Page 74 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

Rannoch is in front of me, wiping my face gently with the damp cloth, and I can see the streaks of blood on it when he pulls away. Hisjaw is clenched, his body vibrating with the effort not to scream, but I can’t tell if he’s angry at me or something else.

“I did nothing wrong…” My jaw aches when I speak, and though I’m half-defiant, the world has come rushing back in painful color, and I’m also half-petrified. Rannoch hears it in the tremble of my voice. Nostrils flaring, he takes a deep breath, forcibly calming his face.

“I am not angryatyou, Wren. I am terrifiedforyou. What happened? Please.” He cannot stay at peace, the promise of teeth and blade edging his words.

There is a presence behind me and I flinch away from the shadow before I can help myself.

“I apologize, Keeper. I didn’t mean…I didn’t realize.” Silas is trying desperately to step back into the roll of the Father, away from the emotion fragmenting him, but his clenched jaw and flexed hands betray him. “Can you tell us what happened? What forced you to into the night?” Silas’s voice is deep, a chasm of lost souls in its darkness. There is a death pact being made in this room, with no words having been spoken. But I have no patience for their posturing.

“Your rabid wolf escaped,Sir.” My words are biting, a snarl, and he rocks back on his heels.

“Surely you can’t mean…”

“Nickolas.” I spit his name out from my mouth with blood following. At some point he must have split my lip. My tongue darts out to prod the corner gently, and it stings, tasting of metal.

“Nick —Nickolasdid this?” Rannoch is frantic, running the cloth down my neck, at my clavicle, behind my ears, trying to clean the dirt and grime so he can see the cuts and bruising.

“I warned you. Iwarnedyou—” I yelp, yanking away from Rannoch’s hand, and both men lean over, examining me closely.

“He tore hair from her head.” Rannoch sounds like he is going to be ill. “Ripped it from her scalp. Oh Gods, Wren. Your shift….” He face pales, from ghost to bone, and I think he’s going to pass out for a moment. “Can I…I’ll be gentle…” and he moves his hand towards the rip of cloth barely covering me. It’s too much, though, and, without conscious thought, I fling my body away from him violently, like a frightened horse. He backs up immediately, holding his hands in front of him to show he’s stopped. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He stutters, a quick babbling sound, water on rocks, and he steps toward me slowly, hands still up. “Someone needs to check, though. If you need medical attention…”

I know he’s right, Iknowit, but I’ve gone from a life where I am never seen to one where I am completely exposed, all the time, and it is too much. It is too much. Still, I know he is right, and, hands shaking violently, I pull back the edge of the torn cloth, exposing some of my chest. A hissed curse escapes Silas’s mouth, the promise of death and thunder covering him like a shroud. Looking down, I see five ruby lines clawed into my skin around my breast, dark bruising already purpling my naked flesh. It makes my stomach churn, and I have to swallow back sickness.Later, later. When you are safe. You will never be safe. You willneverbe safe. There is no later. There is only this, forever and ever. There is only this…

My lungs stutter, seize, and suddenly I can’t breathe. Reaching out frantically, I find bone around me, and pull its coldness into me.Quietly now, Keeper. Quietly. We are here. We are here.A gentle chorus of the dead wraps around me, settling my trembling limbs and silencing the tears I did not even realize were falling.Come to us, let us in. We’ll take you for now.They offer to step inside me, softly, but I’m too agitated, andyankas hard as I can, grabbing onto the nearest soul. All at once, most of my conscious mind goes to sleep. In that space, between waking and sleeping, a presence surges forward in me. The voice that speaks is not my own — cold and clinical.

“Her neck as well, Village Father.” Whoever is speaking for me has no love for the Father, that much is clear.

He recognizes the change in my tone, jerking his head up and looking consideringly at my empty face.

“Are you deaf as well as dumb? Her neck.” There is no humor, just a biting cynicism. The woman speaking does not expect one of the Council to help, tenses my body for me as he moves forward.

“Who speaks for you, Keeper?” he asks quietly, concern clear in his voice.

“Who I am is none of your business. You have let your gift be bruised and bloodied when she warned you. Shewarnedyou, and you answered with casual indifference. You want more of her secrets now? You have not earned a single one. I would slit your throat in the night — every one of the Council’s — if I thought it would help her in some way. But I cannot take what she will not give. Even now, sheletsme speak, calls me forth with her blood, which I did not think possible. It is all I can do for our child. It is more than you have done, though. Her neck.”

Silas is silent, moving forward like a dark shadow, and I watch through a pane of glass, from somewhere far away behind my eyes. His hands, as large as the Trader’s, reach up slowly, tracing the star pale column of my throat, and he chokes on his next words. “Rannoch, we…soap. And clean water. Not brackish. Use some of the Traders’ gift.”

Rannoch takes a moment to look at whatever Silas is seeing, then rushes from the room, returning moments later, hands full. Slowly, painstakingly, as I sit like a doll, they wash every exposed inch of me. Occasionally panic flashes through my mind, but the bone memory of the woman who has taken control croons me sweet songs, like a baby, and the panic recedes. Flickers of pain light my vision, but she takes those too, cocooning me away from reality.

“Does it…does it need stitches?” Rannoch’s words are sick with worry.

“I don’t know. I don’tknow!” The helplessness in Silas’s voice is my undoing, and, even far away from my body, tears push through, waterfalls of sorrow cascading down my cheeks, mixing with blood and forming red rivers on my waxen face.

“Did he — Wren, did he touch you anywhere else?” The words are ripped, sharp and jagged, from Silas’s mouth, and Rannoch moans quietly in a sort of panic. I cannot move, so the voice speaks again for me.

“Follow the bruises, Councilmen. Where they stopped, so he stopped.”

With her unspoken permission, they continue cleaning down my torso, both swallowing audibly in a sort of horror as they pull the edge of my pants down, just to hip level, purple and black handprints pressed into my skin like a FleshCarver’s tattoos. The line between the bruising and my untouched skin is drastic, even in the wavering light of the torch.

“Here? As far as here?”

I nod — or she nods for me, I cannot tell, and Silas and Rannoch exchange looks before cleaning my skin, rough hands gentle as a newborn lamb. Then it is Silas’s turn to disappear, returning with a pile of soft, dark clothing that smells of woodfire and pine. Rannoch frowns, but Silas ignores his inquisitive look, carefully removing my ripped top and replacing it with some sort of cloth that is much softer, much stronger.

“A gift from the Traders,” he explains shortly, and I nod again. What do I care if it is a gift from the Gods themselves? “Can you…will you return to us, Keeper?” His voice is tender, the whispered velvet of a lover, and before I even try, my bone guest shakes my head.

“No. She needs to sleep before she comes back and you question her. But there is nowhere here that is safe for her.”

“She will be safe here!” Silas protests, bass voice cavernous. “I swear it.”

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