As we approach, I understand his meaning. At the edge of the plaza, behind a low stone wall mottled with moss and lichen, a small armée of men turns the muddy soil. With their shovels and their carts, they could almost be farmers, but their harvest is bitter: piles and piles of pale bones, plucked from the earth and stacked neatly into the backs of the carts.
The sight wakes a memory: my brother and me, playing in the jungle beyond the fields and paddies. We’d been gathering sticks and vines to build a stage for shadow plays when I’d pulled a dirty leg bone from the leaf mold. Akra and some of the other village children went hunting for the skull, but the first one he found was much too small to belong to the same body as the femur. We ended up finding half a dozen skulls before it started to get dark; most of them had holes in the backs, and one even had a brass armée bullet rattling inside.
We had told our parents, but what could they do? Our makeshift stage in the jungle was not the only place where bodies had fallen. I watch as the men sift vertebrae from the churchyard muck—Chakran men, I realize, and men from the Lion Lands. Their features are obscured by the cloths tied around their mouths and noses, but I can see the rich shades of their skin.
Why am I surprised? Chakran shadow players weren’t the only foreigners who came to Aquitan—anyone could, if they were brave enough to leave and could save enough to buy a ticket. But in my country, foreigners got the best jobs. Here, it seems most of us are offered the worst. Except for the lucky few: the artists, like me. Like Ayla. But only as long as we didn’t displease the king.
As I watch the men working, one of them stands, pressing his filthy hands to the small of his back. Hurriedly, I look down, so he doesn’t catch me staring—so he doesn’t see my face, or recognize my features. I’m ashamed to be walking into the treasury at the king’s side, instead of standing in the muck with my own people.
Le Roi continues to the back of the cathedral, where a pair of guards stands by a plain wooden door. They wear ceremonial swords on one side and more utilitarian guns on the other, but they step aside when they see us approaching. Le Roi pushes the door open without needing a key, and cold air rushes out of the spiraling stone stairwell.
The footman races ahead, lighting the lamps on the way down, but the souls are even brighter than the flame. They cluster so thickly here beneath the cathedral, spiraling through the air, racing up and down the steps, flickering like embers in the corners. I don’t realize I am staring until the king calls back over his shoulder. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” I say quickly, hurrying to catch up. “I’m only surprised to see a treasury beneath a temple.”
“The jewel room and the gold vault are in the palace itself.” The king’s voice echoes up the stairwell. “But Le Trépas is not the only dignitary who has honored me with strange gifts. We need a place to store them.”
“Strange gifts?” As the stairs spill us out into a stone room the size of a warehouse, I can see what he means. Wooden shelves line the walls all the way to the vaulted ceilings, and each one is covered in valuables—from stringed instruments, to blown-glass vases, to architectural models, to an enormous boat carved of a single knotted trunk. When I catch sight of a beast lurking in the corner, my heart leaps into my throat before I realize it’s stuffed. The creature is three times as large as a water buffalo, with armored plates instead of fur and a single horn sprouting from the wide nose.
“The people of the Lion Lands call it a rhinoceros,” the king says when he sees me staring. Then he points to the ceiling, where the articulated bones of another creature hang: a strange amalgamation of animals, with great wings and an eagle’s beak, but four paws like a cat. “And they claim those are the bones of a griffin, though I’m fairly certain it’s only spare parts, strung together by a charlatan. Speaking of which, there is the book Le Trépas brought,” he adds, nodding.
“Ah.” The implication is a needle in my side, but this is not the time or place to argue with Le Roi about power and trickery. Instead, I follow his gaze to the dusty shelf. I had expected a thick tome, but the Book of Knowledge is surprisingly slim.
Before I can pick it up to look inside, Le Roi beckons me farther into the salon. “These will be more interesting to you,” he says.
Reluctantly, I tear my eyes from the book, but when I come to his side, the sight takes my breath away. The shelves on the far wall are covered in fantouches, and each one is a marvel: gorgeously painted, richly dyed, finely tooled and scraped, gilded and studded with sparkling gems. Thoughts of the book fly out of my head, and my fingers reach out, almost involuntarily. “There must be hundreds,” I whisper.
“Thousands,” Le Roi corrects me, and I can’t summon a reply. How much work did this collection represent? To see them gathering dust on the shelves makes my heart ache. I run my hand over the fantouche of a tiger. The stripes are like flames, and gold
