Ghoulish Song

Thirteenth Verse

THE NEXT MORNING THE Beglicane household was all bustle and chaos. Kaile crept downstairs to see musicians of every kind jostling for floor space and trying to tune their instruments. Luce Strumgut stood on one banister of the staircase and shouted like a barge captain in the midst of a storm. Master Nibbledy walked stately among the musicians, checked the tuning of their instruments, and gave his own solemn orders—each with a single word.

He only ever spoke one single word at a time.

Kaile found a window and peered outside. The world seemed calm enough. Morning sunlight glowed and glinted, and the surface of the River drifted downstream in what looked like an ordinary way.

“Not sure what the fuss is all about,” she said to Shade, who stood beside her. “I don’t see any flooding. But everybody’s busy, and we’re as much in the way as a Snotfish in a kitchen. Let’s just go.”

Luce said she would take us to the Reliquary, Shade whispered.

Kaile tried to get Luce’s attention, but the lute-playing sailor’s attention had already split into several pieces. None of those pieces noticed Kaile.

The Master paid her no mind, either. The only one who seemed to notice Kaile was Bombasta the singer, who stood in one corner sipping tea and glaring. You are not supposed to be here, the glare said.

Kaile agreed. She did not like taking up space where she was not welcome.

“We’re not supposed to be here,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She picked her way between the drums and foldable harpsichords, dodged a fretful bandore player who kept trying to replace a broken string with fumbling fingers, and finally made it to the front door.

Cymbat the drummer suddenly stood in her way.

He looked directly at Kaile for one moment, and then mumbled unintelligible things at the empty space just above her head. He noticed Shade, and flinched away from her, but only a little.

“Hello,” said Kaile, nervous and uncertain. “Good luck with all this.”

Cymbat handed over a very small bundle made from a napkin tied at the corners. Kaile took it.

What’s that? Shade asked.

“Bread, cheese, and two apples,” said Kaile as she peeked inside. “He gave us breakfast.”

She looked up to thank the drummer, but Cymbat had already disappeared in the bustle and chaos.

Kaile and Shade ate their breakfast and shadow-breakfast outside. It was early, so there wasn’t very much traffic flowing over the bridge. A farmer’s cart passed by, heading north. A boy in a coat very much too big for him came walking south.

Kaile wiped crumbs from her mouth and the front of her dress. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s find this Reliquary place ourselves.”

We don’t know where it is, Shade pointed out. And we’ve never been to Northside.

“Then we’ll just ask for directions,” said Kaile. She slung her satchel over one shoulder and set out. Shade followed.

They crossed the Fiddleway into Northside. It seemed like a different city entirely, somewhere very far from home rather than just the northern half of their own Zombay. The streets were smooth, the rooftops were slate tile rather than tin sheets and thatch, and none of the walls were falling down. Northsiders wore shorter coats, taller hats, and fewer colors than Kaile was accustomed to.

She felt uncomfortable noticing these differences. It reminded her that she did not know the whole of Zombay as well as she had always thought. She didn’t know her own city. She felt unwelcome. The word “home” seemed like noise to her now, like a very small sound that made no sense.

“Look at all these people,” she said to Shade. “None of them are neighbors. I don’t recognize any of them. I don’t know where they’re going. There’s so much happening at the same time.”

Of course, said Shade. This is a city. There’s always more than one story unfolding at once in a city.

People looked at Kaile oddly when she asked for the Reliquary, but they gave her directions and she followed them. She tried to move with purpose, as though she really did know where she was going, because she had heard that unattended children in Northside got rounded up by the Guard and thrown into orphanages.

Don’t walk so fast, Shade protested. We’re not in the Guard. We don’t have gearworked legs.

“We’re not dustfish, either,” said Kaile. “We can’t swim through dust and leap between the drift dunes. Not that there are any drift dunes here. I wonder how they keep the streets so clean.”

We’re still not molekeys, said Shade, so we can’t scamper over the rooftops and make hiding places with our teeth.

