Brood of Bones (24 page)

“Oh, my!”
Alyla said, accepting a bouquet of the purple hydrangeas from a servant.

“Flowers are a horrible gift,” I said. “They only wilt and die.”

Seeing Deepmand wince made me realize, to my
shame, that
I had erred again.

“But they’re lovely now,” Alyla said. “Thank—”

One moment, the girl was speaking, and in the next, I found myself in my laboratory.

Unsettled in the break of continuity, I checked my latest memory. My mirror showed my eyes fluttering as I slumped, my chin hitting my cane.

I, Elder Enchantress, had fainted. Perhaps no one would notice, I thought
,
if I returned quickly.

The diamonds on the dais below my slippers separated as I Burdened
myself
, the jewels’ sparkling formations stretching downward. With a snap, they returned to their place, and I remained in the laboratory. Consciousness eluded me.

Anxiety pained my insides as if I had swallowed gemstones with sharp edges. I worried that my gowns might be the death of me. Any water I Created in dream would have no bearing on the real world, as I could not add or subtract matter from reality but only change its weight and how it was bound together. An Attraction could save me if I gathered water vapor near my unconscious body into my mouth.

Selectively targeting airborne water with a spell that crossed the dream threshold would tax my abilities. I
Created
a silver ladle in preparation to hold the enchantment, yet in my desperation, I feared heat stroke might damage my brain before I could construct the requisite magic.

My amethyst flashed with people calling my name. I had a sense that my real gowns had become sodden, and I left the silver ladle floating to try fleeing the dream once more.

I awoke as water gushed over my head, and I lifted my drenched headdress to see Maid Janny reach for another bucket.

“Enough!” I said. “Enough!”

“Open your mouth,” she said as she hurled the water at me.

Spluttering, I accepted help to my feet but had to bend over just as fast to vomit. Fortunately, Janny had a bucket in hand.

My gowns automatically Burdened dirt and water, which wicked off them. Soon I had dried enough that the weight of the water no longer immobilized me, and Janny led me into the manor for some shade and rest.

As I settled my arms into the silk harness, I noticed Janny taking the key out of the door. She closed it behind her and locked me inside.

Her shout carried through the keyhole. “You’re not coming out until you promise to drink more.”

“This is preposterous!” I sat up and drummed my palms against the door. “You cannot trap me in here. All the mothers’ lives depend on me. Open this door.
Deepmand!”

With no rescue forthcoming and not about to comply with Janny’s duress, I settled back to sleep. I had procrastinated on something unsavory for far too long and now would attend to it.

Under the jewel stars shining through the laboratory skylight, I rotated my mirror parallel to the floor and gazed down to see a dream memory. A reflection of
myself
labored over the dying Faliti, her belly half-translucent from the enchantment of my blue diamonds. During the procedure, I had manipulated and scanned the interior of the unchild but had sequestered it, rather than spending time analyzing its organs.

I wanted to banish the memory from my dream, yet I forced myself to peer inside it, to count the clusters of venom sacs surrounding the thing’s beating heart. I identified the toxin as similar to that found in the bite of a coral snake, for which I had an antidote shelved and ready: an enchanted powder of emerald would neutralize the venom.

Within the unchild, the brain connected neither to brainstem nor to its internal muscles;
this abomination would
have no self-control. I found this curious yet not unanticipated. The muscles within the unchild had contracted at the moment when magic had invaded my dream from an outside source. A row of canine teeth had protruded on both sides of the oval of bone, digging into the womb for traction, while the halves of its shell had separated enough to revolve. Sharp bone edged the narrow ends, and one side of the ovoid had cut one way into Faliti, the opposing side slashing the other.

The sight gouged my insides with fear, hurting me as if I too carried an unchild.

The bone ovoid had shattered, the forces applied by its muscles and the womb greater than what the undeveloped bones could withstand. I had no doubt that by the end of the third trimester, the stronger bones of the unchild and its more complete mineralization of cartilage would allow it to slash its way out of the abdomen.

The old and the young need not have the strength to give birth; the unchildren would birth
themselves
, ripping out of their mothers and leaving them to die in blood.

My arm sliced through the air as I exiled the unchild from my dream. I felt foul, shriveled, and dead, mummified in my gowns.

The Lord of the Feast had claimed we would become slaves. I began to believe him because any man responsible for the unchildren would have dominance over Morimound; we could not resist his will in anything, or he would maul all our women, from the inside. The Seventh Flood could sweep over the city in seconds.

Whoever he was, this man wished Morimound’s devastation. He hated the city, and I would find him at the ball among the foreigners. I would have to find him. Only, I was no longer certain I could control him.

Night Thirty-Seven, Third Trimester

My life would culminate tonight.

My disease of somnolence had led me to the Mindvault Academy, where I had studied flatworms and salamanders, learning regeneration to finance studies of my unrelenting desire for sleep. Although I had eased others of their relentless weariness, mine had proven unresponsive because I had not been destined to leave the Academy yet. I had surveyed midwives and analyzed pregnant women in preparation for the day I would find a cure.

The Fate Weaver had molded my thread into the pattern needed to save Morimound. She had given me knowledge and magic, and I had to believe they would be enough to free Morimound’s women of the unchildren.

