The Names Above the Map — Crowns and Spirits, Tome II
By B.J.P. Bisoneaux
A 1,000-word short-story adaptation from Crowns and Spirits, Tome II, by B.J.P. Bisoneaux. BISONARTZ.
Three days after the Revenant Lord fell, Autumnsberg still whispered with stolen voices.
Barricades closed the streets where the dead called through paving stones. At the harbor, welders stitched light across the Eisenhower’s wounded flank. In the lower archive, Lady Selene Marusic gave the city another kind of repair: names written on slate, identities pieced together from ledgers, clothing, survivors. Where the search failed, she allowed one word.
Unknown.
Every entry was a refusal to surrender.
Bernhart Wolvenhart read it beneath the weight of Omega at his hip. Inside his coat lay a wooden wolf with a broken ear. The sword could sever roads between worlds. The toy proved that someone had once loved him before he became useful to them.
Across the hall, Mellisandra Garnet bent over the Holds codex beside her brother. Her dark hair was tied back; exhaustion shadowed her crimson eyes. Three names stood together in Janette’s handwriting: Anjelisse, Mellisandra, Runik.
Children, before anyone had called them instruments of prophecy.
Selene opened a map beneath the records. Bernhart joined the gathering. At its northern edge a black circle pulsed.
“Naraka,” Orenn Kohl said.
The prison-world’s name tightened the silence. Beneath its ice waited things older than the governments that warned against them. Its northern seam had already been weakened when Omega’s victory sent a recoil through the Ash Road. The severance had exposed the damage.
It had not created it.
“The keeper?” Bernhart asked.
“Spiritwarden Kaiden,” Selene answered. “His last report came seventeen days ago.”
Blackened runes. Missing personnel. Voices beneath sealed floors.
Bernhart looked up at the walls. Unknown. Autumnsberg was teaching him how much cruelty could fit inside an answer supplied too soon.
Selene read from the codex. “Confirm the living before confirming the seal.”
They might reach Kaiden through the Vault of Whispers, beneath Winterark’s northern root.
Winterark.
For an instant Bernhart stood again before the court that had stripped him of belonging. He imagined returning with Omega drawn and making the men who had judged him behold their mistake.
Then he looked at the names above the map.
“A witness expedition,” he said. “We find out whether Kaiden lives. Autumnsberg keeps its defenders.”
They began choosing companions. Maurice would go. So would the healer Sakes and those who understood dangerous thresholds, deceptive voices, impossible distances.
Mellisandra chose herself.
“No,” Runik said.
She turned toward him. “That was quick.”
“You nearly died three days ago.”
Her song had reached through Autumnsberg’s dead. Another attempt might tear something medicine could not mend. Bernhart saw fear in her eyes, and recognized the greater fear moving through her brother: to survive finding her only to lose her again.
“The Vault may call for your song,” Bernhart said.
“Then I should enter with people who know I must not answer alone.”
Runik’s jaw tightened.
Bernhart knew the temptation to build a wall around someone and name it love. He knew, too, how easily need could turn another person’s courage into permission to consume her.
“Do you choose to come?”
“I do.”
“If the song calls?”
“I decide.”
“If we need you?”
“Need may ask. It may not command.”
“And if you forget?”
Mellisandra held his gaze. “Then remind me that I wanted to live before anyone needed me to die.”
“I will.”
Runik lowered his eyes. When he spoke again, his anger had found room for her choice.
“Then I come. Her judgment is terrible.”
Mellisandra almost smiled.
Sakes made departure conditional upon food, rest, and a halt at the first sign of bleeding. Mellisandra complained that he was already unbearable. He accepted this as evidence treatment had begun. Bernhart listened, grateful that someone still measured destiny against the ordinary requirements of a living body.
By midnight the archive had emptied. Omega rested across the table, sheathed. The wooden wolf sat beside it.
Mellisandra brought two cups. Bernhart smelled bitter herbs.
“Sakes sent you.”
“Sakes threatened me. With details about your internal bleeding.”
He accepted his medicine. She studied the sword and the toy.
“Which frightens you more?”
“The wolf.”
“Because it remembers you before the sword?”
“Because it proves that child existed.”
“He still does.”
Bernhart had no light answer. Beside him, the northern circle continued its slow black pulse.
“I am afraid,” Mellisandra said.
“So am I.”
They stood close enough for warmth without touching. For that moment, neither had to be anything greater than frightened and alive.
Maurice entered carrying a letter sealed in violet wax.
“Anjelisse,” Mellisandra whispered.
Bernhart took it with both hands. Childhood and separation rose between them, everything remembered and everything time had altered. He broke the seal and read aloud.
Anjelisse wrote that Runik needed no forgiveness for having been stolen. She reminded Bernhart that awakening weapons did not release men from needing sleep, affection, correction. Winterark’s nearness created no obligation to return for pride’s sake.
Bring Mellisandra if she chooses.
Mellisandra covered her mouth. Tears gathered beneath her eyes.
Come back still yourself.
Bernhart folded the letter beside the wolf.
“She told you to bring me.”
“She told me to respect your choice.”
Mellisandra watched him. “You love her.”
“Some part of me always will.”
She nodded, accepting an honesty that hurt without making either of them smaller. When she reached for the letter, he gave it to her. Together they read her sister’s words again.
At dawn, the buried northern gate opened. No herald announced their departure. Autumnsberg had roofs to mend and names to recover.
Bizen waited at the threshold.
“Guard the living,” Bernhart told him.
“Bring back the names.”
Cold air breathed from the descending road, smelling of roots and hidden water. Maurice took Bernhart’s right; Mellisandra his left. Runik followed with Laevateinn ready. Their companions gathered behind them.
Bernhart settled Anjelisse’s letter beside the wooden wolf inside his coat. The sword remained sheathed. Behind him, a wounded city returned to work; before him waited a prisoner-world and a keeper whose silence they would not mistake for death.
He stepped into the dark with witnesses.
Continue the story in Crowns and Spirits, Tome II.
Comments