‘Witches and warlocks,’ he replied. ‘Bonecasters, they’re called.’
‘They throw bones?’
‘No. Well, maybe, but I think the name goes more to what we saw in that temple, milady. Bone to wood, bone to stone. As if to ask, if we can be one why not the other? As if it’s only a matter of how we talk to time.’ He paused and then added, ‘It’s said they gave the Jheleck the gift of Soletaken, which is yet another way of seeing the casting of bones.’
Ribs lifted his head without any signal from Rancept, and she felt the unwelcome chill in her feet once more. Sighing again, she rose. ‘Tell me they buried the bodies at least.’
‘They did, milady. Cold stone on cold flesh and sorrow in the silence.’
She shot him a look. ‘I think you surprise people, Rancept.’
‘Yes, milady, I do that.’
They made their way down a side track, rounding the butte they’d mostly ascended in order for Rancept to look down on the road. ‘I trust Lady Hish knows you well enough to value you.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘If she doesn’t, then I’ll do my best to steal you away, castellan. You… and Ribs, too.’
‘That’s a kind thing to say, milady. But I will serve Lady Hish Tulla until my dying day.’
Something in those words told Sukul of a love beyond that of a castellan for his mistress, and the very notion threatened to break her heart.
Ribs snaked down the stony slope ahead of them. ‘He’s just a dog, isn’t he?’
‘Just a dog, milady.’
‘Not Soletaken.’
Rancept snorted. ‘If he once was, he’s long forgotten his other body, leaving him what he is now, and that’s just a dog.’
Once down on the road, they approached the site of the killing in silence, Ribs staying close on Rancept’s left. Before reaching the scene both the dog and the castellan halted. Eyes on the ground, Rancept said, ‘The killers rode past the caravan and then went back to them. More proof that they weren’t bandits. They were back up to a fast trot, two lines in close formation, before they turned round. Someone gave a command.’
‘Disciplined, then.’
‘To start with,’ he replied, as he and Ribs set out once more. ‘But I saw what was left of one of the guards. There was anger in that butchery.’
‘Your eyes are that good?’
‘Was easy to see. The ones doing the burying carried him over in pieces.’
She pushed down her imagination, squeezing shut figurative eyes upon the image. The smell from up ahead was foul, not just from the still smouldering ash heaps where the wagons had burned, but also the stench of bile and urine. A horse’s carcass was lying on the road’s flank, this side of the row of cairns. The beast had been stabbed in the gut, the slash vicious enough to spill out stomach and intestines, now stretched out and partly wrapped about the animal’s hind legs as it had tried to kick free of its own ruin. Sukul found herself staring at the pathetic creature, seeing its terrible death and feeling pain as the scene seared into her mind. ‘I will never be one for war,’ she whispered.
Rancept, picking among wreckage, heard her and glanced over. ‘It’s an unpleasant business that’s for sure, especially when the sack is opened.’
She pulled her gaze away. ‘What sack?’
‘You. Me. The sacks of our skin, holding everything inside.’
‘Surely we are more than that!’ Her words were harsher than intended. ‘Even this horse was more than that.’
He straightened, wiping his hands. ‘Milady, though you ain’t asked for it, here’s some advice. Most of the time — the best of times, in fact — it’s good to think that. We’re more than just a sack of blood and organs and bones and whatever. So much more, and the same for every animal, too, like that noble horse and even old Ribs here. But then comes a time — like this one — when you can’t let yourself think that. When what you’re looking at now is just a broken open sack, with stuff spilled out. Whatever was “more” inside of us is gone — it’s gone from that carcass and it’s gone from those bodies under those stones. It’s not down to what we’re worth-’
‘No,’ she snapped, ‘it’s down to what we’ve lost!’
He seemed to flinch and then he nodded, turning away once more.
Sukul felt bad, but she wouldn’t take back her words. She understood his meaning, but she didn’t like it. Seeing people and animals as just sacks of skin made ruining those sacks that much easier. If no one looked at the loss, they were left with no sense of the worth. In such a world not even life itself had any value. She looked over at Rancept once more. He was standing in the centre of the road, opposite the cairns, but his gaze was on the track ahead, beyond the road’s bend. Ribs sat at his heel. There was something hopeless in the scene and she felt herself close to tears.
‘Is there a smaller grave?’ she asked, refusing to look too carefully at those cairns, not wanting her eyes to witness yet one more unpleasant truth.
He shook his head. ‘The boy got away, at least to begin with. Our friends are just ahead, by the way. Trying to skirt the mudflat, and you need to be on foot to do that — no place for horses. I’m thinking the boy was being pursued and took his horse out on to it.’
‘And?’ She made her way towards him.
‘There’s a lake under that flat,’ he said. ‘A lake of mud and it’s deep. His horse wouldn’t have made it. Could be the boy went down with it.’
‘Have they seen us yet?’
‘No.’
‘Step away, then.’
He frowned at her and then moved behind the butte once more. ‘What are you thinking, milady?’
‘When that rider comes to Tulla Hold not even the castellan will be there. Does anyone know where we are?’
‘Sergeant Broot’s commanding in my absence. He’ll stare and blink and eventually that messenger will decide he’s got rocks for brains.’
‘And then?’
‘And then the rider will leave, going back to wherever she needs to be. Done her duty and left the tale at the feet of Broot.’
‘I think we need to make sure, if we can, whether Orfantal is still alive.’
‘The boy was meant to be a hostage, milady?’
‘Yes, in the Citadel itself.’
‘And he was sent along with nothing more than a handful of caravan guards as escort?’
‘Yes.’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘There might have been reasons for that.’
Rancept looked away again, his mouth hanging open as it always did, and the man’s ugliness now struck her as something tender, almost gentle. In that temple, in the vision in my mind, I could have made him beautiful. She wished she had. She wished, with sudden ferocity, that she had made him anew.
‘Castellan, can’t they heal you? Your nose, I mean.’
He glanced at her. ‘Best way is to break it all over again.’
‘Why not try that?’
‘Ever had your nose broken, milady?’
‘No.’
He shrugged, looking away once more. ‘Tried that. Six times.’
She realized that his attention was fixed on the cairns, and that it had not been a casual regard. As she made to speak he strode over to the makeshift cemetery, edging down into the ditch. Ribs followed him, tail dipped and ears drooping. Sukul joined them. ‘What is it, Rancept? What have you found?’
‘Found? Nothing, milady.’ Yet he studied the cairns. ‘When they camped below the Hold and you decided to go down and visit them, you commanded me to have the cook prepare four days’ worth of decent meals, for seven people.’
She looked at the cairns. ‘If there’s only one body under each one