The last guest had arrived at my manor. The sun had set, the doors locked and bolted. I strode among the dignitaries of other realms, my gowns fluctuating in small air currents and appearing to grab at any who strayed too close.

I was flustered with the foreigners crowding my rooms and lounging on my furniture. Anything they scratched, I would have to replace.

The men wore gossamer linen or flowing robes embroidered with dancing monkeys. Plants from Nagra's magical gardens interwove their collars and sleeves, fat flowers sickening me with their weight of perfume.

Their wives were no better, some infested with jewelry childishly modeled after insects. Other women boasted vines that curled around their fingers and held their drinks for them.

I had a boy at my side with an effeminate face, and he wore the dressings of a proper woman, complete with interlocking designs of henna up his arms and legs, bracelets and anklets jangling, gems braided into his hair, and his brows painted yellow and tufted after the elegance of a cockatoo.

I asked the
guests,
“Are the women of Morimound not beautiful?”

My sagging eyelids opened long enough for me to catch the reactions toward my womanly boy. Later, I would analyze their responses in my laboratory for surprise, suspicion, and animosity, as the guilty party would expect every woman to be pregnant. A few other boys sashayed about in blouses and skirts to emulate the wives of Morimound’s higher society.

My eyes shut and refused to open; I wondered how I could stay awake another moment into the night. My gowns prevented me from pinching myself to alertness.

“Elder Enchantress Hiresha.”
Mister Obenji’s voice sounded next my ear. “There is a gentleman outside. He claims to have arrived late.”

I forced open one eyelid. “You told me all the guests were present.”

“I did. And you previously admonished me to refuse this individual’s entry to the estate.”

“If he was not invited then he has no business here. Direct
him
to wait out the night in the gardener’s shed.”

“He protests an
oversight, that
you must have meant to invite him. An ambassador
Tethiel,
and his daughter.”

The name connected in my mind with a jolt, and my heart lurched into an escalation of beats. I bowed my head, my headdress hiding what must have been a horrified expression. I followed Mister Obenji’s feet into the hall, Deepmand behind us.

“Mister Obenji,” Deepmand said once we had reached the gold-leaf stairs above the door, “if I could have a word alone with the elder enchantress.”

The aged servant left, while Maid Janny stayed and was duly ignored.

“Elder Enchantress,” Deepmand said softly, “you must not allow
him
into your manor.”

“I would be better to refuse and anger him?”

“You and your guests could be harmed.”

My thoughts were quickening, and I felt almost awake. “He could frighten them from outside just as readily. His illusions penetrate walls.”

“Appeasement encourages more demands.”

“The women of Morimound cannot afford more enemies.”

He held his voice respectfully quiet. “When will you refuse him, Elder Enchantress?
If not now?”

My answer terrified me too much to be spoken aloud: When the unchildren are gone and my city is safe. I wondered if I would truly accept any demand to achieve those results.

I started down the stairs, yet Maid Janny backed away. “Not going down, no thanks, not if he’s there. I’ll be in the kitchen, comforting the wine barrels.”

With her gone, I had to slide open the door’s viewing window myself, and the exterior of its silver bars reflected crimson from the glare of an ostentatious coat. The Lord of the Feast waited on my doorstep, and he must have recognized my eyes.

“Enchantress Hiresha, allow me to present the debutante Physis, my daughter. May we come in?”

A woman sparkling with spinel jewels had her arm locked around his, her low-cut, jeweled gown shamelessly derivative of enchantress fashion. Her features reminded me of the Feaster woman who had sat in the High and Dry Inn’s parlor couch, as if the two were sisters—one stricken by a lifetime of poverty and hunger, the other boasting the curvaceous health and confident gaze of a woman in her prime.

“I cannot invite into my home people of your sort.”

“You have nothing new to fear,” he said. “Physis has already played the mouse inside the Mindvault Academy.”

With two fingers, she pulled down the corners of her full, crimson lips for an exaggerated frown; her teeth were painfully white and appeared subtly too sharp. “You wear such an unhappy face, Elder, in your sleep.”

I happened to know I did frown in my sleep, in concentration. My insides twisted at the thought of a Feaster leering over me in bed. I recognized that elements of her face were similar to the novice Kally, who had gone missing from the Academy and was assumed a runaway. She could have
crept
the halls at night and spied on me for years, concealed as long as she had controlled her urge to Feast.

Nonetheless, I said, “You have no place at this ball.”

He said, “We could always find another way to amuse ourselves in this city, at night.”

I imagined him slipping illusions of snakes down chimneys, maybe even tricking people to think their homes were shaking and collapsing down onto them. I glanced past the gilded stairs, toward the ballroom. “Would you promise to harm no one? And none of the furnishings.”

“My word is worth the lives of many men,” he said, “and I swear we’ll harm no one.
Unless we must.”

Closing the peephole, I leaned my brow against the door. Deepmand made no move to unlock it, and I had to shove the bar open myself.

“You may enter,” I said.

The lady Feaster lifted a corner of her skirt with two fingers and walked inside with a deftness she had lacked during the day. I accompanied her and the Lord of the Feast to the ballroom, gnawing my lip as I remembered stories of Feasters causing mayhem at nightly gatherings. It was a small consolation to know that “Physis” had never harmed me in the Academy.