Bone Crier's Dawn

by Kathryn Purdie

  Odiva takes a tentative step forward. She’s unnaturally stiff, and the tendons in her neck are stretched taut. “Give me Sabine’s jackal grace bone, and I will allow you to leave.”

  Godart wasn’t trying to kill Sabine earlier, I realize. He was after her crescent pendant. Why are they so desperate to have both bones?

  “I’ll be the one striking bargains here,” Bastien replies. “Tell us how to release Ailesse and the Unchained from the Underworld, and I won’t slice Godart’s neck open.”

  My mother’s eyes tighten. She presses her lips together.

  “Tell me!” he demands.

  Sabine’s face purples. Her eyes start rolling back while she convulses.

  Cas holds her hand in a death grip. “Damn all of you!” he says, and shoots Bastien a frantic glance. “We have to leave. Now.” He turns to Odiva. “You will let us go if you want your daughter to live.”

  My mother stares at Sabine. I can’t read what she’s thinking or feeling. I pray that somewhere in her hardened heart, she still holds affection for the daughter she once favored. For the first time in my life, I don’t care that she did. I just want Sabine to survive.

  My mother stands taller, feigning a look of indifference. She opens her mouth to speak when my sixth sense starts hammering. She whirls to face the door, feeling it, too.

  Several souls burst into the room—Unchained castle soldiers, the men she and Godart killed. At least fifteen of them. They’re holding solid weapons that don’t glow with chazoure.

  They lunge for my mother. She swiftly counterattacks. Bastien takes advantage of the diversion and tries to cut away Godart’s salamander skull. But his knife never nicks the necklace cord. He’s knocked away by six souls converging on the king.

  “Bastien, come now!” Cas shouts, and drags Sabine to her feet. Her head droops as she loses consciousness. He lifts her in his arms, like he lifted me on the soul bridge.

  “It’s all right, Bastien,” I say, knowing obtaining the skull is too risky now. I want him to live, too. The Unchained souls won’t stall my mother and Godart for long. “Leave!”

  Forgeron glares at me but doesn’t approach. Bastien didn’t hear me this time. I didn’t use any Light.

  Bastien grabs Cas’s sack of books and rushes after him.

  My mother seethes, watching them pass her and the souls she’s fighting.

  They reach the door and run.

  32

  Sabine

  I CAN’T BREATHE. SOMEONE’S HOLDING me under the surface of the water, but it’s insufferably hot, not cold like the sea. I thrash, pulling at my clothes. I kick and hit so the person lets go of me.

  Sabine . . . Sabine . . . Sabine . . .

  Cas? No, it’s Ailesse. Why are they hurting me?

  My muscles seize and cramp. I cry out, my voice battered.

  An acrid taste fills my mouth. I try to spit, but someone shuts my jaw and plugs my nose. I gag and swallow. I’m being poisoned all over again.

  Cas’s handsome face appears, hovering in my blurred vision. “It’s going to be all right.” His hand warms my cheek. I whimper, and my head sags against him. I’m so tired, but I can’t rest. I have to ferry the souls of the dead. The new moon is tonight. Or is it the full moon? Either way, I must go and open the Gates, even though I’m going to fail again. The silver owl won’t help me. She’s long abandoned me.

  “I’m not enough, not enough . . .” I struggle to form words past the emotions strangling my throat. “Ailesse has to come back.” Hot tears leak from my eyes. “We have to bring her back.”

  “Shh, shh,” Cas whispers, but I pull away from his gentle hand. I don’t want his pity or his comfort. I want to be strong like Ailesse and the elders—even my mother and father.

  My eyelids start to flutter closed. “I can’t . . . make a difference . . . if I’m weak.”

  Darkness envelops me.

  The catacombs? No, the pit beneath the cavern bridge. I float, weightless, buoyed up by the glittering black dust in the depths. The siren song warbles harrowingly from above, sounding the way it can only when played on a bone flute.

  The black dust lifts me higher, called by the music, carrying me to the Underworld.

