The Bones of Broken Songs: A Historical Mystery Romance (Mortalsong Trilogy Book 2)

by J. M. Stredwick

  Am I afraid? I shouldn’t be. I have spent years preparing for this. No matter how it came about, my sole goals were to find Giselle, kill Benjamin, and then Vauquelin. I reminisce upon when Alphonse came to me, telling me that his father was dead at Benjamin’s hand. I could think of no reason for Benjamin to kill him.

  “He wanted it all for himself,” Alphonse told me, tone thick with disgust.

  He has that now. All of it, for himself. Can one creature, born of the blood of a Succubus and the host body of a common woman, hold the proper balance that could lead to this coveted immortality? That gave him his vast empire of ships and piracy? That can be the only conclusion. He could not do this himself. No man could.

  I must go. Beyond the patterned flower walls, there should be servant’s passages. Lonely little halls that lesser people take. I wonder where our servant women are, or if they are silently watching me from some peephole somewhere. I have to find myself some sort of weapon. I flurry around the room in search for something that I could use.

  Jumbling up every chest and drawer, every cupboard and then, I find it. It’s a neat piece carved from ivory, a comb inlaid with jade. At the rounded top, there are carvings of birds and foxes. The sharp-toothed end of the comb I test on my skin, pressing down to grade its flimsiness.

  It should work with the proper aggression behind it.

  I go to the servant’s door, gently sliding it aside. My breathing is measured so that I do not give myself away. I would hate myself if I did that.

  I see nothing in the shadows. There is only darkness. Servants carry with them chambersticks for light. I grasp the one that is settled on our table and plunge into the dark chasm that awaits me. I could kill someone. I shut my eyes for a moment, swallowing my adrenaline and willing it away. My heart beats frantic in my chest and I blow out a breath. The tension of the air that comes from my lungs is uneven, shaky.

  “I am not afraid,” I whisper. I clutch my comb tight, tines facing out.

  I feel that I am walking for a long while. I have yet to come across another exit. Then I hear it; a shuffling. The bristle of a cloak, the sharp clap of a leather boot against the stone passage floor. I freeze, falling back against the wall, snuffing out my candle.

  “Hello?”

  It is a man. His voice carries strong, echoing down the passages.

  “Is that one of our pretty prisoners?” he goads me. “I’d like to think that it is.”

  Curse words form in my throat. I want to unleash them, and perhaps I will. He’d deserve a good berating, deserve the points of this comb stuck somewhere, maybe one his more sensitive parts.

  He lights his own torch, and this illuminates the hall, illuminates me fully. I hide my comb.

  “Monsieur,” I incline my head. “I am sure you can relate to the boredom. Stuck in one spot for so long, how do you do it?”

  The man’s face contorts to rage, and he bends his knees a bit as if preparing to wrestle me, “Come here pretty kitty, I’ll be sure that you are not bored any longer.”

  “You will?” I simper. “It has been such a difficult experience, being taken in by corsairs such as yourself. I would like to think that you would be able to commiserate.”

  “I do as I am told. Just as you will,” his smirk is oily, and he takes a step forward.

  “You see, I am not very good at doing as I am told,” I take a step back. “If anything, I’d say it is my biggest character flaw.”

  “You’ll do what I want you to do. I do not need your assent. I saw you, you know. The other night. Where’s that nice dress you were wearing? Let’s go find it now.”

  My luck.

  “I think you’d feel better to sate your appetite with one of the whores down in your village. Do you think Brother Death would be happy to hear that you took something that was not yours? Doesn’t he have strict rules for his men? Men higher up, in any case…I will bet that for men like you, at the low end of the chain, his grip is like iron on you.”

  He gives a growl, lips pinching upward.

  “Not your fault, of course,” I speak airily. “Some men are smarter than others.”

  “Smart? Smart would have been staying in your chamber. Methinks your vanity makes you blind, my Lady. Another of your character flaws too?” he quips, and whispers on stinking breath. “Our leader will not know if a bit of honey is missing from the pot.”

