The Skeleth Read online

  “I’m not,” said Katherine. “I’m facing down to you.”

  Everyone in the laundry shed stopped what they were doing, runner-boys and pot-girls, the row of washerwomen beating at the linen and the withered old crone stacking wood for the fire.

  Katherine remembered where she was, and what had become of her. She remembered that she had no home, and that all the toughness in the world would not provide her with supper. “Forgive me. Please. I’m new.”

  Goody Bycross pushed past her. “You’re no man’s daughter now, girl, and don’t you forget it. You heed your betters or I’ll have you out on your ear.”

  Katherine stared at the hard dirt floor of the laundry shed. “Yes, mistress.”

  “I want fresh linens up in the ladies’ day chamber, and new tablecloths for the hall.” Goody Bycross pointed at a bundled load that would stagger a mule. “Get moving.”

  Katherine cast a glance through the shed at the other laundresses, then back at Goody. “Just me?”

  “You’re built for hauling a load, and so far as I can see, you’re good for naught else.” Goody Bycross had already moved on down the line, inspecting the work of the girls and women under her command. “When you’re done, go scrub the floor of the great hall. Yes, the whole thing—I’ll let you know when to stop.”

  Katherine stooped to heave up the linens. She could just manage to get her arms around them, but the first two times she gained her feet, their unwieldy weight nearly made her trip and fall down again.

  “Serves her right,” one of the laundry-girls whispered, loud enough for absolutely everyone to hear.

  Katherine tried to peer over her bundle to mark who had spoken. It did not matter; a giggle spread up and down the rows of girls soaking dirty washing in the tubs. Whispers grew to become mutters, and then brazen talk:

  “Doesn’t know her place in the world, that’s her problem.”

  “Oh, she’ll learn it here, soon enough.”

  “Her father raised her wrong, that’s the truth, and now see what’s come of it.” They kept at it, sticking barbed words into Katherine’s back on her way out the door. “She’ll grow old alone, you mark me.”

  The sun stood high enough to flood between the walls of the castle’s inner ward, casting its wan autumn smile over a frantic swarm of activity. Smoke curled in great black puffs from the wooden kitchen by the keep, bakers hauled in carts stacked with fresh-cooked cakes of bread, and a dozen men worked double-time, cleaning barracks and smithy down to the last speck of dust. Katherine dodged from the path of boys hauling plates and serving-ware out of storage, then nearly tripped over a bard who sat rehearsing his music on the grass. A ringing fanfare sounded, and guardsmen stepped in march-time along the battlements toward the inner gates. The castle shook and bustled with preparations for the tourney, and could hardly have looked more chaotic if it was under attack.

  “Katherine!” Footsteps sounded behind Katherine on the path through the garden. “Katherine, wait—it’s me!”

  Katherine looked over her shoulder. “I was hoping you’d come find me.” She could not set down her bundle of linen anywhere nearby without getting it dirty, so she wobbled back and forth with it clutched in her arms. “I’m glad you’re here, Edmund. We need to talk.”

  “I know.” Edmund waited for the procession of servants to pass by toward the great hall with the nobles’ noontide feast carried between them, then took a careful look around. “Lord Wolland’s here to start a war.”

  Katherine stared at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Never mind that right now.” Edmund tried to make himself look as though he were discussing something of no consequence, faking a smile and gesturing to the bright pennants and happy folk in the courtyard while at the same time muttering under his breath. “Remember the wizard girl at Harvestide? The southerner, Ellí—she’s fighting a secret war against the Nethergrim. There are creatures called the Skeleth who once laid waste to all the north, and Ellí’s afraid they’re coming back.”

  “What are you talking about? What does this have to do with Wolland?” Katherine stumbled back and forth, straining to hold on to her unbalanced load.

  “Here.” Edmund held out his arms. “Here, Katherine, let me help you.”

  “If you like.” Katherine shifted her bundle onto Edmund, who staggered under its weight and promptly dropped it.

  “Sorry!” Edmund reached down to gather up the linen, red to the ears, and somehow managed to scuff more dirt all over it with his silly-looking shoes.

