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The old woman came to his fire at dusk, when the snow shone pale against the black woods. Night had already overtaken the forest, but beyond the bare trees the western sky was still a deep red-gold. The moons had not yet risen. Joromey Brath sat with his back against an old oak, cleaning his musket with ice-numbed fingers. He had not heard the old woman approach until her feet crunched in the snow at the edge of the clearing. He raised his musket slowly, too tired to be startled. The flintlock was not loaded—he had just been oiling the empty barrel—but if the old woman were what she seemed, a forest refugee begging for warmth, she might be easily frightened off. And if the beggar were more than she seemed—well, then even a loaded musket would be useless. Ten thousand loaded muskets had failed to stop them on the Fallow Fields. What use were musket balls if they passed right through the filmy skin, between the bones, the way shot rips through a sail without hitting the ship? What use were cannons for smashing bones to splinters, if the splinters could reform and keep walking? The combined regiments of the Queen’s twelve greatest lords had broken like waves against a rock. Now, their bones served the enemy. “Stay back,” Joromey warned. In the flickering shadows, she was a hunched shape wrapped in ragged blankets. He hoped her old eyes would not notice the trembling of his arms as he leveled the musket at her. He doubted he would have the strength to fight off even a feeble old beggar, if she guessed the musket was not loaded and wanted to steal the chicken roasting over the fire. “Get back.” He cocked the musket. “No, please,” said the old woman, her voice faint and hoarse. “Let me sit by the fire, just to rest. Please. I’m not one of—one of them.” As proof she held up her hand in the firelight, pulling back a heavy sleeve. Her skin, though withered with age, was firm and brown as Joromey’s own—not pale and translucent as egg whites, dangling from the bones like scraps of paper. So, she would not cook him until his flesh dripped off. She would not join his bones to hers. But she still might want his food. And he neededevery shred of meat on that scrawny chicken, or he would not have the strength to reach the Queen’s city. How long had it been since he’d eaten? Joromey could not remember. The days after the battle on the Fallow Fields were a blur. He had trekked through the forest on feet so swollen he could not remove his boots, eating biscuits from his ration-tin, lighting fires at night with powder from his dwindling supply of paper-wrapped cartridges. He used his musket at least twice to scare off coyotes. His fingers had turned so cold they’d barely been able to ram the shot and powder into the barrel. “Please,” said the old woman again. She took a step closer.  Should he drop the firearm and draw his boot-knife? His arms ached just from supporting the musket’s weight, and the butt was pressing against a bruise on his shoulder. Without taking her eyes off the musket, the woman sank down in the snow by the fire. She was terrified, Joromey realized, yet she was too cold and weak to care. She must have noticed his stained, tattered uniform. Perhaps she thought him a deserter, and feared what a man lost to honor would do. He lowered the flintlock. “You may share my fire, granny,” he said, “but I’ve no food to spare.” She nodded, stretching out her toes near the fire and rubbing them. Her felt shoes were badly torn and caked with snow. She must have come from a peel tower like the freshly-ruined one he had stumbled across that afternoon. There were many such fastnesses in the forest. Long ago they had marked the boundaries between two petty kingdoms; in these days the Queen let pensioners live there as wardens of the wood. Now, the Bone People had encroached even into the heart of the Queen’s forest. The old woman sat staring into the flames. Joromey waited for the chicken to roast, his stomach rumbling. The western sky darkened, while in the east one of the moons rose. At last, Joromey pulled the chicken from the makeshift spit. With powder-blackened fingers, he broke open the crispy skin and dug out chunks of meat, shoving them into his mouth. By God and the Heroes, his luck was with him today. Finding that ruined peel tower, with winter wood stacked nearby and one lone chicken scratching in the rubble, had surely saved his life. He managed to carry the wood and the chicken into the clearing; he’d not dare to risk a fire in sight of the ruins. They had razed the tower with their long, strong arms of jointed bones, tearing down the stone walls and plucking out the people and animals sheltering inside. The carcasses of goats and chickens lay in the snow near the ruins—cooked carcasses, with the bones removed and the flesh discarded. If not for that one live chicken, Joromey would have been reduced to eating that meat. The remains of the residents of the