The Bone Palace

chapter 5


Isyllt woke alone, tired and aching, to an insistent pounding on her door. A cursory inspection revealed a dark bruise scabbing on her inner thigh—a delicate nip instead of a full bite. Only a taste taken, since she was already weak. A few stray drops of blood spotted her sheets.
“Sand and saints,” Khelséa said when Isyllt opened the door. “You look terrible. More terrible. You did something stupid, didn’t you?”
“Probably.” The smell of spiced meat wafted from one of several bags the inspector carried, and saliva flooded Isyllt’s mouth. Her courses always left her craving meat and greens and this was many times worse.
“What did I tell you about that?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know about some of the stupid things I do.”
Khelséa unpacked her bags, producing lanterns, rope, a map of the sewers, a small arsenal of weapons including an extra pistol loaded with spell-silver, and lunch. Isyllt fell on the food, but shook her head at the proffered gun.
“I’m hopeless with them,” she said around a mouthful of spiced mutton and spinach. “And magic has better aim.” She stopped short of licking the last of the grease and yoghurt from the wrapping, but it was a near thing. Khelséa’s eyebrows rose in eloquent disbelief, but she slipped the spare pistol into her own pocket rather than press the matter.
Isyllt washed and traded her dressing gown for leathers and boots—older, well-worn ones this time, since she wasn’t about to lose another good jacket to the sewers. The high collar chafed her wounded shoulder, but she stopped herself before she numbed the bite. Some things ought not to be forgotten. Last night’s souvenir, however, she was willing to ignore.
Khelséa puttered in the apartment’s tiny corner kitchen when she emerged, and the air smelled of jasmine tea. Watching the other woman, Isyllt almost wished she didn’t live alone. She and Kiril hadn’t cohabitated since the first few days after he found her; they’d spent so much time together it hardly mattered. She hadn’t had anyone else to make her tea—or to make tea for—since she was fifteen and living with three other girls in a leaking tenement attic. They were too poor most decads to afford tea, anyway.
A pity, she thought wryly as Khelséa handed her a mug, that she didn’t appreciate women that way. And even if she had, the inspector’s taste ran to plump and pretty and not remotely self-destructive. Her latest lover was a seamstress.
“Do the other vigils know you’re misadventuring with me?” Isyllt asked, letting the warmth of the cup soak her hands. The sun had reemerged an hour past noon, leaking like watered honey through the curtains and pooling along the dusty baseboards.
“This is my day off.” Khelséa grinned, a quick flash of white. “Gemma is always telling me I need more hobbies.” She leaned back in a chair and stretched her legs in front of her. “My autopsist knows—the one who saw the ring. In case we don’t come back.” She shrugged aside the possibility of death, and her wealth of braids—twisted into one forearm-thick plait and wrapped with brown yarn—rustled against her jacket. “Do you have a plan?”
Her surname, Shar, meant “sand” in Assari, and foreign inflections still colored her vowels. Not for the first time, Isyllt wondered how a woman from the deserts of Assar ended up working for Erisín’s Vigils. One day, she resolved, she’d ply the inspector with enough wine to get an answer out of her.
“Go back to where I was attacked and track them from there, I suppose. One of them is called Myca, but I doubt that’s enough to summon with.” Vampires, like prostitutes, were unlikely to use their birth names. And the true names of demons were nearly impossible to determine, anyway. Binding a foreign spirit to flesh, living or dead, changed both irrevocably.
“The one who bit you?”
“No, that would be too easy.” The bond of the wound coupled with even an untrue name might have been enough to use, but not only one or the other. “I’d almost rather search for Forsythia’s ghost first, or for someone who knows her story.”
“But—”
“Yes, but.” She grimaced at the dregs of her tea. “We don’t have time for that.” Stolen royal goods would always take precedence over a murdered prostitute. Part of her wanted to argue, but the calendar was against her—it was already Hekate, and the rain and chill that wrapped Erisín would be snow in the north. The king and his forces were already decamping or would be very soon.
