The White Tree (46 page)

"What—?"

"It's not as bad as it looks," Larrimore said. "Do you have any idea how many people have died in this city over the years? Sometimes after the larger sieges they had to sort of dig up the old to make way for the new."

"That's barbaric!"

"Pragmatic," Larrimore corrected. "Egalitarian, even. This way everyone gets a turn in the earth." He stepped forward into the mess, shuffling his feet against the floor. Bones rattled away from his boots. Dante followed in the path he cleared.

"What do you want me to do with them?" Dante said, shrinking back from the top half of a skull that had rolled within an inch of his foot. "Tidy up?"

"I said you'd be doing something important, didn't I?" Larrimore bent at the waist and knocked away a few random bones. He made a satisfied grunt, then plucked one up and displayed Dante the jawbone in his palm. "Weird looking, isn't it? Strange to think your teeth are the same substance as the jaw they're embedded in. Yet they're exposed, naked to the air and the eye, while the rest of our bones are buried under all that flesh."

"Truly a marvel of nature," Dante said. It was a large room, perhaps forty feet deep and just as far across, and except for a small space around the door, the carpet of bones lay ankle-deep from wall to wall. In the corners they were piled to the knee, gathered in drifts like snow in the wind.

"We've got a few mirrors around the place. You should look at your teeth some day. Quite frankly it's scary when you think about them like that."

"Is this some kind of lesson on the virtue of looking closely at the things we take for granted?"

"No, it's a lesson on how disgusting our bodies are." Larrimore tossed the jawbone at Dante. It bounced from his chest and he puckered his face. Larrimore laughed through his nose. "Jawbones, ribs, and thighs. One of each in sets of three. Write Arawn's name in blood upon the bone—in Narashtovik, not this decadent Mallish—and soak it through with nether until the whole thing's bound up tight. Repeat. Gain my eternal praise."

"What?"

"'What' as in you didn't hear me, or you don't understand?"

Dante kicked the nearest skull away from him. "Why?"

"Because Samarand's children are bored with their old toys."

"Samarand has kids?"

Larrimore's face bent with a shocking flash of anger. "What are you, some kind of idiot? They have vows of chastity."

"I thought I was going to be doing something important," Dante said. "You want me to bleed on some bones in a room so low it's under the dungeon?"

"This
is
important! Before you volunteered, the council was drawing lots to see who'd have to do it."

"This is asinine."

Larrimore plowed his feet through the debris, sending bones clattering over each other. He chuckled without humor, then fixed Dante with a stare emptied of any patience.

"When the time comes for all the excitement, the council's going to need all the power they can find. Sources they can depend on other than their own frail bodies. These bones? The bones you're going to bleed on? They'll be the fuel for their deeds."

Dante frowned up at the man. "Are you putting me on?"

"Big events are always preceded by countless hours of tedious preparation. Like the good book says, proper preparation is the difference between celestial glory and standing around in a field with our dicks in our hands."

"I don't remember that verse."

"Obviously you haven't been studying hard enough." Larrimore dug into his pocket and removed a small, thin knife, more of a pick than a blade, and a delicate black quill covered in intricate silver Narashtovik words. He handed them to Dante. "Any questions?"

"Yes," Dante said, holding the knife in one hand and the quill in the other. "How do I do the things you told me to do?"

"Lyle's flayed balls." Larrimore rubbed his face in his hands. "Ribs of the watchdog, jaws of the dragon, thighs of the lion. Just like Mommy used to sing about when she'd point out the stars. Give yourself a good nick and write Arawn's name on each. In Narashtovik. Bind blood to bone with nether—I'm not sure how that part's done, but you're a smart lad, figure it out." He sucked in his cheeks. "Don't kill yourself or anything, but we need a lot."

"Define 'a lot,'" Dante said, gazing out on the thousands of bones.

"Drink plenty of water," Larrimore winked. He used his torch to light another by the door. "Don't shut this door, either. We've only got the one key, and sometimes I lose things. Got a lot of responsibilities for one man, you see." He flashed his eyebrows, then picked his way out into the corridor. Dante heard him whistling on his way through the gloom.

