Bone War

by Steven Harper

  “You mean Nu and Tan?” Aisa said. “They are not my sisters quite yet. They were here a moment ago, but I do not know where they—”

  “I found the reason the Garden is sick,” Death interrupted, brandishing the sprite. “And I’m holding it in my hand.”

  Chapter Three

  The man with the melted face stared at Talfi for a long moment. Talfi stared back, unable to move. It was like looking in a twisted mirror. Talfi’s first thought—

  I have a brother?

  —flickered and died like a firefly. Glass glittered in broken-diamond shards on the cobblestones, and the crowd behind him seemed to fade into nothing. All Talfi could see were the candle-wax features of the man who had half his face.

  At that moment, a pair of guards in red and gold livery pushed through the crowd. “What’s this, then?” one demanded.

  Talfi was still staring at the melted features of the other man. “You—” he managed. “Who—?”

  The man stared back from under ragged brown hair. His withered right hand clutched the cloak at his throat. “You—” he echoed.

  Just behind him, Ranadar and Kalessa gave identical gasps. Ranadar said, “What in the name of the Nine Gods?”

  “Vik!” barked Kalessa. “Who is that?”

  The moment broke. The candle-wax man looked sharply around him and seemed to notice for the first time the gaping bottler and the gawking crowd. He pushed past Talfi, who was still too startled to react, and tried to lose himself in the mass of people. One of the guards grabbed his arm.

  “Just a moment,” he said. “Where did you—?”

  The candle-wax man stiff-armed the guard in the chest. The guard flew backward and bowled into the people behind him. He went down in a red and gold tangle of arms, legs, and swearwords. Kalessa’s knife leaped into her hand and flickered into a full-length sword while the second guard drew his own sword and lunged for the candle-wax man. The candle-wax man, moving with a cat’s own speed, stepped aside and snatched the guard’s sword out of his hand. With a screech of metal, he bent the sword in half.

  Kalessa didn’t pause. She leaped forward and thrust her blade straight into the candle-wax man’s shoulder. There was a dreadful sound of metal sliding through flesh, and Kalessa came face-to-face with the candle-wax man’s distorted features over her hilt. The candle-wax man blinked at her.

  “You will not die today,” she growled. “But you will come with us.”

  The candle-wax man grabbed the front of her tunic and lifted her free of the ground. Kalessa was so startled she let go of her sword. The candle-wax man flung Kalessa aside like a terrier tossing away a rat. She crashed into another booth. With another awful noise, the candle-wax man pulled her sword out of his own body. There was no blood. Talfi was too shocked to do anything but stare.

  Now Ranadar lunged for the man, and his hand touched the candle-wax man’s bare forearm. Talfi recognized what Ranadar was doing. A long, lingering touch would addict the candle-wax man to Ranadar, and the man would be unable to resist any command Ranadar gave until the day one of them died.

  “Ran!” Talfi cried. “Don’t!”

  It was too late. A faint glow engulfed Ranadar’s fingers as the glamour took hold. Kalessa’s sword clattered to the cobblestones. Talfi took a step toward them, hoping to break them apart.

  A mask of fear crossed Ranadar’s face. He howled and snatched his hand away. The candle-wax man shoved Ranadar backward, and he fell against Talfi. Like Kalessa and the guardsmen, they both went down. A piece of broken bottle sliced Talfi’s knee with red-hot pain.

  “The Nine!” Talfi snarled. “Get off me!”

  Ranadar rolled away, his cloak protecting him from more broken glass. Talfi got carefully to his feet, hot blood streaming down his leg. Nearby, Kalessa had also emerged from the booth. The candle-wax man was gone. The crowd slowly went back about its business in the twilight market.

  “Are you all right, Talashka?” Ranadar asked.

  Talfi put weight on his leg and winced. He’d been hoping to run after the man, but his knee hurt too much. “I’ll be fine, but I won’t be winning any races for a while.”

  Kalessa strode over, her face stormy. “Who the Vik was that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Talfi. “Scared the shit out of me, whoever he was.”

  “My Talashka,” Ranadar repeated, touching his face. “You can’t—”

  Talfi caught his hand. “Why did you try to addict him, Ran?”

  “I—” Ranadar’s face went pale under his hood. “I was not trying. I was only—”

  “Who’s going to pay for my broken bottles?” interrupted the bottler. “Half my stock is destroyed. Weeks of work!”