Which wasn’t need for so much haste that she shouldn’t talk to Kiril first. Khelséa might be better prepared than she and Ciaran had been the first time, but there were still a dozen dangers in the sewers. A dozen reasons to seek his advice. And the only reason not to was the set of his shoulders as he’d turned from her, the warmth of his hand on her skin and the chill of its absence. The foolish pain of rejection and loneliness that could still prick her to tears years later. Whenever she thought she’d finally moved past it, a touch or glance would undo her all over again. How many more years would pass before she was free of it?
“All right,” she said, taking a last swallow of cold tea to rinse away the bitter taste in her mouth. The light cooled and greyed again, and they had little enough of it to waste. “Let’s go.”
They didn’t enter through the Garden’s access this time, but by one in Harrowgate that Isyllt judged to be closer to the place where she and Ciaran had been attacked. It might have been easier to track the thieves from the palace crypts, but also easier to draw attention and unwanted questions. At least the trail here was fresher.
The door shut with a metallic clang behind them and echoes scattered and sank beneath the rush of water. The sewer didn’t care about day or night—its blackness was absolute. A carriage rattled overhead, and the clatter of hooves and wheels echoed painfully.
They kept careful counts of turns and branches, but the tunnels in Oldtown all looked the same and getting lost was far too easy. If Isyllt had brought any food, she might have trailed crumbs behind her like the children in cradle-stories. Not that the sewer rats needed more to eat, by the size of those who so brazenly crossed their path. A pity she couldn’t talk to them and save herself some detective work.
She found the site of the attack after two wrong turns, or at least a stretch of sewer that looked promising. Isyllt drew a knife—not the kukri at her back, but a razor-honed folding blade that fit neatly in her pocket—and pricked her left wrist. A drop of blood glistened black in the pale light, and washed metal-and-seaweed over her tongue as she licked it away. Her instructors at the Arcanost would chide her for needing to draw her own blood—she was filled with it, after all—but she’d always found the spell easier with the taste of it sticky in her mouth.
With a whispered word, light blossomed on her wounded wrist and on the damp stone ledge, a pale blue no brighter than cave lichen. From the shape of the stains she could see where the vampire had first bitten her, where blood had dripped from her shoulder and later splattered as she shook him off. The trail ended with the ledge.
Now that she knew where to look, Isyllt could also see the shadow-faint outline of the secret door in the wall. She kept her eyes away; Khelséa didn’t lead a cohort by being inobservant.
“This is it.” The pounding water drowned her words, and she shouted the next. “The water carried one away, and I imagine the other followed.”
Khelséa gestured ahead with a flourish. “After you, Crown Investigator.” Isyllt read the shape of the words instead of hearing them.
Isyllt sniffed, hoping to catch the scent of vrykoloi, but all she got was a noseful of wet shit and offal. She shook her head with a grimace and started walking.
They followed the current for several turns, but finally came to a fork where the water rushed left and right. Isyllt sent her witchlight back and forth over the ground and along both arches; peperine bricks glittered with dark flecks of magnetite and brighter mica, beautiful amidst the filth, but she saw no sign of anything having chosen one tunnel over the other. Finally she leaned back against the wall and sighed in disgust.
“Do you have a coin we can flip?” she yelled to Khelséa. Echoes bounced off slime-slick stones.
“I thought,” a familiar voice said from the darkness, soft but carrying, “that you were going to wait for me.”
Khelséa spun, pistol shining in her hand, and Isyllt flung out a hand before she could pull the trigger. Her heart spiked sharp in her chest. “Don’t! He’s—” Safe was definitely not the word. “Not a threat,” she finished half-heartedly. “Are you, Spider?”
“Not to you or yours, necromancer.” He stepped into the light and Khelséa’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. In the darkness and witchfire it was hard to believe he could ever walk the streets unnoticed, glamourie or no. Gaunt and grotesque, inhuman. Demonic.
Isyllt realized that she’d never talked to Khelséa about consorting with demons, and if the inspector might ever condone it. Maybe that was a conversation to have with plenty of wine, too.
“It seemed a pity to waste the daylight,” Isyllt said, stepping neatly between Khelséa and Spider. From the corner of her eye she saw the inspector lower her pistol, but not holster it. “I thought you’d be sleeping.” She blushed, and gave thanks for the darkness.
