Bone Crier's Dawn

by Kathryn Purdie

  I openly stare at her. “How did you—? Why—? This is no place for . . .” I try to compose myself. “You should be in Paradise, not here.” I shift on my feet. “Where is here?”

  She meanders down the stream. “Walk with me, Ailesse.”

  She knows my name? I glance behind me at Sabine and Cas. They’re deep in conversation, and more important, safe for the time being. I inhale a breath I don’t need and follow after Estelle.

  As soon as I reach her side, the landscape changes. We’re no longer in the gully, but walking along the shore of the Nivous Sea. Tall limestone cliffs rise behind us, and the water laps at the glittering sand. “Do you know this place?” Estelle asks.

  I take a closer look around me. The cliffs surround us on all sides but one. Out beyond the distant waves, I spy sea stacks and jagged rocks. Everything still has that hazy and streaked-edge appearance that I’m becoming more accustomed to, but other than that, where I am is the same as I remember. “This is the inlet where the land bridge surfaces at low tide,” I reply. I’ve never seen it in the daylight. It’s still beautiful, but far less mystical than it was when I stood on the cliffs above here on the night of the new moon.

  “You are correct,” Estelle says. “We are in the Miroir, the threshold of the Underworld, and all that surrounds us is the same as it is in the mortal world, only we are not a part of it.”

  I try to absorb this. “Is that why I’m this color?” I touch my face.

  She nods. “Orvande is the shade of those who are trapped here, even though they have no chains. Or in our case, those who have not experienced death.”

  I raise my brows. “You haven’t died either?”

  She shakes her head, gently kicking her pointed toe through the sand, although the grains don’t shift beneath her. “I came here when Forgeron did.”

  “The blacksmith? Is that his name?”

  “It is his title. I fear he has forgotten his name. He forbids anyone to use it.”

  “Why?” I can’t keep my questions from tumbling out.

  “Names are the song of the soul. They hold Elara’s Light and help us channel it.” Estelle tips her head back, as if to bask in the sunlight, but the sun is behind a cloud at the moment. The waning moon, no longer quite full, is a faded footprint in the sky, and when I concentrate, I also feel its muted energy siphoning into me. “Light is scarce and precious in the Miroir,” Estelle says, “so we take great care with it. If we use it to help a living person, we will be punished.”

  I consider the orvande cuff around my wrist again. “But I didn’t use Light to save Casimir. I don’t even know how to use Light. It’s just a part of me.”

  “You used Light last month on the cavern bridge,” Estelle counters, and I think back on the first time I discovered that place. “Your grace bones were taken away, yet you still found the strength to fight your mother. I was there,” she adds, noting the surprised look I give her. “I watch all ferrying nights of the founding famille. You are my descendants.”

  Growing more awestruck by everything she tells me, I’m not sure how to respond. I follow her as she wades thigh-deep in the sea and trails her fingers through the water. It doesn’t stir at her touch. Her dress doesn’t swirl from the current, either, but she smiles all the same, as if imagining what it feels like gives her enough satisfaction.

  I finally find my voice. “If I used Light to fight my mother, I did it by accident, the same as I did with Casimir today. I shouldn’t have been punished.” I do my best not to sound petulant. I just don’t want Estelle to be disappointed in me. She’s the first Leurress, the mother of all of us.

  “The laws are strict in the Miroir,” she says. “Remember, this is part of the Underworld. I have been punished for far less than what you have done, Ailesse. Any interference in the mortal world is forbidden, whether or not you use Light. Because you still found a way to help Casimir, Forgeron was compelled to give you your first chain link.”

  I picture the sullen blacksmith I keep crossing paths with. “You make it sound like he didn’t have a choice.”

  She lifts a shoulder. “He believes he doesn’t, and perhaps that is true. His duty is his curse, you see. He is the man who wraps all sinners in chains. It has been so for countless ages, ever since his mother and father banished him here for loving me.”

  I halt, instinctively bracing myself against a large wave, but of course it only washes over me without a jostle or even wetting my hair. “Forgeron is your amouré?”

