Bone and Jewel Creatures by Elizabeth Bear

Author:Elizabeth Bear
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2011-02-03T02:33:39.586652+00:00

Bijou woke naturally, a little after sunrise, that small habit already grown foreign. For a moment she stretched, wondering why the child had not arrived to burrow her out from under the covers, demanding breakfast like a cat. Then, painfully, with Lucy’s assistance, she commenced the elaborate feat of rising from her bed.

The chill morning had dewed the loft, but early heat was already drying the stones. Still, enough water remained that Bijou’s feet and robes smeared a trail behind her. When she pushed the drapes aside and stepped from her sleeping alcove, she noticed at once a similar trail left by the child.

And the inexpertly-made bed, and the object glittering upon it.

Leaning on her cane, hips and knees grinding with morning stiffness that lasted into the evening now, Bijou hobbled towards the hearth and the child’s bed. The arm lay across the covers at a perfect right-angle to the bedstead, precise as if measured. Hawti hulked in the shadows by the fire where the gray morning light did not yet reach, bone and metal limned dying red by the faint glow of banked coals. It seemed impossible that such a vast creature could huddle into such a miserable small bundle.

“It’s all right,” Bijou said, patting the giant Artifice on one sharp-slanted shoulderblade. “It’s not in the garden, is it?”

Hawti rocked from leg to leg, disconsolate, and Bijou thought if it had the power, it would be keening. “Shhh,” Bijou said. She stumped around the bed once, but did not touch the jeweled arm that lay, pale and hurtful, in the shallow morning light. She followed the trail into the side-garden, and there found the bent stems of rose brambles, a little blood and hair and some fibers from the child’s smock caught among the thorns. She would not have thought anyone could climb them.

She had underestimated people before.

As she leaned upon her cane with both hands, waiting for direct sun to creep over the wall and warm her hair, Bijou considered. One possibility was that the child served Kaulas and that it had returned to him. But if that were so, there was no reason for it to leave behind the arm. To obtain a sample of Bijou’s best and current work could only serve the Necromancer. True, Bijou might be able to trace the Artifice—but Kaulas had to assume that Bijou knew where he lived.

The child could not speak, unless it had somehow been ensorceled to silence—and Bijou comforted herself that she retained a good understanding of the limits of Kaulas’s powers. She did not think it likely. And what good was a spy who could make no report?

The sun had not reached her yet, but the spatter of tiny moving reflections among the curl-leafed but November-blooming roses told her it had painted the top of the arched doorway and that Lazybones hung from its hooks just within, watching over her. Or, at least, watching over her shoulder.

She was fond of the sloth, an exotic skeleton brought back for her from a distant land.

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