The Bone Maker

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “He made me laugh,” Kreya said.

  “I made you laugh,” Zera said. “He made you feel smart.”

  “She’s brilliant,” Jentt said as if it were a fact as immutable as sunrise. She loved that about him. He believed in her. Even after her plans had gotten him killed.

  “Are you two even aware of how nauseating you are?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jentt told her. “It’s one hundred percent intentional.”

  Kreya agreed. “You make hilarious faces when we’re lovey-dovey.”

  Arm around her, Jentt squeezed her closer and kissed her, and Kreya kissed him back, running her fingers through his hair. She’d need to cut it again, now that he was going to be alive for a while. Zera huffed and walked faster, ahead of them, and from the way her shoulders twitched, Kreya knew it was so that they wouldn’t see her laughing.

  She’d missed teasing Zera as much as she’d missed kissing Jentt.

  She remembered those early days when they’d both been unsure of their feelings, when every little word was so fraught with the weight of meaning. The popular love ballads went on and on about new love as something so amazing with all its firework-newness, but Kreya vastly preferred this: the absolute certainty that Jentt had her back.

  Ahead, Zera paused to check the street signs. “Only a few blocks,” she reported. “If he hasn’t moved.” She pointed toward the twisty streets, as if they shaped the buildings into anything like “blocks.” It was more triangles or trapezoids. No city planning had gone into Ocrae. It had sprung up naturally, with buildings erected on a whim and streets laid out where they could fit. In fact, the whole city looked like a childlike god had dribbled mud into towers. And then a drunk god vomited rainbows on it, Kreya thought.

  She didn’t know what Marso was doing here. This was the worst kind of place for a sensitive bone reader, especially one of Marso’s unparalleled range. He should have been someplace quiet and peaceful, like a forest glade. He couldn’t possibly read any bones in this cacophony.

  They turned onto Marso’s supposed street and were confronted with an open-air market with dozens of fruit, clothing, and trinket vendors clogging the sidewalks. Each had spread a colorful blanket across the paving stones to display their wares. A few beggars were positioned between them, as well as performers. On opposite corners, horn players were belting out tunes that clashed into one another, while a bell ringer focused on her windchime-like cascade of notes. A few girls with braided hair were dancing around a boy with a tambourine.

  All three of them halted.

  “Marso can’t live here,” Zera said.

  “You’re the one who said he did,” Kreya reminded her. Zera had claimed the info was only a few years old, though, so maybe the market was a new addition and Marso had moved to a quieter area of the city. Or out of the city entirely. “He can’t have changed so much that he’d like this. He used to stuff his ears with cotton so he could block out the sound of crickets in the forest.”

  “In his defense, crickets can be loud,” Jentt said.

  Crickets were soothing. This was an assault on her eardrums. And eyes. She felt as if she were being bombarded with too much activity, and belatedly she realized why she hated it so much. It wasn’t that she was used to her quiet tower. It was that it reminded her too much of being in the middle of a battle, where there was too much motion, too many screams, too much danger, too much death. If it feels this way to me, she thought, what must it be like for Marso?

  Jentt snagged a boy with ribbons tied to his back as he ran past. “We’re looking for a bone reader named Marso. Silver coin for you if you can help us.”

  “Don’t know any bone readers. Thought they were all dead long time ago. Killed and stuff.” The boy squirmed out of Jentt’s grip. “But do know a Marso. Everyone does. He’s the guy who sleeps in the fountain until the city guards make him stop. Back there the next day, though, and then the guards give up for a while until someone complains they don’t want to wash their laundry with a naked guy snoring and drooling on their skivvies.”

  “That can’t be our beloved Marso,” Zera said.

  But the boy dragged Jentt forward, through the market, and Kreya and Zera followed along. “You said a silver coin?” the boy prompted. Halting, he pointed at a fountain of three horn players. Water spouted out of the horns and into a murky pool, tiled with either green tiles or algae-coated tiles. Sure enough, a man lay on top of the fountain.

  Jentt tossed him a silver coin, and the boy scampered away.

