Page 27 of Mistress of Bones

XVIII

AZUL

The huge plaza by the Temple turned into exhibitions of swordsmanship every other week during the summer months.

Azul was well versed in these sorts of things from Isadora’s love of everything to do with rapiers and duels and winning.

Isadora had loved exhibitions, a staple of each summer she had spent away at the Temple school.

When Enjul told her he, Azul, and Nereida would attend that day’s match, Azul guessed the visit was all about the necromancer search rather than fake duels among schoolgirls. What better opportunity to find a wide congregation of Cienpuentes’s citizens?

Azul put special care into her clothing, as did Nereida, even if they didn’t have much clothing to choose from.

Sergado had insisted in opening an account for her at a local seamstress once he had learned there were no trunks full of belongings following their arrival, but Azul hadn’t had the time to visit the shop yet, what with arriving, being denied at the ossuary, and then kicked out of the Temple just to have Enjul commandeer her presence for the exhibition.

As for the Emissary of the Lord Death, Azul was confident he was still unaware of her mousy spy, and thus had no way of knowing she had witnessed his meeting with the woman.

“You didn’t find what you were looking for,” Nereida said, having invaded Azul’s bedroom while she finished getting ready. It was the first time they had been alone since breaking their fast the day before.

“The ossuary they show the public is a husk.” Azul spoke with disgust, combing her hair with her fingers.

“The real one is somewhere else, or perhaps underneath, and they are not happy to allow visitors. Sergado promised to help me get inside, but he said it will take him some time to obtain access,” she added, not without frustration.

“He didn’t say how long, but I worry. The emissary is already pressuring me, and once he’s done with whatever secret questioning he’s doing, I won’t be able to shake him easily.

His shadow is already a problem. Is there nobody you know who might help us?

With whom you might share your arrival in town? ”

Whatever Nereida thought of Azul’s request, or her involving her brother in this quest of theirs, remained hidden behind the slight hauteur that had become Nereida’s permanent expression since arriving to town. Although, if Azul were to guess, for a moment she had looked thoughtful.

With firm hands, she turned Azul around and took ahold of her hair. To Azul’s surprise, she began braiding it.

“Do you no longer want me to raise someone?” Azul asked.

Nereida’s hands tightened, and Azul yelped in pain. “Our deal stays as is. What I do with my time is of no concern of yours.” A few moments of silence while Nereida worked on Azul’s hair. “Your sister, how did she die?”

Azul couldn’t believe she would ask this. “You were there,” she snapped. “You saw how.”

Another sharp tug of her hair, then the feeling of Nereida tying a length of leather at the end of the braid. “The first time. That was her second death, wasn’t it?”

When Azul’s words came, they came slowly. “She caught a fever during a trip. We were on our way back from visiting family friends.”

“How did you manage to hide her death from your mother?”

“We were traveling alone. Isadora was old enough to take charge, so a friend took us to the inn before continuing on her way, and we were waiting for someone from Agunción to come pick us up.”

“How old was your sister?”

Azul smiled in spite of herself, remembering the cheeky teen her sister had been. “Fourteen. Had already spent two years at the Temple school by then.”

“And nobody was the wiser?”

“Why would they be?”

Nereida hesitated. “What if the person were to have died by violent means? Would traces of such violence remain? Cuts? Holes?”

“I told you: Isadora was whole in body and spirit. All her memories, all her essence is—was—still her. The same person, their body rebuilt. No fever, no scarring.”

She reached for a half mask Enjul had given her.

With a shocking economy of motion, Nereida ripped the mask out of her hand. Her eyes were bright, her voice hard as she crumpled the scrap of hard fabric in her fist. “Never wear masks in Cienpuentes, Del Arroyo. Never cover your face while you’re here.”

Azul was too startled to do anything but agree. Then, “But why?”

Unsurprisingly, Nereida did not answer. Azul wondered who could. Her brother? Her shadow outside? Not Enjul—he obviously had no issue with wearing masks around town.

The question nagged her all the way to the Temple, but once they arrived, she forgot all about it.

Gentry and nobility mixed with merchants and laborers, and pleasure-seekers filled every walkway, every street, every building with a view into the plaza by the Temple’s side. No wonder Enjul wanted them here!

Children ran around in half capes and skirts, selling dried fruit and small cakes to spectators.

Banners hung from the buildings, some too faded to tell colors or crests.

Caught in the cloying excitement, Azul elbowed her way to the parapet of the second floor’s open walkway and took in the view, drank in the sounds.

The Temple school pupils stood in pairs in their uniformed breeches and vests and skirts, most of their shirtsleeves rolled up their arms, waiting under a tent by the Temple walls for their turn to fight.

Joining them was a large contingent of guards of two different kinds—the ones with the palace’s yellow colors, and the ones with the City Guard’s blue tabards.

Nereida carved a spot by Azul’s side, hiding beneath her hat and holding a square of lace to her nose and mouth.

An upside-down mask, as it were, since she hated the normal ones so much.

And in this, she was almost alone, for well over half the crowd wore masks: white, brown, black; felt, silk, and other things; plain, embroidered, lined with small beads sparkling with summer sunlight, holding feathers like exotic birds.

Held by ribbons, part of hats, or threaded into side braids with pearl-ended pins.

No wonder nobody had glanced twice at Enjul wearing a mask a day earlier. City of bridges, city of masks. Wealth and secrets all at once.

