Ghoulish Song (9781442427310) (14 page)

Kaile wasn't sure whether or not to laugh, so she didn't.

The Reliquarian dropped her coat-wings, resumed a dignified posture, and led the way down a long, windowless passage. Here the walls were made out of arm and leg
bones, hundreds and thousands of them stacked on top of each other as though a multitude of the dead had built a fort out of themselves.

Kaile hoped that none of these bones had drowned, and that they wouldn't make unquiet mischief.

At the far end of the bone-built passage stood the Chamber of Curiosities, which displayed bones carved into other things. Kaile saw a model barge, a miniature tree, and a ticking clock.

“Here we are.” The Reliquarian came to stand beside a shelf of flutes and whistles. “Some of these are really quite ancient. This one here is a favorite of mine, covered with carvings in an old script. Shall I read it to you?” She squinted at writing scratched into the bone, and then closed her eyes and tilted her head backward. She stayed that way for one long, silent moment.

“Hello?” Kaile finally said.

The Reliquarian opened one eye, and closed it again. “Excuse me. I am helping myself remember this ancient language by pouring the liquid stuff of my thoughts from the centers of sensory perception to the mental place of memory. Philosophers assure us that this is how memory works.” She cleaned out her left ear with one long pinky finger, opened her eyes, and began to read. “ ‘
This leg belonged to Heris, and she the greatest musician to walk these hills. With
so much music in her bones, she desired to be a source of music in death.
' That's a lovely idea, I think—though I shouldn't want to risk playing it to find out how much music is left inside. This is a very old relic, very old, and cracked along the side.”

She set down the leg of Heris, and picked up another flute. “This one is more grim. The inscription reads, ‘
I played a happy and frolicking tune at the execution of my murderer.
' That sounds horrible to me, and not at all frolicsome. Let's examine something else.” She set that flute aside, and took up a pair of ribs. “These are drum bones. You play them by clacking them together. I would try it, but they might snap in half. They are older than this building, you know, and they remember a great deal. Here, let me read to you what they say.” She squinted and moved her lips for a while before speaking. “ ‘
Mine is the rhythm makes the bone-house. Mine is the beat inside that house. Mine is the dance and the dark in between. Mine is the building and mine is the breaking. Mine is the shaping and severing song.
' There. What an intriguing bit of old verse.”

The Reliquarian returned the two ribs to their shelf. “Now tell me,” she said, sounding suddenly nervous, “what interests you so much about bone-made music?”

“I need to know more about this flute,” said Kaile, holding it up again. “I need to know why it insists on playing
only one song. And I think I should find out whose bone it used to be. I have a solid guess about whose it is, but I don't really know.”

Runcemore the Reliquarian stood thinking. Then she reached out and took the flute away from Kaile.

“Hey!” Kaile protested.

The Reliquarian ignored her protest. “Come with me. Let's see what answers we can find in my laboratory.” She moved quickly to a doorway on the far side of the Chamber of Curiosities. The door was thick, and locked. The Reliquarian unlocked it with one iron key, which she kept in her coat pocket, and descended the spiral staircase on the other side.

Kaile followed, still unhappy that someone else was carrying her flute. Shade moved beside her.

The staircase ended in a metal door and a basement room beyond it. The stone walls here were rough and unpolished, and the floor made up of dirt and sawdust. A workbench lit by several lamps and cluttered with odd instruments took up one side of the room. A blazing cast-iron furnace took up the other end.

The room was hot, oven hot, kitchen hot—only worse, because there were no windows, and because the place smelled like rust and ash rather than baking bread.

“So sorry for the lack of polish,” the Reliquarian said. “I do need to tidy up down here. Now, let's see what we can learn. I'll need a pinch of fine dust from the bone to begin.”

She took up a dull knife and scraped at the side of the flute.

“Stop that!” Kaile told her, shocked.

Runcemore flinched away. “I've only scratched it,” she said, defensive and scolding. She collected the bits of scraped bone dust in shallow metal basin, rubbed a pinch of it between two fingers, and tasted it. Then she lit a candle, took another pinch, and dropped the dust into the candle flame. The dust made tiny flashes of light as it fell. The Reliquarian studied the flame, and nodded.

“Carved from the femur of a young girl,” she said, mostly to herself. “She stood at the same height as yourself, more or less, and wore her hair in much the same way. It seems that she also had a fondness for figs.”

“You got all that from burning bone dust?” Kaile wondered.

“I did,” the Reliquarian said. “And I can also tell that the girl died by drowning.”

“I thought so,” said Kaile. “Iren drowned. She didn't really turn into a swan.”

The Reliquarian made a scornful noise. “That's a foolish song,” she said. “I remember that the girl was
foolish, too, though she died a very long time ago and I did not know her well. She was northern, and from a very good family, but wayward enough to take up singing on the Fiddleway. She even took apartments there. No good came of that, of course.”

The Reliquarian looked sideways at Kaile. “I thought you might
be
Iren, at first. You do resemble her.”

Kaile took two steps backward. “Why would you think that? Why would you think I was her? You just said that she died a very long time ago.”

“She did,” the Reliquarian agreed. “But I'm not at all sure when
you
died, shadowless thing.” Metal scraped against metal as the Reliquarian shut the door and brought down the latch. Shade made a very unhappy noise.

