The Bone Charmer Read online

  He gives a dark laugh. “Della didn’t tell you? I’ve had your grandmother’s bones since the handlers finished preparing them. Except for the few Della held back and had prepared on the sly, but I’ll get those in time.”

  “You’re lying,” I say. “Oskar would have told us they were missing.”

  “Oskar is an incompetent fool. He still doesn’t know they’re missing,” Latham says. “So, when I took your father’s bones, I made sure to make it obvious enough that even he knew they were gone. I needed something personal to get you involved, dear Saskia.”

  I think of the open, empty box in the middle of the floor at the bone house. Of my mother speculating that someone wanted her to know what they’d done. Latham was taunting her. But why? I try to remember what he said about my mastery tattoo. Something about it being the last piece he needed. My father’s missing bones, along with Anders’s and Rakel’s murders, led my mother to train me. Latham must have known exactly what series of events would lead to the tattoo on my arm. He’s been planning this for months. Maybe for years.

  And I played right into his hands.

  If the bone hadn’t broken, if I’d just accepted my fate, maybe we wouldn’t be here now. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so powerless.

  But I’m not powerless. I may not be matched as a Bone Charmer, but I’m trained as one. And that has to be good for something. Still, it’s not as if I can pull out a set of bones and do a reading right here and now. Find your opponent’s weak spot. Nurtured magic grows stronger. My father’s and my mother’s wisdom echo in my mind and melt together. I think of the first time I was successful reading the bones. Of Latham’s words to Declan—make sure that girl falls in love with you.

  My thoughts spin around my mind like a child’s toy.

  And then they slow.

  Tip.

  And go still.

  Latham needs me to have the mastery tattoo, but he needs me to have the love tattoo as well.

  And I don’t.

  My plan to trick Declan into believing I’m in love with him is Latham’s weak spot. I can use what Latham doesn’t know against him. That is my power.

  I scrub at my wrist more vigorously. Finally the tattoo begins to smudge.

  “Latham, don’t do this,” my mother is saying, “please.”

  She’s trying to buy me more time. I lick my thumb and smear the paint along my skin.

  “Avalina wouldn’t want this for you. She’d hate what you’ve become.”

  Latham sucks in a sharp breath. He turns to me and I freeze. His head cocks to one side. Birdlike. Inquisitive. “How about a small mercy, Saskia? Would you like to embrace your mother one final time?”

  My mind goes blank. I know the question is a game, but I can’t understand the strategy.

  He drops the knife to his side. “Well?”

  “Yes,” I say, my voice tight.

  He gives my mother a little shove. “Go on then. Say your goodbyes.”

  She takes a step toward me. And then another. Her expression is resigned, sad. She gives me a small smile as she reaches for me. And then, suddenly, her eyes go wide. She looks down at her chest, at the blood that seeps through her shirt.

  I was only a moment away from falling into her arms, when Latham stabbed her in the back.

  My vision goes red. I scream. “Mama, no. Please, no!”

  My mother falters. I catch her, and we sink to the floor. Her breathing is ragged. Her eyes are glassy. I press my hands against the wound, but blood oozes through my fingers. Tears flow down my cheeks.

  Latham grabs me by both arms and yanks me backward. My mother tumbles away from me, still gasping.

  I struggle against Latham, elbow him hard in the nose. He grunts and tightens his grip. My shoulder blazes with pain. Latham flips me onto my back and presses the knife to my throat. I rear up and punch him in the face.

  He flips the knife around in his fist so the blunt end of the handle is facing me, and then he brings it down hard on my temple. Pain explodes in my head. Warm blood trickles down my cheek.

  “My love tattoo is a fake!” I cry out.

  His expression falters. “What?”

  “I could never love someone like Declan.”

  He whips his head in Declan’s direction. “She better be lying.”

  Latham uses his knees to pin my shoulders down. He catches my wrist and twists it viciously, bending my entire arm at an unnatural angle. Agony makes nausea rise in my throat. He brings my hand close to his face and examines my wrist. I can only hope I’ve done a good enough job of smearing the dark paint.

