The Bone Palace

by Downum, Amanda

  “I hate these places,” the princess muttered as they descended the stairs. The lantern swayed in her hand, and their shadows capered back and forth. “The dead should be burned and given to the sky, not locked up in vaults like preserves. And you call my people heathens.”

  After several twists and curves, they saw a glimmer of light ahead. Nikos had set his lantern on the ground outside the Alexios crypt; its glow cast his face in shadow where he sat beside his mother’s sarcophagus, legs sprawled in front of him and a bottle of wine in his hand.

  “I probably shouldn’t be found here,” he said, tilting the bottle. “I’d be called morbid and unstable in no time.”

  Savedra’s hands clenched in her skirt. “Nikos—”

  He waved the bottle in a silencing motion; wine sloshed black against the glass. “Wait. Listen.” He caught the edge of the coffin and pulled himself up; Savedra winced, remembering the scrape of stone as it opened. He took another long pull and set the bottle down.

  “Vedra, I love you. I wouldn’t give you up for propriety, or my father, or even a political marriage. I don’t ever want to give you up.”

  A painful knot lodged in her throat—before she could swallow it he went on.

  “Ashlin. I know this marriage isn’t what either of us wanted, but I find myself not half as miserable as I expected. You’re clever and strong and competent and only a termagant every other decad or so. I like you, and the alliance is a good one. I can’t think of any daughter of the Eight that I’d rather be saddled with. You could have forced me to set Savedra aside, and you didn’t. And—and so it seems heartless and hypocritical for me to force you to set her aside.” He fumbled for the bottle again, and Savedra was too stunned to speak.

  Ashlin wasn’t. “Do you mean—”

  “I mean I don’t want to lose either of you. If… if you bear the child, I’ll accept it. I would gladly have a child with Savedra—this is the closest I’ll ever come. And—” He looked away, throat working as he swallowed. “And if you don’t, we’re no worse off than before.

  “I just—” His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I just don’t want to end up alone and miserable like Father.”

  Savedra’s paralysis broke. She crossed the room in swift strides and took him into her arms. He sobbed once and pressed his face into her neck.

  “I won’t leave you,” she murmured, fingers tangling in his hair. “Not ever.” It wasn’t something she’d ever promised before—it was the sort of vow fate took too much joy in breaking. She turned and stretched a hand to Ashlin. “And I don’t want you to leave, either. Stay with us.”

  “This is madness,” Ashlin said, staring at them. Then her hand rose to clasp Savedra’s. “We’ll kill one another in months.”

  They stood that way for a long moment, precariously balanced until Nikos laughed breathlessly and pulled away. “Then I won’t have to worry about what will happen if Father finds out. But we should go up, or the guards will think we’re already murdering one another.” He squeezed Savedra’s free hand and knelt to retrieve the wine bottle.

  “We have to talk,” Savedra said. “Isyllt and I have learned something.”

  “Not here,” he said as they left the crypt. “I’ve exhausted my morbidness for the day. And what happened to the lock?” he added as the heavy door swung shut behind them.

  “This is important—”

  Savedra knew they weren’t alone a heartbeat before a ghastly white shape flitted out of the darkness. Taloned hands closed on Nikos, tugging him down the corridor. He yelped and the bottle shattered on the floor.

  Ashlin’s lantern shattered an instant later as the princess lunged after him. The air reeked of wine and smoke and olive oil, and a strange inhuman musk. Savedra snatched up the second lamp and followed, terrible visions flashing through her mind.

  Nikos and his assailant had vanished when they reached the next turn, with no trace to show which way they’d gone. The tunnel was silent save for the harsh echoes of their breath, and the voiceless laughter of the fates.

  CHAPTER 19

  Savedra had dreamt of death, or plague, of ridiculous arguments and of Nikos abandoning her for the unlikeliest members of the court. But never in the worst of her nightmares had she imagined she would have to go before Mathiros and tell him his son had been kidnapped.

  The king was closeted with his advisors when they burst into his study, the mood in the room already heavy. Savedra breathed a silent blessing when Ashlin stepped forward to speak. The princess delivered the account like a reporting soldier, leaving out only their conversation before the demon struck. She would have searched the black tunnels herself, but Savedra had insisted they not do so alone.

