The Bone Palace (26 page)

She put her back to the terrible view and sucked a calming breath through her nose. Clean air was a blessing after the stifling must below, even if it numbed her fingers and toes. She gathered her scattered thoughts and raised her voice against the wind. “It’s not my place—”

That drew Ashlin around like the jerk of a chain. Snowflakes landed on her face and hair, melting to leave cleaner spots in the grime. Her eyes glittered, the green of her irises all the fiercer against bloodshot whites. “Not your place?” She barked a laugh. “To tell me when I’m being a fool, and a termagant besides? If you won’t do that for me I don’t know who will.” Her arms snapped open. “You’re my friend, Vedra. You can say whatever you want to me.

“And don’t think,” she said, softer now, “that I don’t know your place, or that I’ve taken it from you.”

Savedra swallowed half a dozen responses, along with a lump in her throat. “If I can tell you not to be a fool, then I’ll do that now.” She closed the distance between them, till the hem of her coat whipped Ashlin’s legs. “I have always known how it had to be with me and Nikos. The only thing I didn’t expect was to care for the woman he married.”

Ashlin’s smile was wry and lopsided. “I’m glad you do, since we’re alone on a tower.” Her smile twisted and fell away, and she waved the bad joke aside. “I wish you could have had it, though. The throne, the prince. Children.” Her hand clenched on her belt buckle till her knuckles blanched. “My father could have married off my brother instead of me, if this is the best I can do at bearing heirs.”

Savedra caught the princess’s hand and eased it away before she could bruise her fingers on metal. “I’m sorry you’re unhappy, but there’s no sense in recriminations.”

Their fingers twined, cold and grimy, and Ashlin squeezed tight. “It’s not that I’m unhappy.” Her breath hitched, unraveling on the wind. “It’s that—”

Whatever she might have said was lost as black wings passed close enough to ruffle their hair and a raven alit on the merlon opposite them. Talons scraped rock as it regarded them with one dark, mirror-bright eye.

“Lady of Ravens,” Ashlin breathed. For all Savedra knew, it was. The bird on the tower was certainly large enough; she hadn’t realized ravens grew so big. Another bird wheeled overhead, its shadow staining the stones.

“Maybe we should go down,” Savedra said, straining to keep her voice calm. “The last thing I want is bird shit in my hair.”

“Good idea.” She steered Savedra down the steps first, her hand on her sword until she tugged the trapdoor shut behind them. The hollow thunk chased them down the staircase.

They found Iancu and Cahal in the library, past the bedroom at the end of the hall. They stood in the center of the room, surveying the disarray around them.

Books spilled off shelves and tables, lay open on the floor. A lamp had fallen, shards scattered across the once fine carpet. The hearth still overflowed with ashes and a few scraps of withered paper. It was the first true disarray Savedra had seen, the first sign that the inhabitants hadn’t simply vanished amid their daily tasks.

“There’s more than one set of footprints,” Cahal said, not glancing up from the span of floor he was studying.
“It took me a moment to catch it through the dust. They’re nearly the same size.”

A woman or a small man. A woman and a small man.

You don’t know,
she told herself.
You can’t be sure it was Varis
. But it was too late for that—wrong or not, she was sure. What had he done here, and why?

Savedra knelt by the hearth and picked delicately through the ashes, trying to find a clue as to what had been burned. The scraps were too old, though, too faded and filthy to be legible. Most crumbled when her fingers brushed them.

“What’s missing here?” she asked Iancu, but he wasn’t standing beside her anymore. She turned to find him examining the opposite wall, running his hands over a stretch of wall between two decorative panels.

“Here,” he murmured. His fingers paused, pressed, and something clicked. One of the panels swung outward with a creak and a silver flurry of shredded cobwebs.

Savedra closed her mouth before any more dust flew in. “Oh.”

“Clever,” Ashlin said. She shot a sideways glance at Savedra. “Do we have those?”

