My heart pounds, jackrabbit fast, but I pull in slow, deep breaths until I’m steadier. Then I lift the knife in my fist and begin to scrape at the trunk again, deepening the groove I created earlier. Usually Oskar, the master of the bone house, carves the names of the deceased into the bark when he hangs the burlap bag from one of the branches. But there is no bag to hang, no bones to prepare. I set off for Ivory Hall tomorrow, and I can’t bear to leave an empty space where my mother’s name should be; I may not have her body, but I won’t rob her of the honor of being remembered.

I scrape into the wood until the joints in my fingers scream in pain. Oskar must have better tools for carving than my father’s old knife.

A throat clears behind me. “Saskia?”

I turn to find Bram, his brown eyes soft with concern. A bright spark of surprise goes through me. “You’re back,” I say. Bram came to Midwood after my mother died, but only stayed a short time before returning to Ivory Hall to finish his first-term exams. I’ll be joining the apprentices for the second term, so I didn’t expect to see him until then. “What are you doing here?”

“Norah sent me back to travel with you.” He gives me a wry smile. “I think she’d feel better if every Breaker in Kastelia were by your side.”

Norah is Steward of Ivory Hall. She offered me a placement to train as a Bone Charmer, and wanted me to go to the capital immediately after the funeral, but I needed time to grieve. And time to figure out how I’m going to hide the fact that I’m both more and less qualified than Norah thinks; I already have a Bone Charmer mastery tattoo because my mother was training me in secret, but I lied about being matched as a Charmer. I wasn’t. Not in this reality, at least.

“I think Norah just feels guilty that one of her instructors murdered my family,” I say, dragging the toe of my boot through the pile of leaves at my feet.