“Maybe.I’m starting to think I won’t ever know enough.”
“Will that stop you from trying to change?”
“No,” Isaac said.“It won’t.”
“I think we’re kindred souls, then.”
He didn’t answer.Out of the corner of his eye, he saw herstare at the bandage again, trying to mouth out the syllables to the word,connecting sound to letters.After a minute, she folded the bandage and tuckedit into a pocket at her waist.
“Gonna turn in now.You certain that spell will keep themonsters out?”
“We’ll be fine.We don’t need to post watch.”
She paused.“You sure?”
“I promise.”
There was another pause.
“As you say, then.I’ll trust your judgement.”Zaria wrappedthe white blanket around her chest, closing her eyes.“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” he replied.
He lay there on the stone, staring up at the giant rib cage.After a while, Zaria began to snore.He listened to it for a time.It no longerannoyed him.In fact, it was a constant reminder that she was there, besidehim.Some time later, he closed his eyes, and he fellasleep at once.
His dreams were vivid and wild.
ChapterTen
Fool’sGold
Thecity of the dead had well and truly died.
Everystreet and building was bathed in an eternal twilight.Not even the shadowsmoved.In the semi-darkness, each of the houses leered from their ordered perchlike skeletons peeking from the holes of an ossuary, their architecture alwaysgiving worship to the curve and socket of bone.He saw nostril-shaped doors,eye socket windows.As he strolled through a commercial boulevard, there was amarket of shoulder blades, femur signposts, spinal column towers, water millsthat once scooped water with the wings of a pelvis.When Isaac studied thepaving beneath his feet, he realized he had been walking on a road made ofknuckles.
It wasall imitation.All of it was stone, given shape through a mason’s hand.Abovetheir heads, the skull of the colossus had been a brittle, overgrown shell,constantly aged by the sun and sand.These buildings were too perfect to bereal.
Realbone, that is.
It wasnot real.
Evenstill, the impression was grotesque.The architecture gave Isaac such a feelingof uneasiness that he kept glancing over his shoulder, worried he’d seen one ofthe shadows move, one of the collarbones trestling a walkway suddenly detachingand slithering along the knuckled road, like a stalking serpent.
It wasall imagination, he thought.
Nothingmoved.
Thedirt did not tremble.The air was just as lifeless as the masonry around it.They had been making their way through the city for at least an hour, and therehad been no sign that anything had walked these streets for centuries.Everywhere Isaac looked, he received the impression of piles of bone, allcovered in dust or specks of dirt, bathed in the pale yellow light of theglowing cartilage above.He thought of giants who had perished within sight ofa glimmering golden horde.
To easehis nerves, Isaac made an effort to study the muralsand reliefs stamped onto the walls of various buildings, all of which depictedmythologies, gods, gesturing figures, supplicating worship, the clouds partingin the sky, the creation and destruction of flying vehicles.He was beginningto discern the story of a creation myth, one that layat the heart of necromancer society.He made an effortto study each of the murals as they continued on, trying to use his ciphers todecode the language.
It wasfascinating.
It wasexciting.
Hemight be the first ever person—
“Sure wishI’d known my cunt had magic properties,” Zaria said, her voice echoing down thestreets.“Could’ve been a bloody saint by now, if I’d had a notion of itspower.”