peel tower were nowhere to be seen, but that was not a comforting thought. He knew humans were taken to the Fallow Fields, to add their bones to the fortress being built on the plain. The bone castle, the men in his company had called it. Against the wintry sky, the ivory-pinnacled towers glittered with frost, as if the whole fortress were made of ice. But up close, when the regiments formed ranks below the massive walls, they saw that it was made all of bone. The portals were gates of crossed ribs, the domed roofs a patchwork of skull-pieces, the crenellations studded with tiny rows of teeth. Bricks of crushed finger-bones formed the bulwarks. A thousand armies must have given their skeletons to build it, for it was huge as the Queen’s fabled palace. “And it breathes,” said Joromey Brath. The old woman’s head jerked up at the words. She had been dozing. Joromey hadn’t meant to speak out loud. He wondered if he were going mad. But who wouldn’t go mad, who had seen bone walls expanding and contracting like the rib cage of some giant beast? “The bone castle?” said the old woman. Her alertness surprised him. “I have heard tales of it, since it appeared that morning in the fog last autumn. It still stands? But the armies...” “We smashed the walls with cannon,” said Joromey. “In the time it took us to reload, the shards of bone had joined together again.” She drew her knees to her chest, shivering. “What are they? Do you know?” Joromey tore a strip of flesh from the greasy chicken, swallowed it without chewing. “My mother used to tell stories.” He paused; that had been a long time ago, when he was a boy. When he’d thought being a soldier would mean parading down the cobbled streets of the Queen’s city, with brilliant banners streaming and girls throwing flowers from balconies. Before he knew he’d never even see the Queen, or any part of the realm except the Eighth Regiment’s barracks and training grounds—until the day the bone castle appeared. “My mother told stories,” he repeated, “stories of the morning of the world, when everything was new-made. One day, God’s Wife was baking at her fire. She had grown tired of always cooking for God, so to amuse herself she shaped people out of her corn paste. The first batch, she left raw and unbaked, and these became the Heroes of the Upper Air.” The old woman nodded. “The Heroes, made with the raw power of God. Lujensa with her golden spears, Bright Rinnu in his fiery moon-boat, Princess Sky-Blue-Shell. Lord Swift-Foot, the warrior with the coyote tail. They were supposed to keep us safe.” Joromey had believed that, once. But if the Heroes could not save them, then the Queen could. Her family’s lineage went back to Lord Swift-Foot himself. Within her, there lived some remnant of the Heroes’ power, the power of the Upper Air. There was still a chance. “And after God’s Wife made the Heroes—” the old woman prompted him. “God’s Wife put the second and third batches in the oven. But then God called her away to some other task. While she was gone, the second batch of people escaped from the oven and came to live on earth. Their skin had been baked brown. They were our ancestors.” Joromey paused to suck the last bits of meat from one of the wings. It felt good telling a story the way his mother used to; it felt, for a moment, as if the world had not gone mad. “And the third batch,” he went on, “they were cooked in the oven until all the flesh burned away and nothing remained but bones. Later, when God’s Wife came back to clean out her oven, she raked out the pile of ash and bones and buried it deep in the earth.” “But the bones were alive,” the old woman finished, remembering the story. “And ever since, the Bone People—the Cooked Ones—have been trying to crawl out of the ash pit.” “And now they’re free,” said Joromey. And now the world had gone mad. Now, the virtues of a soldier meant nothing. Courage no longer counted—the bravest men in his company had died screaming. Honor and loyalty counted for even less. After all, he was still a man of honor, a loyal soldier of the realm. Yet, knowing what he had to do—it would be called loyalty only in a mad world. What could he do except conserve his strength and complete his task? He licked grease off his fingers, ripped a leg from the chicken, tore into it with his teeth. The old woman watched him, her mouth moving soundlessly. She should go back into the forest and leave him alone. Joromey had already told her he couldn’t spare any meat. He must reach the Queen’s city—he knew what the Cooked Ones wanted. He couldn’t spare any time helping poor beggars. Joromey leaned against the oak, tucking the half-eaten chicken under his coat. In the morning he would eat the rest of it; the meat would make him sick if he finished it now, with a stomach shrunken from days of fasting. Joromey tossed another log onto the fire. Even the small meal had made him feel stronger already. The moon climbed above the trees, casting its silver-green light