Conservation of Shadows - By Yoon Ha Lee Page 0,17
that dark-haired woman. The artist, in drawing Brien’s fingers as a cage of tension, convinced Kaela that the latter was closer to the truth.
Kaela remembered the name of Teris’s lover, but it didn’t matter. She put down her pen. Now that she understood what she had overlooked, she had time to formulate a coherent thesis. Roz Roven, her sponsor, would be pleased.
She also understood that she could never mention her insight to Teris in a language that the other woman could fathom. Kaela had no desire to break the paired beauty of hand meeting hand, blade meeting blade, to step between two sword-dancers’ shadows intersecting beneath the eyes of light. But she could find her own dance.
I have loved you in your own language, Kaela thought as she picked up her blades, so softly that we never knew it. Let your language be mine; let me cast my own shadows.
No shadows interrupted her all the way through curfew hour that night as she walked to the Spinning Rose, or any night thereafter.
THE BONES OF GIANTS
Whatever else might be said of the sorcerer who ruled the rim of the Pit, he had never been able to raise the bones of giants. The bones lay scattered in the rimlands, green-grey with moss and crusted with crystals, whorled with the fingerprints of desperate travelers. The bones did not easily surrender fingerprints. The locals considered it bad luck to leave their marks on the giants’ bones.
Tamim was sitting in the lee of a rock and had raised his gun to his head when the giants’ bones embedded in the hill shook themselves free of earth. He knew that the gun wasn’t going to be of any use against the bones. He knew of only two ways to destroy ghouls: lure them past the rimlands’ borders so they would crumble into dust, or pierce them through the heart with jade.
The border was days away. Tamim had used the last of his jade bullets escaping a vulture patrol.
His finger hesitated on the trigger.
“You shouldn’t do that,” a girl’s voice, or a young woman’s, called from the other side of the rock.
He shouldn’t have let his guard down, even for a suicide attempt. Maybe especially for a suicide attempt. The sorcerer’s Vulture Corps was always happy to collect corpses.
Tamim edged around the rock. He didn’t like leaving bones at his back, but they were taking their time assembling themselves, as though unseen ligaments were growing at each joint. Their clattering made him jumpy. Assess the threat, he reminded himself, then decide.
The girl was in plain sight. She had brown skin like Tamim’s own and long black hair in tangles down to her waist, too long to be practical, the kind an aristocrat might have. No aristocrat, however, would have been caught in that high-collared black coat.
Tamim knew the rimlands’ sumptuary laws, knew what the black coat meant: vulture, and necromancer besides. He aimed and fired.
He must have made some noise to alert her. She ran toward him, ducking at the right moment. The bullet missed her by inches; a lock of hair drifted free. “I’m not what you think, boy,” she said breathlessly. She barely came up to his shoulder. Her hand, surprisingly strong, caught his and twisted the gun to point at the ground between them.
Five bullets left, but he wanted to save one for himself. Admittedly, at this range he was more likely to shoot himself if he tried again. That wasn’t even taking into account the girl’s reflexes. “What are you, then?”
“I’m no vulture,” she said. “I’m alone out here. I need help, and I’ll take what I can find, whether it comes in the shape of a giant or a boy who looks half-ghoul himself.” She stared directly into his eyes as she released her grip on the gun.
Tamim made a frustrated noise and holstered the gun. A soldier wasn’t supposed to feel curiosity, but today he had forfeited any claim to being a soldier. “You’re the one raising the bones,” he pointed out.
He had been wrong about the skeleton. There were two of them, not one, entangled oddly from aeons in the earth’s embrace.
The girl took her attention off Tamim for a moment. She laced her fingers together, then pulled them apart. In a rush, the bones separated into two skeletons. Loam, uprooted grass, and glittering gravel showered both Tamim and the girl. Dust swirled in the shape of grinning skulls, then settled. The girl paid it no heed. Apparently she was