Bone Crier's Dawn

by Kathryn Purdie

  I tremble with rage. This is nonsense. The Chained are slippery. You can’t keep them in cages for long. Roxane knows that. They all know that. “You’re afraid of Odiva. You’re just avoiding a confrontation with her.”

  “Odiva has nothing to do with us anymore. We shun her, as we shun you.” Roxane draws herself taller so the tines of her antler crown tower over mine. “Leave this place, Sabine. You are never to return here.”

  I blink back furious tears. “I can’t help who my mother is.”

  “You lied to us. We might have prevented what happened tonight had you told us the truth from the beginning.”

  A torrent of images flash to mind: Ailesse yanked into the Gate of dust, Maurille lying on the ledge with her head bleeding, thousands of terrified Unchained souls swept from Elara’s peaceful realm, my mother set free, my father beside her, vicious cunning on their faces.

  “Go, Sabine,” Roxane says. “You are no longer a part of our famille.”

  I flinch slightly and look to Chantae and Pernelle again. They’re staring at the ground, along with the other elders. My chest caves inward with terrible hurt, even as my blood rages hotter. “Cowards,” I hiss, and turn my back on Roxane. I cross the courtyard to Milicent and Dolssa. “Let him go. Our people have stolen enough from him.”

  Without a word, Milicent and Dolssa unhand Bastien. I move toward the exiting courtyard tunnel, but he doesn’t immediately follow me. First, he strides to Roxane and spits at her feet.

  She returns his dark glare. “If you are ever seen near this castle again, I will command my famille to kill you without question.”

  He grins, daring her to try, and then swaggers away to join me. “Formidable Bone Criers? What a joke.”

  I brush away a few stray tears as we make our way outside. I’m only angry, I tell myself. I’m not lost or devastated or completely alone in the world now.

  Bastien mumbles a string of foul words, cursing Roxane and the elders. Half of me agrees with him, but the stronger part—the deeper part I’ve buried all my life—can’t abide it. “Stop!” I cut him off once we’re outside the castle ruins.

  His brows launch up. “They just banished you, Sabine. They refused to help us find Odiva. You’re right. They are cowards.”

  “No, they’re just uprooted.” I finally feel a flicker of Light in me, and it helps me see reason. “Did you see their faces?” I remember what Odiva told me when she confessed she was my mother, and I repeat it to him: “‘What Ferriers are tasked with demands great faith.’ This treachery has just destroyed their faith. No matrone before Odiva ever betrayed our famille. It throws everything a Leurress must do into question—sacrificing animals for graces, sacrificing amourés to complete rites of passage, risking our lives to ferry the dead.”

  Bastien crosses his arms. “They should have questioned it, anyway.”

  I nod, growing thoughtful. “I did. It was why I never felt like one of them, why I swore to never become sensitized to bloodshed.” I give a mournful laugh. “But now I have the blood of five animals on my hands, and I would have killed Casimir if it meant saving Ailesse.” I stiffen and murmur, “Cas . . .”

  Bastien frowns. “What about him?”

  I rush along the overgrown path that leads from the castle garden to the plateau along the cliffside. “I have to find him.”

  Bastien tags after me. “No, we have to find Odiva.”

  “You find Odiva. We’ll meet later and form a plan once we know where she is and what she’s up to. First, I have to get to the king. Tell me where your hideout is in Dovré.”

  “Forget about Cas,” he grumbles. “At least Ailesse is safe from their soul-bond for the time being.”

  “No, she isn’t.”

  He stops in his tracks. “What do you mean? She’s in the Underworld.”

  “Yes, but she’s alive, Bastien.” The hard line of his mouth says he doesn’t question it, either. “Which means she can die. And if something terrible were to happen to Cas, she will die. Then we’ll have no hope of saving her.”

  “Merde.” His eyes widen, and he drags his hands through his wet hair. “Sabine, last night Cas escaped my hideout after Ailesse left. He’s out in the open now, walking bait for the dead dissenters you weren’t able to ferry.”

  A wave of dizziness slams into me. “I have to get to Beau Palais.” I tear away across the plateau, still in the direction of Dovré. Cas surely went home to his castle.

