Graveyard of Lullabies

Chapter 47 (welcome)

The queen nurses a cut in her forearm, wrapping it in cloth torn from her leggings. Maroon streaks stain the jet bird's feathers. Days old blood still flakes from my face--this is how we talk, in the dawn, beneath branches and the weight of dried blood.

"What do you mean, surrendered to the empress?" I drain the last of our water.

"The Jani Empress"--the queen chews on the second-to-last root vegetable--"conquered most of the lands to the east." She swallows, staring at the ground. "We--I didn't know how long he was planning...to ally with her. How long they were communicating. I did find a box of letters in his rooms, then we caught one of his messengers returning--who never did tell us where she went to meet them."

I shift in the grass. "But if they were allying...the army didn't come here first. It showed up on the coast. We followed it for..." I try to recall the days. "At least a week. They didn't come directly here."

"Even if they did come here just for Iqavu, they wouldn't just take Iqavu." She eyes the city, the outermost buildings smashed by cannon eggs, smoke licking from the ruins. "We're her enemy."

"We didn't put up much resistance." I think of towns left in ruin and acrid smoke pillars.

"This war hasn't started yet." She turns her mountain gaze to me. To the jet bird. "You said you met Panuk's servant?"

I stare. "Who?"

"Panuk. The dead king. His servant." She speaks so calmly.

"Oh." I stare at the box between us. The almost empty box between us. "I said I would go back for them."

Silence. "But..."

"But we don't have enough supplies to make it."

She waves a hand. "Supplies won't be a problem."

My eyebrows furrow. "How?"

"The buildings. We hid supplies in them."

I slowly blink at her. "You mean, you cleaning the buildings was a cover for you to hide supplies throughout the city?"

She nods. "We were afraid we might have to escape quickly, but things never went that way," she hesitates, then motions to the bushes around us. "Until now. With Aqtilik..."

"So we have to sneak back up there." I point to the hill and the omnipresent palace.

She bites her lip. "Don't you have a skeleton?"

My hand falls to my side, curling among the roots. "Not anymore," I mutter. "What I said last night, about us stealing supplies, it...didn't go well the last time. The soldiers smashed Skeleton--the skeleton. That's why I came here alone. The king's servant was too injured and told me to..." I slowly inhale.

"I'm sorry," she says, dipping her head.

"I'm sorry too. For your servant." A distant skeleton shivers, blood in glacial ice and sharp stone. I scoop up a handful of dirt, letting it fall through my fingers. "Did you see it happen?"

The queen plucks the cloth bandaging her forearm. "We were pressed back to back. In the aviary. We had gone to release the birds, but they surrounded us faster than we could escape." Her lip twitches. "The aviary only has one exit, unless you can fly."

I glance at the palace. I don't need to. Those senses find the lightness of bird bones there, near the pale peak.

"Aqtilik suddenly wasn't behind me anymore, and I just knew what that meant. So I ran. Cut through the servants to the door. I barely slipped through. Earned this," she motions to her once-armored forearm. She adds wistfully, "I wonder if the birds are still alive."

"They are."

She blinks at me, mouth parted. "You know that?"

I nod. "I can sense them. Their bones are lighter than human bones."

She wraps her arms around herself, mountain eyes distant with fog. She looks away without speaking. Maybe I shouldn't have told her that. Knowing; that sometimes makes it worse.

I turn away. To the palace. The army--a sickle curve around the hill--lies quiet. Scattered. Disturbed. I ignore them. I shut my eyes, reach out for a set of bones. "Hello," I whisper. A body shivers, in sharp wind and carved stone.

"What?" the queen asks.

"How much would your servant hate being a skeleton?" I ask. A body shivers again.

"What?" the queen repeats.

"Would she"--that shiver--"hate being a skeleton?"

"Well, she's--she's dead. I don't know."

"Will you hate it?"

The queen falls silent. Holds her breath. "As long as I don't picture the rest of her, lying in the aviary..." Her heart skips a beat. "Do it."

I do it. I tug the bones free of skin and muscle. Blood seeps out, and I whirl it in a spiral. Glacial ice, sharp stones, cool wind. I leave her skin and clothes the eye to her storm. It is the best I can do. Her spiraled blood sears into the aviary floor, tattooed deep, orbiting, forming stained clouds in a colored twilight.

Her skeleton steps across stone.

"How do I free the birds?" I ask.

"The...the window," she says. Fingers grip my shoulder, hard. "It slides."

"I can't see anything," I say.

"Oh. The wall. There's a latch in the window. Push that down, then push the window to the left."

The skeleton stumbles to the wall. I press the finger bones to the stone and trace my way around the room, finding a rectangular bump after the first corner, the second surface. I press the latch down. It jumps into place. I assume this means the window is open. The skeleton pushes the wall to the side, smooth bone slowly slipping on glass. I think. The skeleton keeps pushing the wall. I figure the window is wide enough when light bird bones flutter past the skeleton, taking flight.

The queen gasps softly. I peek through my eyelids; a flock of green and amber and gray specks bob through the air. The skeleton trembles and I shut my eyes again.

"Tell me how to leave the palace," I say. Sneaking a skeleton past palace people is hardly unlike sneaking a skeleton through a camp of tents. "Which buildings to go to."

She lightens her grip on my shoulder. "Thank you. Aqtilik would've...thank you. She would feel better knowing they are free." She shakily inhales. "Promise me we'll bury her after."

"Okay," I say. Like this speaking is enough for taffy and blood she cannot witness.

***

I tell the queen the skeleton is coming down the hill towards the bushes, and she shifts, facing away. The jet bird erupts and squawks towards Aqtilik's bones, except the texture of her storm chills in disappointment and she wheels back, silent. I wonder how she knows.

The skeleton hardly jangles, white bones rasping over stone and grass. She's weighed down by sacks, waterskins, a tent, hung from her bones. My skin nearly wilts at the luxury of a tent.

"Do you want to bury her here?" I ask.

"No," the queen whispers. "We should leave. We can do it tonight. Tomorrow."

I open my eyes and glance backward. At the back of the queen's head. Rigid spine. "You can't even look."

"Let's go," she stands. "I'll be fine. We can't risk doing it in the open here."

She strides away. I uncurl from my seat to follow, I grab the dented box and hold that close. The jet bird flutters from the branches to land on it, adding to the dents with her scratching talons. "At least one of us is good at digging craters," I whisper, peering into the bird's dark eye, "for dead bodies."

We walk away from the palace, a white-boned, blood-free skeleton trailing, waterskins swaying from her ribs.