“Not here, anyway,” said Kaile. “All the walls are brick and stone. Painful to bite through. And we’re also not ...”

She forgot about whatever it was that they were not, and stopped to stare at the building in front of them. It looked like a great big jewelry box of pointy stone spires. A pair of bronze doors stood open, gleaming in the sunlight.

“I think this is it,” she said.

Probably, Shade agreed. The doors are made out of bronzed bones all stacked together. That’s a pretty big hint.

The two of them passed through the open doors of stacked bones.

Inside, the Reliquary was a place of thin stone walls, wide windows, and soaring vaults held up by painted columns. Each column had an arch carved into the side, and every open niche held a skull.

Kaile looked down at the glass-smooth floor of polished stone. She saw her own reflection in it, and Shade’s beside her.

“Do reflections mind that we’re stepping on them?” Kaile asked.

No, said Shade, without looking down. From where they stand, they’re stepping on us.

A voice called out to them. “Who is there?” The sound carried, bouncing between the stone columns. “Is someone there?” Footsteps hurried across the floor.

Kaile suddenly wanted to hide. She spoke up instead. “Here! Over here.”

A woman came hurrying toward them. She wore a crisp and formal blue coat, and kept her hair mostly short and oddly styled—or at least Kaile thought it looked odd.

“A guest!” the woman called out. “A visitor! Would you care for a tour? I am Contrivia Runcemore, the Reliquarian on duty today, and I would be very pleased to conduct a tour.” Her Northside accent sounded sharp and precise in Kaile’s ears.

“Um, yes,” Kaile said. “I’d like a tour. But I’d especially like to know about carved flutes. Flutes like this one.”

She held up the flute. Runcemore the Reliquarian looked down, smiled, frowned, and then tried to smile again.

“Of course!” she said, with aggressive enthusiasm. Her voice sped up. “Right this way. But first—first we must admire the atrium as we pass through it.” She held her arms wide to encompass the entryway and all its many columns, and launched herself into a practiced speech. “The space around you is dedicated to the history of Zombay, and to preserving the relics of our most significant personages. The skulls here belonged to every Lord Mayor who has ever governed the city—excluding the current Mayor, of course. He is still using his skull. Along the wall you can see the hand bones of every Captain of the Guard to have served the city—including the current Captain. He was kind enough to donate his old hands after replacing them with gearworks.”

Kaile glanced politely at the bones on display. Pieces of important people sat on velvet cushions within glass cases, gold boxes, and stone arches. Shade walked beside her, and did not look around.

“They seem like actors in pretty little theaters,” Kaile said. She meant it as a compliment, but the Reliquarian scowled.

“They do not resemble theaters,” she said. “What a filthy comparison. The theaters have all closed, and good riddance to them.”

“Sorry,” Kaile said quietly.

With obvious effort, the Reliquarian wrestled away her scowl and resumed the tour. “Down that way we have the Chamber of Grotesques, where we keep all sorts of monstrosities and misshapen bones, oddly changed—and sometimes Changed, even! We have two goblin skeletons, and one set of bones that I believe may have belonged to a troll. Over in that direction we keep the Chamber of Infamous Criminals, and the Chamber of Beasts. I maintain the Chamber of Beasts myself. We will pass through it on the way to the Chamber of Curiosities, where the carved musical instruments are kept.”

The Reliquarian led them into a long chamber, smaller than the atrium but with much larger bones on display. She gestured proudly at the ceiling, where a greatfish skeleton hung suspended by several copper chains. Kaile hadn’t known that any living thing could be so huge—or any dead thing, either. Each of its tusks was bigger than she was.

“I call him Bufkins,” said the Reliquarian. “He is new to the Reliquary. I only just assembled him last year, and employed a gearworker for a few extra touches. Observe. ...” She took a long pole from one corner, reached up through the greatfish ribs with it, and cranked hidden springs. The skeleton began to move. It swished its tail back and forth, and opened its jaws. The great old bones seemed to remember swimming. Then the gearworks wound down, slowed, and stopped.