“The palace has spyholes, but no passages that I know of.” She took a step forward, even as the depth of the blackness in the opening prickled her nape. The opening was set high on the wall; an awkward step without a stool. The air that breathed from the black mouth was cool and stale, but a pleasant relief from the stirred dust and ash of the library. “Maybe Nikos will add some.” That careless
we
would have given the princess away to anyone paying attention, but it warmed her all the same.

Iancu lit the lamp again. The glow lined the angles
of stone stairs and brushed a low curving ceiling. “Shall we?” he asked.

Savedra caught herself touching the pocket that held the striga coin; she swept her hand in a gesture of invitation instead. “Lead on.”

Tight spaces had never bothered her, unlike heights, but the chill closeness of the stairway was still oppressive. Her shoulders brushed the sides and she was glad she wasn’t any taller; Iancu stooped like a hunchback.

The panel at the top of the stairs took a moment of fumbling with, but finally opened to a thin wash of daylight. She hadn’t realized she’d been hoping till her hopes died—the room was a skeleton, bookshelves and tables picked clean. The old woman had mentioned a workroom, and she supposed this might have been that. But no sign of any sorcery remained now, nor any clues.

This room had the largest window in the castle, a paired casement that swung inward with a screech when Savedra tugged at the latch. Ice stung her face, falling harder now. A rusting balcony lined the outside ledge—nothing that would save anyone from a fall, but wide enough to become yet another home for birds. That was all that Carnavas was home to, it seemed—birds and rats and cats, and if Varis had come here maybe that was all he’d found as well.

A crimson glitter caught her eye amid the filth and feathers that clung to the railing. She stooped, grimacing as she flicked aside debris to retrieve something that gleamed red and gold.

She stumbled back at a raucous croak. The giant raven from the tower—or another just as big—wheeled past, so close she smelled the musk of his feathers. She retreated quickly, shoving the window shut behind her.

“Are all the birds in Sarkany that big?”

She asked it lightly, but Iancu frowned. “No,” he said. “And I don’t like the look of these.”

A sharp crack made them all jump. A black shape vanished from the other side of the window as Savedra looked up. The raven. Another shadow wheeled past, and another. Talons struck the glass again.

“Perhaps we’ve outstayed our welcome.” Iancu said, urging them back into the passage. As the panel swung shut behind them, they heard the sharp whine of splintering glass.

“Definitely time to go,” Ashlin said, taking Savedra’s arm for the long step back into the library.

Too late. The library windows burst inward with a howl of wind. Savedra threw up her arm to ward off splinters; it saved her life as a giant raven struck her.

Talons closed on her forearm and she screamed. She’d felt the force of a falcon landing on a glove—this was worse. She stumbled and fell to one knee, her other hand rising against the blinding storm of air and feathers. Someone else cried out. Steel sang. She scrambled back, groped for a weapon and found a book. Leather and parchment blocked the striking beak that meant to take her eyes. She couldn’t reach her knife.

Bone and feathers crunched. Blood sprayed hot across her face and hands and the buffeting weight was gone. The bitter gamey taste of it filled her mouth as she sucked in a breath.

Ashlin stood over her, sword drawn and bloody, equally splattered with red. Her eyes were black and wild. “Out, out!” Savedra read the shape of the words on her lips—she couldn’t hear over the roar of wind and her own heart.

As she scrambled up she glimpsed the fallen bird, cleaved nearly in half by Ashlin’s blade, and another across the room that Cahal must have slain. Curtains billowed in the draft, and ash thickened the air. Beyond the splintered glass teeth in the window frame, more winged shadows circled. Her boots skidded in moisture as she ran; she didn’t know whose blood it was.

She felt the door slam shut behind them. After the brightness of sky the dim hall blinded her. When her vision adjusted she saw Cahal and Iancu leaning against the door. Both men were tousled and grime-streaked but seemed unharmed.

“Are you all right?”

Savedra hadn’t realized she’d fallen to her knees until Ashlin crouched beside her. She looked down, and regretted it as pain followed her glance. Her right sleeve was shredded and quickly soaking with blood. Her left hand was merely scratched, but stung like a fiercer wound.

