders for king and country, hundreds, but never any so personal. And thank the saints for that—he didn’t think he could have done it more than once, not for any love or loyalty. “You… He was mad for you, as I’d never seen. Whatever alchemy was between you was a powerful one.” Kiril shook his head. “But you’re quite right—I have no place to be your conscience.” He rose, simultaneously annoyed and amused that he was ever the one retreating from his own home. “Do what you must. But try not to leave any more bodies in plain sight.”

  He felt Phaedra leave the house not long after. But then, she never really left him anymore. He sat awake well past the final terce, turning a glass of whiskey between his palms and turning memories over in his head. He took them out every so often to keep them polished—he was the only one who carried them now, and he felt he shouldn’t lose them. The sight of Phaedra’s bird triggered his last memory of her as she had been. The one that should have been the end of it.