He chuckled. “You’ve been reading the wrong sort of stories. Oh, yes,” he said when she raised an eyebrow. “I follow the penny dreadfuls.”
“You should write some of your own, if the others are so inaccurate.”
His grin bared his fangs, and the gaps around them that let him close his jaw. Like an animal’s. “I don’t think your citizens would like to read the truth of us.”
Isyllt snorted. “We can discuss literature later. If you want to help us, then by all means lead on.”
“So impatient,” Spider said. “You haven’t introduced me to your companion.”
Khelséa stepped forward, holstering her pistol and extending her gloved hand in one smooth motion. “Khelséa Shar.” No rank or title, and Isyllt silently blessed her discretion. And from her willingness to share her name with a demon, guessed that it wasn’t her birth name.
“Spider.” He bowed over her hand with an exaggerated marionette grace. “Delighted to meet you.”
He hadn’t been so delighted to meet Ciaran. Maybe Khelséa was more to his taste. Isyllt thanked the saints that he wasn’t to hers.
“Do you know which way they went?”
He studied the branching tunnel, nostrils flaring. Finally he cocked his head toward the far one. “That way, I think.”
Of course it would be the side that made them cross the canal. She glared at the churning black water. Spider caught her expression and laughed. He moved faster than she could follow, a pale blur and a ghostly afterimage behind her eyelids. When she blinked again he stood on the far bank, sweeping out a mocking hand to invite them across.
“Show-off,” Isyllt muttered as she backtracked to the last narrow bridge.
“You do have the most interesting friends,” said Khelséa.
Another winding, branching walk followed. Isyllt had long since lost track of time, but getting out of the sewers before early autumn darkness fell seemed unlikely. Not that it mattered, if the vrykoloi truly didn’t sleep. Although he’d earlier said they did.
She wondered if Spider could read her thoughts, or only knew the curious minds of mages. After a while he slowed till she walked at his shoulder; Khelséa kept watch at the rear.
“The older we grow, the more we sleep,” he said softly. She shouldn’t have been able to hear him over the din, but she could. “The elders nap for months at a time, or longer. But only injury drives the young ones to rest, while they’re safe from the sun. Daylight is… tiring. Painful. Like the worst of summer and winter is to the living.”
He was only trying to bribe her with information, but her curiosity was piqued all the same. “And how old are you?”
His eyes glittered with a sideways glance. “Older than you, little witch. Young enough to remember summer and winter, wind and rain.”
“When you do sleep, do you dream?” She meant it to be clinical, but wistfulness crept into the words.
“Yes.” He said nothing else, and soon drifted ahead again.
Of course they must, Isyllt thought. Nothing freed you from the past. Not even death.
He stopped not long after, letting Isyllt and Khelséa catch up. As they approached, the witchlight revealed rusty iron bars bound with a heavy chain.
Khelséa pulled the cloacae’s skeleton key from her pocket, but it didn’t turn in the lock. “Well,” she said mildly. “This is problematic. I didn’t think to bring a saw.”
Isyllt leaned her head against the cold bars. Nothing even remotely human-sized would fit through them, unless vampires could turn to shadows like the penny bloods suggested. She remembered Tenebris, and wondered how far from the truth those stories really were.
“We could try to swim under….” She didn’t try to keep the disgust from her voice.
Khelséa examined the lock. “It doesn’t look like this has been opened recently. So if your vampires did come this way, how did they get through? Unless they swam.” She didn’t sound any more thrilled with the prospect.
“There are,” Spider said after a pause, “other tunnels down here. Crawlspaces and byways that I doubt are on your maps. I imagine whoever comes this way leaves the lock intact to avoid attention.”
“You imagine?” Isyllt’s eyes narrowed. “Have you known all along where we were going?”
“I suspected it.” He shrugged one shoulder, a disturbing articulation of bones. “You wouldn’t have trusted me if I’d had too much information too soon.”
“I don’t trust you now. But if you make me swim through the sewers again when there’s an easier way, I’ll give a few new scars for your collection.”