  “Wait!” Bastien races after me but quickly falls behind. He can’t keep up with my nighthawk speed. “King Godart is probably headed straight there!” he shouts.

  “All the more reason for me to hurry!” I call back to him.

  I set my jaw like Ailesse would and run faster. I have to protect Casimir.

  There’s no saving my sister if she loses her soul.

  24

  Ailesse

  I RACE ALONGSIDE SABINE, WAVING my hands in front of her face. “Look at me!” She doesn’t turn, doesn’t blink. Her hazy image streaks at the edges, like a candle’s flame when stared at for too long. Everything around me has that same smeared appearance—the wild grass along the plateau, the clouds pulling away from the full moon, the ruins of Château Creux behind us. But when I glance down at myself, my hands and dress are crisp in my vision. They’re also a strange color I’ve never seen before, nothing like chazoure.

  “Play the flute again!” I cry, keeping pace with Sabine as she runs faster. I don’t need my crutch anymore. My shattered knee feels whole. I’m able to use my peregrine falcon’s full speed. Maybe Sabine unwittingly shared her graces with me, like she shared them with Bastien, when we formed the channel between the Gates. Or maybe bones don’t stay broken when you’re dead. “Open the Gates again! Try anywhere! Try here!” We’re on solid earth, not a bridge of any kind, but I’m desperate. “Please, Sabine, I have to come back!”

  She remains focused on the east, toward Beau Palais and Casimir. He must be there if he escaped his bonds in Bastien’s quarry room.

  Tears pool in my sister’s eyes. It’s easy to guess what she’s feeling. I know her better than I know myself. I always have. She believes she’s to blame for losing me. She’s guilt ridden over Maurille’s death, my mother’s escape from the Underworld, King Godart’s resurrection, and all the Unchained who were stolen from Paradise.

  I touch her arm, but she doesn’t feel me, just like Bastien didn’t feel me when I sat beside him on the cavern ledge and tried to comfort him. That’s when my panic set in. Until that moment, alone beside him, I’d watched everything happen to him and Sabine and the Ferriers in shocked silence. And although I was horrified, I felt strangely removed from it all. I didn’t realize I was in the Underworld—I thought I’d evaded the Gate of dust—until Bastien went on ignoring me on the ledge, even when I wept and cursed and screamed for him to stop playing games.

  The plateau merges into forestland. I don’t see any signs of the places that should exist in Tyrus’s realm—no bloodred scalding river or scorching Perpetual Sands or smoke and ash from the Furnace of Justice. Only familiar trees and deer trails surround me. I don’t understand. Did I really make it to the Underworld, or am I caught somewhere in between?

  My panic flares, bearing down on my ribs and squeezing my heart tight. But it doesn’t beat faster. I can’t feel my pulse at all. I cry out at the top of my lungs, but don’t have to catch my breath afterward. My voice echoes on and on, though it shouldn’t reverberate in these woods. Maybe everything I’ve been taught about the Underworld is all lies, and Tyrus creates a personal hell for each soul he snares here.

  I dart faster to keep up with Sabine and tug at her arm, though it doesn’t jostle. “Please, bring me back! You have the flute. Why won’t you even try?” She doesn’t bat an eye at me.

  Think, Ailesse. No Leurress has ever been able to open the Gates once they’re closed. Sabine will have to wait until the next ferrying night. Calm yourself and be patient.

  I stifle a whimper. Tha
t’s impossible. I’ll be driven to madness before the next ferrying night. The new moon won’t come for another fourteen days.

  A guttural and masculine voice calls out, “You are forbidden in this sphere.”

  I startle and jerk around. Several yards away, I glimpse a spark of chazoure. A man. He rushes behind a wide trunk and hides as heavy footsteps thump nearer, radiating from where the voice came from. If Sabine heard it, she makes no indication and keeps racing eastward. I stop following her. I creep closer to the tree backlit with chazoure.

  “The Chained belong to Tyrus,” the guttural voice continues. “It is best not to attempt escaping your fate. The god of the Underworld does not look kindly on cowards.”

  Fifteen yards away, the man who is speaking stalks into view. I slip behind a low-lying branch. He’s lit with the same strange color I’m glowing with, and he’s a blacksmith, by all appearances. A studded leather apron is draped over his bare chest, and he wears matching wrist cuffs and tall boots. Instead of sooty grime, he’s dirty with smudges of chazoure. It’s smeared across his face, neck, and trousers.