  Declan makes a noise that sounds like a frightened animal. His eyes are trained on me and full of dread. Latham spits on my wrist and scrubs at my skin. Quiet fury chisels his features. Then, abruptly, his expression changes. He smiles. Begins to laugh.

  He drops my hand and sits back on his heels. I examine the tattoo and my heart ices over. Beneath the smeared paint, a faint pink line has etched itself around my wrist.

  And I have no idea where it came from.

  I push the hair off my forehead and scoot away from him. If I can just get to my mother …

  “Don’t bother,” Latham says quietly. “She’s already dead.”

  He’s lying. He has to be. I crawl toward her even though my head screams in protest. She lies prone in a pool of blood. Her eyes are open and vacant.

  “No!” The word scratches from my throat. “Please, no.” I reach for her, take hold of her cold hand in mine. My vision blurs. Hot tears roll down my cheeks and I don’t bother to wipe them away. For months I’ve worried about this reality winking out of existence, but simply disappearing would be a far more merciful end.

  “Lars,” Latham says, “tie her up. We’re going to kill her slowly.”

  The Breaker yanks my hands behind my back and secures them with a rope. I try fighting him off, but it’s no use. I’ve lost too much blood and he’s too strong.

  Latham stalks toward the kitchen, and I hear cupboards and drawers opening and slamming closed. My stomach seizes. He’s probably looking for things to torture me with.

  I turn toward Declan. He sits motionless in the corner, still surrounded by broken glass. But his expression is haunted and full of regret. He’s been my ruin, but he’s also my last chance for survival.

  “You never answered my question,” I say softly. “Did you ever care about me at all?”

  He flinches. His eyes are uncertain as they fall to my wrist. Is he wondering if the tattoo means I’m in love with him after all? Can I use that to save myself?

  “We’ve been through so much together. Declan, please.”

  His gaze darts to Lars, who is sorting through his satchel of bones. Declan’s fingers close around a shard of glass. I give him an encouraging nod. If he can incapacitate Lars, we’ll have a much better chance of escaping. Latham won’t be nearly as powerful without his Breaker.

  In one fluid motion, Declan springs to his feet. But instead of attacking Lars, he races away from the Breaker and toward the front of the house. The last of my hope bleeds away and white-hot hatred burns through me. I should have known he’d abandon me and save himself.

  Declan throws open the door. “Help!” he screams. “Somebody help! We—” His words strangle off and he slumps to the ground. Lars stands at the threshold, his bone pouch gaping open, a broken frog vertebra between his thumb and forefinger. I gag at the thought of Declan’s spine snapping.

  Latham runs from the kitchen, his face twisted with rage. He holds a mallet in one hand and a long needle in the other. “You idiot!” he shouts at Lars. “How did he get outside?”

  The Breaker’s face goes stony. He dips a hand into the pouch at his waist and lets the tiny bones tumble through his fingers. “This town is crawling with Watchers.” His eyes flick to me. “You better kill her now.”

  Latham glances out the window and his jaw goes tight. “Too late. The Ivory Guard is almost here.”

  He bends and scoops my mothe
r’s lifeless body into his arms. I ram my shoulder into his leg to try to stop him, but he aims a foot at my temple and kicks me away. Pain shoots through my head. I taste salt and I don’t know if it’s from blood or tears or both.

  Latham heads toward the door, cradling my mother close to his chest, and I sob. “Please,” I say. “Please don’t take her.”

  He turns to me and smiles. “I’ll see you soon, Saskia. You can count on it.” He leaves, and I’m left alone to wonder how it is that a broken heart can continue beating.

  Saskia

  I swim through layers of darkness, trying to reach the surface, but sleep tugs at me. Pulls me under. Holds me captive.

  My skull is heavy with hammering pain. Throbbing and relentless. Distantly, I’m aware that something needs my attention—my mind stretches for it, but it’s out of my grasp. The pounding is too loud to focus. Images pull me up toward the surface—my mother braiding her hair, expert fingers darting between pale strands; Ami lying in the grass on the bank of the Shard, her toes digging into bright green grass; Gran pulling me on her lap for a story. And then other images thrust me deeper into the darkness—the glint of a blade against a throat; wide, shocked eyes; acid fear.

