Page 1 of Mistress of Bones

I

DEATH

NINE YEARS EARLIER

Azul del Arroyo didn’t fully know what would happen when she set out to bring her older sister back to life, but since she was ten, she didn’t much care.

It took courage to sneak down to the inn’s cellar, even more so to saw off Isadora’s cold finger. Azul’s dagger was too blunt, Isadora’s rapier of no use, but Azul did it, and she rolled the digit in her handkerchief before hiding it inside the pouch hanging from her neck.

She waited and stayed silent, because she knew her gift was strange and that nobody would thank her for using it.

And she prayed to all five gods, but especially to the Lord Death, to allow her sister to come back from his domain just as the chicken had when Azul was seven, and her favorite cat when she was nine, and the couple of mice and the little snake at some point in between.

The Lord Death must’ve listened, because a day after she returned home to the small Sancian town of Agunción, Isadora was at her family’s door, her memories after falling sick with the fever completely gone.

The doctor at the inn must’ve made a horrible mistake and sent her straight home, Azul assured everyone as only a ten-year-old could.

After all, Isadora was alive and free of illness.

And if her sister had walked from the meadow of tall grass behind the house—like the chicken and the cat and the mice and the snake—instead of stepping out of a traveling carriage, well, Azul wasn’t about to confess it.

Because there was nothing Azul wouldn’t do for Isadora.

THE PRESENT

“There’s been a suspicious death, Emissary.”

Virel Enjul, Emissary of the Lord Death, looked up from his sketching—bones, of course, free of flesh and tendons and blood. They were meant to become an armor, and sweat was enough of a stench to carry around.

The messenger at the entrance of the room wore all his corresponding flesh and tendons and blood tucked into snug breeches and a long waistcoat.

Sancian fashion, come to intrude into Valanje, as if, unable to conquer its neighboring country across the floating sea, Sancia had decided to invade through clothing instead.

Enjul didn’t care for these fashions, but they didn’t bother him either. They would die, just as this man would, and something else would take their place. The Lord Death was supreme, after all. Nothing escaped his reign.

“Come forth, and speak,” Enjul ordered, abandoning the sketch and focusing his attention on the man. Natural decay had already taken hold of the messenger’s body, death inevitable for everything that was ever born or grown.

All Emissary Enjul ever saw was the death surrounding him.

The man approached the emissary’s desk, a sturdy thing used to the weight of thick, unread volumes and ledgers. He met Enjul’s eyes for a heartbeat, then focused on the emissary’s chest. “A suspicious death was reported on the docks at Diel.”

Diel—Valanje’s Pride, Valanje’s Treasure. The country’s southernmost city built on untouched Anchor—the gods’ bones. Another difference with Sancia, where they had no respect for Anchor and wore it on their houses and their persons as if they had the right to own the gods.

But that fashion would never take hold in Valanje—Enjul and others like him would make sure of it. “And?”

“Your… your presence has been requested by Rudel Serunje, Emissary.”

All who entered the Order, the service of the Lord Death, studied death in all its forms—divine, natural, unnatural, premature—but only those with a piece of the Lord Death himself, those blessed to see the decay of death and feel the god’s guidance, became emissaries.

And emissaries did not investigate petty sailor scuffles, even if they occurred in great Anchor cities.

Enjul’s thoughts must have shown on his expression, because the messenger hurried to elaborate on the request: “Serunje, Valanje’s Eyes, was in charge of an envoy to Sancia’s capital, to Cienpuentes, and had returned home with the Sancian delegates when the death occurred.

An emissary was demanded, sir. You are the closest one. ”

“A Valanjian’s death?”

“One of the Sancians, Emissary.”

Sancians , Enjul thought in irritation, bringing their problems and their disrespect of the gods along with their fashions . He stood, slipping his latest drawing into the leather-bound folder holding the rest of his sketches.

Strange manners of death had always appealed to him, but in his experience, what others considered strange and suspicious only ever amounted to trite and mundane.

A suspicious stabbing, a suspicious poisoning—the death simple enough, the culprit the only thing suspect.

Such things were not his purview but a guard’s.

Rudel Serunje had purposely made his message vague, either out of a need for secrecy or to incite curiosity. Since nobody would think to toy with an emissary of the Lord Death, Enjul would honor the request.

