Read Bones of the Past (Arhel) for Free Online Page B

inventory by myself.
    Still, once she was aware that the notes she’d been passing were for everyone to read, she gamely perused them. Most were benign—and exceedingly dull; memos regarding upcoming secret meetings, suggestions for festivals honoring the great Edrouss Delmuirie, a sketch suggesting a new mask design (it had more room for a nose, and Roba voted in favor). There were also some heated protests over the contents of the last issue of the Faulea University
Campus Informer
. Some student humorist had published a satirical piece called “Delmuirie Lives: Paternity Suits Prove It!” in the University press sheet. There were any number of fraught little editorials decrying that. Roba shook her head sadly, reading those. “Delmuirie Lives…” was hilarious.
    One memo brought up the recent news of the Ariss Historical Society’s decision to cut out all funding of Delmuirie-related research, declare Delmuirie an apocryphal figure, and proclaim the recently discovered Delmuirie Diaries a fraud. Roba, who read Thirk’s copy of the translated diaries at the time she got her job, thought the AHS was on the right track with the diaries, even if it might have gone too for with its other decisions. Nobody got laid as often or as variously as “Delmuirie” claimed to and still got any work done. But the Delmuirie Diaries were apparently damned-near sacred texts to DS’ers. And as for cutting funding—
    “I move that we infiltrate the AHS,” read one memo, “find out who voted in favor of the Delmuirie revisions, and neuter the reprobates.”
    “Duly seconded,” was scrawled underneath, and someone had drawn a tally with votes FOR and AGAINST.
    Roba noted that votes were running about three to one in favor. There was even a little block drawn on the bottom where volunteers could write in their secret society name, offering to take on this essential mission.
    She shielded the tablet with one arm, bent over it, and made a little mark in the AGAINST column. Then, grinning behind her mask, she rubbed the wax smooth over everything except the initial motion and the second, and scrawled in, “I move that the above motion be tabled as unworthy of the generous spirit and upstanding ethics of Edrouss Delmuirie, for whose honor we meet.”
    She passed the tablet to the person on her left and noted that the woman read her note, nodded, and scrawled “Duly seconded” under her own motion.
    But that was the high point of the excitement, as far as she could tell. The Delmuirie Society huddled on its benches and wrote its little notes until the bells for antis began clamoring through the city; then one by one, and with a great show of cloak-and-dagger secrecy, the members crept out.
    “Wait for me by the Sargis Crustery and we’ll get antis-fare,” Thirk wrote. Roba nodded, and when her turn came, marched into the anteroom, tucked her mask into her carrybag, and strode out into the last damp curtains of Ariss’ morning fog.
    She waited a block down the street, outside the huge double doors of the Sargis Crustery, surrounded by the rich aromas of wood smoke and hot spiced meat pies and fresh breads that wafted from the shop. If she thought about it, she also noticed the barnyard smell of the road and from somewhere down the Way, the stench of a tannery as well. So she tried not to think about it. Instead, she watched the goings-on of Six Round Way.
    Ariss traffic always left her in awe. When in the city, she didn’t drive, she didn’t ride, and she didn’t fly—and the reasons why were in the street in front of her. Traffic was still light—it was, after all, very early—but the flat paving stones of Six Round Way already rang with the iron-shod clatter of horses’ hooves and the pitters and clunks of herds of goats and sheep and cattle, all bellowing. To these, Ariss drivers added the rattling wheels of huge wooden transport carts, the swish of light two-wheelers pedaled furiously by suicidal riders, and the