Bone War (26 page)

“I won't look if you don't want me to,” he said.

She breathed out heavily. “Now that the thought has occurred to me, it will bother me greatly if you do not look. Get it over with.”

“We're only going to see if it's a boy or a girl,” he said, forcing his voice into a calm he didn't feel. “Probably nothing else.”

“Just look.”

Danr closed his right eye and looked. A long silence stretched through the tent.

“Huh,” Danr said.

R
anadar arrived at the Gold Keep with his lungs burning and legs aching. The two red and gold guards were standing outside the main gate along with the two golems. On the spiked wall above them in a cloud of flies were three impaled heads. Their swollen tongues hung grotesquely from their mouths and their hair was streaked with dried blood and their eyes were already milky, but all three were easily recognizable as Talfi. Ranadar's guts turned to water. Was one of them the real Talfi? Ranadar was panting now, and not from exertion. Talfi had been unable to return to life when he was crushed under the chimney stones. He would not return to life with his head separated from his body. Ranadar tried to keep himself under control, but it was difficult under the dead gaze of three men who looked exactly like Talfi. Who might
be
Talfi.

He forced himself to look up at the dead heads. The left ear on the first one looked partly melted. It was not Talfi. The bloody hair on the second one was ragged and badly cut. Also not Talfi. The third one . . . the third one had no flaws on his face. His hair was cut the same way as Talfi's. He was missing a front tooth, but that could have been knocked out during the arrest. Ranadar's throat caught. It
could not be. Ranadar told himself to be calm. All the flesh golems looked like Talfi, and this one—

Ranadar caught sight of a blue strip of cloth around the head's severed and bloody neck. It was the remains of a high shirt collar. When he left, Talfi had been wearing a pale red shirt—his favorite color. This was not Talfi, either. Ranadar's knees went weak with relief and he leaned against the wall of the Keep for a moment.

“What do you need?” asked one of the guards at the gate.

Ranadar dropped the glamour so the guards could see his face. “Tell the prince that Ranadar of Alfhame demands an audience,” he barked.

The guard summoned a page, who escorted Ranadar inside the gates and into an antechamber, then dashed off to deliver the message. Ranadar waited impatiently. At last, the page returned to the room. Following him came Lady Hafren, accompanied by two ladies-in-waiting. The ladies closed the door. The room had no furniture in it, forcing all of them to stand.

“What is your business with the prince?” Hafren asked without preamble or civility. The thin silver circlet she habitually wore as a symbol of her status as the prince's chief adviser had been replaced with a thicker one of iron, an unsubtle warning for Ranadar to keep his distance. The metal put a putrid taste into his mouth and made his head ache.

“I wish to speak with your son,” Ranadar said. “Prince to prince.”

“In this kingdom, we do not recognize the Fae as royalty,” Hafren replied waspishly. “What you wish to say to him you will have to say to me.”

Ranadar stared at her. It was not difficult to see that she was creating a barrier between him and Prince Karsten. She had no intention of letting him speak with Karsten or even of letting him know Ranadar was here. Still, he had to try.

“The . . . men you are holding in the cells,” he said. “I have information about them, and the prince needs it.”

Hafren made an imperious gesture. “Go ahead, then.”

“They are a kind of golem,” he said. “Made of flesh instead of stone or clay. But one of them is not a golem. He is human, and you have falsely imprisoned him. I have come to ask for his release.”

“This man looks exactly like all the other . . . flesh golems, does he?” Hafren said. “Even though he smells the same as a flesh golem to the trolls?”

Ranadar nodded. “He does. But—”

“Then how do you know this man is not a flesh golem?”

Vik!
“My lady,” Ranadar said in a deliberate, even voice, “you have met this man and know him. It is Talfi. I cannot imagine your son would authorize the execution of a friend!”

“I am overseeing this, not my son,” Hafren said. “He has other duties, and there is no need to worry him with this problem.”

“The
problem
, lady,” Ranadar said through clenched teeth, “is that you are executing an innocent man. And the flesh golems themselves have done nothing to earn such treatment.”

“What does it matter to you what happens to a golem?” Hafren said, spearing Ranadar with an arrow of guilt. “They aren't alive. They don't think. We put their heads on spikes outside the Gold Keep so other people can see what they look like and find the rest for us.”