  “Seriously, how much was your ‘finder’s fee’?” Zera asked Jentt.

  Both Kreya and Jentt ignored her, instead staring at the man on the fountain. Stretched across the trumpets, he was naked except for a tattered loincloth. His body was so sun soaked that his skin looked like leather, and you could see every one of his ribs. He was waving his arms in the air as if he were dancing.

  It was undoubtedly Marso—except the Marso they remembered never would have acted like this.

  “Huh,” Zera said. “I think he has a new tattoo.”

  Kreya and Jentt stared at her.

  “Just because he’s made different life choices than you two does not mean this is a cry for help.” Zera waved her hand to indicate his nearly nude body.

  Hearing her, Marso giggled. “Help.” He then twisted over and licked at the water flowing from the horns, as if he were a feral cat.

  “That’s arguably more of a cry for help,” Zera said.

  “In fairness, it’s not as if the two of us have done so stellar since the war,” Jentt said. “Of all of us, Zera is the only success story.”

  Kreya opened her mouth to refute that, but it was a valid point. While she’d been poring over forbidden texts in search of a way to defy nature, Zera had been excelling as a highly successful businesswoman at the top of her craft. Maybe her taste was tacky and her spending habits frivolous, but that didn’t change the fact that she had done what she’d set out to do.

  Marso, on the other hand, most likely had never planned on becoming an accessory to a water fountain. So much for his “unassailable reputation,” she thought. “We should help him down.”

  “Agreed,” Zera said.

  Jentt waded into the fountain. “Come on, buddy.”

  Leaning over, Marso reached out a hand and touched the tip of Jentt’s nose. “I know you. You are nice.” He tapped his nose three times.

  “That’s right,” Jentt said. “I’m your friend, and I’m here to help you.” He wrapped an arm around Marso’s waist, but Marso giggled and pushed off him. Using the momentum, he swung around the horns, holding on to their undersides.

  “It drowns them,” Marso said, as if he were explaining.

  “Yes, water can drown,” Jentt said patiently. “Release the fountain, and let’s find someplace nice and quiet we can talk instead of drown.”

  “There’s no quiet here. No quiet anywhere. That’s why I drown them!”

  This is going nowhere, Kreya thought. She stepped forward, checked to make sure no one was paying attention to them, and pushed back the hood on her coat. “Marso, it’s me, Kreya, your commander. Get off that fountain right now and come with us.”

  Marso smiled happily at her, released the fountain statue, and fell into the water. He splashed down, spraying Jentt. Kreya put her hood back up as Jentt helped Marso out of the fountain water. She noticed there were chicken bones in the water, left by people wishing for good luck.

  In a singsong voice, Zera said, “We’re drawing attention.”

  Surrounding Marso, they hustled him through the market. A few of the vendors called out after them, and Kreya thought she saw the boy who’d helped them and a few of his friends following along, but the boy lost interest once they were beyond the market.

  They checked into an inn, with Zera paying, and ordered soup and meat rolls to be sent to the room. Zera also slipped the innkeeper an extra coin for private access to the bathing facilities, which, despite spending his days in water
, Marso definitely needed, and another extra coin for a set of new clothes for him, also definitely needed.

  Aided by his friends, Marso was bathed and dressed in fresh clothes. Sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, he ate soup with a shaking hand while Kreya, Zera, and Jentt all stared at him.

  Zera finally broke the silence. “So . . . did you take something that messed with your head, or did your head mess with your head all on its own?”

  “He wouldn’t need chemicals to do this,” Jentt said. “A place like this, stirring up his magic—it would be bad enough to stir up his mind.”

  Marso took a sip of soup, lifted his spoon, and stared at it as if it had spoken.

  “Then we have to un-stir it,” Kreya said.

  “It’ll take time,” Jentt said. “And quiet.”

  Kreya shut the window as revelers outside decided to sing three different songs simultaneously. “We need to take him out of the city.” But where? Her tower was gone. Zera’s mansion wasn’t private enough—even if she dismissed all her sycophants, word would spread from that act alone. Plus Cerre was too many miles away. A close, quiet place . . .

