“You are too kind, Your Majesty.” Fox bowed.
“It was a bad business. I remember that order, but I had little choice. I could not afford to have my northern borders terrorized by some nameless creature. We never did find the daeva, but my men must have injured it, for the attacks ceased soon after. What are the chances of it slinking off to whatever lair it calls its own to die?”
“With much respect to Your Majesty,” Fox said, with his usual gravity, “I hope it did not.”
The king laughed even harder. “I see that you have your hands full with these siblings, Mykaela. Fire and calm, these two, water and flash. Much like my sons. This is Prince Kance.”
The boy smiled at me, and I felt my cheeks prickle with heat again. “It is my honor to meet you, asha.” He bowed low, and his heartsglass swung with the movement. Like his father’s, it was set in silver and adorned with an intricate working of the royal family crest along its edges: a lion’s silhouette emblazoned against the sun.
“I’m not an asha,” I stammered. How could a simple smile work such wonders to my heart? “I’m…I’m—”
“An apprentice,” Lady Mykaela interrupted, taking pity on me, “due to take up her novitiate in Ankyo.”
“But a bone witch all the same, eh?” The king winked at me. “It has been a rare year. The first new bone witch in decades! Two of you from Odalia, when many other kingdoms are forced to do without. Doesn’t Istera only have that one old crone left, Mykaela? Of course, we don’t have Kion’s heartforger, but he’s old and getting on in years.”
“Heartforger?” I asked before I could stop myself.
King Telemaine gestured at my heartsglass with a thick hand.
“Their heartsglass are silver white, like yours. But they don’t wave magic about like you do, only fire up memories and forge them into new ones.”
Two others approached the king—one a royal councilor, judging from the robes he wore, and the other a young boy in a brown cloak and hood. I read the blue and yellow palpitations on the older man’s heartsglass, an irregular heartbeat of fright. The other’s was easier to discern—his was beet red with anger, directed at us. I didn’t bother to look at their faces, keeping my eyes on the councilor’s heartsglass instead.
“Your Majesty,” he stuttered. “We shouldn’t—shouldn’t keep the children waiting.”
You cannot spend so much time on those witchfolk, the man’s heartsglass seemed to whisper. What would the people think, seeing their king consorting with these pariahs?
“He is right.” Lady Mykaela laid a firm hand on my arm. “We had best get started. Four hundred and eighty children are waiting.”
“Kings and queens may be let off with ungracious behavior,” she murmured once we were alone again. “Bone witches may not. Speak in that manner to the king or to anyone else in the palace, and I will box your ears and have you clean the city outhouses for a month. We are welcomed in most of Odalia because of his generosity and are outcasts without.”
“I promise,” I said meekly, because Lady Mykaela was the kind who carried out anything she threatened, if our time at the daeva mound was any indication. “What did he mean by heartforgers?”
She tapped at my heartsglass. “A different magic but with the same color. They’re of more use to the people than bone witches, so they aren’t as reviled. They can take memories and break them into bits and pieces, distill them down into potions and spells, and build them back up into new hearts, bright and counterfeit, so that even we can’t tell one heartbeat from the other. Fortunately, some artificial hearts cost more than a kingdom, and so few people bother.”
“But why?”
“For noble reasons and for horrible reasons. Give your heart to the wrong person and they can abuse that trust, and there are spells to prevent you from drawing one anew. When you have enough enemies, it is sometimes necessary to speed up what nature did not intend. The strongest spells require memories. There are many people who wish to forget, and there are many rich enough to pay for the privilege.”
“But that’s terrible!”
“People can be terrible, Tea.” Lady Mykaela’s empty heartsglass winked against the light as she turned away, and I wondered what in the asha’s past was responsible for making her so sad.
? ? ?
Only one asha was necessary for the equinox ritual, so I stood aside, watching from the sidelines while Lady Mykaela attended to her task. As her apprentice, I was given a spot among the most junior of the king’s staff: on the edges of the crowd but able to watch the proceedings without looking over everyone else’s heads. Fox, not quite as fortunate, stood somewhere in the middle of the group. It did not matter; I could feel him there, and that was enough.
We were part of a large audience looking on, where at the center of the town square, a group of children around my age stood expectantly. They were dressed in their prettiest and most expensive clothes and held their empty heartsglass in their hands. After presenting themselves to the king, the boys and girls waited as Lady Mykaela moved down the line, tracing runes as she went.
Each heartsglass case seemed to me even more elaborate than the next. I could feel poise and composure incantations woven into the dress of one girl so that the crowd marveled even as she fidgeted and squirmed in her lace and satin best. One boy dug a finger into his nose with undue diligence, the spells on him muting the action. It was simpler back in Knightscross, I thought. We were too poor to afford but to behave.
Behind me, a chorus sang, and instruments were played by unseen hands. Lady Mykaela continued, fingers working at the air, and the people watched, their faces enchanted to hide their disdain of the bone witch—to all but those who can see through the magic and through them.
“They say you can bring back the dead.”
I looked behind me. A boy stood there, his hostility obvious.
“They say you can bring back the dead,” he repeated. “Well? Can you?”
Most of the people in Kneave had gone out of their way to ignore me, and so his pointed derision took me by surprise. “It depends. Do you require raising?”
It did not appear to be the answer the boy wanted.
“Can you, or can’t you?” A black cloak many sizes too big swallowed him up, hid his heartsglass from my view. I could not see the color of his hair, could only see the lower half of his face and one of his eyes, which was hooded and gray. If only I could see his heart, I thought, and tell whether he had reasons to be smug or whether he was merely stupid. At least he did not smell of spells and invocations, none woven into his clothes to mask his disgust. “I’m a bone witch. Of course I can.”
“My father says bone witches are demon children,” the boy persisted. “They curse the healthy and blight the sane. No other magic would touch them because they sell their hearts to the Dark. That’s how they raise dead men, soulless as they are.”