Bonemaker

Chapter One, Part Two

****

"Damn," Morda shouted, slamming the door of the room he shared with his sister behind him. "Shit and piss and hell and damn. Why can't I do it, Mors? Why the hell can't I do it?"

His sister, who had been bent over her own globeset at her desk, jerked back as though stung, and let the globes fall to the table. She was not, however, quite fast enough--her brother's sharp eyes took in the globes, parsed out what she had been doing in seconds.

"Hadrang incantation," he hissed, jealousy evident in every line of his face. "The fourth principle. Water to glass and glass to stone. And your tenth hand position was wrong. That's why the glass is so grainy."

Mors tried out a wary smile. "Thanks, brother," she said.

"Oh, don't thank me. I'm just a bloody dunce." He took off his pitifully tight robe, crumpled it up and threw it in a corner. He looked a good deal less ridiculous in the simple white tunic and breeches they all wore underneath--these, at least, fit him. "An overgrown apprentice. Gods, how long until they have me cleaning the stables and mucking through library codices with the rest of the failures?"

"Don't be daft," Mors said calmly. "You've a gift, and you know it. You just haven't figured out how to express it yet." She rolled up her globeset, turned to face him. "Master Otrang has faith in you, you know. So do I."

Morda sighed, rubbed his temples. "I know," he said at last. "I'm sorry, Mors. I don't mean to be so harsh. I just--I wish I knew why. I wish I could fix it."

"I wish I could, too," Mors said. "But shouting and complaining isn't any way to fix a problem."

"Easy for you to say," Morda muttered. "They treat you like living gold." He rummaged around in their tiny closet, found the stick he'd whittled down for a walking staff. The iron cap he'd wedged on the bottom, borrowed from its previous home on one of his bedposts, glinted in the summer afternoon sun.

"I'm going out in the woods," he said. "We've three hours before supper, and studying isn't going to do me one lick of good. Want to come?"

Mors sighed. "It won't do you any good," she said. "Me, on the other hand--I need all the help I can get."

"I can help you."

"No." She frowned. "I want to figure it out for myself, just this once."

"Why?"

"Well. Why do you want to know why you can't cast whetwork?"

There was a moment where Morda simply looked at her, his basilisk stare every bit as cold and impartial as it was when it focused on school work or the other children. Mors, who knew the unpredictability of that look well, tensed, prepared to dodge or duck if she had to.

But, at last, he smiled. He touched her shoulder fondly.

"A good point," he said. "A fair point. And I would do nothing to deny you."

He raised her out of her seat, spun her around. He dipped her, courtly slime oozing out of his every pore, over the desk.

Mors giggled.

"Some day," Morda said theatrically. "Some day, my dear sister, I shall be a king, and I shall have a nice big throne, and you'll have a nice big throne the twin of mine in every way. We'll have the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it'll be so delicious you won't even care."

"Can my throne be pink?"

"Pink as a baby's bottom," Morda said seraphically. "Pinker than the pinkest pink flowers you ever pinked through."