Bonesmith

ONE

Ready your blade.

As one, the novitiates knelt in the snow, their weapons held high on upturned palms. For valkyrs like Wren, it was a blade fashioned from dead bone. For reapyrs, a scythe of gleaming steel.

The sun had set, the sky inky black and riddled with stars—the Gravedigger’s hour was upon them. Any moment now, the sickle moon would crest the would-be trees.

Any moment now, the trial would begin.

Wren’s heart thundered in anticipation.

The branches of the forest stood pale and stark before them, sharp with reaching hands and gaping mouths. With splintered spines and cracked ribs.

This was no ordinary forest, after all. This was the Bonewood.

Arms and legs soared up from the ground, twisted and warped. Bent and broken.

Dead, soulless bones.

Undead, haunted bones.

Human bones, yes, but other creatures too. Reindeer with spiky antlers and great woolly mammoths with arching tusks. Ancient bones from unknowable beasts. Bones from the dawn of time.

The Bonewood was at once a graveyard and a training ground. It was here that bonesmiths tested their skills, extended their magic… and showed their mastery over the undead.

Now, after years of training and a lifetime of living in its shadow, Wren would traverse the Bonewood and compete in the Bonewood Trial.

She lifted her head slightly, considering the novitiates kneeling on either side of her. There were ten of them total, each dressed in Bone House black and with black grease lining their eyes, making their sockets look sunken like skulls. Ghostlight was bright enough on its own but turned blinding when it flashed against the snow, so they used the wax-and-charcoal mixture to reduce glare. It also made the mark of their magic—their pale, bone-white irises—stand out all the more.

Sometimes Wren extended the eye black into her hairline or painted her lips for a more dramatic effect, though her teachers usually told her to wipe it off.

Sometimes she spread it on her teeth and smiled wide, just to give them a fright. There wasn’t much to entertain in the House of Bone, frigid and isolated on the northernmost tip of the Dominions, so Wren had to make do.

Not tonight, though. Tonight Wren would play by the rules… for once.

If she passed the trial, she would serve for life as a valkyr of the House of Bone. In the Dominions, where magic welled up from deep in the earth, the dead lingered—violent and unpredictable—unless a bonesmith severed the ghost from its earthly remains. That was the duty of the reapyr.

But not all ghosts went quietly. Some put up a fight, so it was the valkyr’s task to defend the reapyr from the undead.

Without the House of Bone, ghosts would overrun their land, making it uninhabitable, as it had been for centuries. Their work was more than a job or a calling. It was a necessity.

But that didn’t mean Wren couldn’t enjoy it.

In contrast to their blacks, the valkyrs also wore bones. They wore them fastened to their forearms as gauntlets and their chests as breastplates, and bone weapons were strapped across shoulders and in belts or loaded as artillery into bandoliers.

They all had their favorites—Wren wore twin swords in sheaths on her back, while Leif had a broad ax made of sharpened pelvic bone and Inara carried a flail with a spiked skull on the end.

In short, they were dressed for war. The battlefield was the Bonewood, and the enemy was the undead.

Though they would one day be allies, tonight the other valkyr novitiates were Wren’s rivals, her competition—sons and daughters of the House of Bone and its various branches, or upstart nobodies from across the Dominions who somehow found themselves with bonesmith blood. Cousins and distant relations, strangers and outsiders, but not friends. Not family.

Her father had explained it to her during one of their rare conversations: They were linked by magic, not love. Duty, not affection.

That was the way of the House of Bone.

Wren had worked hard, had scraped and clawed to get here. She was the best damn valkyr novitiate her house had seen in years, and tonight she would prove it in front of everyone: her teachers and instructors, Lady-Smith Svetlana Graven—head of the House of Bone—and most of all, her father.

Psst, whispered a voice from her right.

Inara.

Of all Wren’s cousins, Inara Fell was the biggest threat to her superiority among the valkyrs—and her only worthy adversary. They were of an age and had comparable height and build, so they were often paired together for lessons and exercises, though the similarities ended there. Inara had coarse black hair, carefully arranged in rows of tight braids, while her ivory bonesmith eyes stood out starkly against her brown skin. Wren, meanwhile, had wild bone-white hair—always tangled and unkempt—and eyes to match, her skin equally pale and colorless. Inara was organized, by the book, and always on time. Wren was more intuitive, coming and going as she pleased, and considered rules as suggestions more than laws to follow to the letter.