“Did you witness this death?” he asked.

“No, Emissary, but there are rumors.” The messenger swallowed. “I heard strange magic was involved. That the body was there and then not. Reduced to green ashes and dirt, they say.”

And just like that, Virel Enjul, Emissary of the Lord Death, found his heart in a tight grip and a growl in his throat.

“A malady?” he demanded, disgust pulling his mouth into a snarl.

The man backed up to the door. “Yes, perhaps, Emissary, sir.”

“Have a mount ready. I leave within the hour.”

Enjul took his sketches and tore through the hallways toward his quarters. Maladies. Rare, so very rare there had been only whispers of one in his lifetime.

Long had Enjul heard the rumors of the malady taking up residence in Cienpuentes; long had he wished to put an end to it.

Sancians didn’t seem to care, just like they didn’t care about defiling the gods’ bones on which they’d built their capital, and he wished to correct their mistake.

But his emissary duties belonged with Valanje, the land of the Lord Death, not Sancia, where belief in the Blessed Heart and the Lady Dream reigned supreme.

Infuriating that they thought these two lesser gods amounted to more than the Lord Death or the Lord Life.

Had Death and Life not created the Blessed Heart, the Lady Dream, and the Lord Nightmare?

Had they not plucked the moons from Hope and Despair’s remains?

Now this malady might have arrived in Valanje. Now Enjul might have it within his grasp, and he’d see it erased from this world, thrown into the understars and Void beneath the lands. A spark ignited inside him, spreading warmth inside his body and hastening his steps. His god agreed.

The trip to the Anchor city of Diel took two uneventful days, eastward across the low mountains, and no matter how often Enjul traveled here, the sight still dazzled. For how could a city built on the gods’ bones fail to impress?

Diel rose from the land, a wide peak of glittering blue Anchor covered by houses of all colors and sizes.

It stood, alone and magnificent, the high point of an enormous valley of farmland extending from the mountains and the thick forests in the far north and south to the sea at Diel’s eastern footstep.

It was a good thing the sea separated the great island of Valanje from Sancia and the continent of Luciente. The gods’ blood limited the reach of Sancia’s rotten beliefs, the maelstroms making passage across impossible but for narrow routes south and north.

The closer he got to Diel, the more magnificent the city became, the blue rock of its base almost too bright for the eye to take.

For someone like Enjul, who was always aware of the signs of death on every person crossing his path—every flower, every plant—such a display of rock was a welcome respite from the rot.

That the Anchor was Lord Death’s own bones only made it even more magnificent.

Farmers and travelers walked by the roadsides to make space for riders and carts, their clothing a simple, dustier version of what Diel’s citizens wore. No doublets, no cumbersome skirts for them; no velvety plumes attached to their hats and no half capes. No elegant rapiers or long swords.

Soon the dirt path turned into the intricate mosaics of flagstone covering the streets winding up the peak of Diel. Buildings grew in elegance, the glittering blue of the gods’ bones peeking here and there, undisturbed.

Enjul dismounted and walked toward the grand building topping Diel, where the slopes were so steep it was dangerous for horses to traverse.

Valanjians hid at his approach, and guards stood at attention.

No words were needed to grant him access into the Great Council House.

Here in Valanje, in the land of the Lord Death, an emissary needed no permission.

Rudel Serunje was waiting for him in one of the parlors, tall and lean.

He wore a waistcoat over his traditional long shirt, the lower folds falling all the way to the knee.

The rings around his golden-brown irises were a warm gray—narrow, friendly.

They didn’t clash like Enjul’s wide, thick, deep violet ones.

They made him approachable. People in Sancia, used as they might be to the differences in Valanjian eyes, wouldn’t gawk at Rudel as they might at Enjul.

It must have served him well in Cienpuentes , Enjul thought, made him forgettable and easy to underestimate.

Serunje stood and gave Enjul a slow, respectful bow of his head, belying the sudden tension in his body. “Emissary.”

“Valanje’s Eyes, explain the situation.”

Serunje offered a cup of water. Enjul refused with a sharp move of his hand, and the Eye placed the cup back on the side table.

“First, I must explain how we came to be at Diel’s port, Emissary,” Serunje said with no little wariness.