Brood of Bones (30 page)

The red diamond now glowed, as did the other objects on the shelves and the jewels floating about the laboratory. Unlike them, the red diamond was real and would carry its enchantment to the waking world, although there it would not glimmer.

I judged the enchantment would dismantle the final vestiges of my unchild in fifty hours. Relieved, I noticed that I no longer felt I was being watched. Whether or not the Soultrapper had understood what I had done, he would likely sense the loss of one of his unchildren. He must realize he had erred in infecting me, as not only had I developed an enchantment to annul a Bone Orb, but I also knew that the Soultrapper had touched me.

Now, he could not escape.

Only ten people had touched me in Morimound, and the Soultrapper was one of them. Tethiel had said a woman Soultrapper had never been found, and I ruled out the four women who had presumed themselves on my person.

Six men remained: Deepmand, Priest Salkant, Priest Abwar, Harend Chandur, Mister Obenji, and Tethiel. The Lord of the Feast had gripped my arm last night, yet the unchild had been developing inside me for approximately a month. I studied the expressions of the others as they viewed the pregnant women.

The glee evident in Abwar of the Ever Always most concerned me. I did not enjoy the prospect that a respected priest could be responsible for the mass pregnancies.

Fondling, slapping, pinching, Priest Abwar touched most everyone around him as he waddled about in his green and white robes. When he spoke of the Ever Always causing the pregnancies, his enormous tongue heaved from one side to the other of his smiling mouth, and speaking of sacrificing to honor his goddess lifted his whole face in a grin like an enchantress receiving a shipment of jewels and gold.

The sacrifices he had performed had bloodied the ziggurat steps, and I remembered Tethiel saying a Soultrapper would have no fear of blood. He did dread something, however, as his face pinched together in terror for fractions of a second. He was neither pregnant nor in danger of dying in a flood, since he lived up high on the Island District, and I wondered if his fear was that he would be discovered a Soultrapper.

I could be mistaken. Priest Abwar’s terror might derive from something else—perhaps his god—and he tended to show the most delight at mention of the sacrifices, again implying a penchant for blood but not necessarily for Soultrapping. I had to be certain, before requesting Tethiel to strike.

Day Forty, Third Trimester

Awakening to morning beaming through windows, I left my room to find Deepmand. “Prepare the carriage. We will pay a visit to the Priest of the Ever Always.”

An aftertaste of nausea made breakfasting difficult, yet after the half-portions I felt revitalized. I would soon determine if Abwar of the Ever Always was the Soultrapper, and, pending confirmation, I would bid Tethiel to cut the priest’s thread from the fabric of life. All the grief and worry caused by the mass pregnancies would be recompensed.

“Elder Enchantress Hiresha,” Mister Obenji said, “Lady Sri wished you to speak with her.”

Determined to leave as soon as I had dealt with the Once Flawless, I entered the sickroom to find Sri on her side, her gasps short and shallow. “So little breath fits inside me nowadays,” she said. “I think I’m being crushed from the inside.”

“All mothers feel such, and your age worsens it.”

“Sometimes I forget how old I am.” Her thick-jointed fingers ran over the sheet covering her mound of a belly, and I tried not to think of the Bone Orb. “It was foolish, yet I had hoped to be a mother.”

“I predict you would have made a good one.” She would have done better than I, certainly.

“Now I understand I’m to be a mother of death. I’m afraid, Hiresha. Afraid I’m the cause, that the Ever Always blighted us because of me.”

“This is not the work of a god.”

Sri clawed at her hair, distraught. “I disgraced us!
Shamed the God’s Eye Court with my thoughts of nudes!”

“Thoughts of what?”

“I was fated to be weak. All through the court proceedings, I imagined the handsome petitioners undressing themselves. Sometimes I stayed up nights thinking about them dancing, their bronze skin oiled and gleaming, and when they touched—”

“How thoroughly indecorous!”

“Only I should have been punished. Alyla and the rest shouldn’t have to die.”

“I will not permit that to happen.” I took her hand, as I had seen the servant do to reassure Alyla. Sri’s arm felt far too light. “I will undo the mass pregnancies.”

“But how can you? They’re the work of a god.”

“They are not,” I said. “And neither are they the result of your scandalous thoughts.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Your belief is not required, for it to be true.”

“Then,” Sri asked, “
you
can cure me?”

“Once I find the source of the pregnancies, I will cure them all at once.”

The Bone Orbs all connected to the Soultrapper, or to an object of magic focus he possessed, and if I could bring this keystone into my dream then I could commandeer his magic to channel the red diamond’s enchantment into each woman.

She closed her eyes, holding her distended belly. “I’m not sure I understand. Instead, I will trust you. I am glad I wrote you to come to Morimound.”

Her confidence only worsened my nervousness. I could disappoint so many.

