The Bone Orchard Quotes

They only heard Abel’s screams. That’s why Finch didn’t stop sawing when Macy coughed. Abel’s terror was a sound I will never forget. That, and the rip saw cutting through his bones.

Just because you're done with the past doesn't mean the past is done with you.

Mogadishu the beautiful - your white-turbaned mosques, baskets of anchovies as bright as mercury, jazz and shuffling feet, bird-boned servant girls with slow smiles, the blind white of your homes against the sapphire blue of the ocean - you are missed, her dreams seem to say.

Evening. The dead sheathed in the earth's crust and turning the slow diurnal of the earth's wheel, at peace with eclipse, asteroid, the dusty novae, their bones brindled with mold and the celled marrow going to frail stone, turning, their fingers laced with root, at one with Tut and Agamemnon, with the seed and the unborn.

Men did not respect anger in a woman. They labeled it weakness.

You’ll find that what you can bear increases a great deal when you are not offered any other choice.

I want to change. But my bones are old, my heart is selfish, my spirit is weary. I look at me and I look at you, and I see two different dream. I am death. And you, Sidra…” He reached out to touch her face, softly, as if she might vanish beneath his fingers. “You are life.” She closed her eyes beneath his caress. When his hand eased away, she looked at him and whispered, “Does that mean we cannot exist as one?” He had been waiting for her to ask this. He had yearned to answer her in the orchard, when she had made it evident that they were vastly contrasting souls. “No,” Torin said. “It means that without you, I am nothing.

Green waves surround this black rock where I sit turning bones to sonatas. Fingers blurred, I play what I know from listening to orchards unleash

To change any of this, we need to live.

The world isn’t all towers of white marble, and it isn’t all gardens of perfectly trimmed grass,” said Pain softly. “Whether we want to look or not, we cannot escape from the world. We can retreat for awhile, but always it is there.

They’re all falling away from me. I don’t want to be the Lady. I’m just learning how to be me. I don’t want to go back to the Lady, to being an empty nothing. I’m afraid.

Sorry, Mistress, but I’m not much interested in ghosts. I have enough of my own.

I’m tired of being only a ghost,” she said with something like desperation.

I’ve noticed a curious trend in your boneghosts, Mistress Charm. Desire cannot hold on to anything, Pain is pale, and Pride is blind. It cannot be a coincidence, surely?

He did not want to hear or believe what she said, and so she said nothing.

The Lady’s head ached. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to know anymore or fight anymore. She was so tired already. How did people live like this, with all the ugliness?

And now, from beneath the audible, came a low reverberation. It came up through the soles of my feet. I stood still while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the country worked through my body until I recognized it as music. As language. And the language ran everywhere inside me, like blood; and for feeling, it was as if through time I had been made of earth or mud or other insensate matter. Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the orchard had done some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as of voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words came clear, and I sang with them a beautiful and curious chant.

This cemetery of Small Gods was for the people who didn’t know what happened next. They didn’t know what they believed in or if there was life after death and, often, they didn’t know what hit them. They’d gone through life being amiably uncertain, until the ultimate certainty had claimed them at the last. Among the city’s bone orchards, the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked MISC, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much. Most

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow? And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city? And what is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable? There are those who give little of the much which they have--and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth. It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving. And is there aught you would withhold? All you have shall some day be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'. You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you. And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream. And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving? And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving. For in truth it is life that gives unto life while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness. And you receivers... and you are all receivers... assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the freehearted earth for mother, and God for father.

They made you! They made you to control me! A childish woman who lives to be good. To be proper. To be appropriate! To do what she’s told! And every time I came to the surface you split that ‘me’ off! It isn’t the mindlock that kept you from throwing me out, it’s that I’m Charmaine and you were never part of me. And I won’t feel guilty anymore for what was done to us! I won’t feel guilty about surviving! I won’t be ashamed of what was done to me! I won’t be ashamed of remaking myself. And I won’t turn my back on myself.

How did you escape?” It took Pain a moment to decide. She wasn’t sure she liked the answer she found. “Well, first of all you threw me away. And now I am becoming too much my own self.” She paused. “I am afraid, too. We are the same in that, at least. I don’t want to go back to sleep. I don’t want to be only an empty place. I do not think I can do it.

You weren't the love of my life, but you sure as hell were the love of my death.

She couldn’t find anyone who was responsible except herself.

He doesn’t deserve anything from you. Not. One. Tear. Cry for yourself. Not for him.

Responsibility for a country’s actions must ultimately rest with their government.

