Nettle & Bone(66)

“I know,” said the dust-wife. “I know.”

“She can’t have realized—she must not have understood!”

“She understood.”

“Was she scared? Did she not believe us?”

“Maybe,” said the dust-wife. “But more likely she simply did not want him destroyed.”

“You cannot help people who do not want help,” rumbled Fenris. “You can’t force someone to do what you think is best for them.” He paused, then added, somewhat reluctantly, “Well, you can. But they don’t appreciate it and most of the time it turns out that you were wrong.”

“But—”

“We can only save people who want to be saved,” said the dust-wife. “If it’s still bothering you, we’ll come back afterward, assuming any of us are alive to do so. But we are out of time.”

Marra clutched Bonedog’s collar and shut up.

It was a long way to the quarry. The shadows got longer and then pooled together, deep blue on the white walls of the city. Marra kept looking up, to the palace, where her sister and her newborn nephew waited.

She bore an heir. After the christening, Kania’s life will mean nothing to the prince.

No, no, surely not. Children die too easily; he’ll wait until he has another one, won’t he? Surely? It would be the sensible thing to do.

Why do you expect a man who tortures his wife to be sensible?

Marra gripped her temples. Concerned, Fenris reached over and took Bonedog’s leash. “Are you all right?”

“No, but I’ll manage.”

It was dark when they left the city. No guards stopped them. This was the poorest quarter, where you lived because you could not afford better. No one cared who went in or out. Rats and alley cats watched them, and children with eyes like alley cats, but no one else.

For a moment, looking down into the quarry, Marra thought that she was looking back into the bone pit in the blistered land. The white stone was the color of moonlit bones and the chunks of abandoned rock looked unpleasantly like skulls. Her brain sang that it had all been a long, impossible dream and now she was back at the beginning with everything still to do again. Her foot slipped on the edge of the slope and Fenris reached out to steady her.

“I’m fine,” she muttered. “It’s nothing.” Her head was still full of Miss Margaret clinging to the puppet and probably it was no wonder that she was a bit vague right now. Also you’re about to enter the cursed palace of the dead. That tends to have an impact on your nerves.

She wondered what Mordecai had thought, standing at the swamps at last, and whether the poison worm had been right there in front of him or if he’d had to go wandering through the swamp trying to locate it. They still didn’t have a map. She had the ruined fragment of the godmother’s tapestry, but unless it started glowing or talking, it didn’t seem like it was going to do any good. Another of life’s little intelligence tests, and as usual, Marra had failed to even learn the question.

The entry to the palace was halfway down the slope, but a good road had been built to it once. Even though it was long abandoned and had corrugated with neglect, it was still stable underfoot. They approached the entryway three abreast, while Fenris walked behind with his hand on Bonedog’s leash.

The paleness of the stone continued inside the passage, which meant that the iron bars stood out like bands of shadow. Marra wondered how they were supposed to break them down. There were no keys or gates. No one had expected this way to come into use again.

The dust-wife tapped her nail against each of the bars in turn, then grunted. She muttered a few words under her breath, lifted her staff, and cracked the end across the iron, which promptly shattered.

Marra gasped. The dust-wife cackled. So did the hen. She smacked the next bar and the next, and each one shattered like a black icicle.

“Is that magic?” breathed Marra. “Can you do that to the guards’ swords?”

“Of a sort,” said the dust-wife. “And I suppose I could, if you can get me the swords at least a day beforehand.”

“She did something to them last night,” murmured Fenris. “Rubbed them with grit and then poured a little vial over them.” Marra stifled a sigh. Magic never seemed to be much use at doing the things you wanted done in a reasonable time frame.

They stepped over the broken teeth of the bars and into the passageway. Fenris wrapped Bonedog’s leash around his wrist and took a candle from his pack. The dust-wife pulled something from her many pockets, said two sharp words, and moonlight blossomed under her hands.

“Is that the moon in a jar?” asked Marra, feeling a pang of recognition.

“Only a little of it. It won’t mind. The moon loves things like this.” She hung the little vial of moonlight from her staff. The brown hen cast a molten shadow on the ceiling, crowned with horns.

“So that bird really is a demon,” said Fenris, eyeing the shadow.

“Of course she is. Why would I lie about something that ridiculous?”

The light revealed carved words overhead. Marra pointed upward. “What do those say?”

“Curses against graverobbers. Threats to tear your soul out and sentence you to wander for all eternity—that sort of thing.”

“Should we be worried?”

“No, it’s the usual grandstanding.” The dust-wife sniffed. “Although I wouldn’t rob any graves, just in case.”