Page 96 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

And the people…the people kneel.

Rannoch is desperately trying to hide his panic; Silas, beside him, is whispering fervently in his ear, eyes darting between Raek, the Council, the villagers, and me. Control has been torn from his handsin a single moment, and even those he trusted, other than Rannoch, are nowhere to be found.

Lorcan is abnormally silent on my back; he trembles on my skin as though he is trying to speak, but is unable to. He is almost vibrating with strangled effort, and sickness rises in my throat.

“Bring the first Sacrifice!” Raek calls, and from the crowd, Grace isdraggedby two Protectors. This is nothing like we have ever seen; Offerings are not treated like criminals, gripped tightly in inflexible, bruising hands. They are not thrown before the Council as though they have committed some crime and are now facing punishment. They are walked with care and gratitude, given honied breads and sweet mead, made comfortable and given the blessing of their people. They are honored, and thanked, and sent to the Gods with love and heart-deep appreciation. None of that is here, none exists in the furious lines of Raek’s face, the desperate hunger of the rocking crowd, the set acceptance of the approaching Render and Reaper, each ready to do their job.

“To the Reaping, for the Gods!” he screams, and the kneeling crowd echoes him.

“To the Reaping, to the Reaping!”

Grace is panicked on the stage, eyes wide and wild, looking around her in confusion and terror. Silas steps forward again, no hesitancy this time, towering over her. His presence is just enough to push Raek back a step, to settle the crowd enough to make himself heard. He is our mountain in human form, massive and threatening, carved stone, glinting obsidian, and grim determination is written in every line of his body. Reaching down, he extends a steadying hand to Grace, who takes it in her own trembling one and lets him pull her gently to her feet.

“Who are we becoming?” he asks, low, troubled voice a startling counterpoint to Raek’s higher, screaming one, the juxtaposition enough to drain some of the hysteria from the undulating crowd. “Who are we becoming?” There is so much sadness in his voice it is cavernous. “With calls forSacrifice?” The word is bitter on his tongue, and flavors the ears of those listening. It is true; we don’t speak ofSacrifice, only Offerings, and the difference is night from day. Slow realization breaks on the faces of those closest to the stage. “When have we ever treated the gift of someone’s life with such disdain, with such callous hands, with such cold hearts?” Looking down at Grace, he studies her, giving the people a moment to take in her tear-stained face, her straining chest, shuddering from hitching breath. “Youknowthis woman. She is a seamstress in the Second Ring, not aSacrifice. She has made clothes for the births of your children, dresses for your weddings, blankets for your hearths, taught at sewing circles. Does she not deserve your appreciation? The comfort of your gratitude, the weight of your arms around her as she fulfills, for each of us in our stead, the price we must pay?”

Shame is thick in the air; Raek’s jaw is jutted forward, brow dark, but he has no room to speak as Silas continues. “We are not a soft people,” he acknowledges. His eyes dart my way before looking back out into the square. “We do not live in a world which often allows space for tender things, which is filled with nothing but warm days and star filled nights. But neither are we heartless — at least, I would not have thought so. We donottreat our Offerings like…likethis!” Somehow his deep voice, already cave dark, drops lower, as though the mountain itself is speaking. “I cannot go against the full will of the Council,” he says, more to Grace than anyone else, “but neither will I let us continue down this path of madness. If an Offering is called, then it is called, but we will pay as we always have. With gratefulness, and love. With hope, and with honor. With gentle hands and a Guided soul. But we willnotSacrifice as though her life isn’t a gift to protect us from what has been, and what is still to come. And there is no place in this village foranyone who would ask for such a thing, or demand it.”

The words are pointed, a sword’s tip, aimed at Raek, who takes the hit with mouth twisted in an ugly grimace. “Of course,Father,” he spits, before forcing his face into a mockery of respectful supplication. He drops his voice, so only those closest to the stage can hear. “And, as you agree to the need for the…Offerings…perhaps you would call the other nine now, as a show of solidarity in these most trying times.”

Silas is silent, and Raek, without looking away from him, shouts out to the waiting crowd, using the Father’s words against him in near-parody. “With love, and respect, with hope, and honor, and gentle hands, the Council calls the rest of our Offering to the stage, for Reaping and Rendering.”

Slowly, slowly the crowd parts, letting those named stutter-step forward. There is no last minute respite written on the page this time, no call for Crown or Blade that will stop what is to come. Too many are too afraid, too many are too hungry, and there is a bone deep belief in every villager here that for any peace to occur in our lives, Offerings must be made.

“BoneKeeper?” Raek calls, pointing to a spot just to the side of him but still on the ground, still shadowed by the stone portico, turning to me with blazing eyes when I don’t move. “BoneKeeper?” He says again, this time the command is clear.