  Adrastos paled at the news. Captain Kurgoth, still wan from his encounter with Phaedra, swore under his breath. Mathiros’s hand tightened on the arm of his chair, but his expression didn’t change. He looked worse than Savedra had seen him since the queen’s death—ashen and sunken-cheeked, eyes dark with lack of sleep.

  She ought to speak, tell him all she knew. It was treason not to, and her secrets and slowness had led Nikos into danger. Or worse. No, she told herself fiercely, digging her nails into her palms. Not worse. Never that. Then Ashlin stopped speaking and Mathiros began, and her moment’s resolve was lost.

  “Mikhael, take men and search the tunnels,” the king ordered immediately. “Adras,” Mathiros continued when the captain saluted and strode from the room. “Bring me Kiril. No excuses, no delays—find him and bring him here.”

  The chancellor nodded, but the crepey flesh of his throat worked as he swallowed. “As you wish, Majesty.”

  “Sire,” Ashlin said when they were alone, “what can I do? My sword is yours.”

  Mathiros tried to smile and managed a grimace. “I’m glad my son has you. But now I—and Nikos—need you safe. Stay inside. When I have some news I’ll let you know.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.” Ashlin couldn’t hide her annoyance at the dismissal, but Mathiros gave no sign of noticing, only stared into the distance. He hadn’t looked at Savedra since they first entered the room. It would have angered her, but at the moment she didn’t want that black gaze trained on her. When he didn’t speak again the princess gave a shallow bow and turned on her heel.

  Ashlin snarled as soon as the door closed behind them. “I’ll be damned if I’ll pace my cage and wait for news. We have to do something, Vedra. But what, against demons and sorcery?”

  “We’ll find him,” Savedra said, and almost laughed. She’d never thought she would have to reassure the princess when it came to Nikos. “And against sorcery we need a sorceress.”

  Isyllt returned home to find a coach waiting outside her door and an unhappy soldier shivering beside it. Dusk was too close to be out on a dead day.

  “Lady Iskaldur?” The soldier’s Celanoran accent made her name into something musical. “The princess sent me to fetch you to the palace. Will you go?”

  His voice was mild, polite, but his posture spoke of trouble and haste, perhaps worse than what they might find being out of doors at nightfall. “Of course,” she said, saving her questions, and let him help her into the carriage.

  “The princess sends for me?” she asked when they were underway. Purpose and motion were a ward against little spirits—misdirection was their most powerful weapon, luring travelers away from safe paths, tricking them into stopping. If they were set upon by a demon, they would need more protection than the walls of a carriage.

  “The princess commands me,” the soldier said, pulling his scarf aside to bare a lean, chill-reddened face. “But in fact I believe it’s the pallakis Savedra who sends for you. I came because we heathens don’t have a healthy fear of your dead days.” He grinned, baring a chipped eyetooth. Isyllt smiled back, though the expression felt clumsy and stiff. “Although,” the man said, cocking his head, “I don’t like the sound of the wind.”

  “You shouldn’t. However much superstition surrounds these days
by now, the dangers at night are real. Most of the spirits you’ll see tonight are harmless, wildling things and tricksters, but they’re still hungry, and enough of them together may try more than tricks.”

  He touched a charm nestled in the hollow of his throat—a bead painted with a red eye. The sign of Andraste, Celanor’s warrior goddess, if Isyllt remembered their legends aright. Saint Andraste, the politic would call her now—only years ago the Celanorans were spirit-worshiping heretics.

  The soldier frowned, and she realized he’d said something. “I’m sorry?” she said, pressing her shoulders against the padded seat.

  “I asked if you were well, Lady.”

  “Underslept, is all.” Underslept, overextended. All the scars on her heart ripped fresh. But she had no time to indulge in grief. After the New Year, after Erisín was safe and this demon dead and her ashes salted.

  The soldier—in fact a lieutenant, and named Cahal—led her not into the palace proper, but to the Gallery of Pearls. She’d never been inside before, and would have paused to study the portraits and busts that lined the broad hall had she not had to hurry to keep pace with her escort.

