Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,67

began to chatter. She stumbled twice as she stood. She needed to rest, to get warm, but she couldn’t stay in this narrow coffin of a room any longer. Mekaran called her back as she fumbled with the door, but she only shook her head.

The warmer air of the hall dizzied her, the smells of beer and food and sweat. She tripped on an uneven floorboard, staggered into the wall hard enough to send a sharp shock down her right arm, and fell to her knees in a tangle of skirts.

A worn pair of boots stopped in front of her and a familiar voice spoke her name.

“C—Ciaran?” She could hardly raise her head. The chill in her bones curved her spine into a fetal hunch.

“Saints and shadows,” he whispered. “What have you done to yourself this time?”

Footsteps shivered through the floor as Mekaran and Dahlia followed. Ciaran cut off Mekaran’s stammered explanation. “Later. I’ll take care of her.”

He crouched beside her and wound an arm under hers; his flesh burned. She barely kept her legs from buckling as he hauled her to her feet. “You have to walk,” he told her. “My room is another flight up and you’re too tall to carry up these stairs.”

“I’m not staying.”

“You’re not leaving—there’s rioting outside the Garden. Besides, you’d stay in this hall all night if I dropped you. I’d like to think my bed is the more pleasant option.”

She gave up arguing and concentrated on moving her feet. And, when she finally collapsed on to Ciaran’s bed and breathed in the musk and spices that lingered in his pillow, she was forced to agree. He piled blankets on top of her and kindled the brazier. Light glowed through cut brass, tracing filigree patterns across the walls and ceiling. Isyllt closed her eyes and curled tighter. Feeling returned to her extremities, but the ice settled thick and deep in her core.

The bed creaked as Ciaran wedged himself between her and the wall and held her close. It wasn’t wide enough for two, but that had never stopped them before.

“You push yourself too hard.” His beard tickled her neck, but she couldn’t pull away. “You’ll die if you don’t stop this.”

“Maybe not even then.”

“What do you mean?”

It was not the sort of thing to be spoken of, but she was too numb to care. “You know the old stories of necromancers being beheaded and burned when they die? They aren’t just superstition. We have the choice, at the end—or so I’m told. We can let our souls depart for the other side of the mirror, or we can stay. Either as powerful specters, or as the undead.” Necrophants, the risen mages were called, and even the Arcanostoi said the word softly or not at all.

This must be what it felt like to die, Isyllt thought, cold and aching and hollow. She couldn’t imagine an eternity of this, no matter how powerful it might make her.

Ciaran stilled, his breath rough. Then he squeezed her and kissed her neck. “I prefer living women.”

She laughed, and the ice began to crack. As it melted, she began to sob. For Forsythia, for all the dead flowers whom no one mourned, for all the cold and hollow dead. Tears scalded her cheeks and soaked the pillow until, finally warm again, she slept.

She woke later to stuffy heat and the fire died to embers. Blankets tangled around her legs and sweat stuck her dress to her back. She grimaced at the taste of salt thick in her mouth.

Ciaran sat on a chest by the window, rolling a wine bottle between his palms and frowning at the night-black glass. A draft rolled over the cracked-open casement, and the single candle flame danced with it. The earlier ruckus had faded, and from the depth of the silence she guessed it must be the final terce. Release, Selafaïns called this hour, for all the deaths and births that it witnessed. Her mother had called it the wolf’s hour. The night smelled faintly of smoke.

“The riots have stopped,” Ciaran said, not turning from the window. “The Vigils finally came, after a few shop windows were broken and fires started.” He glanced back at her. “Feeling better?”

“Mostly. I think that wine might help the rest.”

He uncoiled from his perch and hopped lightly from chest to bed without touching the floor or spilling the bottle. He’d been a wire-thin sneak thief when they’d met fifteen years ago—food and wine and less sneaking had thickened his waist