  “I am sorry, friend,” Kalessa said. “It was not our doing.”

  The balding man’s face grew as stormy as Kalessa’s, and orc and human looked surprisingly alike. “Someone has to pay! I have children to feed! A landlord who wants rent!”

  Ranadar raised his hood to show his ears. The man flinched and raised his hands defensively. “Filthy Fae!” he said. “Just like all your muck-sucking kind. Did you enjoy destroying an honest man’s living? Piece of shit like you isn’t worth the—”

  Ranadar, face impassive, flipped the man a coin. It was a gold hand, more than the bottler made in six months. Startled, the man snatched it out of midair.

  “Go home and tell your children that not all Fae are cruel,” Ranadar said, “and even a few are kind.”

  “I—yes, my lord.” The bottler bowed and scuttled back to his booth.

  “Ran,” Talfi growled. “Why did you—?”

  “Not here,” Ranadar replied shortly. “We may as well end the day with one more explosion. Come along.”

  Heedless of the stares from nearby merchants and customers, Ranadar drew figures in the air with his fingers. They glowed for a moment, and disappeared quickly. When he was done, the elf was panting a little, and a faint shimmer marked the air in front of them.

  “Really?” Talfi said.

  “I would rather walk than Twist,” Kalessa grumbled.

  “Do not waste it,” Ranadar said. “Go. Before I lose concentration.”

  Talfi sighed and forced himself to step through.

  The wrench wasn’t too bad. Then he exploded into a thousand, million, billion pieces that scattered all across the universe. He was a trillion seeds floating in a hurricane. After several frightening seconds, he was able to clutch at a twig and follow it to a branch, and then to a trunk. His body came together, and he burst back into existence.

  For a bad moment, memory took over and he was lying on a grassy plain, screaming in agony with his right leg lopped off at midthigh. Smoke rose from the cauterized wound, and the stench of cooked flesh filled his nose. His breath came fast and his heart howled in his ears.

  And then he was back in the right place, in the room he shared with Ranadar at Mrs. Farley’s boardinghouse. Nausea swam through his stomach from the Twist, but it wasn’t as bad as he had feared—the boardinghouse wasn’t far from the market. A more distant Twist would have had him heaving up three days’ worth of meals. He clutched at his leg and stared about the room with wild eyes.

  Kalessa burst into the room a fraction of a second later, looking a bit greener than usual, and Ranadar appeared right after. The Twist snapped shut behind them. Ranadar pushed back his hood.

  “That was not easy, with all the iron in the—Vik!” He caught sight of Talfi’s face. “Talashka! What is it?”

  “I … I almost forgot. And I remembered.” Talfi was having a difficult time with words just now. “The Twist took my leg. I wasn’t—I didn’t—”

  “Vik!” Ranadar swore again. He put an arm around Talfi and guided him to the bed. “What happened? Kalessa, bring some spirits. Mrs. Farley usually has some brandywine in the kitchen.”

  Kalessa dashed out the door while Talfi leaned against Ranadar and tried to sort himself out. Ranadar touched his face and examined his hands, and it took
Talfi a moment to understand that Ranadar was checking him for injuries.

  “What happened?” Ranadar asked. “Was it a stray memory? Something from a hundred years ago?”

  Talfi shook his head. “Not even five. Vik! I’d almost forgotten. I did forget it. And then I remembered it. And then I remembered it again, but I forgot that I did.” His hands shook. He knew he wasn’t making sense, but he couldn’t seem to pull himself together.

  “It will be all right,” Ranadar said, and he pulled Talfi close again. “It was just a memory. It was not happening again.”

  Talfi sighed and tried to make himself relax against Ranadar’s body, but he couldn’t seem to make his muscles unclench and his fingers were cold. After a moment, Kalessa returned with a clay mug, which Ranadar pressed to his lips. Talfi drank, and the brandywine burned all the way down. Then, remembering something Aisa always did, he poured some over the bloody cut on his knee. That burned, too, and he sucked at his teeth. Ranadar gave him a handkerchief to press to the wound.

  “How is it?” the elf asked.

  “It’s fine. Just painful.”

  “Mrs. Farley was a little startled to see me,” Kalessa reported. “I believe she and the butcher are carrying on in some way, judging by what I saw when I entered the kitchen. I do not wish to see such a thing again.”