The two of them had been at each other’s throats for as long as she could remember, but after tonight, they’d go their separate ways. Once they passed their trial, they’d each be paired with a reapyr and sent to travel the Dominions, performing death rites and battling dangerous ghosts, ensuring all the dead were reaped. Elsewise, they might be lost and forgotten for centuries until some hapless fool dug them back up and unleashed an undead horde.

Like what had happened at the Breach—the darkest challenge the bonesmiths had ever faced. But it was in such times that heroes were forged and legends were made, like Wren’s uncle Locke Graven.

She longed for such notoriety, and one day she would achieve it. But first she had to pass the Bonewood Trial.

Shut up, she said to Inara, not turning her head. She was generally in favor of whispered conversation—the more inopportune the time, the better—but tonight was far too important for Wren to allow herself to get distracted.

The terms of the trial were simple: Each valkyr and reapyr pair must pass safely through the Bonewood, reaping three ghosts along the way. They had until dawn.

But the Bonewood did not suffer travelers lightly. There were ghosts there that did not sleep, undead that would never find peace.

And that was to say nothing of the living.

Wren had to protect her reapyr from violent ghosts and contend with the other valkyrs making their way through the trees. Valkyrs like Inara, who would love nothing more than to see her fail.

Want to make things interesting? Inara pressed. For someone who loved to toe the line, she was being surprisingly insistent tonight.

"I’m talking to you, Wren drawled. I’m not sure that’s possible."

Yes, Inara was worthy competition… but she was also a constant thorn in Wren’s side and always nipping at her heels. Second place in everything, except rule breaking.

In that regard, Wren had no equal.

Inara was unfazed. "You might make things more interesting for him, then, she said softly. She spoke to the ground, the pair of them still poised on their knees in the snow, but Wren heard the words clearly. There was only one him" she could mean.

She glanced up at her father.

Lord-Smith Vance Graven stood next to his mother, Svetlana, atop the podium with the rest of the trial’s judges. As heir to the House of Bone, he was required to witness certain events—whether his only child participated in them or not.

He gave her the subtlest of nods. Acknowledgment, yes, but also a reminder.

I’m counting on you today, he had said to her mere hours before. They’d stood inside the training grounds of Marrow Hall, bone-white pillars arching over them and black sand underfoot. Make me proud.

To Wren, it sounded like a challenge. She hadn’t seen him for three months, and she was determined to make him more than proud. She wanted to make him stay, even just for a little while.

She lifted her chin. Yes, Father.

He’d surveyed her for several silent moments, then given her a reluctant, indulgent smile. They tell me you spent half the night sweeping bonedust from the librarian’s bookshelves. Why?

Wren couldn’t help but smirk back at him. She shrugged. I was bored.

Technically true. She’d climbed the bookshelves on a dare because she’d been bored during lessons, and when the librarian caught her three stories high with her dirty boots perched on a first edition of The Gravedigger’s Watch, the cleaning had been the eventual punishment.

Her father’s pale eyes danced, reading between the lines as he often did. Whenever he came home for a visit, however rarely, he asked Wren about her various studies—and accompanying punishments—with a serious air, like he was looking for something. For proof of her abilities? Or lack thereof? The topic was dull, even to her, so it seemed only proper, then, that her antics should entertain him. It was the least she could do.

He sighed, going for stern, but the amusement was still there in his gaze. Wren lived for that spark. Though he’d never own up to it, Wren had heard stories of Vance Graven as a young bonesmith, and he was at least as much of a troublemaker as she was. In fact, given Wren’s problematic origins, he was more so.

I do hope the lack of sleep won’t affect your performance in the trial, he said, the smallest amount of censure there.

Wren shook her head resolutely. Never.

He nodded, then turned to survey the rest of the novitiates who continued to practice in the training sands. Forgetting her already.

In fact, she added, reclaiming his attention. I’d been planning on staying up anyway—acclimate to the night trial, you know—so the librarian did me a favor.