  Estelle sighs, as if that word is upsetting, and she shakes her head. “Your amourés did not exist in my time. The four gods resolved to introduce the tradition after what became of Forgeron and me. We were the first star-crossed lovers. He was the son of Belin and Gaëlle, and I was the daughter of Tyrus and Elara.”

  “Was?”

  She considers me. “I suppose they are still our parents.” I stay in step with her as she wanders back to the shore. “We haven’t seen them in many ages, so it is difficult to think of them as family anymore.”

  I recall what I know of the four gods. At the dawn of time, Tyrus and Elara married in secret against the will of the supreme god, Belin, and as punishment he separated their kingdoms. He cast Heaven into the night sky, and Gaëlle opened her earth to swallow Hell. “So because Belin was still angry with your parents, he cursed his own son to live here forever, and to be the man who forges chains—all because Forgeron loved you?”

  “The wrath of a god is no small thing.”

  “Well, it isn’t fair.”

  A soft laugh escapes her. “I have stopped worrying over what is fair and what is not.”

  I marvel at the serenity on her beautiful face. “Is that how you’ve found contentment here, because at least you can be with Forgeron?”

  “Is it contentment?” She purses her lips. “I am not sure. I imagine joy in this place with the only man I have ever loved. That is what carries me.”

  Pity stirs within my chest, the kind that would squeeze my heart, if my heart could be pained here. “I’m sorry that all you can do is imagine.” I’ve barely spent any time in the Miroir, and already the inability to speak with Sabine and Bastien is unbearable. “I don’t know how other souls tolerate it.”

  “They are not supposed to. Tyrus designed his threshold to be the first stage of eternal suffering. The Miroir is a mockery of life, you see, a place where you can look upon the world you left behind, but you cannot act upon it, like the blessed can in Paradise.”

  A dozen questions spring to mind, but before I can ask any, Estelle shifts directions in the sand. The moment I turn with her, our surroundings change. Now we’re standing on the rickety wooden bridge in the forest, overlooking the river where I saw the silver owl. “This is where Bastien asked you what you would choose for your life if you weren’t born to be the matrone of your famille.” She leans over the railing to gaze at the glistening water.

  I glance at the hole in the bridge I fell through, and the memory of the river’s coolness trickles back to me, though I can’t quite grasp the feeling again. “I remember,” I murmur, and close my eyes, trying to recapture the sensation of kissing Bastien one last time before I told him we should just be friends. I was terrified to pull away from him like that, but I felt more desperate to be free—of something in my life. And I didn’t know how to be free of who I was born to be.

  “Your great-grandmother Abella was with you.”

  I open my eyes. “Pardon?”

  “Here on the bridge,” Estelle clarifies. “She was also matrone in her day, so she understood your burden. I watched her stroke your hair and tell you all would be well if you dreamed of a life larger than the limitations of your birthright. ‘Sabine would be a worthy ruler,’ Abella whispered, ‘if you chose another path.’”

  “I never heard her voice,” I say quietly, fighting a flicker of hurt. Why is everyone telling me I don’t have to be matrone? Didn’t I do enough in my life to prove myself?

  “No, but y
ou felt her truth nudge at your heart. Souls in Paradise have that privilege. They can commune with their loved ones in the mortal world, while souls in the Underworld are not allowed to. The Miroir is the only place where we can even see the living, but our interference is forbidden, especially in matters of saving lives.” Estelle’s orvande eyes grow somber and earnest. “This is what Forgeron wishes me to make clear to you, Ailesse; it is why you earned your first chain link. If you earn three, you will be considered fully Chained, and he will be forced to call the jackals on you. They will drag you to the true terrors of the Underworld.”

  I shudder as the irreversible implications bear down on me. I’d have no hope of returning through the Gates if that happened. I’d never be with Sabine or Bastien or anyone in my famille again. “I understand.”

  “I hope so. The jackals eventually come for every Chained after they are ferried here. Forgeron only calls the jackals when a soul evades them the first time. The beasts are far more ferocious when he has to strike his hammer. I do not wish you to suffer that horror.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “It will be very difficult,” Estelle warns me. “You will have to cultivate the restraint you might have developed had you completed your rite of passage.”