He laughed, like dry leaves scraping stone. “There’s always an easier way.” He twined two fingers through the shackle of the lock, another two through the nearest link of chain, and twisted. Link and lock groaned, and the shackle snapped free of the body with a screech. The sound echoed down the tunnel.
“Easier, but not quieter.” Isyllt fought the urge to cover her aching ears. If the vrykoloi were in their den, they’d soon know someone was coming.
“We hear you mortals crawling through the tunnels no matter how softly you walk,” Spider said. “Like mice in the attic, but clumsier.”
He stilled abruptly, raising a hand to cut off Isyllt’s reply; his ears twitched. She listened, but heard nothing but water and a distant carriage.
“Speaking of mice…” Spider’s wide mouth twisted in a frown. “I hear you, too, Azarné. Come out.”
For several heartbeats there was no reply. Then the tiny vrykola melted out of the shadows. She didn’t move with Spider’s drifting ghostly grace, but with the lazy purpose of a predator. Isyllt didn’t doubt her deadliness for an instant, despite her size and delicate, almost childlike beauty. Her eyes flashed in the light like an animal’s; also yellow, but a warmer, more golden shade than Spider’s. Her clothes had been lace and velvet once, something lovely, but now they hung in stains and tatters.
“You’re turning up quite often lately,” Spider said, still frowning. “One might mistrust it.”
Azarné smiled—or bared her teeth; Isyllt couldn’t be certain. Either way, fangs flashed white, incongruous behind her tiny rosehip lips. “There’s much to mistrust in the catacombs these days. Thieves and schemes and strangers.” Her eyes flickered over Khelséa, and Isyllt thought she saw disappointment there. Ciaran often had that effect on mortal women—why not undead ones too?
“I’m Isyllt,” she said, stepping forward and holding out a hand. “And my friend is Khelséa. Fewer strangers now, at least.”
Azarné stared at the outstretched hand as one might at an unexpected dead mouse. Then she reached out and clasped it briefly, cold and light, with the echo of a courtier’s grace. “Manners,” the vrykola said, with a sound that might have been a laugh. “I remember those, I think.” She sank into a curtsy, ruined skirts pooling around her. Broken chains and jeweled pins glinted in the tangled mass of her hair. “I am Azarné, called Vaykush.”
Owl, the word meant in Skarrish. She looked it, with her wide eyes and small round face. And that would explain the faded accent, though her vowels didn’t sound quite like those Isyllt heard in the markets. How long since Azarné had last seen Skarra or Iskar?
“Pleased to meet you,” Isyllt said, the ridiculousness of the scene nearly making her head spin. From Azarné’s brief twitch of a smile, she appreciated the absurdity as well. Spider simply glowered.
“Since we’ve all established that we don’t trust each other,” Khelséa said, “shall we keep going?” She tugged the chain free of the broken lock, and the gate squealed inward.
“You’re hunting Myca, aren’t you,” the vrykola said. “And his friends.”
“Yes.” Isyllt raised her eyebrows. “Do you object?”
“They tried to kill you and your musician. They would break the truce and bring the armies of daylight down on us all. I remember the last time that happened.” She stripped the sleeve from one narrow forearm, baring the scar-slick ridges of old burns. “I’ll help you stop them.”
“As you will,” was all Spider said. He turned between heartbeats and ghosted down the corridor.
Isyllt and Khelséa exchanged a glance, then resumed their hunt. Azarné drifted behind them, as silent as her namesake.
Another stretch of tunnels, these rougher than before, less traveled by sewer workers. Isyllt could feel the difference in her head—not the sharp chill of death, but a cool stillness. The absence of life, not the end of it. It might have been soothing, but her legs ached and the constant witchlight was giving her a headache.
The knowledge that she was lost did nothing to ease it. Khelséa’s map was a comfort, but even that wouldn’t help them if they turned into one of the uncharted tunnels. She felt like a spirit caught in a maze-trap. Better, she supposed, than being caught in a labyrinth, and circling toward one certain fate.
