Page 23 of Last Rites

I stopped with my hand on the latch of the Ossuary doors and watched Penny cross the square to Rosie’s stall before I made my way inside.

When I entered the atrium, Klaus was there waiting. Apparently, Merrick’s “dressed appropriately” comment extended to everyone on the Tribunal. Gone were the Sentinel’s typically casual clothes, replaced with the ceremonial robes of the Death Watch. They were similar to my own, though with less voluminous sleeves and no ridiculous collar. What was new was the addition of a cord around Klaus’s neck with a single finger bone that hung to the center of his chest. That had never been a part of their vestments before. Bone adornments were reserved for those higher up.

It didn’t bode well that Merrick was already making changes. Perhaps he intended the necklace as a sign of the favor Klaus had earned with the new regime. Klaus had been a loyal follower, after all.

I was sure that favor would fade if Merrick were to find out that Klaus was bedding his wife.

The Sentinel turned at my approach and headed across the circular room to the dark hallway on the opposite side. I followed him into the ritual chamber and was surprised to find it empty but for the two of us. The brasiers were lit further in, along with a single torch on the far wall, bathing the dais in warm firelight.

Klaus mounted the steps and, as I stepped up beside him, a wooden door set into the stone floor came into view. It had a heavy ring bolted near to the foremost edge and a line of hinges along the far side. All of it was well-worn. Klaus gripped the ring and heaved the wooden panel open to reveal a dark hole chiseled into the mountain beneath our feet.

With a growing sense of dread, I stared down into the black that swallowed the end of a set of crude stairs hewn directly out of the stone. I was so consumed with wondering where the passage led that I jumped in surprise when Klaus thrust a torch in front of me. I took it from him, and he motioned into the hole.

“Will Merrick be joining us?” I asked.

Klaus scoffed. “The Right Hand has more important things to do than show you around.” He pointed into the hole again. “You first.”

I was sure my swallow was audible when I once more fixed my eyes on the darkness. The opening was narrow, and I doubted the passage beyond would be any wider. I wasn’t pleased at the prospect of Klaus being at my back, either. If he took me below the Ossuary and slit my throat like he had the fur trader’s, no one would ever find me. Penny would never know.

The thought of being trapped under feet of stone without space to properly move was enough to set my heart slamming against my ribs and make my breath come quick and shallow. But I couldn’t delay any longer, so I descended the steps into the black.

The ceiling was so low I had to stoop to keep from knocking my head on it. Both of my shoulders brushed the walls, and the air was cold and damp. There was no telling how far the tunnel ran under the town without even a distant bit of light to denote the other end.

The farther we walked, the harder it became to breathe. Klaus couldn’t feel the way my ribs caved in as if bound in a vise, but he had to hear how loud my panting was in the oppressive silence. When I glanced back over my shoulder to reassure myself that the light of the entrance was still behind us, he hung back far enough that the ring of torch light barely lit his face. His expression remained unreadable.

My hands shook harder when I couldn’t see the entrance to the tunnel anymore. We must have been walking for at least ten minutes, and now there was nothing but all-encompassing darkness aside from my flickering, dimming torch. It took every bit of my self control not to turn back, not to shove Klaus to the floor so I could climb over him and race back to the Ossuary.

My steps slowed as the tunnel continued to narrow, and Klaus closed the gap between us to jab me with his knuckles to keep me moving forward. Just when I thought my chest would seize and choke off my air and render me unconscious, a glimmer of light pierced the gloom ahead.

I quickened my steps and, not a moment too soon, I was scurrying up the stairs at the end of the tunnel and into the open air. Several ragged breaths later, I settled enough to take in where the passage spat us out. The cliff wall rose above us a few dozen feet away, pocked with a series of cave entrances. To the left of the largest opening stood a circular stone structure, belching smoke through the chimney hole in the center of its domed roof. Through the small door on the front was visible the glow of fire from beneath the ground and layers and layers of pale bricks and oddly shaped stones. Made of bone, I assumed.

Farther to the left was another kiln, half-constructed of excavated mountain rock, with several men hard at work fitting the slabs together to build up the walls. And behind us, past the rows of fresh bones laid out on the rocky ground, was a stone wall nearly as tall as the cliff face, closing off the entrance to the caverns and the tunnel from the rest of Ashpoint.

As kids, Levitt, Violette, and I used to sneak out of town and up along the base of that wall and make up stories about what was happening on this side of it. We all knew the Vessel was being constructed somewhere and, after the Judgment, it made sense that the Bone Men would want to keep its location secure. Preserve their new work so it couldn’t be destroyed like the old. After all these years, this was my first time seeing what went on here.

I had as little interest in finding out now as I had when I was a child.

Klaus took my torch and once again motioned for me to follow. I fell into step beside him as we headed for the largest cave opening.

“What are they doing there?” I indicated the second kiln.

He flicked a brief glance at the men working. “Sun drying the bones takes too long, so we’ll be using fire to dry them faster to fit with Merrick’s timeline,” he said. “Now, keep up.”

We stepped into the largest cavern, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the torch and lantern light inside. It was a wide room with a low ceiling, lined on either side with lunch pails and spare boots and the odd broken tool awaiting a trip to the forge for repair. Several passes branched off from there, and Klaus took me down the widest one on the far side.

“You will spend most of your time here,” he said as we passed through several smaller chambers where vaguely familiar faces from town were grinding bones, kneading their dust into pale clay, or forming that clay into uniform bricks and shapes vaguely resembling fingers or facial features.

I found it macabre, but the workers chatted casually with their fellow laborers, going on like this was the most normal thing in the world. For them, it was.

Klaus and I wound our way through narrow halls until the passage opened into a cavern twice the size of the Ossuary’s atrium. A small opening in the ceiling on the leftmost side of the room let in a beam of sunlight, and a narrow stream of water cascaded down with it into a pool stretching halfway along the edge of the wall. There were a handful of workers here, too, but what drew my eye was at the back of the chamber, butted up against towering supports and wooden scaffolding.

The Vessel stood as tall as three men and nearly as broad, made of bone bricks and blocks fit together like puzzle pieces. Its head and the lower part of its right arm were missing, but its left arm was complete. The hand was the size of my torso, and from the wrist up the forearm was adorned with human vertebrae and silver chain like a bastardized vambrace. Pauldrons made of skull plates and topped with a wolf skull each rested atop its shoulders and, beneath that, rib bones hung like a banner over the upper arms. Additional rib bones, held together by more silver chain, formed a breastplate over the Vessel’s chest and torso, with the upper half of a human skull as the centerpiece.

It was so much closer to completion than I expected.

The air in that cavern felt wrong, heavy with the souls of everyone who was unwittingly made a part of this monstrosity. How many of those bodies had I provided? How much of the damnation from this creation fell on me?

Too many, and too much.