Page 75 of Silver in the Bone

“And here I was hoping she’d fallen into a well, never to be heard from again,” I muttered.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Cabell promised, elbowing me hard in the ribs.

I leaned back against the fence, too annoyed to respond. My eyes drifted around us, moving aimlessly over the stones and the blurs of people passing by.

While the cover of night had given the tower an air of hallowed mystery, the bleak light had burned that lie away.

Now its structures wore their raggedness as plainly as starved bodies. Sections of stones had been chiseled away, revealing desperate patch-up jobs, and more than a few walls slumped so badly they had to be braced. Mildew, rust, and soot smeared themselves over every surface, somehow giving the impression that everything was slowly sinking into a boggy abyss.

The banners depicting the Goddess’s symbol, a three-hearted knot at the center of an oak tree, hung listless in the still air.

Worse, patches of the Mother tree had turned a sickly gray, spotted with mushrooms. I didn’t need Neve to tell me that these fungi were likely eating the decay inside it. Even Deri looked weaker—the wooden parts of his body brittle. It didn’t escape my notice that several Avalonians were either studying the rot on the tree or working to help Deri try to cut it from the trunk.

I sighed, eyes skimming the courtyard again. Neve was still cheerfully greeting the horses that had been tethered outside of the stables, which stood on the other side of the training ring. They, along with the infirmary, were located behind the tower. According to Cabell, one of the stone buildings at the front of the tower was the kitchen, a cramped, boilingly hot space ruled by its cook, Dilwyn. She was an elfin, no bigger than a child, but she more than made up for her diminutive size with her no-nonsense personality.

Laundry, I presumed, could only be done in the springs, unless they wanted their clothing and sheets to come back with more bloodstains and fewer washers.

Waiting had also given us our first real opportunity to see and be seen by the survivors of Avalon. Most of them gave us a wide berth as they took their places on the wall or carried up water from the springs. Some watched with obvious curiosity, others with outright suspicion. Some even regarded us with terror, dropping their pails and tools to retreat into the tower.

The worst, though, were the faces that revealed nothing at all, as if the horror of what they’d confronted had hollowed them of spirit. They moved from task to task without lifting their eyes, like restless spirits imprisoned in a mindless loop, operating on pure muscle memory.

These people, though—they knew they were trapped. They’d utterly surrendered to it.

Cabell followed my gaze, his voice hardly a whisper. “How can this be Avalon?”

“Stories are always more beautiful than the truth,” I said. “That’s why Nash couldn’t bring himself to live in the real world.”

But perhaps he’d found himself trapped in this one. Caitriona’s words to me last night—I’ll take you to see your father—had implied that he wasn’t here, within the walls of the fortress, but some part of me had still expected to see his face among the others this morning. I wanted to enjoy his shocked reaction, dine on his disbelief.

I’d overheard Betrys and Bedivere discussing some sort of watch outpost in the forest as they’d set up for the session with Arianwen, and that seemed like our probable destination.

Cabell sighed. “It’s so strange to think he’s alive after all this time, and we’re going to see him. I’m not even sure what I’ll say.”

“I’m not going to say a word.” The hope I felt was tinged with bitterness, like the bite of a sour berry. “I’m going to punch him in the throat.”

He laughed. “Come on. You really think he’d willingly stay here if he had a way of getting back? Time works differently here. He could think only a few months have passed.”

Given how much we had changed in the last seven years, it was strange to think that Nash might look exactly as he had when he’d vanished. Even his old jacket—the one Cabell wore now—bore the marks of our travels and travails over the years, remolding itself to fit its new owner.

Most of the Avalonians wore some version of what Neve, Cabell, and I had been given—a homespun tunic and pants that clung close to the leg. Some of the women chose to wear a simple head covering; others, almost in defiance of the rotting world around them, adorned their foreheads with thin silver strands strung with colored stones.

Dresses that might once have been rich in color, like jewels, had been humbled by hastily repaired tears and stains. Others had been split down their centers and transformed into the coats or short jackets and vests worn by all. None of the armor, steel or leather, seemed to fit its wearer, or else it had been obviously hammered into a different shape.

“Sorceress,” someone hissed. By the time I’d turned, it was impossible to tell which of the passing men it had come from.

Neve, mercifully, was too far away to have heard, but I knew by the nervous shift of her weight that she felt every one of those gazes on her.

Aled, the stable manager, matched the descriptions I’d read of the elfin almost exactly—silky dark hair, pale green flesh, a stocky build, and an affinity for animals. Neve continued to sneak looks at him as he stood on a stool and showed her how to saddle the horses. Now and then he shifted his weight between his left leg and the piece of wood that comprised the lower part of his right.

“What’s got yer face so sour?”

Flea appeared behind us, weaving her small body through the fence to sit atop it. She’d tucked her straggly white-blond hair up into a heavy knit cap, and her face was smudged with even more dirt than the night before.

“Where’d you come from?” I asked, amused.

“My mam said the Goddess ’erself sent me in a basket down the ol’ river,” Flea said, shrugging a shoulder. “Like all babes. ’Cept the two of you. Looks like yer mam was a goat.”

“You’re a horrible child,” I informed her.

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