Blade and bone, p.6
Blade and Bone, page 6
Who were they talking about? The Dogs?
“You know what that is, don’t you? Hegen magic. It’s dangerous. It’s not supposed to be here,” the other replied.
“You don’t know that’s what it is,” the first one said. “Besides, I’m not nearly as superstitious about magic as those shits in Reyand.”
“If that magic is spreading here, it might mean the war is coming this way too. We don’t need any of that.”
“The war should be over. At least, it’s mostly over.”
They moved on, but Lily hung out for another moment. They’d found her collections.
She wasn’t concerned about the watch finding anything she had taken. She was more worried about Kanar or Jal learning about it. They weren’t questions she was eager to answer.
She found her way down the hillside, moving past brightly colored buildings, and then turned down a narrow, twisting side street. This one led toward an alley that opened up into one of the more distinct streets in the city. The place had once been filled with nefarious people, but it had been gentrified so that the homes were some of the nicest, and most expensive, in the city. Lily always enjoyed walking along it.
Most of the homes had flowerpots outside the windows, and vibrant flowers bloomed in the bright sunlight that shone here. She always appreciated the fact that the fragrance from the flowers mingled, creating the smell of a garden in the midst of the city. It was a place she always came to on her own so she could think, where she knew it would not be occupied by dangerous people.
She took a seat on a bench in a small plaza right before the alley opened into a wider street. She pulled out her pouch, set it on her lap, and began to work at the bones. Lily rubbed the bones until they were fully cleansed. She would need boiling water and would have to process them fully, but for now this would be enough. If it came down to it, she could even use them, but it would take more out of her to do so.
She worked her finger along the bones as her mind traced back to when she had first learned this technique. She’d been barely eleven years old when she had first begun her journey toward the art and understood her own potential. It was so different than what her parents could do, though her mother had certainly tried to help her find a similar gift to her own. For all of Lily’s attempts to be like her mother, she had failed. She simply didn’t have that same predilection.
Not like she did when it came to bone.
She remembered the first time she’d been brought to claim her own prize. That was what they were considered, after all—prizes. The man had been hanged for some crime against the kingdom, and once she and the others had climbed up the white stone, her instructor had waved her hand toward Lily and then to the corpse.
“You have to claim it yourself,” Ezra had said. “There’s more power in it. Once you claim it, then you can clean it, and then you can use it. All part of the stages involved in this.”
Lily approached slowly. The others had backed away, especially when Ezra had gotten there. They revered her, not only because of her experience but because of her skill. If Ezra was training a student, as she was with Lily, they gave her the necessary space to do what she needed to do. In this case, Lily was being given an opportunity to claim her own prize so that she could begin to have some mastery.
“It feels wrong,” Lily said.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the man’s face, with his grizzled beard and sallow cheeks. His brown eyes were open and staring at her, as if condemning her for what she was going to do. She shivered and backed up a step, knowing that she should not. Ezra would not allow her to abandon this part of her training.
“What about it feels wrong?” Ezra asked.
Lily looked over to her. Ezra’s blonde hair was pulled back into a braid and wrapped with a pale blue silk that shone in the moonlight. Her smile was warm and comforting as she looked at Lily.
“Taking from him,” Lily said.
“Does he need his fingers?” Ezra asked. “His toes? Even his ears or his manhood?”
Lily glanced back at the corpse, and for a moment she could practically feel as if the man were watching her, his eyes demanding that she walk away, that she not touch him.
“He’s dead,” she whispered.
“Then he does not need those things. They are part of his flesh, and now they will be part of something greater. But only if you turn them into something greater.” Ezra reached forward and grabbed the man’s hand. She gripped his thumb, and with large silver scissors she cut through the thumb before holding it up. “It is our responsibility to ensure that those who have gone can still offer something to those who remain behind. Do you feel that you do not have that potential?”
“You said that I do,” Lily said.
“And what do you think you can do?”
“I don’t know.”
It wasn’t a matter of what she could do, it was a matter of what she was willing to. And in this case, she was going to have to be willing to do what Ezra had just done: claim a prize. Lily had known that was part of her training and had tried to prepare herself for what she would have to do, but now that she was here in front of this man, she found it more difficult than she had imagined.
The wind picked up, stirring a hint of the rot of this place, but it was mixed with the flowers that bloomed all around the stone. Lilies, just like her name.
“What did he do?” Lily asked.
“Will it make it easier for you?”
“I don’t know.”
Ezra glanced to the city in the distance. It was hidden behind a wall, obscured from her view, though Lily had wandered the streets of that city. She had learned to sneak through them, skulking like the others who had been training with Ezra.
“He took advantage of several women,” Ezra said. “That was his crime. Crimes.” She smiled tightly as she corrected herself. “The mistakes he made in his life can be redeemed in the afterlife. The mistakes he made can be paid for with the offering that he makes.”
“He’s not choosing to make this offering, though.”
“By agreeing to his sentencing, he agreed to the offering.”
