Charm is a witch, and she is alone. The last of a line of conquered necromantic workers, now confined within the yard of regrown bone trees at Orchard House, and the secrets of their marrow.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller, out from Tor Books on March 22.
Charm is a witch, and she is alone. The last of a line of conquered necromantic workers, now confined within the yard of regrown bone trees at Orchard House, and the secrets of their marrow.
Charm is a prisoner, and a survivor. Charm tends the trees and their clattering fruit for the sake of her children, painstakingly grown and regrown with its fruit: Shame, Justice, Desire, Pride, and Pain.
Charm is a whore, and a madam. The wealthy and powerful of Borenguard come to her house to buy time with the girls who aren’t real.
Except on Tuesdays, which is when the Emperor himself lays claim to his mistress, Charm herself.
But now—Charm is also the only person who can keep an empire together, as the Emperor summons her to his deathbed, and charges her with choosing which of his awful, faithless sons will carry on the empire—by discovering which one is responsible for his own murder.
If she does this last thing, she will finally have what has been denied her since the fall of Inshil—her freedom. But she will also be betraying the ghosts past and present that live on within her heart.
Charm must choose. Her dead Emperor’s will or the whispers of her own ghosts. Justice for the empire or her own revenge.
Orchard House was closed on Tuesdays. Only one customer was permitted to enter. Come siege, storm, or strife, the Emperor called at Orchard House on Tuesdays. Sometimes, like today, he was late; but in the five decades of Charm’s life here he had never before failed to call by noon. Normally, she would have attended to the various tasks of Orchard House while she waited. Checked the pantry, reviewed the menus, ordered supplies for the cook and the second floor. Today she could not make herself focus on these trivialities. Today, Charm paced the parlors and halls in restless, rustling black silk, endless circles punctuated by attempts to settle. Phelan must be dealt with. The Emperor must do something about his sons besides pay the bills for their damages. She glanced at the clock. Five minutes after two.
“Mistress, there are two Firedrinkers at the reception desk.”
Pain’s voice made Charm jump. She turned on the pallid boneghost in a near snap. “Orchard House is closed on Tuesday.” She should not have to remind anyone.
“Forgive me, Mistress, but they say that they have a message from the Empress.”
Charm paused. This had never happened before. It clashed, discordant, with the fact that today was Tuesday. “Thank you, Pain.”
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Charm stood and pressed her hands against the comforting armor of her corset, inhaled, let the breath all out. Calm. She did not run. Ladies of position did not run. It pleased her for poise to counterbalance her hair and her clothes. To ape her betters. The murmur of her skirts was loud in the silent hall.
Two Firedrinkers stood at parade rest before the reception desk, crisp in their bright red coats. Their calling outside business hours heralded nothing good; much less with a message from the Empress.
Pride was absent from her post at the grand curve of the reception desk, enjoying a day spent in her attic private bed with her knitting.
“Good morning.” Charm greeted the Firedrinkers with a professional smile.
The Firedrinker on the left stepped forward and held out a slim letter. A crystal carved with the imperial seal sparkled, set into the wax.
“Mistress, for your hand from the Empress.” The Firedrinker’s voice was distorted into androgynous middle tones by his, or her, helm.
Charm took the letter carefully. The seal was identical to the one in the Emperor’s ring. The sight of it made Charm’s mindlock tick and whir. Inside were two scant lines in a fine hand.
Mistress Charm, these guards will bring you to me. Please come at once. It is important.
Ylsbeth, Empress of Boren
Empresses of Boren came and went at irregular intervals. Had the Emperor tired of Ylsbeth? The first empress, Aerleas and Luther’s mother, had died in childbirth. Prince Phelan’s mother, the second empress, had been beheaded and set a standard after which Prince Strephon’s mother had taken her divorce settlement and retired to a quiet life of disgrace in the country. The fourth empress had died in childbirth. The one who’d come in just after Charm arrived had no child and had been divorced and sent back to her native country after objecting loudly and publicly about the Imperial Tuesdays. The current empress, Ylsbeth, had lasted a shade over six years. She was by far the quietest of the Emperor’s choices. The girl rarely said a complete sentence in public.
From the moment the Emperor had woken Charm in Orchard House, she had never left the grounds. Orchard House was her world. What could possibly motivate this little wisp of an empress to send for her husband’s mistress after six years of tactfully ignoring the situation? No wife, not one, had ever sent for Charm. Charm fingered one pink curl where it fell over her shoulder.
“I… can’t go to the palace with pink hair,” Charm hedged. “It’s entirely inappropriate. Surely the palace calls for royal blue.”
The Firedrinker on the right shifted uncomfortably inside their bloodred uniform. “I’m sorry, Mistress, but you will come to the palace.”
“Ah. I see.” Firedrinkers had their own compulsions and Charm wouldn’t make their mindlocks punish them for failing in their duty.