Ranadar clenched his fists. The idea of slaughtering all the flesh golems wholesale felt wrong, but he could not explain how or why. Had he not himself just argued that the flesh golems were nothing but animated piles of meat? He should not be upset at the thought of their deaths. As Hafren said, they were not quite alive.

Quite
alive. That word
quite
made a great deal of difference. There was doubt. And Ranadar had never advocated destroying the flesh golems. Was it possible to be alive and not know it? Was it possible to only
think
you were alive and actually be . . . not? Ranadar was not sure, but he
did
know that it was wrong to kill something that might not be alive in order to find out if it was dead.

And it was not right to kill Talfi.

“Why have you executed only three so far?” Ranadar found himself asking.

“They're strong and difficult to hold down while we cut off their heads,” she said dismissively. “This evening we will bring in some trolls to speed up the process. Though I hear the dwarfs can build a machine that drops a blade to cut off a head quickly and without fuss. Perhaps we'll hire them to build one for us.”

A thought came to Ranadar. “How many do you have in the cells right now?”

“Perhaps eighty or a hundred,” she said with an airy wave. “The cells are bulging, which is why we need that dwarfish machine.”

You
want
the prince to arrest the flesh golems? What are you up to, Mother?

The truth came to Ranadar now. Thanks to the arrests, the Gold Keep was stuffed full of flesh golems, freakishly strong beings who were almost impossible to kill. Beings who could bend iron bars and were unfazed by swords, knives, or iron bars. Beings who would obey the command of his mother and boil up under the very feet of Prince Karsten. Mother could destroy the Gold Keep and everyone in it with a mental word. The flesh golems being arrested was not a flaw in her plan to rule Balsia. It was
part
of it.

And what was Ranadar to do? He could not let Hafren execute Talfi and all the golems, but was it any better to let them loose in the city, still under his mother's control? His insides twisted. Above all, he had to get Talfi out.

“This is . . . a wrong, my lady,” Ranadar said carefully. “These creatures . . . men . . . have done nothing wrong.”
Yet,
he thought. “You cannot kill them just because you do not understand what they are.”

Harfen looked at him askance. “Can I not? Are the Fae once again telling the Kin how to run their own affairs?”

“They are alive,” Ranadar said. “I have seen their minds. I have touched them. They do think, just as you and I think.”

“Ha! Trustworthy Fae magic has the answer.”

Ranadar pushed down the rising panic that was creeping into his voice and agitating his body. “My lady, I beg you—let me at least visit the cell and show you the one I am seeking. You will see that he—”

“Is your true love?” Hafren finished. “I know all about you Fae and your
regi
ways, how you seduce humans with a touch. Perhaps I should just kill you now and end his addiction to you. Or are they
all
addicted to you? My prince.” She spat the last two words.

Red outrage mingled with pale panic now. Ranadar drew himself up, and the ladies-in-waiting shied back. “There is no addiction between us. I am a prince of the Fae, and what we have is—”

“You and your kind have no right to exist,” Hafren interrupted again. Her voice was a hiss. “You are an affront to the Nine, and your seed should be burned from Ashkame itself.”

Ranadar was struck speechless. It wasn't just the flesh golems, then. Hafren had another agenda. She hated
regi
, and she was willing to commit murder over her hatred. Ranadar's heart moved between despair and outrage. The outrage won. He thrust a finger into Hafren's face, but she did not flinch. “I came here to find a peaceful solution. I came here to find a way to work with humans and see how we are more alike. You call yourself humans, but I see only monsters.”

He pushed past her and stormed out of the room, out the gates, out of the Gold Keep. He refused to look up at the awful heads. When he got to the street, he was shaking.
Regi.
All his life, people had told him how wrong it was to love men, to be himself, to do anything but what
they
decided was right for him. After Talfi died that first time, he had worked hard to ignore other people, to live as best he
could without worrying what they thought. He had paid for it, but in the end, the Nine had rewarded him for it, reunited him with Talfi. Now he was going to lose Talfi again because of hatred toward people like him. The anger and outrage thundered through him even as the iron headache pressed against his temples like lead clamps. He made a fist. Perhaps it was time for this
regi
to fight back.

