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.
She thought of the coldness in her grandmother’s voice when she’d proclaimed Wren a failure, the disappointment in her father’s eyes when she’d been forced to hand over Ghostbane.
She thought of Leo, the look of fear he’d worn as the kidnappers descended on him.
They were her family. He was her friend.
But this was bigger, even, than that.
“Do you think Leo will be safe? If the exchange happens, your people… They won’t hurt him, will they?”
“No,” Julian said with certainty. “Whatever Captain Royce is cooking up, the prince will be safe because he’s valuable. Plain and simple.”
Wren wasn’t as convinced, but she knew she didn’t have a choice.
“I say we pursue the iron revenant. We can’t pretend we didn’t see it, can’t turn our backs and continue with the mission as if nothing has changed. It has. Whoever that boy is working for, both sides of the Wall stand to suffer for it.”
“Agreed,” Julian said, and they shared a strange smile, as if both of them were expecting an argument.
“You do realize that you might miss out on your chance, too,” Wren said. “To confront the captain and learn the truth.”
Julian’s smile turned sharp. “Oh, I’ll have my chance.”
A chill slipped down Wren’s spine, and she was glad that they were currently on the same side.
* * *
They consolidated their supplies first. Wren’s pack was sodden, and with the cold night wind whipping across the landscape, it would remain that way for the foreseeable future. She ditched the extra blankets she’d stuffed inside, along with the firewood they’d have no time to dry. The remaining food stores went into Julian’s pack, the extra bonedust attached to her belt, and the empty bag was left behind.
They stopped twice to take turns resting. Wren let Julian sleep for as long as she could, but when it was her turn, she only lay there, her mind racing.
Rather than try to sleep, she stared at the ring, fingertips running over the ridges in the smooth bone, over the glyphs and the birds. A bird of prey for him. A songbird… a wren… for her.
“I wonder if it’s an amplifier,” Julian said, making her jump. It was sometime in the middle of the night, and she’d been so absorbed she’d forgotten he was there.
Wren looked down at the ring. “Amplifier?”
“They store extra power. It takes magical familiarity—like ironsmith armor bonding—and increases it exponentially.”
“But this is bone… That would make him a bonesmith, when his abilities…” She trailed off. When his abilities were clearly ghostsmith abilities, she was about to say, but she was a bonesmith and had wielded the same powers as him. Or some of them, anyway. The ring had glowed brightly when he’d drawn up the well’s power, just like the horned skull mask had, suggesting they did indeed hold magic. And though she hadn’t seen it, she would bet the mask had one of those dark spikes through it, the same as the ring. So maybe it wasn’t about the bone at all but the spike. The same kind of spike that had bound that revenant to its corpse.
Did that mean these rings, that skull mask… Were they haunted? Was that the material a ghostsmith needed to be close to… the spirit?
“It’s just a theory,” Julian said quietly. “But amplifiers are common among metalsmiths. You saw how much gold that prince wore.”
“I thought he was just vain,” Wren mused, though at the mention of Leo, she felt a pang of guilt for abandoning him.
Julian grinned. “That too, maybe, but I’d bet one or two of them were amplifiers. They’re usually jewelry—family heirlooms, if they can get them, so they hold decades of shared contact between the material and the user’s bloodline. In fact”—he cleared his throat—“sometimes they even mix them with blood—or other living matter—to increase the bond, or implant amplifiers inside their bodies. Permanently combining magic and blood.”
Living matter? Magic and blood?
She stared at the ring again, made of someone’s bone—though she didn’t know whose. She ran her finger over the songbird, then put it back inside her pocket. “I heard silversmiths actually eat silver,” she said, needing to divert the conversation. “Is that the same sort of thing?”