Amurra paced in front of the ridiculous artificial waterfall. Zera’s servants had given up offering her refreshments after she refused them again and again, and she’d been left in peace with her own thoughts and worries.
She wasn’t certain that was a good thing.
Without the children and the farm to distract her from Stran’s absence, she couldn’t stop imagining everything that could go wrong, from the guards at Lorn’s palace arresting Stran to an army of the undead cornering him and killing him. She hated being stuck without anything to do except worry. The whole point of coming to Cerre with her husband was so that she could be useful. In marriage, you were supposed to face life’s challenges as a team.It’s supposed to be the two of us, together,Amurra thought.Not me here, useless and worried sick.
She had made the choice to stay, however, so this time there was no one to blame but herself. She wasn’t a bone maker, and besides, someone needed to be here in case Kreya’s constructs returned with news of Eklor’s army, as unlikely as that was. But still, she wished...I don’t wish I were one of them. I don’t wish I were fighting alongside him. I wish we were both home, in the life we built, in the life we chose, with the family we made.He’d left all ofthis behind—happily, she’d thought. She missed her children so badly that it felt like a physical ache.Why are we here?Why was Eklor his problem again? Couldn’t someone else do this? He’d risked enough!
Often at night, Stran still woke, covered in sweat and shaking, and when she asked, he said, “Nightmares.” But she knew they weren’t. They were memories. When they’d married, she’d sworn she’d help him make new memories, better memories. And they had! Was all that about to be erased by fresh trauma that neither of them had asked for?
She told herself that she was being selfish. She should be proud that Stran was noble and selfless.But I don’t want him to be noble and selfless,she thought.I want him to be home! I want all of us home, a family together.Whatever Eklor did in Cerre wasn’t going to affect them way out on their farm.
She scolded herself for such thoughts. Lives were at stake. Other people’s husbands, wives, and children. She merely had to be patient. After this was over, they’d go home and be with their children again.
Across the room, Amurra heard a clicking noise. She crossed to the window and opened it. One of Kreya’s constructs, a mechanical creature made of gears and bones that loosely resembled a tree squirrel, climbed inside. As it chittered and whirred at her, she felt a cold horror close over her heart. The search had been going on for days with no results, and she’d expected that to continue. However, the Five had gone to poke the hornet’s nest.
She knelt beside the construct. “Master Kreya isn’t here right now.”
A confused chirp.
“But you can tell me what you found.”
Another chirp, this one with a down note, as if it were agreeing with her.
“Did you find Eklor’s army?”
It chirped, whirred, and nodded its mechanical head so hard that it toppled over. She righted it, while her heart hammered hard in her throat. She pivoted toward the door and shouted, “Guine!”Please don’t let it be too late yet,she thought. There had to still be time to warn Stran and the others. “Guine!”
Behind her, the window shattered. She screamed and ducked as shards embedded in her skin. And a monstrous construct leaped through the broken window. It was massive, with spiderlike legs like a crawler but also tentacles made of twisted wires extruding from its back. Its head spun and its mirror eyes fixed on her. Amurra ran for the door, still screaming for help.
A tentacle shot out and wrapped around her waist.
She grabbed the nearest pillar, but the pull of the tentacle was implacable. She felt her hands slip as it dragged her toward its maw. “Help! Someone help!”
Another wire wrapped around her waist and then another. She felt them squeeze. It was hard to suck in air.Crunch—the massive construct crushed Kreya’s scout, the one who’d tried to bring a warning. A warning she’d failed to deliver.
Stran...
She heard footsteps pounding in the corridor outside.
Then she heard shouting.
Then Guine’s voice: “Get it off! Grab her!”
They hammered at the construct with whatever they could find—someone shattered a pitcher on its side, another hit it with a chair. A few ran. But those who stayed pounded at the horror.
Amurra struggled, but it was becoming harder and harderto breathe. Black spots danced in front of her eyes.Stran,she thought,I’m sorry.She didn’t know why she was sorry—that she wasn’t able to help, that she wouldn’t be able to say goodbye, that they didn’t have more time, that she was leaving him alone to face the world, to be a father alone, to be a man who had lost his wife, to have pain when he should have had joy. And her, she’d wanted more time, more time with him, more time with her children, to see them grow, to help them and hold them and love them. More time in the world. More springs, to see the buds on the trees, the fresh shoots bursting out of the ground. More summers, lying side by side looking up at the stars with the warm breeze all around them. More autumns... Her thoughts scattered as the tentacles squeezed harder.
She tried to form words. “Tell. Stran.” But then there wasn’t air. She couldn’t force the words out of her throat. Air, water, blood gurgled in her throat.
She heard Guine begging, “Don’t kill us. Please, don’t kill us.”
“You will not all die,” a man’s voice said—the construct? She hadn’t known they could speak. She wondered at that, clinging to the question as if it were a rock in a raging river. “You must deliver a message. The five so-called heroes will recant their false accusations immediately, and in exchange, Master Eklor will restore this woman’s life.”
“Don’t—” Guine began.
And then Amurra felt a sharp pain in her neck as a wire pierced her throat. Darkness consumed her vision, and death swallowed all else.
In Yarri’s room, Kreya wrapped a bundle of bones, including an obvious human skull, in a sheet and tucked it under her arm. “Proof of what we’ve witnessed here,” she toldthe boy and the guards. “We’ll present these to the guild. Let Eklor try to squirm out of this now.”
