Soulbinder by Sebastien de Castell

Author:Sebastien de Castell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2018-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

39

The Bones

“They’re so small,” I said. “It can’t be him.”

None of the others bothered to contradict me. They saw what I saw, and knew just as well as I did that these had to be Reichis’s remains.

Squirrel cats are small-boned creatures. Stripped of meat and skin and fur, emptied of that indomitable spirit, what was left looked like the skeleton of a house cat. None of Reichis’s bravery and brashness, his thieving nature and loyal heart, remained.

I was too scared to even touch the bones for fear they might crumble into powder and disappear into the storm beginning to rise up around us.

“You should speak to him,” Diadera whispered. She held on to my arm as though worried I too would drift away into the swirling winds. “Tell him what he meant to you.”

Why do people suddenly become so stupid the minute they want to console you? Dead was dead. Reichis was gone, lost to me forever because he couldn’t stop himself from trying to save me even after I’d left him behind.

Desperate to escape the flood of grief that was already up to my neck and rising steadily, I considered Diadera’s words—not because I believed it would do any good, but because they gave me the excuse to retreat into suspicion and callous insight. She spoke with a high Daroman accent, and displayed any number of their mannerisms—even her courtly flirtations. The Daroman culture takes death very seriously; theirs is an imperial people, and so rank and ancestry are recognised in manifold ways. Rituals. Parades. Solemn vigil. Grand oratory.

But they don’t talk to the dead.

Which meant Diadera wasn’t who she pretended to be.

So many lies. Hers. Mine. How were any of us not crushed under the weight of them? I looked into those pale green eyes of hers that pulled me in every time I saw them. She must’ve known her suggestion would reveal to me that she wasn’t Daroman, yet she’d made it anyway. “Why?” I asked.

She answered both sides of my question at once. “Because it will ease your grief.”

A hand pressed down on my shoulder. Butelios. “In the north we sing for the honoured dead. I will sing for Reichis, if you will allow it.”

“I don’t have any incense with me,” Tournam said, his voice quieter, gentler than I would’ve thought possible for him. “But I know the sacred prayers by heart. Ask me and I will entreat God to grant your friend entry into his domain, to let him sit astride his shoulder as he gazes down upon us.”

One after another they made similar offers. Azir. Suta’rei. Ghilla. All our peoples have ways of dealing with death. None would make me feel any better.

I removed my shirt and spread it on the ground next to the little mound. I picked up the desiccated bones one by one and carefully wrapped them in the linen fabric, finally rolling it up into an awkward bundle. I left behind a playing card, dark red, like blood. A debt had been paid, even if not by me.

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