The Bone Palace

by Downum, Amanda

  “Was it worth it?”

  “For a moment,” Phaedra said, almost too soft to hear. “For a moment it was. Now… it doesn’t matter now. It’s done.”

  A spark of steel caught Savedra’s eye. Ginevra was awake, bound hands groping across the floor for Savedra’s knife. If Phaedra noticed the movement, she gave no sign.

  “Now what?” Isyllt asked. Her eyes flickered—she noticed, and was trying to keep Phaedra distracted.

  The demon stared at her hands, clean of blood. “Now I finish it, I suppose. I don’t want to wear this flesh anymore.”

  “It won’t be different in anyone else’s,” Savedra said, finding her voice at last.

  Phaedra turned. “It will, for a time.” Behind her, Ginevra had finished sawing through her bonds and chafed her raw wrists, jaw clenched against any sound of pain.

  “Mathiros is dead,” Isyllt said. “Spider is dead. Kiril is dead.” Her voice was too hollow to crack. “You have your revenge, but your plans are ruined.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. I only wanted—” Phaedra shook her head. “I don’t know what I wanted. Rest, perhaps.” She glanced at Savedra and Nikos. “Keep your prince. The other is all I need.”

  At last she turned toward Ginevra, in time for the girl to launch herself off the floor, knife in hand.

  Clumsy and slow, but Phaedra only gaped as the blade flashed toward her, rocked back as it struck her face. Ginevra fell, wan and sweating, and Phaedra stumbled back, one hand clapped to her cheek.

  “You—” She pulled her hand away, and blood glistened on her palm. Mathiros’s blood, Savedra supposed. The slice laid her cheek open to the bone; flesh gapped as she spoke. Dark rivulets ran down her chin to stain her bodice.

  “Dead flesh doesn’t feel pain,” she told Ginevra. “I’ll be more careful when I’m wearing yours.”

  Ginevra’s grey eyes were dark with pain and hopelessness, but she gave Savedra a fleeting smile.

  “I find,” she said softly as Phaedra walked toward her, “that I’m tired of being anyone’s pawn or plaything.” She turned the knife. Savedra’s lips moved as she understood, too slow to stop it.

  The blade flashed one last time, as Ginevra drove it into the soft flesh beneath her chin.

  Savedra screamed as Ginevra fell. Phaedra shrieked in rage. Isyllt breathed a name.

  “Forsythia.”

  A whisper was all the dead needed. Her ring sparked and the ghost appeared beside her, translucent and wild-eyed.

  Isyllt reached for her magic as well, for the biting cold that gave her strength, but it fell to ashes at her touch. Her power would return, Kiril had said. She could endure this. But for the moment she was useless.

  “What’s happening?” Forsythia asked, watching Phaedra kneel in the spreading pool of Ginevra’s blood. “Is that—”

  “That’s her. I need your help to stop her.”

  Transparent hands knotted in her skirts. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “You can.” Isyllt levered herself off Kiril’s shoulder, trying not to think of the cooling flesh beneath her. “You’re the only one who can. If we don’t she’ll do this over and over again.” She touched Forsythia’s shoulder, numbing her fingers to the bone. “I’m too weak to do it alone.”

  The ghost straightened. “What do you need from me?”

  “Possess me.” Her jaw wanted to lock on the words. “Wear my flesh. I can’t use my magic, but maybe you can.” Her voice shook. “It might destroy us both.”

  Forsythia smiled crookedly, an echo of her mortal beauty. “I’m already dead, aren’t I? What do I do?”

  Isyllt cupped the dead woman’s face in her hands, drawing her close. “Come inside.” Her defenses, already shaken and cracked, fell away, leaving her bare.

  It was as cold as she’d ever imagined. Colder. Painful, too—shudders wracked her, muscles cramping and contracting, pulling her into a fetal ball. Fingernails cracked as she clawed the stones.

  The pain ended, but the cold remained. With it came a fierce strength and hunger. All her aches and scrapes and fatigue faded away; she was strong again. Alive. Colors dizzied her, the texture of stone and cloth and the weight of her hair against her neck overwhelming in their intensity.

