Page 66

A VOICE IN BONE

WREN

I land on the floor with a pained gasp, and am immediately pulled to my feet by Rannoch, who is murmuring apologies, even as Silas is barring the door behind him.

“Quickly, quickly,” he commands, deep voice tense and fraying at the edges. I’ve never heard him sound so…human. “What were you thinking , Wren? Out at full dark? What were you thinking? ”

Rannoch’s eyes jerk to the Father, startled by the emotion in his tone, but there is no space for questioning as the light hits my face and my torn clothing. Silas pulls back his now bloody hand, looking at it in confusion, as Rannoch’s face darkens into something murderous.

“Who did this to you? Who DID this to you? ”

Silas is a towering storm, and picks me up in his arms like a child as Rannoch moves swiftly to the water basin they have in the corner of the Council House.

Such a luxury I think inanely. It is fresh and not brackish, and they have a deep well of it sitting in the open, like gold spilling from their fingers.

Rannoch grabs a cloth and soaks it, even as Silas pushes open a private door through which I’ve never been before and sets me gently on a cushioned couch inside.

Rannoch is in front of me, wiping my face gently with the damp cloth, and I can see the streaks of blood on it when he pulls away. His jaw is clenched, his body vibrating with the effort not to scream, but I can’t tell if he’s angry at me or something else.

“I did nothing wrong…” My jaw aches when I speak, and though I’m half-defiant, the world has come rushing back in painful color, and I’m also half-petrified. Rannoch hears it in the tremble of my voice. Nostrils flaring, he takes a deep breath, forcibly calming his face.

“I am not angry at you, Wren. I am terrified for you. What happened? Please.” He cannot stay at peace, the promise of teeth and blade edging his words.

There is a presence behind me and I flinch away from the shadow before I can help myself.

“I apologize, Keeper. I didn’t mean…I didn’t realize.

” Silas is trying desperately to step back into the roll of the Father, away from the emotion fragmenting him, but his clenched jaw and flexed hands betray him.

“Can you tell us what happened? What forced you to into the night?” Silas’s voice is deep, a chasm of lost souls in its darkness.

There is a death pact being made in this room, with no words having been spoken.

But I have no patience for their posturing.

“Your rabid wolf escaped, Sir .” My words are biting, a snarl, and he rocks back on his heels.

“Surely you can’t mean…”

“Nickolas.” I spit his name out from my mouth with blood following. At some point he must have split my lip. My tongue darts out to prod the corner gently, and it stings, tasting of metal.

“Nick — Nickolas did this?” Rannoch is frantic, running the cloth down my neck, at my clavicle, behind my ears, trying to clean the dirt and grime so he can see the cuts and bruising.

“I warned you. I warned you—” I yelp, yanking away from Rannoch’s hand, and both men lean over, examining me closely.

“He tore hair from her head.” Rannoch sounds like he is going to be ill.

“Ripped it from her scalp. Oh Gods, Wren. Your shift….” He face pales, from ghost to bone, and I think he’s going to pass out for a moment.

“Can I…I’ll be gentle…” and he moves his hand towards the rip of cloth barely covering me.

It’s too much, though, and, without consci ous thought, I fling my body away from him violently, like a frightened horse.

He backs up immediately, holding his hands in front of him to show he’s stopped.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He stutters, a quick babbling sound, water on rocks, and he steps toward me slowly, hands still up.

“Someone needs to check, though. If you need medical attention…”

I know he’s right, I know it, but I’ve gone from a life where I am never seen to one where I am completely exposed, all the time, and it is too much.

It is too much. Still, I know he is right, and, hands shaking violently, I pull back the edge of the torn cloth, exposing some of my chest. A hissed curse escapes Silas’s mouth, the promise of death and thunder covering him like a shroud.

Looking down, I see five ruby lines clawed into my skin around my breast, dark bruising already purpling my naked flesh.

It makes my stomach churn, and I have to swallow back sickness.

Later, later. When you are safe. You will never be safe.