Leaving my manor, I learned from an acolyte that Abwar of the Ever Always still oversaw the destruction of the Flood Wall. On the way to him downhill, we stopped at the Bazaar, as I needed a chain to safely wear and hide the red diamond. The merchant stalls bustled, although few spoke; this was the Flood Moon, a time for whispers, which gave the market a ghostly feel. A staggering brightness burned down in-between the clouds looming on every horizon.

I found a chain of gold that held an opal of similar size to the red diamond, and Maid Janny paid for it. The merchant weighed the coin in his hand and grinned, leaning toward me to whisper.

“I like to think you’ll enchant that, Lady Flawless. It’s the best gold of the Skiarri Mountains.”

“Do not call me the Flawless.” At any other time, I would not exchange whispers with a man, yet Flood Moon tradition demanded it. “You trade with the Skiarri Mountains? Did they have a warm spring?”

“A real melter.”
Half his face and neck tightened with concern. “I worry we’ll be missing your Flood Wall all too soon.”

I feared the same. If higher than average temperatures in the mountains liquefied too much snow then the rivers would overflow.

On the way back to the carriage, I heard a muffled chiming behind me, and I needed two seconds to interpret the noise as an enchantment triggering in my golden hump. That sound meant something had been accelerating downward, toward my head.

Deepmand clanked around to look above me, where a brick slid forward and back in the air like a falling leaf. The enchantment had
Lightened
the brick and saved my life. Maid Janny puffed out her cheeks and blew the brick away.

The Spellsword
Lightened
himself and leaped upward, turning as he did to scan the surrounding buildings. He must not have seen anything of note because once he touched down he jumped a second time to survey.

The sight of a man in gilded plate armor hopping about had stilled the Bazaar. Everyone watched Deepmand and me, some with suspicion, which I felt was unfair, given that a brick could have recently crushed my head.

Deepmand spoke in a growl.
“Couldn’t spot the thrower.
Wait here, Elder Enchantress.”

While he tromped away to question a few onlookers, Maid Janny cupped a hand to my ear.

“Did someone just try to murder you?”

“Do not be ridiculous. A brick merely slipped loose from a wall.”

“Must’ve been one slippery brick.
The walls aren’t that close.”

The Spellsword returned with a scowl, and the way his eyes shot over the onlookers convinced me that he believed someone had thrown the brick. I found the concept unpleasant to the extreme, that one of my own people would attack me when I was working so hard to save them.

In the carriage, I stripped my gloves then reached into my mouth to remove the red diamond, which I had hidden under my tongue. With the jewel and chain in one hand, I descended to my laboratory.

Using a chisel spell of Repulsion, I broke the opal from the gold chain, and
Attracted
its clasps to fit around the red diamond. The necklace floated from my palm to wrap around my neck.

I disliked having to wear the red diamond on a necklace because any who saw it might falsely believe me engaged; however, a bracelet would risk displaying the jewel far too often, and I could not allow any to deduce who had given me the jewel. An anklet would provide an excellent place of hiding, yet foot jewelry was never more than trinkets; I could not insult the gods who had created the red diamond by shackling it so far from my heart.

I had considered implanting the jewel into my flesh, the most conducive spot being my breast, yet the whole premise struck me as lacking a certain refinement. A necklace would serve because none would ever see the stone, except for perhaps Janny, who hardly counted.

The necklace’s clasp sealed as I enchanted the gold chain,
Attracting
the metal to itself and making it next to unbreakable. The removal of my head would be required before someone could steal the red diamond. While I found this concept not altogether agreeable, at least the diamond was safe.

I opened my eyes and shoved the red diamond necklace under the ruffles around my neck. Relieved, I gazed outside the carriage window of Stilt Town, where men covered with mud clanged their pickaxes against the Flood Wall in a horrifying racket. Sections of the wall had been demolished, revealing stretches of skyline and black clouds dragging rain. I imagined water surging through the rents in the mortar, lifting nearby shacks off their wooden posts and sweeping the splintering wreckage into Morimound, to smash apart buildings and drown children.

Seeing the breaches in the wall felt like pieces of tissue carved out of my intestines. Salkant of the Fate Weaver might have wished for his prediction of the Seventh Flood to come true, yet Priest Abwar risked actualizing it. I remembered he had announced the scheme the day after I discovered the Bone Orb in Faliti, and now I wondered if he might have wished to distract me from the true threat of his Soultrapping.

Deepmand opened the carriage door to a view of Priest Abwar, his robes wet and dark up to the thigh; water trickled into Stilt Town from a break in the wall. Dots of brown mud and perhaps dried blood splattered up to his bulging paunch.

“Can you feel the will of the god between your toes? This water was sent by the Ever Thriving, Always Dying, and only by placing our fragile bodies in His merciless hands may we earn mercy.” The priest whispered as loudly as most men spoke. “Quickly now, remove the last impediments.”

He rolled his hands in the air, beckoning men to pry up the stones at foot level. As they did, water flowed over Priest Abwar’s sandals.

I lowered myself to the carriage step but would go no farther. Water stinking of ox dung spread under the carriage.

Deepmand splashed his way to the priest and tapped his shoulder with a gold-plated finger.