Idol of Bone

by Jane Kindred

  “Oh, yes, Geff, we ate her.” Jak glared, standing to face him. “We’ve been holed up here indulging in orgies and eating human flesh.”

  “Where did you come by all this?” Geffn stepped into the interior and examined the sideboard.

  “Ra’s work.”

  “Ra’s work?” Keiren echoed. “What do you mean?” He approached the sideboard and picked up a discarded bird’s wing. “These are animal carcasses.”

  “So she did come here.” Geffn turned from the sideboard. “Where is she?”

  “Gone,” said Jak, not feeling generous.

  Geffn breached the distance between them, the stony expression turning to outrage. “You must be out of your mind. You stand here completely unconcerned. You self-indulgent—you insufferable—”

  “Asshole is always a good one,” Ahr offered under his breath.

  Geffn ignored him. “Ra is out there somewhere—dead, most likely—and the two of you stand here in your orgiastic dishabille without the slightest concern.”

  “Orgiastic dishabille?” Jak knew better than to laugh but couldn’t help it. “I’m wearing everything but socks!” Geffn was as angry as Jak had ever seen him, no doubt fueled by genuine worry for Ra. It was petty to keep poking at him like a bull in a ring. “Look, Geffn, it’s not that I’m not concerned. But Ra has greater resources than I would have thought.”

  “What resources? What in sooth are you talking about?”

  “These are animal carcasses,” Keiren repeated, still holding the bird’s wing. “Bones.”

  Geffn whirled on him in exasperation. “Who gives a damn about the bones, Keiren.”

  “Ra couldn’t have prepared this, I’m telling you.” Keiren gave Jak an uneasy look. “She wouldn’t even have known where to begin. This isn’t even local fowl. None of this is local. These shouldn’t be here at all. There’s no way they could be here, except by—”

  “Magic,” said Jak.

  Geffn opened his mouth and then closed it, his face blank with shock. He looked helplessly to Jak as though willing Jak to refute it, to tell him Keiren was out of his mind.

  “She is MeerRa of Rhyman,” Jak said with a sigh. “A newly ‘renaissanced’ fugitive of the Deltan Expurgation.”

  Keiren’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. “I knew it! I had a feeling from the start we were harboring a criminal!”

  Geffn, never an advocate of the decadent race of Meer, faltered. “The Meer were murdered. The Deltans—” He threw a black look at Ahr. “The Deltans are the criminals.”

  Keiren gaped at him. “Well, there’s a fine turn of mind. And it only took the fair form of a Meeric woman to win you over. Has everyone gone as mad as the Meer?”

  Ahr stepped forward with a look of menace. “I don’t care for this talk. There will be no more mention of that word in my home. Now if you’ll excuse us, Jak and I would like to dress.”

  Keiren tried his best to look indignant, but there were no takers, and he turned, sulking, and climbed from the mound.

  Geffn remained where he was, staring Ahr down. “You knew her. She knew you. I want to know what this is all about.”

  “I have no quarrel with you, Geffn. Don’t make one.”

  Geffn looked at Jak to prove the point of their quarrel, and then mounted the stairs. “So be it, Deltan. But I intend to set out in search of Ra.”

  “You’re not going to find her.”

  Geffn paused. “And why is that?”

  “Because she’s gone,” said Ahr. “Gone to Rhyman.”

  Jak was just as startled as Geffn by this cool statement. “That would be suicide,” Geffn exclaimed.

  “It would,” Ahr agreed.

  Jak didn’t care for the slight smile on his face as he said it. “What makes you so sure that’s where she’s headed? Why would she go there?”

  “She’s bent on completing the Expurgation, seeking out another of her kind.”

  Geffn watched their exchange with a look of reservation. “Are there others?”

  Ahr rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I know of one.” He met Jak’s eyes.

  Geffn gave them both a dark look. “Then I’ll go to Rhyman myself and stop her.” He hoisted himself over the bank of snow and was gone.

