Brood of Bones (13 page)

“Her current state does not negatively reflect on her fate’s thread. That thread may be short, however, if Faliti continues to poison her.”

“Poison?
You mean her complaining?”

“With wormwood, to purge the pregnancy.
You must intervene.”

“It’s not really poisoning then, is it? Alyla won’t have much of a life, if she has a child now.”

“She will not have any life,” I said, “if she dies.”

“Faliti wouldn’t harm her. Alyla’s been sick, but isn’t that expected? Who’d know what’s best for her, if not her mother?”

“I would. You must stop Faliti from giving her another dose of wormwood.”

He threw up his hands.
“Fine.
I’ll mention it to Faliti, if you think I should, Resha.”

A distaste
pervaded my mouth as if I had eaten bread that I only now realized was spotted green.
Something more than Harend’s appearance conflicted with my expectations.

I said, “You cannot call me that anymore, Mister Chandur.”

“I suppose not.
The Flawless of Morimound, then?”

“Nor that.”

“You sign your letters ‘Elder Enchantress Hiresha,’ but your friends couldn’t call you that.”

“Everyone calls me that.” Hearing him say my title made me feel as lifeless and dusty as book stacks in the Academy library.

He glanced to Janny, who had her head down, and to Deepmand, who scrutinized anyone who walked close. When Harend Chandur’s gaze fell on my cane, I became self-conscious.

“This may sound odd,” he said, “but I once thought we’d have more between us. I can see now the Fate Weaver had greater plans for you.”

“I am uncertain what you mean. There could be no greater aspiration than to raise a family in this city.”

“But look at you.” His eyes followed the train of gowns, which wound around the trunk of the banyan. “You’re a city patron. You built the Flood Wall.”

His words faded, slipping farther and farther away as I labored to keep my head upright and my eyes open. “You will wish to return home, Mister Chandur, for your daughter’s sake.”

“You’re right, and, um, Elder Enchantress Hiresha, it was amazing to meet you again.”

Before I realized what he was doing, he clasped my hand. My fingers wriggled, and I tried to scan the street, to see if anyone witnessed the improper gesture.

He plodded off, and I let go of myself, slumping on my cane. My eyes blinked shut; the world darkened, and everything in me felt as if it weighed twice what it should.

Janny guided me back to the carriage, and I plunged into sleep. A shock awaited me, in reviewing my meeting with Harend Chandur. I had waited years to speak with him, only to find a man indecisive and scarcely capable of mustering the resolve to save a girl’s life, even if she was not his true daughter.
At the mention of her, his face had shifted from embarrassment to sorrow.

His thread of fate was a flimsy one. I did not know what I had ever seen in him.

A tearing feeling crossed through me as if a tether connecting me to the world had severed, and I could not help but think that I floated in the laboratory because nothing filled my body: I was a hollow woman.

Not feeling ready to face the real world yet, I decided to correct an imperfection in my dream.

I threw myself upward, toward the dome roof, and airborne jewels swirled in the wake of my gowns. Although this circular room had no doors, a skylight at the top of the curved ceiling opened to the night sky, and my jump carried me through it. Stars above glittered green, pink, and purple; they were jewels I had thrown to the sky in moments of frustration.

Among them loomed the moon, full, dim, and red; some would call it a blood moon, yet I preferred to think of its lighter edge as the hue of amber and its darker face as the shade of spessartine gems. I had Created the moon in replica of a lunar eclipse I had once witnessed at sunrise, which had required the heroic effort of waking predawn.

I Burdened myself, landing on the laboratory dome then Lightening my body and leaping off again. The roof fell away behind me, along with an island of rock on which the laboratory drifted in the sky, leaving nothing below but a drop of three thousand, two hundred and fifty-one feet to the ground.

I glided in my gowns.

The rush of the chill air caressed me as I spread my arms to encourage my sleeves to billow outward. Silver streaks of rivers raced closer, below on the savanna. Leaning to the left, I circled through the air down toward a dark hill on the flatland, its rough surface growing distinct as the homes of my replica of Morimound became more visible.

The White Ziggurat I had Created glistened blue from the light of my earrings as I swept over the step pyramid, down to the street of Diamond Way. The buildings and empty merchant stalls in the Bazaar reformed to represent the changes I had seen.

My slippers landed on the street. I Lightened myself to nothing and sprang off the bricks, sailing into the air. Whisking over Rainsweep Street, I decided to leave the door to the Mitul house forever broken, in memory of the confrontation with the Feaster. Although no children peered out from this doorway, glowing jewels inside leaked light of blue and red out onto the dark street. I did not permit myself the indulgence of replicating other people, and the city was empty, except for my jewels and myself.

I vaulted back toward the ziggurats, past the High Wall and into the upper section of the city, the Island District. My estate encompassed a grove of strangler fig trees, their trunks weaving around host trees to crawl their way to the sunlight. The roof of my house steepled in pyramids, one on each of its wings, and I touched the eastern marble pyramid with my hand and pushed off to coast to the front doors.

Quartz windows rippled with the light from my earrings, and I ghosted inside and up a curving stairway, into a dining hall set with porcelain that had never been used, by chairs in which none had ever sat, below chandeliers that had never been lit.

