She called out the activation word: “Renari!”
And then she leaped from the balcony.
Wind rushed against her, and the talisman of flight lifted her. Zera felt the current buoy her up, and she laughed out loud. There was no rush like flying! I should get out more often, she thought.
Arms spread wide, she breathed in the air: fresh, clean, empty of all the scents that clung to her palace. She felt the sun warm her back, even as the wind chilled her skin. Her sleeves were puffed with air, and the fabric of her pants fluttered around her legs. Below her, the city of Cerre glistened in the early morning sun, and she saw people beginning to bustle in the streets. From this high, they looked like dolls.
She flew, with swallows swooping around her. “Hello, fellow citizens of the sky!”
Her words were lost in the wind, but that didn’t matter since birds couldn’t speak.
Angling herself, Zera soared over the gap between mountains. She aimed for a cable car that was trundling up the next mountain. Wind pushed her from side to side, but she steadied out. Using her sleeves to slow herself, she landed on top of the cable car.
She hit hard, and the car rocked beneath her from the impact. Inside, the passengers screamed. “Apologies!” she called to them. “But if you could have seen that from outside, you’d have been impressed.”
Lounging against the mechanism that held the cable car to the wire, she tossed the flight bones over the edge. They were spent. The talismans could handle decent jaunts, but they had limitations, such as durability and lift. Technically, they were more “glide” than “flight”—she hadn’t succeeded in creating talismans that could fully overcome the density of a human body—but so far, none of her customers had reported any fatal splats, so she counted them as a success.
From another pocket, she withdrew a sticky cinnamon pastry, wrapped in paper. She ate, licking her fingers and enjoying the ride up the mountain. She even had a nice view of the valley mist below, swirling ominously as usual. Luckily, her path wouldn’t take her anywhere near that morass.
At the docking station, Zera climbed down the ladder and was helped off by a nice-looking young man in a sleeveless shirt. She thanked him and then signed autographs for the passengers as they disembarked. One little girl wanted to touch Zera’s cheek, which was charming. She requested soap and water after the girl and her family had departed.
Her duty to the public complete, Zera waltzed back to the sleeveless handsome boy, dropped a pouch of coins into his hand, and bought his mountain horse.
It was named Rock, the boy told her.
She renamed it Merridia, because it sounded nicer.
Only distantly related to the horses who raced through pastures at lower altitudes, mountain horses were stocky, with thick, fluffy fur to protect them from the wind and snow, and surprisingly nimble. She didn’t even have to use a talisman for steadiness on Merridia. “You’re a good girl. Or boy.” Twisting in the saddle, Zera tried to check, but the horse’s fur blocked her view.
The horse snorted until she pulled herself back up.
“You’re a fussy one.” She decided that meant it was a boy.
Using a bit of a speed talisman, Zera urged the horse to move faster. Unlike bones carved by a bone maker, a bone wizard’s creations couldn’t animate any kind of inanimate transportation, but her talismans could imbue living things with particular properties. Her enhanced mount galloped over the road that wound around the mountain. Soon, she passed the passengers from the cable car. She sat up straighter as they gasped and pointed, amazed at her speed. She was glad she’d left her multicolored hair loose so it could stream dramatically behind her. They’d return home with a tale to tell.
Soon, though, she had to slow, as her route took her away from the civilized, stone-lined road and into the thick pine forest. Birds sang out from the trees, and Zera whistled back at them. She wasn’t meant to be out on her own, with no one to talk to or to entertain her. She wished she’d brought along Guine or one of the others.
The problem with being alone was that it gave you time to think.
And worry. And regret. And experience all those other inconvenient emotions.
But she muddled through, and thanks to a judicious use of talismans on Merridia, Zera reached the tower by late afternoon. She hitched the horse to a tree, dismounted, and rubbed her thighs, which were unaccustomed to this much travel. Perhaps she should have taken a more leisurely approach. “Enjoy the grass,” she told Merridia. “I’ll ask Kreya for a bucket of water. She might even have grain or oats, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for that. Looks like she’s embraced a more austere aesthetic.”
Looking up at the tower, Zera realized it was decidedly more shabby than the last time she’d checked on her old friend. Moss grew over the stones, and grasses were knee-high around the path to the door. Inside it was dark, though that could have been only because it was so sunny outside. She hoped Kreya was home.
Scooping up the hem of her coat so it didn’t drag in the dirt, Zera climbed the steps to the door. She searched for a bell or a door knocker or anything to signal her arrival. Has Kreya ever had a visitor?
Making a fist, she knocked.
It barely made a sound on the massive door.
“Kreya? Oh, Krrrreyaaaaa?” She sang the name. “Darling, I’ve traveled a long way to see you, and I would like some tea for me and some water for my horse. Or vice versa.”
The tower was silent.
“I know our last conversation didn’t go as either of us imagined a reunion would go,” Zera said. “For my part, I apologize. I could have come visit you sooner as well.”
Still, nothing.
“Are you here?”
Perhaps she’d moved.
Or Zera could have beaten her home. She had taken a rather direct route.
She tried the door. It creaked and clanked, and, to Zera’s surprise, swung open. Stepping forward, she peered in. The lock mechanism swung free, barely held by one screw. Whatever Kreya had been up to, it hadn’t been home repair projects. Or security. “Helloooo? Kreya?”
Her voice echoed up the dank stairwell. It was a toss-up which was thicker: the shadows or the cobwebs. As Zera stepped inside, she tried not to touch anything. She noticed a hatchlike door, presumably to a cellar, as well as a door to a shadow-laden bathroom. She was distinctly disinterested in viewing how clean or unclean it was. Lifting the hem of her coat, she climbed up the stairs.
One turn up, she shrieked.
A spiderlike creature made of metal, cloth, and bone was scrubbing one of the steps. She stopped shrieking when she realized it wasn’t attacking or even trying to move off its beloved step. She wondered if it could move. It had worn through the stone so badly that the step was more bowl than stair.
As Zera carefully stepped around, it paused and “looked” up at her. It had no eyes, but it twisted its body so its empty metal eye sockets pointed toward her.
“You’re doing a fabulous job,” she told it.
It purred and kept scrubbing.
Exhaling, she tiptoed past it. All right, so Kreya had made a cleaning construct that had malfunctioned and had just left it there for possibly a decade. That didn’t mean her friend—Ex-friend, Zera corrected herself—was in mortal danger.
That construct was a prime example of why she preferred being a bone wizard to being a bone maker. The power in her talismans was temporary, burning itself out in a few beautiful and pure minutes of glory or, if she was bragging about her skills, hours of use. But a construct made by a bone maker could linger creepily for years before it eventually wore down. Unnatural things.