Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1)(84)
“Come on,” Julian said, leading them away from the mine shaft. They cut between several buildings that were scattered nearby, mostly ruined or fallen down, until they arrived at one that was still standing. Ducking behind it, they stopped to catch their breath.
Wren’s ears were ringing, her blood pounding so hard and fast she could barely think straight.
“Well?” Julian said, staring at her.
“What?” she asked, dazed.
“Are they following us?” While she leaned against the wall, he stood facing her, peering around the edge toward the mine shaft.
Closing her eyes, Wren steadied her breathing and extended her senses. “No,” she said, with unnerving certainty. It wasn’t that she couldn’t sense anything—she could, but the undead she could sense were at the bottom of the Breach. Well outside her normal range.
At least they weren’t in immediate danger.
Had the boy called them off? Or had Wren’s order, “step aside,” superseded his? She suspected his magic was thoroughly depleted after creating that iron revenant, so maybe his commands were similarly weakened.
Opening her eyes, she found Julian staring at her intently. “What did he say to you?”
“Nothing,” she said, which was true. He hadn’t spoken a word, but he had told her things… things she didn’t understand. Julian pulled a skeptical expression, and Wren reached into her pocket, withdrawing the ring. “He was wearing the same one.”
She couldn’t bring herself to explain about the birds. She didn’t know what they meant, not truly, and she didn’t want to speculate.
Julian ran his hand through his hair, thinking. “How long have you known you could do that?”
No need to ask what he meant. “I didn’t.”
He looked unconvinced. “You’re telling me one touch of your bare hand to that glowing stone, and suddenly you can command the undead? Suddenly you’re a—”
“Don’t,” she said, her voice ragged. She swallowed several times, trying to get herself under control. “It was that well. It must be more than just magic. It must somehow give a person abilities beyond, give them…” Limitless power. Dark power.
“Can you do anything else?” The words were pointed, and she knew he was thinking of Locke, the same as her.
She forced thoughts of obedient revenants and crushed bones from her mind. “My range feels wider. My senses… sharper. Beyond that…” I don’t know. “And you? You were right next to me—”
He held up his hands, showing the leather gloves. “I didn’t touch anything.”
“Still,” Wren prodded, needing him to be affected too. Needing to be less… different. “You felt it, didn’t you? In the air?”
He shrugged, though the casualness was undercut by the tension in his neck. “I don’t know what I felt. I just know what I saw, and that—that boy was doing more than commanding them.”
Yes, he was. He had plunged a strange spike through a piece of bone, just like on the ring they both bore. And somehow that had stopped the ghost from separating from its body. Made it impossible, Wren guessed, so that it would remain inside that armor.
She frowned at Julian. “Where did he get it? The armor?”
He reared back. “How am I supposed to know?”
“Where else would he get a full suit of ironsmith armor than the House of Iron?” Wren demanded, glad to be on the offensive. “That was custom work. No eye holes. No ventilation or gaps.”
Julian shook his head. “Every scrap of iron we have is under close guard, and every hammer who survived the Uprising is in service to the regent.” He paused, seeming to realize what he had just said. “But there’s no way he’d…” He trailed off, his gaze growing distant. Even if the ghostsmith had salvaged iron from a battlefield—House of Iron traditions be damned—he’d still need a hammer to create that custom suit. He’d still need an ironsmith.
Perhaps there was finally a crack in Julian’s ironclad faith in this regent and their cause.
“Whatever that boy is doing, he’s not doing it alone,” Wren said pointedly. They needed to find out more, but she had no idea where that armored undead had gone. She craned her neck in both directions, then cursed. “We need to follow that iron revenant, but we lost it.”
Julian cocked a brow. “Iron revenant?” he repeated. Wren shrugged—it seemed an accurate name to her—and he shook his head before continuing. “We didn’t lose it. That boy told it to go to Caston. I know where that is. Or rather, where it used to be.” Wren had forgotten that he’d given a destination, the place unfamiliar to her. “It’s supposed to be in ruins, overrun like everywhere else,” Julian continued. “But maybe that’s just where he’s storing these things.”
“Let’s go, then.”
He hesitated. “Caston is on the southeastern border of the original Haunted Territory.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, it’s the exact opposite direction we were traveling. If we follow that iron revenant, there’s a good chance we lose the prince.”
“Oh,” Wren said. Right, the prince. Emotions warred within her. She had set out to save Leo and prove her worth. But along the way, she had seen and heard things she could not forget, things that were, if possible, even more dire than a prince of the realm being held as a hostage and a prisoner. Her curiosity pulled her to the iron revenants, to the ghostsmith boy, wanting—no, needing—to understand it all, if only to understand herself. But there were larger ramifications to what was happening here, something much bigger than a single prince. Or her personal pride. This boy wasn’t just making curiosities…. He was controlling the undead and fitting them with armor. He was turning them into weapons.