Bonesmith, page 18
“Then shut up and count yourself lucky. It usually takes at least a few drinks and some pretty words to get this close to me.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
He was not entirely wrong. Wren had tumbled around with boys, with or without the drinks—and with or without the pretty words.
“Are you saying I’m easy?” she asked.
He huffed. “I’m saying you have no interest in pretty words.”
For some reason, that statement made Wren’s throat tighten. “It’s a good thing, too, since I haven’t gotten a civil one from you since we met.”
“I’m not in the habit of lying.”
Wren scowled—not that he saw—and removed her coat. “Good. Then I don’t want to hear you complain about this.”
“Complain about—” Wren lay down beside him, and he gasped as she slipped inside his open jacket and pressed herself against his crossed arms, enveloping him in what was essentially a hug, her hands sliding under his jacket to meet around his back. Her coat, still clinging to her shoulders, fit under his, creating a barrier to keep the heat in, just as his did for him.
Julian went instantly rigid, spine straightening and pulling away from her.
“Stop it,” she murmured, her mouth landing somewhere in the space near his collarbone. She tightened her grip on his back, waiting for the chill of her intrusion to dissipate, for heat to build between them.
It didn’t take long. Silent, tense seconds turned into languid ones, each muscle in Julian’s back unlocking beneath her hands. She rubbed up and down tentatively, creating more heat, while his hand—which had been cold against Wren’s chest—started to steadily warm.
His breathing went from shallow and tight to deep and slow. His cheek lowered, propping itself on the top of Wren’s head.
“Sleep,” Wren ordered. He needed to gather his strength, and there was no better way.
He muttered something into her hair.
“What?” she asked, tilting her head slightly.
“Thank you.”
TWENTY
Wren remained wrapped up in Julian for an hour at least, waiting until every twitch and tremble receded, his muscles heavy and his chest rising and falling in the rhythms of deepest sleep.
He had rolled over slightly, taking Wren with him, so she was essentially sprawled on top of him. She squinted toward the hatch, anxiously looking for the telltale glow of the undead, but all was darkness. Her breath misted before her, but she remained warm in the ironsmith’s embrace.
His eyes were closed, his brow furrowed slightly. She drew back carefully, watching his face as she did, but he didn’t wake. His skin was dry, with a healthy flush of color—not pale or clammy with cold sweat like it had been before.
She looked at his arms, still crossed against his chest, and pulled one of her hands from behind his back to touch his skin through his shirt. Even though she’d prefer to actually see the lack of deathrot than just assume it, peeking when he was unconscious was a line she didn’t intend to cross. Besides, she felt only the warmth of healthy skin beneath her hand, and if the rot had started, he would be in excruciating pain at her touch.
Expelling a relieved breath, she slid her other arm out—it had fallen asleep—shaking it as she extricated herself. His frown deepened at her departure, as if unhappy with the sudden space between them, and the incongruous sight of it wormed its way into Wren’s chest. Of course he was sleeping, and how he actually felt was the exact opposite. He’d never wanted her so close to him to begin with.
Going to their packs, she unearthed the rest of their blankets and piled them on top of him. She thought again of a fire, but even if she could manage to create something that didn’t burn the place down, it would only draw attention to them. There were more than undead threats in the Breachlands, as their run-in with the bandits the day before had proven.
They had gotten extremely lucky finding this place. She didn’t know how much farther Julian could have run, and despite how much she liked to brag about her skill, Wren would have had a difficult time protecting them against a handful of tier fives. She could have tried a defensive ring, using bonedust to enclose them in safety, but even at Marrow Hall they had warned that revenants had a certain resistance to its effects. The remnants of their bodies protected their ghost and could allow them to pass through a bonedust ring or at least reach beyond its barriers. Ideally, that’s when Julian’s iron sword would come in handy, and really, the pair of them might make the perfect team against these walking undead, if they could only find a way to work together properly.
She stared longingly at the nest of blankets, the lingering memory of his warm skin appealing—especially as she had left her jacket somewhere inside. She was exhausted, both from the scant amount of sleep they’d managed early that morning and the series of attacks—before and after it—that had made up the past few days. But as soon as she closed her eyes, she saw those revenants standing below the open hatch, looking up at her. She saw them reach for the ladder, and the vision chased away the possibility of sleep.
Instead, she took up her bone blades and perched next to the trapdoor, watching, waiting… just in case.
* * *
When Wren next became aware of herself, she was slumped against the wall beside the trapdoor. Golden light filled the tower, and Julian crouched before her, a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m awake,” she mumbled, lurching upright. She stared down through the hatch again, stretching her senses, but the revenants had not returned.
Julian sat back on the heap of blankets, scrubbing at his face as if he’d just awoken as well.
“How is your hand?” she asked.
He looked down at it, clenching and unclenching his fist. He nodded. “It’s good.”
“Good,” Wren said. He tugged at the edge of his glove and then smiled—a soft, affectionate expression she’d never seen on his face before. He was fiddling with something… a bracelet? “What’s that?”
