Nettle & Bone(61)

Agnes gave her a worried look. “I don’t think the spell would let her. I think she already did as much as she could.”

Marra took out the butchered chunk of tapestry. Another few strands had come loose. It was agonizing to look at, like an open wound. “She said she could give me this, because I didn’t know what it was.”

The dust-wife looked it over but shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. It isn’t any kind of magic, or if it is, I can’t sense it. I don’t know why she gave it to you, but presumably she had a reason.”

Marra stared at it, trying to make sense of the pattern. Nothing came to her. She leaned her head back against the wall. Fenris had sat down opposite her, trying to minimize the amount of space he took up in the tiny room. Bonedog was half under the table, his illusionary tongue hanging out. Finder the chick had wandered down to sit between his paws, apparently napping.

Bonedog freed from the pit of bones. Fenris freed from the goblin market. Finder freed from a pen in the market. Everywhere we go, we set things free, and we’re trying to free Kania from Vorling …

“Could we free her?” asked Marra. “The godmother?”

“The king who bound her is long dead,” said Agnes. “I don’t—”

She stopped. Her eyes went round. She looked at Marra and Marra felt the same idea strike her all at once, a shared moment of realization. The king is dead.

Slowly, holding the thought in her head as delicately as an egg, Marra turned to the dust-wife. “The dead kings live in a palace of dust below the living palace,” she said. She remembered the billow of tapestries, and the maid telling her about the maze beneath the palace. She’d seen it herself, however briefly, hadn’t she? She remembered the stone underfoot and staring at the back of Kania’s dress, trying not to get lost in the dark. “They’re all there. Can you find the king who bound the godmother? Find him and make him let her go?”

The dust-wife drummed her fingers on her knee. “I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s find out.”



* * *



“Three sets of iron doors and a portcullis, each of which requires teams of draft horses to move,” said Fenris grimly. “That’s leaving aside the honor guard and the fact that it’s on the main square opposite the living palace, where anybody can see us trying to get in.”

Fenris had spent two days lurking outside the palace, scouting the main entrance to the palace of dust, occasionally with help from Agnes and the dust-wife, sans chicken. Marra couldn’t go in case she was recognized, but she remembered the place well enough. When members of the royal family were interred, the horses wore black caparisons and were blessed by the priests of seven temples. Marra remembered the solemn pacing of the great beasts as her niece’s coffin was carried through the iron doors, the thudding of drums.

“There must be a way in that doesn’t require horses,” said Marra. “People have to go in first to prep the tomb. You couldn’t get a bunch of horses in every single time.”

“It’s theater,” said Agnes.

Fenris looked puzzled, but Marra nodded. “Yes, exactly. A royal funeral is like a wedding. And the christening is the same way. You need set dressing and staging and schedules. Horses don’t just show up spontaneously in the right outfits and march.”

Fenris considered this. “I suppose you’re correct. Though it is not work I had considered. The coronations I have overseen mostly involved getting someone to a point of being crowned. Actually setting up the feasts and the clothes and the priests was someone else’s problem.”

Marra thought privately that it was probably mostly a woman’s problem, but at least Fenris was acknowledging it was work.

“So there must be a way to get in and out of the tomb,” said Agnes. “Without all the horses.”

“It might be inside the palace, though,” said Marra. While she was reasonably confident that no one would recognize her in the city, going into the palace itself seemed like tempting fate.

“It’s a tomb,” said the dust-wife. “There are always entrances. If they are hollowing out new areas, or building new rooms, there must be an entrance for masons that does not involve tracking brick dust through the palace.”

“Do the dead know?” asked Fenris.

The dust-wife rolled her eyes. “The dead are already there. They don’t worry about how to get in and out. They’re corpses, not cat burglars.”

Fenris leaned back, tapping his thumb against his lower lip. “Bricks. Hmm. Could there be a quarry? Or an entrance from a quarry? How can we find out?”

“Put out that you want work as a stonemason,” said Agnes.

“A stonemason?” He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know the first thing about stone.”

“Take off your shirt,” said the dust-wife, poking Fenris with her staff, “and I suspect you won’t have nearly as much trouble as you think.”



* * *



In the end, Fenris did not have to take off his shirt. Apparently he was sufficiently well muscled that no one questioned a history of chiseling stones into shape. (Marra tried not to act disappointed. Agnes didn’t even bother to try.) He came back from his first day, drenched in sweat and covered in white dust, and went immediately to the well to dump water over his head. (“Almost as good,” said Agnes, elbowing Marra. The dust-wife’s chicken cackled.)