Bone War

by Steven Harper

  “We can fight. We don’t know that she’ll win,” Talfi shot back, though the words sounded empty, even to him. “Let’s warn the prince, get Balsia ready for the attack.”

  “After that earthquake?” Other Talfi said. “She could take the city any time she wants. The only thing holding her back is that Ranadar is still here and she doesn’t want him to get hurt.”

  “Come with me, Talashka.” Ranadar took him by the shoulders. “I need you. Be my chief adviser, the one who knows how the Kin think, the one who can tell me when I am uppity.” He laughed. “If I am king, I can create new laws that allow humans and elves to marry. Even when they are the same sex. What of that?”

  Other Talfi shifted uncomfortably but showed no signs of wandering off. Talfi shot him a pointed look to make him go away, but he stayed where he was. And the anger still squatted inside Talfi like a bloated toad.

  “And what are you forgetting, uppity elf?” The words came out harsher and more bitter than Talfi had intended.

  “Forgetting?” Ranadar tried to touch Talfi’s shoulder, but Talfi batted his hand away. “Talashka, what—?”

  “How can you forget,” Talfi growled, “what it would be like for me in Alfhame? I wouldn’t be your beloved husband. I wouldn’t be your happy little consort. I’d be a fucking slave.”

  “I could change that.” Ranadar’s voice rose as well, and his ears were turning red. “This is the point! I cannot change a thing when I am here, in this stinking, lazy, iron-ridden city! Have you forgotten what it is like for me here?”

  “Tell us,” Other Talfi said.

  “Shut up,” Talfi snarled. He knew he was overreacting, knew he was making things worse, but he couldn’t stop. A black miasma curled within him like rotted roots, poisoning his words and filling him with more anger. For a tiny moment he thought he actually smelled rotting plants, but he flung the sensation away with a shake of his head. He was too angry.

  “Every moment in this pig-sucking city is nausea,” Ranadar said, ignoring the exchange. His voice rose. “Every day is sand under my skin. Every second is a headache. I wish I could have gone with Danr and Aisa and Kalessa. At least then I would not live with filthy iron and dirty looks and wondering which human is hating me.”

  “Oh, but you just want to help!” Talfi’s own voice rose to match Ranadar’s. More pain and fear and frustration spilled out. The smell of rotting plants returned. “You just want to go back to your little kingdom and make things better for everyone!”

  “I do!” Ranadar snapped. “And I can get away from this cesspit at the same time!”

  “So humans live in a sewer!” Talfi shouted. “And you airy-fairy perfect slave-owning elves live in crystal palaces in Valahame with the Nine! The Fae shit and stink like the rest of us.”

  “My kind does not burn regi,” Ranadar said. “Remember that when you are rutting with your dark-haired boy.”

  The remark landed like a punch to the gut. Other Talfi gasped. Talfi stared at Ranadar for a long moment, mouth open. Ranadar wavered, then firmed his chin and looked away. Talfi spun and marched away.

  “Where are you going?” Ranadar called after him.

  “To find another bed to sleep in,” Talfi shot back over his shoulder. “Maybe one with a dark-haired boy in it.”

  Other Talfi hurried after him. “You shouldn’t be out by yourself,” he said. “You might—”

  “Get killed?” Talfi finished. The anger still burned hot and red inside him. “You’re a bigger danger to me than anyone else.”

  “You’ll calm down,” Other Talfi said. “You’ll come back.”

  “Will I?” Talfi rounded on him. They were barely in sight of Mrs. Farley’s house. Ranadar was still standing on the doorstep, but Talfi couldn’t tell if he was watching. He told himself he didn’t care. He didn’t. Let the uppity elf stew for a while. Maybe they needed some time apart anyway. They’d been together nearly every moment for the last two years, trying to make up for two hundred years of separation, and maybe that was a mistake. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be together like this. Ranadar was an elf, and elves didn’t think the way humans did. They didn’t live the way humans did. They didn’t love the way humans did.

  And they were both men.

  Their relationship was doomed from the start. Talfi just needed to get used to the idea. Maybe, if Ranadar wasn’t around, Talfi would forget all about him the next time he died anyway.