  She had it.

  “The farmhouse.”

  The abandoned farmhouse where they’d trained wasn’t far from Ocrae. She didn’t know if it would be still standing after twenty-five years, or if it had been claimed by new owners, but if it still existed, it would be ideal.

  “It’s not abandoned,” Zera said.

  “Oh. Maybe we can buy it?”

  “You mean maybe I can buy it?”

  “Well—”

  “No need. Stran lives there,” Zera said. “With his family.”

  Kreya felt her jaw drop open.

  “What?” Zera asked. “I told you I kept tabs on everyone. Except Jentt, of course, because, you know, he was dead. And obviously I didn’t keep close enough watch on Marso. But Stran is there.”

  “He has a family?” Jentt asked.

  “He lives in the farmhouse?” Kreya asked simultaneously. “He remembers how many animals we deboned in that kitchen, right?”

  “My guess is he didn’t share that detail with his wife,” Zera said. “Who knows, though? Never met her. She might be fine with that.”

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Kreya said. She found herself smiling at the thought of Stran with a family. If anyone deserved an ordinary happy life, it was Stran.

  The farmhouse was nestled into the side of a mountain between terraced fields. It had been freshly painted white, with a ruby-red roof. A chicken coop and a rabbit hutch were on one side of the yard and a vegetable garden on the other. Someone had built a long wooden table with benches under an old massive tree—Kreya remembered they’d buried the unused bits of animal carcasses under that tree, but there was no sign of that now. It was blanketed in wildflowers. All in all, it was picturesque and perfect.

  “Pretty,” Marso said.

  “Wow, yes,” Zera said. “Stran has done well.”

  Together they started down the well-worn path toward the farmhouse. A few deer, the tame kind, froze, watching them as they passed, before resuming grazing on the wildflowers.

  “Am I dead?” Marso asked.

  “No, buddy, you’re not,” Jentt told them.

  “Are you dead?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Marso smiled. “That’s nice.”

  Closer to the farmhouse, though, Marso balked. He dug his heels into the dirt and sat backward so fast that none of them had a chance to catch him. His face had gone pale, and his hands were shaking.

  Zera squatted next to him. “What’s wrong, honey?”

  He shook his head.

  “Get up, Marso,” Kreya told him. “We’re going to see Stran.”

  But Marso hugged his knees to his chest and rocked back and forth. Wrapping her arm around his shoulders, Zera began talking to him in a low, soothing voice. Kreya watched them for a minute and wondered if what was wrong with Marso was anything that could be fixed. He hadn’t shown any sign of the cravings or withdrawal that she would have expected if he were an addict, which made her even more certain he’d addled his brain by overloading his magic.

  If I hadn’t locked myself away in my tower, could I have prevented this?

  She’d let Marso flounder on his own when she could have helped him. She had no idea how long he’d been like this, but it couldn’t have happened overnight. If she’d checked in on him, maybe she’d have seen the signs. She could have gotten him help, even if it was beyond her to help him herself.

  “We’re here,” Zera was telling him. “You’re safe.”

  At least with Zera, Kreya could reassure herself that her friend had fared fine without her. Even thrived. But Marso . . . The guilt threatened to choke her. Retreating from them, she said, “I’ll say hi to Stran, tell him we’re here.” Make sure he hasn’t fallen apart too.

  “I’ll come with you,” Jentt offered.

  “Might want to stay back,” Zera said. “Seeing Kreya is going to be a surprise on its own. Seeing you? ‘Hi, Stran, long time no see. I brought you a heart attack. Enjoy!’”

  Jentt took Kreya’s hands. “She has a point. Can you do this?”

  “It’s Stran.” He was an overgrown puppy dog. Of course she could handle him.

  “I mean, can you try to break the news gently? About me. About Marso. About . . . well, what we suspect. Or maybe save that until later?”

  “You think I can’t be diplomatic?” Kreya tried to sound offended, but she knew as well as Jentt did that diplomacy had never been one of her strengths. She’d try, though. She always tried. “I’ll be gentle.”

  He kissed her forehead, as if to either agree with her or encourage her.

