Chapter Twenty-Four
Kreya and the others descended to the third tier, where all the guild headquarters were housed. They hid their bone worker coats in a pack that Stran carried, and they used false names as they passed through the gates.Paranoid, maybe,Kreya thought,but it pays to be cautious when your enemy has such a causal relationship with death.
Only Amurra remained behind at Zera’s palace, with Guine and Zera’s followers. This time, she hadn’t argued or asked to come. They were about to piss off the grand master of their guild. It would be best if outsiders weren’t present.
Squatting on the east side of the third tier, the Bone Workers Guild headquarters were made of stone carved to resemble the rib cage of a beast, larger than any that had ever lived. The walls had been polished until they gleamed the white of sunbaked bone. The five heroes entered through a stone skull, beneath empty eye sockets.
Already, the headquarters were humming with activity. Sliding into a side corridor, Kreya signaled to her team to keep quiet. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. At least not until they entered the great hall.
Zera whispered, “How impressive an entrance do you want us to make?”
“Options?” Kreya asked.
“Anywhere from joining the queue of supplicants to arriving like a firework.”
Kreya considered it. “We want all eyes on us. But no advance notice. Grand Master Lorn would prefer to see us privately, but we can’t count on him being reasonable one-on-one. We need the other masters to pressure him into listening.”
Zera grinned. “Firework then. My specialty. Follow me.”
As Zera led the way, Kreya fell in beside her, with the others behind them. She was acutely aware that Jentt had chosen to take up the rear, as far from Kreya as possible, but she shoved thoughts of him into a knot to be untangled later.He’ll forgive me,she thought,once he’s had the chance to accept that done is done.She couldn’t let herself believe anything else. Especially now. She had to stay focused on the task at hand.
After they saved the world, she could turn to saving her marriage.
The corridor was mostly empty, except for a few novices scurrying here and there. None of them gave Kreya and her team more than a glance. All five heroes knew the trick of walking with purpose, looking as if you belonged.
We do belong here,Kreya thought.Or we did.
The white-as-bone walls were coated in memories. She’d been a novice here, racing through the halls to be on time for class, sneaking spare bones out of the labs to practice when no one was watching, obsessively studying for exams until her entire body ached. She’d met Zera in one class—the teacher had been taunting a student with a stutter, telling him he’d never amount to anything if he couldn’t speak his spells right, andKreya had informed him that she was reporting his attitude to his superiors. The teacher had tried to suspend Kreya for talking out of turn, and Zera had “accidentally” blown up a shelf of chemicals. In the chaos, Kreya and Zera had bolted for the head of the department, and within twenty-four hours, the teacher was on sabbatical, and the students had a much better teacher.
To be fair, they’d both been given detention, but it had been worth it.
She’d met Jentt here too, when they were older. Maybe it had been in the library? She knew vaguely when but didn’t remember the exact moment. She wondered if he did.
She’d recruited both Stran and Marso after, but this was the place that had set them all on the path to their future. She felt as if the memories were welcoming them back, and she began to feel confident: the council of bone worker masters would listen to them, and Eklor would be exposed and defeated.
This is it,Kreya thought.We defeated him once with strength of arms.
Now we’ll defeat him with strength of words.
Zera pivoted, leading them through a classroom with several bird skeletons suspended from the ceiling. All the rooms still smelled the same as Kreya remembered—a mixture of mildew, dust, and body odor, all undercut with the ever-present and unmistakable scent of blood. It was a comfortingly familiar smell, and she felt the muscles in her shoulders relax minutely.
Through the classroom, Zera chose a narrow stairwell. Windowless, it wound up two levels to emerge in a hall that led to the balconies overlooking the great hall. She held up a hand, stopping them before they approached the balconies.
They shed their plain coats and donned their bone worker coats. Stran stashed the pack behind a pillar. Creeping closer,they heard voices drifting up to the balcony. A crowd was gathered in the great hall, with Grand Master Lorn seated on a dais. He was lit by the muted light that poured through twenty stained glass windows, above the balcony. Each window was decorated with past glories of bone workers in colored glass thick enough to block all noise from the city outside but thin enough to allow sun to seep through.
Fourteen masters were seated beside Grand Master Lorn, in chairs carved to resemble an array of tusks—they comprised the Council of Bones, an advisory board that served the grand master. Each throne was in its own pool of muted light.
If we can convince them...
With a jolt, Kreya spotted Eklor between the masters, as if he’d earned the right to sit with such great men and women. It hadn’t occurred to her he’d be here. She’d pictured him skulking around Lorn’s palace.No matter,she thought.Same plan.She felt a hand squeeze her shoulder and glanced back to see Marso, stricken. She nodded to him and wished she had the words to reassure him.
Zera passed out talismans to each of them. “Say ‘renari’ and try not to crash.”
Kreya crept forward, listening. Addressing a man in a bone worker’s coat, one of the masters was expounding on his theory of why the current crop of novices needed more structure in their curriculum. She had a vague memory of the master who was speaking—his beard had been burgundy when she’d known him. It was straggly and white now, and his shoulders curved toward his chest as if he carried a heavy pack.
Grand Master Lorn let him complete his monologue, and then when he inhaled to launch into another point, the grand master raised his hand. “Thank you for your input, MasterSubene. We will discuss and consider your points as they pertain to the complaint at hand. But it’s time to move on to the next order of business, even if it means waking Master Epsana from her nap.”
A few laughed, and one lightly tapped Master Epsana, an elderly woman who had been slumped in her chair, on the shoulder. She straightened herself and blinked owlishly, as if she believed that fooled anyone into thinking she’d been paying attention all along.
