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

Chapter 9

9

Lyra

Boots scuffled over the longhouse floor. Sobs of my people split through my chest in an ache that felt like it would never heal—sharp as a shard of steel.

Night mists thickened the nearer we drew to the docks. I stumbled, but Ashwood refused to let me fall, keeping me upright, no matter how much my toes snagged across the pebbled shoreline.

Sconces marked the posts at the docks. The grim light played games with shadows, sprawling haunting shapes across the sails and hulls of the Stonegate longships.

One bitter tear dripped down my cheek when I took in the smooth, ashy stones of the Skalfirth beaches. I looked to the inky night sky bright with crystalline stars, to the crooked points of rooftops, then to Thorian’s battered fishing nets. Hillsides and trees loomed around me like haunts in the darkness, watching as the village was torn apart.

“Lyra! Kael!” Selena sobbed on the path leading to the docks. The Stav Guard shoved her back into the crowds.

“Sel.” My voice was a broken croak, too soft for her to hear.

Doubtless Selena took note of the wretched way my features contorted in fear, in pain, for she pressed a hand to her heart and did the same. She fell to her knees, pleading to the gods, who ignored us.

“You heartless bastard,” I seethed at Roark.

The Sentry spun me around, pinning me to his chest. We were close enough, I had to tilt my head back to meet his stare. One of his palms cupped the back of my neck, squeezing until I stiffened beneath the grip.

For a drawn-out pause he held us there, nose to nose, then slowly pressed a finger to his lips. A command to keep silent and there was no mistaking the threat in it. His patience was spent.

Two longships bobbed in the tides. Clinker-built hulls bulged in the middle and were painted in the seal of Stonegate—a white wolf’s head in front of a round shield and sword.

Most ships in the Skalfirth fjord came for trade, fishing, or passengers, and were fitted for only fifteen to twenty oars. These ships were built for battle and had places for sixty oarsmen.

My toe caught on the lip of the rail, but Roark caught hold of my hand.

I despised how warm his palm was against mine. There was an unwelcome gentility in the way he helped me over the rail of one longship, and I hated him all the more for it. Bruise me, batter me, be the creature I believed him to be. Kindness had no place in his actions.

When my feet were firmly planted inside the ship, I glared at Ashwood on the dock.

This was done under his command. Baldur shouted the orders, but the Sentry was to blame.

Another shoulder struck mine. Hilda, trembling and tearful, was shoved next to me. On the shore, Gisli, her husband, fell to his knees, a palm to his heart, like it might be breaking free of his chest.

This was wrong. Hilda had done nothing but carry bone craft in her blood.

Because of me, families were being ripped apart.

We did not know each other well. Hilda came from farmers, a loving home. Most of our interactions were had in the market and when the jarl offered the great hall for her wedding. Still, almost on instinct, she curled an arm around my shoulders, tucking me close against her side, no thought for the difference in our height, me standing half a head taller.

“Steady now, Lyra.” Her voice cracked.

“Hilda, I’m so—”

“Hush,” she said. “Not now. We need to keep our heads.”

Edvin took up a place beside us. He took his sister’s hand, but turned the pain in his eyes to the shore. The wife he adored, the three children he cherished, all huddled on the water’s edge, broken and downtrod.

They would be forced to go on without a husband and father.

The Stonegate bone crafter materialized through the crowd of returning guards. She led the two men who carried Kael on a fur mat between them.

“In the center,” she said, nodding as the two men placed Kael beside me and Hilda.

My hands fell to his chest, seeking the slow thrum of his heartbeat. Blood still stained his tunic, his shoulders were bruised and pulpy from the attack, but he was alive.

I curled my fingers around Kael’s tunic, hardly noticing the shouts to take to the wind, the commands for oarsmen to take their places.

Through the blur of tears, the last sight I took from my home was of the fierce, unfeeling eyes of Roark Ashwood as he stepped onto the same deck—pain and suffering in his wake.

Kael burned in a fever the deeper we went out into the short sea between Skalfirth and the hills of the royal keep. Black night cloaked all sides of the longships and only the steady dip of oars into the surface and lap of tides against the hulls were heard. The air was chilled, but Kael shivered like an early frost coated the sea.

