The Bone Witch

by Rin Chupeco

  There were two sides to Polaire as well. She scrutinized me as I entered the small tearoom at the Gentle Oak, her lips pursed. “That’s a horrible outfit,” she said.

  “What?” I was wearing the prettiest hua I had. It was a deep maroon, with golden butterflies fluttering halfway up its skirt, and a waist wrap of soft beige with outlines of brown leaves embroidered along its edges.

  “We’re meeting the envoy to Drycht, you dummy. He’s an old and cranky stick-in-the-mud, and he wouldn’t approve of women wearing such bold colors.” She gestured at herself, at her lavender hua with tiny lilies painted in large clumps along the bottom of her gown. She shook her veil at me. “Didn’t I tell you to do your research? It’s a little too late to go back and change—he chafes at delays. Let’s see what we can salvage.”

  She was right; the envoy was a yellow-faced old man with cheeks pulled down like a bulldog’s, and he drew back a little when he saw my hua. “Do asha-ka take in courtesans now?” he sputtered, scandalized. “Women were not so bold in my day, least of all asha apprentices!” His heartsglass actually bristled, the colors palpitating between turgid yellow and green.

  “Forgive us, Envoy Mu’awwan.” I never knew Polaire could gush so. “I told Tea here to come in her most outrageous hua, so you can point out all that is wrong with it, to teach her. Who is the authority on all manners of propriety and custom, I asked myself, and thought of you.”

  “Well.” The man relaxed, mollified. “Quite, quite clever of you. Unlike some of my countrymen, I am not one to deny progress and women’s rights—my views are known to be liberal.” I stared at him in consternation. “But with all these indecent girls nowadays showing off legs and ankles without so much as family to accompany them, they wind up in all sorts of trouble. It’s important to cover up, to prevent men from indecent thoughts. Why, the stories I could tell you—if you knew the shamelessness of such women!”

  We didn’t want to know, but he regaled us with them anyway. Afterward, he told me the fifty-seven things wrong with my hua, and my dislike for him grew with every justification.

  “We’re wearing practically the same thing!” I hissed at Polaire when Envoy Mu’awwan excused himself to go to the bathroom. “How can he find fifty-seven things wrong with mine but not with yours?”

  “The Drychta are a conservative people. Most would consider us terribly underdressed, and they avoid the Willows altogether. Envoy Mu’awwan is a diplomat and a progressive man in comparison, but what you consider similar is to him a world of difference. Red on a female implies that she flouts tradition and is therefore a loose woman. You wear the color on your clothes and in the jewels in your hair. Drychta men prefer that their women dress simply, without any ostentatious gems. Your hua has a slit on your side and exposes a part of your leg, while mine has none.”

  “Maybe he just doesn’t like the color red.”

  “That is no excuse, Tea.” Polaire was stern. “Know the people you entertain. If they are offended, you not only bring dishonor to the Valerian but also to the tearoom you stay at and me by association as your sister. Our opinions do not matter, and if you have to swallow your pride to keep them happy, then so be it. Now, stop slouching. I can hear him coming back.”

  We attended a larger party the next night, with a group of wealthy merchants from both the kingdom of Arhen-Kosho and the Yadosha city-states. This time, Polaire was dressed like a princess, in silver and gold, and it brought out the gray in her eyes. The style of her hua was bolder, more brazen; her hair was skillfully piled up on top of her head and kept in place by half a dozen hairpins, where bright diamonds dangled, and long ringlets of brown hair framed her face. I had done my research and had once again donned my maroon hua but had not made myself up to the extent that she did.

  The group of men greeted our arrival with cheers and guffaws, the noise loud in the usually quiet tearoom of the Golden Bough. It was early in the evening, and most were already drunk or at least well on their way to being drunk.

  “Ah, Polaire! We were wondering where you were! And who is this pretty little thing?” One of the men bounded over, the tallest I’ve ever met. His hair and beard were golden, his face a healthy pink and white, but the hand that enveloped both of mine in a hearty handshake was brown and weather-beaten and twice my size.

