Page 26

THE CROWN AND THE BLADE

WREN

T he next day, I wake with a purpose. It has been too long that I’ve let myself be moved around the board, complacent being a piece instead of a player, from fear, from tiredness, from self-pity.

But the faces of the people yesterday convince me to step from the shadows where I am most comfortable.

Today is the Council’s day for readings — a perfect time to start.

I give myself extra time to prepare, lacing up my bone cuffs tightly, adding extra bones in my hair, on my fingers, the laces of my boots — anywhere I can cover myself in their cold, stark protection.

And then, pausing, I stare at my face in the small, cracked mirror on the wall.

I have not painted my skin in the Keeper’s sigils since the first time bones called for a child to be Reaped and I denied their request; have rejected all symbols of the BoneKeeper since that moment, other than my armor.

But symbols hold power, and I need to reclaim mine if I am to go against the Council.

So, reaching out with a hand that only slightly trembles, the clicking of my bracers betraying me, I grab my small pot of tallow mixed with bone ash, and begin.

Down the center of my forehead I carefully draw a white design — the sigils for protection and strength.

Under each eye, a curving line, like a flower petal, out to the corners, where I carefully inscribe the trimoon, and then, on each cheek, across the bridge of my nose, and under my lips on my chin, the lines of the four elements that rule us — earth, air, fire, and water.

Earth and air on either cheek, fire across the center, and water nearest my mouth, as every word spoken in our village is a prayer for water.

A quiet nudge of awareness from the bones in the corner has me sigh, and smile begrudgingly.

“Alright, alright,” I whisper to them, and grab my kohl stick from beside the white pot, darkening the lines around my eyes, and retracing the symbols in the black, making the white stand out in glowing patterns on my skin.

The kohl lining is an old practice, much before my time, but some of the bones in my room remember.

They have pushed me for years to wear the full mask of the Keeper, and I have resisted, every Reaping and Rendering twisting my stomach until I wanted to tear my skin from bone to avoid my role.

Perhaps, perhaps , I have done more harm than good avoiding my place in the hierarchy of our city.

And if I am to reclaim my place, to fight the poison that has grown while I have visited with death, then I need all the advice I can get.

“Satisfied?” I ask, the fire in my voice amusing the bones, but they push harder, and I shake my head at them, hair rattling.

They call for the Crown and the Blade.

No I whisper, and their mirth fades.

The Crown and the Blade. The End or the Ender.

NO I say more forcefully, and through the open window, the wind rises, whipping around the corners of the streets, dust swirling in curious twists of movement.

The bones of the walls outside pick up the chorus.

The End or the Ender, Keeper. The Crown and the Blade. By the Turning, by the Turning, they moan, over and over, a waterfall of sound, until it blends together in indistinguishable noise, and I crack beneath its weight.

With shaking hands I lift the bone crown from its place in the corner.

A forest of fingers in a circle of white, of metatarsals, of cuneiform.

Tiny carpals. Thoracic vertebra. And in all bone history, since it was first discovered, it has only fit on my head.

Previous Keepers rested it on their hair for the Offerings, an uneasy perch where it would not settle as a crown should, any sudden movement shifting it from its place.

The diadem curves to me perfectly. But there is a price.

It slices my skin as I settle it on my brow, tiny rivulets of blood running down my face like tears and mixing with my sigils. The bones that cut me almost inhale, sending cold shivers through me.

Ahhhh. BoneKeeper. They are quiet, gentle, happy. They are…thirsty. It has been too long. Thank you, Keeper. Thank you. We will protect you. The Blade, Keeper. The Blade.

I am in the fire now and will burn either way, so I reach out and grab the Guiding Knife carelessly, scratching my hand with it, and if Silent bone could grin, it would be smiling a corpse smile.

The Crown and the Blade. The End or the Ender.

Glancing in the mirror before I leave, I hardly recognize myself. There is no white shadow there; somehow a storm of blood and ivory has taken her place.