Pain brought her a wrap, gloves, and a little tasseled bag. Charm had no wraps, no gloves, no bags. Pain’s things fit, of course, and would serve. Charm gave the Empress’s note to Pain, shrugged the wrap around her shoulders, and busied her hands putting on the gloves. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d worn gloves, if she ever had. The gentlemen who came to Orchard House had never noticed the scars on her palms, or if they had they had politely kept it to themselves. “Pain, if the Emperor comes, please give him the Empress’s message. He will understand.” It was, after all, Tuesday.
The Firedrinker helms turned toward one another.
A chill ran icy fingers up Charm’s spine.
The carriage waiting in the front garden was an unextraordinary vehicle, with no insignia on the door and heavy curtains over the windows. The horses were mismatched, one chestnut and one bay. Not an Imperial carriage. An anonymous visit. She was to be smuggled in. The Firedrinkers held the door and handed her up into the carriage. Charm settled onto the tucked velvet seat. The horses started with a jerk. She had no desire to open the curtains. The confined interior seemed safer than the broad uncertainty of the city. Her fingers bit into the soft cushion. What did Ylsbeth want? Where was the Emperor?
She must not huddle. Charm sat up, away from the back of the seat. She turned up the lamp in the carriage compartment and searched in Pain’s bag until she found the gold compact of powder that Pain used to give her pallid complexion some semblance of normalcy. Charm checked her face, dusted powder over the freckles that had started to show on her nose. Charm herself did not have freckles. The Lady had freckles. She shook off the thought. The Lady was safely concealed, and thinking about her would only complicate things.
Charm examined her brilliant hair with a critical eye. It wouldn’t do to arrive mussed. Whatever happened in the world, a woman should face it well groomed. Besides, the situation might not be as bad as all that. Empress Ylsbeth would turn twenty-eight in a few months’ time. Maybe the poor girl wanted some advice. It seemed reasonable that sooner or later one of the Emperor’s wives would have more brains than an inkpot.
***
A grim chamberlain showed Charm from a back door through silent servants’ passages and into a warm purple and gold sitting room. The Emperor’s wife had pale hair and paler skin untouched by cosmetics. She was so thin she looked fragile inside elegantly restrained jewels and heavy brocade. A harsh contrast to Charm’s buxom self. A single Firedrinker stood at parade rest by a gilded connecting door emblazoned with the Imperial crown, the firelight flickering in reflection on his featureless helmet. His white sash stood out against his scarlet coat, the only thing in the room more pale than the Empress—Captain Oram. Something was dangerously wrong. Charm wanted to bolt to the carriage and fling herself back into the safety of Orchard House. She held on to her courage. She would not run like a startled partridge, flapping through the halls.
The Empress put on a faint, brave smile. “Thank you for coming, Mistress Charm” was all she said. She gestured for Charm to follow and opened the connecting door, then slipped inside with Charm trailing obediently after her.
The great man in the silk-draped bed lay unmoving. Only the rasping rise and fall of his chest betrayed that he was still alive. Perfumes and incense couldn’t cover the sour smell of his dying. Charm looked down on the Emperor of Boren in shock and pressed a shaking hand over her mouth. She’d never seen him in less than perfect health. Rejuvenation drugs kept his age at a robust fifty-two, just as they kept Charm eternally young.
Watching him struggle to breathe jolted Charm’s world. “How long has he been like this?”
“Since this morning. The doctors have done all they could.” Ylsbeth looked to Charm for a long moment. “It was not right that he leave us without you, of all people, being able to say good-bye to him,” said the young empress in her soft voice. “My lord? My lord, I’ve brought Charm to you.”
The Emperor’s gray eyes opened. His smile was weak. “Thank you, my dear.”
His wife put her slim hand on Charm’s shoulder for a moment, the grip far stronger than Charm would have credited her for, and went out, closing the door.
“It was cruel to use her to send for me,” managed Charm, her voice hoarse.
“I didn’t. She called you on her own.” His gravelly basso was syrupy with phlegm.
Borenguard had never grasped what was between Charm and the Emperor, and that somehow Ylsbeth had recognized something more instead of assuming bestial pride of possession shot emotion through Charm’s heart. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat with no success. “A greathearted lady, to send for her husband’s mistress.”
He managed a tiny nod. “I recall telling you, once, that you underestimated her. I’m glad she sent for you. I don’t have much time, and there is something I need you to do.”
“Anything, Majesty,” she answered automatically.
“When I am dead, one of my sons will take the throne. The one who manages it is most likely the man who has actually killed me, because none of them would risk it unless they could secure the throne for themselves.” The Emperor’s smile was almost admiring. “I’ll go to my death wondering how and which one managed to poison me, but in the end it doesn’t matter which one it is. They’re all… I believe the phrase you favor is ‘stone bastards, every one.’”
Charm flushed, but he had long ago commanded her never to lie to him. “Few have more cause to know their true colors than my ghosts, Majesty.” Aerleas was psychic, unmindlocked and somehow still alive in spite of his insanity. His madness had savaged her native Inshil for fifty years. Luther had been banished to sea for an affair that nobody remembered but Desire. Phelan was the pedophiliac whose mindlock surgery had been botched. And Strephon was a bitter little coward of a man who wanted whatever anyone else had.
