Chapter Twenty-Four
The Ladder
‘To secure the end of a hand-stitched seam or close a loop, the ladder stitch is a practical choice. The seamstress guides the needle through the final looped stitch and pulls taut before cutting.’
—An Exhaustive Compendium of Stitches
Most of the dust had settled as we started our descent, and the sky was bruised with a slow and merciless dawn that cast dim light over Mirthwater’s broken skyline.
The silence here was a fragile thing, stretched thin over the wreckage of a kingdom still teetering on the edge of collapse.
From above, we could see the snaking line of destruction where the catacombs had caved in.
I hoped that most of the people had managed to get away in time.
The palace was untouched, its thousand windows reflecting the morning.
The bone bird landed carefully in the courtyard inside its walls with a clatter, making its eerie, hollow cry that sounded like stones knocking together.
Guards had rushed out upon seeing something land on the ornate tiled path, but I doubt they had expected a giant skeletal bird, and they stopped in their tracks.
“A dragon!” yelled one. I rolled my eyes.
They knelt and leveled their spears at us. I was wondering if I would have to fight the king’s guard now, and how exactly I was planning to do that, when Patrick sighed behind me and climbed laboriously down from the spine.
When he hit the ground, I thought for a moment he was going to prostrate himself and kiss it—his face was very green—but instead he held out his hands, palms forward in a gesture of peace.
“Ban Foley,” said one of the guards, relaxing his stance. The others glanced at their fellow sidelong, but dipped the heads of their weapons a little.
“I need to speak to the king,” he said. “At once.”
No matter how I felt about Patrick on any given day, I had to admit that, however irritating he could be, he did have a commanding presence when he chose to. The guards leapt to attention, despite the fact that his clothes were torn, and he was covered in blood and dust.
“Your wound,” I said. “You should get that tended to before you speak to the king.”
“It looks worse than it is,” he said. “Honestly.”
I eyed him skeptically. “Are you trying to impress me by being stoic?”
“A little. Is it working?”
“No. Go and clean up.”
“All right.”
He gave me a lopsided smile. His eyes were shadowed with petals of fatigue, and the skin around his lips was faintly blue.
I felt he was worse off than he was letting on, and I was glad to see him stride into the palace, his gait only a little shaky.
I felt a little shaky myself as I dismounted the bone bird.
I patted one of its ribs, and it swung its immense head around to nudge me in a friendly sort of way. I didn’t quite know what to do with it.
An ostler hovered nearby. “Should I … should I take it to the stables, my lady?” he quavered, eyeing it apprehensively.
That was a thought. I suppressed a chuckle at the idea of my enormous skeletal mount happily munching on hay in a stall next to the king’s horses. I couldn’t imagine they would be too fond of the idea, even if the bone bird would fit in a stable.
“No, it’ll be all right here,” I said, hoping I was right. I supposed I could have dismantled it again, but something about the immense, empty eye sockets looked plaintive, pleading, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Besides, Baldbeak seemed to be getting attached.
I rubbed its bone beak. “You can fly up to the roof if you like,” I whispered.
It seemed to understand me, spreading out its wings with a sound like gravel crunching under carriage wheels, and launched itself into the air.
The ostler almost fell over backwards watching it take off.
It made two lazy, curving swoops upwards, and settled itself on the crenellations overhead, grooming its nonexistent chest feathers with its beak.
“Baldbeak, can you go with it?” I said. “To make sure it’s safe.”
Which seemed like a ridiculous thing to say about a magical entity the size of a small house, but the bone bird had only been in existence for an hour, and I worried it might not know how to act like a bird if I wasn’t on its back directing it.
Or that it might fly away. The city of Mirthwater had been through enough in one night, and it didn’t need to be terrorized further.
Of course, said Baldbeak, giving me a friendly nip. He flew after the bone bird. From down in the courtyard, it looked like he was admonishing it about something. The bone bird hung its head, looking chastened.
I left them both to their bird business and made my way to the palace entrance.
The guards, clearly feeling they needed to do something useful if I didn’t require them to slay a dragon, lined up to let me pass as if I were a visiting dignitary.
I entered the palace filthy, bedraggled, and twitching with the force of magic that threatened to burst from my skin … and saw Mieka running towards me.
“Mieka!” I hugged her tightly. Her curls tickled my nose.
