The door crashed open. I jerked awake, gasping at the sound.
“Slept well?” Jextor boomed. He stomped in and came to peer out of the window, pushing his head next to mine. “The chair broke finally? Something interesting out there?”
A sigh came from the doorway. “We’ll have to pay for all of this, you know?” Falar said.
I grinned as I imagined his exasperated face. I kept my eyes closed, forehead pressed against the window. The cold had left my bones. I was warm, properly warm, maybe for the first time in a week.
“If I slept like that, I would need to resurrect myself to get up in the morning, hah!” Jextor said, slapping me on the back.
The impact threw me against the window, pressing both palms into it and smushing my face against the glass. The magic flexed and popped, and a small crack appeared next to my right eye as the glass snapped.
Another deep sigh came from behind me. “I didn’t go to all this trouble for you to pulp her before we even leave the city.”
I peeled myself off the glass. A black coach stood on the street below me. Judging by the style, it had to be theirs. I grimaced at the tingling between my shoulder blades where the extroverted brute had slapped me.
“We’ll be waiting for you downstairs, girl,” Falar said. He held the door open, as pale as he had been yesterday. “Don’t tarry. And you’ll be paying for the window, Jextor. Be more thorough with your enchantments.”
Jextor pushed the glass with a finger the size of a sausage, cracking it further. “Hmh, I’m the chancellor. I’ll just tell them to send the bill later.”
“Really? And explain it to the Bursar?” Falar said, then turned to go.
A flicker of worry passed Jextor’s face and he rubbed his neck. “Good point. I’ll get my purse.”
I kept my mouth shut. They seemed almost to have forgotten about me. Falar had already gone. Who knew what Jextor was thinking. The window was already half-broken, and I was feeling strong again.
I would be damned to let two creeps kidnap me. Nothing good could await me there. Nothing. I’d take my chances with the winter.
The window creaked as I pushed it tentatively. One solid pu—
“Hup, come on,” Jextor said, wrapping a single arm around my shoulders. My heels pulled off the floor as he dragged me to the door, stumbling and legs flopping around. “I hear the breakfast here is worth dying for. Hah! A low price for a necromancer!”
“Are you done?” Falar asked.
Jextor wiped his face, brushing the foam off his beard. “Maybe a couple more eggs? They really are as good as everyone said. You sure you don’t want anything except than that grapefruit?”
“It fits my mood, having to watch you eat while we could already be traveling.”
I had been forcibly seated next to the wall, between them two. Falar picked at his grapefruit, cutting off small, symmetrical pieces. Bones, eggshells, and empty mugs of beer littered the table in front of Jextor.
I recognized the place now, even if I had never been inside. A large hall with a roaring fire, no magical lights, adventurers and wizards mingling together freely. A single table empty and cordoned off by a rope. The Wily Wizard. That explained why the stew had been that good. The place had a reputation. People spoke in hushed voices saying that the empty table was for the Janitors, and that if they ever used it, it would mean that something monumental had or would happen.
Who cared about the Janitors? They had nothing to do with a person like me, and I had nothing to do with them. Hormens feared them, but they didn’t actually care about anyone who wasn’t one of their precious citizens. Hadn’t cared about Jordan, that was for sure.
“You’re not going to eat that?” Jextor said, pointing a fork at the bacon in front of me. “We have a long road ahead of us. More eating, less sulking, I always say!”
I swiped the plate away as he reached out. His fork thunked where the plate had been. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but the food was mine. I grabbed the bacon and pushed it all into my mouth.
“That’s the spirit,” he said, leaving the fork to stick into the table. He lifted a mug of beer to Falar. “You’ll handle the pullers?”
“Yes, yes,” he said.
“Then I’ll get one more beer.”
Falar groaned, standing up. “Fine. You, girl, swallow your meat and come.”
“Why do you have to phrase it like that?” I muttered. The bacon had been better than the stew last night. Jextor howled next to me, slamming the table with his hand. A knife bounced and fell into my lap. I stopped my eyes from going wide. Better than I could have planned it.
“Whatever you mean, spare me,” Falar said. “You will help me since the stable boy is in hiding.”
“Wonder why,” I said, standing up, holding the knife hidden under my palm, sliding it under my sleeve.
“Sad narrow-mindedness and constricted, conventional view of morals, would be my guess. Enough banter. Out.”
The carriage was matte black. It reflected the morning sun, but only barely. Despite myself, I wanted to go near, touch it. Already to where I was standing, its surface radiated warmth.
”Pull the lever,” Falar said. ”I need to assemble the crew. You figure out a place for the pieces that don’t find their own way.” He pointed at a long black handle on the side of the carriage, next to one of the wheels.