  I stifle a prick of defensiveness. “I can learn self-control without murdering someone.”

  She grins softly, both amused and sad. “I wish more of my descendants had been like you.” She walks off the bridge, and her fingers wrap around one of her wrist cuffs. She already has two, and she told me she has worn them for centuries. One more slip-up would have sent her to the deeper Underworld. It could still happen.

  “How did you learn restraint?” I ask, drifting after her like a duckling again. If amourés didn’t exist in her time, then neither did rites of passage.

  “Slowly,” Estelle says, without looking back. “Painfully.” She brushes a loose lock of hair off her face. “It is not the living who tempt me in the Miroir. It is Forgeron.” Her shoulders broaden as if she’s inhaling a steeling breath, even though she won’t be able to feel how it stretches her lungs to capacity. “Twice we have been unable to resist each other here, and twice our weakness gave me chains.” She releases the breath, and her shoulders wilt. “When we touch, he forges links around me. It cannot be helped. It is his curse.”

  I stare after her, speechless at the injustice of her existence.

  She gazes back at me again, and if there was any sorrow on her face, it’s gone now, replaced by her serene smile. “Do not pity me, daughter of daughters. I would rather be near my love, unable to hold him, than be apart from him in Paradise. It was my choice to come here, and I do not regret it.”

  My thoughts turn to Bastien and how he danced with me under the ruins of a glass dome in Dovré when the moon was full. I knew I loved him then. “I would choose the same,” I say, and then catch myself. Would I really, or would I let Bastien go and choose to be matrone of my famille instead?

  Estelle’s smile deepens, and despite how conflicted I feel, Elara’s Light fills my chest with warmth. I soak it in, remembering that Light is scarce in the Miroir. “Goodbye for now,” she says.

  I stop at the bank of the river we’ve started walking by. “Where are you going?”

  She heads for a thicket of trees. “The Miroir is overflowing with Unchained souls, wrongly stolen from Paradise. I must warn who I can of the dangers here, lest they also become wrapped in chains.”

  I lower my eyes, furious at my mother for what she did to bring them here. I just can’t figure out why she did it. I was the sacrifice required for Tyrus to resurrect Godart, not the Unchained. Why did she take more of them when she already had me in her grasp at the soul bridge? If she is still serving Tyrus, working to help him join kingdoms with Elara, it must benefit her somehow, too. “Please tell me they can still be saved. Not just from chains, but from here.”

  Estelle looks at me one final time before she enters the thicket. “Perhaps . . . if you can learn to save and also be saved from this place.”

  I’m not sure I understand. “Will you teach me?”

  “I cannot say more than I have. You are not dead, only trapped. I would earn my third link.”

  My chest falls.

  “Do not despair, Ailesse. You are more than your mother’s daughter; you are also mine. I believe in you.”

  She offers me one last calming smile and turns and disappears.

  29

  Bastien

  “JULES, MARCEL,” I CALL, CLIMBING down the scaffolding. “You’ll never guess what’s happened. All of Dovré is talking about it. King Godart has usurped Casimir.” I hop off the ladder and into my quarry room to find the usurped king staring back at me, along with Sabine, Jules, and Marcel. They’re all seated comfortably in various places on the floor, like fast friends at a picnic.

  Cas waves once, an awkward attempt at a peace offering. “I thought I’d take my chances back here until I can reclaim my title . . . if that’s all right.”

  Sabine gives me a pointed look. “Cas has returned as our friend and ally.” She’s sitting close beside him on the straw mattress next to the ball and chain that isn’t shackled around his ankle. “He’s not to be your prisoner anymore,” she adds. “We need his help, and he needs ours if he wants his throne back.”

  “And if he wants to stay alive,” Marcel chimes in from a few feet away, a stack of open books laid out before him. “A throne isn’t much good if you’re going to die in ten months from a soulbond—whether or not your soulmate is stuck in the Underworld.”