  I instruct my eyes to open, but they won’t obey. It’s too much effort. And so I give up and let the darkness swallow me, let it sweep me away to a place where pain doesn’t exist and hearts can’t be broken.

  A scream punches through the heavy silence that envelops my mind. My eyes fly open. I try to sit up, but my head pulses with pain. My limbs feel slow and heavy.

  “Saskia?” Ami’s voice perches on the razor edge of hysteria. She kneels beside me. “Can you hear me? What happened?”

  I flinch away from the memories that swarm my mind. Nightmares. Only nightmares. Except … the thoughts don’t float away when I try to hold them, like dreams do. They grow more vivid. More real. Grief pushes against my rib cage. I make an involuntary noise.

  Ami loosens the knots at my wrists and then dabs at the blood on my forehead with the edge of her sleeve. “There’s a dead Watcher outside”—her voice wobbles—“and Declan …” She trails off. “Sas, who did this?”

  I squeeze my eyes tightly closed before opening them again. “I want …” It’s so hard to speak. The words feel like gravel in my throat. “I want my mother.”

  Ami bites her lip. Her eyes fill with tears.

  “You need a Healer,” she says. I can hear the forced calm in her tone, like she’s struggling to hold herself together. She squeezes my shoulder gently. “I have to leave for help, but I won’t be long. You’re going to be fine, I promise.”

  But she’s wrong. I will never be fine again.

  The door closes behind her and I try once more to pull myself into a sitting position. My head throbs and a wave of dizziness washes over me. When my eyes finally focus, I wish I’d never opened them. My mother is gone, but the pool of blood remains, a reminder that it wasn’t just a bad dream. Sorrow pushes up my throat, so thick that I can scarcely breathe.

  My gaze flicks to Gran’s bone on the shelf. I’d been so worried about this life disappearing, but now it’s my only tendril of hope. I long to wink out of this existence and live in a world where my mother survives. Carefully, I lift myself to my feet. My head aches. I pull the bone from the shelf. It’s still suspended in the nutrient solution. I turn it from side to side. Examine it from all angles.

  And then I sink to my knees.

  The bone is completely healed. This is the reality that survived.

  Gran’s words drift through my mind. I taste the bitter truth of them. The past is a rigid and unchangeable thing.

  My mother is gone forever.

  Time passes. The shadows in the room elongate, become distorted versions of the objects above them. Darker, uglier versions of the truth.

  Vaguely, I wonder where Ami has gone. And then I remember that Midwood doesn’t have a Healer anymore. Anders is dead. Just like Rakel. And Declan. And my mother.

  I rub at the paint on my wrist until the pink line underneath is clearly visible. I’ve waited months to see this—first with the breathless hope that I was actually in love with Declan, and later when I was desperate to trick my body into believing something that wasn’t true. But it never appeared. So why now?

  Tattoos always occur in response to highly emotional experiences. It’s why so few children have tattoos from loving their parents. That kind of love is too instinctual, too gradual. But plenty of people who didn’t have love tattoos before they were parents get them the first time they hold their child in their arms.

  It’s a singular moment of overwhelming love.

  But maybe seeing a knife pressed to my mother’s throat—realizing what it would mean to lose her—was enough for the tattoo to materialize. It’s the only explanation I can think of.

  Voices drift from outside and pull me from my thoughts. I yank Gran’s bone from the nutrient solution and shove it into my pocket.

  The door opens, and Ami comes in, followed by the two non-magical members of the town council—Valera and Erik—along with several people I don’t recognize. A collective gasp ripples through the room.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Valera says. Something about the tender note in her voice, the raw pain, makes fresh tears fall. “What in the name of bones happened here?”