A rustle of parchment drew her out of her brooding. Khelséa unrolled the map and stopped to frown at it. Isyllt leaned close to look over her shoulder.
“What is it?”
“We’ve been going south all this time, more or less.” One dark finger tapped a section of faded lines and branches, slid down the paper and stopped against a darker, wider line. “Which means we’re going to hit the river soon.”
“Problematic,” Isyllt murmured. No architect was mad or ambitious enough to dig under the Dis; the sewers on either side were unconnected.
“I told you—” Isyllt stiffened to realize Spider was right beside them; the map crinkled in Khelséa’s hands. “There are passages not on your maps.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, or you’ll bring the whole city down one day.”
“Not on accident,” Spider said with a grin. “Come on—we’re almost to the crossing.”
“On second thought,” Khelséa muttered, “next time you can take the minstrel.”
The crawlspace was as close as Spider promised, at least. A narrow crevice in the wall, barely wide enough for a man to squeeze in. It shivered in Isyllt’s head as she leaned close—not human magic, but the same sort of glamour that Spider wore in the city streets. Most eyes, she suspected, would slide over it unnoticing.
“Be careful,” Spider said. “The way is steep and long.” He twisted sideways and vanished in a pale blur.
Isyllt and Khelséa exchanged a glance. “Well,” the inspector said. “Go on.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Azarné added, with only the phantom of a smile.
Isyllt glared at both of them, then sent her witchlight into the fissure and followed it down.
“Steep” was an understatement. Her boots slipped and slid, and bits of rock skittered down into the darkness ahead of her. Her hands soon ached from bracing against the wall. The roar of the sewers faded, leaving the ringing in her ears and the harsh echo of her breath. Sweat ran down her back, slicked her scalp and squelched inside her gloves.
“This wasn’t quite the sort of misadventure I had in mind,” Khelséa muttered. A rivulet of dust and pebbles spilled from beneath her boots, rattling past Isyllt into the echoing darkness.
“Watch out,” Spider called from below. “The way branches here, and you have to turn.”
“Or what?” Isyllt asked, breathless.
“Or you go all the way down. It only gets steeper.”
“Of course it does.”
It happened in a rush: She yanked her right hand away from a particularly cruel bit of rock, just as one foot slipped in scree. Cursing, she grabbed at the wall, but her crippled hand was already cramping and her right had nothing to hold. Her stomach flipped as she skidded faster. Khelséa shouted her name.
By the wildly flickering light, she saw Spider reach for her. But undead strength was no use without a good grip. Her sleeve snagged and tore on his claws, an instant’s jolt that did nothing to slow her slide.
The witchlight only dizzied her; Isyllt let it die, wrapping her arms around her head. Spilling her brains down a tunnel was all she needed—
The ground beneath her vanished. She flailed through the air with an undignified yelp, getting her feet below her in time for an awkward landing. Her knees buckled and she fell sideways, bruising her shoulder and knocking the wind from her lungs. She rolled down wet stone toward the sound of water.
Not again, she had time to think. Then her head struck something cold and unyielding, and there was nothing at all.
*   *   *
She woke with a groan. Her head throbbed and red spots swam across the blackness. Someone was calling her name, echoes scattering queerly. For a moment she couldn’t tell who it was or why they wanted her so badly. Returning memory only made the pain worse. She couldn’t feel her legs, and had an instant’s terror of a broken spine. Then she realized that from the waist down she lay sprawled in frigid water.
“I’m here,” she finally shouted, only to hiss in pain at the echoes. “I’m all right.” That was likely a gross exaggeration, but at least her legs moved. And, she realized a moment later, she hadn’t fallen in a sewer. The air around her smelled of stone and clean water, the bitter metallic scent of the Dis, and a subtle floral sweetness. She hadn’t realized the river flowed underground….
Something brushed her leg, cold and slick and curious. She jerked leaden limbs out of the water’s reach; the movement brought tears to her eyes. Her stomach churned, and she fell limp again.
“I told you to be careful,” Spider chided, crouching beside her. Cold hands eased beneath her arms, pulling her out of the water. “Are you hurt?”
“Only my pride,” she said. “And my head.”