  “Don’t be so free with my little sister, Aden!” Polaire scolded, slapping his hand away. “Didn’t I tell you to behave this time around or will I have to stick your head into the pond outside again?”

  Rather than be outraged, the men laughed harder. “She got you there, Aden!” one called out, shorter and wirier than the bearded merchant, with a thicker accent. “The last time you shook a flannin with Lady Polaire, she sent you headfirst into the fountain!”

  “I remember her chasing Balfour around with that pole they clean the garden’s fishponds with. Mad as hops she was—”

  “I was tipsy!” the red-haired man with darker skin protested.

  “You were tipsy all right—tipped right into the stream!”

  The group roared again. A tearoom attendant hurried in briefly, setting large tankards of a foamy golden drink on the table, and hurried out. I was ushered into a place among the cushions between Polaire and a dark-skinned man who was younger than his silver hair suggested.

  “Your younger sister, you say?” Aden continued. “What’s your name?”

  “It’s Tea, milord.”

  “Milord?” Another one of the men guffawed. “No need for formalities. We’re all friends here. Tey-uh? What an odd name.”

  “It’s spelled like the drink, Isamu,” Polaire explained.

  “How strange to name someone after a drink! Where are you from, Tey-uh? Kion?”

  “Her skin’s too dark for Kion, Isamu,” someone said. “She looks Odalian if anything. Or perhaps even Drychta.”

  “I’m Odalian, milo—I mean, sir.”

  “I’m Jolyon.” The man bowed. Unlike Aden, his beard was black, carefully trimmed and shaped so they were thin lines that crisscrossed his face.

  “It’s hard to tell who the locals are in Ankyo,” Isamu protested. “Look at Knox here. He’s as black as night, but he comes from Yadosha like the rest of you.”

  “Yadosha is also a melting pot,” Jolyon observed. “Not like you people in Arhen-Kosho. You all look the same.”

  “That is not true!” One of Isamu’s countrymen extended his arm out, palms facing upward. “See? My skin is darker than Isamu’s!”

  “I can’t tell the difference!” Aden complained. “Isamu, hold out your arm alongside Eito’s.”

  Fairly soon, all the men in the room—all respected merchants, all rough-and-tumble men of influential standing—had their arms out, comparing skin tones. I had no idea what was going on.

  “Aden’s arm is much darker than his face, see? He doesn’t even have the same color on himself!”

  “I work outside! My face isn’t covered the way my arms are!”

  “Polaire, what about you?”

  “I think I will go and dunk myself in the spring outside if the lady asha is darker than mine—”

  “Maybe only in the places that count,” Eito said slyly. That was enough to set the men off again.

  “We apologize,” Knox said to me. “We have known each other for years.”

  “I remember now,” Aden said. “Isn’t Tea the Dark asha who nearly obliterated the Falling Leaf tearoom?”

  I winced. “I’m sorry.”

  “Now, now,” Jolyon said. “That wasn’t her fault. And no one blames you, little miss. In fact, people have been asking for you, wanting to know if asha novices can be invited to the cha-khana regularly. I’d say you’ll have mistresses of the other tearooms knocking at your door, demanding that you wreck theirs too!” He laughed when I turned red. “Ah, don’t mind me. I say these things just to make the pretty girls blush. Here, hav
e some alut.”

  “I’m afraid Tea is still too young for your horrible drinks, gentlemen,” Polaire said primly. To my horror, she went and smacked the man lightly on the nose when he tried to hand me a glass, anyway. “You Yadoshans! Always looking for any excuse to get drunk!”

  “But that’s why you like us, Polaire,” Aden said childishly. “Jolyon is offering to pay for all our meals, so let’s grub up some cants that the ladies might like—would that be apology enough, Lady Polaire?”

  Polaire’s response was to tap him playfully on the cheek, and the men laughed again.

  “Yadoshans like to fight and argue,” she explained to me after the party ended and we were walking back home. “Arhen-Kosho tend to be more reserved as a people—until they get drunk. You cannot treat everyone in the same way when you entertain them, Tea. Yadoshans sulk and get bored easily when you do not share in their revelry. Treseans are superstitious and like to get straight to the point in discussions but drink even harder than the Yadoshans. Drychta are—well, I’m sure you can already imagine what the Drychta are. There will be a few exceptions, but this is the general rule. What can you say about your own fellow Odalians?”

