Page 34 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

“Councilmen?” My voice is far away, in a dream, and I can sense their confusion.

“What are you doing here, BoneKeeper?” A deeper, more cavernous voice, low and rumbling like thunder, pulls me upright. The questionandthe asker are both unexpected.

“Father?” It is almost unheard of to have the Village Father out. I have drastically misjudged the situation. There is a vibrating string of tension between me and the Councilmen, a simmering anger that hovers on their surface like a mirage of water. It seems a year since I refused to read the bones for them, but it has only been the course of a day, and my defiance is clearly still at the front of their thoughts.

Three councilmenandthe Father, though….Either the Storms are early or the Ender has come for this to happen.

The Father steps forward, burl and brawn; his name would make him seem a greybeard, but he is living fire, all dark, polished wood gleaming in the pale sun. The Father is younger than most of the Council, and though we are not privy to the choices the Sun God makes in his wisdom, it is easy now to see why he was anointed as the leader of our city. He is the only one in the village who looks like a piece of the before that was forgotten and found, a mystery of blood and bone that cannot be explained. As a man he is a sort of brilliance that is difficult to look at, but impossible to turn from.

Lorcan’s sense of relief on my spine is unexpected but comforting.

Silas. You are safe for now, Little Keeper. He is…was…a friend.

I have heard that the Council was not as bad before; there wereencroaching members, of course, men who grew too fond of softer treatment, of fear and favor, of power, always power. But they were balanced by those who had been in service for a longer time, who had silver beards, and wrinkled skin, whose bodies wore the weight of the decisions they had made for our people. During my father’s time, the bones named so few to the Council that the people grew used to control resting in the hands of the oldest in the village.

Everything changed in the winter of my birth. I’ve only heard fragments of the story from the villagers when they thought I was not listening, when they did not see me, half-girl, half-shadow, but from their words in quiet corners, this is what happened. The bones refuse to speak to me about their choices for anything — any Offering, any Councilman, any decision from the Gods — and I will not force them, so everything I know is swallowed truths and wide-eyed whispers. I am marrow certain that, were I to sit in a history class in the schools, the story would be different, something morepalatable. But at least the elders in our village know that the autumn before my birth, early in the Slaughter Month, the bones named Silas as successor to the Village Father. Silas was only a child, I think eight, when the bones whispered his name. It was unheard of in our history to have a child named successor — usually, when one Father is close to death, the next is named, and there is time for training, for transfer, for trust to be built between the Council and the new Father, between the people and their new leader. The Old Father remains a trusted hand to help until he passes and is guided to bone. His femurs are placed as all Fathers, Councilmen, and Justices before him, on the stairway leading to the House of the Gods. These bones are off-limits to any other than the current Council and the Father; even I, as Keeper, am not permitted to visit them by myself.

Still, despite Silas’ youth, the people counted it a blessing of sorts. Perhaps Silas was named so the old Father could raise him into a truly strong leader, perhaps it was a sign of something better to come. No one was truly worried; there hadalwaysbeen the steadying hand of the Father previously, to guide the Council. It was unthinkable that the bones would call the older Father to Offering, leaving nothing buta child to lead us. The old Father would spend the winter educating Silas, and we would finally have a leader who would be able to pull us from the wreckage of our history into something new. Hope flavored the Slaughter that year, and even the poisoned winds curling down from the mountains couldn’t taint it with bitterness.

But the winter winds didn’t ebb and flow as expected; instead they tore into the village devastatingly early that year, cold biting the people like a rabid wolf. Before the end of the Slaughter Month,justafter Silas was called to serve, the rains poured down so fiercely that roofs were torn from homes and people had no protection from the poisoned water. My father was trapped by the Storms in the now-abandoned BoneKeeper’s home, carved from rock far from the Council House, and could do nothing for the hundreds of villagers sent to their deaths in Silence. Everyone was frightened; in an eerie echo of our current situation, the silos were too low for such a long storm season. People were trapped between crying out in sorrow for their neighbors and being sickened by the hope they felt knowing with every death, their rations increased slightly.

