Bone and Jewel Creatures (14 page)

But that was as it should be. And the lady of death was the lady of moths, also.

“All this just to
own
us?” Bijou said, as slow blood rolled down her throat. “So be it. You’ll own nothing again.”

She stepped forward onto the knife, and as she did, she raised her right hand and brushed the wing of the bone raven sitting like a trophy on Kaulas’ shoulder. “Aladdin,” she said. “I free you.”

The rest of her incantation died on the knife. But she had spoken her intent, and with her blood and breath across the bird’s skull that was what mattered.

Brazen saw her hurl herself onto the knife. He saw her hand rise. He saw the palm slide down the bones of the animate bird skeleton. He saw the mirror-sharp skeleton of the sloth shuffle forward from the edge of the ring of watching creatures to rise up behind the Necromancer and drag hooked claws as long as human fingers though his hamstrings and across his lower back, drive them through flesh and twist.

He saw the raven turn, open its beak, and sink the beveled steel point of its hypodermic tongue into the angle where Kaulas’ jaw joined his throat, silencing him before he could speak a dying spell.

Neither one of them screamed.

But the Necromancer tried to.

Bijou—

Oh, Bijou.

She lay in blood that first bubbled and then seeped and then stopped, and Brazen could do nothing to staunch it. The knowledge did nothing to prevent him from reddening his hands in the attempt.

Despite anything he tried, she went quickly, the raven perched beside her on the stones, the sloth rocking worriedly beside her. When her breath had stilled and the blood stuck to his fingers rather than seeping across them, only then did he whisper, “You should have let me take care of it.”

But then, he wasn’t sure after all that he would have been able to.

Brazen leaned back on his heels and looked up.

The first thing he saw was the child, crouched over one dead jackal, flank to flank with a scarred and living one. The next was the raven, wings still half-spread, cocking its one-eyed head from side to side. Still animate. Still moving.

Brazen turned on his toes without rising from his crouch. They had come up around him, Kaulas’ creatures and Brazen’s and Bijou’s, the animate dead and the animate machines and the jeweled skeletons, many crushed and torn and missing pieces. They stood and waited, and did not judge—or if they judged, they did so silently.

As silently as the child, who had not moved from its place beside its packmates. Other jackals slung from amid the crowd to lurk beside them, shadows on the slick and stinking stones. He wondered if the corpse of his mother was still among them.

He thought he could find out later. And find out, too, if she still wished to be destroyed. It was a decision for another day, one which did not already hold so many
terrible decisions.

“You’ll all come home with me,” Brazen said, looking from the re-animated to the living to the never-living at all.

The child looked up at Brazen with eyes gone huge as he rose to his feet. Whether his words meant anything to it, he did not know. But it straightened up, holding itself like a young person rather than a wild animal, and touched his hand with the fingertips of its bone and jewel one. It looked over its shoulder, where the pack had gathered around the corpse of one of their own, and made a yearning gesture.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

It shuddered all over. Brazen touched its hair. He thought the gesture would send it haring away, but it suffered the caress. Afterwards, it withdrew just beyond the length of his arm and stared up at him.

It did not shy away, though, when the captain of the
kapikulu
came up through the ranks of the dead.

“Enchanter,” he said. “What are your instructions?”

He took a breath. Faces were appearing in windows and the corners of doorways. There was a public face to be put on this. And a hero to be remembered.

“Lash your spears to carry the Wizard Bijou,” Brazen said. “She must be honored. Bring her to Kaalha’s House. I will await you.”

But it turned out he couldn’t leave while they were seeing to Bijou, because he could not walk away from her. And nor would Emeraude, who flitted back and forth between Bijou’s corpse and that of the she-jackal, touching each with featherlight gestures, clawed fingers that scrabbled as if to clutch, but never quite locked on what they touched.

When the remaining
kapikulu
lifted Bijou’s body, Brazen found himself beside the child. It gentled the he-jackal as Brazen lifted the female in his arms. She weighed no more than seed-puff, a fistful of feathers. So burdened, it seemed only right that he fell in behind Bijou’s bier rather than leading the way, as had been his intent.

It was fitting that he should walk this last mile with Bijou. As her guard of honor. And it was fitting that he should carry the jackal who had come to fight beside them, though Kaulas’ wrath had only slopped over onto her pack by accident.