The night breeze off the sea riffled through the bone orchard, playing softly in the ghastly white fruits, making the solid ones clatter while the long bones chimed and fluted. The trees were as foreign to Borenguard as their owner, Charm. She sat in the solarium with the windows open to the mellow night, going over her books. A soothing rhythm of touch, tally, and check to the uneven music of her bones.

That night he had dreamed of an orchard under the moonlight, of skeletal white trees, their branches ending in bony hands, their roots going deep down into the graves. There was fruit that grew upon the trees in the bone orchard, in his dream, and there was something very disturbing about the fruit in the dream, but on waking he could no longer remember what strange fruit grew on the trees, or why he found it so repellent.

You exorcised the others. You threw away shame and pain and pride…even justice. Everything that interfered with being their obedient little dolly. You kept me locked in whatever they asked, and you never had to pay the price for any of it because you had parts of me to do that for you.

We were made pale, crippled, blind, and lame so that we would be clumsy and ridiculous, but the Lady has underestimated us.” The last words rang in the dank of the laboratory as if in marbled halls. “I love you, Pain, as a sister; but I will not suffer you to take my place. Do I make myself clear?

From a lightwire overhead, dangling head downward and hollowed to the weight of ashened feathers and fluted bones, a small owl hung in an attitude of forlorn exhortation, its wizened talons locked about the single strand of wire. It stared down from dark and empty sockets, penduluming softly in the bitter wind.

Evening. The dead sheathed in the earth’s crust and turning the slow diurnal of the earth’s wheel, at peace with eclipse, asteroid, the dusty novae, their bones brindled with mold and the celled marrow going to frail stone, turning, their fingers laced with roots, at one with Tut and Agamemnon, with the seed and the unborn.

I have been outside the walls of Orchard House, Lady. The things that are bad within this house, and even the things that are wrong in the city, are not bad and wrong everywhere; any more than Inshill’s perfection existed outside the walls of its palace,” Pain told her. “When you see a larger world, there is room for good things as well as bad.

You began as an emptiness, and all your experiences are only yours. I don’t need an empty place now. It scares me to be without it,” she admitted, “but I’m not going to let another person carry my hurt. You’re a separate person now; so much so that you have your own name, and a rather lean, slightly sticky gentleman who loves you.” She paused and tipped her head at the rosy blush that crept up Mercy’s face. Mercy clamped a hand over her mouth for a moment, giggling. Her scarlet eyes shone with tears. Charm went on. “I wouldn’t feel right taking your life away from you. So…welcome to the world.” Charm smiled in spite of the pinch in her throat. Something that was hers, and not Pain’s. The fragility in the air seemed to fall away with Mercy’s shaky smile. “Thank you.

There is an entire orchard. Hidden, tucked away. Rows and rows of magical, uncharted trees. Doorways into old, long forgotten towns. Father Time. Old Man Winter. The Tooth Fairy. Multitudes of worlds, places we never knew existed. I smile, and Jack pulls me to him. A queen, and her king. And I know, with a certainty that is knitted in my linen bones, we will spend a lifetime---Jack and I, side by side---slipping through doorways that lead to other doorways, carved into ancient, gnarled trees. Lands to explore, adventures to be had. But always together. Because there is nothing quite so wasted as a life unlived. And I intend to live mine. Fully. Unbound by the rules of others. Queen or not, we all deserve these things. Freedom. Hope. A chance to find out who we really are.

Ode to the Beloved’s Hips" Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered percussion in the morning—are the morning. Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me— I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna. How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur. My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena, ecstatic devourer. O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped the amber—fast honey—from their openness— Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet- dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond— to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue— come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips, I am—strummed-song and succubus. They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book— the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel. Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays, Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray. Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera. Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle: What do I see? Hips: Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone. Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread, wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be: Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel. Bone basin bone throne bone lamp. Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery— slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit, laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God, I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth for pear upon apple upon fig. More than all that are your hips. They are a city. They are Kingdom— Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire— thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth. Beloved, your hips are the war. At night your legs, love, are boulevards leading me beggared and hungry to your candy house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late and the tables have been cleared, in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake. O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve, a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon, let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming for your dark matter. Along las calles de tus muslos I wander— follow the parade of pulse like a drum line— descend into your Plaza del Toros— hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros. Your arched hips—ay, mi torera. Down the long corridor, your wet walls lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed. I am the animal born to rush your rich red muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan, a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre Manolete—press and part you like a wound— make the crowd pounding in the grandstand of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer.

The cemetery of Small Gods was for the people who didn’t know what happened next. They didn’t know what they believed in or if there was life after death and, often, they didn’t know what hit them. They’d gone through life being amiably uncertain, until the ultimate certainty had claimed them at the last. Among the city’s bone orchards the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked Misc, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much.