  “When are you coming back?” Other Talfi asked.

  Talfi set his jaw and walked away, ignoring the hot tears that pricked the back of his eyes.

  *

  Ranadar bolted awake, and he was in the wrong place. He glanced frantically about, trying to remember where he was. Above him, instead of a ceiling, thousands of stars coasted gently across velvet darkness. He lay in a tangle of blankets on the ground. For a confused moment, he was in the forests of Alfhame. Then memory returned in a flood. Talfi and the flesh golem had not returned, and eventually Ranadar had crept into the rooming house for blankets so he could make a bed in the courtyard beside the rooming house amid the noises of people in neighboring streets who were doing the same thing. Mrs. Farley had gone to sleep at the butcher’s, leaving Ranadar utterly alone for the first time in months. Ranadar’s heart beat fast in his chest. Something had wakened him, but he could not make out—

  Shouts and grunts and the clank of the metal came from the street. Protests. Screams. More shouts. Rumbling troll voices. Ranadar listened from his blanket, trying to learn what was going on, but the sounds were too garbled, and the noise of iron crashing on iron made him wince. For a moment he considered leaving the walls and seeing for himself, then scolded himself for being foolish. He did not need to become involved in every altercation in the entire city. Already he had caused enough trouble.

  More shouts, this time with the sound of fighting. The voices sounded familiar, but the clashing iron made identification impossible. It could not be Danr or Aisa or Kalessa—they were nowhere near Balsia.

  Tense again, Ranadar forced himself to lay back on the hard ground and automatically he reached toward Talfi for comfort before he remembered that Talfi was not there. Instead he made himself lace his fingers behind his head and work his jaw back and forth as he stared upward at the bejeweled sky, still exhausted but unable to find sleep again.

  Talfi was gone. Gone. When Ranadar had brought blankets down from the bedroom to spread in the walled courtyard, he had automatically created a place for Talfi. And when he had realized what he was doing, he could not bring himself to change it. Changing it would be admitting that Talfi was not returning, and anyway, how would it look if he did return and Ranadar had created a single bed?

  Except Talfi had not returned. An ant ate a tiny hole into Ranadar’s heart and gnawed it steadily larger every moment Talfi stayed away. In some ways, this was worse than thinking Talfi was dead. When Talfi was dead, there had been a finality. Now Ranadar could only wait and hope, and hope was slipping away like sand between his fingers, a few more grains, and a few more, and a few more. Soon, he would be left with a handful of nothing.

  Ranadar sighed and held his head. He had been a fool. Again. The argument itself had been idiotic, born of tension and fear and misdirected anger. He should have seen that. Once his own anger had died down, Ranadar went out to look for Talfi, not sure whether he was planning to berate him for being an idiot or beg his forgiveness. But he had been unable to find Talfi anywhere. Now Ranadar lay in lonely blankets on rocky ground by himself because his temper had gotten away from him.

  The iron in the city poked at Ranadar with sharp fingers, and he rolled over, trying to ignore it. His room in the house was above ground level, where most people kept iron implements, and that blunted the impact somewhat. Down here, the feeling was always worse. At least the commotion had ended, and with it the mind-spearing sound of iron clashing against iron. The constant dull headache, however, remained with him, and he wanted nothing more than a cool forest and
an absence of the awful metal. And Talfi next to him. He missed his form, his voice, his eyes, the way he called Ranadar an uppity elf. He missed—

  “Ran,” said a quiet, familiar voice. “Is that you? I can barely see.”

  Ranadar twisted, getting tangled in the blankets, and managed to sit up. Talfi was squatting next to him. Ranadar had not even heard him approach. His heart swelled and even the iron headache abated. Even Talfi’s mind was there, sharp and familiar. Shaking, he reached for Talfi’s hands. Talfi took them with a wry grin that made Ranadar want to leap into the stars themselves.