His lips quirked. I suppose that also explains why you slept until noon and missed morning lessons?

Wren beamed. Exactly.

His focus shifted back to the other novitiates, Inara among them, and Wren had the sudden urge to tell him about the things she hadn’t screwed up lately. I’m undefeated in our sparring class, and—

He spoke over her as if he hadn’t heard. Your grandmother is watching you, Wren. You must be careful. She will take any excuse to fail you. His gaze returned to hers. "Do not give her one. You cannot simply pass tonight…. You must pass spectacularly. Do you understand?"

Now, with the Bonewood Trial mere moments away, Wren tilted her head toward Inara. What did you have in mind?

Inara smiled, and behind her, Ethen—her reapyr novitiate for the trial—exchanged a look with Wren’s novitiate, Sonya. This was not Wren’s and Inara’s first time going toe-to-toe, and their conflicts rarely ended without some form of collateral damage. Both reapyrs likely feared they might be it.

A race, Inara said, darting a glance up into the trees before looking down again. First one through wins.

That was already, more or less, the purpose of the trial. It was not timed, but being last to finish would not look good. Everyone wanted to be first, Wren most of all.

And the second one through?

Inara turned her head enough to frown, as if the answer were obvious. Loses.

Wren smirked. It was sufficient motivation for both of them, but… That hardly makes things interesting. I plan on winning whether you dare me to or not.

Inara licked her lips, her gaze fixed on the ground. If you win, I’ll give you Nightstalker.

That caught Wren’s attention. Nightstalker was the Fell ancestral dagger, currently sitting in Inara’s open hands and gleaming in the moonlight.

Like Wren’s own blade, it had a long history within the House of Bone and had belonged to dozens of talented valkyrs over the years—most recently, Inara’s mother. She had been Wren’s father’s schoolhouse rival, just as Inara was hers.

How sweet would it be to lay claim to such a weapon? To show her father that she had not only outclassed her greatest competition—and in a lesser way, his—but now possessed two valkyr blades?

They were more than just practical weapons; they were symbols of the valkyr order itself, representative of their place within the House of Bone. They were not given lightly and could only be taken by a worthy opponent during a formal challenge. Or by the head of the house if a blade bearer was deemed unworthy.

Wren couldn’t imagine a more powerful way to prove herself. To be spectacular.

There was, however, a flip side to the arrangement.

And if I win, Inara continued, you give me Ghostbane.

Wren’s dagger, and her father’s dagger before her. It felt heavy suddenly, sitting in her palms, causing her arms to tremble with the weight.

Once this night was through, Wren would either have two ancestral blades… or none.

But with or without the bet, she had no intention of losing, as Inara put it, and not coming first. Then again…

You cannot simply pass tonight…. You must pass spectacularly.

Oh, one more thing, Inara added, with the superiority of someone who has set the bait and is ready to release the trap. We have to take the Spine.

The Spine. It was the hardest path between the trees, slicing right through the middle of the forest. It was the shortest way, but also the oldest and most severely haunted, traversing the very heart of the Bonewood.

It was the surest way to run into trouble, even if they weren’t traveling together. But they were. They’d be directly in each other’s path the whole way through, which presented its own opportunities and obstacles. Much as Wren flouted the rules on principle, she didn’t intend to sabotage Inara. But if they traveled together, she could.

And, of course, Inara could sabotage her, too. Doubtful, since Inara was a teacher’s pet who loved the rules, but this was the Bonewood Trial. The stakes had never been higher.

It would be risky, and reckless, and make what was already a challenging test twice as dangerous.

You cannot simply pass tonight…. You must pass spectacularly.

A horn call sounded, making Wren jump. She looked up at the moon, just now cresting the highest branches. She lurched to a standing position along with the others, her grip on her dagger achingly tight.

She glanced at her father once more; then her gaze shifted to Inara. You’re on.

The moon cleared the bonetrees.

All eyes fell on Lady-Smith Svetlana. It was she who had called them to arms in the first place.

Ready your blade.

And it was she who spoke again now.

Defeat the undead.

The Bonewood Trial had begun.