  I smirk.

  “I suppose I am at an impasse, then.”

  He grits his teeth and tilts his head, acknowledging the truth.

  “Well, if that is the case. I think the most logical course of action would be that I not resist.”

  I begin to walk towards him, slowly. This tenses him, but his eyes glint with lust and his brown stained teeth are exposed in goofy bemusement. I move my quaking legs till I stand just before him. As I have in the past, I give my lips a sensual pout. Peeking up as if I ache with loneliness and passion, I lay a palm on his black-leather covered chest.

  “When I watched you during the celebration I did everything I could to be the one they chose to guard your doors,” he tells me. “To wait for a moment like this.”

  I nod as if I am listening, but I am cocking the teeth of my comb just so, making sure that I have the perfect grip. I glance down to see that I should have easy access to his knife if he were impaired in any way.

  “Yes, you knew that if you came to me in any other way there would be no hope. Better to take what is not yours, correct?”

  He pauses for a moment, confused. Then I do it. I ram the comb into the socket of his eye, twice, and I watch the blood spill. The eye crumble. I’ve no time to be sick because as he doubles over, screaming in pain, I draw the knife from its scabbard and lay it on his neck. He shudders, spitting out blood that dribbles down into his mouth, whimpering.

  “Men like you…” I shake my head, exhaling hard from the effort. “There are men uglier than you out there feasting of the breasts of prettier women than I. You know why?”

  His silence is response enough.

  “They’ve wooed the woman well enough. Given her all the reasons to trust and love him. Men like you…bitter, gloating, piggish…you somehow think the only way to get through life is to take what you want. You think everyone owes you something. To rape, steal? I mean, honestly, how do you live with yourself? You are despicable.”

  I laugh because his trepidation has sent him into heavy body shudders.

  “Methinks my vanity saved me,” I mimic him. “And yours killed you.”

  The knife slips into his skin easily, and his neck is left gaping.

  The dead man’s cloak would have been a good thing to take from him. Now I stand at the edge of the home, covered only by bits of shrubbery. If someone were to look out they’d see me in the light that spills from the windows. I have no concealment or covering. I cannot go back in, at least, not yet. I wonder if they keep Alphonse in a room within this home or in a jailhouse in the forest. Have they forced him to the edge of his sanity, burgeoning and breaking his internal shields?

  The night is dark and lonely. Far too quiet for my taste. Only the ocean and the insects ruffle my mind. The knife I hold loosely in my hand, the rust of blood staining its once shining silver. My heart is thunderous in my chest, a cannon quivering from explosion. I had not known what it would be like to kill and cannot think of it now. I spilled my sick on the floor on my way out, and now I feel the visceral doom that most men might experience with their first kill. I could do anything. No one will stop me.

  Funny that it is I who now knows the feeling. How did Alphonse kill with such ease? Perhaps I have been a naïve creature, stuffing away the less pleasant topics the world holds, the depths that a person can go…how you can take away the breath of another. I have never held this understanding in my mind, bathed it in my consciousness, never connected the realness that death is. It could come for me, for any one of us, and then it would just be done; an absence of breath and heartbeats and then: oblivion.

 
; I will have to listen to the quiet voices of his men. But there are none to eavesdrop on now. Where did they all go? A breach on their walls? It must be the Bone Woman. But why would he care? If his allegiance was to her, then why call it a breach?

  “Claire!”

  I hear a voice. A gruff voice that echoes in my mind as familiar. Competent. Solid.

  Glancing around I see him huddled at the edge of the forest, rigid and peeking from beyond a tree.

  “Dales!” I flurry out towards him without thinking.

  I meet him at the edge and we huddle beyond the trees. His skin is red, patched with blisters from the sun. His gray hair is pulled tight back into a low tress and he smells of shit and piss.

  “You look how I feel,” I tell him.

  “Ah, you weren’t strapped to a pole all day, were you darling?” he chuckles quietly.

