Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1)(46)

“It’s close,” Wren said with an eager grin.

He frowned at her. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“You’re not the first person to tell me that.”

“Won’t be the last,” he muttered under his breath.

It wasn’t long before they found the edge of the river—the Serpentine, Odile had called it—which was flat and wide as it bent southeast, but they traveled upstream, where it steadily grew narrower and twistier before slicing through the rising landscape, creating a ravine.

They walked along the stony bank, keeping the water within reach. It was a natural barrier to the undead, so while ghosts could come upon them on its shores, one quick jump into the rush would see them safe from deathrot, even if they risked drowning instead. The river varied between rocky, foaming swells and smooth, gentler currents, but Wren hoped it didn’t come to that.

Exhaustion was starting to settle in when Julian came to a stop. He was squinting toward the rising cliffs, and then Wren saw it too—remnants of a broken-down millhouse.

“I say we check it out,” Julian said. “Sleep here until dawn, then—”

“We can’t stop now! We’ve barely made any ground, and—”

“They will have stopped.”

“Which means this is our chance to catch up!”

Julian shook his head. “We can’t push for three or four days straight, and I’ll be damned if I’m entering the Haunted Territory without my right mind. We need sleep.”

Wren jutted out her jaw. “We should sleep during the day. The undead are far less active.”

He considered that for a moment. Nodded. “We will—but after tonight.”

Wren opened her mouth to argue when she caught him shift his shoulders. It was a slight movement, barely noticeable, but as she’d been watching his face, she saw the grimace it caused him. He’d been hurt before the attack by the bandits, and it seemed he was suffering worse than he’d wanted to let on. He’d started to limp, favoring the leg Wren had sliced earlier. Her own cuts and bruises were making themselves known, her ankle throbbing as the adrenaline from the day faded away.

Fine, they could rest, clean themselves up, then hit the ground running the next day.

When she didn’t object any more, he moved toward the house, but she held out a hand. “Let me,” she said, unhitching her pack and dropping it on the ground.

He opened his mouth as if to protest, but she unsheathed her swords and raised her brows in silent question. He darted a nervous glance at the house, then nodded.

“Stay near the water,” she said, before slowly approaching.

Part of the wooden roof was caved in. The place where the wheel had jutted from the stone foundations was cracked, leaving behind a single piece of protruding metal but no sign of the wheel itself.

Wren peered in through the broken shutters on the window, but really it was her magic that was doing most of the searching.

She couldn’t sense any bones in the vicinity.

She turned, and nearly leapt out of her skin when the cursed ironsmith appeared directly behind her.

“Clear?” he asked, ignoring her obvious alarm and peering through the shutters himself. “Not just undead we have to be on the lookout for.”

“It’s clear,” she said, and so he did a quick circuit of the house before returning to her side and approaching the door. It was warped and water damaged—easily forced open—and Wren followed him inside to find a small, single-room dwelling, reeking of mildew and rotting leaves that had blown in through the openings, but otherwise completely harmless.

Julian seemed pleased, dropping both their bags on the ground. He had apparently carried Wren’s from where she’d left it. “We’ll be able to have a fire, I think, if we can find some dry wood.”

There was a rusted stove they could use, and next to it, a pile of moldering logs under a tarp. Despite the smell, whatever flooding had caused the damage here had come and gone a long time ago.

Still, most of the lumber was unusable, rotten and crumbling in Julian’s hands as he lifted piece after piece. Wren found a rickety old table and four chairs stacked against the wall; she grabbed one of the chairs and snapped off the legs.

Together, they managed enough burnable wood to last for several hours. Julian had the flintstone, so he started the fire.

Soon the place was filled with the scent of smoke and the steadily growing light of the flames.

A strange awkwardness descended. They were basically strangers, technically enemies, and hadn’t spent more than a few scattered minutes together when they weren’t fighting or running for their lives.

Wren decided to break the silence.

She took a seat on one of the remaining chairs and put her booted feet up on the table. “Why were you trying to kidnap the prince?”

Julian sighed, rubbing a hand distractedly over his chest where the arrow had landed. “Do you ever stop talking?”

Wren smiled. She was just getting started. “Were you trying to barter for something? Gold?”

He didn’t look at her when he spoke. “What good is gold when we have no one to trade it with? As soon as that Wall went up, gold as a currency became irrelevant to us.”

“Food, then?”

He shook his head and stood, facing her. “Sacks of grain and cattle in exchange for a prince? Are you being deliberately obtuse, or are you actually this stupid?”