Before they started forward, however, the captain of the
kapikulu
stepped before Brazen, straightening his
gore-soaked coat. “And the Necromancer?”

Brazen turned away. “Leave him for the jackals,” he said, and then paused and looked back over his shoulder. “You know what? Actually, you’d better take his head.”

“Just in case,” the captain said. “And burn it?”

“Just in case.” Brazen smiled a smile that made his cheeks burn. “He
was
the Necromancer. I’d hate to take any chances.”

The cub follows the loud creature and the loud creature follows the old creature’s body, which the men in long coats carry with as much gentleness as if she is only sleeping and they do not wish to wake her. She is not sleeping. The cub can smell the death on her.

The cub wants to howl, but its throat tightens around the sound it would like to make. So it walks silently, the father and the brothers-and-sisters close beside it. They will not leave the cub—or the mother.

Not yet.

They do not go to any place the cub has been before. It might worry at being out of its territory, but the pack is there—all of its packs, both packs—and it is too tired and sad to be afraid. It is almost too tired and sad to walk, but everyone else is walking, and the cub won’t be left behind.

Even the mirrored creature creeps along behind, scraping itself along the stones until the big broad bone creature with the hands stops and picks it up, slinging it from its chest like an infant. That comforts the cub. The cub does not think it could stand to see anyone else left behind.

They come to a building—a man den—bigger even than the enemy’s den, and the cub thinks they will stop outside it. But instead the bearers lead them up a broad shallow set of steps and into a den built of silver-and-black stones, under a portico hung with silk awnings and strings of flashing mirrors.

A rank of robed creatures meet them here, and at first the cub flinches from them. They are men, male and female, and each of them wears a mirrored mask split down the middle with a jagged line. But they part into welcoming lines to let the procession pass, and when the cub smells them they smell like simple grains and milk, like soap and dates and honey. No blood and no wrath.

As the procession passes between them, they each raise both hands to the separate halves of their masks, as if to remove them, or as if to shield their eyes from horror.

Inside the building is cool, a great echoing space of polished floors with a table at the far end on a raised platform. The table is simple wood, freshly scrubbed, and the source of the good smells. It holds bowls of cooling porridge and honey, glasses of wine.

A man stands in front of it. She wears a gleaming mirrored mask like the others, but her robes are sewn with mirrors and her sleeves of plain white linen drip from arms spread wide. She makes a greeting noise, and sweeps down the steps from the platform.

Something occurs between her and the loud creature, some conversation the cub cannot follow. She strokes the mother’s bloody ear and bows her head, which looks like sadness despite the mirrors. With gestures, she points the loud creature and the bearers to lay their burdens before the table.

And then she turns to the cub, and to the pack. She crouches before them, holds out her hand to the father. He cringes and shies back, then creeps forward on tiptoe, coat bristling, to sniff offered fingers at the full stretch of his neck. The cub does not shy so much, but neither does it lean in to sniff.

The robed man stands, and the cub realizes that everyone else has drawn back in a wide ring. It glances over its shoulder, but the path to the door is not blocked. And they must have been careful to leave it open, when there are so many.

The robed man comes forward hesitantly and the cub waits. It lets her touch its ears. It lets her touch its tongue, fingers damp with something that tastes of salt and water, although it makes a face and shakes its head, after.

The robed man draws back, sweeping everything aside with gestures like a pack-mother’s, and when it returns it carries bowls of cooling porridge from the altar in its hands. It sets them on the ground before the father and before the cub, then goes back for more, until there are bowls of food or milk or honey before every member of the pack.

Cautiously, the cub inches forward. It crouches, its elbows resting on its knees. And it watches the food and the robed man. But it does not eat, and neither does the father.

When the Eidolon of Kaalha backed away from the food she had set with her own hands before the child and its jackal friends, Brazen went forward. She sighed as he came up beside her, so he knew she’d registered his presence, but she did not turn her mirrored mask to face him until he spoke.

“Jackals are sacred to Kaalha,” he said.

She looked up. “Jackals are welcome here. But one of those is not a jackal.”

“Nor yet is it a human child.” Brazen glanced aside. The child had dabbled its jeweled fingers in the bowl before it and was studying the porridge clinging to them, as if readying itself to taste. “I will apprentice it. But—” He looked back at the Eidolon, helplessly. “As we have seen today, even Wizards must return to Kaalha.”