“I'm not dead,” Kaile insisted. She gave the Reliquarian a fierce and challenging look, one with iron in it. She had sharpened this look with long practice. She had used it to banish drunken patrons of the Broken Wall such that they slunk away from the public room in shame.

Runcemore the Reliquarian did not notice Kaile's iron look. “How sad,” she said. She did not sound at all sad—though she did speak very quickly, all in a rush. “I had heard that ghouls are often unaware of their own death, and carry the delusion that they yet live. This seems to be the case with you. Your lack of shadow leaves no doubt,
however. I am not at all sure what one dead girl is doing with the carved fragment of another dead girl, but the dead's business is none of mine.”

“Then give me back my flute,” Kaile told her. “Give it back. I'll go away, and then none of this will be any of your business.”

“I really cannot do that,” said the Reliquarian. “I would prefer it if you just went away, but my own responsibilities are clear. I should add this specimen to our collection of carved flutes. As for yourself, there are rules concerning the dead who continue to move; very clear rules, and far more humane and hygienic than the terrible things they do in Southside. No beheadings, no separate graves for separate pieces. None of that.”

She walked wide around Kaile, keeping her distance, and crossed the room to the great furnace at the far side. She opened the furnace. A wood fire blazed inside, and waves of heat flooded the room.

“We burn ghouls here,” the Reliquarian said.

KAILE RAN TO THE
door and wrestled with the latch, but it was too heavy and too high up.

She turned to face the Reliquarian, whose dark silhouette stood in front of the open furnace blaze.

“Please don't,” Kaile said, with pleading in her voice. “Please. I'm breathing and my heart is beating and I
do
have a shadow but it's just that she's standing over there though you probably can't see her because nobody except for me and the cracked drummer can see her and if you burn me then there will be no one to light lanterns for her because she's afraid of the dark so please don't do this!”

“I really don't understand what you're saying,” the Reliquarian said, her voice still rushed and flustered underneath the words she spoke. “I wish I did, but I don't. And burning you is for the best. It might not seem that way, but a good, cleansing fire is the only sure method to help the unquiet dead find peace. Truly. You should thank me for
this—though of course I'll understand if you don't.”

The Reliquarian took a step toward Kaile. Then she paused and took a step sideways. Her free hand fiddled with the buttons of her coat.

“I'm really not sure how to go about this,” she admitted. “I have heard that one should avoid being bitten by a ghoul, if one can possibly avoid it, so I would appreciate it if you did not bite me. Perhaps I should hit you over the head with something first, to make sure that you don't.” She picked up a log from the woodpile beside the furnace.

Kaile looked around desperately for a weapon of her own.

Even armed, the Reliquarian still kept her distance. She took a small step forward, and paused again.

She's afraid of you,
Shade whispered.
She's trying to hide it, but I can hear it in her voice. She's terrified. Don't plead with her. Frighten her. Threaten her.

Kaile tried to clear her head and focus her challenging look.

“I can do worse than bite you,” she said. “I can curse you.”

“How vulgar,” Runcemore said, dismissive.

Kaile forced herself to move closer to the Reliquarian, and closer to the furnace. “I can curse the whole of the Reliquary,” she said. “I can wake every single dead thing you keep here, every grotesque thing, every beast and former Mayor. Bufkins will thrash his tail without any gearworked
help. The jite will gnash its teeth. The hands of former Captains will crawl across the floor and come looking for your throat. I can do this. I will do this.”

The Reliquarian said nothing, but she hefted the log in her hand like a club.

Kaile did not flinch away. She moved closer, within striking distance. She smiled to make sure the older woman saw her teeth.

“I could also sing them all to sleep,” Kaile offered. “I could do that instead. I can do it without fire, without burning anything. If you give me back my flute, then I can use it to make the whole Reliquary rest peacefully. And after that I'll leave and never come back.”

The Reliquarian looked thoughtful.

“It's your choice,” Kaile said. She tried to keep her voice calm, as though it didn't much matter to her which way the old woman chose. “You can help your relics sleep, or else force me to wake them up. All of them. Your choice.”

Runcemore lowered her club—though she kept it in her hand rather than returning it to the woodpile.

“I confess that I would find it distasteful to knock you over the head and stuff you in the furnace,” she admitted, clearly trying to sound aloof. It didn't work. Her voice cracked as she stumbled over her reasonable words, and her hand shook as she held out the flute.

Kaile took her flute back, and then lifted it to her lips.

She played a few phrases of the flute's only song, slow and soft like a lullaby, doing her best to pretend that it would soothe and charm the dead back to sleep.

“There,” she said, when she was done. “Now the others will keep still.” She hoped that was true. She hoped there were no drowned bones in the building.

“Lovely,” said Runcemore. “But I should probably still burn you. It would be the most hygienic thing.”

Kaile was expecting the Reliquarian to waver. She smiled again, showing teeth.

“But we did make a bargain, of sorts,” the Reliquarian hastily said. She crossed the room, moving wide around Kaile, and then unlatched and opened the large metal door. “Be on your way, dead girl. Please do not bite anyone.”

Kaile and Shade both raced up the stairs, ran through the Chamber of Curiosities and the Chamber of Beasts and the atrium, and left the Reliquary through its big bronze doors.