With the help of Hilda, we draped him in any Stav cloaks that had been shed. I kept my arms wrapped around his shoulders, holding him close. When his fingers curled around my wrist, I grinned and pressed a kiss to the top of his sweaty head.

He was alive. He knew we were there.

Deep in the night, his groans grew louder, and the bone crafter from the great hall maneuvered to our sides.

“Get back.” I tightened my hold on Kael’s shoulders.

The woman shook her head like I was some sort of insufferable child. In her palms was a clay bowl filled with herb paste. The concoction smelled of damp bark and a bit of clove.

With two fingers she painted the pulse points of Kael’s skin.

While she worked, she hummed a tune, a comforting song of old lore: Kveea vie min móreir. Skip búask ok á morgun. Ek sigla til min fol?g.

My throat tightened. From within the haze of a memory, the same gentle song lulled me off to sleep while slender fingers stroked my hair. Gammal sang it in the young house. Selena sang it while she baked.

To hear it from a Draven, an enemy I was raised to mistrust and despise, added a connection I did not want, a connection I resented, as though she’d stolen yet another thing.

“What is it you use on him?” I asked once her hands reached Kael’s throat.

“Ortl?k.” Her eyes were like a sapphire sky, brilliant and fierce all at once. She couldn’t have been much older than me, but there was a hardness in her features, like she’d already lived three lifetimes.

“I don’t know of it.”

“Most don’t.” She hummed for a few more breaths, caking the herbs over Kael’s brow. “It is an old tonic made by my grandmother.”

“Draven made.”

She ignored the bite in my tone and nodded. “Craft does not have all the power. Sometimes our greatest gifts are found all around us in the water, the soil, the trees. This uses a moss that grows on the underside of logs. It seals wounds, reduces the chills of fever, and even extracts toxins from the blood.”

I arched a brow, intrigued but furious enough to feign indifference.

The woman barreled on with her explanation as though her own concoction fascinated her. “Much like firevine and rosewood burn toxic in crafter veins, this moss is amplified. I found it heals a great many ailments for our folk.”

“ Our folk.” I snorted and looked to the empty sea. “You are Draven and nearly killed him. You’re not ours.”

“Not the first I’ve heard those words.” Her palms stilled. “I am born of both worlds and rejected for it. Because of this, I had to find my place and learn my craft. You will need to do the same. By using your craft to save him, the strength of it will grow. It is like it has awakened, and will flow in your blood. Should your craft go dormant again, it will fester.”

“Why should I believe you?”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t believe me. Believe the burn you felt when you touched that soul bone. Speak true: you felt a power unlike anything before.”

I looked away, refusing to admit the truth.

The woman sighed. “I learned my craft well, Melder. Stonegate can help in that way. Be grateful it was me in the great hall. Darkwin would not have gone to Salur under my hand.” With that, she stood and handed me the pouch. “If his fever remains, add more once the first layer has gone dry.”

With each step she took toward the stempost, she sang the somber lines of the song— at gafa skugga maer…

I blinked against the sting in my eyes, from the sea spray or something else, I didn’t know. Softly, I murmured the final line in time with the Draven bone crafter, as though we were more alike than different for a moment, Min sála, min sála . My soul.

It was harrowing and true. Soon Stonegate would own not only my life, but my very soul.

“Crafters, pay attention.” At the dawn, the bone crafter stood a few paces from the stempost. Her braids looked silver in the early threads of morning.

The second ship was spotted in the mists, distant from ours, but remained the only other sight. No land. No villages. Only Stonegate lay ahead.

Roark leaned against the coiled neck of the sea serpent stempost, arms folded over his chest, and faced the inner ship.

With my focus on Kael most of the night, I’d hardly taken note of the Sentry. Now he was a wash of somber, wretched beauty. Something cruel and hard, save the few moments of interaction he had with the Draven woman.

When she spoke to the Sentry, his features softened. The longer she whispered to him, the less tension seemed to stack on his taut body.

She mattered to him.