You will never be safe. There is no later.

There is only this, forever and ever. There is only this…

My lungs stutter, seize, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

Reaching out frantically, I find bone around me, and pull its coldness into me.

Quietly now, Keeper. Quietly. We are here.

We are here. A gentle chorus of the dead wraps around me, settling my trembling limbs and silencing the tears I did not even realize were falling.

Come to us, let us in. We’ll take you for now.

They offer to step inside me, softly, but I’m too agitated, and yank as hard as I can, grabbing onto the nearest soul.

All at once, most of my conscious mind goes to sleep.

In that space, between waking and sleeping, a presence surges forward in me.

The voice that speaks is not my own — cold and clinical.

“Her neck as well, Village Father.” Whoever is speaking for me has no love for the Father, that much is clear.

He recognizes the change in my tone, jerking his head up and looking consideringly at my empty face.

“Are you deaf as well as dumb? Her neck.” There is no humor, just a biting cynicism. The woman speaking does not expect one of the Council to help, tenses my body for me as he moves forward .

“Who speaks for you, Keeper?” he asks quietly, concern clear in his voice.

“Who I am is none of your business. You have let your gift be bruised and bloodied when she warned you. She warned you, and you answered with casual indifference. You want more of her secrets now? You have not earned a single one. I would slit your throat in the night — every one of the Council’s — if I thought it would help her in some way.

But I cannot take what she will not give.

Even now, she lets me speak, calls me forth with her blood, which I did not think possible.

It is all I can do for our child. It is more than you have done, though. Her neck.”

Silas is silent, moving forward like a dark shadow, and I watch through a pane of glass, from somewhere far away behind my eyes.

His hands, as large as the Trader’s, reach up slowly, tracing the star pale column of my throat, and he chokes on his next words.

“Rannoch, we…soap. And clean water. Not brackish. Use some of the Traders’ gift. ”

Rannoch takes a moment to look at whatever Silas is seeing, then rushes from the room, returning moments later, hands full.

Slowly, painstakingly, as I sit like a doll, they wash every exposed inch of me.

Occasionally panic flashes through my mind, but the bone memory of the woman who has taken control croons me sweet songs, like a baby, and the panic recedes.

Flickers of pain light my vision, but she takes those too, cocooning me away from reality.

“Does it…does it need stitches?” Rannoch’s words are sick with worry.

“I don’t know. I don’t know !” The helplessness in Silas’s voice is my undoing, and, even far away from my body, tears push through, waterfalls of sorrow cascading down my cheeks, mixing with blood and forming red rivers on my waxen face.

“Did he — Wren, did he touch you anywhere else?” The words are ripped, sharp and jagged, from Silas’s mouth, and Rannoch moans quietly in a sort of panic. I cannot move, so the voice speaks again for me .

“Follow the bruises, Councilmen. Where they stopped, so he stopped.”

With her unspoken permission, they continue cleaning down my torso, both swallowing audibly in a sort of horror as they pull the edge of my pants down, just to hip level, purple and black handprints pressed into my skin like a FleshCarver’s tattoos.

The line between the bruising and my untouched skin is drastic, even in the wavering light of the torch.

“Here? As far as here?”

I nod — or she nods for me, I cannot tell, and Silas and Rannoch exchange looks before cleaning my skin, rough hands gentle as a newborn lamb.

Then it is Silas’s turn to disappear, returning with a pile of soft, dark clothing that smells of woodfire and pine.

Rannoch frowns, but Silas ignores his inquisitive look, carefully removing my ripped top and replacing it with some sort of cloth that is much softer, much stronger.

“A gift from the Traders,” he explains shortly, and I nod again. What do I care if it is a gift from the Gods themselves? “Can you…will you return to us, Keeper?” His voice is tender, the whispered velvet of a lover, and before I even try, my bone guest shakes my head.

“No. She needs to sleep before she comes back and you question her. But there is nowhere here that is safe for her.”

“She will be safe here!” Silas protests, bass voice cavernous. “I swear it.”

