Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,74
old witch’s story had filled Savedra’s head with visions of corpse-strewn halls, skeletons clutching rusted weapons or ghosts wailing and screaming for revenge; the ghosts in her imagination looked suspiciously like stage specters in artfully tattered shrouds and greasepaint. None of that confronted them as they stepped into the narrow courtyard.
The stones were fouled with dead weeds and leaves and bird droppings, and feathers drifted like dark snow in the corners. Vines cocooned the well and the wooden cover was broken and half fallen away. The yard smelled of stone and damp and mildew, shit and the sharper pungency of cat urine. Savedra pinched her nose against a sneeze. The ground was littered with bones—they crunched alarmingly as she stepped farther in—but they were tiny fragile things. Mice and fallen birds, not the castle’s slain guardians.
Despite the stink and ominous doors and hallways and broken-shuttered windows that stared down at them, an ache spread behind Savedra’s breastbone. It must have been a pleasant place once—empty flower boxes hung beneath windows, and rotten trellises climbed the walls, tangled with browned roses. Drifting snow and the slanting morning light lent the yard a ruined, antique beauty. Like yellowed lace, or funeral art.
Something hissed in the shadows and Savedra yelped. Eyes flashed copper-green in the gloom of a doorway and Ashlin’s hand closed on her sword hilt. A heartbeat later Cahal laughed at both of them as a scruffy striped cat bolted up a flight of stairs and vanished down a gallery. Ashlin laughed too, but touched her shoulder to Savedra’s in mutual reassurance.
They startled a few mice and feral cats as they explored the ground floor, and one sleepy owl, but found no other signs of life or unlife. Signs of the previous inhabitants were all around them, though. Beans spilled out of rotted bags in the pantries, and jars of preserves encased in dust lined the shelves. Dishes still littered the kitchen counters, and drawers held crumbling receipts and recipes and lists of stores. The altar in the narrow chapel was spotted with wax, the candles toppled and chewed by rodents. A few tarnished silver sconces still clung to the walls, while others had fallen to reveal cleaner stone beneath. The icons of whatever saints or gods the Sarkens prayed to were darkened and unrecognizable. Moth-eaten clothes and linens filled chests in the servants’ quarters, and hints of lives littered the rooms: a shelf of moldering books; a carven box filled with needles and buttons and an ivory thimble; a pair of shoes heavy with once-bright embroidery, much too fine to be worn for daily chores. Paintings hung in flaking frames, long-faded portraits or hunting scenes.
The second story was much the same—no corpses, no waiting monsters, but memories thick as cobwebs everywhere. No one spoke as they searched the rooms, and Iancu’s face grew sadder and more strained with each vanished life they found.
On the next floor a painting watched them as they climbed the stairs. A woman sat in the foreground, white-skinned and sable-haired, with dark eyes and beautiful cheekbones still visible beneath the web of cracks that marred the oils. A man stood behind her chair, one hand on her shoulder. He was tall and lean and well-dressed, but his face was too chipped and shadowed to make out.
Ferenz III Darvulesti, the tiny plaque read, Margrave of Carnavas, and the Margravine Phaedra.
“Who are you?” Savedra murmured, raising a hand to the painting and pulling back before she touched the canvas. The frame was grey with dust, but her hands were worse. Her nose had long since closed off in self-defense.
“Who indeed?” Iancu asked softly, standing beside her. Savedra studied his face for any hint of recognition, but his frown only deepened.
“Here,” Cahal called. He kindled a lantern and held it aloft. Their own footprints showed stark against the pale drifting dust, but other, fainter prints were visible beneath it. Like tracks in trampled snow clear beneath a fresh fall. Short, narrow feet—a woman or a small man.
“How old are these?” Savedra asked.
Cahal shrugged, sending orange light swaying across the walls. “Hard to say.”
The tracks led down the corridor to a bedroom that must have belonged to the Margrave, and crisscrossed the floor there. Bed hangings pulled free of the great oaken frame, and the lantern cast their shadows like great tattered wings across the walls.
Savedra and Ashlin tugged back the curtains and pried the shutters open. The windows facing the cliffside were wider than those overlooking the path; anyone