TWO

The forest was ten miles wide and another ten deep. Some said the ancient bonesmiths had been giants, their limbs as long as Wren was tall—but it was more likely that they had stretched and distorted the bonetrees, making them narrow and spindly or thick as oaks.

That was the magic of the bonesmiths, the ability to sense, move, and manipulate dead bones without touch. Within a ten-foot radius, bonesmiths could summon a bone to their hand, guide its movements in midair, or heft bones much heavier than their muscles alone could bear. Valkyrs like Wren carried bone weapons, their magic lending them extra speed and strength, as well as pinpoint accuracy.

Bonesmiths could also see spiritual tethers—the fibers that connected the ghost to its bones—that were indistinguishable to the non-bonesmith eye.

If Wren was totally honest, they were often invisible to her eye as well. It came down to training and natural talent—the former of which Wren hadn’t bothered with, knowing that it was the realm of the reapyrs and she was meant to be a valkyr, and the latter she’d simply been born without.

Reapyrs had a more delicate touch, able to detect and label every bump and groove, and were better at sensing and locating the anchor bone—the bone that connected the ghost to the body. While all bones in a dead body contained some trace of the spirit, the anchor bone was the strongest. It was usually the bone nearest the mortal wound that had killed the person, or in the case of death by illness or age, the bone nearest the ailment or first organs that started to fail.

The anchor bone was also the most coveted by bonesmith fabricators, who used a combination of tools and their magical touch to create armor, weapons, and talismans. They could shape rib cages into breastplates and carve femurs into longswords, or pulverize knuckles into bonedust. The possibility of crafting her own weapons certainly held some manner of appeal for Wren, but the idea of being locked away inside Marrow Hall’s catacombs for the rest of her life did not.

As such, it was valkyr or bust for Wren. Their job was the most dangerous, and Wren loved nothing more than a challenge.

And for valkyr novitiates, there was no greater challenge than the Bonewood.

It was filled with undead bones, haunted by ghosts and beyond a bonesmith’s magical reach. Only by fighting back their spirits and allowing the reapyr to cut the tether to their bodies could the bonesmiths use and manipulate their bones. In one swift move, bonesmiths made the world safe from ghosts and acquired the materials to do so. After all, there was nothing that ghosts hated more than dead bone. It was the bonesmith’s first and best protection against them.

It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it, and Wren was only too happy to oblige.

But the Bonewood was more than a haunted forest—it was a maze, dense and confusing. Marking the barrier to the House of Bone’s lands, the Bonewood doubled as a line of defense and was filled with the bodies of would-be attackers and trespassers.

And just because there were trails through the wood did not mean those routes were safe. Stray off the path to find a shorter road—or one less haunted—and risk never finding your way again.

Many novitiates would rather travel twice as far and take twice as long than have to encounter a ghost higher than a two on the undead scale.

But not Wren.

She smiled fiercely at Inara before striding toward the bonetrees. Her reapyr followed, while Inara and her reapyr—as well as the other pairs on either side—did the same. When Wren moved toward the entrance to the Spine, Inara close behind, the other pairs balked and shook their heads, choosing safer routes.

Wren thrived off their doubt, but the instant she stepped into the trees, her attention sharpened and her focus was honed.

The Spine was not, in fact, a real path, but rather a rough route through the forest, demarcated by old smears of red paint against the pale trees. That meant Wren and Inara would not actually be walking together, hand in hand like lost children from a fable, but following their own instincts and choosing their own way, ever heading toward the next flash of red.

The only light came from the moon above, obstructed by soaring bone branches that creaked and rattled together, drifting in an undead wind Wren could not feel—and, of course, from the ghosts.

There were surely thousands of them, some bright as the sun but with an eerie, green-white light and others as soft as a guttering candle, begging for release. Some were mere wisps of vapor without shape or form—tier ones—while others were nearly solid, their edges sharp and clearly defined. Tier twos. No matter how dense and substantial, there was no way to mistake any of them for the living. Their bodies rippled in the same, unearthly wind as the bones, and their features were stretched and distorted or flickering in and out of existence like flashes of lightning. There were animals among them too, swooping bats or stalking snow cats, and the lot of them blurred together between the trees.