I tore myself apart so they wouldn’t destroy me, but I can stand it now.” Tears traced down her cheeks. She bared her teeth and wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t spare herself. Better wild grief than this meekness with no passion. “Pain…she was how I stood it then, but I can remember it all, now. I can stand by myself because I won’t let you win. I won’t let what someone else made me into be what I am. I love this me I’ve made myself into. I’m proud of me. And I damn well won’t give this me up to you.

In a city it's impossible to forget we live in places raised and built over time itself. The past is underneath our feet. Every day when I leave the house , I may walk over a place where a king killed a wolf in the Royal Forest of Stocket, one of the medieval hunting forests ,where alder and birch , oak and hazel,willow, cherry and aspen grew. The living trees were cut down , their wood used to fuel the city's growth , it's trade, it's life.The ancient wood ,preserved in peat, was found underneath the city(The site of the killing is fairly well buried -the wolf and the king had their encounter some time around the early years of the eleventh century)It's the same as in any other city, built up and over and round , ancient woodlands cut down , bogs drained , watercourses altered, a landscape rendered almost untraceable, vanished.Here, there's a history of 8,000 years of habitation , the evidence in excavated fish hooks and fish bone reliquaries, in Bronze Age grave-goods of arrowheads and beakers, what's still under the surface, in revenants and ghosts of gardens , of doo'cots and orchards, of middens and piggeries, plague remains and witch-hunts, of Franciscans and Carmelites, their friaries buried , over-taken by time and stone .This is a stonemasons' city , a city of weavers and gardeners and shipwrights and where I walk , there was once a Maison Dieu, a leper house; there was song schools and sewing schools, correction houses and tollboths, hidden under layers of time, still there

On a wild night he went through the dark of the apple orchards downriver while a storm swept in and lightning marked him out with his empty sack. The trees reared like horses all about him in the wind and the fruit fell hard to the ground like the disordered clop of hooves. Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain. He sat with his back to a tree and watched the storm move on over the city. Am I a monster, are there monsters in me?

She took the bird to her worktable and put a rubber tube into its beak. With the end of the tube in her mouth, she massaged its ribs with her finger as she puffed, very gently, into the tube. The little swallow kicked, and she held it gently between her hands. “Just like resuscitating a person,” murmured Bern. “Exactly like that,” agreed the Lady. “Most animals want to live. They struggle toward life regardless of their surroundings.” She deposited the bird in the cage, a sad smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Human beings are more difficult. At some point of trauma, most people just give up and die.” Bern’s face changed, something like guilt shadowing his eyes. “Only if they’re let to, Mistress.

In the store the old men gathered, occupying for endless hours the creaking milkcases, speaking slowly and with conviction upon matters of profound inconsequence, eying the dull red bulb of the stove with their watery vision. Shrouded in their dark coats they had a vulturuous look about them, their faces wasted and thin, their skin dry and papery as a lizard's. John Shell, looking like nothing so much as an ill-assembled manikin of bones on which clothes were hung in sagging dusty folds, his wrists protruding like weathered sticks from his flapping prelate sleeves, John Shell unhinged his toothless jaw with effort, a slight audible creaking sound, to speak his one pronouncement: It ain't so much that as it is one thing'n another.

All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam’s waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam’s curse. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia.

Reasons" For our own private reasons We live in each other for an hour. Stranger, I take your body and its seasons, Aware the moon has gone a little sour For us. The moon hangs up there like a stone Shaken out of its proper setting. We lie down in each other. We lie down alone and watch the moon’s flawed marble getting Out of hand. What are the dead doing tonight? The padlocks of their tongues embrace the black, Each syllable locked in place, tucked out of sight. Even this moon could never pull them back, Even if it held them in its arms And weighed them down with stones, Took them entirely on their own terms And piled the orchard’s blossom on their bones. I am aware of your body and its dangers. I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather Where other fugitives and other strangers Will put their mouths together.