He glanced at her, and apparently he was in a talkative mood, because he actually lifted the bracelet to give her a better view. “It’s a good luck charm.” It was made of simple iron links, with three roughly hewn beads that slid across the surface. “These are iron ore. Raw and untreated. There’s one for each of the House of Iron rankings.” He touched the first bead. “The hammer, which is the artisan—the person who crafts our weapons and armor. Then we have the sword,” he said, touching the next, “which is the warrior—the person who uses them. I’m a sword,” he added, flicking a look in her direction before he continued to the last bead. “And then the anvil. They are the historians, the protectors of the lore. The foundation.”
“We have three, too,” Wren murmured. “The reapyr—the person who severs the ghost from its bones. They also handle funeral rites once they age out of active duty. There’s the valkyr, the one who defends the reapyr against the undead.”
“Let me guess—you’re a valkyr?”
She bowed her head in acknowledgment, ignoring the twinge that told her it wasn’t technically true, and he smiled smugly. “And then we have the fabricators. They’re like your hammers, I suppose, but there are a lot of different specializations. Weapons and armor, yes, but also protections.”
“Like the Wall?”
“Right. So they make weapons and armor, plus talismans for roads and towns.” He nodded, still toying with the bracelet. “Who wants to keep you safe?” she asked. When he lowered his brows in confusion, she clarified. “The charm. Who gave it to you?”
She knew it was a gift from the way he’d looked at it, like it reminded him of a happy memory. Her guess was maybe Julian had a girl back home, and she felt a bit guilty for the way she’d pranced around him the other day—and a bit disappointed, too, if she was honest.
“Oh,” he said, surprised and suddenly uncomfortable. He dropped his hand. “My little sister.”
“Oh,” Wren echoed, and he looked puzzled at her reaction. She cleared her throat. “Well, I guess it worked, didn’t it? You were shot by an arrow the day we met.”
“My breastplate worked,” he said dryly, sliding his hand over the place where the armor had saved him. Then he huffed out a laugh. “I tried to tell her. I am literally covered in iron—three extra rocks won’t do much—but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’s superstitious. And stubborn.”
“I like her already.”
He tilted his head. “Yes, I suspect you would.”
Wren couldn’t figure out what to make of that. “What about last night? That was the hand that almost got exposed. I think she’s on to something.”
“I think I have you to thank for that,” he said.
Wren’s stomach squirmed at the intense, unguarded look in his eye. “Yeah, well… you already have.”
His expression flickered, and he glanced down, noticing her jacket amid his blankets and bedding for the first time. She could almost see his tired brain trying to work through it all, recalling how they’d lain in an embrace, and his murmured “thank you” before he’d fallen asleep.
“I thought I dreamed you,” he muttered. Then froze. “It. I thought I’d dreamed it.”
Wren stood and picked up her coat, smiling as she pulled it on, delighted at the flush crawling up his face. “I guess today is the day your dreams have come true.”
He gave her a flat stare, and she laughed, doing up the buttons.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” she said. “I knew you had it in you.”
He rolled his eyes, but she thought she could see him stifle the smallest of smirks before he cleared his throat and stood. “We need to figure out our next move. Are they…? Are we alone?”
“For now,” Wren said, peering down the open hatch again, though she could sense there were no undead in the vicinity. She turned her gaze to the narrow windows that sat at regular intervals along the wall. All she could make out were tree branches. “I just don’t know where we’ve wound up. We ran for a while last night, but in what direction…”
Julian, who had been refolding some of the blankets, straightened. His gaze roamed the space before landing on the ceiling, where, much to Wren’s surprise, an additional trapdoor sat. It was currently closed, but Julian extended his arm and flicked the latch. “This was a watchtower once,” he explained, confirming Wren’s suspicion as the door groaned open, revealing a perfect circle of blue sky studded with clouds. Mounted next to it on the ceiling was a rusted metal ladder, which he tugged, and it too screeched and protested before coming loose, the steps perfectly meeting the floor underneath.
“Steel,” he muttered with distaste, shaking his head. “We never had to bother with this stuff until the Breach. Suddenly we couldn’t afford to waste good iron on anything other than weapons and armor.” He actually wiped his gloved hand on his leg, as if the steel left some sort of residue.
Shaking her head in amusement, Wren followed him up the ladder.
The roof slanted away from the hatch on all sides, allowing for proper drainage of rain and snow but making it difficult for them to stand on. Julian pulled himself onto the roof, still moving somewhat gingerly thanks to his chest and hand injuries, and sat down near the top. Wren did the same, and together they took in the view.
The height of the tower helped them see past the treetops in all directions, and the breath whooshed from her lungs as she turned northeast. There was a massive gouge marring the landscape. This was the Breach, the place where the ironsmiths had overmined and caused the land to shake, the ground to split, and whole cities and towns to come crumbling down. And that was to say nothing of what they’d uncovered there, a lost city filled with undead.
It was as jagged as a scar, deep and dark… save for a faint, unnatural green glow.