I grabbed it, ready for anything. The street around the carriage was empty, save for a few gawking onlookers. The lever felt like it had a fever, hot and sickly. It creaked as I leaned against it, hidden gears grinding against each other as I struggled. I jumped and dropped my weight on the lever. It ground down and a trapdoor at the bottom of the carriage swung open.
Human bones started pouring out. Large and small, a mountain of white bones, gathering into a massive pile beneath the carriage, more and more. A skull rolled and stopped as it bumped against my boot.
Right.
Enough bone to fill a cemetery. Should have been suspicious when I didn’t see any horses anywhere.
Falar drew symbols into the air. Some of them were bright blue, but he cut through them with his other hand, interlacing the pattern with dark, purple lines. The different colors looked like they hated each other, the places where the lines touched sparking and rippling in a way that made my eyes hurt. “Don’t look at the intersections.”
“Now you say that,” I muttered, turning my back on the symbols.
Tingling and pressure built behind me, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The two sensations combined in a way that felt like something had burst free, like my ears had popped and started ringing at the same time.
The skull next to my feet rotated, gazing up at me with its empty eye sockets. It clacked its teeth together, like it was laughing at me. A pair of bony hands crawled at it, fingers scratching the cobblestones.
The whole mound of bones started clattering and shifting. Skeletons rose, pulling themselves upright. One was missing its hands and head, stepping this way and that like it was lost.
“Don’t bite me,” I said to the skull, lifting it up from the ground.
The rest of the skeleton was on the other side of the pile, nearly to the other side of the carriage. I crouched, moving low past the horde of skeletons assembling themselves. The carriage was tall enough that I could walk almost straight. The skeletons were each the exact same height, all noticeably shorter than me. Maybe that’s why Falar had wanted mine. What a creep.
The headless skeleton stumbled around, bones snapping against the road. Its feet bones wiggled around like it was searching for something on the ground with its toes. The skull in my hands started to pull toward the rest of the skeleton, finally flying out from my hands and snapping onto its neck bone, or spine, or whatever it should be called. It reached its arms up, and the hands still stuck around its head snapped on to the wrist bones.
I stepped out from under the carriage, past the skeleton. It looked so pleased with itself, grinning like an idiot. Great teeth. What an unnecessary thing to pay attention to.
There was an alley right before me, winding to the right, splitting off into two separate alleys a bit later. Good spot to climb to the roofs on the left after half a block.
“There’s a femur somewhere! Find it!” Falar hollered from the other side of the carriage.
A long bone trembled between the spokes of the back wheel on my side of the carriage. It pulled one way and then the other, but couldn’t figure out a way out. I stuck my tongue out at it. What a stupid bone.
I snickered. What a stupid necromancer, leaving me unattended like this. After the first two running steps toward the alley, something tightened around my neck, invisible hands squeezing my throat. Another step and the pressure increased. I growled out of frustration. Should have known. Should have known!
“Where’s my femur!” Falar yelled.
I pushed forward, one more step, just out of spite and anger. My eyes started to darken, my throat like something would crack in a moment. I kept going, but the pain got sharper, like someone was cutting my head off with rusty garden shears. My knees crashed on the ground. I rolled to my side and crawled backward, and the pressure started to loosen immediately. Another step on my hands and knees, and I could breathe again. I panted for a moment, rubbing my throat and wiping the tears off my face.
A couple of running steps took me back to the carriage. I crashed my boot into the bone still rattling against the spokes. The bone shot out, ricocheting off the ground under the carriage, bouncing to fly somewhere to the other side.
“Thank you,” Falar called out.
I ducked under the carriage, fists clenched into tight angry balls. His black robes were dusty at the bottom. He looked so smug, watching the two dozen skeletons standing in two neat rows. “Much more efficient than those obnoxious whinnying animals. No chance of stepping into something disgusting, either,” he said.
“What did you do to me?” I snarled, pointing at my throat, fighting not to start screaming out loud.
“What? Oh, a little something to keep you from wandering too far. Your condition needs to be monitored. The Conspice is a powerful tool, and you suckled on it like a baby on a teat.”
“I… did… not!”
“No need to get theatrical. Why do I surround myself only with loud people?” He stepped toward the skeletons and slapped one on the back. It clattered, bones jostling against each other. “You should learn from the undead. Now, go somewhere else. Pester Jextor instead,” he said, flicking his hand around dismissively. “Getting them to put on the harnesses is finicky.”
He didn’t even glance in my direction, instead starting to draw into the air again. This time, he drew only dark purple lines. They pressed on my brain in the same way the Conspice-rectangle had done, like a rotten tooth. Normal magic tingled and buzzed, but what he was doing felt oppressive. Like I could drown in it if I wasn’t careful. Like I nearly had.
His focus was on the magic, his precious skeletons. The knife sat in my sleeve. I could sneak up to him, slit his throat. They boasted a lot about controlling life and death, but even that would get harder with extra ventilation through the neck. I took a quiet step toward him.