Ezra looked over to those around them. Lily was one of the very few who did not grow up among the people of this holding. She had been sent here to train, to learn. In that, she felt like an outsider, but never more so than she did now. Now that she was here with Ezra and the others, instructed on what she needed to do next, she could not help but feel as if she did not belong.
“He didn’t agree to his sentencing,” Lily said.
“He made the walk. You saw it.”
Lily nodded. She had seen. The man had walked out to the stone, climbed the stairs and the small ladder, and placed his neck inside the rope. Maybe he had agreed to his sentencing. Not that the man had any choice in the matter, but perhaps at the end he had known what was coming and hadn’t objected. Maybe he knew what would become of his body, the way the people would claim their prizes. None of that was a secret in this part of the world.
Ezra watched her. Lily reached out and took hold of the man’s pinky finger. She would start small. That had been the lesson she’d been given. Not just because claiming the prize was easier when she started small, but because the art she would create would be easier to make that way.
The wind whispered along her face and tugged at her hair. She looked over to the others, all of them standing in the shadows as if waiting on her to make her decision—and to claim her prize.
Ezra nodded in encouragement. Lily placed her small silver scissors up to the base of the pinky, and with trembling hands, she snipped. The finger came off cleanly. She held it out, unsure what she was supposed to do next. Ezra had told her before, but she hadn’t given enough thought to it. In her mind, this had never been something she would have done.
The pinky felt surprisingly small and cold. Lily hadn’t known what it would feel like, but other than the sticky blood, it was just cold. She would have to clean the flesh before she could use the bone in the art, but it seemed to her that the hardest part had been done.
“Very well. Now that you’ve claimed your prize, you get to decide how you’ll use it,” Ezra said.
Lily nodded. “Just this one?” Her hands still shook, but she’d cut one finger off now. What would be another?
“We’ll start with this. When you feel comfortable with it, you can begin to try another. Does that sound fair?”
Lily looked at the dead man again, meeting his blank eyes. Was it fair?
Was anything?
She didn’t know how she felt.
She nodded and stepped away from the hanging body, letting others move in to take their prizes. She’d been so focused on what she’d been doing that she hadn’t paid much attention to them as they waited on her and Ezra. Now they were there, quiet as they worked, the steady snip of the scissors cutting through flesh and bone the only sound.
Lily blinked away the memory, turning the bone in her hand as she looked around the small courtyard. That seemed like a lifetime ago, though it wasn’t that long. It was easier on her conscience now. Claiming prizes was a matter of practicality. When someone was gone, why shouldn’t she use their remains?
But it was harder to actually do because getting to the bodies wasn’t easy unless she was the one who killed them. Then it didn’t feel so much like she claimed a prize as it felt like her taking something that wasn’t hers.
Sitting here wasn’t going to help her prepare any better, but there was something relaxing about it. Ezra would understand. She’d taught Lily so much, but it was only one aspect of the training Lily had received. The other parts of her training had been harder earned but no less important. They were the parts that had kept her alive all this time.
Lily stuffed the bones back into her pouch and sealed it shut.
Kanar wouldn’t understand. She had to keep him from learning about her prizes and about the reason she claimed them. Though he was from Reyand, most there didn’t care for the kind of subtle art she used.
Not so subtle these days.
Not with what she’d done with the Dogs.
Then again, there hadn’t been the chance for subtlety. She’d needed quick action, or else Jal and the wagons would have been captured. She wasn’t about to let that happen just because she’d been trained to try to keep her arts hidden.
The Dogs…
That was what she needed to learn more about.
When she did, then she could let Kanar know what kind of a threat they really posed. He probably expected her to get involved anyway, though he would never tell her that. Kanar could be difficult to read. Stubborn. He was the kind of man that she would have relished the opportunity to go after had she been given the job, though. She would have taken a careful approach, perhaps even something of a delicate touch to ensure that he didn’t know she was coming.
And then…
Lily smiled at the thought. What kind of art could she create with a prize claimed from Kanar? That thought wasn’t just hers. It came from the lessons Ezra had given her. Lessons that her other mentors in the citadel had trained into her mind.
A bark sounded in the distance, and she got to her feet.
It seemed as if even the strays wanted her to get moving. And it was time.
The Dogs weren’t waiting on them, so she wouldn’t wait on the Dogs.
Chapter Six
KANAR
When he came awake, Kanar half expected to be in one of the Dogs’ strongholds. Having survived the attack, he knew there was a danger of them coming after him. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t a known entity in the city. Quite a few people would recognize him and his sword, along with the members of his team.
But he wasn’t in one of the Dogs’ strongholds. If he had been, he would smell the seashore, the stench of fish, the salt in the air.
Instead, it smelled like Malory’s room. She wouldn’t have jumped him, though.
Whoever was responsible for this had used some sort of explosive—or magic, he had to acknowledge—and knocked him out. Malory didn’t need to do any of that. If she had wanted talk to him, she would simply have sent for him.