“Oh, you swear it?” The amusement in my words is a sharp contrast to the scent of blood in the air, to the wet, red rags dripping crimson puddles on the floor.

“As you swore that no harm would come to her from your tame little beast? As you swore she would be safe under your protection? We chose the wrong man,” she spits out, bitterness and fury warring in my voice.

“We had such hopes for you, but you have failed us at every turn.”

Silas looks helpless and furious at the same time. “ I have failed you?”

I shrug.

“What test did I fail? ”

And she laughs for me, a colder laugh than my own, the clattering of bones in my voice a Reaping pit song.

“What test have you not failed? It would be the easier question to answer.” There is a long pause, and then, sharply, “Where is her Protector?”

Silas and Rannoch exchange hopeless looks. “Someone stole into her cottage and destroyed the bones there. We…we don’t know if her Protector made it through or not. She won’t tell us. But I’ve never seen her neck free of him before. We haven’t had time to…” Rannoch’s voice trails off.

“You strip her of her armor and then are surprised when invading armies take advantage. What an absolute waste you have been.”

“I was a child ,” Silas snaps out.

“So was she,” the voice replies coldly. “You are nothing but excuses. Councilor? Her Protector? He is not gone. I assume he’s in her home still. Take a torch and get him.”

“It’s full night?—”

There is no response but expectant silence, and he leaves the room.

Nothing is said in his absence, the woman curving around my consciousness, not exactly preventing me from returning, but not encouraging it either, and I drift in the timeless nowhere until Rannoch returns, breathing hard as though he’d run the entire length there and back.

Lorcan’s bones are carefully draped in his hands, and he moves to put them around my neck, but she clicks my tongue in warning, taking them from him and looking over the teeth and fingers carefully.

“He has been off you too long. You are already bleeding. It is necessary.”

She doesn’t wait for a response, as though I could even give her one, and wipes my bloody hands down the length of the necklace over and over and over again before wrapping it tightly around my throat like a collar.

Little Keeper? Oh Gods, Wren! I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Lorcan surges forth, beyond frantic, horrified, but even for him I cannot speak.

“At peace, Protector. She is going to sleep soon, and you will not be removed again.” She turns me toward Silas and Rannoch, about to speak, when from outside the entryway, close enough to touch the sound, the liquid howl of the horned man rings out.

It is muffled by the door, but it seeps in the cracks, bouncing off the walls.

Jerking my head up suddenly, I can feel my eyes flare wide in surprise, chest constricting painfully.

“Is it?” The hope in my voice is beyond anything I have in my heart or body — it is full of centuries I have not lived, and she pulls me to my feet, unsteady as a newborn foal, as though wearing my body.

Silas and Rannoch startle back, and move to grab me, but I shake them off.

That sound…it shivers through me, running through my veins, calling to me.

He is much too close, whoever he is, but too far away at the same time.

The two men move in front of me, as though to protect me from whatever is outside the barred entrance.

If I took back my body, my voice, I could tell them that he would not hurt me, that something in him sings to me, but for the first time, I cannot.

The bone memory keeps me back, locked away in my body.

From the night his song rings out again.

“ Ah .” The longing in my voice is so melancholy it hurts my throat.

She is still smiling though, and, before I know it is happening, she leans my head back, white and red hair dripping down my back, and sings out, a hunting bird’s call, a keening, shivering sound that is pain and pleasure all at once.

Everything and everyone freezes, Silas and Rannoch whipping around to face me.

There is nothing but silence, both inside and out, just the staggered inhale and exhale of the men inside the walls of the keep.

From outside the door, the whisper of a startled motion, and then the call of darkness, a low, chuffing purr, like one of the beasts in the bones’ memories.

No one moves. I do not know how long we stand there, but at some point the chuffing noise quiets, and the woman in me smiles in apparent satisfaction.

“She’ll sleep here now, Councilmen. There is one outside the doors guarding her who will not fail.” And, without my consent, she shuts my eyes, and my world disappears.