  Focus, she whispered, before Forsythia grew drunk on sensation. We have to stop her before she recovers.

  “Phaedra.” She felt her lips and tongue shape the sound, but control wasn’t hers. Dried salt and blood and mucus cracked and flaked as she moved. The air reeked like a slaughterhouse.

  The sorceress rose, blood sticking her gown to her knees. Her hair fell in stormwrack swags around her ruined face. Her eyes burned.

  “I’m sorry for Kiril,” she said as Isyllt tried to stand. “I never wanted that.”

  “I’m sorry too.” She—they—gained their feet, and took a halting marionette step. In time she-and-Forsythia would be as strong and graceful as Phaedra, but they didn’t have that time. Was this how it always felt? The boundaries of host and possessor slowly blurring? Too slowly—she couldn’t teach Forsythia how to use the magic she’d studied for decades in only a moment.

  “You can’t stop me,” Phaedra said. “You know that, don’t you? You can barely stand.”

  Another awkward step, then another, and they were close enough to touch. Had Phaedra struck her, Isyllt would have been doomed, but she only watched, her demon gaze dimming with grief.

  She cupped Isyllt’s cheek. “You loved him.”

  “More than anything.”

  “I know what it’s like to lose that much, to live with the loss.” She leaned her forehead against Isyllt’s, cold breath drifting over both their faces. “I can take the pain. It would be a mercy.”

  “Yes,” Isyllt whispered. “Mercy.” She had no anger left, no strength, but she could do that much.

  There. She tugged Forsythia’s attention to the cold place she carried beneath her heart. That’s where the nothing lives. Release it.

  She pressed her cheek to Phaedra’s ruined one; the woman’s hair tickled her lips. “Take everything.”

  Phaedra cradled her face in cold hands and magic crawled over them. Isyllt expected pain, but none came, even as beads of blood welled from her pores—that was a relief, at least. The blood rolled toward Phaedra, sinking into her skin.

  The empty place opened and the nothing poured out with her blood. Forsythia didn’t have the knowledge to control it, and Isyllt didn’t have the strength. They didn’t need to. Phaedra drank it down.

  She realized her mistake a moment later. She pulled away, but Isyllt caught her hands and held her. The world dulled around the edges, but she had a demon’s strength.

  Phaedra rallied her magic, but it unraveled beneath the tide of entropy. Brown skin bruised and bled as the sorcery that kept it fresh dissolved. Stolen flesh sank, shriveled, cracked.

  Isyllt knew she had to stop or the nothing would take her too, but she was too cold, too tired, and the emptiness soothed her with promises of dark and quiet. Phaedra’s wrists snapped in her grip, disintegrating like snow and ashes. With nothing to lean on, Isyllt fell.

  As she crumpled, she heard Forsythia whisper farewell.

  CHAPTER 22

  It was warm in the darkness, warm and still and soothing, save for the occasional interruption of voices and hands. Isyllt would have floated there forever, but nothing so peaceful could ever last. Black gave way to red, and then to brilliant gold as her crusted eyes cracked open. Tears blinded her and she tried to sink into the dark again. The voices returned, calling her out. A warm hand brushed her brow and she flinched.

  “She’s waking up.”

  “Isyllt?”

  Her mouth was dry and chapped, sour with thirst and sleep. Her tongue peeled free from the roof of her mouth, but the only sound she could manage was a croak.

  “Water,” someone called. Wet cloth swabbed her lips. Tepid moisture leaked between her lips, the sweetest she’d ever tasted. “Careful,” the voice said, and the r
im of a cup touched her lower lip, clicked against her teeth as she tried to move. Water sloshed down her chin and across her chest, just enough spilling into her mouth to make her choke. The cup vanished and she nearly sobbed; she’d never been so thirsty.

  A shadow moved in front of the blinding light and she had a heartbeat’s impression of a small room, and walls that rippled dizzyingly. The walls became curtains with another glimpse, the light a lantern hanging from the ceiling.

  St. Alia’s. It had been a long time since she’d woken up in a hospital bed.

  “What happened?” It took two tries to shape the sounds properly.

  “You did something stupid.”