His hands were bound. His legs as well. He was sitting in a chair, but it was too dark to see. It wasn’t the first time Kanar had been bound like this, and he immediately began to work on the knots. Most people got sloppy, afraid of cutting off the prisoner’s circulation. That was one thing Kanar knew how to do well—make sure the bindings were taut.
He rubbed his wrists together. It was tight, but not completely.
Somewhere nearby, a door opened. He heard the soft thud of boots along the floor. The sounds were muted more than they should be on wood. That meant carpet. Was he in some sort of merchant stronghold?
Maybe Heatharn had decided to betray him. Though he expected that Heatharn was already out to sea, taking his treasures beyond Sanaron to wherever he sailed.
Not Heatharn, then. Not Malory. And not the Dogs.
A lantern came on, and Kanar blinked.
He was in a wood-paneled office, seated in front of a heavily lacquered desk stacked with books and papers. There was a yellow veil over the lantern. He couldn’t easily see the figure seated at the desk, though he suspected it was a man.
Kanar continued to work at the bindings around his wrists. They started to loosen, but not nearly as fast as he wanted. He didn’t see anyone else in the room with them, though that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone here. Somebody was probably hiding behind one of those paneled walls, watching to make sure that he didn’t escape—or spring across the table and strike this person.
“Mr. Reims,” the voice said. It was slightly accented but sounded as if it belonged to a Sanaron local, not one of the city’s many outsiders. Not somebody like himself. “I apologize for the nature of our visit, but given your reputation, I thought it was best to bring you here in a way that would ensure all of our safety.”
“All of it? Seems to me you weren’t all that concerned about my safety. What did you use on me?”
“Just a little incapacitating measure. Nothing to be too concerned about.”
“A magical measure?”
There was a moment of silence. “Yes,” the man finally said. “Your reputation is well earned. Not many would pick up on that. You have experience with it, don’t you?”
Did the man know about his past serving the Realmsguard? Or how he had served them? Or was this person only aware of his recent history—the time he had spent in Sanaron and what he had done since coming to the city?
That he was unsurprised by Kanar’s exposure to magic suggested that it was the former. There were not many people here who knew of it. Malory was one, he suspected, but he didn’t know with certainty. Jal and Lily, to a certain extent, though neither knew the full truth.
“I get around,” Kanar said.
“It’s more than just getting around, though, isn’t it? That it makes you a bit of a predicament.”
“It only depends on what predicament you’re getting at, but maybe you can release these bonds and we’ll have a mature conversation.”
“I’m afraid that can’t be done until I have your full attention.”
“You have my attention,” Kanar growled.
The man leaned forward. The glowing lantern light cast shadows about his unfamiliar lean face. He had hard lines around deep green eyes, and a heavy beard.
Not a merchant, then. Most of the merchants were clean shaven, at least those who traveled beyond Sanaron. There were too many people who had judgmental opinions about beards. And about tattoos.
Kanar sat forward just enough that he could smell the man’s perfume. Definitely not a merchant.
“That’s good. Very good. I would hate to need to do something more to get your attention. I believe your colleagues Mr. Olassa and Ms. Lily would not be quite as receptive to conversation as you are.”
That left only a few options, and all of them made him feel increasingly troubled.
“Are you threatening them?” Kanar said.
“Do I need to?”
Kanar worked his hands again, finally jerking them free and lunging at the same time. The bearded man flinched and leaned back, but not before Kanar had his hands around the man’s neck. He flipped his legs to the side, cracking the chair on the desk so that he was freed of it. His legs might still be bound, but he had his arms, and now he had the man in his grasp.
A soft click came from behind him. Either a panel sliding open or, more likely, a crossbow drawn and ready.
“You are everything I heard you might be,” the man said.
“Not everything,” Kanar said. He squeezed tightly, just enough that he could suffocate the man or break his neck if someone were to fire a bolt at him. “Call them off.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” He wheezed the words out while Kanar squeezed his neck. “Not while you hold me here.”
“I’m going to count to three. I don’t care if they fire at me. I’ve been shot by crossbows before.” It was a gamble, especially as Kanar wasn’t sure that crossbows were the only things being aimed at him. “But I can guarantee that I will snap your neck before they have a chance to kill me. Call them off.”
The man licked his lips, and Kanar relaxed his grip slightly, holding one hand on the back of his head. He wasn’t kidding about snapping this man’s neck if it came down to it.
“Leave us,” the man said.
“Are you sure?” a voice replied. “But—”
“I am sure. Now leave us.”
Kanar stood, still keeping one arm wrapped around the bearded man’s neck. He pulled the veil off the lantern and twisted the dial, burning more oil so that it lit the room more brightly.
He looked around. In addition to the wood paneling on the walls, wooden beams crisscrossed the ceiling. A table stood along the far wall, with a bottle of brown liquor resting on it, the stopper shaped like a wolf head.
He noticed an opening in the corner of the room. Kanar positioned himself so that the bearded man was in front of him, and in front of whoever aimed down from above. He scanned the rest of the room and found another bolt hole in the opposite corner.
