The Bone Palace (52 page)

A
MANDA
D
OWNUM
was born in Virginia and has since spent time in Indonesia, Micronesia, Missouri, and Arizona. In 1990 she was sucked into the gravity well of Texas and has not yet escaped. She graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in English literature, and has spent the last ten years working in a succession of libraries and bookstores; she is very fond of alphabetizing. She currently lives near Austin in a house with a spooky attic, which she shares with her long-suffering husband and fluctuating numbers of animals and half-finished novels. She spends her spare time making jewelry and falling off perfectly good rocks. To learn more about the author, visit
www.amandadownum.com
.

If you enjoyed THE BONE PALACE, look out for

THE KINGDOMS OF DUST

The Necromancer Chronicles Book Three
by Amanda Downum

I
t rained all the way to the prison.

The coach rattled and juddered through Kehribar’s uneven streets, jarring Isyllt Iskaldur’s spine with every pothole. Beyond the window, rain softened square buildings and spindle-sharp spires, bled haloes of amber and citrine around the scattered city lights. Watchfires burned on distant walls, orange pinpricks against the night.

The lights, the streets, the scents embedded in the carriage cushions were all foreign to her. Even the rain tasted different, the alchemy of wind and water subtly altered as it blew off the Zaratan Sea. By day she could distract herself with sights and sounds, but at night homesickness stole over her. Even nights like this, when she had work to do.

Another bone-jarring bounce, and Isyllt’s companion cursed again. Isyllt kept her invective to herself for fear of biting her tongue off mid-jolt.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Moth asked when the road smoothed again.

“Easier if you don’t,” Isyllt said. “I’ve made the arrangements. Best to keep this as quiet as possible.” Wisdom for any jailbreak, even one arranged through bribery and veiled threats instead of swords and black powder bombs.

“I don’t like you going into an Iskari prison alone.”

Isyllt smiled ruefully, tugging the curtain shut against the damp. When had her apprentice become her caregiver? The first time she’d cried herself to sleep in Moth’s lap, no doubt. “I promise to come out again.” And not alone, if all went well.

It might have been an argument, but Moth had a magpie’s curiosity—or merely an adolescent’s—and a new city to explore. She’d gone out every night since they’d arrived in Kehribar, winding farther and farther each time. Dangerous to be sure, but the girl had grown up a street rat and had no use for coddling. Six months ago she had been Dahlia, a whore’s androgyne child with a prostitute’s life awaiting her. Now she was an apprentice mage, and shed more of her old life with every new place they traveled. She was due her freedom.

Six months ago Isyllt had been a Crown Investigator, student to Selafai’s spymaster. Now she was jobless, her master dead, her home miles away, abandoned to ghosts and memories. What was she due?

The carriage slowed, knocking Isyllt’s shoulder against the bench. She snorted humorlessly—due a cut purse or a
cut throat, if she couldn’t shake the maudlin distraction that fogged her wits. She might no longer be employed as a spy, but she wasn’t yet out of the game.

The driver tapped on the connecting panel. Wet wood squealed as it opened. “We’re here, effendi,” the man called. “The Çira gan Serai.”

“Thank you.” Her Skarrish was atrocious, but functional. She had money enough to ease translation.

“Be careful,” Moth said, leaning close as Isyllt opened the door. Light warmed the curves of her face, still soft with youth. Less so now than mere months ago.

Isyllt couldn’t say the same in return—prickly adolescent pride wouldn’t allow it.
I always am,
she nearly said, but they both knew that was a lie. “I’ll try. Send the carriage back for me.”

Her boots splashed in a puddle as she stepped down, and the wet summer night settled over her. The rain had slacked into haze. She shut the door and rapped her knuckles on the side, and the carriage rumbled into the mist and dark, leaving her alone in front of the bulk of the Çira
an.

The Çira
an Serai, the people called it, the Çira
an palace, a dour stone fortress crowning the westernmost of Kehribar’s five hills. It was one of the few buildings in the city that had never truly been a palace. At the height of the Ataskar Empire every bey and sultan and merchant prince had built one, and after its fall they had been repurposed one by one into brothels and hostels and gambling halls. The dark façade before her had only ever been a prison.

Once it had faced a courthouse—a hope of justice, or a mockery of it—but over decades of revolution and power shifts the court had been burned and abandoned and eventually razed, leaving the Çira
an alone in a wide,
desolate courtyard. The closest neighborhoods were poor and mostly empty, populated with squatters and stray dogs and patrolled by the city guard. The Çira
an wasn’t isolated as many prisons were, but the guards were known for their brutal efficiency; escape was the stuff of folktales.

An old friend was inside.

Her nape prickled. Only the attention of the archers on the watchtowers, perhaps, but she thought not. A shadow had haunted her steps for decads, and she’d had no luck shaking it. Her years of “good service”—as spying, theft, and murder were euphemistically called—had won her enemies, and now she was far from home, far from her friends and allies, with no king to protect her. No one to avenge her. And she meant to walk into an Iskari prison.

Isyllt touched the diamond ring on her right hand, the briefest indulgence of nerves. Then she straightened her shoulders and strode toward the black iron gates.

He was dreaming when the guards came for him. Blue shadows beneath fir trees, the crunch of snow and clean taste of winter, the wind on his face as he ran for the joy of it—the echo of booted footsteps banished that, returning him to the dank filth of his cell. Adam was glad to wake; those dreams were worse torture than anything his jailors could do.

At first he thought it was the daily meal that woke him, but the footsteps were too loud and numerous and only one rat pressed its cold nose against his neck—they came by the dozens when food arrived. Then the lock clicked, and the door that hadn’t opened since his cellmate died scraped inward. The unexpectedness of it stunned him as badly as the onslaught of light and sound.

He lay still as rough hands seized him, though the
touch of skin made his flesh crawl. The iron they closed around his wrists was easier to bear. Vermin scurried through rotten straw as the guards hauled him up. He was glad to be rid of the roaches, but he’d miss the rats.

Was he going to the headsman after all? The thought made him stand straighter, though gummy tears blinded him and he already ached from the weight of the chains. Had they forgotten him while bureaucrats shuffled paperwork? He chuckled, and the guards startled at the sound. Three of them—one for the torch and two for him. Once he might have tried those odds, but it would be suicide now. Or just pathetic.

His eyes adjusted as they led him past the row of iron doors, the row of tombs. Deep beneath the city, these cells, the bowels of the Çira
an. A place to bury murderers and violent madmen and unlucky mercenaries like him. Screams and curses rose up as the guards’ boots rang on stone, taunts and pleas for attention, protestations of innocence. After the silence of his cell, the noise drove spikes into his skull. The smell of his captors’ sweat and leather and garlic-and-paprika-steeped skin dizzied him after the unchanging stench he’d grown accustomed to.

The guards didn’t speak. A small mercy. It took effort enough making his legs work. No sun in these halls, no wind or seasons or any hint of time, but Adam knew he’d never been confined so long before. To die like this would be a miserable joke—the gods’ favorite kind.