It was years before I realized the sort of sadness my mother had couldn't be taken away by a new scarf or a piece of jewelry. The sadness my mother had was in her bones; it would never be vanquished, no matter how hard I tried to be happy for both of us. There was nothing I could purchase or do or even cook that would change things. Life had fundamentally let her down, it seemed, and the shade of that disappointment colored everything. There was nothing I could do to fix that.

city, ending again at the palace gate. “Bounds must always be walked to dawn first,” Belvarin had explained. “It is not the direction of the circle, but the direction of the first turn that matters—it must be the shortest way to the rising sun and the elvenhome kingdoms.” Now they were nearing the city’s margin, with forest beyond gardens and orchards. A cloud of birds rose singing from the trees—tiny birds, brilliantly colored, fluttering like butterflies. They swooped nearer, flew in a spiral over his head, and returned to the trees as the procession turned toward the river. Butterflies then took over, out of the gardens and orchards, arching over the lane, then settling on his shoulders and arms as lightly as air, as if he wore a cloak of jeweled wings. As they neared the river side of the city, the butterflies lifted away, and out of the water meadows rose flying creatures as brightly colored as the birds and butterflies … glittering gauzy wings, metallic greens, golds, blues, scarlet. Kieri put up his hand and one landed there long enough for him to see it clearly. Great green eyes, a body boldly striped in black, gold, and green, with a green tail. The head cocked toward him; he could see tiny jaws move. Was it talking? He could hear nothing, but the creature looked as if it were listening. It was a long walk, and his new boots—comfortable enough that morning—were far less so by the time they reached the palace gates again. He could smell the fragrance of roast meats and bread, but next he had the ritual visit to the royal ossuary, and spoke vows into that listening silence, to those who had given him bone and blood, vows no one else would hear. He came up again to find the feast spread in the King’s Ride, long tables stretching away into the distance. On either side, the trees rose up; he could feel them, feel their roots below the cushiony sod that welcomed his feet. His place lay at the farthest table, with

Every Wednesday Angela Belle came to town. And every Wednesday Dr. Montgomery "accidentally" ran into her. That Doc sat by the diner window for thirty minutes picking at a piece of pie until she rounded the corner did not go unnoticed. "Never seen a man so whupped," the Sheriff said, rolling a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. "Got him by the short hairs," Willie concurred. Naturally, every man in town thought Doc was getting some. Naturally, every woman in town knew better. "A dog don't dance for a bone he's already chewed," Dot said, sliding Ben Harrington's plate lunch in front of him. "Depends on the bone," the Sheriff said, as they watched Doc run across the street to catch up with Angela. "Depends on the dog," Dot countered, giving Willie a look that made his face burn.

didn’t know what happened next. They didn’t know what they believed in or if there was life after death and, often, they didn’t know what hit them. They’d gone through life being amiably uncertain, until the ultimate certainty had claimed them at the last. Among the city’s bone orchards the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked Misc, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much. Most of the Watch got buried there. Policemen, after a few years, found it hard enough to believe in people, let alone anyone they couldn’t see.

I want to change. But my bones are old, my heart is selfish, my spirit is weary. I look at me and I look at you, and I see two different dreams. I am death. And you, Sidra…” He reached out to touch her face, softly, as if she might vanish beneath his fingers. “You are life.” She closed her eyes beneath his caress. When his hand eased away, she looked at him and whispered, “Does that mean we cannot exist as one?” He had been waiting for her to ask this. He had yearned to answer her in the orchard, when she had made it evident that they were vastly contrasting souls. “No,” Torin said. “It means that without you, I am nothing.

She isn't me. Her experiences are no part of me. I'm the daughter of the Chancellor, not this girl who has to sit sorting people all day.

You've nestled yourself inside my bones, deep within the marrow.

Luke watched from his bedchamber window as the would-be-gothic, all-too-comic hunting party sallied forth. Footmen bearing torches flanked the four adventurers: Intrepid Denny in the lead; the dark-haired Portia and slender Brooke a few paces behind, squabbling as they went. Cecily, with her flaxen hair and dove-gray cloak, bringing up the rear— graceful, pensive, lovely. She’d always worn melancholy well. She was rather like the moon that way: a fixture of bright, alluring sadness that kept watch with him each night. No, she had not changed. Not for him. He watched as the “hunters” crested a small rise at the edge of the green. On the downslope, Cecily made a brisk surge forward and took Denny’s arm. Then together they disappeared, the green-black shadows of the forest swallowing them whole. Luke felt no desire to chase after them. He’d had his fill of tramping through cold, moonlit forests— forests, and mountain ranges, and picked-clean orchards and endless fallow fields. He was weary of marching, and bone-tired of battle. Yet if he wanted Cecily, it seemed he must muster the strength to fight once more. -Luke's thoughts

Johns, what the fuck are you doing?” Digger called. “You don’t chat with ghosts, you fucking run like Scooby-Doo, man!” “It’s okay,” Owen told them. “Scooby-Doo!” “Not okay,” Nick cried.

Ambrose managed to fight his way free long enough to shout, “Am I the only ghost here doesn’t know how to ghost?