  Katherine stooped to beat the linen clean. “Edmund, how can you be sure that some old monsters from ages ago are coming back?”

  Edmund gave up trying to help her. “I read it in a book.”

  Katherine sighed. “Another book? Where did you get this one?”

  Edmund cast a nervous glance about him. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “From Lord Aelfric’s study.”

  Pins and needles prickled up Katherine’s neck. “What?”

  “It was Ellí’s idea.” Edmund spoke so fast that his words smeared together in a nervous babble. “She said we had to find true knowledge of the past to understand what’s about to happen, and she was right! There were these three kings, you see, and three queens, and if the book’s right about them, they were—”

  “So,” said Katherine. “Some wizard girl in Wolland’s service tells you she’s fighting the Nethergrim, and without asking a single question about why she wants you to do her bidding, you just run off with her to plunder Lord Aelfric’s private library.”

  “It’s not like that!” Edmund spluttered. “Ellí’s wise, and good. And very nice.”

  Katherine crossed her arms. “I’m sure she is.”

  “No, no, that’s not what I mean.” Edmund shook his head. “There are creatures coming, horrible things that serve the Nethergrim, and—”

  “How can you be so sure?” said Katherine. “How do you know you’re not just running errands for a greedy wizard—or worse, doing something Wolland wants?”

  “Girl!” A screeching voice interrupted Katherine’s retort. Goody Bycross poked her coiffed head through the low entrance of the laundry shed, and brandished her stick at Katherine. “Get a move on, you great ox! Did I give you leave to flibbet about with a boy? You mind your work, curse you!”

  Katherine heaved up her linens. “We’ll talk about this later.” She turned her back on Edmund and mounted the narrow stairs into the keep. “I have work to do.”

  The arched fireplace in the corner of the great hall burned low, and the tiny arrow-loop windows did little to relieve the gloom. A girl made a round of the walls, snuffing every other candle and oil light. Two dozen castle servants were ranged throughout upon the benches, some working at crafts and mending while others wolfed down a hasty meal of porridge and leeks before returning to their duties. Sir Richard Redhands sat with Lord Overstoke at the high table, speaking of hawks and boars, spears and hounds, meat and blood. Katherine had only been in the castle for a day, but already knew better than to try taking the grand stairs behind the nobles. She turned instead to go the long way around, up the spiral stairs toward the sentry-walk, only to find Lady Isabeau standing in her path.

  “Katherine.” Lady Isabeau backed Katherine out of the way with a glare. “I have heard ill reports of your efforts in our service so far. Is even laundry too complicated a task for one such as you?”

  “No, my lady.” Katherine put a foot behind her to steady herself and succeeded only in ripping the hem of her workdress.

  Another, larger figure followed Isabeau down the stairs. “Ah yes, John Marshal’s daughter!” Lord Wolland ambled into the passage. “Your young friend told me of your many deeds of valor at the feast last night. How splendid to meet you at last!”

  Katherine made a deliberately clumsy curtsy in reply, feeling Lady Isabeau’s hard glare on he
r. “I’m just a maidservant. No one in particular, if it please you, my lord.” She fumbled for a better grip on her linens and made to hurry past.

  “Nonsense, nonsense!” Lord Wolland put out a hand to bar Katherine’s passage. “Our meeting is truly a fortunate one, my girl, because my lady Isabeau and I were just discussing a matter of the highest importance, and we do humbly beseech your wisdom on the subject.”

  Katherine had not the faintest idea of what to do. Lady Isabeau shook with rage, cold and small, in Lord Wolland’s round shadow. The smile at Wolland’s lips never seemed to quite match the look in his deep-set eyes.

  Katherine chose simple obedience as her best course. “What subject is that, my lord?”

  “War,” said Wolland. “My lady Isabeau maintains that war is a monstrosity, a blight and stain upon our world, while I argue that it is both good and necessary, a wholesome enterprise that destroys that which is weak and sets on high that which is strong. What is your judgment on the matter?”

