Free The Bonemender by Holly Bennett

ladder, and then he died. Jeanne cried for three weeks. I saw her crying in the kitchen. And then she married Leo. But you didn’t marry anyone, did you?”
    “No,” said Gabrielle. “No, I didn’t.”
    Solange rescued her. “Madeleine, sit up and eat now. Your mother said you didn’t eat today, you two. How come?”
    “The carriage made me throw up,” said Matthieu cheerfully, loading up his plate.
    D OMINIC’S ARRIVAL HAD triggered a new series of meetings. The coast was the best defended part of the country, and the question of whether to move all the coastal troops into the interior, leaving the Island and Blanchette virtually unguarded, was a vexing one.
    Gabrielle overheard her brothers, still in heated conversation, as they emerged from one of these sessions. She was heading toward the clinic, her mind on the wet, fevered cough that was flaring up all over Chênier. Winter was a hard season, especially for the old ones.
    A door clicked open, and Tristan’s voice floated into the tiled hallway ahead of the two men. “I just don’t think we should discount the Elves completely,” Tristan was saying. “They live up there. They know the country.
Their
scouts didn’t get captured. They should be our allies.”
    “Tristan, I doubt there are even enough of them to make a difference,” replied Dominic. “And you said it yourself—they keep apart. We can’t count on them. If we can’t count on them for sure, then we shouldn’t count on them at all.”
    “Féolan and Danaïs said they would try to persuade their Council to join in the defense,” said Tristan stubbornly. “They believe the Elves should be part of this. I think we should at least invite them to a strategy meeting.”
    “I know they are your friends, Tris, but who knows if they have any influence over this Council? In any case, how would wecontact them? Their settlements are secret, right? You could ride all over the Maronnais highlands and never find them.”
    Their voices faded away as they rounded a corner.
    Gabrielle stood motionless for a minute. Then she turned, the clinic forgotten, and hurried upstairs to her chamber. She crossed the room to her bureau and took down the carved wooden box that sat there. It had been a gift from Dominic for her thirteenth birthday, and it still moved her that as a swaggering young man he had chosen something so right: a beautiful adult thing, with an elaborate key to appeal to a young girl’s desire for secrets of her own. Tristan, only eight at the time, had given her a gaudy necklace, and she had been able to please both by declaring it would be the first treasure kept in her box.
    Now she sat on the edge of her bed with the box on her lap, turned the key and lifted the lid. Tucked at the back was the scrap of parchment Féolan had left with her. Gabrielle took it out, unfolded it and smoothed it with her hands. How many times had she sat looking at the words he had written there? They gave directions—not right to the Stonewater settlement, “for that is forbidden without Council’s permission,” wrote Féolan—but to a sentry-point where a messenger could make contact.
If you ever need me
. Did Féolan mean for her to pass it on to the War Council? She thought not. But what if there was great need? Was not Verdeau’s need her need also?
    By then it will be too late for messengers, her mind replied.

CHAPTER 10
    T HE Elves of Stonewater had not been idle. They and the other Elvish settlements were not just well hidden; they had been well armed to start with, and over the winter the stores of weaponry grew steadily. Unlike the Humans, many Elves who had fought in the last war still lived, and their experience guided both training drills and strategy meetings.
    It was all provisional, however; at this point the Elves intended to fight only if directly attacked, and they doubted the
Gref Orisé
would bother searching out their small territories.
    Féolan was not able to counter these