We all die someday,” Nick muttered as he moved off into the darkness. “Yeah, but I’d rather my obituary didn’t lead with ‘He broke into a jail museum and then died,’” Digger grumbled as he trailed after. “At least it would read ‘with his friends,’” Doc added. “If I wanted to die with you jokers, I would have done it in Afghanistan!” Nick and Owen both stopped and wheeled on Doc and Digger. “Will you at least pretend that you care we’re doing something illegal here?” Nick hissed. Doc and Digger muttered apologies, and they carried on.

Luke felt no desire to chase after them. He’d had his fill of tramping through cold, moonlit forests—forests, and mountain ranges, and picked-clean orchards and endless fallow fields. He was weary of marching, and bone-tired of battle. Yet if he wanted Cecily, it seemed he must muster the strength to fight once more. Did he truly want to win? The answers were supposed to come to him here. Here at Swinford Manor, where they’d spent that idyllic summer, racing ponies and reading Tom Jones and rolling up the carpet to dance reels in the hall. When Denny had invited him back for this house party, Luke had eagerly accepted. He’d supposed he would greet Cecily, kiss her proffered hand and simply know what to do next. Things had always been easy between them, before. And the way he saw it, the pertinent questions were simple, and few: Did she still care for him? Did he still want her? Yes, and yes. God, yes. And yet nothing was easy between them, and Cecily had questions of her own. When you kissed me that night, did it mean anything to you? How could he give her an honest answer? When he’d kissed her that night, it had meant little. But there’d been moments in the years since—dark, harrowing, nightmarish moments—when that kiss had come to mean everything. Hope. Salvation. A reason to drag one mud-caked boot in front of the other and press on, while men around him fell.

I love you," he said quickly. "If I don't come back..." "No," Ezra hissed. "No, you must." "Know I loved you a lifetime's worth," Ambrose gasped. "A lifetime.

It’s okay to be scared," Ambrose said solemnly." I know I am. As long as you let the fear drive you, rather than hold you down.

...as my fist drove through her ribs. Bone cracked. Shifted. The numbers in my optics hit steel-bending digits and Muerte lost her footing. My meat flagged, but the arm Orchard had fixed up and the shoulder girdle she’d strengthened didn’t.

One extraordinary feature of the private quintas or orchards and plantations in the vicinity of the Saladeros was the walls or hedges. These were built entirely of cows' skulls, seven, eight, or nine deep, placed evenly like stones, the horns projecting. Hundreds of thousands of skulls had been thus used, and some of the old, very long walls, crowned with green grass and with creepers and wild flowers growing from the cavities in the bones, had a strangely picturesque but somewhat uncanny appearance.

Freddie shrugged. Then he turned, and he and Pupkin walked off through the Bone Orchard, looking for the End of the World.

I’d met charismatic older men who used their “wisdom” to charm impressionable women into bed.

Did I understand the fragrance and heft? The too-sweetness of the pulpy flesh? Had I ever felt the fatality of autumn like my bones did now, while I watched the pensive currents of foot traffic? A muted hopelessness pressed on me. I lay under it. At that point I couldn’t remember the orchards, the blossoms, the life of the apple outside of the city. I only knew that it was a humble fruit, made for unremarkable moments. And yet it carries us into winter. It holds us steady.

She’d wanted an adventure, to get out, to have a life of her own for just this little while.

Situational deafness runs in her family. She inherited it from her father.” John didn’t laugh. “It killed her father. I wanted her to be wiser.” “Can you teach someone like that to be less brave without breaking them altogether? The more the odds were against Lord Fergus, the harder he fought.

What will you tell Anna?” “That’s up to you; but if you’re determined to break her heart, I wish you’d do it yourself,” admitted Pain. “I…” The young man broke off. His voice cracked. “I’ll write to her,” he whispered.

She wasn’t coping very well just then, but she’s strong enough for it. We all learn to live with our memories, and the skill is there whether she knows it yet or not.

He had destroyed everything any of her ghosts had ever loved.

Her eyes prickled with tears at the burdens her ghosts had carried. Her soul burned with them. For all these years she’d done her best to keep her selves alive, and even when they hated her they’d still done their best to protect her. She wouldn’t turn her back on herself now. Not any part of herself.

Charm’s guest hadn’t sat down, and now leaned elegantly against the conservatory’s framework. Long and elegant. As if they were a man and this utterly unthreatened, completely self-assured. As if they owned the space they took up by the right of their mere existence, instead of existing in a space borrowed from others. And that, oh genius that it was, was the surest part of the guise. The major knew their worth to a point of surety that, in a woman, would be overweaning arrogance. As a woman they would not be beautiful. It was their audacity that made them breathtaking.

