“Sorry about him, Ben,” I said quickly. “Kid can’t hold his alcohol. He didn’t mean any harm.” Fishing a few coppers from my pocket, I held them out. “Let me buy you a new drink.”
The butcher glanced between Penny and me, ignoring my offer. “Yanno he’s been trawlin’ around town askin’ about you all week? Pickin’ around for rumors.”
I sighed. “I’m aware. We’ve had a few… conversations.”
Ben’s brows drew down again. “Kid’s gonna bring trouble, talkin’ like he has been. Runnin’ his mouth about the boogeymen.”
“Don’t worry.” Penny sidled against me with his head poking out from under my arm. “I’m going home. He won’t help me.”
I tried for a patient smile, but it may have been a grimace. I jingled the coppers again. “For your drink.”
Ben waved the money off and, with a last wary look at Penny, turned back to the bar.
“You’ll get yourself killed before you ever find the Bone Men at this rate,” I muttered, grabbing my whiskey and Penny’s bag from beside his stool and ushering the surprisingly pliant young man to a table in the corner away from listening ears. I pushed him down into a chair, then dropped into the seat beside him.
When he didn’t look up, I dipped my head to meet his gaze. His eyes squeezed shut as he swayed in his seat.
“Hey,” I prompted, steadying him with a hand on his shoulder. “You with me?”
When his eyes finally opened, they were swimming with unshed tears.
Luckily, he was too drunk to notice the instant guilt that washed over me. In all our interactions, I’d widely ignored what had prompted Penny to seek me out.
How long ago had he lost his father? Had he said? I certainly hadn’t bothered to ask.
Myfather’s death had been a boon, affording me a chance to finally emerge from his shadow.
But Penny wasn’t me.
I was well-versed in having matters of the Bone Men interrupt the process of grief. I hardly remembered my mother’s death, but they’d taken any chance at mourning and replaced it with a disdain for the dead that took me years to shed. I’d meant what I told Penny the day before: I ran as far as I could to escape it all. But the distance had left me cold, and now I barely recognized myself.
This wasn’t the first time that my reputation had brought problems to Forstford. Almost three years before, a veritable mob descended on the market calling for myhead. I’d expected the townsfolk to hand me over and wash their hands of me. Instead, they closed ranks around the forge and kept the invaders at bay while Ben whisked me away to his shop.
When I asked him why he helped me, he shrugged it off and said the town couldn’t lose their blacksmith on such short notice. He never pressed for details about why they were after me, though I was sure he heard the chatter around town in their wake. Still, he walked me home in the evenings and was there on my front porch in the mornings to escort me to town for weeks after until he was sure no one would come back to try again.
There hadn’t been any others since, but if a simple farm boy could track me from rumors after all this time, what was to stop someone else? Who knew how many people had overheard him while he gathered information and plotted his trip here, and how much more dangerous they might be? I didn’t want to bring Forstford any more trouble than I already had. Their goodwill could only go so far.
Penny’s words from the market rattled around in my head. “Perhaps doing right by my father will earn you some much-needed absolution.”
But there was no getting back those bones. They’d be cleaned and shuttled off to storage to await their use in building Eeus’s Vessel long before Penny could reach them. There would be no body to reclaim. It was a fool’s errand. When I opened my mouth to say as much, a thought struck me.
Maybe we couldn’t retrieve thosespecificbones, but Penny could be my way back into the Bone Men’s ranks to ensure no one else went through what he had. Bringing in a recruit would buy favor with the cultists and soften the sting of my thirteen-year absence. And if that recruit had afarm to offer in service to the cult—not that they would get the chance to know where tofindsaid farm—all the better. By the time Penny realized it was a lost cause, I would already have my foot in the door. He could leave and go back home, and it would be no great loss for either of us.
I would never let him go through the Oaths, anyway.
Corking my whiskey, I ducked under Penny’s arm and hefted us both to our feet.
There was a good chance I would regret this in the morning.
“Come on, you need sleep,” I said as his head tipped onto my shoulder. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what it’ll take for us to become Bone Men.”
6
Penny
Iwoke on a leather sofa, buried in furs I had to dig out of to roll over and retch. Sweat slicked my body as I strained with powerful, strangling gags.
Tears made the room around me a watery blur as I struggled to orient myself. Beside the puddle of booze and bile sat a wooden bucket, completely missed. I grimaced as pain bounced between my temples, adding to the full-body aches of having spent the night scrunched in a ball.