on the snow. From the black woods came the yip-yip-yip of a coyote, answered by another, closer. “The Heroes,” said the old woman suddenly. ”Why aren’t the Heroes of the Upper Air here to drive the Bone People back into their hole? Why did they leave?” A log popped on the fire, sending out sparks to die hissing on the snow. Joromey did not answer. “When I was a little girl,” said the old woman, “I used to find thunderstones embedded in the earth after a storm. The Heroes’ arrowheads, made of shiny black stone, still smoking from their fall from the Upper Air.” Her eyes gleamed in the firelight, bright as jewels. “But now ... I haven’t heard of anyone finding a thunderstone in years. The Upper Air is empty. Where did they go?” Joromey shrugged. “What does it matter? They left, like God and his Wife left long ago. They’re gone, and the Cooked Ones have climbed out of their pit.” “They have destroyed everything,” said the old woman, her voice breaking. “My home, my family. My grandchildren are dead. They killed even the dogs.” Joromey stared at the fire, watching the flames lick the wood. “My mother told me they wouldn’t rest until they’ve cooked the whole world.” The old woman grasped at her ragged blankets, her shoulders shaking. It took him a moment to realize she was crying. “Here, don’t, don’t do that,” said Joromey. His mother had wept like that on her deathbed, ashamed that she had left him with no way to earn his living except to become a soldier. “Don’t weep, granny. Pray to God and his Wife. Pray for the Heroes to come back.” He could have added, Pray for me to reach the Queen’s city and finish my task, but he did not. Joromey took out the chicken carcass and broke off the other leg. He would regret it in the morning; but how could he face the Queen, knowing he’d denied food to a starving old woman? The Queen had to understand that his honor was not gone. Whatever he did, his loyalty as a subject of realm could not be questioned. She had to understand. The old woman snatched the chicken leg from his hand, began sucking at the meat with her lips. “Thank you,” she whispered between mouthfuls. When she was done she tossed the bones in the fire. “I thought you were a deserter,” she told him. “I thought you had nothing left of honor, nothing left but to flee and save yourself. But if you would share food with me...” She drew something from her robe, held it out to him. It flashed silver in the firelight. She crawled close and placed it in his hands—a medallion in the shape of a coyote. The Queen’s insignia. “You,” said Joromey. He could see now that under the filthy blankets, her tattered robes were of rich fabric. “Then the city...” “Gone,” said the old woman, “Everything is gone. My city was destroyed. My guards died saving me. The Bone People took my servants, my daughter, and the little princes, my grandsons. Even the hounds in the kennels.” Joromey bent his head over his knees, trembling. “Please,” she said. “I put myself under your protection. I will pardon you for deserting. If you still serve the Queen and the realm ... please, help me. They are hunting me.” “I know,” said Joromey Brath. He raised his head. “They want the power in your bones. The Heroes’ power, the raw power of God. Then they can rise to the Upper Air and leave our world alone.” “What—?” Her body tensed when she saw that he had drawn the long knife from his boot. The coyote medallion dropped from his hand into the snow. “I still serve the realm, my Queen,” he said. “I am sorry.” It was better this way, to use the knife now, than to bring her alive to the castle. And it did not matter, to them, whether the flesh still lived or not. Only the bones mattered. Her hands clutched at him, but she did not struggle. In the dark, her blood was black as ink, even against the pale snow. When it was over, Joromey picked up his musket and pack, kicked snow over the fire. He slung the old woman over his shoulder, ignoring his bruises and aching muscles. Somehow, he would summon the strength to trek back to the Fallow Fields. They would be waiting for him on the plain, long bones wearing rags of skin. When he brought them his Queen, they would leave. They had promised him. That was why they had let him go. They needed the Queen herself; the Heroes’ power was too diluted in the bones of her offspring. Joromey had been the only soldier brave enough to accept the Cooked Ones’ offer, the only soldier loyal enough to know what it meant to save the realm. The other surviving soldiers had taken their own lives, proving themselves dishonorable cowards. Not like Joromey Brath. Coyotes howled in the dark forest, but now the sound was far away. The green moon shone on the snow, a bright path for him to follow. The same moon would be shining on the Fallow Fields, illuminating snow-crusted crenellations, turning white spires and ivory domes to green ice, glowing on the bone castle and its builders.
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