Broken Souls and Bones (Broken Souls and Bones #1)

Chapter 2

2

Lyra

I was once told we never truly knew another soul until we saw the darkness they kept inside.

In this moment, I was looking into the eyes of evil.

I blinked, hoping the bastard could see a bit of the silver scar bending the dark center of my eyes, a warning he ought to choose his next moves with care. Pukki did nothing but gnaw on the clod of grass, wholly unbothered by my disdain.

“ Move .” I tugged on the rope around the goat’s neck.

A lethargic bleat followed, and the creature dipped his head to continue his graze of the meadow. I held out a palm, as though Pukki would understand the threat, and whispered, “I could break you, you stupid beast.”

More gnawing, more snorting.

I let my head fall back and cursed the sky. “Fine. Stay there, you damn devil, but don’t go anywhere until I finish.”

I trudged up the narrow path to the small orchard of star plums. The pale outer flesh gleamed in the sunrise, but when eaten, the centers were a crimson deeper than blood.

There, a cart stacked in wicker baskets remained, goat-less.

I glared at Pukki. His jaw rotated lazily, and he flicked his ears, slightly curious why I’d gone away, but not enough to move.

I dug a vial from the pocket of my burlap smock. I’d rinsed my eyes with the intent to intimidate a stupid creature with my scars, but he had no sense of self-preservation. Head tilted, I dropped some of the inky fluid into each eye, wincing against the bite of heat.

Thorn blossoms were lovely flowers that grew by the coast and were often used to dye tunics and wool. For me, the pressed blossoms hid the silver scars in my eyes behind a dark violet lie.

Beautiful, but the blossom dye stung like hot ash tossed in the face.

Time before the scars appeared was lost to a fog in my mind, a life I could not quite recall.

There were weak, vague memories of laughter and warm arms and a thick beard split into two braids. Sometimes I would dream of a woman’s gentle voice singing me a folk song of lost souls.

Whenever I dreamed of the night of smoke and screams, I always saw eyes like a sunrise break through the shadows just before I woke.

The first memories I knew to be real for a certainty began in the cold walls of a youth house meant for abandoned or orphaned young ones. Wood laths overtaken by golden moss and silken webs in the corners gave me a roof and bed. There, I learned the silver dividing the black of my eyes was a cruel curse.

Gammal, the wizened maid whose spine arched like a rounded hill, was the first to take note. I would never forget her knobby, crooked fingers working in a frenzy, teaching me to crush the petals of the blossoms, and forcing the dye over my lashes.

She had beautiful, coiled ink tattoos across her wrists that had faded from sun and seasons.

“Unfettered Folk marks,” she told me. “Our young ones are given their marks to begin the sagas of their accomplishments. My clan was often covered in them by the time they were ready to fall into the realm of souls. A bit like your house runes.”

On instinct, I brushed a hand over the tattoo beneath my ear where Gammal had helped alter the rune marks of what once was a sigil of a House named Bien.

The clans of the Unfettered were people beyond the cliffs of the Night Ledges in the North. People without a king, a queen, and no magical craft. They lived in huts and hunted with spears and stone axes. Some said the Unfettered shaved their teeth into sharp points.

Gammal’s teeth had looked like mine.

The woman let me draw my own designs on her wrinkled skin whenever we finished chores, and she taught me how to hide the silver scars.

“Take the sting or take death, elskan,” Gammal always whispered when I whimpered about the ache of the dyes. “Folk here kill for those scars.”

Three veins of magical craft lived in the soil of the realms, all brutal and lovely on their own. But silver in the eyes was proof the Wanderer King’s curse burned in the blood with the power of all. Power coveted enough it stirred wars.

Twice I’d witnessed the king’s melder when the royal caravans entered the village, almost as though searching for something, yet never finding it. Folk always said he was so well guarded because he was also the king’s consort, not only a crafter.

No one really understood why melding craft was coveted so fiercely, only that melders were never truly free.

Gammal led me to thick tomes where I could read the histories of wars in which our small seaside kingdom of Jorvandal allied with the lands of Myrda for nearly a century, before rising victorious over Dravenmoor.

For Jorvandal’s aid, through treaties and sanctions, not only did Myrdan daughters always wed Jorvan kings, but melder craft would always belong to Stonegate, the royal keep.

I didn’t remember the last raid hunting a new melder, only that it was during my tenth summer, and House Bien was the heart of the bloodshed. I wasn’t a fool. I had the manipulated sigil runes, scars in my eyes, and nightmares aplenty of dark words, flames, and screams.

Always screams in the dark.

I dabbed at a few drops of the dye that slithered down my cheeks. Stav Guard would arrive soon, and their presence always set my nerves on jagged edges.

I shook out my hands. In the past, the Stav never noticed the simple woman with dirty fingernails and messy braids.

This time would be no different.

