‘We have to tell Igneus.’ Usther was sprawled across her armchair, fanning herself with a translation scroll. She glared at Ree, as if expecting her to argue.
She was right to, because Ree was not so stupid as to ever let her father know one tenth of what had happened to her. ‘We really don’t,’ she said evenly, as if she didn’t want to punch Usther just for suggesting it. ‘Pa is not any more likely to know how to break a Black Oath than you are.’
‘Ree.’ Usther rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t believe you’re making me say this, but he is a much more experienced practitioner than I, and may well have come across something in his studies.’
‘He hasn’t.’
‘Well, how do you know?’
Ree’s nostrils flared. ‘Because the Oath is unbreakable!’ Her voice echoed around the small stone house. Ree’s face heated; she avoided Usther’s gaze.
Usther clapped lazily. ‘Excellent. Truly beautiful melodrama. Will you be writing and acting in the play?’
Ree clenched her jaw. ‘Usther.’
‘Or perhaps you’d prefer to commit it to verse, like some maudlin bard?’
Smythe cleared his throat; both girls turned to glare at him. ‘Terribly sorry to interrupt,’ he said, ‘but did I hear you say that this is an unbreakable oath? Not you know, just a very difficult oath, or perhaps a heavily inconvenient oath?’
Ree rubbed her eyes and nodded.
‘Mm. Mm-hmm.’ Smythe nodded, then nodded again. ‘Yes. That’s not very good, is it?’
‘How have you not come across it?’ Usther curled her lip. ‘You consume books at a disgusting pace. It’s like watching a pig at a trough, and frankly I had quite enough of that as a child.’
Smythe looked sheepish. ‘I didn’t see how it would be relevant.’
That hung in the air a moment. Ree closed her eyes, imagining a world where they had never angered the Lich and the Black Oath was still nothing more than an interesting piece of trivia. ‘I’m not saying the situation is hopeless,’ she said. ‘Obviously, I’m going to try to find a way to break this. But my father is not at his most rational when it comes to me. We need to come at this with clear heads.’
‘Well, can’t we just sort of, fulfill the oath?’ Smythe looked uncertainly between Ree and Usther. ‘The ritual, or whatever it was?’
Usther rearranged her robes so that they draped more impressively. ‘I assume whatever it is, it’s not easily done, or else darling Ree wouldn’t be so very hysterical over it.’ She gave Ree a hooded look. ‘What is this ritual that worries you so?’
Ree remembered long black nails gleaming in the dark. She rubbed her arm, feeling the ridges of the ugly scar of the Black Oath. And so let it be done.
She hadn’t been able to study the tablet in the Old King’s tomb, and she’d been outraged that Emberlon intended to hide an artefact. ‘That tablet belongs to all of us,’ she’d said. She’d stood with shoulders tensed and fists clenched, surrounded by the glittering treasure of the long dead king. ‘Why should you get to decide what people should and shouldn’t read?’
Emberlon had given her a long look, and had let his gaze rest heavily on her for the full of it. But though Emberlon’s stare could cause even council members to shift uncomfortably, Ree’s anger and righteousness had held her head unbowed and her back straight.
Emberlon had set down his pack and carefully withdrawn the linen-wrapped tablet. ‘This tablet belonged to a king, and kings are rarely good and never kind. It’s a sacrifice ritual — to sacrifice one city to raise another.’ His blue eyes were steady. ‘What do you think we should do with it?’
Ree had shifted uncomfortably. She’d always known that there was dark magic out there — magic that could turn necromancers against each other, or bring the fury of the upworlders down on their heads — but that kind of magic was rare and hard to find. It wasn’t banned in Tombtown — little magic was officially restricted, although much was unofficially policed — but she’d heard her father say that everyone just sort of hoped that nobody would come across it.
It had dawned on her how strange it was that, in a necromancer community of this size with the accumulated knowledge of centuries of practitioners, nobody had ever come across any of this dark magic.
Emberlon had waited for her answer.
Ree had licked suddenly dry lips. ‘Even if someone tried to use it,’ she’d said. ‘Even if they attempted it — resurrection magic doesn’t exist. It’s impossible.’
‘Hard to say anything is impossible,’ Emberlon had said. ‘Especially when you’ve lived here a few years. But let’s say it doesn’t work: what if someone made the attempt?’
In the end, Ree had taken the tablet from him and hidden it back inside his pack.
Now, Ree said to Usther, ‘It’s the kind of ritual that could hurt a lot of people.’
Usther shrugged. ‘Nobody cares about upworlders.’
Smythe cleared his throat. ‘Um, actually—’
Usther glared at him and he blustered a bit, probably trying to wind up for what he thought was a cutting comeback.
‘It probably poses more of a danger to the town,’ said Ree. Usther’s eyebrows shot up; Smythe’s half-formed arguments died on his lips. And she knew that it did. Sacrifice a city for a city, Emberlon had said. Well, there was a city already here, living on the literal bones of the one that came before it. It could hardly be more convenient if people lined up to be sacrificed.
For a moment, nobody said anything. Usther pursed her lips and Smythe looked small and lost.
‘And you agreed to it?’
Ree eyed Usther uncertainly. ‘It was that or die.’
‘You agreed to it. You, Reanima, precious first child of Tombtown. “Too good for the Craft” Ree agreed to sacrifice the town to save her life.’
Waves of bitterness rolled over Ree. She hated it when Usther got like this. ‘I’m not planning on sacrificing anyone. And you weren’t there — you don’t know what we’ve gone through.’