  Glimpses of my life flash before me. I’m a small girl of five when I see my first dead body; I was too young to remember those who passed away earlier, during the great plague. It’s Liliane, who had the most beautiful voice, but she can’t sing anymore. Her eyes are glassy and fixed. Her mouth hangs rigidly open. When I’m eight, Emelisse’s body is dragged into the cavern beneath Château Creux. I’m ten when Ashena, who loved Jules and Marcel’s father, is also brought lifeless before Matrone Odiva. These three died for failing to kill their amourés. By the time I’m thirteen, three more in my famille meet their deaths by ferrying. I’m fourteen when I lose Ciana, who I believed to be my mother. She kisses my forehead, and Odiva’s dark gaze lingers, making my blood chill. The next time I see Ciana, her body is limp and wet from the Nivous Sea. She also perished on the land bridge.

  Year by year, each death affects me deeper. I stop eating meat. My ferrying training slackens. I stick closer to Ailesse, who excels in everything. Her confidence and acceptance are a shield from the others who scorn or shake their heads at me.

  A fire salamander darts midair across my vision, leaving a sparkling trail as the black dust continues to pull me upward. I see a moving image of myself, too. I chase the salamander and trap it. I sob as I stab it with my bone knife. Ailesse hugs me, and I bury my head against her shoulder.

  The nighthawk soars overhead. The golden jackal bounds toward me. The meadow viper slithers out of a sack. Each kill at my ritual blade comes more thoughtlessly than the last. Finally, the majestic red stag with sixteen antler tines springs through the forest. I craved his death. I look monstrous when I kill him viciously and mercilessly. It doesn’t matter that I thought I was dreaming.

  The animals vanish. I stare down at myself. Why am I not bound in chazoure chains? I must be dead if I’m being forced to watch my sins. I haven’t even seen all of them yet. Where are the people who died in Beau Palais because I loosed poisonous vipers on them? Where are those who lost their souls because I couldn’t ferry the Chained?

  I rise to the rim of the pit. The soul bridge is re-formed. The Gate of dust lies at its end, but the translucent Gates to Paradise are missing. Chained or not, it seems the Underworld is the only place that awaits me.

  The glittering black points me toward Tyrus’s realm and sets me on my feet. I advance toward the doorway. No siren song calls to lure me from within. It doesn’t need to. I walk of my own accord, knowing it’s useless to outrun my fate. My mother warned me what would happen if I bore the jackal grace alone: He will bury you, daughter.

  I am the jackal. I will bury myself.

  “Sabine,” someone murmurs when I reach the swirling black Gate.

  I look through the doorway and gasp. “Ailesse.”

  Her auburn hair drifts about her shoulders like she’s underwater. Her umber eyes glow with Light that shouldn’t exist where she is. “Don’t say you’re not enough,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t be who I am without you. I never had a mother’s love, but I had yours. Your strength carried me.”

  My breath catches on a sob. I miss her desperately. I saw her a few days ago, but it’s been months since we’ve been together for more than a few stolen moments. “Nothing makes sense without you,” I say. “I can’t be who I’m supposed to be without you.”

  Her smile trembles as she watches me weep. “Yes, you can. We’ll always be together. You’re my sister. You’re a part of me.”

  I reach for her, but she takes a step away. I exhale, weary. “Just let me come to you.”

  “No,” she replies. “I will come to you. Rest now. Heal. You don’t need your salamander skull, Sabine. You have Light. It’s always been your strongest gift. Hold on to it.”

  Powerful fatigue washes over me. I wilt down to the bridge and lay my fac
e against its cool stone. Ailesse sings me a lullaby about the first daughter of the gods and calls her Estelle. Star.

  I let that song seep inside me. Faintly, almost incoherently, I sing back the refrain with Ailesse. My voice is a thin croak, but I continue singing. Even when I no longer hear myself, the song about Estelle reverberates inside me and burgeons with Light.

  I cling to the image of her name, a star, a pinprick of hope against the darkness, and I close my eyes.

  33

  Ailesse

  I’M SINGING A SONG I’VE never sung before. I make it up, word by word, note by note, wishing I had the power to step out of the Gate of dust and stroke Sabine’s hair while she sleeps on the soul bridge. But then my hand is on her hair, and her black curls are no longer perfectly arranged and glossy, like they were a moment ago; they’re damp with sweat and hazy in my vision, each ringlet blurred and streaked at the edges.