  I thought. “Hardworking for the most part but very concerned with money. They’re suspicious of outsiders and of magic. No—they’re only suspicious of magic that other people use but not when they do.”

  “Exactly. Would you say that your family too or your friends in Knightscross can be described in this manner?”

  “But my family are nothing like that at all! The people in Knightscross aren’t—” and then I paused. I thought about their distrust of bone witches, their hostility toward me. Were they any different, after all, than the cold treatment Lady Mykaela and I received from strangers in Kneave?

  She nodded at my growing understanding. “That’s right. Over the course of your life, you will meet many, many people. The trick an asha must learn is to read people accurately. So if a Tresean comes in and consumes a stupid amount of kolscheya and grunts at everyone in the room, then he is a typical Tresean to whom small talk will have no effect, and if you understand Treseans, you will wait patiently until he finally chooses to speak. But if he is a Tresean who is fond of chatter and has an eye for fashion, then you must ask Rahim what he is doing at such a party.”

  I giggled. Polaire flicked her dark hair over one shoulder, the diamonds in it twinkling in the twilight. “Everyone is a puzzle, Tea, made of interlocking tiles you must piece together to form a picture of their souls. But to successfully build them, you must have an idea of their strengths as well as their weaknesses. We all have them,” she said, adding almost as an afterthought, “even me.”

  She carried another vial in her hands. Black liquid sloshed inside from one of the many cauldrons that had gutted the landscape with its smoke and odors the last couple of days. We stood before the hulking carcass of a mastodon-like beast. Only its rib cage remained intact, wide enough for us to pass through. Two brown tusks lay nearby; the ends of one lay broken, the other buried so deep underneath the sand that only its tip gleamed out at us through the muddied churning of seawater.

  The girl lifted the bottle to her lips and drank until there was nothing left. When she was done, she let it fall from her grasp, and before it hit the ground, she was already moving, performing the same ritual as she had with the taurvi.

  Something that resembled lightning lanced through the bones, circled the massive ribs, and struck at the barely visible tusk. And then the skeleton moved. It struggled to stand, and the tusks rose, attracted to the rest of its body like a magnet. It settled atop the bony jaws. One by one, like a life-sized puzzle, it built and took form. Femurs attached themselves to pelvic bones and tibia, vertebrae lining up to collarbone and neck spurs. What it could not find, it created out of thin air.

  And throughout it all, the girl never stopped. Her fingers danced and her feet moved, and she circled her creation like a parent awaiting the birth of her child until the massive being rose before her, whole and complete, magic spun into flesh.

  “Imagine if you had the power to control daeva like these. Imagine the kingdoms that would quake and tremble before you. With such a threat at their borders, how quickly do you think they would mend their ways? Would more people fall under King Aadil of Drycht’s iron grip? Would he look out from the windows of his castle and see us at his gates and still send innocents to the headsman’s block? Would he still exile those like you who strive for a truth he does not wish to see? Would murderers in his kingdom still go unpunished for killing their daughters?

  “And if I turned my taurvi and my akvan southward, to cross the rolling plains of Odalia to enter the kingdom of Kion, would the asha of Ankyo regret what they did to the man I loved?”

  The akvan shook the sand and water from its hide and bayed at the rising moon. Its black heart shone, suspended in the breeze, until the girl reached out and plucked it from the air.

  “Do they not understand,” the girl asked, her voice so very soft, “that they are nothing more than playthings in the eyes of daeva?”

  22

  Lady Mykaela was finally allowed out of bed a month after my khahar-de, though restricted to the immediate vicinity of the Willows. Mistress Parmina had banned her from taking up any new requests outside of Ankyo and dismissed all her protests to the contrary.

  “You are more important than anything they might ask of you,” she informed her firmly. “The next daeva to require raising will not be for another year. You will stay here and attend to your younger sister until I have deemed you fit enough to work, and that is all there is to say about the matter.”

