Page 85 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

And there, the axe has fallen.

I have kept the armies at the gates for years, since I offered my first personal sacrifice to the Gods when the Bones called for a child, and they accepted. Deep, patterned lace carved into my flesh, a map for the Gods from the sky above and ground below, a book I have written on pages only they can read.

Once, years ago, when a newly born infant was called by the Bones, so young her eyes hadn’t settled into their color yet, I swallowed her name and locked it in my throat. For days I was ripped apart in unending pain, the Gods pulling at the veins in my body, twisting my muscles, breaking and reforming my bones, but I refused to speak. I knew just a whisper would end the agony, but there are things worse in life than physical anguish. And so I endured a grim, unceasing crucible, where moments melted together like fat in thefire. The infant was called just after I Guided Tahrik’s sister, and the scars of Cara’s passage were still red and violent on my heart. To have another child, a baby, called only a month later — the pain gave me stupid courage, the echo of her Offering a gift disguised as a curse maybe.

The bones of the village pressed in on me for days, blocking out all other sound, coming close to rupturing my ear drums with deafening pressure. Once they have called for an Offering, there is no peace until it’s answered, no quiet until blood. I waited long enough that the Earth began to churn, that the pillar’s fire was hot enough it dripped embers like rain to the ground beneath it. And still I would not bend. The bones began shrieking her name, day and night, ripping sleep from me like flesh flayed from muscle. It was incessant. Finally, sick from exhaustion, sicker still from what was being demanded of me, I decided to throw myself into the Offering pit, taking the Guiding Knife with me, and placed it at my heart.

My courage was a broken bird in a storm the moment the Knife cut my flesh, and I had to take a breath before trying again. But in the inbetween, several drops of my blood fell to the ground. The instant they hit the Earth and were swallowed up, the bones suddenly, and mercifully, fell silent. As I readied the Knife a second time, they started whispering, confusion clear in their voices.It…it is accepted, Keeper. Your blood is accepted in her place. More, more, but your Offering is accepted.

And so I carved my first line into my thigh, too deep, too straight, not caring yet that I was writing a story on my flesh that would remain forever. I didn’t know. I just wanted the screaming to stop, the baby safe, the Offering satisfied. I thought, foolishly, that that would be it, that another child would never be named, that I had broken a curse.

I had not.

For years,yearsnow, every time a child is named, I have added to my filigree in delicate pattern, the first line being the only straight, angry scar. Everything since has been a curling leaf, a flower petal, a teardrop, a spiderweb. Beauty from desperation, and, in a way, theseOfferings were the biggest blessings of my life, since it was through one of them I discovered, purely by accident, what anointing bones in my blood does. I will never forget the moment Lorcan’s necklace trailed over me during an Offering and he roared to life along my skin in vibrant, curling flame, like fingers tracing my spine.

But I cannot save a child from being called when they have not been named by the Gods.

Drawing in a breath so deep as to empty the world of oxygen, I straighten, eyes cold, spine diamond. I open my mouth to refuse, of course to refuse, when a shout from bone distracts me — so loud that I whip my head around, the fingers and teeth adorning me clacking loudly. Behind me, above me, surrounding me from the farthest walls of the city, the bones speak as one.Keeper! Keeper!they cry, a keening wailing filling the air so loudly I want to cover my ears, but I cannot move. I am frozen, a waking corpse, because their sorrow is my sorrow.Keeper. You must. The Council must be seen for what they are. This is the only way. The Gods were testing, and the Council has failed. If they go through with this, they have failed, they have failed, they have failed.

I….cannot. I canNOT!I call back. Ten people.Ten.And children!

I is for Infant….they sob, and I shake my head, lifting a trembling hand to my eyes, wet with tears.

Yes, yes,I is for Infant, but never have I…the rhyme is still taught in school, a warning, a guide, but never since I took the Crown…I cannot…

The bones fall silent, all at once, the cacophony ceasing so suddenly it leaves a hollow, ringing noise in my ears. Nickolas and Raek are both speaking, but I can’t hear them behind the cavern of wind in my skull. I am shaking, a tree in the Storms, trembling so violently my bone armor vibrates with me, chattering and rattling. I know myself, I know the very heart of me, and I can’t see how I will be able to stand on the dais to oversee this atrocity, no matter what the bones say. But if I don’t…to leave innocent souls unguided…what do Ido? Icy fingers of panic dig into my heart, my lungs, my stomach, tearing at the tissue.What do I do?