How does your Grace prefer to be addressed?” asked Charm. After all, “Major Nathair” and as a man was how they had been introduced, but they had appeared in a gown in the ladies’ gallery at the Assembly Hall and been referred to as a woman by Count Seabrough. Charm’s guest hadn’t sat down, and now leaned elegantly against the conservatory’s framework. Long and elegant. As if they were a man and this utterly unthreatened, completely self-assured. As if they owned the space they took up by the right of their mere existence, instead of existing in a space borrowed from others. And that, oh genius that it was, was the surest part of the guise. The major knew their worth to a point of surety that, in a woman, would be overweaning arrogance. As a woman they would not be beautiful. It was their audacity that made them breathtaking. Major Nathair’s thin lips curled up in amusement. “Do you know, no one has ever asked me that?” “That seems a sad lack of manners in those who have the good fortune to be closely enough acquainted with you. Obviously, I shall refer to you as masculine if I speak of you as Major Nathair to others, and in feminine if I have any reason to refer to Your Grace by your Imperial title; but as this is a private space, and Orchard House is very good at keeping secrets, is there a manner of address you prefer?

The Lady caught sight of herself in a window, a creature all glittering and unnatural, corset putting the soft curves of her breasts on display and making her waist look smaller than it was. It seemed as if passing the door into the front of the house would make everything real. She had felt daring, letting Pain recolor her hair pink, donning Mistress Charm’s dazzling clothes. It had been easy to be daring in private.

We need to treat your hands,” said the Lady, coming out of her trance. She took Pride by the wrists and drew her to a stool. The Lady ignored Pride’s loathing look and began to collect linen, tweezers, a jar, and bandages as if nothing at all were wrong. She began to gently peel the tattered remnants of loose skin from Pride’s bloody, blistered hands. “Tell me if I’m hurting you.” Pain put a hand over her mouth to hide a smile as Pride’s lip curled in utter scorn. “I’ll take it, Pride,” she said softly. Pride turned toward Pain, her chin coming up in spite of the tear that slid down one cheek. “No. I earned it. It’s mine.

I didn’t think you’d admit that there was anything that anyone else might be better at.” “That’s a funny thing about sitting here at this desk so much. It gives one a great deal of time to think, and to come to fairly precise terms with one’s strengths and weaknesses.” Pride’s voice held dry humor instead of the bitterness that Pain expected. Embarrassment was a strange emotion, to Pain, coming with a flush of uncomfortable heat. Pride’s lips quirked slightly. “A little blindness now and then would have been far more comfortable.” A laugh rose from Pain’s diaphragm to her lips. “It would be at that.

Would you have bedded him if you’d been whole?” demanded Luther. “If you remembered me?” Charm breathed. Men did not respect anger in a woman. They labeled it weakness. “You ask a question designed to ferret out or create guilt, because you’re convinced your best dramatic stance is to be hurt because I’ve ‘spurned’ you. Have I got that right? You want me to feel as hurt as you do? Well, I don’t, and I’m not going to. I won’t mourn my surviving. No one has the right to ask me for that. Certainly not you so that you can feel nobly blameless. You seduced a child, and got a child on my body. And you abandoned us both. My child and my body and my ghosts had to pay the price for it. You didn’t even have the decency to come see me until after your father was dead.

You want me to feel as hurt as you do? Well, I don’t, and I’m not going to. I won’t mourn my surviving. No one has the right to ask me for that. Certainly not you so that you can feel nobly blameless.

I walked the Greenmarket stalls during my break. The leaves were riotous but I couldn't focus on them. I only saw apples. Stacked, primed for tumbling. Empires, Braeburns, Pink Ladies, Macouns. Women in tights, men in scarves. Vats of cider, steaming. I bought an apple and ate it. Did I understand the fragrance and heft? The too-sweetness of the pulpy flesh? Had I ever felt the fatality of autumn like my bones did now, while I watched the pensive currents of foot traffic? A muted hopelessness pressed on me. I lay under it. At that point I couldn't remember the orchards, the blossoms, the life of the apple outside of the city. I only knew that it was a humble fruit, made for unremarkable moments. It's just food, I thought as I finished it, core and all. And yet it carries us into winter. It holds us steady.

I am not Shame. I am not made of such flimsy stuff. I can carry it.

He should hold Phelan for raping children, not smuggling guns,” Charm snapped through her mouth. The Lady clenched her teeth together. She went to the sideboard and poured two glasses of wine. “That would assume that the law is equal for paupers and princes,” said Hyacinth with a snort of scorn. “As long as it happens in private, people can ignore just about anything. You ought to know that better than anyone.