An ache built within me as I passed from dark room to silent hall. Dim moonlight fell on a painting, a portrait of a young man as seen through all the blurry hope of an adolescent girl; Harend Chandur gazed down at me from the shadows of his picture frame. Shaking my head, I waved a hand, and the paints faded and transformed into the wood of a jewel display case. A rainbow of corundum stones whisked past my shoulders to arrange themselves in place of the man I had never had the right to call mine.

I felt I had to scream, or I would die. I asked myself where the harm would be in wailing here in my dream, where none would ever hear me, except myself.

Outside, my laboratory had descended closer to the city. The mound of rock obscured a patch of stars. I calculated my trajectory then hurled myself toward the floating island in one swooping arc; the ground and city plummeted away from me, and my insides felt squeezed down into my thighs. Dropping as planned through the laboratory skylight, I kicked off the wall to the diamond dais and returned to the waking world.

Aches in my legs and back caused me to groan, as they often did; I wore an enchanted opal, which flexed opposing muscle groups throughout my body, causing me to exercise in my sleep.

“We have arrived at your manor, Elder Enchantress.” Deepmand appeared relieved that I had woken before full darkness.

Outside my carriage, the open front doors of my manor glowed with candlelight, windows blazing in the colors of sunset. The sight pierced me like a shard of diamond in the eye: My home looked so welcoming, so full of warmth, that for a moment I assumed someone else’s family must live there.

Night Four, Third Trimester

The manor servants insisted on giving me a tour. I knew I should not compare the home they had labored over for years to the one I had
Created
in my dream, yet the similarities disoriented me while the discrepancies upset me.

“We now approach the guest rooms,” Mister Obenji said, tapping his glinting fingers together. He wore at least ten rings. “Here you will find Lady Sri convalescing.”

“No Bright Palms have deigned to heal her yet, have they?”

“One has promised to come tomorrow, at noon.”

I was determined to be present at that time to ensure the Bright Palm did not refuse to heal her because of some technicality.

My earrings lit the sickroom with a bluish-white glow. Sri the Once Flawless lay in bed, belly up; her yellow skin had whitened to
a pallor
, and her pupils had constricted from the milk of the poppy. Her gaze strayed to Mister Obenji, whom she blinked at with both eyes in a peculiar manner. He touched her hand and asked if she needed broth, another pillow, or more milk. She shook her head, brushing a lock of sweat-plastered white hair off her brow.

Mister Obenji left the room to confer with Deepmand. I gestured Maid Janny to lift the coverings, and I observed that Sri’s hip was well splinted. A mass of bloating purple skin still protruded from her side, rivaling her pregnancy in size.

Sri touched her lips with thick-jointed fingers. “Hiresha, what do you think of Mister Obenji? Is he not dashing?”

“He seems competent.”

“Yes, but is he potent?” Sri cackled.

“While under the poppy’s influence, you should endeavor to speak as little as you can.
To maintain your dignity.”

“I’ve had enough dignity for four lifetimes,” she said. “I winked at him. Do you think he noticed?”

“You did not wink.”

“I did so.
Five times.”

“Those were most decidedly blinks.”

“It takes practice,” Janny said and displayed a most inappropriate lowering of the eyelid. “I’ll help you learn.”

“You will do nothing of the kind, Maid Janny. Lady Sri, once you are healed, I must insist you walk with a cane. In fact, I will require all mothers over sixty to do so.” I grew conscious of my own cane, which would place me in the same class as grandmothers. “Make that two canes each, one for each hand, to prevent falls.”

“I didn’t fall,” Sri said.

“Of course you did.”

“Only after my leg broke.
It cracked while I was walking, then I fell.”

“Your pregnancy clearly has diverted too much blood from your brain. You fell first.” I had never heard of someone breaking her leg while walking. I wondered if it was possible that the unchild had so leached Sri’s bones of mineral to strengthen its own twisted skeleton that she could no longer withstand her own weight.

Leaving the sickroom, I heard Deepmand speaking to Mister Obenji. “...she does appreciate the work you’ve done. Only, she prefers everything just as envisioned, and
understand
the stress she’s under.”

“I see.” Mister Obenji pivoted to face me. “Ah, Lustrous Elder Enchantress, you will doubtless wish to retire now in the east wing.”

“I would rather not.” In the east wing waited the rooms of my never-family.

“Was there another room you wished to see first?”

“No.”

“I would recommend the gardens,
were
it not night.”

As if under a spell of compulsion, I followed Mister Obenji’s turban into the east wing. My bluish light pushed the darkness back, revealing a door set with a misty green stone, the room of Chrysoprase, my daughter, who would be my greatest happiness in life. I wondered if an opportunity would ever come for me to bring her into
existence,
or if she would remain worse than dead: an unborn.

I had already picked names for my progeny, as well as planned them the happy childhoods and lives that I had never had. Now, walking past their empty rooms, I felt my hopes for them being ripped away.

Using my cane to drag myself forward, I shuddered as I passed a door with a magenta gem, the room that would have to belong to my firstborn son, Beryl. Next, a stone the hue of fire glinted from the wooden portal to Carnelian’s room; her beauty would have brought her fame. Last came a stone of grey ripples, where Agate would have grown up,
his
depth of intelligence lofting him to rule.