I am barely out of my home before the game begins.

“BoneKeeper.” His voice is flat and oily, like the scum that floats on top of our brackish ponds.

I wonder how long I can avoid answering him — the little limits I let myself test, my tiny rebellions in an otherwise controlled world.

But he is not in the mood for it today, and his dirty, broken nails dig crescent moons into my upper arm, belying the obsequious smile on his face.

“It is the Council’s day for readings. We expected you at second light.

” Nickolas’ tone edges on belligerent — it is too much of an effort for him to keep up his mask for long, and I wonder again how he has convinced so many that he is harmless.

“I am sorry, Councilman. I lost track of the time.” My answer is placid, bland, but I must let something slip into my words, because his eyes narrow and his grip tightens.

“We all make mistakes, Keeper. You are fallible. No one is perfect.” It’s a threat, but I’m too tired from my dreamless sleep to keep parrying sharp words to try to get first cut.

Yanking me to a full stop, he studies my face, venom dripping from his sneering lips.

“What is this?” He reaches a hand to touch my face, but I pull my head back, and click my tongue in warning.

“You would do well not to touch the sigils of the Keeper, Councilman.”

He almost growls, a low, dangerous anger escaping him, despite his best efforts.

“You merely surprise me, BoneKeeper. I haven’t seen you…

painted…in a long time.” The way his voice twists the word painted layers lust, and fury, and condensation all in one.

He says it as though I’m one of our Gentle Women, who offer comfort to those who would pay for their talents.

They decorate their faces and hands red with a dye made from the dirt of our village's outer walls, and I narrow my eyes.

To be a Gentle Woman is a blessing of sorts to many in our town, and they, nor I, deserve the callousness and disgust implied in his tone.

Shrugging, I pull away, his nails scraping my skin as they drag along my arm in an effort to find purchase. “I appreciate your help, Councilman, but I’m sure you have better things to do than escort me through the village.”

He smirks, a wicked twist of his lips, and his thin tongue darts out in lizard-like movements to wet them. “You’re with me first today, Keeper.” The triumph in his words corrodes my stomach, and I frown in response.

“I am not. Rexus would be first, as always, as fits his station. Then Nathanial, Allford, Denian, Raek, Carvek, Edvard, and then would be you, Councilor. If the Father wished to speak with the bones, he would outrank all others.”

“We have altered the order. I am first.” His hand is back around my arm, pulling me along behind him, as you would a misbehaving child, and I throw him off, more violently this time.

“It is not yours to shift. You have no say in this.”

Leaning in close to me, he is near enough that drops of his saliva hit my face as he hisses his reply, “ You have no say in this. The old ways are changing, Keeper.”

And they are. The old ways are fading from the village memory, or rather, are being torn from the pages of our history books.

Before my birth, a Councilman would never, never think to speak to a BoneKeeper as they do to me.

So perhaps it is my fault in some ways, or the fault of my mere existence, some trick of the stars that pulled me to earth early, and in the wrong body, and started a crack in the foundation of our village that cannot be fixed, no matter how hard I try.

In all our known history, there had only ever been one Bonekeeper at a time; usually we’re separated by a sea of births and deaths.

There are ancient stories of Keepers where one was in his Twilight season, ready to leave on the raven's wing as another took his first breath from bone, a brief crossing of paths, nothing more.

In any recent memory though, when a Keeper passed to the Void, unguided and soul lost, his blood was drained to an urn and kept waiting.

His flesh was offered to Earth and Sun, his bones were ground to dust, divided, and placed in the four guardian ossuaries over each of the four bone arches at the entrances to our city.

When a new Keeper was called to bone, the dried blood was mixed with pure water and reconstituted for his anointing ceremony.

But never had a Keeper been alive and in his Dancing years when the next BoneKeeper was born.

Never had the blessing been passed from a parent to his child.

Never had a Keeper been marked from birth.

And never had the Keeper been a daughter, rather than a son.