They know that the hair in the gun lock was planted, Hyacinth. They know someone is plotting against them. Emperor Strephon will be searching for the conspirators, and we must seem innocent.” Hyacinth laughed, a great expansive laugh. “Honey, they’re always looking for men,” she said, shaking her head. “Men always do. How do you think I’ve been in a man’s business so long? Not even the Firedrinkers think to look for women in relation to serious business, and a lot of ‘em are women themselves. Trust me, no one has the slightest idea that it’s two poor, weak women who threw the wrench into their works.

Her tone held only distant disinterest, but Pain found it odd that Pride would take any interest at all in Pain’s life or plans. Pride seldom spoke.

They’re all falling away from me. I don’t want to be the Lady. I’m just learning how to be me. I don’t want to go back to the Lady, to bring an empty nothing. I’m afraid.

Do you think I would have kept coming back if I did not care?” he whispered. “I have hesitated in the drive for so many hours I believe my horse thinks he’s a lawn ornament. I sit and repeat to myself all of the reasons that I should not come in, should not torment myself by only having a sliver of my lover at a time.

I’ve wept before, and probably even enough, but it…I feel raw. I’m not sure if I’m more her or more me.” Pain’s knees began to give way for sheer exhaustion, and she sank down into the chair that Charm had vacated. “You are you,” she assured Charm. “But I’m not,” said Charm, her voice veering back toward hysteria. “I’m not one me. I’m two? Four? Six? How many? Who am I? I’m not who I was and I don’t know who I am or who is me.” Pride snatched Charm’s arm. She spun Charm around and gave her a swift shake, her bloodily bandaged hand clutching Charm’s arms. “You are the mother of Evlaina. You’re Charm, enthraller of princes and emperors, feared by bestial men who abuse you in order to expiate their own weakness.” Pride’s teeth bared in a fierce hiss—“You were clever enough to grow into someone who could take her shocks in pieces that could be dealt with instead of dying of them. You were strong enough not to die when anyone else would have. You are Charm.” She shook Charm again, viciously, heedless of her own injuries. “Stand up and act like it!

I’ll tell you what not everyone does,” said Charm, hastily diverting. “Not everyone is shot through the lungs and gets back up.” She looked pointedly at the Duchess. Nathair lifted their shoulders. “That’s my gift. I am persistent. I bled out in childbirth when I was sixteen, and since then I’ve always reanimated. I’ve been shot, stabbed, burned, beheaded, disemboweled, and dismembered. None of it has been pleasant, but more crucially none of it was permanent.” “Not poisoned?” asked Charm, teasing with some care. “If anyone’s tried it, it didn’t do anything to me.” They lifted the brandy snifter in a toast and smiled before they sipped again. “And what will you do now, Duchess?” The Empress seemed eager to get away from the ghoulish subject, and as Charm had just done the same thing, Charn couldn’t really object. “It will depend on what Emperor Oram…I presume they’ll make him emperor. It’s the obvious thing, and the Assembly does tend to leap to the obvious. What I will do depends on what Oram decides to do with any of the army who are in Boren and who might have survived. They’re welcome to execute me a few times if it makes anyone feel better, but if I can supply a sufficiently talented, low-power, high-manipulation telekinetic for Boren, I can probably do whatever I’d like.

Charm watched her go. Mercy would continue carrying pain for others. For Oram and for the Firedrinkers. But that was Mercy’s choice and Charm could not make it for her. There were, of course, complications. Mercy was not quite human, for all that she so clearly wanted to be. She could not have children. Charm would make sure the Assembly didn’t weep about that or try to force some other bride on Oram. It would be easy to point out to Hanover that if the Assembly got into the habit of electing the emperors, they would retain a great deal of the Imperial power. It was the least Charm could do for her child.

Your dying wouldn’t stop Phelan from preying on children, or stop soldiers dying on the front, or stop Strephon from ruining the people he rules. To stop those things, we need to live. You want what’s right. You want things orderly, but we need to live for that to happen. Mistress Charm was correct. To change any of this, we need to live.

Well, while I test this, you can think. With Pride and Pain away we need a lady’s maid. Charm rolled her mental eyes. She knew this dodge better than anyone. Pretend trivia was important, try not to think about important or upsetting things.

He kissed her temple, but it touched her swelling bruises and she flinched. I’m sorry I was so slow getting to you. It was harder than I expected to wake. I’ll heal, she assured him. She didn’t doubt it. She would recover. What shall I call you? he asked gently. She wasn’t quite Pain. Pain was a fragment of Charm. An empty place. She’d outgrown it. You called me Mercy, once. I like that better than Pain. My Lady Mercy. Orange breathed across a place in her brain that made her shiver, drew back, leaving a lingering impression of his caress. She laughed, low and shaky. “Are you teasing me?” she asked in a whisper. “We will have our time,” he promised her.

