While the idea of tier fives in the Bonewood might make her smile, Wren had no desire to face one tonight.
Sonya’s gaze flicked over Wren’s shoulder—in the direction of Inara and Ethen—and she nodded. “S-sure. What you said. Take them as they come.”
Like the valkyr novitiates, the reapyrs also dressed in black, but while Wren’s blacks consisted of formfitting leather and thick, padded layers, the reapyrs wore long, sweeping robes that dragged across the snow—a bit dramatic, honestly. They bore no weapons save for the scythe: the curved, handheld blade used to make the final cut. Each bone in a body contained a complex web of ley lines—these were the seams, the places where ghost met bone, the junctures that could hold the two together or the fissures that could wrench them apart. It was the reapyr’s business to identify the ley lines and sever them, releasing the spirit.
“Stay behind me,” Wren advised, sheathing Ghostbane and withdrawing one of the twin bone swords strapped across her back. It gave her a longer reach and was better suited for the task at hand.
As Wren and Sonya moved through the trees, the sound of the others faded, and a tense silence rose to take its place. Not true silence, but the heavy, weighted silence of the undead.
Wren’s magic could sense the bones all around—humming like a current against her skin—and her eyes caught every shift and movement, waiting, watching…
When a bowed arm—no, arms, twisted and fused together with three or four elbows—leaned precariously over their path, Wren held out her sword to stop their forward progress.
She approached the monstrous tree warily, but closer inspection revealed the bones were dead and unhaunted, as she’d expected, crafted by some creative and slightly disturbed bonesmith long ago. Bone transformations undertaken while the ghost was still attached, performed on undead or even—Wren shuddered—living bones, were impossible.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few extra elbows,” called Inara, who was closer than Wren realized and watching them through the trees.
Wren smiled stiffly and used both hands to bring her sword down in a flashy move, cutting through the many-elbowed tree with one fell swoop. Her blade might have been made from the same material as the tree, but it had been sharpened and hardened under a fabricator’s careful touch and was almost as strong as steel.
Splintered bits of bone littered the ground at her feet, combining with the fresh snow to create a pale and brittle forest floor that crunched and crackled underfoot.
A cloud of bonedust settled onto Sonya’s pristine black robes.
“Whoops,” Wren murmured in false concern, reaching out a hand to swipe at it.
Sonya stepped out of reach and rolled her eyes, flicking her wrist and causing the dust to rise from the fabric and disperse in an instant. It was the kind of delicate work Wren could never have achieved and that characterized a reapyr’s talent. Wren was fairly average for a bonesmith in terms of magical ability, and while she was capable of powerful bursts, she was not much good at subtlety or finesse.
Sonya wasn’t a friend, exactly, but hardly anyone in the House of Bone really was. Wren had enemies like Inara and then people who tolerated her like Sonya. Her father was her only emotional touchstone, and he was never there.
It was tempting to wish for more—and certainly she had, when she was younger. Looking for a mother who was alive or a father who would stay, but any time someone started to fill the hole her parents left behind, her father would turn up again, and she’d forget whatever surrogate she’d attached herself to. The truth was, she wanted something real, even if it was painful.
That was the point of all this. Pass spectacularly and be named a valkyr. Then she’d actually get to leave Marrow Hall and travel—sometimes with her father—fighting ghosts in every corner of the Dominions, from Giltmore to Granite Gate and everywhere in between.
They were about to press on when something raised her hackles.
She whirled around just in time to see a silver-green mist rise. A ghost, floating mere feet away and with a direct path to Sonya, called into existence thanks to their presence and drawn, as all undead were, to the living.
The disfigured arm had been keeping the ghost at bay, but now that it lay in broken pieces upon the ground—perhaps Wren shouldn’t have hacked that arm to bits just to show off for Inara?—the spirit had free rein to move across the path.
Wren didn’t wait to see what it would do next. She jerked Sonya aside and stepped forward, reaching into the bandolier across her chest, releasing a handful of knucklebones. They shot out in a small burst of magic, piercing the vaporous form and causing it to slow its pace, swirling and undulating in the air.
It was probably a tier-one ghost, incorporeal to the point of almost being no threat at all, but Wren couldn’t risk being fooled by a two or three that had yet to take its shape. She waited a second more to see what it would do, and much to her satisfaction, it began to coalesce into something human-shaped. Or at least, it had a face, with a wide, gaping mouth—stretched and distorted—and long, trailing limbs.
“What do you think?” she called over her shoulder.
While Wren’s attention was on the ghost itself, Sonya’s attention was lower, on the ground, seeking the body the spirit was still tethered to. She dropped onto her knees in the snow, a small spade in her hands.
The shovel hit the dirt below with a soft thump and scrape, but it wasn’t long until Sonya was scrabbling through the snow and soil with her bare hands, relying upon touch and magical senses as she sought the ghost’s bones.
Wren watched, itching to help dig and speed things along, but that went against a cardinal rule of valkyr-reapyr training. No matter how seemingly benign, never turn your back on the ghost. Never let your guard down.
It was also why she didn’t just slash at the specter as she had that many-elbowed arm.
She might get the ghost to disappear entirely as it recoiled from the dead bone, but such a reprieve was only temporary. There was no telling how quickly it would return… or where. Better to keep it trapped in her line of sight than to dispatch it now and have it turn up behind her back or directly on top of them.
So Wren did as she had been trained and withdrew her second bone sword, holding them before her like scissors, trapping the spirit within. A stronger ghost would fight back, but this one only ebbed and swirled with mild and uninspiring menace.
To Wren’s delight, Sonya made a soft exclamation of pleasure and lifted a muddy femur from a pile of bones in the dirt.
The anchor bone.
With her attention split between the wobbling, silently trembling ghost and the reapyr at her feet, Wren watched as Sonya lay the mottled, off-white bone against the stark white snow. She withdrew her scythe and closed her eyes. Her muddy hand ran the length of the bone once, twice, three times. On the fourth she brought the weapon down on the invisible ley line, cracking into the bone and severing the connection between the ghost and its earthly remains.
There was a familiar, sucking sensation, leaving the air in Wren’s lungs sparse, and a heartbeat later, the ghost disappeared in a puff of cold air and ether.
As Sonya collected the now-dead bone and got to her feet, Wren cleared the area, swiping her blades through the air to make sure nothing remained, then gathered her scattered knucklebones for later use.