A lover, perhaps? I shuddered to think any sort could love a man like Roark Ashwood. Hate her as I did for the pain she’d caused Kael, the bone crafter had healed his fever. Without her rancid herbs, Kael might’ve faded from the infection and wounds.

“We will reach the shores of Stonegate by the morrow’s nightfall,” she announced, turning her back on Ashwood…as he turned to me.

The weight of his gaze spread an unnerving heat up my arms. A dozen stinging thorns on my skin. I kept my focus trained on the distant sea mists.

“The fortress is in the hills and will be reached by foot,” she said. “Until then, you are under the watch and protection of Sentry Ashwood.”

“We view protection as vastly different things, then.” A low rasp jolted my heart.

My arms had long gone numb, locked in place around Kael’s shoulders, but I shifted to peer at his face. He cracked one eye, and a weak smirk played in the corner of his mouth.

“Gods.” The word slid over my tongue in a kind of plea. I hugged his back to my chest and practically throttled him from behind. “I think I hate you, Kael Darkwin. Don’t you dare come so close to dying again.”

“As you say.” He let out a soft chuckle and gingerly rubbed my forearm around his chest.

A cinch of guilt tugged in my belly. “Kael, if I knew they planned to hurt you, I would never have argued with the Fox. Baldur knew what I was, and I…I tried to keep the lie too long.”

“Don’t.” Kael squeezed my arm. “It isn’t on you. I promised to keep your lies, and death isn’t a sturdy enough threat to change that.”

I rested my cheek on his brow, listening as the bone crafter went on with her instructions.

“You may know me as Emi Nightlark,” the Stav Guard said.

Draven clans took odd surnames. Ashwood. Nightlark. Thorian explained to me that every Draven young one took a piece of the earth in their names—from the wood, the plants, the sea, the creatures—as a way to keep their souls connected to the wildlands where they lived.

Emi cleared her throat and went on, “I have lived in Stonegate since my fourteenth summer, and I understand what it is like to sit where you are.” She hesitated. “So take my words and know it is not so dreary. This is not the end of your life, but there are expectations to remain safe within the gates.”

“Nightlark isn’t horrid, Ly,” Kael said, hoarse and strained. “I met her, sparred with her. She did this under a direct command.”

“She should have refused the command.”

“Lyra.” Kael sighed. “If not Emi, it would’ve been a blade from Captain Baldur. She even whispered to me before she used her craft that she would not let me die.”

My anger at Ashwood, at Stonegate, at my own magic made it impossible to have a glimmer of appreciation for the woman. Kael and his endless optimism softened the disdain, but still I did not understand how another crafter could stand watch as families were torn apart.

There were means of surviving, then there were acts so vicious it would be better to die before committing them.

Emi described the trek to the gates. It would take long enough we would make camp in the wood before reaching the keep. From there we would be brought before the king.

A simple life, a purposeful life, that was how Emi described our new futures. Like all this was fated to be.

“For our journey,” Emi went on, “you will be expected to learn a few hand signals Sentry Ashwood will use often.”

Roark narrowed his eyes, but didn’t move, merely took us in like he could not decide if we’d be better off in chains or drowned at the bottom of the sea.

Emi held up her palms, slowly moving through a few commands Roark might use on our journey and expected us to recognize.

To ask us if we were in need of aid, he would cup his palms and draw them toward us like a supplicant seeking food or coin. To signal an approaching fight or for us to take up blades, we’d watch for crossed wrists.

To claim something as his—a strike, a kill, a horn of ale—Ashwood tapped whatever he wanted three times.

Should a threat arise or danger grow close, Ashwood would pound one fist over the top of the other, then signal a count of how many threats we faced by tapping two fingers until we calculated the full amount.

“One tap signals there could be up to two assailants.” Emi demonstrated on her own wrist. “Three taps means three or more. Understood? Naturally, if there are threats such as beasts or falling stone, I hope you all have enough wits to run without being told.”

Herb bread and a few strips of dried herring and berries were passed about for a simple meal. Emi took the morning to guide us through more of Ashwood’s commands, all while he kept his back to us, his focus on the sea.