  “Good for her,” Ranadar said. “Do you know where Aisa is? I would feel better if she examined Talfi.”

  “She and Danr went down to the beach with that rowboat,” Kalessa said. “They are probably halfway to the Flor Isles by now.”

  “Nothing for that, then. But I do know Talfi will need food to ground him after a nasty shock like this. Could you—?”

  “I was just down there,” Kalessa protested. “Who knows what Mrs. Farley and the butcher are doing with that piece of meat he brought?”

  “Just go, please.”

  Kalessa stumped away, muttering about orcish princesses being treated like servants. Meanwhile, the brandywine had warmed Talfi a little, and he was able to relax. Ranadar touched his hair. “Tell me what it was.”

  Talfi breathed out hard. “It was my leg.”

  “Your leg,” Ranadar repeated.

  “I told you about it. When Danr’s grandmother Twisted him and Aisa and me from Glumenhame to Xaron, she made a mistake.”

  “Because the Twist was so distant,” Ranadar said, remembering now.

  Talfi nodded. “Danr and Aisa were all right, but the Twist cut my leg off. Aisa stopped me from bleeding to death, but then the orcs came and …”

  “They sliced off your head.” Ranadar hugged him again. “Barbarians. My Talashka. I am so sorry.”

  “I don’t remember much about my head,” Talfi said. “Kalessa’s father pulled his sword out and the next thing I knew, I was sitting up next to a funeral pyre. My funeral pyre. And my leg was back. That doesn’t bother me—I die and come back all the time.”

  “The boy who forgot how to die,” Ranadar said with a small smile.

  “The traitor elf,” Talfi replied with a small smile of his own. “I just … when you Twisted us back here, the memory of my leg slapped me so hard, it was like I was there again, bleeding on the plains of Xaron.”

  “I’ve Twisted you since then,” Ranadar said. “Death has, too. You didn’t react this way then.”

  “I think it was the shock of seeing that guy with the melted face,” Talfi said. “It just … unsettled me, and then I was pissed at you, and then we Twisted, and it was just a little much.”

  “Oh,” Ranadar said. “Yes. Er … you …”

  At that moment, Kalessa banged back into the room with a tray of food—bread and cheese and jam and fruit and even a pot of tea. “Will this do, Your Majesty?”

  “Thanks,” said Talfi, accepting the tray on his lap. Kalessa shut the door. “Ranadar and I are about to have an argument. Do you want to join in?”

  Kalessa flipped a chair around and faced them over the back of it. “Always.”

  “An argument?” Ranadar edged away from Talfi on the bed. Talfi took advantage of the moment to spread a slice of bread with blackberry jam.

  “We were going to have it in the market, but you pulled up a Twist so we could avoid it,” he said, his voice flatter than he intended.

  “Oh yes—you tried to addict the melted man.” Kalessa’s face was a hard mask. “And why was that?”

  “Should we not talk about his strength? Or the way he failed to bleed when you stabbed him?”

  “In time,” said Kalessa. “Why did you do what you did?”

  Ranadar snatched Talfi’s brandywine mug from the tray and took a slug. “I was not thinking. It was … reflex. He would not run away if he wanted me.”

  “You would have addicted him to you for the rest of his life—or yours,” Talfi said. “Just like Aisa used to be.”

  “Listen, I know what I did. Almost did,” Ranadar said. “We need not—”

  “I think we do need,” Kalessa said from her chair. “A warrior controls his reflexes. I did—I attempted to wound, not kill. Clearly, you have not tried to control yourself. And why is that, I wonder?”

  “It was an accident,” Ranadar said shortly. “He frightened Talfi, and then he tried to flee without explaining who he was. We know so little about your past, Talashka, and anything we can learn is for the greater good, considering.”

  “And what would you have done with him once he was addicted to you?” Kalessa persisted. “Let him become your servant? Your slave?”

  “Slavery is now illegal in Balsia,” Ranadar snapped.

  “The melted man would not care,” Kalessa shot back. “He would love you. Like Talfi does.”

  “Not like I do,” Talfi said.

  “Actually—” Ranadar began.

  “You know what I mean,” Kalessa interrupted.

  “I do not answer to you.” Ranadar’s face was set hard. “I am a prince of the Fae.”

