Nettle & Bone(80)

“True. Nevertheless, if you are seen as soft on your husband’s killer…”

Kania stared down at her son. It occurred to Marra that she did not even know the child’s name. They had arrived too late to the christening for such niceties.

“I hated him so much,” she said softly. “So much, and for so long. I thought if he died, it would feel like a great weight off my shoulders, and yet I am just as weighed down as I was. Is he really dead? Is this truly happening?”

“It is,” said her mother.

Kania gave a single dry sob, startling the infant king, who began to cry.

“You did so good,” said Marra. “You did. All that with the lords and the generals and you even convinced people I wasn’t part of it. I couldn’t believe it.”

The sob had a laugh at the bottom this time. “Oh yes,” Kania said. “Oh yes, that part I knew. I’ve been running it through in my head for years, what I’d do if he miraculously died. I had every possible scenario memorized. It’s only now that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do it sooner,” said Marra helplessly. “I’m sorry. Everything took so long to do and … and…”

She tried to explain. She got as far as Bonedog and began to cry and Kania also began to cry and their mother put an arm around each of them and held her daughters as if they were all much younger.

“I’ll help you,” her mother said. “I’ll help as much as I can. I can’t stay for terribly long, but grandmothers are allowed some time to dote on their grandchildren, and we’ll go through all the details while I’m here. There may be angles that you can find to keep the rest of the courtiers from seizing power.”

Kania wiped her eyes. “I wish Damia were here,” she said. “I wish she could have known that it got fixed. That there was justice.”

Marra gulped. Her eyes and nose were streaming and she wiped them on her sleeve. Justice seemed so little, so late. Kania had suffered for long years and the godmother for long centuries. The Northern kings had left scars on time. Even the thief-wheel still roaming the halls, even the furious ghost daughter …

I was buried alive to hide their shame.

She looked up. An idea had come to her, as terrible in its way as the very first idea had been, the one that had set her on the road to kill a prince and curse a kingdom.

“I know how to save Fenris.”





Chapter 22


The funeral of King Vorling was small by the Northern Kingdom’s standards. He had reigned for less than half a year and barely any preparations had been made on his tomb. His wife, the new queen regent, said that her husband would have preferred the wealth be spent on strengthening the kingdom’s defenses, as they were clearly targets of an enemy who might strike again, whatever ridiculous tale the Hardishman assassin had spun about a dust-wife and a goblin market and a geas. Diplomats had been dispatched to Hardack to demand answers, but no one was optimistic. There was sorcery afoot.

Perhaps the nobles might have been worried, with a foreign woman on the throne, but Queen Kania had already proven herself as ruthless as the kings of old. For at the foot of Vorling’s sarcophagus, under a screaming death mask, the assassin had been interred alive, to die of thirst in the halls of the dead. The queen had stood at the head of the procession and watched the lid come down. “For what you did to my husband,” she said, “for what you did to me.” And then darkness had covered the face of the Hardishman and the procession had left the tomb behind, deep in the dark and the dust.

It was fourteen hours later that Marra and the dust-wife flung themselves at the stone lid, scrabbling with all their strength. For a horrible moment, she thought that it would not be enough, that they would have to come back with levers, but it began, inch by agonizing inch, to slide. They got it perhaps six inches and had to stop, panting.

Fingers slid out of the gap and caught the edge. Marra nearly wept with relief. Fenris shoved the lid aside and sat up, gasping for air.

“You’re really here,” he said, bending over so that his forehead touched his drawn-up knees. “I kept imagining voices, but you’re really here this time.”

“We’re here,” said Marra, the words this time jabbing her like pins.

He took a half dozen sobbing breaths. “It is very close in there,” he said, “even with the holes.” His face was slick, with sweat or tears, Marra did not know. “Close and cold.”

“I’m sorry,” said Marra. “I’m sorry. It was the only way I could think of.” She pulled him out of the coffin, or he climbed out and she helped, and he wrapped his arms around her and they stood together, shaking.

“It worked,” he said. “I would not want to do it again. How many days has it been?”

“A little over half a day,” said the dust-wife.

“Only that? It seemed so much longer.”

They slid the lid back in place and crept out of the tomb, through the tomb that had been cut for Kania, through the small, sad room where Marra’s niece lay in her bed of stone. She had to help hold Fenris up. His muscles had cramped and knotted and he staggered as he walked. “Why are there no guards?” he whispered.

“Because of the queen,” said the dust-wife.