With a small amount of distance now between herself and Inara, Wren turned to Sonya. It was the valkyr’s job to lead, to choose the safest path and soundest strategy, but the most successful pairs worked together in well-balanced harmony. While Wren had never been the best team player, she tried to include Sonya so the reapyr could do her job properly.

Wren needed her, after all.

How do you want to play this?

There were numerous different strategies they could implement for the trial. Tier-one ghosts were virtually harmless, but that was because their tether to their bones was weak. That made finding their earthly remains more difficult, even if trying to do so was safer. The higher on the undead scale, the more corporeal the ghost—and the stronger the connection to their bones—but it also made trying to reap them more dangerous.

Targeting tier ones would mean a nice, safe trial… but the reapings would be slower. Not ideal in a race that had an extra bet with a lifelong rival tacked on. Targeting more dangerous ghosts would be faster, but the likelihood of mistake and injury higher.

The likelihood of failure higher.

It wasn’t terribly common, but it did happen—a reapyr and valkyr pair got lost and failed only the previous year—and would mean another year of study at Marrow Hall before the next trial began.

Wren was generally a fan of the chaos approach: barreling through at top speed and choosing targets on the fly. She didn’t like to back down from a fight, but if a ghost was too volatile, they’d leave it and move on. If a ghost was too weak, it likely wasn’t worth the time and effort.

Take them as they come? she prodded as Sonya chewed on her lip, uncertainty written on her face. Avoid ones and fives? Wren quirked a smile. There were no fives in the Bonewood. In fact, they shouldn’t even exist. Only in the Haunted Territory to the east, behind the Border Wall, did the bones of the undead walk with their ghosts—and that was because of the Breach. Apparently, if you dug deep enough, like the ironsmiths had, you could unearth all manner of surprises… including hundreds of buried corpses flush with dark power and happy to be set loose.

Those walking undead—or revenants—had been the work of ancient ghostsmiths, a long-extinct order of necromancers shunned by the rest of society for using their magic to command and control the undead. Even Wren, who loved nothing more than a good fight with a ghost, suppressed a shiver at the thought of them. Thankfully, the ghostsmith civilization had been buried by some sort of cataclysm centuries ago, and anyone who possessed their abilities was buried with it. Unfortunately, just before Wren was born, the ironsmiths’ mining had dredged their lost world back up along with their undead creations. It was because of the Breach that bonesmiths had to come up with the undead scale in the first place.

While the idea of tier fives in the Bonewood might make her smile, Wren had no desire to face one tonight.

Sonya’s gaze flicked over Wren’s shoulder—in the direction of Inara and Ethen—and she nodded. S-sure. What you said. Take them as they come.

Like the valkyr novitiates, the reapyrs also dressed in black, but while Wren’s blacks consisted of formfitting leather and thick, padded layers, the reapyrs wore long, sweeping robes that dragged across the snow—a bit dramatic, honestly. They bore no weapons save for the scythe: the curved, handheld blade used to make the final cut. Each bone in a body contained a complex web of ley lines—these were the seams, the places where ghost met bone, the junctures that could hold the two together or the fissures that could wrench them apart. It was the reapyr’s business to identify the ley lines and sever them, releasing the spirit.

Stay behind me, Wren advised, sheathing Ghostbane and withdrawing one of the twin bone swords strapped across her back. It gave her a longer reach and was better suited for the task at hand.

As Wren and Sonya moved through the trees, the sound of the others faded, and a tense silence rose to take its place. Not true silence, but the heavy, weighted silence of the undead.

Wren’s magic could sense the bones all around—humming like a current against her skin—and her eyes caught every shift and movement, waiting, watching…

When a bowed arm—no, arms, twisted and fused together with three or four elbows—leaned precariously over their path, Wren held out her sword to stop their forward progress.

She approached the monstrous tree warily, but closer inspection revealed the bones were dead and unhaunted, as she’d expected, crafted by some creative and slightly disturbed bonesmith long ago. Bone transformations undertaken while the ghost was still attached, performed on undead or even—Wren shuddered—living bones, were impossible.

Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few extra elbows, called Inara, who was closer than Wren realized and watching them through the trees.