“How badly? The latter, I mean.” His fingers were soft and careful as he touched the back of her head, but she jerked away when he found the injury. “Oh, hold still.”
She did, with an effort, clenching her teeth as he examined the back of her skull. “Barely bleeding,” he said at last, “but swelling. I don’t remember much of mortal injuries—is your vision blurred?”
“That implies I could see in the dark to begin with.” Even sitting still on solid stone dizzied her, and her ears rang worse than ever—she doubted her vision would be any better. It took much too long to call a light.
The witchlight sparked and shivered, sending mad shadows capering across the walls. Isyllt hissed at the brightness, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Sure enough, when she opened them again, Spider was a bone-colored blur watching her with three sulfurous eyes.
He frowned. “You can’t go on like this.”
“Of course I can—” She broke off as she looked past him at the cavern they’d fallen into.
The cave was wide and cylindrical, stretching into shadow on either side. Black water filled the bottom, still save for scattered ripples. The walls glistened and sparked—not carved, for all their perfect arch, but oddly ridged; they seemed to ripple, like a giant sphincter contracting. Isyllt’s stomach lurched at the image. Columns rose from pool to ceiling, thick and gnarled as tree trunks. The light turned rough stone into leering faces, winking eyes and gaping mouths.
She dragged her gaze away from the pillars, and froze again as she saw the floor by the water’s edge. Coins, gems, and scraps of cloth lined the shore, beside carvings of wood and stone and bone. Flowers too—some brown and rotted, others almost fresh—and bowls of incense, sweet and cloying in the damp air.
Offerings.
“Isyllt!” Spider’s hand fell on her shoulder and she flinched. From the concern on his face, she guessed he’d called her name more than once already. The sound skipped across the water like a stone.
“Who are they worshipping?” she murmured. Spirit worship was illegal—one of the few Assari traditions the founders of Selafai had kept when they broke away five hundred years ago. Mortal saints could be venerated, or abstracts, but turning little spirits into gods was dangerous.
The answer came to her as she stared at the columns and arch of stone overhead. What was this place, after all, but the river’s own cathedral?
She had visited another river’s temple once—the Mir, for which the city of Symir across the sea was named. A gentler river than the Dis, and a kinder one. A young woman Isyllt had known had sacrificed herself to the Mir to save the city, and the river had answered. She heard lately that the girl had been sainted.
She hadn’t thought that anyone worshipped the Dis, but of course they did. The river carved through the very heart of Erisín, swift and black and implacable, rich with lifeblood of the dozens of corpses that fetched up against the gates each decad. Flowers and trinkets were more pleasant offerings.
She wondered which the river preferred.
“Perhaps,” Spider whispered, “we shouldn’t stay and find out.”
In the depths of the pool the water bulged and rippled, and Isyllt remembered the cold touch in the dark. “No. Let’s not.”
She stood, and Spider’s hand on her elbow kept her from collapsing again. They didn’t run—mostly because she couldn’t—but their exit was too hasty for any dignity. Clinging to Spider’s neck like a child while he climbed back into the tunnel didn’t help either. At least she didn’t vomit, though she gave it serious thought. In the darkness below them, something heavy moved in the water and fell silent again.
Spider carried her back to the fork in the tunnel, where Khelséa and Azarné crouched. Khelséa had lit her lantern; the light hurt Isyllt’s eyes, and the heat and smoke choked the narrow space. Her soaking clothes warmed from frigid to merely clammy.
“What happened?” the inspector asked.
“Only a detour.”
“She struck her head,” Spider said. “And probably needs to rest.”
Shadows turned Khelséa’s frown into an exaggerated snarl as she held the lamp closer to peer at Isyllt’s eyes. “A concussion?”
“I’m fine,” Isyllt snapped, raising a hand against the glare. At least she could count her fingers. “We can hardly turn back now.”
“You’re clumsy and slow,” Azarné said softly, “weak. The others will smell your blood.” She leaned forward as she spoke, eyes burning.
Isyllt grinned, though it made her skull ache all the more. “Then I’ll be excellent bait, won’t I?”