Swallowing back a churning sickness, I turn and face the Council,who have fallen strangely quiet. I wonder how long I have been with the bones…seconds? Minutes? Enough time to make them uneasy, to blunt the sharp edge of victory in their eyes. Only Nickolas looks untouched.

“Did you hear us, BoneKeeper?” he asks, venom in each word, and I nod carefully, as though my head would fall off if the movement were too sudden.

“I heard, Councilman. And more.” Turning to look at each one in turn, unseeing eyes focused with eerie accuracy on the Councilmen, I force my chest to expand, contract, expand.Think, Wren. Think! There must besomething!“I heard. If you choose this, if you walk this path…”

“There is noif, Keeper. Thereisno if.” Raek is bland, emotionless, and his calm conviction is a dagger to my heart. There is no if. The Council has abandoned the ways of our people, our history, the will of the Gods, the caution of the Bones. The tenuous balance that existed from the days of the first Keeper is gone; swallowing hard, I realize they’ve left me no choice. I won’t leave souls unguided, won’t condemn innocent people to Silence if I can house them in bone. If I can’t stop this, I will have to bend to their decisions. If they are so far gone that they’ll ignore the Bones, there is no threat I can make that would counteract this atrocity.

Even knowing that, I have to try. Inhaling deeply, I force myself to straighten, to make my words an unwavering promise. “As BoneKeeper, I am bound by the Council’s decisions as much as those of the Bones. I understand my position, and my duty. Better than most of you know your own, evidently.” Taking my knife from my pocket, I slice my palm, deeply enough that the gelatinous glistening of fat is visible even in the dimness of the pressing night, and hold my hand out in front of them, ruby red teardrops falling to the ground, forming a puddle at my feet. “And I swear to you, by blood, by flesh, by bone, that if you commit this heresy, I will never Guide your souls home; I will cast you to Exile for eternity.”

The stillness in the square is deafening, the only sound the plink-plink-plink of my blood hitting stone. Not a single man moves, untilfinally, “Nickolas…” One of the weak carrion birds behind him whispers pleadingly, and Nickolas turns a crazed glare at me.

“You will do as you're told,” he bites out, “and when it is time, you will Guide us home, or you will suffer.”

It is an empty threat, and he knows it. He has overplayed his hand.

“You may command me in life, but you will not in death,” I reply, voice flat and empty. “If you kill me, you will go to Silence, as no one will be left to Guide you. If you let me live, I will make sure your bones are hollowed and your marrow burned, even if it costs me my gift.” Bending over, I dip my thumb into the pool of blood before me, then straighten, and, closing my eyes, press my thumbprint onto either, already stained lid. “So I swear it as BoneKeeper.” Looking at the Father, at Rannoch, at the rest of the men who let this happen, I shake my head. “This world will be all you get, and then I will Exile you to Silent bones, and your eternity will be naught but suffering. And when you pass, I will empty the bones of your ancestors as well, every one I can find. They and their stories will be lost to history forever. As will your names when you are gone. You have assured it. If we are breaking tradition, we are breaking tradition.”

There are shouts of protest, of anger. Such a thing has never been done before; being Guided to bone has been a right of the people since the birth of the first Keeper. But these are dark days, and darker nights; if the world is changing, then I must change as well, or my hands will be stained forever to match my eyelids, red with blood of those I could not save.

“You willneverknow peace again, in this lifetime or the next,” I whisper fervently. “Never. Call me when it is my time.”

Whirling, my armor calling out in its rattling song, I leave the churning vitriol of the men behind me, roiling waves of fear and venom washing out from their conclave. But I have little hope; even in the moment I know it won’t be enough. They will convince themselves that, eventually, I will bend to them, or break for them. That it’s an empty threat from a faded ghost of a girl.

There is no if.

Blood has been called for, and will pour from innocent throats likerains from the storm skies if I can’t find a way to untangle this web, to alter this course.

There is no if.

PleaseI beg the bones around me, dragging my fingers in claws along the skeleton walls, bloodying their ivory surface.Please. Help me. Please.

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