  She left them comforting Marso and continued the rest of the way down the path to the farmhouse. From inside, she heard multiple voices, a baby’s cry, and a warm male laugh that boomed through the house and across the yard.

  Stran, she thought.

  Approaching the door, she knocked and waited.

  She heard voices calling to one another, asking someone else to get the door, and then at last footsteps. The door was opened, and a petite woman in a leather apron, heavy boots, and an embroidered blouse stood in the doorway. She was smiling as bright as sunshine itself.

  “May I help you?” the woman asked.

  Kreya gawked at her. This was Stran’s wife? It was clearly his house—nothing could have convinced her more than hearing that familiar laugh—but this was not the kind of person she’d expected him to marry.

  Looking curiously at Kreya, the woman was, hands down, the loveliest person she’d ever seen. Luminous eyes, soft skin, fragile features. She reminded Kreya of a lily in sunshine, glowing with a delicate beauty. Except wearing work boots. “Stran married you?” The words were out of Kreya’s mouth before she thought about how they’d sound.

  The woman laughed, and even that was beautiful, like a waterfall in springtime. “Yes, Stran is my husband. Why is that a surprise?”

  “Well, last time I saw him . . . He always looked like he’d been punched a few times. I can’t imagine age has improved that. You, on the other hand, look like you were carved by a master artisan.” She’d always pictured Stran with another warrior, a tough, battle-scarred, and sheathed-in-muscles battle-ax, not this flower. This young flower. She looked to be about twenty years younger than Stran.

  Stran’s wife blushed prettily, and it occurred to Kreya belatedly that she shouldn’t have said that out loud. Not exactly diplomatic. I am out of practice with people, she thought. It was a good thing that she wasn’t planning on interacting with anyone but Jentt after this was over.

  Suddenly, the woman gasped. “I know you! You’re his old commander! The Kreya of Vos! Oh my goodness, come in! Stran is going to be so excited to see you! I am so honored to meet you!” Raising her voice, she called, “Stran! Come see who’s here!”

  “Honey, do you know where my spare boots are?” came Stran’s voice from with
in the house.

  She frowned and even that was lovely. She had the kind of face creased with laugh lines; a frown looked like a novel expression on her. “Why not wear your regular boots?”

  “Vivi has her dolls in them, and she says I shouldn’t wake them.” Stran came into the hallway and, seeing Kreya, halted. He looked exactly as she’d remembered: as wide as two men, with arm muscles as thick as her waist. He’d shaved his beard, and his hair had silvered. He boasted a few more wrinkles in his sun-worn face than she remembered, a few more laugh lines around his eyes. But he was unmistakably Stran. And if she hadn’t been sure, his nose still looked as if it had been pounded by multiple fists, which was in fact true.

  His wife waved her hands as if presenting Kreya. “Look who came to visit!”

  “Kreya? By the bones! It’s you!” Crossing the hall in two strides, Stran scooped her up, swung her in a circle, and set her down. Startled, she nearly missed hugging him back, but she managed a pat on his shoulders as she caught her balance again.

  Stran spun with her to face his wife. “Amurra, did you arrange this? You are amazing! You didn’t even hint—”

  Amurra laughed. “She surprised me too!”

  Stran turned his attention back to Kreya. “This is fantastic! It’s amazing to see you!”

  “Very glad to see you too,” Kreya said, and she meant it. She hadn’t been expecting such a joyful greeting. She’d braced herself for more accusations, like with Zera, or for the feeling of guilt, like with Marso, but Stran seemed honestly happy to see her.

  I hope he feels the same once he knows why I’m here, Kreya thought.

  Amurra poked Stran in the ribs. “Introduce me.”

  Releasing Kreya, Stran wrapped his arm around Amurra and pulled her tight against his side. “My wife, Amurra. Meet Kreya, my commander.”

  “He’s told me so much about you,” Amurra gushed. “Honored to have you in our house!”

  “Honored to be here,” Kreya said. “Actually, I didn’t come alone. I have some other people with me who will be very happy to meet you. And to see you, Stran.”