19 SO THE BONE TELLS

19

SO THE BONE TELLS

Corayne

At home, time divided into long portions, weeks or months, to suit trade demands, voyages of the Tempestborn, and the change of seasons. The days were a hallway, a clear passage of open doors. In Lemarta that meant days of waiting, plotting around distant storms or political upheaval on some foreign coast. Corayne felt bored more often than not, watching the horizon with her ledger, letters, and reports tucked close. But she had room to maneuver, to think, to plan.

Now Corayne felt like she was back in the hedge maze, running blindly around corners with gods-knew-what waiting on the other side. She could only react and hope to survive. Not exactly ideal.

“What could it be now?” she muttered as they followed Andry out of the mill.

The abandoned farm had a haze to it in the morning light, a golden mist that softened the hedges and overgrown fields. It was as lovely as a painting. Corayne hated it. Too quiet, too safe, she thought, glaring at the rutted lane. Everything felt like a trap. She had strapped the Spindleblade on before they left the mill, and it dug into the newborn welts on her shoulders and waist. That did not improve her mood.

Andry waved them over the threshold of the dilapidated farmhouse. Half of it still had a roof, but it was more cobweb than timber. The rest opened to the sky, like a giant had come along and put his fist through the ceiling. Debris gathered in the corners, and most of the furniture was broken or gone, with only an iron pot half buried in the hearth. Anything else of use piled on the floor, in ordered rows like a regiment of soldiers. Andry has been busy.

Sorasa sniffed at the pot, her eyes narrowed. Corayne followed, peering in to see a pile of boiled bones. They seemed to radiate cold, despite the warm sun spilling over the house.

“Animal,” Sorasa muttered, her eyes narrowed. “But fresh.”

On the other side of the room, Andry stood over a pile of rags, his copper cheeks tinged with red. “I didn’t notice her at first,” he said hesitantly. “I wasn’t quiet, but she didn’t stir.”

Corayne stiffened, eyeing the rags again. It was difficult to tell what lay beneath. The bone cold seemed to thrum. “Did you say her?”

Andry swallowed. “I don’t know if she’s—”

“She’s alive,” Dom answered, cocking his head. Apparently he could hear a heartbeat, one of the more unsettling things about the Elder warrior. There was a steadily growing list.

He bent to the rags, crouching on his heels, and inhaled deeply, like a dog catching a scent. Gently, he pulled back the first layer, a patchwork blanket in every color of dirt. A head of gray, frizzing hair peeked out between his feet, stuck with twigs, leaves, and beaded braids that made Corayne twinge. Why, she could not say.

She took a step forward, her knees shaky with exhaustion. But a fist closed on her arm, the fingers digging in sharply.

“Wait,” Sorasa warned, holding her back.

“Mistress, we’re sorry to intrude,” Andry said, taking a knee next to the pile. The gray head didn’t move. Corayne strained to see her face but Dom and Andry blocked her view.

Dom ran a hand over his blond beard. “She’s in a deep sleep. Too deep for a mortal.”

“Leave her and we’ll be on our way,” Sorasa said. “She hasn’t seen our faces; she won’t be able to aid anyone looking for us.”

The Elder bit his lip. “Are you certain of that?”

The assassin shrugged. “Fine, slit her throat.”

“Sorasa,” Corayne hissed, sucking in a breath.

Andry squared his shoulders. “You’ll do no such thing,” he barked, and Corayne saw the flash of a knight in him.

Sorasa glanced between them, puzzled. “You’re being hunted by the Queen of Galland and a demon king. I don’t recommend making it any easier for them.”

The sleeping woman sat up quickly, as if she’d never been sleeping at all. Her eyes opened, blue as the most brilliant sky. Her mouth was like a gash, her lips thin, lined by wrinkles from a lifetime of smiling.

“Kill me and Allward is as good as gone,” the old woman said cheerfully. Her voice lilted, playful, edged in a familiar accent. The woman’s gaze bore into her like a battering ram, a grin jagged on her pale, old face. “Don’t gape, pyrta gaera; it hasn’t been so long.”

Corayne clenched her teeth against a cry of shock.

“You,” she breathed. The old woman from the ship, the Jydi peddler. Useless trinkets and silly rhymes.

Dom rose from his crouch as the woman scrambled to her feet. “You know her?”

“She was on the ship to the capital,” Sorasa said, putting her body between Corayne and the Jydi. “She boarded when we put in at Corranport and then got off in Ascal with the rest.” Her eyes roved over the old woman. She looked the same as she had on the galley, swaddled in a mismatched shawl and filthy dress. Her feet were bare and black with dirt. “You followed us.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible, Sorasa,” Corayne breathed. From the docks, to the palace, chased out of the city. It doesn’t make sense. She would have to know where we were going before we did. Her hand twitched at her side. Cold prickled in her fingers.