  “Any last words before you meet your master?” the blacksmith asks, his short-cropped hair rustling in an eerie breeze that affects only him and me. The ends of my hair and my skirt also billow like I’m underwater. “A show of bravery might make a small difference. Pleading for your chains to be removed won’t. I forged them myself, and nothing that exists among the damned has the power to break them.”

  The hiding soul is quiet for a moment, and then he steps out from behind the tree, his hands clasped in prayer. Chains band diagonally across his tunic like a shameful sash. “I will do anything, kind sir, if you’ll only help me. You have a sledgehammer and a sharp chisel on your belt there. Surely there is something you can do.”

  The blacksmith sighs, a weary and angry rattle from his chest that feels ancient, though he looks to be only ten years older than me. “I can deliver justice, nothing more,” he says, and draws the hammer from his belt. He swings it overhead with both hands and slams it against the ground.

  Boom!

  The thunderous sound ripples in waves throughout the forest. I expect the earth to shake or the trees to topple, but not even a leaf stirs. Only the Chained man trembles. “What have you done?” he asks.

  The blacksmith stands tall, his muscled arms flexed from exertion. He doesn’t answer. He backs away slowly from the ground he just struck.

  Muffled yips and howls rise from below. Sharp claws break through the surface, but they don’t disturb the dirt. A pointed canine face emerges next and bares its fangs. I stare, astonished. It’s a golden jackal. I’ve never seen one myself, but its image is engraved in the courtyard of Château Creux.

  A few feet away from the jackal, another fanged mouth tears up from the ground, then another one nearby. In a few short seconds, a total of six jackals dig their way up and surround the Chained man. He tries to run, but they herd him in, circling closer, their jaws foaming, their eyes glowing red.

  The largest jackal snarls and lunges for the man’s neck. The others ambush him, too. They snatch at his limbs and chazoure clothes with their teeth. My stomach lurches. The man’s horrified scream grates on my ears, but I do nothing to intervene. I’ve trained all my life to deliver the Chained through the Gates of the Underworld . . . though maybe I would have thought twice about it if I’d witnessed what happened here on the other side.

  The jackals drag the man through the unseen portal in the ground. The last part of him I see is his tensed and outstretched hand before it’s also sucked away.

  The blacksmith exhales and slides his hammer back into the loop on his belt. I expect him to stomp away, but he turns. He looks directly at me.

  I can thank Bastien for teaching me the first word that drops off my tongue. “Merde.”

  The blacksmith narrows his glowing eyes and strides in my direction. I don’t hide. I don’t run. I find the girl in me who dove into a lagoon to kill a tiger shark, and I square my shoulders. Cowardice is a crime, wherever I am. I will not let it mark me.

  When he’s three feet away, his stern gaze lowers to the pouch of grace bones around my neck. “Watch yourself in this place, Leurress,” he grumbles. “I am all-seeing . . .” Another soul-weary sigh escapes him, but his brows form a hardened line. “Whether I wish it or not.”

  He walks past me without stopping and travels deeper into the forest.

  I stare after him, my mouth unhinged. “Wait!” I blurt. “What do you mean? Watch myself how?”

  His heavy boots stop. He turns and regards me, his jaw muscle tight. “There is one rule in this realm of the Underworld, girl: no intervening in matters of life and death.” He wipes a smear of chazoure onto his sleeve before he swaggers away. “It isn’t too late for you to form chains.”

  25

  Bastien

  I LOWER MYSELF DOWN THE scaffolding to my quarry room and find Marcel and Birdine on their knees, brushing up shattered pieces of my father’s figurines. Marcel looks at me and pushes his floppy hair out of his eyes. “Oh, hello there.” He flashes a half smile. “We were hoping to have this cleaned up before you got back.”

  “I told Marcel we should wait,” Birdine adds, eyeing me nervously. Her frizzy ginger hair is pulled up in a knot on the top of her head. She wears it like that when she takes a bath in the pool of groundwater off one of the tunnels below. “We know how particular you are about these statues.”

