Page 104 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

Wren shakes her head at his words. “Yes, in case you ever want useless shiny stones to hang from your neck.”

“I’ve told you they have value in other places, Keeper!” He huffs with false indignation, and she grins at him like a child.

“Enough that you thought to collect them in the tunnels while carrying us?”

“Enough that they were worth gathering. And you’ll keep them on you like I told you to. You never know when you’ll need to bargain. What is worth nothing in our lands is a treasure in others.”

“You speak and speak, but it still sounds like chickens chattering to me…” she laughs, and he growls in mock-affront.

Their back-and-forth makes me uneasy, fills the pit in my stomach with acid.

Kaden sinks to his heels in front of me, blocking them from view.

“Soup, Tahrik. For strength, as we can only stay one more night here before we need to travel. The Corpse Bridge is no place to tarry.” Dropping his voice, Kaden pushes the bowl into my hands. “Don’t be too upset at broken promises. He meant to keep it, but your little bird there was apparently distraught when your legs failed, and wouldn’t leave you. She begged him, and he had enough strength, just. So eat.”

I shouldn’t be so comforted by his response, but the thought of meaning that much to Wren — it soothes the tightness in my chest, and I put the bowl to my mouth gratefully. Rannoch and Wren have finished whatever back and forth they had, and Kaden turns from me to face them. “I’ll teach you my tongue, Wren, if you’d like.”

She’s just taken a sip from her own bowl and chokes on the liquid at his words; Kaden’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly at her response before he full out grins at her. “You said you wanted to learn anotherlanguage…”

“Yes. Of course. The broth was hot. I’d appreciate that, Kaden.” She is strangely breathless. The teeth against my ribs are back.

Still grinning, he hums under his breath as he moves away from me to tend the fire. It draws my eyes up, and then up and up and up. There’s enough light left in the dying sky to still shadow the world around us, and though the land is rapidly fading from dim to dark, I can still see enough to catch my lungs in something close to panic.

“The sky?—”

Wren and Rannoch nod in understanding; Kaden is more puzzled.

“What?” he asks, glancing our way with a confused smile on his face.

“It’s so…so big,” I say numbly, and his brow furrows.

“It’s the sky?” He’s not judging or disdainful, just curious, and Rannoch shrugs.

“It’s more open than we’re used to,” he tries to explain. “Everythingin our village is always in the shade of the mountains, in the curve of our walls. And we don’t leave. Well, not many. The Hunters go beyond the bones, but even that is rare. This much space is new for us.”

“There are mountains…” Kaden says, motioning to the sides, but they are lower, and more distant. They’re softer than the jagged, obsidian peaks of our home, curved and curling.

The three of us from the village exchange looks. It’s difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t grown up with the comfort of being surrounded, wrapped in the land and the city like a blanket.

“The ground is strange too,” I muse, pressing a hand into it. It gives way slightly under my fingers, the grass thick and smooth, not sharp and sparse.

“It’s called a wetland,” Wren interjects, pushing her own hands into the soil, a glimmer of a smile on her face. “There’s water just under the surface, Kaden says. The entire way along here. The land grows in colors I’ve never seen, Tahrik! Wait until morning light; your eyes will hurt from it all!” I like to see her happy, but the feel of the ground beneath me doesn’t give me the same comfort; tiny flickers of anxiety run along my skin. Something she says pushes at my brain, but I can’t figure it out. Too much is unknown.

“What’s a Corpse Bridge? That sounds fairly ominous!” I try to inject some levity into my words. It seems like Rannoch and Wren trust the Trader to some degree, but the Trade ended so badly, and there is so much that we don’t know. The more information I can get, the sooner we can form a plan, and more flies are caught with honey than vinegar. So until I find my footing, I need to smile. “And why can’t we stay here? Where are we traveling? How did we find you? How long was I out?” The questions, once started, pour from me, unable to be stoppered.

Kaden stares into the fire for enough time that I’m about to repeat myself, when he answers me. “This is our second full day here, setting into the third. But it needs to be our last. Rannoch and Wren haven’t said much about your time in the tunnels. Just that it was…for too long.” He swallows hard, eyes darting quickly to Wren and then back to the fire, taking a deep breath before continuing. “Too long by half and then some. We’re close to three weeks of time since I left your village, the second day in the Slaughter Month now.”

“Ten days then, give or take.” Shivers run through me. The rains start in the Month of the Earth; Wren sees it, as she always does, and smiles gently at me.

“It’s alright, Tahrik. Kaden says it doesn’t storm in the same way here. The rain is safe when it falls.”

When it falls, when it falls. Suddenly the buried memory of our last few moments in the village stabs me like a knife, and I fold over in pain. Surprisingly, it’s Rannoch who offers comfort. “Breathe. Breathe,” he murmurs, gripping my shoulder in joyless commiseration.

“Our people!” I choke out, and he sighs.

“I know. Put it away for now if you can. We’ll figure it out.”

“We have to go back! Sun and Earth!” Flashes of light burst in and out of existence behind my closed eyes, and I feel dizzy.

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