He turned around. Bones from wall to wall. Was this another test? Larrimore had barely told him what to do. The man gave the impression he didn't care about anything, but somehow he was the one who kept the wheels of the Citadel greased and turning. Dante swept an open circle with his feet and sat down. Larrimore wanted bones, did he? He took up a rib, grasping the natural handle where the bone would meet the spine. This bone had once been a part of someone, he thought, then realized he didn't give a damn. That man had been dead for decades. Whoever he'd been, he hadn't even had the simple courtesy not to get dug up and stored in a forgotten basement until his remains could be involved in some morbid ritual.

Dante set the quill in his lap and with the knife he drew a light incision below his left thumb. His blood gleamed a blackish red in the uneven light from the torch ensconced beside the door. He picked up the quill, glad for the small favor that no one was here to see this bizarre melodrama, then dipped it in the blood in his hand and held the rib close to his face. He painted the letters delicately, one stroke at a time, adding a flourish to their ends. He held out the rib, eyeing it critically. Bind it? With the nether? He blinked back the frustration that was crowding his mind. Shadows sucked up from under the piles of bones, coursing up his arm and wrapping themselves around the rib's white surface. He let his desire become a semiconscious thing, felt rather than verbalized, the way he recognized he was hungry without thinking "apple" or "roast chicken," and smoothed the shadows over the length of the rib. Become one, he thought, and twitched back as the shadows pulsed and then sunk into the bone like water spilled on hot sand. The formerly creamy rib had grown gray, lined with the red-brown letters of Arawn's name, and when he set it aside he had a creeping sense of energy—not warm, not motile, certainly not conscious, but far sharper than the bland feel of the bones around him or the still air or the stones of the wall. He grunted and placed it gently on the floor.

The second bone was easier. He misspelled Arawn's name on the third and lobbed the thighbone into a far corner. After that first mistake he moved quickly, pinching the skin around the cut on his hand to keep it from clotting. Each bone was the work of no more than five minutes, and within half an hour he had the start of a pile lying beside his knee.

Last night's talk with Blays felt impossibly distant. He no longer had any way to deny he was doing the work of the Arawnites. Delivering letters was reasonably harmless; no doubt 90% of them said nothing but empty chatter. Bodyguarding men who couldn't help themselves was a respectable enough position, Blays' similar occupation notwithstanding. Capturing criminals was no more wrong than when the watch did it in every city on the planet. But this—painting bones with blood and locking them up with nether for use in what could only be their attempt to unleash Arawn—there was no defense of that. Mercenaries and men off the street couldn't do what Dante was doing now. If they succeeded in releasing the old god—not that he thought such a being even existed—Dante would be in part responsible for that success; and if he failed again when it came time to kill Samarand, perhaps that too would have its roots in what he was doing down in this neglected ossuary.

He grasped a jawbone, tensed his arm to hurl it against the opposite wall. All at once his feelings broke, his conflict left him like a hulled boat slipping beneath calm waters. Let him do Samarand's work with one hand while with the other he honed the knife meant for her heart. Let him tell Blays he was biding his time even while he used Nak to learn everything the monk could teach. Uncertainty and self-doubt wouldn't help him. No army was going to smash down the Citadel's gates, no heavenly hand was going to guide him through his trials and lead him to justice. He had nothing and no one but himself, the strength of his hands and his head and his will. If he was going to become the kind of man he intended to be, that would be enough.

The wound on his palm had scabbed as he brooded and he cut a parallel beside it. He worked without thinking, adding to the pile near his knee. He broke for lunch and wandered upstairs, wanting beef, red meat and fruit and a barrel full of water. Servants and guards watched him walk by the way he'd watch a wolf pad through the brush of the open woods. He ate by himself and returned downstairs without a word more than what he'd needed to get his meal. Once more the logic of the nether took his mind. He knew his part. One bone at a time, he created order from the decay.

"Make any progress?" Larrimore called to Dante when he'd halted for the evening and was making his way through the keep.

"See for yourself," he said, ignoring whatever the man said next as he stepped into the yard. Back at his room, Nak had prepared a thick sheaf of notes and lessons. He paged through them, recognizing more of the words than he would have expected, then set the papers aside. Too much lust for knowledge was the trappings and vanity of an unreal world.