  “Beware of visions,” Forgeron says. I startle to find he’s standing right behind me, where I sit beside Sabine. But I’m not on the soul bridge in the underground cavern anymore; I’m in the quarry room beneath Chapelle du Pauvre. Sabine is lying on the straw mattress by the relief of Château Creux and the four gods, her face pale as she sleeps fitfully.

  “I—I didn’t know I had entered a vision.” The last thing I remember, before I spoke with Sabine, was vainly trying to help Cas hold her still as Birdine administered a new tincture of antidote. The next thing I knew, I was on the other side of the Gate of dust. I didn’t think the sudden shift was so unusual. In the Miroir, I travel to different places in the blink of an eye.

  I glance around the room, still struggling to orient myself. Bastien and Jules are sleeping. It must be the middle of the night. Birdine is gone. I have a vague memory of her leaving to tend to her sick uncle. The only people awake are Marcel, who is reading from one of the books Cas brought back, and Cas, who is sitting close by me near Sabine. He adjusts the blanket over her, his eyes heavy with fatigue.

  “You fell asleep,” Forgeron explains to me.

  I blink at him. “I need sleep here?”

  “No, but that doesn’t prevent you from sleeping when you wish to forget your troubles.” He leans against the wall as if he’d like to nod off himself. “I would caution you to stay awake, though. The veil between the Miroir and the mortal world is thin. Dreams have a tendency to slip into visions here, and communicating with the living while in that state can be considered interference.”

  I stare down at the cuffs around my wrists. If I earn one more link, I’ll be fully Chained. Forgeron will have to strike his hammer and call the jackals on me. “Why didn’t you chain my mother?” I ask, remembering what Estelle told me: Odiva was clever enough to avoid Forgeron’s punishments. “The vision she sent me was calculated,” I say. “She tricked me into freeing her from the Underworld without even receiving a single link.”

  “Your mother did not use Light.” Forgeron rubs a stubborn smear of orvande soot on his forearm. “Tyrus does not ask me to punish those who wield his darkness here.”

  “I didn’t know darkness could be wielded.”

  “Everything has its opposite.”

  I study him. His manner isn’t as abrasive as usual. Maybe he hasn’t had to forge as many chains lately, or maybe he’s not always in a dismal mood . . . not that I’d call his current mood pleasant. At least he doesn’t look like the whole world of the living and the dead is pressing down on his shoulders. “What happens if you defy Tyrus?” I ask, remembering what Estelle said. Forgeron doesn’t believe he has a choice. His duty is his curse.

  He grows quiet and picks at the handle of his hammer. “I will remain in the Miroir, but Tyrus will mask my view of the mortal world forever. It will be nothing more than a fog of endless streaks and blurs. He will do the same to Estelle; he tied our fates when she followed me here.” His mouth quavers until he flexes his jaw muscle. “I could bear the punishment if she didn’t have to suffer, too.”

  I picture Estelle trailing her fingers through the sea she can’t feel, tipping her head back to the sun that doesn’t warm her, telling me she watches her descendants each ferrying night. Despite her contented nature, it’s clear she wants what she doesn’t have, even though what she wants most is happiness with Forgeron. I imagine joy in this place with the only man I have ever loved, she said. That is what carries me. “I think she’d prefer a real life here with you rather than only pretending at living.”

  “A real life?” Forgeron’s deep voice almost breaks. He covers it with a growl. “I can’t even touch her without giving her chains.”

  “Even if you defy Tyrus about that as well?”

  “I do not dare tempt him to find out.”

  I glance at Bastien, asleep on the pillow of my folded chemise. He’s curled up like a child. The dolphin statue his father carved for him is close beside him on the floor. “Some people would choose to be Chained if it meant being with the person they loved forever.”

  Forgeron scoffs. “Even if it meant calling the jackals on them?”

  “You are not without agency. Whether you strike your hammer is up to you. You should trust the choice Estelle already made. She was ready to give up life among the living when she joined you here long ago. She’s been waiting ages for you to accept her reasoning.”

  His temper flares. He unhitches himself from the wall and glares down at me, his orvande eyes rock hard. “I have been trapped in the Miroir for millennia. I do not need a child who has scarcely set foot here telling me what to do.”