  She tried to laugh at Khelséa’s dry voice, but it turned into a rasping cough, which gave way in turn to tears.

  “Careful,” the inspector said, “or they’ll make me leave. Ciaran won’t be back for an hour.”

  Isyllt wiped her eyes, alarmed at the heaviness of her limbs. The halo around the lamp slowly faded till she could make out Khelséa and the rest of the room. “He’s been already?”

  “We’ve taken turns watching you, he and Dahlia and I.”

  She tried to sit up and quickly abandoned the idea. “How long have I been here?”

  “The better part of a decad. It’s the fourth of Ganymedos.”

  “Saints.” Then she noticed the white armband on Khelséa’s orange coat. The woman’s skin was dull with fatigue, cheeks hollow and circles carved beneath her eyes. “The riots?”

  “Burnt out, with half of Elysia. The city is calming, slowly. The king went to Little Kiva himself, to talk to the people and see the damage.”

  That gave her a start, till she realized that “the king” meant Nikos now.

  “Is he—”

  “He seems well. Exhausted. Grieving. No one understands what happened in the ruins, though, except you and him and the pallakis.” Khelséa held out the cup and Isyllt took another greedy sip of water. “She was here too, the pallakis Savedra. She didn’t stay long, but she was grateful that you were alive.”

  A nurse came soon to shoo Khelséa away, bringing lukewarm beef broth. Isyllt would have eaten the wooden bowl for last drops of salt and liquid. Her hands were shockingly white, veins stark blue through transparent skin. Her nails were blue as well, and she shivered despite the weight of blankets and glowing brazier.

  Ciaran came soon after. He joked and teased and flattered her, but she saw her reflection in his dark eyes and knew she looked like death. Maybe she was.

  She flinched away when he reached for her hand, remembering Phaedra’s skin cracking, Kiril’s heart slowing beneath her touch. She was death—she could never let herself forget that.

  The nurses chased Ciaran off in turn and doused the light above Isyllt’s bed. She lay in the darkness surrounded by the breath of her fellow patients, their coughs and snores and whispered prayers. She was wrung dry, but tired of sleeping.

  She stirred from a doze when the bells tolled a lonely hour. Eyes closed, she touched her ring, picking at the layer of grime that crusted the curve of the diamond. She could feel the difference in the stone already, the lightness. She tried anyway.

  “Forsythia.”

  There was no answer. She remembered a whispered goodbye. She hadn’t said one of her own.

  She cried herself to sleep.

  Two days later, she went before the king.

  Nikos wore mourning white, which didn’t suit him, and no jewelry but his nose ring and sapphire signet. He’d cut his hair; for the first time Isyllt saw his father in the bones of his face.

  “Lady Iskaldur.” They met again in his study, but no tea or informality this time, no clutter on his desk. The room was nearly bare—he would move to the king’s suites soon. “I’m glad you’re well.”

  “Likewise, Your Hi—Your Majesty.”

  His mouth twisted. “Awkward, isn’t it? No one quite has it memorized yet. Least of all me.”

  “What happened, Your Majesty?”

  “Phaedra… disintegrated. I was a bit cloudy at the time, but Savedra tells me it was spectacular. You passed out. We thought you were dead too, but when we came back with the guards you were breathing.”

  “And—” Her throat closed. “And Kiril?”

  His hand twitched against the desk. “We didn’t find his body. We searched, but there were spirits everywhere, and the riots—I’m sorry. He’ll have a tomb in the royal crypts for his service.”

  She closed her eyes, too tired to care if he saw her pain. He didn’t know—that was obvious from his helpless misery—about Kiril’s betrayal or just what the missing corpse might mean. It would be a mercy if he never knew. “I understand. Thank you.”

  Silence stretched for a time. “Savedra tells me how you helped her,” he said at last. “Before and after I was captured. Thank you. And thank you for stopping Phaedra. But…” He couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “But I forswore myself,” she said softly.

  Nikos nodded. “I would have done the same, I think, had it been Vedra hurt. But you broke your oath.” You let my father die, said the catch in his voice. “It’s—” Again he stopped short. This time, she imagined, the unspoken word was treason. “Not something that can be known. I can’t ask you to return to my employ.”