He spent the next day with the bones, seeing others only at meals. Scabbed lines lay across his palm like tallies on a prison wall. Midway through his third day in the sub-basement he heard footsteps, the first that weren't his own. He didn't turn away from his work.

"Impressive," Larrimore said.

"I'm busy."

"That's enough for now. I've got something else for you."

"More important than laying the foundation of our finest hour?"

"Oh, be quiet." Larrimore walked around in front of Dante. He pursed his mouth at the boy's blank expression. "The council's meeting in an hour. I want you cleaned up by then. You look like you haven't bathed in a week."

"I haven't." Dante blinked up at him. "What does the council want with me?"

"It's not what they want, it's what you want. Up with you. Time for a lesson in politics."

Dante snorted and finished up the summons for the rib bone he was still holding. "Sounds enlightening."

"Stop sulking like a child or you'll miss the self-important men puffing their throats and preening their tails." Larrimore beckoned. "Come. Take a bath, for the gods' sakes. Samarand's Hand's Hand will never be of any use if he doesn't understand how the council works."

"Awful lot left," Dante said, nodding to the numberless bones, then the few score he'd prepared.

"That's enough. I told you the council'd been working on this before you. Come and see the court before I punch you in your gross little teeth."

It wasn't the threat that stirred Dante, it was the life behind it. He stood, knees and ankles popping. Larrimore stepped forward and patted him on the cheek hard enough to sting.

"There's some fire for your eyes. The way you carry yourself in that chamber will reflect on me, you know. The only way to keep those old bastards in line is to remind them just how old they are."

"Shall I dance for them?" Dante pulled out the collar of his doublet, tipped back his chin. "Where's my fancy jacket? Don't trained apes wear fancy jackets?"

"Better." Larrimore gave him a self-satisfied smile and led him back upstairs, leaving the stacks of bones behind. In the main hall he found a young man in a black cassock and dispatched him to gather the fruit of Dante's basement labor. Larrimore summoned a gaggle of servants and rattled off a line of orders in Gaskan. Dante could follow enough to pick out the words "bath" and "dress" and how the price of sloth would be a word he hadn't learned, but whose etymology meant "the breaking of limbs from the body."

"Go make yourself presentable," Larrimore said to Dante. "I'll send for you in forty minutes."

Before Dante could smart off the man strode off for other business in the deeper rooms of the keep. Dante turned to the servants with something close to guilt. They ducked their heads and gestured him upstairs, where a steaming bath had already been drawn. He barked at the pair of servants who'd stayed with him to turn away as he undressed, then allowed himself a brief soak. They waited with fresh clothes when he climbed out and he accepted their finery, slapping away their hands when they attempted to help him put them on. This was how royalty lived? For two full minutes Dante fumbled with the ends of a sash apparently meant for his middle, then sighed, looked up at the ceiling, and let the servants' swift hands secure it around his waist. He suffered them to dose him with perfume, waving them off after the first application.

"I'm a man, not a tulip garden," he mumbled in Mallish, then ordered them away before they could convince him it was the way of court. He brushed his hair, which had grown back out a bit since he'd had it trimmed before Samarand's sermon on Ben, then paced around the cushy quarters until Larrimore showed up. The man's mouth was tight, but his eyes danced with mirth as they jumped down Dante's laundered frame. Dante scowled at him. "You people are ridiculous."

"Deal with it like a man." Larrimore gave him a closer once-over, from his combed black hair to the fine silver trim on his cape and doublet and breeches, eyes coming to rest on the scuffed and scarred leather of his boots. "Where are the shoes? What's that garbage wrapped around your feet?"

"The boots stay."

"Fine. Look like a peasant who tripped over his hog and fell into a rich man's closet."

"You dress like you lost a fight with a wildcat!"

"And I've earned that right. All right, Little Lord Spitpolish, let's be on our way." Larrimore turned on his heel and took them to a staircase leading to the upper floors. "I'm guessing you're going to think the old men are stupid. You might even be tempted to try to educate them to the specific nature of their idiocy."