Wren smiled stiffly and used both hands to bring her sword down in a flashy move, cutting through the many-elbowed tree with one fell swoop. Her blade might have been made from the same material as the tree, but it had been sharpened and hardened under a fabricator’s careful touch and was almost as strong as steel.

Splintered bits of bone littered the ground at her feet, combining with the fresh snow to create a pale and brittle forest floor that crunched and crackled underfoot.

A cloud of bonedust settled onto Sonya’s pristine black robes.

Whoops, Wren murmured in false concern, reaching out a hand to swipe at it.

Sonya stepped out of reach and rolled her eyes, flicking her wrist and causing the dust to rise from the fabric and disperse in an instant. It was the kind of delicate work Wren could never have achieved and that characterized a reapyr’s talent. Wren was fairly average for a bonesmith in terms of magical ability, and while she was capable of powerful bursts, she was not much good at subtlety or finesse.

Sonya wasn’t a friend, exactly, but hardly anyone in the House of Bone really was. Wren had enemies like Inara and then people who tolerated her like Sonya. Her father was her only emotional touchstone, and he was never there.

It was tempting to wish for more—and certainly she had, when she was younger. Looking for a mother who was alive or a father who would stay, but any time someone started to fill the hole her parents left behind, her father would turn up again, and she’d forget whatever surrogate she’d attached herself to. The truth was, she wanted something real, even if it was painful.

That was the point of all this. Pass spectacularly and be named a valkyr. Then she’d actually get to leave Marrow Hall and travel—sometimes with her father—fighting ghosts in every corner of the Dominions, from Giltmore to Granite Gate and everywhere in between.

They were about to press on when something raised her hackles.

She whirled around just in time to see a silver-green mist rise. A ghost, floating mere feet away and with a direct path to Sonya, called into existence thanks to their presence and drawn, as all undead were, to the living.

The disfigured arm had been keeping the ghost at bay, but now that it lay in broken pieces upon the ground—perhaps Wren shouldn’t have hacked that arm to bits just to show off for Inara?—the spirit had free rein to move across the path.

Wren didn’t wait to see what it would do next. She jerked Sonya aside and stepped forward, reaching into the bandolier across her chest, releasing a handful of knucklebones. They shot out in a small burst of magic, piercing the vaporous form and causing it to slow its pace, swirling and undulating in the air.

It was probably a tier-one ghost, incorporeal to the point of almost being no threat at all, but Wren couldn’t risk being fooled by a two or three that had yet to take its shape. She waited a second more to see what it would do, and much to her satisfaction, it began to coalesce into something human-shaped. Or at least, it had a face, with a wide, gaping mouth—stretched and distorted—and long, trailing limbs.

What do you think? she called over her shoulder.

While Wren’s attention was on the ghost itself, Sonya’s attention was lower, on the ground, seeking the body the spirit was still tethered to. She dropped onto her knees in the snow, a small spade in her hands.

The shovel hit the dirt below with a soft thump and scrape, but it wasn’t long until Sonya was scrabbling through the snow and soil with her bare hands, relying upon touch and magical senses as she sought the ghost’s bones.

Wren watched, itching to help dig and speed things along, but that went against a cardinal rule of valkyr-reapyr training. No matter how seemingly benign, never turn your back on the ghost. Never let your guard down.

It was also why she didn’t just slash at the specter as she had that many-elbowed arm.

She might get the ghost to disappear entirely as it recoiled from the dead bone, but such a reprieve was only temporary. There was no telling how quickly it would return… or where. Better to keep it trapped in her line of sight than to dispatch it now and have it turn up behind her back or directly on top of them.

So Wren did as she had been trained and withdrew her second bone sword, holding them before her like scissors, trapping the spirit within. A stronger ghost would fight back, but this one only ebbed and swirled with mild and uninspiring menace.

To Wren’s delight, Sonya made a soft exclamation of pleasure and lifted a muddy femur from a pile of bones in the dirt.

The anchor bone.

With her attention split between the wobbling, silently trembling ghost and the reapyr at her feet, Wren watched as Sonya lay the mottled, off-white bone against the stark white snow. She withdrew her scythe and closed her eyes. Her muddy hand ran the length of the bone once, twice, three times. On the fourth she brought the weapon down on the invisible ley line, cracking into the bone and severing the connection between the ghost and its earthly remains.