  The story tumbles from my lips like broken glass—sharp and startling, with jagged pieces that cut as they fall. I tell them about everything except Gran’s broken bone. I don’t know how I would explain it, and even though my mother is gone, I still want to protect her secrets. Besides, maybe my timeline never split at all. Maybe this terrible life was the only one I ever had.

  A Healer comes from Brisby the next day. He’s an older man with a thick mane of bright silver hair. His hands are gentle as he examines me. The lump on my head is the size of a plum, and still hurts when I move.

  “You’ll recover, but you should rest for a few days. No running. No swimming. As much sleep as possible.” My whole family is dead. All I want to do is sleep.

  He lays a palm on my forearm. “You’ve had to suffer far more than is fair for someone so young. I’m not a skilled enough Healer to ease that pain. It won’t ever go away—not completely—but remember that sharp things tend to dull over time.”

  I turn my face away and stare at the wall. I’m in no mood for folksy wisdom or false promises. The Healer waits for a while before he seems to get the message that I’m not going to say anything more.

  “I’ll leave something on the bedside table for the pain.” He gives me an awkward pat on the back and then leaves, closing the door behind him.

  I drain the medicine in one swallow. Bitterness coats my tongue and slides down my throat. I sink back against the pillows and wait for my pain to disappear. It doesn’t.

  I chase sleep, but I never catch it. Each time I start to drift off, I jolt back awake, breathless. It’s as if my mind knows that sleep is a creature with claws. That my nightmares won’t fade when I wake.

  A gentle knock sounds at the door and Ami pokes her head inside. I’ve stolen her room, her bed, her peace. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  She sits on the edge of the bed. “Feeling any better?”

  I shrug. The thick feeling of the medicine has started to wear off, and the lucidity that comes with it is unwelcome.

  “The Grand Council is sending a team to investigate,” Ami says, “and the Ivory Guard is searching for Latham. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “They won’t find him.”

  She frowns. “They might.”

  But she’s wrong. He robbed the bone house while the Ivory Guard stood outside. While a team of Watchers had their animals circling the building. Whatever magic he has at his disposal is stronger than theirs.

  Dawn seeps through the curtains. The hours have trickled by like days. The days like months. I am trapped by time—it moves too slowly and too quickly all at once. I can hardly
believe that my mother has been gone nearly a week. And yet she feels so far away, so out of reach, it’s as if we haven’t been together in a year.

  And I still can’t bear to go home.

  A throat clears—deep, masculine—and I lift my head.

  Bram Wilberg stands at the threshold. The sight of him sends a jolt of recognition through me. Since the encounter with the prisoner when I was twelve, each time we’ve crossed paths, I’ve felt a combination of guilt and fear that made me want to turn away. But now … there’s something else. An unfamiliar stirring in my chest that makes me equal parts curious and confused.

  “I’m sorry to arrive unannounced,” he says. “Can I come in?”

  I smooth a hand over my hair, suddenly self-conscious about my messy, day-old braid. “Yes, of course.” My voice comes out gravelly, whether from too much crying or not enough talking, I don’t know.

  Bram comes to my bedside. His gaze falls to my hands and his eyes widen in surprise. At first I think he’s looking at the love tattoo around my wrist. But he’s not. He’s staring at the small black tattoo on my knuckle. Suddenly the full weight of our history sits between us like a barricade. I tuck my hands beneath the quilt.

  Bram’s expression clears, like a slate wiped clean. “I heard about your mother. I’m so sorry. She was a wonderful woman.” It’s the same sentiment I’ve heard at least three dozen times as townsfolk have come to pay their respects.

  “Yes,” I say woodenly, “she was.” Something elusive dances at the edge of my mind, but I’m too sluggish to reach it.

  “How are you?” he asks.

  “I’m surviving.”

  His face falls. “I’m sorry. What a terrible question. Of course, you’re not well. You’d think after six days on a ship I would have thought of something better to say.”

  Suddenly the room comes into sharp focus and I realize what I couldn’t put my finger on before. Bram got here far faster than should have been possible. If he’s spent the last six days on a ship, he would have had to leave Ivory Hall almost immediately after my mother died.