  “But I told Birdie not to worry.” Marcel fidgets with the decapitated head of the earth goddess. “I said you’d be more angry that Cas escaped.” He turns to her. “That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Her rosy complexion flushes scarlet. “And I’m awfully sorry about that, Bastien. I didn’t realize His Majesty was up here all alone.”

  Marcel reaches into his pocket. “Seems he got ahold of one of Birdie’s hairpins, too.” He pulls it out. “We found this by his open shackles. He must have used it to pick the lock.”

  He chuckles until Birdine shoots him a murderous glare. “I have no idea how he pinched it off me,” she says. “Who knew the king was a proper thief?”

  I doubt he is. It wouldn’t have been so hard to filch a pin. Birdine is always fussing with her hair, and she was usually the one to get Cas something to eat.

  I slowly walk into the room and pick up my dolphin statue. I run my finger over the crack in its tail and picture my father’s frantic eyes, glowing the color of the dead, and my chest pulls tight. “Cas escaped on my watch,” I murmur. “Sabine is on her way to bring him back.” Cas knows the way here. If they don’t arrive soon, I’ll go to Beau Palais and make sure she gets the job done.

  “Sabine?” Marcel asks. “We haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “I guess she’s been busy,” I say.

  “It will be good to catch up,” he replies. “I actually miss her, you know? She’s a sweet girl when she’s not trying to kill you.”

  I nod numbly and set the dolphin statue on the shelf.

  Marcel brushes a few more limestone fragments off the ground. “I’m sure Ailesse will be grateful to see her, too.”

  Ailesse. My palm aches, and I flex my hand. She’s slipping out of my grip all over again.

  My eyes drift to her white chemise, folded on the floor in the corner of the room. I shuffle over and pick it up. After I brought her new clothes, she used the chemise as a pillow. I wanted so badly to sleep beside her and tuck myself around her body. Instead I gave her space and kept to the opposite wall.

  I bring the chemise to my nose, and Ailesse’s earth-and-flower scent fills my lungs.

  “Are you all right, Bastien?” Birdine tilts her head.

  I tear a piece of the chemise away, stuff it in my pocket, and harden my face. “Where’s Jules? Bathing now that the pool is free for once?” Birdine flinches at the bite in my voice, and I immediately regret taking out my frustration on her. Now that I know my friends haven’t been arrested, I need to leave, st
art searching for Odiva. I’m betting I’ll find her at Beau Palais, if that’s where Godart was really headed.

  “Jules isn’t here.” Marcel stands up.

  Birdine rises beside him. “We thought she was with Ailesse.”

  “She’s not with Ailesse.” I rub the back of my neck. “Dammit, Jules,” I curse under my breath and hurry over to the scaffolding. It’s almost dawn, which means she’s been out all night. If one of the Chained attacked her again . . .

  I quickly climb the ladder and call over my shoulder, “Marcel, I dropped my father’s knife when I fought Cas.”

  “You fought the king?” Birdine asks, as if that’s somehow more criminal than abducting him.

  “It’s on the floor of the quarry somewhere,” I go on. “Could you try to find it for me?”

  “Of course,” he replies. “But what about Jules . . . Do you think she’s all right?”

  I open my mouth to say something reassuring—I’ve always tried to put on a brave face for Marcel and not shatter his optimism—but my throat runs dry. After everything I saw last night, it’s hard to hope that Jules will be spared. I climb faster, my pulse racing.

  I reach the tunnels and rush through them, as well as the cellar beneath the chapel, and then I push up through the hatch door. The stab wound on my back doesn’t even twinge anymore. It hasn’t since Sabine’s graces flooded into me on the cavern bridge, though that power is gone now. I don’t stop to wonder what it all means. I have to find Jules.

  Turns out, I don’t have to go far. As soon as I shut the hatch door and kick the tattered rug over it, a soft moan comes from the chapel. Jules is hunched over one of the weathered pews and gripping it for support. I bolt over to her. Gray morning light spills in through the boarded-up windows and shows her sickly pale face and her sweaty skin.

  “Merde, Jules.” I wrap my arm around her and help her stand.

  She slowly lifts her head and squints at me. “So now you turn up,” she says, her humor as droll as usual, despite her ragged voice.