“An experienced bone reader opens himself up to the bones. And a corrupt one tries to manipulate them. That is the line one must never cross. That’s the line I thought I’d crossed, the line Grand Master Lorn said I’d crossed. But I didn’t. Because Eklor lives. I should have trusted...” He trailed off, caught up in the tangle of what could have been.
“Pretend none of that ever happened,” she said. “Pretend you’ve never done this before. You’re a new bone reader, and it’s your first time reading the bones.”
His hands shook. He knew what the first step was: throw the bones. But he couldn’t predict what would follow, what he’d see.
“Would you like me to do it with you?” Amurra asked.
He nodded.
She closed her hands around his again and together they dropped the chicken bones between them, on the plush carpet.They scattered, tumbling together. Marso saw them and then squeezed his eyes shut before the visions could come.
“A novice would ask a single question,” Marso said. “Instead of keeping himself or herself open to the visions.” He felt as if he were humming. Every bit of him was urging him to open his eyes, open himself, look at the bones, see what they wanted to tell him.
“Ask as if you were a novice,” Amurra coaxed. “One question.”
“Is Kreya right?” he asked. He tried again, making the question even more specific. “Can we trust Eklor to not intend harm?”
Opening his eyes, he saw the mist rise over the bones. Images blazed in his mind, mirrored in the mist: a body rose, and another fell. A body rose, and another fell. A body rose, and... He swam in the vision, in its simplicity.
One died, and another lived.
He wondered what else he could see, who the bodies were—and the images piled onto him faster than he could see, and he was back on the plain and then in the fountain and here in the palace and back... until he felt as if he were ripping into pieces, and a scream burst out of his lips.
He felt hands over his eyes. Not his mouth. Just his eyes.
And the images went away.
He quit screaming.
She removed her hands, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Once I was picking apples out in our orchard,” Amurra said conversationally, as if she hadn’t just been confronted by a screaming man and a cascade of chaotic images, “and I thought some of the best apples, the ripest and juiciest, were on thehighest branches. I’d been picking apples all my life. I’ve climbed hundreds of trees. I thought nothing of it as I pushed myself up into the branches. I plucked an apple—and I don’t know what happened, but I slipped. I fell through the branches, and I hit the ground hard. My hip broke. My ankle twisted. My wrist snapped. I’d never been in so much pain in my life. More than that, I was alone. Out in the orchard, and no one was around. It was the worst feeling I’d ever experienced.
“Soon, though, Stran found me. He carried me back, so gentle for such a big man, and nursed me back to health. It took months before everything healed, and I still feel a twinge in my hip sometimes if I twist the wrong way. But the hardest part was learning how to climb trees again. I had to do it step by step, as if I’d never done it before. I’d never had a fear of climbing trees before, so first I had to learn to conquer that.”
“You... were helping me. On purpose.” He opened his eyes. On the carpet, the bones had been swept away, out of sight. Amurra had them cupped in her hands where he couldn’t read them. She was looking at him with the kind of concern he remembered seeing on his mother’s face, every time he did something that scared her.
“You said you wanted to read the bones,” she said. “Did I help?”
“Yes.” He thought of the vision he’d seen—the clear one, before all the shadows of his fears had destroyed everything. He could still do this. “I want to try again.”
Zera’s people brought her word:
He’d saved six more lives.
Six more miracles.
There’s a line at the guild for his services.
Yay. Hooray. Cue the parades.
While the people of Cerre celebrated, Zera pored over gossip papers, news reports, and every scrap of information she could find that might connect the “miracles” to Eklor. It was all very unpleasant and not at all how she wanted to spend her days, but if Kreya was going to be unreasonable, then Zera had no choice. Yet, so far, she couldn’t find anything the six had in common with either each other or the corrupt bone maker. Her followers had collected dozens of rumors and anecdotes. All of them led nowhere.
She was glaring at yet another report when Marso knocked tentatively on her open door. Waving him in, she put down the latest bit of vapid gossip, detailing what fashion miracle number three wore, as if that mattered to a genocidal monster like Eklor.
“You look better,” she observed.
Color in his cheeks. Clothes that didn’t hang off his skeletal frame. It had undoubtedly helped that he’d been eating and sleeping with more regularity.Nice to see our reunion has made at least one of us happier,Zera thought.
