In reality, twenty-five years ago, Zera had drawn on her entire arsenal of talismans, supplying Stran and Marso as fast as they could use them, and all three of them had fought with the strength of a thousand bears and mountain lions combined. But in her dream, she could not find a single one. She searched, and her friends died beside her—sometimes Stran would be impaled by the antlers of a skeletal deer, sometimes Marso would be sliced across the sternum by a sword, more often he’d be cut to ribbons by one of Eklor’s bone-powered metal monstrosities. Sometimes Kreya would be there, bleeding at her feet and trying to form words that Zera could never quite make out. And sometimes Jentt would be just beyond reach, dying again and again as the army overwhelmed him.
It was, to say the least, an unpleasant dream.
She woke after each one drenched in sweat and screaming.
“Fuck me,” Zera said the third night.
“Gladly,” the naked man beside her said sleepily.
She ignored him, stood, and stretched her neck. She felt stiff and sore, as if she’d been fighting in her sleep. An odd feeling, since she hadn’t thrown a punch or held a knife in years. She’d seen no point in keeping up with the training that Kreya had insisted they all get.
She heard a harp strum. “Perhaps some music will relax you?” her lover offered.
“Make it appropriately melancholy.”
He played an arpeggio in a minor key and then shifted to an old tune, one about a goatherd who pined for the miller’s son. Or was this the one about the weaver who lost thirteen sons and six daughters in a series of implausible tragedies? She liked that one. Very gory. A death in each verse, followed by a lament. Sometimes it was refreshing to hear about someone who had suffered worse than you. He sang softly, his voice still a bit rough from sleep but pretty.
She listened for a while as she looked out her window at the stars over the mountain. On the sixth verse, she spoke. “Guine, what do you think Kreya needed my talismans for?”
The harp didn’t cease. Guine knew better than that. “She did not say?”
“She did not.”
“Curious.”
“Not for Kreya,” Zera said. “She always delighted in being cryptic as she ordered us around.” The nightmare, in contrast, had been remarkably unsubtle: her failing to give talismans to her friends and, as a consequence, her friends’ dying horrifically. She didn’t need a dream reader to tell her she felt guilty for not helping Kreya.
“She doesn’t deserve my help,” Zera said.
“She does not,” Guine agreed.
“You weren’t there. You don’t know.”
“I cannot possibly understand,” he agreed again.
Zera shot him a glare across the shadow-laden room. “By the bones, it’s irritating when you do that. You’re allowed to have a mind and produce your own thoughts. You’ll still have those lovely muscles even if you express an opinion.”
His fingertips danced over the harp strings. “And if my opinion differs from yours?”
“I’ll toss you off an aqueduct.” She held up a finger. “No. I will have someone toss you off an aqueduct for me. Perhaps I should hire a servant who specializes in convenient murders. Is that a thing?”
Politely, Guine said, “I believe that’s called an assassin.”
“I am teasing you, you know,” she told him. “In case it’s not clear. When I tire of you, you’ll be set up with your own house on the fourth tier, with servants of your own. No murder servants, though.”
“I hope you’ll never tire of me.”
“That’s unlikely.” Zera patted his bare shoulder. “But it’s good to have hope. Makes for a sunnier disposition.” She resumed staring out at the dark mountains, made darker by the glare of torchlight from the city tiers below. At night, the city glowed brighter than the moon. She couldn’t see the mist-covered valley beyond and below; it was sunken in shadows. “She could be in trouble. Must be, if she needs my talismans.”
“Ask her.”
“She left.” After I kicked her out.
“Then follow her.” He played an arpeggio in a major key.
“Kreya is in hiding.”
“You must know where she is.”
And the truth was, she did.
She was, perhaps, the only one in Vos who knew. A few years after the war, she’d locked herself in her workroom and created tracking talismans, made from the bones of an elite hunting dog. She’d sold most of them for a fortune, but she’d used one herself, to locate Kreya. She had tracked her scent out of Cerre, across several mountains, beyond villages too remote to have ever heard of running water, to a lonely tower, picturesquely perched on a cliff. Zera didn’t know whether Kreya had built the tower herself or inherited it from a hermit who liked clichés and nice views. Zera had stared at that tower for a solid hour, watching Kreya read an old, weathered book by a window. Kreya never saw her, and eventually Zera left. If Kreya was still living in that same tower, then yes, Zera knew where to find her. “What do I say to her?”
“What do you want to say?”
Zera thought she might tire of Guine sooner rather than later.
Guine continued to play, the harp music wafting around the room like a pervasive perfume. “What would give you peace?”
That was at least a more helpful question.
She considered it a moment. “To know Kreya is safe. I wasn’t able to protect her in the war. She chose to face Eklor alone. If I can be certain she’s safe now . . .”
“Go then. Give yourself that peace. And then come home to sleep the night through. Or”—he smiled prettily—“do things other than sleep.”
She liked that idea. Very much. Drawing him into her bed, she amused herself and him until dawn spread its lemon fingers through her bedchamber.
Zera’s new coat was the envy of every bone worker in Cerre, or so she believed. Made of the softest lambswool and trimmed with the finest leather, it was embroidered with gold thread that depicted the skeletons of the birds, fish, and animals of Vos. Each gold skeleton had rubies sewn in for eyes. Before leaving to visit Kreya, she filled the pockets with talismans, unsure of what she’d need. She didn’t intend to simply give Kreya unlimited talismans, obviously, but if the situation was dire enough . . . She wanted to be prepared for whatever she’d find.
She gave Guine specific instructions to lie about where she’d gone: to source new material for her talismans, he’d say, and he’d blame her famed eccentricities for the suddenness of her departure.
Walking out onto the balcony, Zera let the glow of the morning sun wash over her. She had no railing on her balcony, despite the fact that the city fell away beneath it. She knew some of the servants would dare one another to venture out onto it, and her guests avoided it completely, but she loved it. There was nothing between her and the sky, between life and death.
Plus it looked so delightfully dramatic when she stood on it.
Stepping to the edge, she spread her arms. The sleeves of her coat draped down like wings. Catching the sunlight, the gold and rubies sparkled. In her left hand, she held a talisman made from a bird bone. She imagined the men and women on the lower tiers watching her, silhouetted against the sky.