Charm watched her go. Mercy would continue carrying pain for others. For Oram and for the Firedrinkers. But that was Mercy’s choice and Charm could not make it for her. There were, of course, complications. Mercy was not quite human, for all that she so clearly wanted to be. She could not have children. Charm would make sure the Assembly didn’t weep about that or try to force some other bride on Oram. It would be easy to point out t Hanover that if the Assembly got into the habit of electing the emperors, they would retain a great deal of the Imperial power. It was the least Charm could do for her child.

Does the Lady not need you?” “I don’t need her.” “That isn’t what I asked.” “She thinks she needs me. I wish she didn’t. I wish she’d make someone else to suffer for her, if she can’t stand it herself.” Pain couldn’t help the smallest bit of bitterness.

I did love you.” “You very much want to look back and be a romantic hero, but a man of twenty-eight seducing a sixteen-year-old isn’t heroic, and I’ve had to live with the consequences of that, the least you can do is live with a little guilt.” Charm went on, remorseless. “Charmaine was sixteen, and, to her, you were worth tearing her own mind apart so she could love you and be her daddy’s perfect, uncorrupted darling at the same time.” “Which one of you is Charmaine?” He brushed past the self-mutilation of the Lady’s mind as if it was nothing. As if it hadn’t been important. The Lady had done violence to herself. Knowing that, still all he was interested in was the validation of his ego. Charm fanned herself instead of slapping him. “Which ‘me’ it was doesn’t change my age at the time. It doesn’t change your running back to Boren and not taking me with you.” And then her fury slipped through, the spite slipped out. He had no right to any of this, and she had given it to him anyway, and he had no remorse for anything.

Shut up, you, you…” the Countess spluttered in rage. “Whore, strumpet, gold-digging trollop…you may be running out of a vocabulary.

I’m all the pieces of myself again.

You body was the only one that was perfect. I was so close, with you, but growing a human is harder than growing an animal. With Pain I didn’t uncover the tank, and with Shame I let light in too soon. Justice’s bones were not fully grown when I assembled her because I just couldn’t wait to pick. She made me feel so…guilty; and I couldn’t wait for the perfect thighbone, so she limped. It took a few years to figure out what I’d done that blinded you, but it was too much air in the mix. It injured your eyes in some way.” Pride opened and closed her mouth, turned her head away. “It doesn’t mean much to you, I’m sure, but I am sorry.” Pride managed a brittle smile. “While it is utterly unacceptable that you would put any of us out into bodies that you wouldn’t want for yourself, I neither need not want your apology. I do not find my lack of sight such a great disadvantage.

She asked for our help. We agreed. We had to survive.” Desire searched his face for any reaction. He bent down, leaning his elbows on his knees. “I admit to a certain amount of selfishness. It is much more convenient for me to be in love with you when you are alive,” teased Luther in his cool voice, a trickle of amused sarcasm relieving the tone of any sting.

Would you have bedded him if you’d been whole?” demanded Luther. “If you remembered me?” Charm breathed. Men did not respect anger in a woman. They labeled it weakness. “You ask a question designed to ferret out or create guilt, because you’re convinced your best dramatic stance is to be hurt because I’ve ‘spurned’ you. Have I got that right? You want me to feel as hurt as you do? Well, I don’t, and I’m not going to. I won’t mourn my surviving. No one has the right to ask me for that. Certainly not you so that you can feel nobly blameless.

Silence fell between them like the stillness of old bones.

Strephon's breathing grew shallower. Little gasping pants growing weaker. Even if I had done it myself, I wouldn’t stand there and watch! “Maybe you should’ve,” snapped Charm aloud, angry now. “Maybe you should have had to watch, even once to see what you made someone else be responsible for! Maybe you shouldn’t have had to go through all the things you did, but you didn’t even go through them! We did! We’ve gone through it all and you gave us away, shed us like so much dead hair that you didn’t want anymore.

He kissed her temple, but it touched her swelling bruises and she flinched. I’m sorry I was so slow getting to you. It was harder than I expected to wake. I’ll heal, she assured him. She didn’t doubt it. She would recover. What shall I call you? he asked gently. She wasn’t quite Pain. Pain was a fragment of Charm. An empty place. She’d outgrown it. You called me Mercy, once. I like that better than Pain. My Lady Mercy. Oram breathed across a place in her brain that made her shiver, drew back, leaving a lingering impression of his caress. She laughed, low and shaky. “Are you teasing me?” she asked in a whisper. “We will have our time,” he promised her.

It had taken her years to learn to make them, the vessels for the other people in her mind.