Usther cocked her head to one side. ‘I know you’ve tied yourself in knots and somehow dragged the whole town into it merely because you’re too arrogant to use the advantages the gods gave you. Do you think any of this would have happened to you if you’d learned the Craft like everyone wanted you to? Do you think any of this would have happened to me?’
Smythe’s expression barely flickered at the raised voices; he seemed deep in thought. But Ree was quite willing to handle this argument herself. Why did everyone think she had to be a practitioner just because she’d been born here? Why did everyone act like her future had been decided at birth? She had aspirations of her own, she had the chance to do magic beyond the dreams of any of the denizens, and she was the only person in all the town who could survive the crypt — or even find her way around! — without magic. ‘Smythe practices the Craft —’
‘Smythe has been practicing the Craft for five minutes,’ Usther practically spat the words. ‘You could have been practicing from the cradle. You’ve had every privilege and every advantage and you’ve just shit all over it! You never had to struggle in the upworld, you were never —’ She stopped, panting, eyes wide. Ree stared back, just as tense.
Ree had always known that it must have been hard for Usther in the upworld. She’d heard plenty of stories about growing up there from her father, and it sounded a terrible place, overwhelmed by sun and heat, with no dead but what you dug up yourself, and harsh judgement if you did.
Ree didn’t take it for granted that she lived in the crypt. She loved the tombs, the town, the dead. She could hardly have dreamed a place with more to explore, or more to learn. But she could see how Usther might feel that she was squandering the chances she’d been given. If Usther had been raised in Ree’s hometown, with Ree’s parents, she’d never have had to run away at sixteen, which was how old Usther had been when she arrived three years ago.
Ree’s stomach twisted sickly in a feeling Ree had not often felt for Usther: guilt. Usther, for her part, looked ashamed, her cheeks ashen and her eyes lowered. ‘I think that’s maybe not a topic for right now,’ said Ree, twisting her hands in the skirts of her robe.
Usther took a shuddering breath. ‘Quite.’ She smoothed back a loose hair, looking sheepish. ‘If we could just pretend I never said any of that?’
Ree nodded. ‘So have you seen the Lich about? Or anything strange in the crypts since we left?’
‘I’ve not seen or heard anything.’ She sniffed. ‘Bizarre to think it got all worked up over Larry of all things.’
Ree thought of Lazerin smiling tenderly at Evanert; of Evanert resting his chin on Lazerin’s shoulder and wrapping his arms easily around his waist. ‘I don’t think it’s about who Larry is now,’ said Ree. ‘I think it’s about who he used to be.’ And he’d done something to him. Tried to bring him back, tried to make him immortal. That’s why Larry was the way he was. But you couldn’t really bring back the dead. Only their bodies.
And whatever Larry had become, he held no love for his master.
She looked down at her arm where the words ‘and so let it be done’ were carved in garish letters. She groaned and sank to the floor. ‘What in all the worlds are we supposed to do?’
‘I have an idea about that.’
Ree’s gaze shot to Smythe. His thoughtful look was gone, replaced with the determination and zeal he got when discovering new books.
‘Well, let’s hear it then, apprentice, since you know so much about it.’
He looked at Ree, rather than Usther. ‘I’ll need to see the ritual, first. Am I right in thinking that you know where it is?’
Ree bit her lip. ‘I know how to find out where it is.’
After some negotiation, they made their way to Emberlon’s, but the senior archivist wasn’t there, nor was he in the archives. Ree’s chest pinched with early panic as they asked around town, but nobody was really sure where he’d gone.
‘He must be doing a collection,’ Ree said. She wrung her skirts in her hands. ‘Or maybe an undead got into one of the libraries again — the masterless dead can be worse than Larry when left unsupervised.’
Usther eyed her. ‘You’re worried about the libraries, aren’t you? You’re marked for the most unpleasant death ever imagined by a practitioner, and you’re actually worried that someone’s messed up your alphabetising.’
Ree avoided her eyes. ‘I can be worried about both.’ The thought of the mark on her arm filled her with cold terror, but she was nonetheless queasy at the thought of some mindless cadaver chewing on priceless books. She’d been apprentice archivist for too long not to care if someone destroyed the collections under her charge.
They were standing in the market square, where Mazerin the Bold was currently trying to sell the fresh raven spleens he’d harvested on his last trip to the surface. There were a few denizens milling around and a few minions shuffling past, but it was otherwise quiet. It seemed wrong to Ree that they had all come so close to destruction at the hands of the Lich and yet they could act so normal. They don’t know anything about that, she reminded herself. And it would be best if she never told them.
‘Might I make a small suggestion?’ Smythe looked at Ree very earnestly. ‘It seems — forgive me, I know you don’t want this, but — it seems that, without the ritual in-hand, we are going to need some expertise. If — if you won’t go to your father and we can’t speak to Emberlon, who should we go to for help?’
Ree looked down at her hands. The Oath burned in her mind as if it had been carved on her skull and not her arm. She had no idea how long they had before they were considered to have broken the Oath. She didn’t want to think about what would happen when it did.
And she had dragged Smythe into this. He had only made the Oath because she had assured him that he should. He’d had no idea what he was getting into. And if she got him killed because she was afraid to face her father, she would have twice failed him.
But still. Her father.
She wrung her skirts in her hands. ‘Well. There is one person I think we could go to.’
Smythe lit up. ‘Jolly good! Is it someone I know? Nice chap?’
Ree headed up the crumbling stone stairs to the higher levels of town and motioned for Smythe to follow. ‘I don’t think anyone would call her that, no.’