Dead House K'ree: A Blasphemy of Bones Book 1 by Will Payne

Author:Will Payne [Payne, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baldric Books
Published: 2023-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Candleheads

Fools seek immortality. Spend an eternity amongst the living? No, thank you. The dead make far better company. — Ka the Lesser, Renegade Bonebraid and Outlaw

Slippers clutched in her hands, Mrin padded barefoot toward Raspy Jo asleep on a stool.

A snore buzzed from his half-gaping mouth. His lanky legs blocked the boy’s dormitory exit.

She ducked, waddled beneath his breeches, and sped out into the cool summer night.

Stingy Master Moon offered a meager portion of light, illuminating only the stepping stones along the vine-choked pathway back to her study cell. Crickets dueled in the shadows.

She paused only to put on her shoes.

Students seldom walked this way as it passed in front of the headmaster’s quarters. No chance of getting caught after curfew tonight. The headmaster had departed, clutching Mrin’s notes on Blasphemer’s Engines. Pongo insisted Neffan had gone to help the magistrate interrogate Tarn, but she didn’t think so. Why would he take her formula for a hypothetical creation wheel? Was he planning to visit hell?

She held up the key Pongo had given her. As long as the adjacent door was unlocked, she could leave the cloister whenever she wished. No more writing compositions whilst gagging on the stink of turds and piss in a chamber pot. She’d keep shitting behind the shacks to avoid running into Anpee on her way to the privy.

Once she finished this grand dissertation that Neffan wanted her to write, she’d persuade him to let her rest. She yawned at the title: Blasphemy and Furnaces in the Age of the Scholars. After that, she’d convince Pongo to accompany her to the Chain Yard to speak with Tarn.

She scampered across a small courtyard with a broken swing dangling from an elm. Anpee cut the rope and told everywhere that Pongo broke it with his weight. She plunged into the gap between the Lecture Hall Emerald and the academy’s western wall. Darkness enveloped her. The cords of peace and silence comforted her, more than the chirping crickets and Raspy Jo’s buzzing snoring. Chimes clinked at the gate.

Someone giggled outside her cell door. “Shhh…you’ll wake the headmaster.”

Mrin froze, exposed in plain sight under the moonlight.

“You’re lucky you’re locked inside there, demon,” Anpee said into the door, slurring her words. More cosmetics than usual covered her face. She wore a flowing gown, and her braided hair coiled around her head like a serpent. A decorative silver pin held the painstakingly complicated knot together. “You can’t hide from me forever.”

A trio of her worst allies, wearing similar attire, flanked her—the scowling Kite twins, Yadi and Wadi, and the cruel Jeza. A foul cloud of rice wine stink surrounded them.

Anpee banged on the door with her palm. “You hear me?”

“Come on,” one of the Kite twins said. She could never tell them apart. “It’s late, and I’ve still got an assignment due at midday roll call.”

That was Yadi. She was smarter but only slightly less cruel than her sister.

Jeza scowled at them, shaking her head. She towered over everyone in the Conch Academy except Raspy Jo, and he was over fifteen winters old.

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