One by one, ten of the highest masters of the Bone Workers Guild—all council members—also confirmed they’d serve as witnesses.
Kreya noticed a line of novice bone workers stretched from the doorway to the pyre. From within the shadows of the palace, a flame emerged. A novice carried it, passed to the next, and then he passed it to the next, and she to the next—hand to hand, until it reached Grand Master Lorn.
“Long have we believed this was the only way,” Grand Master Lorn said.
In Kreya’s ear, Zera whispered, “Do we stop him now?”
“Archers,” Jentt whispered from her other side.
Kreya glanced up to see that city guards in black leather armor were mounted at the top of Grand Master Lorn’s palace. All of them held bows, their arrows trained not on the crowd or searching out an unidentified threat. The arrows were aimed at the Five.
With speed talismans, theymightbe able to evade them. But she didn’t doubt Lorn had anticipated that. He knew the only ones who might stop him were Kreya and her friends.
Lorn was prepared for them. As if they were the enemy. Not Eklor.
She looked back at the pyre and was certain that Eklor was looking directly at her, even though she couldn’t see his face beyond his hood. She began to calculate the odds of reaching him before Lorn’s security measures took her down.
He hadn’t made a move, though.What if the army isn’t coming?Kreya thought.What if we’re wrong? What if he was tellingthe truth?But... Eklor couldn’t have changed so drastically. You couldn’t be a mass murderer one day and then the next day say “Sorry, my mistake.” Except that it had been twenty-five years. She’d changed in that time.
“We have believed and we have burned and we have mourned, but I have learned that there is another way.” Grand Master Lorn pivoted and threw the flaming torch behind him, over the expanse of nothingness between the mountains. It sailed into the sky, higher than it should have been able to for an ordinary torch thrown by an ordinary man.
Why all this theater?Kreya thought.What does Eklor get out of this?
Because he still hadn’t revealed any hidden army. He hadn’t even revealed himself.
He couldn’t be planning to work the spell that Kreya had used on Jentt. It would require his giving up years of his own life, and he’d never do that. He was far too much of a narcissist.
Unless there was something he wanted badly enough in exchange. Butwhat? The only thing that had ever driven Eklor was his conviction that the world owed him for every wrong, every slight, every accidental twist of fate, and every tragedy that befell him.
Kreya wished again that she’d succeeded in getting an audience with Eklor. Maybe she could have shaken out of him some clue as to his goal. If he wanted revenge against the Bone Workers Guild, this was the perfect opportunity: deny Lorn his child and then eliminate the masters, as well as the leadership of other guilds. Yet she wasn’t sure that was what was happening here, and that made her even warier.
As the crowd around her gasped and whispered, GrandMaster Lorn stepped aside for Eklor to approach the pyre. He still did not remove his hood. He bent over the boy’s body.
Kreya couldn’t hear what he said, but she knew the words. She didn’t see a knife, but she saw him pour a vial over bones and then press each bone one by one into the body. The bones he was using were too shattered and small to identify as human, though she knew they had to be. She wondered where he’d gotten his.The plains, most likely.Jentt had reported burnt bones, but like with the constructs, there was no way to be certain Eklor had destroyed all of them.
The whispers around her grew into shouts. The vast majority of the crowd didn’t know what was going on, but they knew this was a violation of one of their most sacred rites. Yet no one moved to stop them—a bone maker was clearly manipulating the body, but he was not stealing from it. He wasgivingto it. No one knew what it meant.
Except Kreya.
She knew exactly what he was doing. She just couldn’t believe it.
Again, Zera asked, “Do we stop him?”
Kreya shook her head. She felt as if frozen water had poured into her veins, displacing the blood. What she was seeing... It didn’t make sense. She’d expected a trap—a battle at best, a massacre at worst. She hadn’t expectedthis. A sacrifice by Eklor of his own future.
Eklor stepped back, and Lorn’s son’s mouth opened. He sucked in air. His chest filled and rose. The crowd fell silent. And the dead boy sat up.
Not a sound beyond the breathing of the crowd and the breathing of the boy.
“Who will confirm my son lives?” Grand Master Lorn asked, his voice booming across the fifth tier.
Hesitantly, the same men and women who had confirmed his death each stepped forward, one by one, and verified that the boy, impossibly, was alive.
“Papa?” the boy said, his voice small. Lorn enveloped him in his coat, embracing him, and then helped him climb down from the pyre. The boy clung to his father.
“You have witnessed a miracle,” Grand Master Lorn said, addressing the crowd. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “And I present to you a second miracle: the bone worker who has achieved this. He was on the verge of discovering the secret of resurrection when the guild interrupted his efforts. In the clash, we destroyed the bodies of his wife and child. This act plunged him into rage and despair, and he sought revenge.”
There were murmurs around Kreya—they didn’t know who Lorn was talking about, but she did. She also knew that wasn’t the story she’d been told about Eklor’s past. He’d lost his family in a cable car accident. An accident, due to mechanical failure. He, in his grief and narcissism, had blamed the guild for what was merely the hand of fate.
