Nettle & Bone(64)



Agnes cleared her throat.

“I can get in,” she said.

“What?”

“How?”

“I’m a godmother,” said Agnes.

All three of them looked at her blankly.

“I know I wasn’t invited,” said Agnes. “That’s the point.”

“Eh?”

She smiled gently, that tiny, frazzled woman. “There’s only one story about godmothers that’s always true. Bad things happen if you don’t invite us to the christening.”



* * *



“Try to sleep,” said the dust-wife. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I suspect we’ll be glad to be well rested for it. We’ll go tomorrow night.”

“What about Miss Margaret?” asked Marra. “Don’t we have to…?” She trailed off, gesturing at her throat.

“Oh, that. Yes. We’ll offer before we go.”

Marra tried to sleep that night and couldn’t. She tossed and turned, her mind roiling. Agnes thought that she could do … something … at the christening. The dust-wife seemed to agree. Marra would have been much happier if she knew what, but Agnes had waved her hands and said that if it didn’t work, it would be better if nobody worried, and the dust-wife just folded her arms and said that Marra had come to her for help, not an education in magic. “Free the godmother and the protections go away,” she said. “That’s all you need to know. And once the protections are gone, there are a thousand magics that can … rectify … the situation.”

“You can’t tell me more?”

“The less you know, the less you can spill when you talk to your sister about getting us into the palace. You’re a terrible liar, Marra. You look as if you’re afraid the universe is ashamed of you.”

Marra didn’t want to accept this, but the dust-wife locked the door to the bedroom and left her to toss in bed and fail to sleep. Her sister had given birth. They were going to the palace of the dead. Her sister had given birth to a boy. Kania’s life was in terrible danger and if she died, she would be buried in one of the tombs underground, next to Vorling’s tomb, and she would have to stand next to him for eternity. Could ghosts torment one another? Would Vorling’s bones creep from his sarcophagus and hammer on the lid of Kania’s coffin?

Oh gods and saints, she thought, rolling over and burying her face in the pillow. Oh. Let them only be empty bones.

“I never could sleep the night before a battle,” said Fenris.

Marra turned to face him, even though she couldn’t see. “Is this going to be a battle?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what to expect. It might be. Or maybe we’ll just wander around in the dark for a while and the dust-wife will wave her hands and it will all be over.”

Marra shook her head, forgetting he couldn’t see her in the dark. “I doubt it. Whenever I go anywhere with her, something terrible and magical happens and then I wish it hadn’t.”

“I had noticed something of the sort, yes.”

“I suppose that’s still better than a battle.”

“Mm.” She could picture his expression, the way his lips would be twisting at one corner as he considered this. “Battles are terrible, but they’re also comprehensible. You know what you’re doing. Well … all right, that’s not entirely true. You know what you’re supposed to be doing. There’s a lot of yelling and hitting things and then you look up and it’s over. But once you’ve been through a few of them, you know more or less how things go. Magic, though … I don’t know how it’s supposed to work or why.”

Fenris paused for so long that Marra wondered if he had fallen asleep. Then he said, “I was never so frightened as when we were leaving the goblin market. If you had not led me out, I would still be hiding in a corner there, hoping that everything would go away.”

Marra blinked up at the darkness. “I didn’t lead you out. We went together. I leaned on you for half of it.”

He chuckled softly. “That’s not how I remember it. I remember you holding my arm. You were very calm and very brave, even though you’d just had someone yank your tooth out.”

The Toothdancer. Marra shuddered. “I didn’t feel calm or brave.”

“You hid it well.”

It was easier to talk in the dark, somehow. Marra took a deep breath. “I don’t feel brave now. I feel frustrated. I want to run in and drag Kania away from that monster, but I can’t. If you hadn’t found the way into the tombs tonight, I would probably have done something foolish.”

“So long as you take me with you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t get killed for my foolishness.”

“I have been resigned to dying for a long time.”

“Fenris…”

“No, no, don’t sound stricken. What else am I good for now? You gave me something useful to do with my death. I will be grateful forever.”

“No dying,” said Marra angrily. “I don’t want you to die! I want you to live to a ripe, old age so that I can say, ‘Hey, Fenris, remember the time we went into a horrible catacomb and the dust-wife said something cryptic and Agnes waved a baby chicken at us,’ and you say, ‘Of course I remember,’ and I don’t have to try to explain to someone who wasn’t there.”

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