Wren was fascinated. He’d grown up on ghostsmith stories? When her own house wouldn’t even talk about them? “Wait—robbers?”
“Yeah, ghostsmiths. They were graverobbers.”
Right, Wren had known that, but she’d never heard it said exactly that way before.
Ghostsmiths were a taboo subject matter in the House of Bone. Naturally, that meant Wren had always been intrigued by them, but all she knew was what she’d cobbled together from servant gossip and bedtime stories from old nursemaids.
And everything she’d cobbled together was deliciously horrifying.
While bonesmiths could sense and control dead bones, ghostsmiths could sense and control the undead spirit. The ghost. Once upon a time, the two smiths were a match made in spirit-reaping heaven. The ghostsmith would calm and control the ghost while the bonesmith would locate the anchor bone and sever the ley line. Valkyrs didn’t exist back then because they weren’t needed.
But eventually the ghostsmiths began to abuse their power. They used the undead, forcing their spirits into servitude and denying them their eternal rest. Cook told Wren they’d even started killing people in order to get their hands on the freshest corpses, in addition to plundering graves.
The word “graverobber” sounded an awful lot like gravedigger… but she supposed that was why her family had forbidden the subject to begin with. There were too many similarities that could be misconstrued. Because both bonesmith and ghostsmith magics dealt with the dead, many in the Dominions were wary of bonesmiths because of what the ghostsmiths had done, fearing, perhaps, that they were capable of doing the same.
“You think this queen could actually be a ghostsmith?” she asked. No one had seen or heard of a living ghostsmith for centuries. Wren was both thrilled and disturbed by the thought.
He shook his head. “They’re just rumors, and it’s nothing new. Like I said, this was stuff my grandfather used to say—and his grandfather before him.”
Wren tilted her head, considering. “Maybe there have been ghostsmiths here all this time.”
He gave her a dubious look. “Forget about the queen. What I know for certain is that undead will cross our path. Have you faced real revenants before?”
“Not technically,” Wren said. “Revenants can only be found here in the Breachlands. But I’ve trained to fight them for ten years. I can handle this.”
She’d battled countless ghosts in the catacombs at Marrow Hall, where they kept some under careful guard for novitiates to practice against. Plus she’d sparred for hours against Inara, learning the best tricks and maneuvers for facing anything that could walk.
And if that didn’t work, she’d remember Odile’s advice and trust her gut.
“If we move quickly and quietly, we might be able to make it through unnoticed,” Julian said.
Wren was nodding, glad she’d fully armed herself before leaving the fort for Leo’s inspection. Wanting to show off for the prince, she had a full stash of weapons and artillery, plus refills.
“I’ll lead the way. They were Ironlands, once, and I’ll be able to figure out the safest way through. You guard us against the undead.”
It was perfect in its simplicity, yet… “Are you sure we won’t lose them?”
He nodded. “They have no choice but to take the Coastal Road. We’ll take a shortcut and head them off before they reach their destination.”
Considering the location of the Haunted Territory and the sweep of the coast, Wren could only assume that destination was the Iron Citadel. The apparently not-abandoned Iron Citadel, which housed a regent—someone who saw themselves as ruler of these lands. Or at least ruler of the House of Iron, if Julian had some sort of loyalty to him.
No matter. Leo wouldn’t set foot there if Wren could help it.
“This isn’t some graveyard or old execution block,” he warned. “This is the Haunted Territory—the doorstep of the Breach.”
“I know,” Wren said, unable to conceal the eagerness in her voice.
“The only way this is going to work is if you listen to me,” he said. “You might fancy yourself a ghost-slayer, but the goal here is to avoid the undead entirely. Understand?”
Wren bristled at the way he commanded her, but she knew arguing would only make him abandon this plan. Besides, while a glorious death in the Breach wasn’t the worst fate she could imagine, it would mean nothing if she failed. The recklessness that had served her all her life might well be her undoing if she focused more on how to fight the undead than how to not fight them. Without a traveling bard in tow, the tales of her epic journey would be hers to tell. So maybe she’d embellish a little. What mattered now was surviving the Breach in the first place.
“Fine, yes. No undead are the best undead, as far as you’re concerned.”
“As far as anyone is concerned,” he said.
“Not bonesmiths,” Wren replied, flashing him her widest grin. “Now, let’s loot these corpses before we head out.”
“You’re joking,” Julian said as Wren crouched over the nearest body. She located a jeweled scabbard and held it up, examining the stones—surely only colored glass—when Julian marched over and snatched it away. One of the “diamonds” fell off and cracked in two. “What are you going to do with an empty scabbard?”
“Nothing, now that I know it’s garbage,” she said. When he continued to glare at her, she sighed. “Trade it, maybe? I don’t know about you, but I’d like to eat sometime on this journey. Surely jewels still hold value here in the Breachlands.”
“We’re headed to the Haunted Territory. There are no inns or peddlers or kind farm folk to trade with for food and a place to sleep. There is nothing between here and our destination except death.”
“All the more reason to take what we can,” Wren insisted, moving on to the next body. The deathrotted one.
“They’ll have a cache somewhere nearby,” Julian interjected, somewhat loudly. He was plainly uncomfortable with what Wren was doing. “Bandits like them have little safe houses all over the place. We find one, we find supplies.”
“Won’t they be running there as we speak?”
“It won’t be a proper house, just a hole in the ground with provisions. After the stunt you pulled, I doubt they’ll stop running until they reach Southbridge.”
Wren looked up at him. “Does that mean you don’t want this?” she asked, holding up a small black dagger.
He hesitated, then dropped the scabbard and walked over. He plucked it out of her hand, but immediately pulled a face. “Bitter iron,” he said, tossing it onto the ground.
“But it’s black…，” Wren said, picking it up again. Smiths called any variation on their material that they couldn’t touch—like alloys for the metalsmiths—bitter. Steel was a popular iron alloy, so they often called steel weapons bitter iron or bitter steel. Wren had heard bronze called “bitter copper” by coppersmiths, and of course, any material not native to their island was resistant to their magic. So gold, silver, iron—even bones—that came from outside the Dominions were called bitter to the local smiths. In fact, after losing several gold mines to the Breach, the king had deemed that only bitter gold—gold mined outside the Dominions and acquired through trade—should be used as currency. The rest was saved for goldsmith artisans to craft into more valuable objects or stockpiled to ensure its value remained high locally and abroad.