I set off for the final tree. The stout trunks of star plum trees made them the simplest fruit to reach in the orchard, but each thin whip of a branch tangled with the others like a spider’s web, making it a battle to pluck the pome without a few bloody scrapes.

Cold fog sliced through the towering aspens like a misty river. It was difficult to see much of anything beyond the towering wooden gates of the village, but I could taste the storm brewing—brine and smoke collided with a bit of fearful sweat.

The Fernwood held the water of the sea too tightly, thick and heavy, so a constant damp hung in the air no matter the season.

Prince Thane the Bold was preparing to wed the princess and heir of Myrda. Stav Guard had traipsed the petty kingdoms and villages for weeks to secure borders for the ceremony.

Skalfirth was their final stop.

The idea of it put Selena, the head cook in the jarl’s household, into a fit of chants and blessings. Before dawn, she tossed a whittled talisman etched in runes of protection around my neck, convinced with the guard on the roads, Draven Dark Watch warriors would be hiding in the wood.

I plucked another plum, inspecting the skin for wormholes or bird bites. A twig snapped in the trees, lifting the hair on my arms. The sound of canvas rustling shifted to the scrape of reed baskets over the wood laths of my cart.

There, rummaging through all the baskets in my once-goat-pulled cart was a man, hooded in a thick, wool cloak.

My jaw set until my teeth ached. He was no ravager, of the clan who followed the feared Skul Drek, a Draven assassin.

Some suspected Skul Drek was behind the death of Melder Fadey.

But this sod didn’t move with the shadows, or perch in the trees to spear his victim like a ravager. He wore a frayed hood, scuffed boots, and loud, feckless rummaging gave him up as a common thief.

Forced to hide the secret in my eyes since childhood, I’d learned how to handle a blade well enough.

From a loop on my belt, I yanked free a small paring knife and let it fly. A heavy thunk startled the thief when the blade dug into the side of the cart. Even Pukki lifted his greedy head to investigate.

In haste, I plucked a discarded plum from the ground and threw it. “Think you can thieve from us?”

A raspy grunt broke from beneath the cowl when the plum struck the side of his hood.

In a delirious sort of frenzy, I picked plum after soggy plum from the grass, and flung them one after the other, drawing closer to the cart with each step. Bruised pomes struck his shoulders, his hips, his legs, leaving cloying streaks of juices and thin flesh across his cloak.

The thief shielded his head with his arms. When he turned, readying to bolt back into the trees, one final plum collided with his brow. A low hiss slid through his teeth.

I yanked on the hilt of my knife, ripping it from the side of the cart, and prepared to slash against the bastard. By the time I whirled around, he’d rushed into the trees.

For a breath, the thief paused by a moss-soaked aspen, watching me. I could not see his eyes beneath his full cowl, but his gaze sliced through my chest like a burning torch held too close until he retreated into the thick of the Fernwood.

With a narrowed glare at Pukki—who did nothing but gnaw on his cud of wildflowers—I made quick work of inspecting the baskets. The steward of House Jakobson was not a man who feared using the rod for mistakes.

There’d been wardens at the young house who thought similarly, but Gammal had always looked out for me, and I was spared a great many lashings by her warnings. Each jarl in differing townships was like a king of their own village. They could decide how their servants were treated, and Jarl Jakobson often turned his gaze from the use of pain, thinking it made stronger folk.

With a few tugs on the twine to secure the baskets, I draped the leather harness over one shoulder and started to bring the cart to the aggravating creature myself until a wheel collided with something in the weeds.

“Damn this day to the hells.” The curse slipped over my tongue as I knelt to clear away the foliage around the wheel.

A smooth, round stone with a weathered notch cracked through the center trapped the cart. I gingerly traced the sigil of a burning ax carved into the rock. An old totem where someone prayed to the Wanderer King.

I feared my curse of craft, but had always reveled in the saga of the first king.

Once a wandering Skald, he stumbled upon a lost maiden. For giving her shelter and his last strip of roasted herring, she revealed herself to be one of the beloved daughters of the god of wisdom.

As gratitude, the wanderer was given the maiden to wed and offered one medium to hold a piece of the gods’ magic that he could use to build up his new kingdom.

The Wanderer King first chose bone, for bones were in no short supply, and soon held the grandest army with bone blades that could not break and armor that fitted like a dozen shields.

There was more to the tale, darker days that followed and brought different veins of magic.

With the violence and madness behind the final tales of the Wanderer, fewer folk still worshipped the first king, but here, in small sea towns or forest villages, totems were plentiful.

As though the soul of the Wanderer King even cared about any of the small, simple lives in the realms of Stìgandr.

I righted one of the baskets, catching sight of a symbol written in water that was fading swiftly.

A simple word the thief left behind, but the sharp sting of fear dug into my bones.

Liar .