She hadn’t set foot in Eren in five years, and she hoped the villagers had forgotten her, or assumed she’d died in the wilderness. It would be best if she didn’t have to use the stealth talisman until absolutely necessary. She wasn’t certain how much power was left in it. Talismans always burned out far more quickly than her constructs did—the former powered living flesh, while the latter were made from inanimate objects, which made the difference.
Exactly three and a half hours later, as the sun danced lower across the cliffs and crags, Kreya halted at the edge of the forest and looked down on her destination. Charmingly picturesque, the village was nestled on a meadowed slope, framed by pine forest. A mix of stone and wood, the buildings were brightly painted reds, blues, and yellows, with brilliant white trim—as if in defiance of the gray stone mountains all around them.
Once, when she and Jentt had first talked about being together forever, they’d discussed living in a place like this. Jentt had liked how the neighbors all seemed to look out for one another, making sure even the weakest made it through the winter storms and the avalanches and the earthquakes, and Kreya had liked how even the vivid paint color seemed to be saying fuck you to the gray mountains. Later, though, after the war, Kreya couldn’t bear to live so close to other people. It reminded her too much of everything she couldn’t have.
She lurked within the pine trees now, watching the village for a few moments. All the inhabitants would be gathering by their Cliff of the Dead for the ceremony, but she saw no movement on the streets or between the houses. They must already be there. Am I too late?
She didn’t smell or see smoke, and the sun had only just touched the edge of the western mountains. The ridgeline glowed orange. As she skirted around the village, she heard pipes playing: at least six or seven musicians of varying skill playing slow and sweet melodies that wove together in a gentle lament. Her fingers moved in the pattern of the notes. She hadn’t played since childhood, but she remembered the feel of it, or at least her fingers did. Her heart was beating as fast as the heart of a bird, and she tried to let the familiar music soothe her. So far, no one had seen her, and she’d done nothing to alarm anyone even if they had.
A flock of mountain sheep barely budged from their grazing as she passed them. Ahead she heard murmured voices, like a soft breath of wind beneath the music of the pipes. As she rounded the corner of a bright red barn, she saw the Cliff of the Dead before her: an exposed rock face stained by decades of smoke and ash, with the names of the dead carved into the rock.
As she’d suspected, all the villagers were gathered at the base of the cliff, pressed tightly together. Kreya identified the relatives of the dead girl by their white scarves—the color of winter, the color of death.
Seeing the white, Kreya wanted to flee. I shouldn’t be here.
These people had lost a loved one. A child. And she was about to intrude on their grief. Granted, if the stealth talisman worked as it should, they’d never even know. But that didn’t change the fact that what she was about to do was morally reprehensible.
And illegal. Don’t forget that.
There was a reason that the dead were always burned: so that no bone worker would ever be able to desecrate their legacy by using their bones for magic, as she planned to do.
I can’t do this.
Flattening against the barn, Kreya tried to calm her racing heart. She breathed in. Out. Methodically, she seized each of her thoughts:
It’s wrong.
Yes, it was. Both by the laws of Vos and by basic decency.
It’s unfair. A child died! So much life unlived, dreams unfulfilled!
Yes, it was unfair. But so was what had happened to her and Jentt.
It’s not what Jentt would want.
That stopped her for a moment. “The child’s already dead,” Kreya whispered, as if Jentt could hear her. “I didn’t cause it, and I can’t change it.” All she could change was whether the child’s end was merely an end, or whether it led to someone else’s beginning.
It was an undeniable tragedy. But if she could create good from it, wrestle joy out of sorrow, then that was forgivable, wasn’t it? Or at least understandable? Kreya pulled on her fire-resistant gloves, and then, reaching into two of her pockets, she withdrew the talismans for stealth and strength. She held one in each gloved hand.
She felt calmer now. Ready.
The pipe music stopped. A murmured voice, loud enough for the mourners to hear, but not loud enough to carry to where she hid, began to speak.
She peeked around the corner of the barn. They were unwrapping the linen sheets from the body—it would be burned without the wrappings so all would see that the body was whole and intact. Until this moment, it would have stayed wrapped tightly and been guarded as if it were a treasure, which meant that this was her only opportunity.
Smoke curled through the air. She tasted it as she inhaled, and she swallowed back a cough. Through the gaps between the villagers, she glimpsed the fire, growing at the base of the cliff.
She’d have to time it right: strike after the body had begun to burn, when it was dry to the point of being fragile, but before the bones had time to succumb to the heat. She’d use stealth to slip through the crowd and then use strength to remove the limbs.
If all went well, the family would never even know what she’d done. They’d see a blur that they’d mistake for smoke, and then it would be over. She’d steal as much as she could, and the flames would devour what remained, eliminating all evidence that she was ever there.
Her death will give life, Kreya thought, trying to convince herself.
One pipe began to play again, a mournful melody.
She saw the flames leap higher and sparks fly up against the rock face as the body was placed on the pyre. The mourners embraced one another, and Kreya counted silently. One minute, two, three . . .
She kept counting, the pipes kept playing, the mourners cried, and the body burned.
Now.
Breathing a word onto the stealth talisman, Kreya shot out of her hiding place, no more visible than a shadow. Her coat flapped around her, but she weaved through the crowd, moving with them as they spoke softly, words of sympathy and words of comfort—all words that Kreya had heard before, the kind of words that didn’t help anyone but had to be said because the silence was worse. A few mourners startled, feeling an unexpected breeze as she passed them, but their eyes darted all around, unable to see her.
Zera always did make the best talismans, Kreya thought. She wished she could thank her old friend, but that would have required explaining what she’d been doing with the power. Also, it meant actually speaking with Zera, which she hadn’t done in twenty-five years.
At the pyre, Kreya didn’t look at the girl’s face. She tried not to think of the corpse as a person at all. Just a collection of ingredients she needed to obtain. Whispering to the strength talisman to activate it as well, she shoved both into her pockets and then grasped the limbs she needed.
The strength of a bear flooded through her, allowing her to yank.
Snap!
One arm bone broke, and she pulled a knife from one of her pockets—
And the magic failed.
She felt it sap out of her, the strength and the stealth simultaneously abandoning her. Around her, she heard the cries of the villagers:
“Thief!”
“Desecrator!”