“I should install a piece of coal in there one day,” the Reliquarian said, wistful. “If we made an automaton out of Bufkins, then I would not need to do the winding up.”

Kaile was horrified, both by the suggestion and the Reliquarian’s casual tone of voice.

“But coal’s made out of hearts,” she protested. Only the nastiest and most brutal people arrested by the Guard were supposed to have their hearts cut out for coalmaking, but no one really believed that the coalmakers limited their craft to nasty, brutal hearts—no one in Southside, at least.

The Reliquarian pretended not to hear her, and the tour continued.

They passed the bones of different animals, most of them with long legs and large teeth, all put together and posed as though they remembered how to move. Kaile kept expecting them to. She imagined that each beast turned its bony head to follow her, that each one kept its empty eye sockets focused on her as she passed by.

“Are all of these skeletons gearworked?” she asked. She tried to make the question casual, unconcerned, and not at all nervous.

“Oh, no,” the Reliquarian said. “Only Bufkins. It would be wonderful, of course, to make all of my charges move. They could bow to the Lord Mayor when he comes, or do little dances to music on important occasions. Others would move much as they did in life, to show us how they were once accustomed to moving.” She stood beside the posed skeleton of a jite, its teeth bared and wings outstretched to look as threatening as possible. The Reliquarian posed herself, mimicking the jite and holding out the tails of her coat like wings.

Kaile wasn’t sure whether or not to laugh, so she didn’t.

The Reliquarian dropped her coat-wings, resumed a dignified posture, and led the way down a long, windowless passage. Here the walls were made out of arm and leg bones, hundreds and thousands of them stacked on top of each other as though a multitude of the dead had built a fort out of themselves.

Kaile hoped that none of these bones had drowned, and that they wouldn’t make unquiet mischief.

At the far end of the bone-built passage stood the Chamber of Curiosities, which displayed bones carved into other things. Kaile saw a model barge, a miniature tree, and a ticking clock.

“Here we are.” The Reliquarian came to stand beside a shelf of flutes and whistles. “Some of these are really quite ancient. This one here is a favorite of mine, covered with carvings in an old script. Shall I read it to you?” She squinted at writing scratched into the bone, and then closed her eyes and tilted her head backward. She stayed that way for one long, silent moment.

“Hello?” Kaile finally said.

The Reliquarian opened one eye, and closed it again. “Excuse me. I am helping myself remember this ancient language by pouring the liquid stuff of my thoughts from the centers of sensory perception to the mental place of memory. Philosophers assure us that this is how memory works.” She cleaned out her left ear with one long pinky finger, opened her eyes, and began to read. “ ‘This leg belonged to Heris, and she the greatest musician to walk these hills. With so much music in her bones, she desired to be a source of music in death.’ That’s a lovely idea, I think—though I shouldn’t want to risk playing it to find out how much music is left inside. This is a very old relic, very old, and cracked along the side.”

She set down the leg of Heris, and picked up another flute. “This one is more grim. The inscription reads, ‘I played a happy and frolicking tune at the execution of my murderer.’ That sounds horrible to me, and not at all frolicsome. Let’s examine something else.” She set that flute aside, and took up a pair of ribs. “These are drum bones. You play them by clacking them together. I would try it, but they might snap in half. They are older than this building, you know, and they remember a great deal. Here, let me read to you what they say.” She squinted and moved her lips for a while before speaking. “ ‘Mine is the rhythm makes the bone-house. Mine is the beat inside that house. Mine is the dance and the dark in between. Mine is the building and mine is the breaking. Mine is the shaping and severing song.’ There. What an intriguing bit of old verse.”

The Reliquarian returned the two ribs to their shelf. “Now tell me,” she said, sounding suddenly nervous, “what interests you so much about bone-made music?”

“I need to know more about this flute,” said Kaile, holding it up again. “I need to know why it insists on playing only one song. And I think I should find out whose bone it used to be. I have a solid guess about whose it is, but I don’t really know.”