“Shit.” Ashlin glanced down the length of the hall and swore again. “Everything here is filthy.”

“Here.” Iancu stripped off his coat, baring clean linen beneath. With a slit of his dagger and three sharp tugs, he ripped free one sleeve and passed it to the princess.

“There are bandages in the packs with the horses,” she said, crouching next to Savedra. “This will do till we reach them.” She tore the ruined sleeve away. Savedra closed her eyes against the sight of blood welling from deep claw wounds, and when she opened them again the princess was knotting the makeshift dressing. A drop of red splashed white cloth.

Not all the blood on Ashlin’s face came from the birds. A talon had gouged a furrow down her temple and onto
the curve of her cheekbone. Rivulets of crimson tracked her cheek, feathering across her skin and dripping off her chin.

“What about you?”

“It’s nothing.” She snorted a laugh at Savedra’s expression. “This time I mean it. Just a scrape. I’ll clean it when we get out of here.”

“What now?” Cahal asked. Iancu resumed his place against the door so the lieutenant could wipe and sheathe his sword. Nothing struck the wood, but Savedra heard shuffling behind it.

“We get the hell out of here,” Ashlin said. “I’m not spending the night in this place.”

“There are more of them outside!”

“We have to chance it. Unless you want to stay.”

“No,” Savedra said instantly. “All right.”

More ravens wheeled over the courtyard, rasping voices echoing. A few dove as Savedra and the others raced for the gate, but no blows landed.

“They’re driving us off,” Cahal said as they paused in the shelter of the gate arch.

“They certainly are. And they can keep the place.”

Raucous shrieks followed them halfway down the mountain, finally dying away. Pain and fatigue gave way to fugue, and Savedra could remember nothing until Ashlin hoisted her into the saddle. She caught the pommel right-handed out of instinct and cried out as injured muscles flexed. Sweat soaked her, stinging in a dozen scrapes and scratches and chilling quickly now that she was still.

When they passed the salt circle they dared stop. Ashlin stripped away Savedra’s blood-soaked bandages and rinsed the wound, first with water and then with whiskey.
Savedra sobbed at the latter. Ashlin’s hands shook by the time she wound the fresh bandages, and Cahal had to tie them off. He cleaned Ashlin’s wound too, eliciting an angry hiss. His ministrations left one side of her face clean, the other a half-mask of filth.

“We can stay the night in Valcov,” Iancu said. “Get you looked at by a physician.”

Savedra shook her head; her eyes ached with the threat of tears. “I want to go home.” It was foolish and childish, and she winced at the sound of the words. She waited for the others to talk sense into her, but instead they exchanged calculating glances.

“It will mean riding at night,” Iancu said at last, “but I admit I find the idea appealing.”

“Let’s go then,” Ashlin said. “The sooner we get under cover the happier I’ll be.”

Savedra glanced back as they urged the horses on, and saw winged shadows circling the towers of Carnavas.

It must have been a harrowing ride back to Evharis, but Savedra didn’t recall much of it. She had confused flashes of clinging to the saddle, and later slumping over her horse’s neck, and finally of Iancu carrying her up the steps into a confusion of light and warmth and concerned voices. She regained her senses inopportunely, as the physician appeared to clean and stitch her wound. Ashlin pressed a glass of brandy into her hand, and the world dulled once more.

It wasn’t till well past midnight, after an awkward one-armed bath that nearly lulled her into sleep and drowning, that she remembered the jewel she’d found in Carnavas. She picked up her ruined coat, meaning to drop the filthy
thing in a rubbish bin, and something small and glittering fell out of the pocket and rattled across the floor.

Savedra crouched to retrieve it from the shadows under the bed. She’d drunk several glasses of medicinal brandy during the stitching, and the movement nearly toppled her.

A ring. A woman’s ring, a brilliant pigeon’s blood ruby in a delicate gold band. The setting was clogged with grime, the stone dull with it, but there was no mistaking its beauty or its worth. Such a ring would be costly anywhere, but in Selafai it would only grace the hand of a mage.