Bone Jack

“Do you know what Bone Jacks do in this world?” Itzal said, all ready to recite some noble poetry about Bone Jacks from one of the old lays. There were several good ones, full of all kinds of emotionally loud ways of describing the essentialness of Bone Jacks.

“Do you know what they do?” Ben responded.

“Um…” Itzal said. “That’s not the direction this conversation is meant to go. And anyway, of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You might not know what they do because you’ve been living in a nice house on top of a mountain for your whole life. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I just want to hear you say what they do. Maybe I just want you to humor an old man.”

“You don’t seem that old,” Itzal said. Truthful enough. In spite of the grey in the thin bristles of his close-cropped hair and beard, Ben had a youngness to him, like some people do who decided how they would be at fourteen and never changed much after that, in spite of all the physical realities of aging.

Ben leaned forward in his chair, staring at Itzal.

Itzal swallowed again. “Bone Jacks shepherd the peace. Trim here. Weave there. As if time is a trellis and peace all made of flowers, we help it grow in healthy shapes.”

Ben snorted. “You’ve had your classics. Who’s that? Galician? Sounds like him.”

“It was a paraphrase,” Itzal said, half muttering. “Not a direct quote.”

“Someone else’s thoughts, either way. Do you want to know what Bone Jacks do? Shall I tell you?”

“You can do whatever you want,” Itzal said, feeling as if the conversation had escaped him, although he refused to act like it, and quite aware that it made him sound petulant, and quite annoyed by that.

“Bone Jacks run,” Ben said. “Bone Jacks hide. That’s all they’ve done for a hundred years. More.”

“I beg your pardon, but—” Itzal began to argue.

“Scholars retreating into safe libraries and away from people blazing trails into a future they don’t understand and out of a past that they’re rewriting. Bone Jacks have made for themselves the peace and safety they’ve always fought to make for everyone else. And the world remembers them well for it.”

“Libraries are not always safe,” Itzal started to mumble, but he got the feeling that Ben would not be in the mood to hear some theories about the disruptive possibilities of education. “What does it matter to you? We never hurt anyone.”

And rarely helped much anymore either. The implied statement hung in the air, although nobody said it.

“Why are we talking about this?” Itzal asked. “We were talking about ransoming my teacher with some product or other that you haven’t got.”

Ben leaned back in his chair. He stared at Itzal for a long time.

“Why do you care if he gets ransomed or not?” Ben asked. “You can just go back to your mountain, and leave the small daily troubles of the sea to those of us who have to live here.”

“It matters because it…matters,” Itzal said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“I don’t know. Is it?” Ben asked.

“Your attitude is immensely annoying.”

Ben shrugged.

Taking a deep breath, Itzal cast his eye around in the room. His gaze landed on the body in the corner, laid out on Ben’s bed, very dead.

“Who is that?”

“That man, Blue Jay,” Ben said, “was Volta Gabbana, and one of the finest bravoes in the New World until a few hours ago, when he broke his neck on another man’s fingers. At that point he became one of the biggest bothers of my life. I needed a reliable sword to go and…well, negotiate to get my property back.”

“You needed him to fight for it,” Itzal said.

“That’s such a crude way of saying it,” Ben said. “Gauche and distasteful. It implies shedding blood and other uncivilized practices.”

“These are Wild Lands,” Itzal said.

Ben cracked a smile. It was the first Itzal had seen on him. He hoped not to see too many more of the snaggletooth and craggy expressions on the slandersmith. It quite deformed him.

Itzal began conjuring the will to sit up, or at least nod forward.

A knock at the door interrupted him. Irritated, but more than half relieved, Itzal slumped doubly-deep into the sofa where he sat, warm next to the fire with the mulled ale near his hand. His argument could wait till after Ben met his caller.

Ben opened the door. Before he could say anything to the gangly person in black linens, he spoke, his voice raspy. “I should not be here,” he said, as if he’d been asked. “We are not prepared. We make no moves without appropriate preparation. I should not have knocked. I should not… I would not have. I thought I saw a ghost. It gave me such a turn…my dose must be off. I must not be seeing true things. I thought…I must sit. May I come and sit? Please?”

At that voice—its scratchiness familiar to him—Itzal’s heart shuddered. He had to do something. Itzal curled up in the brown, knitted blanket on the sofa. He made sure his head was covered, and he pretended to be asleep. Possibly useless, but it made him feel like he’d done something. Which probably said a lot about his character.

“Was that movement?” Trouble asked.

“What? This lazy lump? Hasn’t moved in hours,” said Helving. Itzal thanked the stars Helving had the right sort of imagination.

Itzal couldn’t tell if Trouble was convinced. Whether or not, he didn’t pursue the subject. He walked past Ben, who seemed too bemused to argue. Trouble sat on a stool near the fire. The light of the flames flickered in the lines of Trouble’s harried face.

Itzal’s heart pattered in his chest. He tried to calm its rate, sure Trouble would hear it.

“Not that ghost,” Trouble said, looking idly toward the body of Gabbana. “Well slain, that bravo.”

“What would you know about that?” Ben asked.

“Enough to know he fought well,” Trouble said. “Honorably.”

“Did you have a hand in it?”

“No active hand,” Trouble said. “I would have approached the challenge with joy. If I had the power, I’d bring him to life again just for the honor of being involved with his death.”

“You’re talking yourself towards a hurting, boy,” Ben said, his voice scraping the ceiling of the stones of the underworld.

Trouble responded with an impatient sneer. “You have no business with me, Ben Mouse,” Trouble said. “You’ve no business speaking at all. Not you. You send better men to guard your corpulence, and hold you up while your body grows like a fat spider’s. Hold your tongue. You dishonor the honored dead by your hot air.” Trouble never looked at Ben while saying this.

Itzal peaked from under his blanket at Ben. Ben had his eyes, in turn, on Itzal. They sagged, Ben’s bright eyes, from a frown deep with tired creases. Ben rubbed his stubbly head, his rough hand and bristly hair making sandpaper sounds.

“Hmm,” said Trouble. He looked at Ben now. “You just did something. What did you do?”

“Anyone ever tell you how annoying you are?” Ben asked Trouble. Before Trouble responded, Ben spoke to Itzal. “Can you guess what happens next, Blue Jay?”

Itzal, his thudding heart hurting in his chest and his palms sweating, responded with the smallest nod.