Bonemaker

Chapter Four, Part Two

*****

Even in the forest, under the leafy canopy of summer trees, it was very hot.

The Lord Barin's procession plodded along, sweat forming on the flanks of every horse and the brow of every rider. Mors, who had never ridden a horse and had no intention of learning in full sight of Lord Barin, had been put in charge of driving the supply cart, her brother poised and silent beside her on the bench.

He was wearing new robes, a gift from his now-patron: light cotton, cool for the summer, probably once Barin's own, for the boy and the man were not so different in size. They were Barin's colors, black lined with a thin threading of gold. Her brother looked like a different person in them, dark and unsmiling. The red jorneyman's robes, her unwitting contribution to her brother's rise, were packed away in their trunk.

Why, she wondered, was he not pleased with himself? This was everything he had wanted, a patron and a gift and an exalted position at court. A chance to shine as brightly as his potential promised. A chance to prove, finally and unquestionably, that he was a Changer, and a damned good one.

Morda had hugged her, when they had loaded their bags onto the cart, but it had not been the sort of hug she had expected. There was no joy in it. No joy in him.

"See, sister?" He had said. "I've made good on my promises."

Did he think this was what she had wanted?

Before she had left the great hall--in the period where everyone was milling around, uncertain what it was they had just witnessed and what to do about it--Grandmaster Lawlee had taken her arm.

"Do you know what your brother has done?" he had asked.

"I can guess."

"And you didn't try to stop this?"

Mors removed her arm from his grasp, staring. "You're the Grandmaster," she had said slowly. "Why didn't you?"

It was funny, how she could only hear echoes of her brother in her own voice at certain times.

Funny.

Lawlee must have heard it too. The look her turned on her was fever-passionate, eyes bulging, lips thin as a skull's. It was certainly not the ordinary expression of Let-It-Be Lawlee, as the older journeymen called him, plump and satisfied and dozing over dinner in his workshop.

It was a look of pure fear. A look of desperation.

"Watch him," Lawlee hissed. "If you've ever been a good person, Mors. If we weren't completely mistaken about you. Watch him. Keep him from doing great harm."

"He's just my brother," Mors murmured, uncertain by now if those words were excuse, justification, or something else entirely--some weak sort of alibi. The look Lawlee shot her suggested it was all three, and worse.

The words echoed around in her skull even now, jouncing and bouncing on the supply cart down the overgrown forest road. If you've ever been a good person. If we weren't completely mistaken about you.

From the direction of the coven, lost now in the thick of the summer wood, she could hear chanting. She strained to catch the last notes of her home on the muggy breeze.

Fa kah so li mah.
Fa kah so li mah.
Va sen tee sen lah tan ku loh.

It was the Hespers Incantation, fifth aspect. A chant of Changing and seeming, in which something could be concealed from the outside world.

It was meant to protect them from Morda, of course. From whatever unpredictable vengeance her brother might try to wreak.

And worse--it was meant to protect them from her. From whatever lonely depths kept her beside Morda, kept her seeing, in that dark and unsmiling face, the ghost of her baby brother.

There was a tear on her cheek. A tear, draining salty and sticky and hot down her jawline.

Morda wiped it off, having noticed at last how upset she was--his hand descended on her shoulder with all the finality of a thing written in stone.