  “Strapped to a pole?”

  “A form of torture,” he explains. “The sun and lack of drink undoes a man.”

  “It would anyone,” I agree bitterly. “It is good to see you, John. Alive.”

  “And you, Mademoiselle Claire.”

  I jerk back to look at the front doors of the mansion. A pattering of roughshod boots and clinking rapiers catches my ears, and we slouch low, leaves caressing my cheeks. Looking out I can see the men trundling up the path and entering through the wide-open doorway. Then, her. Gia is there, with them. Her thin image stolen from me yet again. Spikes of fury rush beneath my skin, causing sweat to tingle at my brow. I can be glad that she is safe. But now, she is in there and I am out here. Now, I will have to stay out here.

  How long will it take them to realize that I am gone? How long will I have before they close in on me? We have to get as far from here as we can. After I find Alphonse. Once there is silence and nothing ruffling the lazy hedges of the walkway, I glance at John. His bright red eyes are narrowed, his sun-seared skin peeling in places.

  “Do you have a plan then, Mam’selle?” he whispers, voice threaded with reluctance.

  “Do you know where they would keep him? Alphonse?” I wonder aloud.

  “A house like this? A man like him?” John shrugs. “I’d say he’d keep him right under his nose.”

  I peer back at the colossal stone home. I set my jaw and let out a sigh.

  Gia

  Candles are lit along the halls but otherwise, there is no reason to believe anyone else would be awake at such an hour. Returning from the hushed jungle into the quiet flickering halls sends eerie trills down my arms and back. I glance upwards, strongly sensing that Claire will still be wide-eyed and waiting, most likely hoping, that I would be returned to her. But I cannot have loyalty to her now. She had her chance to come with me. Maybe we’d both have escaped only to be turned right back around as it’s happened now.

  My heart flutters as I am brought someplace that I can only assume as the entrance to Benjamin’s quarters. I stop my feet, planting them firmly into the stone floors. I feel the guards flanking me jerk to a halt when I stop.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask, voice dry.

  He glances back at me, raven black hair hanging loose at his shoulders. His eyes are luminous in the dark, shining, tempestuously welcoming. The way that men’s eyes always are.

  “Come,” he presses, holding out a hand. “I only want to speak with you.”

  I cannot deny him. I feel only slightly less heated in my regard of him, but the reason I continue is that I am so confused; mind broken by what had occurred in the forest. My limbs are shaking still, my skin cold with leftover fear.

  “If you try to touch me…” I warn him. He gives me an expression that signals his strict observance of the space between us.

  Benjamin’s chambers are expansive upon sight. Dully lit by candles in metal brackets along the walls, the shape of things flickering as the door is shut behind us with a groan of oak and iron bindings. I see a large four-poster bed with typical French bedding, and a large chest at the end of it. Gallant patterns of sage and cream flower along heavy drapes. There is an elegant curved writing desk topped with an inkwell and quill. A giant armoire of similar looks is settled in a far corner with a long mirror. In my mind, I laugh, thinking of wayward “Brother Death” looking himself over. This room leads to another, which I can guess to be his private dining room, the other perhaps a washing place. I cannot contain the smirk on my face. Though it is a gorgeously proper ensemble, I start to notice the small things. The dark glass bottles of rum scattered throughout, the spillage of drink on the furnishings, random scatterings of maps and scrolls, books, and leftover trays of fruits and dried meats.

  I do not know what to say, so I say nothing.

  “I apologize,” he motions about and brushes something off the large velvet settee. “Please sit.”

  I remain standing, feeling so disoriented from the night’s events. I have questions, and they spur me to do as he says. I lower myself into the plush settee and he seats himself beside me. Why does he think he can sit this close to me? I jerk away so that my back is against the armrest. He looks down carelessly at my lack of corset and heavy gown. I am dressed in my thin shift, and I can feel the palpable awareness he has to the nakedness of my body beneath.