The old woman shook her head, laughing.

“You followed me,” she crowed, patting down her manic hair. “Or your horses did, good beasts they be.” She shuffled toward the pot in the hearth. Her hands were like bird wings, fragile and flapping.

Sorasa pushed Corayne away, backing them both out of the woman’s path.

She paid them no attention and upended the pot, spilling bones across the floor. Rib bones, leg bones, vertebrae, and skulls. Rats, rabbits, birds. All picked clean, white as clouds. She let them fall, observing a pattern the rest couldn’t see.

“You’re a witch,” Andry said, sounding dazed.

She didn’t answer, inspecting her mess. The Jydi was lithe for her age, turning and twisting, even dropping to the floor to inspect the spread of bones from every possible angle.

“A witch,” Corayne murmured. In her pocket, her fingers closed around a twist of wood. She pulled it loose, the sharp ends black with dried blood.

The Jydi shrugged. “I’m what I am, and that should be.” Then she tutted to herself, a liver-spotted hand on her chin as she searched the bones. “I should have done this under a tree.”

The charm trembled in Corayne’s hand. “Why did you give me this?” she asked, the bone beads dangling from her fingers.

The old Jydi didn’t reply, too busy with the floor.

Dom stepped around her, keeping his distance. He was twice her size, if not more. “I think the better question is, who are you?”

“Or, perhaps, why are we bothering with this at all?” Sorasa said, her eyes flashing in frustration. She gestured to their horses, tied up across the lane. “We need to keep moving.”

“I gave you something?” the woman murmured to Corayne distantly. She finally looked at her, and at the charm still in her hand. Confusion clouded her brilliant eyes.

Corayne clenched her teeth. “Yes, on the ship, Gaeda.” Grandmother. “Do you remember?” She stretched out her arm, holding the charm within reach.

The old woman swooped, snatching it away. The touch of her fingers was like ice, and Corayne flinched.

“It’s only branch and string,” the Jydi said, inspecting the twigs. “Something and nothing.” She ran the beads over in her palms, then licked the bloody ends. The rest of the room grimaced as she tucked it into her dress.

“Sarn is right—we can’t stay,” Dom huffed. Desperate enough to agree with Sorasa. “Erida’s soldiers will be searching for us, and for the Spindleblade. We have to keep ahead of them.”

Andry picked his way through his neat piles, careful to avoid the bones. “Galland keeps a standing army in Canterweld, half a day’s ride north. They’ll be out ranging for us by the end of the day, if they aren’t already. Ten thousand combing the countryside.” He shook his head, despairing of their chances already. He stuffed a sack with cloth for bandages, a ball of string, and, to Corayne’s surprise, a dented teakettle. “If the Queen calls a muster . . .”

He stopped mid-sentence when the witch touched his shoulder, her knobbled hand like a white talon.

“Keep him near, gaera, he’s a good one,” she said, patting idly at his back, then his face. Andry made a small noise, his eyes wide. The witch ignored him, pointing two fingers at Dom and Sorasa. “I haven’t decided on these two, but better than none.”

Sorasa braced bloody hands on her hips. “She’s seen our faces and she won’t stop rhyming. We need to kill her.”

“I don’t think that can be the solution to every obstacle,” Andry said weakly.

The Amhara was not amused. “It’s served us fine this far.”

Corayne sorely wished for her charts, or at least a map. “What we need is a plan of action. A direction, a heading.”

“Staying out of Gallish custody is plan enough,” Sorasa replied. “Ride for the closest border, regroup in safety. Not in a crumbling barn ten miles from execution.”

The weight of another sleepless night suddenly loomed, heavy and precarious as the collapsed roof. Corayne ran a hand over her brow, trying to think. Everything felt soft-edged and slow, a sleepy warmth battling against the odd, bracing cold.

She bit her lip. “That Spindle isn’t going to close itself.”

“Spindles,” the old woman said lightly, emphasizing the syllables. She toed a rabbit’s spine aside and made a noise of triumph. Her smile leered. “So the bone tells.”

Even the wind in the fields dropped, going silent. Andry froze over his pack while Dom gripped the collapsed wall, his knuckles white on stone. Slowly, he hung his head. Sorasa did not move, her body too still, her face impassive and neutral. As if she was holding back, fighting to remain calm. Corayne could hardly breathe, feeling like she’d just taken a hammer blow to the chest. The air in her lungs hissed out slowly.

“There’s more than one?” she whispered, looking to Dom. He met her eyes with something like shame.

“Already,” he murmured. “Already.”