  “And I am a princess of the Kin,” Kalessa shot back.

  “And I’m nothing?” Talfi said quietly.

  Ranadar turned leaf green eyes on him. “What?”

  “You still think of humans as less than the Fae, don’t you?” Talfi said, trying and failing to keep a note of accusation out of his voice. “You see us as slaves.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t lie.” Talfi hid his face behind his teacup for a moment. “Please don’t. Danr can tell when anyone lies, but I can tell when you do.”

  Ranadar glanced between them like a trapped animal. He looked both sad and defiant. “You fail to understand. Even you, Talashka.”

  A cold hand slid down Talfi’s spine. He had been half bluffing when he made the accusation, and Ranadar’s words confirmed what he had only suspected. Talfi had been hoping he was wrong, and the realization he was right hurt more deeply than the memory of his missing leg. His muscles tensed, and his legs ached from sitting on the bed with the tray across them.

  “What don’t I understand?” he asked evenly.

  Ranadar shifted on the bed and slid his fingers down the seam of his cloak. “I am three hundred and seventy-seven years old. For the first two hundred years of my life, humans were nothing but talking sheep. I did not think this. I knew this. It was much better for humans to serve the Fae, where they enjoyed the benefits of a civilized culture and where they did not squabble over land or their foolish honor, where they did not live in the shadow of the Iron Mountains and the Stane who lived beneath them.”

  “You mean it was better for humans to live as addicted slaves in Alfhame than with their families and friends at home,” Talfi said.

  Ranadar sighed. “Of course. My parents knew it, and my grandparents survived the Sundering to know it. You have to remember that after the Sundering, there were few humans left, and they lived in wretched poverty. There were no crops that first year, and everyone was starving. Humans begged to come live in Alfhame, where there was food and shelter.”

  “Because the Fae pushed the St
ane into destroying the Iron Axe,” Kalessa spat. “If it were not for your squabbling, there would have been no problems for anyone.”

  Ranadar spread his hands. “The Stane ruled Erda with a cruel fist, and the Fae fought to get everyone out from under it.”

  “And the Kin paid the price,” Talfi finished.

  “When the Tree tips, everyone pays the price,” Ranadar said.

  “The Kin pay more,” Kalessa interjected.

  “You are asking why I did what I did, and I am trying to explain,” Ranadar said. “From the moment I was born, my mother and my father and everyone I knew taught me about humans. For two hundred years—twenty generations to orcs—I learned that Kin were lesser beings. Kin have weak minds and are easy to manipulate with even simple glamours. They loved us because they wanted to. I knew this. Here.” He tapped his own chest.

  “You fail to make yourself look better,” Kalessa growled.

  “And then, one day, a bright and merry slave who would not be cowed and who seemed immune to my father’s addictive touch came into the palace and stole my heart,” Ranadar continued, “and I began to wonder if the Kin were something better. Talfi showed me that humans had thoughts and feelings that ran as deep as my own, and I questioned what I knew. Then my father and mother found us out and cut his throat before my eyes. I was too cowardly to stop them, and could only watch his lifeblood spill a river across the floor. It crushed me like a glacier and drove my parents and me apart with a dagger of ice. I ran to the woods and became mal rishal, a forest lover who only rarely visited the city. Still, Mother and Father were sure I would eventually return and stay. To them, I was pouting over the loss of a puppy. And perhaps that would have become true in time. Perhaps I would have gone back to my old way of thinking.”

  Ranadar continued to draw his cloak through his fingers. “But only a hundred and fifty years after that awful day, I was visiting my birth home for the first time in decades when my Talfi appeared on the palace steps in the chains of an orcish slaver, and it was the most wonderful and terrifying moment of my life. When I saw you again, I knew I would never, ever give up this second chance. And I did not. I betrayed all my people, helped Aisa kill …” Here he paused for a deep, shuddering breath. “Kill my own father. I helped Danr repair the Iron Axe so he could slaughter my own people before they slaughtered the Stane. I did all this because Talfi had returned to me, and I would do it again.” He sighed hard and twisted the cloak about his fingers. “But you and I have spent perhaps two years together, Talashka. It takes longer than two years to unlearn the lessons of three hundred and fifty-five others. I am trying, but I often fail, especially where you are concerned. I am sorry for my mistake today.”