This was life, and I was a good boy.
I did what I was told.
Once the coffin was out of the grave, my father let down the tailgate of our horse cart. “One more heave, Kit. Think you’ve got it in you?”
I’d have done anything he asked.
I nodded and moved around to the head of the box, lifting it with straining arms. My father bore most of the weight of the body within and guided our prize into the bed of the cart. He closed and latched the tailgate, then brushed his hands together. He grinned down at me, and I smiled back. I didn’t know any better then.
I passed many nights in a similar fashion and, as I grew older, my father expected more from me. Soon, I was digging up graves myself, bringing in a body a week when there weren’t too many patrols in the graveyards. When a town or ward got wise to what we were doing and dug upall the bodies to burn them, we moved on. But not before picking through the ash pile and finding whatever bones survived the inferno.
I still scrubbed myself raw every time I washed, certain that some bit of ash or bone remained, ever a part of my skin from the dozens of bodies I prepared for the Bone Men.
Taking another swig of whiskey, I forced myself out of the house in a fruitless bid to escape my memories. I stood for a time on the back porch, staring up at the towering pines and wishing the darkness beneath them would swallow me whole. When it didn’t, I stumbled down the steps and into their shade. No sun found its way through their dense boughs, and I shivered in the lingering chill. If it were winter, I could wander off and let the cold take me. I could die as much of a coward as I’d lived. No one would miss me.
A prickling feeling made me think there were eyes on me, but when I swung around, I couldn’t find the source. Penny was out there somewhere, biding his time to beg for my help again, I was sure of it. He’d said he wouldn’t let this go.
“You’re insane!” I shouted to the treetops. “Completely mad!” I took another swallow of whiskey and leaned heavily against the nearest trunk. “Maybe I am, too,” I added, much quieter.
I considered disappearing into the trees. I knew these woods better than anyone. Who was to say I couldn’t outwit that stupid boy and slip out from under his nose? He couldn’t follow me if he didn’t know where I was going. I could leave, settle someplace else, change my name…
But I liked my name. My mother had given me my name, and it was all I had left from her. Lucky for her, she died before my father took the Oaths and became a BoneMan, before he lost his mind and sold his soul to Eeus, before she could see her son go along with it for twelve years.
Before I could break her heart.
The sun sank toward the horizon, and I shivered in the shade of the evergreens. I went to take another swig of whiskey, but found I’d already drank it all. With a shout, I hurled the empty bottle at a tree trunk and watched in satisfaction as it shattered.
“Fuck you, Penny Oliver,” I spat, then slunk back inside.
Through some strength of will, or perhaps sheer stubbornness, I managed to build a fire in the den before full darkness fell. Staring into it reminded me of the first of the Oaths that I was expected to take on my seventeenth birthday, of a night much like this one when I made my escape. The brand on my chest throbbed with a phantom ache, an ever-present reminder of where I came from. I pressed my right hand against it like it might disappear if I willed it away. But it was always there, rough and raised beneath the fabric of my shirt. It had been inked over years ago, but even disguised as something innocuous, there was no hiding what it was.
I’d sworn the moment the first of those hot irons touched my flesh that I would never be like my father. I’d vowed to fight against the Bone Men in whatever capacity I could for as long as I lived. But here I was, hiding in my house on a hill like a whipped dog, being asked to actively help someone else descend into the depths of that suffering. Penny was a stranger, so I shouldn’t care what happened to him. Right?
I threw myself back on the couch and covered my face with my hands. “I’m too drunk for this,” I muttered. Mymind reeled, thought after thought racing across the backs of my closed eyelids.
Curling on my side, I forced my mind to quiet as, despite the heat rolling out of the blazing fireplace, I dragged the furs from the back of the couch down on top of me. Sleep was the only thing that could help me now. In the morning, when things were clearer, I would consider my options.
With the comforting weight of the furs pressing me into the upholstery, I closed my eyes and let sleep take me.
I dreamt of fire and ash and bone. I dreamt of damnation.
2
Penny
The door didn’t hit me, but the rush of air fluttered my hair back from my face, leaving me stunned and blinking. This wasnotthe first setback in my days-long journey, but it was the first I felt inclined to celebrate as I descended the hill toward town. I was closer now than I’d yet been, having found my quarry and put my fears about him at ease.
Kit Mosel was far from the monster the rumors made him out to be; he was merely a man. A bit ill-tempered, but nothing I couldn’t manage. People tended to like me given the chance, and I had a feeling I would win Kit over. He would give up before I did.
I’d doubted my sister, Sayla, when she sent me on this mission informed by little more than gossip. I was to find someone who didn’t want to be found and convince him to aid in a mission I myself would rather not have been part of. But it had to be done. My family’s future depended on it.
Sayla’s snooping led me to taverns and other places where whispers spread about a hermit in the village ofForstford. Not a Bone Man, but the son of one of the most infamous of their order—though no one could tell me who that was—living out his days in self-imposed solitude.
The descriptions were vivid. Kit Mosel was a demon so wicked that the cult of Eeus couldn’t contain him. He killed his own mother and wore her ribcage as a crown. He abducted wayward travelers and used them as sacrifices to his dark god… They may as well have said he kicked puppies, too.
Before I’d left home, Sayla cautioned me about getting lost in the wilds on my first journey away from our cozy farm and familiar ward. She’d made ghoulish faces, imagining the man I sought would be a hideous, humpbacked creature rather than the dark-haired, strapping fellow I’d found instead. What would she say when she found out he was handsome?
Warmth prickled my cheeks as I trudged through the tall grass bordering a packed dirt path. I was tired of walking and ready to find a bed for the night.