Incensed, Sorasa leapt forward, hands free and flexing. She glared into the old woman’s eyes, as if she could find something in them. “Why does anyone believe this?” she spat.

The witch swept aside another bone, letting it skitter over Sorasa’s feet. Her smile turned brittle.

“Amhara Fallen, Amhara Forsaken, Amhara Broken,” the witch said, each word like a knife. Sorasa fell back, flinching as the blow landed home.

“They call you Amhara.” The witch looked at each of them in turn, her brilliant eyes flashing. “But you are Osara.”

Sorasa collided with the crumbled wall of farmhouse, broken stones coming up to her shoulders. Her eyes flared open and her mouth moved but nothing came. Corayne had no idea what the witch’s words meant, but they were enough to steal fire from Sorasa Sarn.

“Sorasa, what is she saying?” Corayne bit out. “What is Osara?”

But the Amhara assassin did not answer. Her nostrils flared and she dropped her gaze, her sunset eyes burning at her feet.

Andry gritted his teeth, his words bringing them back. “There’s another Spindle. Another army.”

Dom dragged his eyes from Sorasa, now silent and far away. “This was his plan from the beginning. The more Spindles he opens, the weaker the realm becomes, the thinner the boundary between Allward and What Waits. Like destroying columns holding up a dome. Of course he’d tear another before we could strike back.”

Corayne heard defeat in him, clear as day. She felt it too, but refused to let it eat her whole. She took the Jydi witch by the arm instead. Her flesh was as cold as her fingers, even through her clothes.

“Do you know where, Gaeda?” Corayne asked. It was like grabbing for the chain of an anchor already sinking. Useless. “Where the Spindle is or where it might lead? Is another army already here?”

The Jydi fixed her with a piercing stare, bones littered at her feet. She nudged one without looking. “No. No. No.”

“All right,” Corayne said, latching on where she could. The chain snagged in her grasp. “Can we hope to fight whatever comes through? Or at least hold it off long enough to do . . . whatever it is I have to do?”

My blood, the blade. Another Spindle.Her stomach flipped. Another chance.

“There’s only four of us, Corayne,” Dom muttered.

“Five,” she bit back, still holding on to the witch. “Can we do it?”

The Jydi stared into Corayne for a long moment, as she had stared at the bones.

Can she read the future in me too?Corayne wondered. Or is this all nonsense, a trick of a peddler? Junk like the charms. But the twigs had burned cold in her pocket, scratched blue on Taristan’s face, made a man who could not be harmed bleed and scream. Corayne wanted them back in her pocket, though she couldn’t say why.

“We must be quick,” the Jydi finally answered. “Call me Valtik.”

Lifting her chin, she snapped her gnarled fingers.

Corayne braced herself for a burst of something extraordinary, but nothing happened, no spell to collect the bones or pack up anything of use. If the witch was truly Spindletouched, her magic was not the kind from any story Corayne had heard. Valtik kicked at the bones again, casting them aside on her way to the crumbled door.

Sorasa stood at the wall, still silent, her lips pursed to nothing. Valtik looked to the assassin as she passed, a finger pointed.

“And we must be seven,” she said. “You understand, Forsaken?”

Corayne did not. To her surprise, Sorasa nodded.

Seven.

“I don’t understand, and I would like to know what you’re talking about,” Dom snapped, crossing the room in silence.

Valtik stepped out into the lane. She hummed under her breath, kicking up dirt with her bare feet, like a peasant child enjoying an empty morning.

“I’m speaking to you, Witch,” Dom rumbled, his frame filling the open doorway.

She only held up two hands, five fingers raised on one, two raised on the other. Seven.

Dom cursed under his breath, in the Elder language unknown to all.

The assassin finally came back to herself, pushing off the wall to join Dom in the doorway. “We rode to Ascal seeking a hammer,” she said, arms crossed. “But why use a hammer when a needle will do?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about either,” Dom bit out.

But the Amhara simply stalked after the Jydi, her braid trailing behind.

Corayne rolled her eyes and shoved Dom out of the ramshackle house. “If Valtik is going to rhyme, you can’t start talking in riddles, Sorasa,” she said, exasperated. “I refuse to save the realm under these conditions.”

If that’s even still possible,she thought, gritting her teeth.

Out in the overgrown lane, Dom threw up his massive hands, muttering again, his Elder curses coming in fits and spurts. He shambled toward their horses, tied up next to the mill.

“You’ll need to ride with the witch, Corayne,” he said, looking apologetic.

“I don’t think so,” Corayne answered, her eyes locked ahead.

“Well, I’m not—” Dom sputtered, then stopped short, following her stare.