Runcemore the Reliquarian stood thinking. Then she reached out and took the flute away from Kaile.

“Hey!” Kaile protested.

The Reliquarian ignored her protest. “Come with me. Let’s see what answers we can find in my laboratory.” She moved quickly to a doorway on the far side of the Chamber of Curiosities. The door was thick, and locked. The Reliquarian unlocked it with one iron key, which she kept in her coat pocket, and descended the spiral staircase on the other side.

Kaile followed, still unhappy that someone else was carrying her flute. Shade moved beside her.

The staircase ended in a metal door and a basement room beyond it. The stone walls here were rough and unpolished, and the floor made up of dirt and sawdust. A workbench lit by several lamps and cluttered with odd instruments took up one side of the room. A blazing cast-iron furnace took up the other end.

The room was hot, oven hot, kitchen hot—only worse, because there were no windows, and because the place smelled like rust and ash rather than baking bread.

“So sorry for the lack of polish,” the Reliquarian said. “I do need to tidy up down here. Now, let’s see what we can learn. I’ll need a pinch of fine dust from the bone to begin.”

She took up a dull knife and scraped at the side of the flute.

“Stop that!” Kaile told her, shocked.

Runcemore flinched away. “I’ve only scratched it,” she said, defensive and scolding. She collected the bits of scraped bone dust in shallow metal basin, rubbed a pinch of it between two fingers, and tasted it. Then she lit a candle, took another pinch, and dropped the dust into the candle flame. The dust made tiny flashes of light as it fell. The Reliquarian studied the flame, and nodded.

“Carved from the femur of a young girl,” she said, mostly to herself. “She stood at the same height as yourself, more or less, and wore her hair in much the same way. It seems that she also had a fondness for figs.”

“You got all that from burning bone dust?” Kaile wondered.

“I did,” the Reliquarian said. “And I can also tell that the girl died by drowning.”

“I thought so,” said Kaile. “Iren drowned. She didn’t really turn into a swan.”

The Reliquarian made a scornful noise. “That’s a foolish song,” she said. “I remember that the girl was foolish, too, though she died a very long time ago and I did not know her well. She was northern, and from a very good family, but wayward enough to take up singing on the Fiddleway. She even took apartments there. No good came of that, of course.”

The Reliquarian looked sideways at Kaile. “I thought you might be Iren, at first. You do resemble her.”

Kaile took two steps backward. “Why would you think that? Why would you think I was her? You just said that she died a very long time ago.”

“She did,” the Reliquarian agreed. “But I’m not at all sure when you died, shadowless thing.” Metal scraped against metal as the Reliquarian shut the door and brought down the latch. Shade made a very unhappy noise.

“I’m not dead,” Kaile insisted. She gave the Reliquarian a fierce and challenging look, one with iron in it. She had sharpened this look with long practice. She had used it to banish drunken patrons of the Broken Wall such that they slunk away from the public room in shame.

Runcemore the Reliquarian did not notice Kaile’s iron look. “How sad,” she said. She did not sound at all sad—though she did speak very quickly, all in a rush. “I had heard that ghouls are often unaware of their own death, and carry the delusion that they yet live. This seems to be the case with you. Your lack of shadow leaves no doubt, however. I am not at all sure what one dead girl is doing with the carved fragment of another dead girl, but the dead’s business is none of mine.”

“Then give me back my flute,” Kaile told her. “Give it back. I’ll go away, and then none of this will be any of your business.”

“I really cannot do that,” said the Reliquarian. “I would prefer it if you just went away, but my own responsibilities are clear. I should add this specimen to our collection of carved flutes. As for yourself, there are rules concerning the dead who continue to move; very clear rules, and far more humane and hygienic than the terrible things they do in Southside. No beheadings, no separate graves for separate pieces. None of that.”

She walked wide around Kaile, keeping her distance, and crossed the room to the great furnace at the far side. She opened the furnace. A wood fire blazed inside, and waves of heat flooded the room.

“We burn ghouls here,” the Reliquarian said.