  My sister still tired easily and always excused herself early in the evening, much to my worry. “She will get better,” Polaire told me often, though occasionally I would detect minute changes in her heartsglass as she spoke—a brief spatter of blue, too quick for anyone else to notice.

  Lady Mykaela asked me one day to accompany her out into the fields outside of Ankyo, the same ones asha used for training practice. She had also asked Fox to join us. My brother still limped, and his face looked more drawn than I was accustomed to, but he was otherwise unchanged. I felt guilty. My free time had been gradually taken up by the lessons my new sisters had begun to teach me, and I had been seeing less and less of him, taking for granted the bond we shared as an excuse that he was doing well, that the army took his time from me as much as my lessons took me from him.

  “I told you once that death would make the better of us, and that holds true for your brother, at least.” Mykaela looked especially lovely today, some of the color returned to her cheeks. Instead of her hua, she wore a flowing dress that was pleated at the knees and tightened around the waist by a long belt made of shiny blue silk. Her hair was unadorned. “Hold out your finger. This may sting a little.”

  I had barely held it out when Lady Mykaela moved, and a sliver of a blade sliced through my skin. Small drops of blood trickled down the wound, but I stood stock-still, not moving despite that tiny blush of pain. I had seen the asha do this when she had raised that taurvi nearly two years ago—how long ago that was to me!

  “Now, draw the Heartsrune for me again.”

  I stared at her, finger dripping red, confusion unmistakable. To draw the Heartsrune was the last thing I expected her to make me do.

  She laughed and laid a hand on Fox’s shoulder. Only then did I see the new heartsglass case that hung around his neck. It was simpler than Lady Mykaela’s and mine, bound by a small white chain instead of gold embellishments. “I would have thought it obvious.”

  “But he can’t!”

  “He can. Not for the usual things we use them for, no. Not to exchange wedding vows with or to delve for illnesses. His heart will be silver marked and identical in every way to yours. No one who knows the magic will mistake him for anything but what he is: a bone witch’s familiar. But even the dead hav
e uses for a heart, even one they’re given instead of the one they were born with. Go ahead.”

  Fox said nothing, only waited.

  With shaking fingers, I drew the Heartsrune in the space between us. The red flowed from my finger and followed the path my hand took, staining the breeze with every movement, so that when I was done, the symbol stood before me, written in my own blood. I felt that welcome rush of relief and elation as the magic filled me up, infused itself into the rune.

  The heartsglass rippled once, twice, took hold. Mist filled the tiny case, swirling into every nook and corner. At the same time, Fox opened his mouth, took a breath, and exhaled noisily, his first since his death. His face no longer looked wan and sallow. Color leeched back into his face, a healthy pink from neck and chin to cheeks and forehead, and it warmed every feature it touched.

  “He will be stronger,” Lady Mykaela said. “Faster than when he was living. Tougher. Unkillable by normal means. He will need blooding for every half and full moon, and only your blood will take. He will never be fully alive, but this is the closest to living that the dead can know. It is, naturally, your brother’s choice.”

  Fox examined his hand, flexed his fingers. They no longer creaked like old bones.

  “I would like to stay for as long as Tea wants me to,” he said. His eyes were brighter, smiling at the corners, like he had found more reasons to laugh at the world.

  “Then stay,” I said, and my hands shook. “If I can make you stronger and if I can help you live the life you ought to have had, then stay. For as long as you want and for as long as I can.”

  Fox watched me fidget and shiver, and when I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, he opened his arms. I ran into them without another word. For the first time since his death, Fox was warm and smelled of home.

  • • •

  The graveyard lay on the outskirts of the city, a sensible distance for citizens to pay their respects to the dead without intruding on their territory. I looked around, wondering what traces remained of the damage I had caused, but the masons and bricklayers of Ankyo were efficient workers, and the only things out of place were the few new headstones whose polished brightness stood out among the weather-beaten graves like bad notes. But I was uneasy. This cemetery was divided into two fields: one allotted for more recent burials, the other for graves dating back centuries. We stood in the latter.