  Jak sat down in the pile of blankets, emotionally exhausted. Ra, returned to Rhyman. She would be discovered easily. Her Meeric ways were too obvious for Deltans to overlook. Jak imagined her, garish in her animal coat, stumbling into the dusty, crowded streets of the place she’d once ruled. In any state, she’d be a bright, glaring target for the warring classes. In her current state, wild, and unanchored… Jak didn’t want to think of how she might be overpowered in the street, how they might destroy her this time, a frenzied mob that might tear her delicate limbs from their sockets.

  Ahr had dressed quickly, already pulling on boots.

  Jak frowned. “What are you doing?”

  He answered without looking up, lacing furiously. “I’m going to stop your erstwhile lover from joining my erstwhile lover.” Ahr grabbed his coat and bounded up the steps of the mound without another word.

  Ahr plunged through the snow, grinding his teeth. Geffn was a hotheaded fool. He had no idea what he was dealing with, believing Ra was some delicate innocent. And the look he’d given Ahr when he’d seen him half undressed next to Jak made it obvious what his sudden need to play Ra’s champion was really about. He’d never liked Ahr, and now Ahr had trespassed upon his territory.

  Jak scrambled after him. “Ahr! Would you just wait? Slow down!”

  “I’ve waited long enough.”

  “Waited for what?” Jak caught up to him and grabbed his elbow. “Ahr.”

  “You were right,” he said without slowing. “I have been waiting for Ra, I just didn’t know it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m an Expurgist, Jak.”

  Jak was silent for a moment, keeping pace with him as Ahr crunched over the snow. “Ahr, listen to me. What Ra did to you in the past—she’s been punished enough for it.”

  He slowed at last, turning against a pain in his ribs that had nothing to do with his pace. “You’re taking her side?”

  “I’m not taking anyone’s side, but we can’t leave her to be bludgeoned again in the street. I can’t. And you’re not a killer, so don’t stand here and tell me you are.”

  Jak didn’t understand. He couldn’t have Geffn bringing her back. He couldn’t live if Ra were here. He couldn’t breathe.

  He tried not to lose it, wishing Jak would let this go. “Ra should have stayed dead.”

  “But she didn’t. She reentered the world here, where you are.” Jak took his hand. “She sought you out from the vague fabric of a past even she didn’t remember. Don’t you think you owe her something?”

  Ahr snatched his hand away, grasping once more at the easier emotion of outrage to keep from succumbing to the sucking despair. “I owe him nothing!”

  Jak stuffed both hands in the pockets of the well-worn dungarees. “He, Ahr. This isn’t he we’re speaking of. This is she.”

  He nearly laughed aloud at the insistence on the proper pronoun. The look was in Jak’s eyes, the one he’d feared and expected to see before. The one he’d seen in Geffn’s. He shook his head. “You’re all tainted by her, aren’t you? You see her as an innocent, something to be protected.” He began to plod over the snow again, stepping in the hard-packed prints of Geffn’s boots to avoid sinking knee-deep into a drift. “The charms of the Meer still work.”

  Jak ran to keep up. “What is renaissance for, Ahr, if not to start anew? Of course I see her as someone different from the Ra you knew. She is different. She tries to put on a front of understanding, and now remembering, but she hardly knows who she is or what she’s doing. If you’d seen her on the moor that evening, slight and vulne
rable, you’d understand. She’d conjured nothing but that absurd cloak and boots, like a child playing dress-up.” The words were almost reverent.

  Ahr stopped and stared at Jak, the pain in his chest making it hard to breathe, like a wound that had pierced a lung. “How can you speak of this to me? This is how you love me, to torment me like this? If I didn’t know better, I’d believe you loved Ra.”

  A veil seemed to drop over Jak’s face, all emotion closed away behind it. “I do love Ra.”

  The chest wound deepened, Jak’s words digging in like a knife. Ra had stolen everything from him, even pursuing him through time and distance and the mocking permanence of death to take what little Ahr might claim. He felt as though the two of them had conspired to violate him as he lay against Jak’s dubiously offered body—his arousal, his ejaculation elicited from him for his humiliation with deceit. He was a mockery to them.