Where there had been four horses only minutes ago, five now stood. A gray mare, as unremarkable as the rest, chewed on grass as if nothing were amiss. She even had a saddle and reins. Valtik stood by her, idly stroking the beast’s neck.

“They follow me.” The witch shrugged, a mad blue gleam in her eyes. “You’ll see.”

Sorasa was already in the saddle of her own stolen horse, stealing glances at the witch. Amhara Fallen. Forsaken. Broken. Osara. The words had hit a nerve in her like nothing else, not even Dom. But why?

The sun shone warm overhead, but there was a coldness to the breeze that hissed of winter. Corayne crossed her arms over her chest, fighting the urge to shiver. Andry came up alongside her, his pack over one shoulder. The teakettle clanged in it, heavy and unnecessary.

“Are you planning on inviting Taristan to tea?” she said, eyeing his pack. “That’s the first thing I’d pitch overboard if my ship were taking on water.”

He felt her scrutiny and shifted, hitching the pack higher. “It’s something I can do,” he offered. A gentle blush colored his cheeks and he looked away, toward the others. “It’s a bit of home.”

He wasn’t looking at the horses, at the witch, at Dom stomping into the mill. He looked through them. His heart was somewhere else, or at least it wished to be. With his sick mother, somewhere on the water, her face pointed south, with a strong wind at her back.

“It’s a safe route to Kasa,” Corayne said. It wasn’t a lie. The shipping lanes east were clean this time of year, an easy sail for an able captain. “Safer than any road we might travel.”

“How would you know?” The sudden sharpness of his voice took her by surprise. Even in the palace, running for his life, he’d been gentle. But then, she barely knew him. It was only last night they had met. It feels like a lifetime already.

“I know what it is to think of a ship and wish,” she murmured, her heart clenching.

Andry Trelland’s eyes melted like butter in a pan. Corayne looked away quickly and fiddled with the belts of the Spindle­blade, adjusting it on her back for something to do. Her cheeks felt hot.

“Used to be my job,” she added, her voice rough.

Andry bit his lip. “That’s what Sorasa meant, when she said you knew ships.”

“I know some. One more than the rest.” The Tempestborn rose up before her, its familiar purple sails and painted hull, a captain with black hair and laughing eyes at the prow. The admission tumbled out, beyond her control. “My mother is a pirate.”

She lowered her face, not wanting to see any more judgment or discomfort from Andry Trelland. He’d been through enough already. Not to mention he’s a squire, raised to be an honorable knight. His mother is a lady, nobleborn, beautiful, intelligent, and far kinder than any parent I’ve ever known.

“That sounds . . . exciting,” he said, taking great care with his choice of words.

“For her.” Not for me. Not for the people she robs or kills. “It’s the first time I’ve ever said that out loud. The others know. You should too.”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant to anything.” Corayne’s head snapped up to find Andry staring at her, his faced gold at the edges with summer sunlight. He watched her intently. “What your mother is, or what your father was.”

My father.Even though she had seen Taristan, far too close for her liking, his face identical to her father’s, she could not see Cortael in her mind. The image wouldn’t hold. It was wrong somehow, and she knew why. It didn’t matter that she had seen his twin. She would never see Cortael himself. Whatever remained was ash and bone. He was lost to her, without hope of return. A man she didn’t want, who hadn’t wanted her. And still it cut her to pieces.

“You saw him die. You knew him.” You heard his voice; you saw his face.

Andry shifted, uncomfortable. “A bit.”

“More than me.”

Sorasa’s shout forced them apart. She stood in the saddle, the cowl back around her neck, a dirty shawl or blanket draped around her shoulders. She could pass for a farmer or a beggar, if no one looked too hard.

“It’s three days’ ride to Adira,” she called. “I’d prefer to do it without a Gallish army on my heels.”

“Adira?” Corayne and Andry said in unison, both gaping. But while Trelland was incredulous—stunned, even—Corayne felt a rare burst of excitement.

Dom seemed to share Andry’s trepidation. He launched himself into the saddle, wheeling his horse up alongside Sorasa. He loomed down on her, eyes flashing. “You can’t be serious.”

“The witch said seven,” Sorasa said neatly. “Adira will get us to seven.”

“Adira will get us killed,” Andry sighed, climbing neatly into the saddle.

After a moment of scrambling, Corayne got her foot under her in the stirrup and swung a leg gracelessly over the saddle. Still, she smiled. Adira. There was not a sailor aboard her mother’s ship who did not have a tale of the Adoring Port, a pilgrimage for all below and beyond the laws of any crown.

“You were at the temple, Trelland,” Corayne said, leaning over to eye the squire. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few drunks and cutthroats.”

Sorasa grinned and snapped her reins. “More than a few.”

“Gods save us,” Andry murmured under his breath.