  He was right, of course. That didn’t stop her cheeks from stinging, or help the hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach. “I understand, Your Majesty.”

  “You’ll be compensated for your service, of course.” His hands curled against polished wood. “I am sorry.”

  “So am I,” she whispered. She straightened her shoulders. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Is that all you need of me?”

  “Yes.” He stood, awkwardly, and she did the same. “Thank you for all your service, Lady Iskaldur.”

  She bowed farewell. There was nothing else to say.

  Savedra Severos met her in the halls. Mourning white suited her no better this time than it had when the queen died. She wrung her hands when she saw Isyllt, then forced them to her sides.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, voice rough. “Nikos told me—and after all you did—I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” Savedra flinched from her smile; she knew how ghastly she looked. “I understand the need. One can hardly make a habit of forgiving traitors.”

  Savedra flinched again, and color rose in her cheeks. “Even so. Oh, here.” She tugged at her left hand, and Isyllt swallowed as she recognized the ruby glitter. “I don’t need this anymore.” Her right hand glittered too, a magnificent orange sapphire that Isyllt had last seen on Lord Varis.

  “You can keep it,” she said, not reaching for the offered jewel. “You should. She was your relative.”

  “I don’t want it! Please. It’s a mage stone.”

  Isyllt lifted a reluctant hand. The ring was warm from Savedra’s skin. No echo of magic stirred as she closed her fingers around it.

  “Thank you.”

  “If there’s anything you need,” the pallakis whispered.

  “There’s nothing.” Too harsh—she tried to smile. “But thank you all the same.”

  She had inherited all of Kiril’s estate that did not revert to the Crown. The thought of walking through his house, of touching his books and his clothes, made her gag. She knew that would fade; she still regretted parting with mementos of her mother, though the sight of them had brought only pain at the time. But for the moment she couldn’t leave her apartment without seeing streets they’d walked together, shops they’d visited.

  Staying in was no better—she heard his footstep on her stairs as she tried to sleep, felt the touch of phantom magic at her wards. Once she leapt from bed and flung open the door, but the hall was cold and empty.

  Khelséa visited her, bringing food every time. Ciaran came with wine and flowers. Isyllt invited them in each time, but had no heart for pleasant conversation, or the pretense of it. She wasn’t entirely sure she had a heart at all.

  On the seventh nigh
t, she opened the door to find Varis Severos on her doorstep. He wore white as well; it suited him better than it did Savedra.

  “I imagine I’m not someone you most want to see right now,” he said, “but may I come in?”

  “Of course,” she said after a pause, stepping aside. “Would you like tea, or wine?”

  He grimaced. “Do you have anything stronger?”

  She poured them both ouzo while he claimed a chair, and prodded the fire to life before she sat in turn. “How can I help you, my lord?”

  He didn’t speak for a long moment, watching the embers fall instead. Behind him, city lights blurred through the windowpane. Finally he emptied his glass in one neat swallow.

  “You know they never found Kiril’s body,” he said at last.

  She couldn’t stop a wince. “I know.”

  “That’s because I took it from the tower.”

  That broke through her fugue. Ouzo splashed her fingers as she startled, chilling as it evaporated. She drained the glass before she could spill the rest. “What?” She coughed on the fumes. “Why?”

  “Because I know the choice that death brings for the likes of you. And I believe in the freedom to make such choices.”

  Her lips peeled back from her teeth, and she wanted to say something vitriolic about his choices and their consequences. She couldn’t find the right words.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because if you’re anything like him, you’ll find out eventually.” He smiled wryly. “And I know you are. I left him in a safe place, warded from opportunistic spirits. I returned after the demon days, and he was gone.”

  She had understood the possibility since Nikos had told her of the missing body, but it wasn’t any easier to hear again. Her left hand clenched till her scars ached.

  “I thought you should know,” Varis said after a long silence. “Now, while you have time to think on it. I know how much you meant to each other.”

  “Yes.” Her lips shaped the word but no sound followed. She drew a breath and tried again. “Thank you, my lord.”