  I shift from foot to foot, trying to process all these new developments. “So we’re back at trying to break the soul-bond, then?” I avoid eye contact with Cas. It’s going to take a moment for me to swallow the idea of him living here again. My side is still smarting from when he bashed it with my dolphin statue.

  “Yes,” Jules answers with a weary exhale, coughing once into a handkerchief. “And we’re running into dead ends, as usual.”

  “You’re forgetting about Cas’s books,” Marcel says.

  Cas’s books? What are they talking about?

  “I haven’t forgotten about them.” Jules rolls her eyes. “We just don’t know if they’re going to help yet.”

  “When have books ever failed us?”

  “When I got possessed by a Chained, when Bastien got stabbed, when Ailesse got hoodwinked by her mom . . .” She lists the reasons on her fingers.

  “Well, besides all that life-and-death stuff.”

  Jules throws her hands in the air. “Why do you think we need these books, Marcel?”

  “You brought books with you?” I speak over them and turn to Cas, finally leveling a hard gaze at him. I take a few steps into the room. “How did you manage that? Word on the street is that a brawl broke out in the castle and you barely escaped with your life.”

  “What you heard was true,” he says. “Godart and Odiva killed many of my guards when they stormed the castle. They would have killed me, too, if . . .” He scratches the back of his neck. “Well, I think Sabine can explain better.”

  She gives him a small but friendly grin. Since when did they become so easy around each other? “An Unchained soul told Cas how to escape,” she replies, “and that soul said she was relaying a message from Ailesse.”

  My chest pulls tight. “W-what?”

  Sabine nods, her eyes shining. “She’s near, Bastien. We really are going to save her. And we have a solid plan. Cas’s books are just one part of it.”

  My hand slips into my pocket around the scrap of Ailesse’s chemise. I start pacing the room. “Tell me everything. What’s in these books?”

  “Stories of Belin and Gaëlle,” Marcel answers. “Scripture, poetry, some folktales.” He leans back against the side wall and crosses one ankle over another, a wide grin on his face. “Cas pointed out that we’ve only been studying about the Leurress and Tyrus and Elara. Maybe we’re missing part of the puzzle, and the other gods are
involved, too.”

  “Belin and Gaëlle separated Tyrus’s and Elara’s kingdoms in the first place,” Sabine explains. “Perhaps learning more about how they did that is key to breaking the soul-bond.”

  “But first we have to break back inside Beau Palais,” Cas says. “I don’t have the books with me yet. They’re in a private library near the royal apartments.”

  I pace in the other direction. “What about confronting Odiva?” I aim my question at Sabine. “That’s part of your solid plan, right?” Saving Ailesse has to include threatening her mother to reverse what she did.

  “I’ve got it!” Birdine calls, her muffled voice traveling down to us from above. I turn as she descends the scaffolding ladder and steps into the room. Her eyes are red, like she’s been crying. She removes the scarf wrapped around her shoulders and reaches under the low neckline of her dress. She pulls out two glass vials from between her breasts, even though she has a satchel, and passes them to me.

  My ears flush with heat. Why do I have to touch them? I quickly hand the vials over to Marcel, and Jules bites down a laugh. “What are those?” I ask, and shove my hands in my pockets again.

  “Poison and an antidote,” Marcel replies, beaming. “Birdie obtained them from her uncle’s perfumery.”

  I raise my brows, impressed. It’s no secret that perfumers handle dangerous ingredients to make fragrances. Making poison is illegal, though, and perfumers have to be members of a guild in Dovré that regulates their use of potent herbs and tinctures. “Tell your uncle thanks next time you see him.”

  Birdine bursts into tears. I shoot Marcel a worried glance. What did I do?

  “Aw, Birdie.” He rises to his feet. “Come ’ere.”

  She rushes over to him and cries against his chest. I look at Jules, wondering what I missed, but she only shrugs.

  Birdine finally pulls back and dabs her tears with her scarf. “My uncle has been attacked by one of the Chained, I’m sure of it. He thinks he’s hearing voices because he’s sick with a fever, but it’s more than that.” She sniffs. “He couldn’t even rise from his chair. I had to mix all these ingredients for him.”