“Mother,” he said, and pushed mental effort behind the word, calling her as she had instructed, as her kiss allowed. “Mother!
Mother!
”

Moments later, a sprite appeared above the city. The chaotic ball of light skittered down from the sky, rushed around the corner, and vanished from Ranadar's view. There was a shout of surprise from the keep gate, and Mother came sedately around the corner in her golden gown. Ranadar decided the sprite must have taken the body of the page—the guards all carried iron weapons. He was only vaguely curious about what she had done to stop the guards from pursuing her.

“My son,” she said in her low, musical voice. “Have you made a decision?”

“I will come home, Mother,” Ranadar said.

She clasped her hands together and touched her thumbs to her lips. “
Ranadka!
You have no idea how much that thrills me! These humans have—”

“But”—Ranadar raised a finger—“I have two requests first.”

People in the street stared as they passed, but Mother ignored them in the way a shark ignores minnows. “Anything. Name it! I have power you cannot imagine.”

“First, the humans have arrested most of the flesh golems, and they took Talfi, too,” Ranadar said. “They are in the cells beneath the Gold Keep, and the humans intend to kill them all. Can you get Talfi out so he can come with me?”

“Easily done, and gladly,” Mother said. “What is your second request?”

“I want you to call off this invasion,” Ranadar said.
“You must promise not to invade Kin territories—human, orc, or merfolk—with flesh golems or Fae ever again.”

She fell silent. Her perfect face showed a number of conflicting emotions. Ranadar held his breath. At last, she said, “I will do as you ask, Ranadar. If you will swear to come home to me immediately.”

Ranadar swallowed. “I swear, Mother.”

“That is fine news, indeed!” Her eyes grew distant and her voice changed. Ranadar heard it inside his head.
My army! My prince and heir has sworn to return to me. Break free of this prison. Then scatter and hide yourselves, more carefully than before.

The queen turned her attention back to Ranadar. “The golems must stay in Balsia until you come to me, as you swore you would. The moment you arrive, our bargain will be sealed and you will have what you asked for. I am waiting for you at Lone Mountain in Alfhame. Oh, my son, how I have missed you!” She stepped in to kiss his forehead as she had done before, and Ranadar smelled the daisy scent in her hair, a smell of childhood and home. Then she was gone and a very confused page was standing in her place while a sprite fled to the sky.

“What—?” began the page.

A low rumbling started under their feet. It grew louder. Shouts and screams rose within the Gold Keep. The page ran back toward the gate. Ranadar waited, pacing a little. More shouts and screams, punctuated with occasional crashes and thumps. Someone shouted an order to lower the portcullis. But this apparently came too late. Moments later, a herd of Talfis in ragged clothes thundered around the corner. Ranadar smiled and prudently crossed the street. A startled, bruised-looking set of guards followed them, along with a clay golem that hopped on one leg and carried the other in its hand. The people on the street scattered. Horses neighed and reared. One of the Talfis saw Ranadar and pointed.

“Ran!” he shouted. “Vik! It's Ran!”

The Talfis scattered in a hundred directions, running with Talfi's easy, loping speed and flummoxing the guards, who did not know which way to turn. It was breathtaking, in a strange, stomach-wrenching way. Ranadar always forgot how fast Talfi could run, and it made sense that his duplicates would share the trait. Hafren came up behind the guards. Her hair was in disarray, her iron circlet was missing, and her dress was torn. Ranadar wanted to laugh aloud.

“Catch them, you idiots!” she screeched. But the Talfis were already gone. Except for one, the one who had pointed out Ranadar and the only one who was not required by Mother's command to scatter and hide. This Talfi, the true Talfi, flung himself into Ranadar's arms.

“Ran!” he said breathlessly into Ranadar's ear.

Ranadar's entire body sagged with thrilled relief, but he had the presence of mind to spin a glamour. It would not make the two of them invisible, but it would make people reluctant to notice them.

“You are safe,” he said. “Thank the Nine you are safe!”

“I'm sorry about last night!” Talfi blurted. “I would never leave you! Never! I was just mad, and—”