  “You take nothing seriously, my lord Wolland, and you never have.” Lady Isabeau looked like she would shove Lord Wolland off the nearest battlement, if only she dared. “You treat matters of high statecraft as fit for discussion with the lowly slattern who washes your bedsheets!”

  “And when war comes, my lady, who dies—only those who draw up the plans in the grand councils?” Lord Wolland held out his hand to Katherine. “Say on, my girl. Of what worth is war?”

  Katherine braced her bundle of laundry against her knee. “Most folk just want peace, my lord. They have nothing to gain and everything to fear from war.”

  “Ah, but, my girl, the making of peace is the very object of war!” Lord Wolland clapped his hands, as though Katherine had said just what he expected her to say. “There is never a man born who does not desire peace; even he who plots to start a war does it to achieve a peace, a new and more pleasant peace full of bounty and ease for the victor. The world, alas, does not allow such a life to simply happen to most of us, a fact that you must know full well. Peace, like plenty, must be taken, it must be seized. All peace, all good and gentle peace, is nothing but a prize won in war.”

  Katherine had never heard such nonsense in her life. “Someone is always the loser in your scheme of the world, my lord. Victory in war breeds cruelty, and cruelty breeds revenge. War only makes more war.”

  Lord Wolland put his arm around Katherine. “My dear girl, look about you.” He gestured to the various people in the hall. “You see before you men and women of various ranks, of different fortunes and stations in life. Some think that these differences are fixed by the stars, or written in the blood. Not so. That fixing—this man the lord, that one the servant, that one the slave—that is peace. In days of peace things carry on as they are, but in war all things are possible.”

  Lady Isabeau stormed over to an elderly man setting out the decorations on the high table. “You halfwit! Did you not listen?” She picked up a silver tankard carved into the likeness of a prancing stag, and shoved it into his trembling hands. “Take that away at once!”

  Katherine dropped her voice. “My lord, should you achieve what you desire by making war, what will you do then? If you set your life by rising, what happens at the summit?”

  “Ah, my foolish girl. This world is large enough that a man may strive and strive, and he may dwell all his life on the upward path.” Lord Wolland let Katherine go, but with a careless ease that said that he could seize her again, any time he liked.

  Fear and revulsion propelled Katherine up the spiral stairs. She crossed the sentry-walk and found the ladies’ day chamber empty. She set down the fresh linens, folding them to make it look as though they had not been dropped, then picked up a bundle of firewood set beside the hearth and hopped up the next flight of stairs to the garret room where the Lady Elísalon had been given lodgings. She listened at the door and caught a faint, familiar sound, something that reminded her of Edmund.

  “My lady? I’ve come to tend your fire.” Katherine prised back the door. The sound she had heard was the frantic scratching of pen on parchment. The fire in the hearth burned a bright purple-blue, fueled by a pile of veined, bone-white things that did not look at all like wood. Ellí sat hunched in a chair beside it with a book laid out across her lap, next to a spinning wheel and spools of carded wool. She scrawled across it with a fine quill pen, but did not seem to be looking at her work. Instead, she was shivering, rocking back and forth in a swaying loop, staring into the strangely colored fire.

  Katherine entered and shut the door behind her. Ellí breathed in and out with a hissing shudder, like someone slowly freezing to death. A whimper escaped her lips—she came to the end of the page and turned it, then dipped her quill into an inkwell with a trembling hand.

  Katherine stole up to the girl’s shoulder. She leaned over to look, and could not help but consider the charms of her face. Ellí was neither plain nor pretty, but her brown eye flickered with a fragile warmth. She had a small mouth, set in a trembling bow, her teeth clenched over her lip.

  —seek to rule his mind. Ellí scrawled in broad strokes across the page, as though racing to catch up with her thoughts: Tempt him, bring him, draw him in with every lure.

  Ellí paused. She moved her hand down a line and wrote again, slower than before and with a rounded, handsome script: Yes, your eminence. I hear and obey.

  Katherine felt her guts churn and tighten.

  All else flows apace. Ellí scribbled fast again. Your Sisters and Brothers keep to their tasks. Do not fall behind.

  Ellí paused a moment. Her lips twitched—half a smile—then she scribbled onward:

  And good day to you, Katherine, daughter of John, the former Marshal of Elverain.