  He swings up his hammer. I wince, afraid he’ll bring it down on the ground just for making him angry. Instead, the hammer falls back to rest on his shoulder with a heavy thud. He stalks away and disappears from sight before he reaches the drop-off of the quarry room.

  I sigh. I’m not doing myself any favors by making enemies with the blacksmith of the Underworld.

  Bastien rustles, murmuring something unintelligible in his sleep. I drift over and sit beside him. His brows are pinched and his eyelids flutter, like he’s having a bad dream. I have the urge to sing to him, like I sang to Sabine, but I keep my lips sealed. I might use Light—I yearn to use it—but if I did this time, it wouldn’t be in an unwitting vision. Forgeron would come back for me.

  Bastien settles back into peaceful sleep. His forehead smoothes, and his right fist relaxes. A slip of white cloth peeks out from his fingers. Curious, I touch it, but I can’t feel its texture, and I’ve no ability to nudge Bastien’s hand open wider.

  I study the edge of the cloth with my falcon vision. The threads are fine like soft linen, and the weave of the fabric has a subtle scalloped pattern. It’s a small piece of my chemise.

  I rest my hand over Bastien’s and lie down so our faces are close together. I wish there was something I could also hold that belonged to him, something to help me cling to the memory of his touch.

  I lean close and kiss his lips gently, but I can’t feel the warmth of his mouth or his breath stirring mine. My chest sinks. I hate that I can’t feel the physical pain of missing him. The ache is trapped inside my useless body.

  “I’m sorry I was so afraid to share my heart with you,” I whisper. “I thought I didn’t have enough room within me to keep hold of both my dreams and my duty. If you can give me another chance, I want to prove my soul is big enough.”

  What if I can’t? What if I never escape this place?

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t think thoughts like that. I’m going to escape. And when I do, I’ll help Bastien and my friends free the Unchained. Estelle gave me hope I could do that if I learned how to save others from the Underworld, as well as myself. So I will learn. I’ll come out of the Miroir with the knowledge my friends need to defeat my mother and Godart, and together we’ll stop Tyrus’s growing tyranny.

  Marcel yawns. His head bobs as he starts to drift off. The heavy book propped on his bent knees slides to the floor. Thunk!

  Bastien jerks awake and whips out his knife. M
arcel startles with a snort. They look at each other for a moment, and then Bastien exhales and sheathes his blade. It’s looped on his belt, lying on the floor beside him. He picks up the scrap of my chemise he’s dropped and brushes his thumb over it tenderly. He rises to his feet and stuffs the scrap in his pocket. “How’s Sabine doing?” he asks Cas.

  Cas shrugs and rubs his tired eyes. “She’s not writhing quite as much, but she’s still a little feverish.”

  Bastien stares at Sabine with furrowed brows before he nods and turns to Marcel. “How about you? Read anything helpful in those new books?”

  “Shut up, will you?” Jules rolls over and coughs into her sleeve. “It’s the middle of the blasted night.”

  “Morning, actually,” Marcel replies. “Dawn should have risen an hour ago.”

  Jules groans. “I hate this place.”

  Marcel is unruffled by his sister. “Nothing helpful yet,” he replies to Bastien. “I say we reconsider my missing-element theory.” I recall what he told me a few days ago: the Gates to the Beyond are made up of four of the five elements—water, wind, earth, and spirit. “There has to be a way to use fire as a weapon against Tyrus.”

  “How would we do that?” Cas frowns. “The only place left to ferry is on the land bridge, right?”

  “And the Gate of water would only extinguish fire,” Bastien adds.

  “How else can we threaten Tyrus?” Marcel sounds a little put out that no one will entertain his theory. “We need some leverage if we want to save Ailesse and all those souls.”

  Jules rises into a sitting position. “What if saving Ailesse is as simple as pulling her out of the Underworld”—she coughs twice—“just like she pulled out Odiva?”

  “I didn’t pull my mother out,” I say, though no one hears me. “I took her hand, and she pulled me in, despite all my struggle.” And Bastien’s and Sabine’s.

  “That only worked because Ailesse took her place,” Bastien replies.