  “I am sorry, Talashka,” he said quickly. “I do not want to argue with you. I do not—”

  “No, Ran.” Talfi put a hand over Ranadar’s mouth, halting his words. “I’m sorry. Look, we were both tired and upset and angry, and we said a bunch of stuff we didn’t mean.” He smiled again, a slice of moonlight in the darkness. “One of us has to be mature, right?”

  “One of us,” Ranadar said with mock seriousness. Then his throat thickened. “Vik! I am so glad you returned, my Talashka! I could not live without—”

  Talfi kissed him, halting the words again, and sank to the blankets next to him. Tears of joy leaked from Ranadar’s eyes, and he ran his hands through Talfi’s hair, so glad to feel it under his hands again, to smell Talfi’s scent, to hear his voice. He could drink those sensations and never need to eat again.

  Eventually, they parted. “I do love you,” Talfi said. “Even when I’m angry at you, I love you. I’ll never do that again. I promise. We’ll work out what to do about Alfhame and everything else.”

  Ranadar’s every muscle went limp with relief at those words, and he swiped at his eyes. “Then come lie with me.”

  The sly grin returned. “You mean you want to—”

  “Sleep,” Ranadar said with a grin of his own. “I am exhausted. But now that you are here, I will be able to rest again.”

  They curled around each other under the blankets, and the distant sounds of iron did not bother Ranadar one bit.

  Morning came, bringing with it more noise than usual. Most people were already outdoors, so voices and calls and iron clanks came early. Booted footsteps marched past and faded. The guard out on patrol, no doubt. Ranadar’s stomach rumbled. When had he last eaten?

  He looked down at Talfi, a deep sleeper and never a morning person. Oh, what a relief to wake up beside him! Ranadar reached down to touch the brown hair that curled just a little, then ran the back of his finger down Talfi’s faintly scratchy cheek. Talfi shifted in his sleep and brought his hand up as if to shoo away a fly. Ranadar smiled and teasingly touched the end of Talfi’s nose. Talfi sniffed and brought his hand up again. Then Ranadar saw the missing fingernail and two twisted fingers.

  The chill of Halza’s entire realm flashed through him. Ranadar jerked his hand back as if he had plunged it into ice water. “No!” he whispered.

  Talfi—no, Other Talfi—opened sky blue eyes. “Morning,” he said sleepily, then caught Ranadar’s expression. “What’s wrong?”

  A serpent’s nest of emotions tangled up inside Ranadar. They slid around, leaving slick trails across his ribs. Acid boiled bitter at the back of his throat. He had spent the night with a flesh golem. He had held the creature in his arms. He had kissed the lips. He had run his hands across the skin, all the time basking in the relief that his Talashka had returned, when all the time Talfi was still out there, still angry at him, still gone. His relief had been as false as this creature’s love. It was like finishing a fine meal and learning the cook had first urinated into the pot. Thank Rolk they had not shared their bodies.

  “Halza spawn,” Ranadar spat. “Vik filth.”

  Other Talfi understood. His face fell. “I’m real, Ran.”

  “Saying it does not make it true, creature,” Ranadar said. “Leave!”

  “My blood is real!” Other Talfi pleaded. “My memories are real! My love is—”

  “You are not Talfi!” Ranadar barked. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to calm down. “I know how you think you feel about me and how you—”

  “I do feel about you,” Other Talfi interrupted. “Why is that so hard to understand?”

  “Your emotions were given to you by someone else.” Ranadar was trying to hold on to his temper, but it was difficult. And he wanted a bath. “You only exist because my mother created you.”

  “The same can be said about you,” Other Talfi countered. “And you loved me last night. I’m the same person I was then. You just know more about me now.”

  “Last night I thought you were someone else.” Ranadar straightened, his jaw tight, and took a deep breath. Other Talfi looked up at him with those maddening blue eyes, and a small inner voice asked Ranadar what would happen if Talfi did not return. “Look, you said your emotions are legitimate and I should recognize them. If that is true, then you must also recognize mine. I do not wish to cause you pain, but I feel no love for you.” He chose his words carefully, making them fall flat and hard as granite. “I cannot love you, and I do not wish to. Even if you were not a flesh golem, I would not love you. It is because I love Talfi. The … first Talfi. And you are not he.”