There was a familiar, sucking sensation, leaving the air in Wren’s lungs sparse, and a heartbeat later, the ghost disappeared in a puff of cold air and ether.

As Sonya collected the now-dead bone and got to her feet, Wren cleared the area, swiping her blades through the air to make sure nothing remained, then gathered her scattered knucklebones for later use.

As she did so, she caught sight of a spectator between the trees.

One already, she said, smiling smugly at Inara. Try to keep up.

THREE

The deeper they moved into the Bonewood, the more tightly packed the trees became, their swaying branches knocking together and snagging the fabric of Sonya’s robe. She brushed the bone aside with a casual wave of her hand, while Wren preferred to keep her swords raised to discourage their grasping reach.

The ghosts, too, were more plentiful, though the majority were tier ones, hanging in the air like fog or swirling in an unseen current like woodsmoke. They spotted what looked like a tier two, but it was too far off the path—trying to lure them into the darkness like a will-o’-the-wisp—and a tier one that glowed so brightly Sonya had to look away until Wren dispatched it.

Their next reaping came nearly an hour later.

They spotted the bones before they saw the ghost, so when the glowing form suddenly appeared out of nowhere, angry and violent, both Sonya and Wren—much to her embarrassment—leapt back in alarm.

Wren recovered first, swords raised, but the ghost wasn’t interested in her. It had surely been a bonesmith in life, its vaguely human shape draped in a wispy fabric that could have easily been a reapyr’s robes, and it focused on Sonya with single-minded intent that suggested it knew exactly what they were about. Reaping might provide peace, but the undead wanted to live, just like everything else.

When it crashed against Wren’s swords with a physical impact strong enough to make her boots slide in the slush beneath her feet, Wren realized it wasn’t just a self-aware tier three. It was able to affect the world around it. Only a tier four—also called a geist—and higher could do that.

Sonya quailed, neglecting her task as the ghost drew nearer.

Hey, Wren barked, glancing away from the ghost for a split second—but that was all it needed. The next time it slammed into her bone blades, heedless of the damage such contact did to its form, Wren dropped one of her swords thanks to her distraction.

Sonya cried out and took a hasty step backward, ready to bolt in fear, forgetting another fundamental rule of the death trade: Never run.

The simple, terrible truth was that tier-three and higher ghosts were fast. They were able to disappear and reappear in the blink of an eye, or streak across an open field in half the time it took a horse galloping full tilt.

Running was far too dangerous and risked the person running directly into the ghost, which would mean instant death or such severe deathrot that they’d be a shell of a person, immobile and in constant pain until they eventually succumbed. Wren had seen the victim of such an attack once—her father had, on Lady-Smith Svetlana’s orders, dragged her out of bed and hauled her to the infirmary to witness it firsthand. Wren had hardly ever spoken to her grandmother before then—she hardly ever spoke to her now, either—and had approached with wary fear.

I’m not sure— her father had said, trying, perhaps, to protect Wren, but Svetlana quickly shut him down. Then he just stood there, silent and unflinching, while the woman’s clawlike hands gripped Wren’s narrow six-year-old shoulders and forced her to hover next to the bed until the dying man’s last, choking breath.

After, her father’s voice had seemed kind, almost gentle, as he said, This is the price of failure in the House of Bone.

Wren would not fail now.

Sonya, she snapped, using her now free hand to dig into her bandolier. The reapyr halted, her gaze fixed on the quivering spirit. The bones.

Turning back to the ghost, Wren sent more knuckles hurtling outward, slicing holes clean through the misty shape, but the attack seemed only to enrage the spirit further.

Wren cursed and picked up her fallen sword just in time for the next impact. The ghost’s form hissed and crackled like a flame against water as it connected with her blades.

It was time to try something different.

Before it could gather itself for another violent surge, Wren went on the offensive. Instead of fighting defensively and protectively, as valkyrs were trained, she angled her body and stepped forward, her swords outstretched. The movement drove the ghost back and away. Creating space between it and