  In Savedra’s rooms she also found the princess, and Hekaterin Denaris, the captain of Nikos’s private guard. The grim cast of their faces was identical. The air was heavy with sandalwood—incense burned on the altar across the room, shedding smoke in lazy coils.

  “Nikos has been taken,” Savedra said when the door was safely locked and Cahal guarding the hall. “Snatched from the palace crypts. Whoever grabbed him wasn’t human.”

  “Black Mother.” After months of creeping, Phaedra moved quickly enough now. But she had to, if she wished to see all her plans realized in the next four days.

  “We have to get him back,” Savedra went on. “We have to stop her.”

  “Does Mathiros know?”

  “He does,” Ashlin said, “though not the details. But he’s closing us out, and I won’t sit by helpless.” Her hand closed on Savedra’s shoulder. “We won’t.”

  Isyllt nodded. “Phaedra has him. And while she’s thwarted my attempts to scry her, I might have more luck with the prince.”

  The casting would have been stronger in Nikos’s own quarters, but also more likely to draw attention. So they rolled up the fine carpets and pushed furniture aside till they had space to work. Captain Denaris brought a map of the city, and Savedra found an earring that Nikos had left in her room, a raw emerald caged in gold. Isyllt stationed one woman at each corner of the map—wife, lover, guard, and sworn agent. The earring she set in the center.

  Hands clasped, pink and pale, olive and brown. Isyllt took Ashlin’s sword-calloused hand in her left, Savedra’s soft one in her right, and fixed the prince’s image in her mind.

  A shiver traced a circuit through the four of them, pricking gooseflesh as the magic rose. Isyllt didn’t often practice spellcraft on the demon days—the power sharper, clearer, as if a veil had been drawn away. The cost, of course, was that they shone like a beacon to every spirit for miles around.

  The red fog of Phaedra’s obfuscation answered at once, choking them with blood and cinnamon. Hands tightened as they shuddered against it, bones grinding through flesh.

  “Hold on,” Isyllt whispered, gathering her power, imagining a blade to cut away the shroud, cold and clean. She couldn’t match Phaedra strength for strength, but it wasn’t Phaedra the spell was meant to find. And unlike Phaedra, Nikos wanted to be found. The earring began to rattle against the map, gold and stone scraping across parchment. Isyllt pressed against the weak spot in the fog, felt it give like skin beneath a knife’s edge.

  She opened her eyes to see the earring spinning across the map, spiraling tighter and tighter till it chose a spot and stayed there, shivering in the lamplight.

  Directly over the ruined palace.

  Kiril stood in his library as dusk settled against the windows, trying to decide which books he couldn’t bear to leave behind, trying to think of nothing beyond that choice. Everything else could be left, or sent for. He couldn’t afford to delay for possessions, no matter how dear. He couldn’t delay till sunrise, either, not if he truly meant to leave. He didn’t relish the thought of traveling during the dead days, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d done so.

  Isyllt no longer needed him. She hadn’t for a very long time. He couldn’t let himself need her.

  He had told himself he was rescuing her, fifteen years ago, from misery and poverty and an untimely death. It was likely true, but he had still known all the other dangers he was exposing her to. And if she thrived under them, an orchid blossoming at the threat of death, that did nothing to lessen the cruelty of his choice.

  He had also known since the beginning how dangerous she might become, but he hadn’t truly appreciated it until the first morning he woke to her weight in his arms. Her magic and cunning made her a weapon without him, but he had honed her and guided her. And turned her to his own heart.

  A hammering at the door roused him, sharpening his pulse. His wards showed him the unhappy soldiers gathered on his doorstep. Adrastos Agyros was with them, stooped and huddled in his winter cloak. Kiril’s smile felt cold and ugly on his face; Mathiros was finally finished ignoring him.

  He might have ignored the summons, but the guards were clearly prepared to break down the door, and violence was unlucky on the demon days. So he descended the stairs and opened the door, smiling benignly as if they delivered an invitation to tea.

  Adrastos’s frown didn’t lessen as they walked to the waiting carriage. He was only ten years Kiril’s senior, but time and worry had stooped him and worn his bones fragile as a bird’s. A hawk once, now his wrinkled neck and bald head made him a vulture. His eyes were sharp as ever, though.