In the midst of this storm chaos, during a short break in the rains, when the mountain was shaking, and thin streams of Everfire could, for the first time, be seen pushing through its cracks, the Village Father walked into the wilds beyond the Southern bone wall and did not return.

Such a thing had never happened. There was no time to mourn, or time for discussion in the village — any who had a home left were confined to it with the coming rains. Many who had lost their homes were welcomed into tight quarters by neighbors; some of the single men, Raek and his friends included, were taken into the Council House for the season, as it had the most room. They were vipers given quarters in a badger’s burrow, and had a long, dark winter to inject their poison into their hosts. And the power shifted, slowly but surely.

My father and heavily pregnant mother were locked away from the rest of the world in their stone cottage. And then I joined them, at the height of the longest winter in our village’s memory, when theStorms ripped the walls from homes, and corroded the flesh of so, so very many people, lost forever to the silence.

I was born on the turning of the year, from Crone to Marrow, one foot in each, as I have had one foot in life and death since. Into a time where the Village Father was an eight year old boy, and the Council tasted a power they were reluctant to give back. Silas has had to wrest it from them, piece by piece, chipping away at the monolith with bloody fingers to carve it into the shape he desires. It has been a long, silent battle, fought by a dark, silent man, who looks cut from the same stone that makes the face of the mountain. There is nothing soft to him — no flash of a smile, no glint in his ebony eyes. They are a starless sky at midnight. But his voice is close to kind now, though I cannot see his face through blood.

“BoneKeeper?” he asks again, and someone behind him scoffs.

“I am speaking to the Oldest Mother, Sir.”

There is a tightness in the men.Did they not know she is here? Then again, they rarely know where any bones are anymore. They have forgotten their lessons if they think they are beyond the memory of the bones.

“Why are you visiting the Oldest Mother?” Nickolas’ voice is a biting command, like his hands on me when he collects me for visitation, my skin showing five fingerprint ovals every day after. I know for certain like I know my own blood that he would imprint himself on me in less temporary ways if he could. I can feel it build in him like the coming Storms. Soon even the threat of Exile will not be enough to keep him from my body. I do not know what I will do when he comes for me.

“I am starting the questioning? I was asked to find answers — the empty silos?” My voice echoes my confusion, tilting up at the end, a rare show of flesh and blood instead of ghost and shadow. I am still blinking away where the thorns have cut me, so I startle violently when strange hands suddenly touch my face, wiping at the crimson ribbons. Flinging myself back, I impale myself on the wall behind me, hundreds of tiny pinpricks pushing into my skin, before strong hands wrap around my arms and bring me forward softly.

Lorcan moans quietly on my skin, absorbing the blood, sounding almost drunk from a second anointing in such a short time.

“I am sorry, Keeper. Forgive me.” The Father’s voice is too deep to be soft, but the words are gentle. Though I hear murmurs from behind him, even the Council would not dare to counteract the Village Father. Openly, at least. Though they are becoming more and more bold in their rebellion against him.

“I was just startled. It is a small thing.” He hums low in his throat, a thought trapped.

“You are bleeding.” He is matter-of-fact, and I shrug, replying in the same vein.

“It is not unusual.”

His answering sound feels like the mountain’s rumble in my chest. Turning from me, he faces the Councilmen, three across, one on either side of Nickolas like guards.

“We came because you are owed an apology, Keeper. And Nickolas was…eager…to give you one, as soon as possible. Is that not true, Brother Nickolas.” It’s not a request, and even I would have had trouble refusing the command in the Father’s voice.

Nickolas sneers, lip curled back as though smelling rotten meat, and shrugs dismissively. “I’m sorry you misunderstood my intent, Keeper. Emotions run high in hard times. I know you would not understand such a thing. But I will not be so incautious again.”

The silence is deafening, the Father’s face a storm of anger, but he swallows back whatever words press against his teeth.

“Brother Aleksander? Brother Malik? Would you get some small amount of cleansing oil and clean cloth, then meet us? The Keeper needs tending. Nickolas, you can return to the Council House. We’ll speak further there.”

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