“Do we Rend and Reap now on the Council stage, Raek?” I ask, unable to fully strip emotion from my words, and he smirks when he hears the tremor in my voice. He is so lost to his triumph that he misses the way the people nearest us look at each other. “Is it a play or a pantomime? A theatre performance instead of a sacred tradition?”

“You know it is not, Keeper,” he replies tightly, fingers twitching at his side as though he’s forcing himself to not wrap them around my throat.

“Then we move to the Reaping Pit or the Rending Fire, though the Earth is silent and the Fire is banked.” I raise my voice to carry on the cold wind; my words are true, and strike home with any who can hear me. With the death of Nickolas, the pillar fire miraculously died out as well, and no bones are screaming with unrelenting pressure in my ears for Offering. But the Council is too far down the path they’ve chosen, and will feed the Earth and fire whether or not the Gods demand it.

Raek narrows his eyes, considering. “No, Keeper,” he whispers, a strange smile twisting his lips, “we will Offer our first here, where the full weight of our people will grant her comfort in her final moments. You can Guide her as easily here as anywhere else, and then we willmove her to the Reaping Pit. In fact,” he says, turning to face the crowd, “we will Reap and Rend all here, where the hearts of those watching can strengthen the hearts of those Offered, where we move forward with these Offerings as one people, with one purpose, one determination.”

He is turning it into a spectacle, the quiet solemnity of the Rending and Reaping being polished and decorated as some sort of celebration, rather than a somber reminder of what has passed, what is present, and what is still to come. When we Rend, when we Reap, it is with the Offering being surrounded by family and friends, and though the Rending Fire is never fully comforting, it is not stoked to blazing until after I have put the soul to sleep in my Guiding blade. Though the Reaping Pit is never calming, it is surrounded by what few flowers we have in our village, by whispering trees, and low stone benches for last moments with loved ones. No Offering is ever forced to their knees in front of a breathless crowd of thousands, throat exposed, waiting for the Reaper’s sharp dagger. No Offering watches the Render approach with his thin, curved blade, knowing it is moments from their heart. They face the rising or setting sun, look to the mountains above them, and when their breathing is slow and their heart at peace, they are taken from this life into their bone life. And though there is fear — who would not fear the unknown — there is never terror.

But Grace is forced to kneel again on the stage, Raek’s hand in her hair twisting her neck painfully; the waiting crowd is motionless and uncertain. Her breath is loud in the square, sharp, frantic pants of sound, neck corded and bent back at a terrible angle. Her panic extends to the Offerings waiting in front of the stage, and even the infants raise tiny, meager cries as their parents' hands flex too tightly against their smooth skin in useless desperation. All else is midnight quiet.

So the sudden, wet sound of Raek’s knife across Grace’s throat is an avalanche of noise, a stomach churning liquid squelch. Her still seeing eyes flare wide in discordant surprise, and she raises a single, trembling hand to her dripping throat in clear disbelief. This iswrong, all wrong. Raek is not a Reaper, does not have the skill or practice to send an Offering to the bone life in a single, swift movement. He has made the cut too shallow and too deep all at once; she won’t recover, but neither is it the quick, merciful death we are granted as Offerings. Her chest strains in struggling beats of motion, a high pitched whistling, drenched and dreadful, bubbling from her gaping mouth, her fingers flexing against torn skin, coming away hearth-red.

No one has moved; we are nothing but echoes of motion. Our inhales and exhales mirror hers, surface, shuddering breaths, an entire people suffocating from the slice of a single blade. The shock of what is happening is too much to force feet forward. Even Silas is stone-still, hand extended toward Raek as though he saw the flash of the blade before it crossed her throat and tried desperately to stop it, but was unable to.

We all stay frozen for a minute, an hour, a year, watching the life drain from her in staggering steps, Raek standing over her, hand still wrapped in her hair.

“For the Render,” he whispers, staring down at her through cold, dark eyes, and behind him, the waiting Councilmen echo his words.

“For the Render. For the Render.”

“For the Render,” Raek says again, but this time I am awake, and aware, and even in my stupor, even though he tries to slur the words together in a hushed, sliding sound, I hear him differently.For the Render? For the Ender? For the Render? For the Ender?

Above me, Raek abruptly releases Grace’s hair as a thin trickle of crimson drips back from the corner of her open mouth to her ear, then onto his clenched, white knuckles. He shakes his hand away in sudden disgust, flinging tiny droplets of blood from his skin, lips twisting in distaste, before turning from her as though she was a rodent he had dispatched, and nothing more. She stays upright for another agonizing moment, head lolling like a broken doll, and then, finally,finallythe light drains from her eyes, and my lungs collapse in relief as the square echoes with cold thump of her body slumping to the floor.

Yanking my bone blade from my belt, I wait, rocking forward on my toes, anxious to pull her to me, to give her peace, to grant her safety, to Guide her home.

Her chest is motionless, her lungs are silent.

Her veins are still, her heart is quiet.

Her skin has smoothed, her muscles softened.

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