  The sun cleared the courtyard wall, throwing a waterfall of Rolk’s golden light across the little courtyard. Other Talfi drew his knees up to his chin just as the sun struck him, and he looked so handsome that Ranadar held his breath and reminded himself hard that this was only a golem.

  Could golems actually be people? He did not want to think about it. It had been difficult enough to work his mind around the idea that humans were more than simple sheep. Golems were animated objects of clay and stone, or even flesh. They did not live.

  Or? Where was the dividing line between life and nonlife? Other Talfi was made of flesh and he spoke and acted like a human. How indeed was that any different from how a real person acted? Ranadar could even sense Other Talfi’s mind, something he could not do with clay golems. Were the Nine Races merely flesh golems created by the Nine?

  The question was too complicated to unsnarl right now. Right now Ranadar had more important problems to solve. He strode for the courtyard gate. Other Talfi struggled out of the blankets to follow him.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To find the real Talfi,” Ranadar said. “I need his forgiveness, and I need his help to stop my mother. And I do not need company.”

  To Ranadar’s relief, Other Talfi did not follow.

  The city was still chaotic, though cleanup was already under way. Ranadar even found a street vendor selling boiled eggs and was able to feed himself. Life had to go on.

  Worry continued to gnaw and nag at him. Once his stomach stopped bothering him, he closed his eyes and felt about with his mind, searching for Talfi—or anyone who felt like him. Talfi and the flesh golems all appeared exactly alike to Ranadar’s mental eye, which was how he hadn’t realized last night’s substitution. Another cold shudder came over him at the thought, and he pushed it aside, trying to concentrate. He found Other Talfi, still in Mrs. Farley’s courtyard, easily enough, and lots of other humans and many Stane beneath his feet. He got a flicker of an idea, the image that they were digging, digging toward the east.

  Ranadar shook his head—he needed to find Talfi, but there was no trace of him, or of any other flesh golems. However, his range was short, and all the iron in the city kept fences around his mind. Searching this way was frustrating and painful both. He wished he were more powerful, like his mother, able to push his mind further out so he could find Talfi quickly with thoughts alone. But he was not his mother.

  He shook this idea away. The trouble was, he had no idea where to find Talfi, and Balsia was a large place. He could try some of their more favorite haunts—inns and taverns where Talfi liked to drink and Ranadar liked to eat—but he was not sure they would be open for business, or even left standing. Then he remembered the guards from before the earthquake, the ones who had tried to detain Talfi and Other Talfi b
ecause the prince was becoming nervous about the flesh golems, though Prince Karsten did not know the true nature of the creatures. What if Talfi had gotten arrested last night? Maybe he and a lot of other flesh golems were down at the Gold Keep right now. That would explain why Ranadar had not felt any of them.

  The Gold Keep. Ranadar chewed his lower lip. Prince Karsten needed to know the truth about the flesh golems, and Ranadar had intended to discuss the matter with him, but the earthquake and Talfi’s protracted death and the argument afterward had flung the idea right out of his mind until now. Mother had made it clear that Ranadar needed to hurry.

  He changed direction and trotted down the street. Along the way, he came across a knot of humans speaking in hushed tones and thought he heard one of them say arrested. Ranadar halted and, for safety’s sake, spun a small glamour that blurred his features and made it difficult for anyone to see under his hood.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but did you just say something about an arrest?”

  “I did,” said the human, an older woman running to plump. “You hear about the trolls, too?”

  “Trolls?” Now Ranadar was confused.

  “They was out last night,” said one of the others, an older man. “Stomping around, grabbing young men. Those tusks of theirs was shining in the torchlight like iron spikes. I saw ’em myself. Didn’t you hear ’em? It was noisy, it was.”

  Ranadar remembered hearing them, but he had been thinking about Talfi. Who had probably been in the neighborhood when all this happened. His mouth went dry. “The trolls were arresting young men?” he repeated. “Why?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” said a third human, a blond boy not even eighteen. “Those Stane move into our town and cause this earthquake, and now they’re grabbin’ people off the street! Vik! Someone needs to teach them a thing or five.”