Julian pointed at the vista before them. “There were once three mines here,” he said, indicating each spot in turn. One was on the very edge of the Breach, which sat at the base of what Wren assumed was the Adamantine Mountains. “It was apparently Oreton, a newer mine, that caused it,” he said. “Not that it mattered. Undead spewed out of every mine within a twenty-mile radius. There was even a gold mine to the north that was overrun, but luckily it collapsed before the revenants could spread. Most of the people escaped, and when they built the Wall, they made sure to close it off with the rest of us.”
“Why did they build it underground?” Wren wondered aloud, unable to tear her eyes from the view. Julian shot her a puzzled look, so she clarified. “The ghostsmith city, I mean. It’s not like they were mining for dead.”
“No,” Julian agreed. “They were mining for magic.”
Wren turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, magic comes from the earth, right? So the anvils—our scholars,” he reminded her, “they think the ghostsmiths were looking for more. They didn’t just ‘go away’ when the rest of the smiths rejected them. They came here and started digging. The anvils think their whole society was built, defended, and maintained by the undead.”
Wren gaped. “You think they found it, then? More magic?”
“How else do you explain the walking undead? They aren’t all centuries-old corpses roaming the Haunted Territory. New revenants are rising every day. And they only rise here.”
Wren was stunned. Like the stories about the Corpse Queen, this was something she’d never heard before. Unless… what had Odile said? That something dark lived in the Breach? Something evil? Could she mean this magic?
Wren didn’t know if it was what Julian had just told her or the very real, very visceral sight of the Breach after a life filled with stories about it, but she felt a bit sick as she stared across the landscape. Even in the daylight, she could see the ghost glow, which added a surreal, sinister tone to the rocks and hillsides. She could only imagine the view at night. And the undead… Would they be visible, wandering to and fro, or did they mostly slumber until the living crossed their path? Everything looked barren, not a person or animal to be seen, nor a sound to be heard.
A question rose to the surface of her mind. “Where do we cross?” The Breach stretched, unbroken, from the mountains in the north to the dense forest in the south.
A short, sharp laugh. He extended an arm. “We don’t. We go around it, through those trees, which are a part of the Norwood—the same forest we’re in right now—and then turn north on the far side.”
Wren followed the path, which required a massive detour.
Julian dropped his hand. “I’d thought that sticking to the outskirts of the Haunted Territory would keep us mostly safe, but if last night is any indication…” He rubbed at his jaw, then shifted his gaze to the landscape nearer at hand. “Towers like this were built soon after the Breach, meant to keep track of any wayward undead that came anywhere close to civilization, so they could raise the alarm. They were placed well outside the danger zone. The fact these trees are apparently crawling with undead means the Haunted Territory has expanded. Exponentially.”
“So even your ‘safe route’ might not be safe at all?”
He sighed but didn’t respond. He squinted into the distance again. “I could have sworn the Breach didn’t extend quite this far south—as I understood it, it didn’t reach the Norwood, but…”
“Could it have grown?” Wren asked. The edges were difficult to discern, jagged and crisp in some places but obscured by rock and fallen structures in others. Entire towns had fallen into that gorge when it first cracked open, so it didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that the ground might give way further.
A visible shudder went down Julian’s spine. He hesitated, then shook his head resolutely. “No. It was mining that caused it, and no one would be fool enough to go digging down there anymore. It’s going to be a hard journey, but if we stick to the tree line…” He trailed off. “It’s our best chance.”
They climbed back down, Wren going over everything Julian had said. It was logically sound, and before their run-in the previous night, she might have agreed with it. But right now she didn’t.
Julian continued to pack up the bedding while Wren dug through their bags for breakfast.
As they sat together on the floor chewing dried meat and sour pickled vegetables, Wren asked about something she’d seen spanning the gaping maw of the Breach.
A bridge.
It had looked spindly and unfinished, a skeletal scrap of metal.
“Has anyone ever crossed it?”
Julian’s hand stilled as he reached for another piece of meat. He darted a glance up at her before focusing on his meal. “My father did,” he said shortly. “During the Uprising. It was built to sneak troops to the Wall.”
Oh. So that was how they’d tried to outsmart the Dominion soldiers. Instead of traveling miles to avoid the Haunted Territory, making it easy to predict their strikes, they’d decided to cut through, hoping to catch the Dominion soldiers and the garrisons at the Wall unprepared. Unfortunately for them, Locke’s scouting unit had found them first.
Looking to Julian, an unasked question hovered on the tip of her tongue: Was Julian’s father lucky enough to walk away, or had he died not long after crossing that bridge?
“Has anyone crossed it since?” she asked delicately.
“Why?”
“Because I think we should.”
“You want to cross over the actual Breach when we barely survived crossing the border into the Haunted Territory that surrounds it? You’re mad. This is last night all over again—you don’t think.”
“This is me thinking,” Wren protested. “We need to get to the prince, and this route you’ve proposed will waste too much time. I can’t afford to fail.”
“That’s all this prince is to you, isn’t he? A trophy to be won? A balm against your wounded pride? A chance to prove how tough you are, how many ghosts you can take on by yourself?”
He may have hit closer to the mark than Wren wanted to admit, but he didn’t understand. In the Bonewood, she had tried to do things the right way, the honorable way—and look what had happened. How else was she to regain her place? How else was she to prove herself to her father?