  “What’s the matter, Adras?” Kiril asked. The man had never liked him much, having a healthy distrust for sorcery and spies, but they had always respected each other’s efficiency.

  “Trouble in the palace. I’ll let the king explain—he knows more than he’s telling me.” He was quiet for a moment as the carriage wheels clattered over stone. “You shouldn’t have left him.”

  Kiril’s lips thinned in something that was almost a smile. “One might argue that it was he who did the leaving.”

  “He was a fool. A grieving fool. But we swore to defend him, and I always took that to mean even from himself.”

  “We all have our limits, Adras. I’m glad you haven’t yet found yours.”

  He tugged a window open and watched the darkened streets flash by. The city was silent, muffled beneath low clouds that promised snow, but its peace was a ruse. He felt the tension, tasted it on the wind, stretched taut and waiting. And in that tension he smelled the conflagrant spice of Phaedra’s perfume.

  The strain he sensed waiting in the city was manifest in the palace. They passed patrols of soldiers, and worried servants lurked in corners. More than one tried to question Adrastos, but the seneschal waved them away, unflagging as he delivered Kiril to the king.

  Mathiros waited in his study, hands laced white-knuckled in front of his face. He didn’t stir until the door was shut, and when he did his joints popped loudly. Kiril fought a sympathetic wince; they were neither of them young anymore.

  “You summoned me?”

  The full weight of Mathiros’s black eyes turned on him, burning with rage and revelation. “What did you do, Kiril?” He stood, hands flat on his desk. His sword lay across the paper-strewn surface—still sheathed, but an eloquent promise all the same.

  “For months I’ve had dreams. Black, murderous dreams of a woman I didn’t know. I thought I was going mad. Even now I can barely remember her real face. The night of the ball she was screaming at me to remember, and I still didn’t understand.”

  “But you remember now.”

  “Yes. Why did I ever forget?”

  Little point in keeping secrets now, when all their old scars were being ripped open.

  “I took the memories from yo
u,” Kiril said. “From everyone. It was the only way I could think to keep your secrets. To keep you safe.”

  Mathiros laughed, cold and harsh. “It didn’t work. And now she’s taken Lychandra’s face to taunt me. She’s taken my son.”

  That drew Kiril’s head up. But of course Phaedra wouldn’t abandon her plans just because he wasn’t there to help her. She was stubborn as Mathiros when she chose to be.

  “I’m sorry,” Kiril said with a sigh. The honesty of it surprised him. “I’m sorry that Lychandra’s memory is tangled in this mess. And I’m sorry for Nikos. It’s you Phaedra means to destroy—Nikos merely has the misfortune of being too close.”

  The king flinched at the sound of her name. “And isn’t that an irony, that Nikos and I might ever be too close. How long have you known?”

  “Long enough.”

  “This is treason. I could have you killed.”

  “It is, and you can certainly try.”

  Their eyes met, and it was Mathiros who broke. The king had never been one for cowardice, so he must still have a sense of shame. He stepped around the desk, leaving the sword where it lay. “Where is she?”

  All Kiril’s anger was spent, only the bitter lees remaining. Just as he’d promised Isyllt, there was no satisfaction in any of this. “She lairs in the ruined palace. I imagine she’s waiting for you already.” He turned, infinitely weary.

  “You can’t leave,” Mathiros said, entreaty threading the words. “Me, perhaps, but not Nikos. This isn’t his doing.”

  He thought of Nikolaos, and of his own father, nearly forgotten after so many years. “Sons should never suffer for their fathers’ sins, and yet they always do. I’m sorry for that as well, but I have no service left to offer you. Goodbye, Mathiros.”

  The door shut behind him, and with its echo he felt the sundering of thirty years. Not even the moment he broke his vows had felt so final.

  He wrapped a shadow around him to avoid the inquisitive staff and turned toward the stables. He hesitated for a moment, and nearly laughed at himself. After all his great betrayals, the thought of stealing a horse gave him pause. But he needed to be gone, and that was the fastest way to do so.