  His skin is evermore bronze in the candlelight. Everything about him is gold and foreign. His eyes are the only dark thing, filled with unknown thoughts and unknown desires. I wonder where he comes from. Why he exists as he is. It is so far apart from the rest of the world, so far, it feels like a dream world to me.

  “Mind your eyes,” I snap.

  A slip of smile widens his lips, and he chuckles softly.

  “What could possibly be amusing at a time like this?” I cock a brow.

  “Well to begin…” he starts, but I stop him.

  “If you’ve brought me here to play your games instead of telling me about the occurrences tonight, or in fact, anything other than that, I’ll be going.”

  I start to rise, but he reaches swiftly for my hand, keeping me seated. I watch his smile sour and his breath grow shallower. He gazes at me with an intensity that no man has ever done before. It is unsettling, and I look to the floors.

  “She’s a demon,” he drawls casually, and his hand remains upon mine, causing tingles of discomfort to ripple up my arm. “A monster. A creature of the night. Living dead. A fiend.”

  “Absurd,” I say.

  Can I believe what he says? Our sights connect, and he seems honest, no crook or doubt within him. He keeps his eyes on me steady, unblinking.

  “Absurd, unbelievable…call it whatever your fancy,” he winces. “But on my honor, it is true.”

  I blink at his unyielding face, zeroing in upon his words. He is convinced completely. He is truly telling me what he knows.

  “What did she do to that man…” I whisper.

  He is reluctant to speak, I see it in him.

  “She killed him,” he says simply. “You wouldn’t have seen it if you’d just stayed where I put you.”

  “Damn you, and damn this Island,” I hiss, hardly able to contain my fury. “I should have fled when I had the chance.”

  I race towards the doorway and hear him spring to his feet. He flies past me, intercepting my path. His eyes are lit with fiery curiosity. I haul myself into him, using all my strength to send jabs into his jaw and stomach. I feel the hardness of his muscled body, unyielding to my blows. Somehow his hands find my wrists and he whirls me about so that I am slammed against the wall. He holds me there and I kick hard upwards into his groin. He’s been anticipating this as he moves his footing so that my resistance goes without making contact, a strike of leg to the open air.

  “Does this mean you want to stay?” he laughs, thoroughly amused, mocking me.

  I curse loudly. His weight is against me and I cannot move. I feel like a snarling animal.

  “I’m sure you dream of a woman that would want to come here… play wife. I almost feel sorry for you, you lonely bastard.”

  At this
, he sighs and releases me as if he does so unwillingly. He only seems distracted now and leans away so that I am granted a shadowy profile of a pained, distanced face.

  “You don’t want answers?” he snaps. “Leave then.”

  I am unnerved. I do want him to speak to me. I do want to know. I want to understand why he was speaking with a supposed “dead” woman, worried that she had trespassed boundaries. I want to know the connection that he has to Alphonse, to Claire. I want to know who he is and how he has come to be.

  “What is she?” I ask.

  “We call her the Bone Woman. Her name is Sidra. It’s complicated…all you need to know is that she is dangerous. I want to keep you safe, but I can’t do that if you’re going to keep trying to escape.”

  “Keep me safe?” I huff. “You should be worried about your men. They’re more likely to be in jeopardy.”

  “You see,” he draws his finger across his chin, “I think she’d like you better than them. Better to be safe than sorry, don’t you think?”

  “Why would she like me better?” I feel a tug of confusion bleed into my stomach, something in the way he says it, it disturbs a feeling in me that there might be a reason for this.

  He shrugs.

  “You don’t know?” I am critical. “Why would you say it then?”

  “Just a hunch,” he smirks, folding his hands in front of him.

  I pace, holding a hand to my forehead.

  “How do you know Captain Chardones?” I ask him faintly.

  His expression is smoky. His change of tune emits a veil of mystique to the air. I grab at my belly, feeling sick from the night’s events. He goes to the door, passing by me and cracking it slightly.

  “Tea for the lady. Rum for me,” he commands through the thin space.

  “Rum,” I correct him.