“Where’s your bird?” she said into my ear.
“On the roof. With another bird. It’s a long story.”
“I found a friend of yours,” she said.
The Book Man appeared behind her, smiling. He was very thin, and his new spectacles were plain silver rather than red. His blue eyes, however, enormous behind the glass, were just the same. I released Mieka and embraced him.
“You made it here safely,” I cried happily.
“We need to get you cleaned up,” said Mieka, taking me in, head to foot. “What have you been doing?”
I gave a laugh that was almost a sob.
“Tell us later,” she said.
Mieka went with me to my rooms and then left me alone to bathe and change.
The maid had readied a bath before the fire, and I sank completely under the bubbling surface of it, feeling my Hair coil softly about me.
The water cradled me and made me feel held somehow, contained—less likely to come apart from the force of the magic pressing against my skin.
I lingered there for a long time before I finally stepped out and dressed.
I called the maid and asked for sewing supplies, then sat cross-legged on the bed, hoping to calm my mind at least a little, but the bone needle I had selected flashed white-hot in my hand, burning me.
I yelped and dropped it on the bed, where it lay sleek as a little snake and somehow just as threatening.
I had felt the power surge to my fingertips. They hummed with it. My Hair stood out from my scalp, charged and fizzing as a storm cloud. I wrapped my arms around myself, tucking my hands under my armpits to ease the pain and buzzing. This new power would take some getting used to.
There was a knock at the door, and Mieka poked her head around. “Can I come in?”
I nodded. She crossed the room and sat on the bed beside me, legs curled up. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, still hugging myself.
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
I told her, as best I could. When I had finished, she stared at me.
“So where did it go?” she said. “The bone magic, I mean. Is it gone again? Or sleeping, or …”
“It’s in me. I think,” I said.
“In you?” She stared at me as if expecting my skeleton to slip free from my skin and start dancing a jig.
“I offered it … a sort of partnership.”
“Is that … something you can do? With magic?”
“Apparently so.”
“So is it … I mean, can it talk? Bargain?”
“No, not exactly. Perhaps a little, in the way Baldbeak can with his mind-pictures. But it desperately wants to live. I offered it another way. A less destructive way.” My Hair curled about me as I crossed my arms over my chest, still feeling the bright surge of it inside.
“I don’t know if I can control it at all, or even live with it.
I’m hoping … that I will find out how. Mother made me from it, with it, after all.
It has always been part of me. Now it’s just … more.”
“Made you from it?”
“Yes. I never had a father, it turns out. She made me with a spell. She carried me in her womb, birthed me the usual way—as far as I know—but I was never really a person. Not like other people.”
“Netta,” Mieka said gently. “You are a person.”
“My whole life,” I said slowly, “I thought I was a disappointment to her. That she loved me despite, not because of. That she wanted a different sort of daughter. But she didn’t want a daughter at all. I was … raw material. Like her paper and ink. She was just waiting to use me.”
Mieka took my hand. “But you are more than that.”
“Am I? I am only half a human, after all.”
Mieka shrugged. “And what makes a human? I never knew my mother. Perhaps she was a magical entity, too. Or a murderer. Or a sentient vase of flowers. It doesn’t matter. I am who I am. And so are you.”
I nodded, looking down. “I hope so. And I hope I can … stay me. I don’t know if I can. I am going to try.”
She was still holding my hand. “You can stay with me and Zlata and the rest of us. Until you decide what you want to do.”
“Thank you.”
“No criminal activity required. Unless you want some. Would you like some criminal activity?”
I smiled a little. “I appreciate that. But I think I’m going to go back to the Tower.”
“To the Tower? Where you lived with your mother? But why?”
I shrugged. “I want to see it again, now that I know … everything. And all of Mother’s work is there—all her research on bone magic. Two decades’ worth of it. If I am to understand exactly what I’ve got myself into, I need to start studying.”
“But …” She paused, as if not sure how to proceed delicately.
“I can’t read, I know. I have some ideas about how to get around that.”
“All right. I suppose I understand. But we’re always there, if you need us.”
I swallowed. “Thank you.”
She drummed her fingers on the bed. “Are you sure you’re not just leaving because of—”
“No,” I said, too quickly.
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“I knew what you were going to say. And no, it’s not just because of Patrick.”
“He came to find you. He was distraught when you left.”