  Jak was without mercy, the impassive face offering no apology, no explanation, not even the slightest indication Ahr had misunderstood. The momentary raft of comfort in his sea of loneliness had drifted apart as though it had been tied with water-soluble string. And Ra had done it.

  “And yet you love me.” It was a taunting statement, daring Jak to deny it.

  Jak was diplomatic, as ever. “There are different kinds of love.”

  Angry tears sprang to his eyes, humiliating him further. “What a fool I am. Groping you and trying to bed you after your tender admission of love. That was quite considerate of you to humor me with my little debacle, as if you had an ounce of sexuality.” He bit his tongue on the words that wanted out, and then the pain in his chest expelled them. “You may not be a woman, but you certainly are a cunt.”

  Jak swallowed, face white, and after a moment of hideous silence, began to walk again at a dogged pace in the depressions Geffn had made before them in the snow. He could take the word back. He could apologize. But acting like an ass had the surprising effect of numbing the sucking chest wound to a dull ache.

  Within a quarter of an hour, Ahr caught sight of Geffn on the frozen bank of the Filial, the highland’s source of fresh water that cascaded from the purifying springs of the mountain when it thawed. He carried nothing with him, ridiculous for a journey in the midst of winter. He was like a pouting child.

  Jak, a few paces behind Ahr, spotted him too. “Geffn!”

  He turned his head briefly at Jak’s shout, but didn’t slow his pace at the sight of them. Ahr strode forward with determination.

  “Come to help or to hinder?” asked Geffn as they neared, not turning around.

  “Help,” said Jak.

  “Hinder,” Ahr countered.

  Geffn stopped to catch his breath and stared at the two of them. “All right,” he said. “Deltan, your argument first.”

  “No argument.” Ahr drew back his arm and punched Geffn squarely in the jaw. The younger man spun to the ground with the dizzying speed of the blow, his face a pure canvas of astonishment, and lay dazed beneath the white winter sun. Ahr hadn’t thought about it beforehand, and he was almost as surprised by his own action as Geffn was, though as a physical outlet for all that was bottled up inside him, it felt superb.

  Jak grabbed Ahr and swung him about. “What in falsehood was that for?”

  “Incentive.” He yanked his arm away and crouched beside Geffn, who’d started to rise, pinning him with a knee against his hair.

  “What in fuck?” Geffn tried to yank his hair from under Ahr.

  “I’ll fight you all the way to Rhyman if I have to, but you’re not bringing her back. The time of the Meer is over. Ra’s time is over. Just let her go. Let her finish it.” Ahr stood, his boots kicking up a fine dusting of snow.

  Geffn shook the snow from his coat with a jerk as he climbed to his feet. “Don’t worry, Deltan. Her time with you is over. I’ll see that you never come near her again. In fact, I’ll see you banned from Haethfalt’s collective.”

  “I’m already gone. There’s nothing in the mounds I’d miss. But I will see to it that you never reach Rhyman.”

  Jak was observing him as if he were a stranger, or maybe mad. He wouldn’t have disputed the latter. He’d been headed there for thirteen years.

  “And just where do you intend to go?”

  “To the Delta, where I belong.”

  “Then what’s to prevent us following you?” Jak stared down Ahr’s challenge. “Are you going to fight us both? That will grow tiring as the day goes on. Regardless, we could wait until you’re long gone and go there anyway. You may be Deltan, but you have no claim to right-of-way over the high desert.”

  Geffn eyed Jak with suspicion. “Why are you suddenly on my side?”

  “I’m not on anybody’s side,” Jak insisted. “I want to prevent Ra from hurting herself. She’s confused right now, and in a dangerous state.” Once again, it was Ra whom Jak wanted to protect—after everything Ahr had shared of himself. After he’d literally laid himself bare, trusting Jak to know him, to understand him, as he’d never done with anyone.

  He was sick of Jak’s cool control, of Jak’s always being right, no matter whom it hurt. “Jak wants what you want.” Ahr curled his lip. “To fuck her.”

  The cool exterior cracked like a block of ice struck with a mallet. Jak swung at him as Ahr had swung at Geffn, but Ahr was ready for it. They wrestled and went down with fists and arms hurtling at one another. Jak was shorter but stockier than Ahr, and it was a fair match until Ahr dug his fist into Jak’s unbound hair and yanked Jak down into the snow, climbing on top.