“No matter which one it is, the other three will not bend to him. They will bicker and fight. Some other nation will invade, and the Boren Empire will be swallowed into time.” His great square fist clenched on his silken sheets.
“You’d allow the man who murders you to take your throne?”
“I haven’t sweated and fought, tortured and lied to see my legacy dissolve when I’m gone. The only way to save Boren is to remove my sons from the succession and give the crown to someone deserving. You are a woman and unlikely to be suspected, and you’re loyal. You have no other choice, I know, but you will choose a new emperor with care.”
“You entrust me with what? Revolution?” Charm laughed a little at the thought, and the sound soured with a desperation that made her heart race. He was giving this responsibility to her? To her, with the captain of the Firedrinkers outside the door? “Let me call Captain Oram to you.”
“Stay here.” His voice kept her there, as if her legs had frozen up. “I have no more time. No Rejuv can save me from this, and I had not intended to die. Not ever. Not until there was someone to leave my country to. You have a position that allows you to interact naturally with the nobility, you have sway with the common people, my sons trust you… and without my command no one can force you to tell what goes on in your mind.” He lifted one massive, trembling hand. The Imperial seal flashed upon it as he stroked the flat casing in her temple. “I’m sorry it took this to protect you from the world outside your pretty prison.”
“At the time I didn’t realize what you meant by it.” Inshil’s walled gardens, its “pretty prison,” had been the Lady’s, but the Emperor didn’t know that. It was her one secret from him, safe because he’d never imagined he needed to ask the questions that would reveal the Lady. Now her secrets would be safe forever.
The Emperor’s chuckle made him gasp for air. He heaved himself onto his side, hacking. Charm leaped to help him, dabbing at his lips with the sheets. The Emperor hawked and spat bloody phlegm onto the intricate silk carpet. “Listen to me. I only have enough effort left for one adjustment. It can’t undo all I’ve done to you, but call it my amends as much as I can make them. No man shall ever bend you to his will without your consent. Nothing my sons say or do to you can force you to betray yourself to them unless you choose of your own free will to do so. They aren’t fit to dictate to you. I name traitor any of my sons who would wear my crown, and condemn them to death. Find whomever has killed me, and see they and any of their conspirators die. Past that, I give you your freedom. Do what you will with it.” His jaw tensed as he concentrated, and the effort made him struggle, wheezing, for breath.
The mindlock in Charm’s temple vibrated as the mechanisms within adjusted too quickly. Her muscles spasmed, taking her to her knees. Deep in Charm’s mind, the Lady stirred. Charm clung to the edge of the bed for a few moments until she was sure that the world had stopped rippling. The future stretched out before her, vast, unfettered, terrifying.
The Emperor’s face was pale as wax. “Be a good girl, now, go call my wife. You shouldn’t be with me when I die.”
Blinking back tears, Charm pressed a kiss to the Emperor’s damp, burning forehead.
He smiled at her as she stood up. “Good-bye, sweetheart. God forgive me for it, but I do love you.”
Charm managed to turn. Managed to leave him. Passing out of the royal bedchamber felt like crossing a chasm. Captain Oram hadn’t moved from his post beside the door. The Empress stood looking into the sitting room fire. Charm choked out words in her direction—“He wants you.”
There were tears streaking the young empress’s face when she turned toward Charm, and her eyes were rimmed with red. Her graceful hands clenched in fists in her heavy skirts. With her husband gone, Ylsbeth would be in the care of one of his sons. Charm held no illusions about their mercy. Her eyes met Charm’s.
Creatures of the same cage, thought Charm. Whether it was pity, solidarity, truth, or the mindlock that impelled Charm to speak was a subject that Charm declined to examine. “He always spoke of you with great tenderness, and respect,” she managed.
“I have something for you.” Ylsbeth gestured to a great jewel case on a side table. “I…”
One of the doors opened. A woman in a savagely elegant day gown came in. Ylsbeth fell silent. Pain had once or twice seen the Empress’s lady of the wardrobe, and most constant companion, Countess Seabrough. The Countess’s middleaged, haughty beauty was unmistakable. The Countess’s lip curled, eyes sharp as obsidian. She whipped forward to stand between Charm and her charge, as if Charm might somehow contaminate the Empress. “How dare you come here, whore? How dare you distress the Empress with your presence!”
Standing in heavy brocade, before a blazing fire, the Empress shivered and then drew herself up. “Do not forget your jewels, Mistress Charm.” Head bent, Ylsbeth went in to her husband.
Charm snatched the great jewel case by its handles and bolted as well as her bustled-up skirts allowed. She ran, stumbling along the echoing marble halls.
Pain, Desire, and Justice waited on the steps of Orchard House to help their mistress inside. Charm trembled as if she were palsied. They put her to bed and slid in beside her, holding Charm in their arms as she wept for a man she was going to kill for.
Excerpted from The Bone Orchard, copyright © 2022 by Sara A. Mueller.