I mimicked each gesture by my side; I watched every simple movement Roark made.

The man was not born of this land, yet he’d earned the trust of a king and the prince. Without the bark of captains or warriors, Ashwood could still bring a hush to a room, he could command the attention and respect of his men.

He was powerful and would not be a simple foe to defeat.

“You have not blinked once, Ly.” Kael pulled himself up to sitting, back against the mast. “Do Ashwood’s hands fascinate you for reasons I don’t yet know?”

I rolled my eyes. “Emi taught us basic commands, but nothing to know his true words. I want to know what he says when he thinks we cannot understand.”

“Why?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know. I simply need to understand him.”

The more I knew of the fiercest warrior of Stonegate, the more I had to believe I could find weaknesses in the walls. The more I had to believe I could get us free.

“When he speaks, I ask the woman Stav what it means.”

“Making nice with Stav Nightlark?”

I snorted with a touch of derision. “Never, but she knows the Sentry enough to speak with him often, and she seems interested in earning my forgiveness for what she did to you.”

Kael rolled his eyes. “Always scheming, aren’t you, Súlka Bien?”

I ignored the jab and showed him a few subtle gestures with my fingers. “I’ve already learned more than the basic commands.”

“You’re picking up hand speak swiftly.”

“Must be my craft. When I melded the shard into you, I could practically see the bones.” The truth of the eerie phantom in the shadows died on my tongue. How would I explain such a thing without sounding like my magic had brought about an unnerving delusion? “Perhaps that is how I’m learning his words. I’m memorizing the movement of his bones, like I can see them.”

I moved my hands in a new gesture Ashwood signaled to a nearby Stav Guard. In the next breath, the guard went through the unit, delivering orders for disembarking and making camp. The signal must’ve meant something about organizing the guard.

I blamed my craft, but there was something more, a pull toward Roark Ashwood that burned the words of his language into my mind. Like my own magic needed me to unravel anything about the man, and I could not help but want to learn the secrets he kept beneath his mask of cruelty.

“What if he’s merely flicking at a pest near his ear?” Kael closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the misty sun. “You might be memorizing nothing.”

I snorted a laugh. “Then I will learn it soon enough.”

“You really think a man like Roark Ashwood will be so careless with his words?”

“I think a man like him underestimates those of us who have been forced to hide to survive.”

“Lyra,” Kael began, voice low. “Don’t be foolish. Melder Fadey was constantly threatened by symbols and missives sent by commanders of the Dark Watch. The Draven army is known for spreading pieces of their victims across the Red Ravines. I don’t want them to even breathe your name. Perhaps you should not fight this so fiercely. You might come to need his protection.”

I picked at a few slivers in the damp laths. “How can you not see this as a betrayal? You’ve admired the Stav Guard—admired Ashwood —for seasons, now look what they’ve done to you.” When he didn’t answer, I pulled my knees against my chest and propped my elbows on the tops to press my fists into my brow. “How can you stand it?”

A muscle ticked in Kael’s jaw. “Because I am loyal to Jorvandal, but…I am also loyal to you.”

We were silent for a long moment before I whispered a question for which I was not certain I wanted an answer. “Why would Vella want me dead?”

“I don’t know, Ly. I never knew what Fadey’s role was at Stonegate to bring such hatred for melding craft.” With a wince, he pressed his hand to his side, and glanced over his shoulder before speaking. “For what she did, I do not mourn her death.”

Damn this man. I kissed his brow.

Kael coughed through a groan and pressed a palm against his bandaged ribs, then looked to the stars again. “I believe Vella was manipulated to fear you by the Dravens. They despise Prince Thane’s union with the princess of Myrda. And they despise that craft is strongest in Stonegate. King Damir has the power of melders and the support of the Myrdan king, and the Dravens want to take it all.”

I rubbed the ache above my brow. “If Stonegate and King Damir are honorable, then why does no one truly know what goes on with a melder? Why are we forced to serve the king?”

“I don’t know.” Kael rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “What I do know is when we reach Stonegate we must choose who we trust with care. This betrothal brings whispers of war, Ly. And the king will want our craft to be at the center of it.”