  Ellí turned her face to Katherine. The effect made Katherine jump—Ellí’s other eye, an icy blue, seemed lit up by a completely different intelligence than the brown. The expression on Ellí’s face, which had looked like a desperate fragility, seemed revealed as a mask, a ruse—come closer, my dear, so that I might seize you by the neck.

  Katherine’s vision misted over in rage. She reached back a hand and smacked Ellí across the blue-eyed side of her face, hard enough that the noble young lady spun from her chair and dropped to the floor. Then Katherine raised the skirts of her workdress and kicked at the fire, scattering the strange white sticks. Embers whined, crying out like babies abandoned in the cold.

  Ellí rubbed at her cheek. She sat up. “Who . . . what are you doing in here? The servants were told not to—”

  Katherine grabbed Ellí by the loose folds of her dress. “Who was that? Who were you speaking to?”

  Ellí hissed and struggled. “Unhand me. Let me go, you lowborn wench!”

  “Hurt Edmund and I will kill you.” Katherine leaned in close. “I will spill your guts on the ground. Do not think for one moment that I won’t.”

  Ellí reached into her belt. “ALL FLOWS, NOTHING—”

  “Enough of that.” Katherine wrenched the girl around and shoved her up against the wall, scattering the dust in her hand across the floor. “Now, you will tell me exactly what you were doing, what Lord Wolland is planning, and who you really serve.”

  Ellí’s blue eye contracted, the pupil disappearing under inward-crawling veins. “COME INSIDE, CHILD, COME INSIDE.” Her voice took on a thousand ringing tones. “STEP WITHIN AND FIND ME.”

  Katherine froze. A vision blotted her sight, shapes forming from the swirl of blue—eyes within eyes, snaking tails entwined and knotting, a mouth of cruel beauty, a spiral turning ever inward to a point it never reached. A falling, flailing fear clutched at her, the feeling that had pursued her in her dreams every night since her escape from the mountain of the Nethergrim. She fell back shuddering, lost and alone.

  She felt a blow to her leg, then another to her face. She staggered and lost her footing, tripped up by her workdress. She only just
got out of the way of a flashing thrust; Ellí had a knife out. Katherine sprang back, planting her back foot, her father’s lessons at swordplay drawing themselves out so clearly in her mind that she could hear his voice—when your enemy has a blade but you do not, use everything around you for your defense. Never lose your footing, and wait for the overconfident strike. She kicked the spinning wheel into Ellí’s path, giving herself space to maneuver and a moment to get her bearings. Ellí came at her again, but this time she was ready. She twisted inward with the thrust, rolling out of the way and bringing down her fist on Ellí’s forearm.

  Ellí dropped the knife and broke away, making a desperate lunge for the door, but Katherine blocked her path. She made a clumsy feint that did not fool Katherine in the least, then backed into the opposite corner of the room, from which the only exit was the stairs that led up onto the roof of the tower. “No one will believe what you saw up here.”

  “Edmund will believe me.” Katherine circled the girl, keeping her moving, waiting for her to step the wrong way. She kept watch on the movements of Ellí’s body, averting her gaze from the spiraling blue eye.

  Ellí grabbed for a skein of wool that lay beside the spinning wheel, then dodged backward and onto the stairs. She threw it upward while holding on to the loose end. “I MAKE MY FLIGHT FROM A THOUSAND FALLS.” The thread in her hand drew taut, jerking her with sudden force into the air.

  Katherine charged up the stairs, but just missed grabbing hold of the fluttering hem of Ellí’s dress. Ellí flew high and away out of reach, off the roof of the tower and into the autumn clouds above. It happened so quickly that the lone guard on the turret, who stood watching the other way, did not even see her go, turning instead to blink in surprise at Katherine.

  “You’re not supposed to be up here,” he said. “What do you think you’re—”

  Something fell to strike the roof of the tower between them with a thump. The guard gaped at it, as did Katherine. A goose lay broken and dead upon the stones, and then another fell nearby, bouncing off the battlements and then tumbling down into the courtyard below.