  “You prick!” Jak shrieked. “You fight like a girl!”

  The insult was so uncharacteristic that Ahr began to laugh, still holding Jak’s hair, and Jak took advantage of the moment to bring one knee swiftly home into his groin. Ahr lost his grip and doubled over while Jak scrambled up and left him groaning on the ground.

  Above him, Geffn was howling with laughter.

  “All right, that’s enough,” Jak insisted, but Geffn was overcome. Bent over with his hands on his knees, he wheezed, struggling to breathe, while Ahr vomited into the snow. When Ahr staggered to his knees, Jak sighed and reached down to help.

  “Fuck yourself,” Ahr said through gritted teeth. This brought more high wheezing sounds from a red-faced Geffn, who still couldn’t stand upright, and Jak threw him a look that only made him worse.

  “Come on, Ahr, a truce.” Jak held out a hand. He reached up after a moment as though to take it, but instead, clasped the extended arm at the elbow as he stood and threw Jak backward onto the snow.

  “Thank you, Jak,” he said with a grim smile as Jak lay groaning below him. “You’ve ensured in more ways than I would ever have thought possible that I will never again have to worry about contraceptive measures in bed.”

  Ten: Discord

  The Meerchild was his special window onto the Meeric world, but Nesre had other means of seeing. The regenerative organs of the dead Meer weren’t the only ones he’d taken, nor had Alya been the only Meer whose body had been scavenged for useful parts. The Meer had been prized for their magical properties long before they’d ruled over the soths. Less powerful than the Meer of recent times, early Meer were hunted for sport and their bodies consumed to transfer specific attributes directly. The heart might be consumed to give long life, or the sex organs, to give virility and stamina. Such practices declined when it became clear that Meer might be worth more alive than dead if given the right incentive.

  But now that the Meer had outlived their purpose, a black market in the trade of Meeric charms made from what remained of them was thriving. Most of it was codswallop—the shriveled penis of an ordinary man who’d died of natural causes passed off as Meeric, or powdered components, more common than whole, being made of other organic compounds entirely. But for the right price, and with the right connections, a small percentage of authentic artifacts remained i
n circulation even thirteen years after the Meer had met their just end. Scattering Meeric elements in such a way further ensured that even time and natural decay wouldn’t inadvertently free the dead Meer to return when they at last became nothing but dust.

  Nesre had a full arsenal of Meeric pieces, rarely used. Among his personal apothecary was a jar of powdered Meertongue. This was a dangerous compound, as it could be used to conjure if one knew how to master it, but Nesre found it more useful for sending long-distance communications. Among the mercenary Meerhunters dispatched to the falend, Nesre had ensured that one he knew personally and trusted would be among them. Pike had once been a litter-bearer for MeerAlya, chosen from among the most well-respected families in In’La. Nesre had given Pike a small amount of Meertongue to take with him, and a message had just arrived.

  The swinging of a Meerseye pendulum hanging over the table in Nesre’s study announced its arrival. He brought out a clean sheaf of parchment, sprinkled it with Meeric urine collected from the child—the secret ingredient to which only he had access—and dusted it with Meertongue. The powder began to move of its own accord, sticking to the droplets of urine and spelling out words upon the parchment.

  Unearthed the falender who was harboring our fugitive, but alas, they must have gotten wind of our inquiries and have fled capture, along with a Deltan expatriate.

  Nesre drummed his fingers on the parchment. He’d already seen Ra on the move, and it was clear where the Meer was heading. But the powder was still shifting, as though Pike were still speaking.

  There is also an interesting development here in Mole Downs. An old friend of yours is running a fortune-telling scam on the locals…the Maiden Sky.

  Nesre breathed in sharply and nearly choked on his spittle. Coughing, he read it again. Ume. The temple whore he’d used to bring down MeerAlya, not twenty miles from the sighting of a renaissanced Meer. The lovely bitch had found herself another patron—perhaps even been instrumental in his return.