Below the masks, below the opening mouths, below the grins and the grimaces, was a show of daylight fashion.

Elegant, light summer dresses with tight bodices that left the shoulders bare.

Embroidered white shirt sleeves—Azul had never seen such before, but they appeared common here—covered by waistcoats of all kinds of colors that made her wish she could fit into one of Nereida’s beautiful creations.

But those beautiful waistcoats she had seen on the way over the sea lay in trunks back in Valanje. Nereida wore as simple of a waistcoat as Azul did. No shoulder plates here to indicate houses and parentage, though—the illusion of anonymity created by the masks too big an allure to pass.

It was overwhelming. The colors, the ever-moving duelists in the plaza, the ripples of the crowd, the insults and the curses and the bets thrown in the air. Perfume wafted from the spectators’ fans in an attempt to keep the heat and the odor of sweat at bay, adding to the assault on her senses.

After a few minutes of taking in the view, Nereida murmured her excuses and left Azul’s side, not to be seen again until later, back at Almanueva in time for supper.

Enjul filled the space, the same mask he had worn yesterday failing to hide his violet-and-golden eyes, and spoke for the first time since their encounter last night. “You’ve been here already, I gather?”

“Yesterday,” she answered. The emissary was too close, and she fought with the person by her other side to gain some ground.

“I’m sure my shadow already told you.” She leaned against the stone parapet, watching the school pupils retreat under their tent and the guards dominate the space.

They took turns, using practice swords with blunted ends dipped in paint.

The different-colored groups jeered and cheered and demanded a rematch whenever their fighter lost a point to the other one.

“I was told your sister enjoyed duels with her rapier. I have yet to see one on you.”

“Duels aren’t easy to wear, Emissary. They dust and break with too much ease.”

Fingers landed on her braid, right over her nape. A shiver at the warm contact ran down her back, and she feared it might be excitement. “Fragile, like human lives. May I remind you how I know?”

“I spoke out of order,” she admitted easily, if a little breathlessly. The crowd’s enthusiasm made for a buoyant mood, even if his touch somehow anchored her in place. “I did not study at the Temple like my sister. Rapiers and swords are not my weapons of choice.”

“Ah.”

He couldn’t possibly think any lesser of her for her lack of godly education, Azul reasoned, since there were no Temple schools in Valanje.

“Why aren’t you wearing your mask?” Enjul asked.

“Is my being here a secret? If so, who would know who I am?”

Excited whispers rose around them. Whoever was next must be a bit of an event.

Azul chose to ignore it, along with the searing heat of Enjul’s lingering touch, and studied the people by the front of the building across the plaza.

They were too far for her to see their features clearly, but they must be of some importance, sitting on chairs dragged from inside the building to its wide front steps.

Some had decided to remain standing, perhaps not to wrinkle their clothing, but this group had also drifted into halves, like the tabards.

Enjul leaned closer. Her heartbeat sped up, the strange pull she had felt when he first walked into her room in Diel returning in full force. Warmth met her back.

“Are there any?” he whispered close to her ear, so close he might as well be breathing the words into her soul.

Azul made to move away, but he held on to her waist with his hand, his touch all but a brand.

“Answer, Miss Del Arroyo. Do you see any creature who oughtn’t be alive?”

She did. One of the blue tabards standing by the tents, outwardly uninterested in the revelry happening around her like a stone in the middle of a stream.

A bored guard, anyone else might surmise, but the strangeness of her presence sent a note of alarm into Azul’s gut.

And another, some woman ambling through the crowd like a lost fish.

“None so far.”

Lies had never tasted better on her mouth. Let Virel Enjul think he held all the power, that she was meek and willing to obey.

The pressure of his hand against her torso increased, bringing an unexpected thrill. “Are you certain?”

She kept her attention on the nobles standing outside the building, on the whites and yellows and greens and blues of their clothing.

On breathing in and breathing out. His nearness invaded her senses.

The warmth of his hand, of his body, his scent of queen’s blooms and fresh soil, the force of his vitality. “I am.”

“On your honor?” he asked, even closer and full of mockery.

“Why ask when you doubt its existence so much?”

“I must make sure you don’t lie to me. And you wouldn’t be lying to me, would you?”

The pressure from his hand disappeared, but she had no wishes to move beyond turning to him. His eyes were as beautiful and hard as jewels up close. “What would be the point, since you know everything?”

“Flattery, while appreciated, is wasted on someone like me.”

“What do you wish for instead,” she asked, “a room full of corpses—a playroom for your god?”

He leaned down until his nose all but touched hers.

And the hand was back, too, blocking her escape.

“Be careful with your tone, Azul del Arroyo, for when you speak to me, you are speaking to the Lord Death.

When you make an oath to me, you are promising your worth to a higher being, to him, who began it all and would have no problem ending you, in this life or after you attempt to claim a spot for your soul in his bones.

“Now use your eyes or your ears or whatever it is that allows you to sense the walking corpses. Have you forgotten the reason you are here and not in chains on your way back to Valanje? I haven’t, and you should make sure you don’t.”

How did one respond to such a speech?

Azul didn’t know. Words escaped her, blood fled from her face and her chest and anywhere that was close to him.

Nobody was here to rescue her, and truly she had never thought herself as someone who needed to be rescued.

But someone must’ve been looking out for her—another god, perhaps, jealous of the emissary’s words—because the crowd broke into shouts and claps, and the sudden jostling jarred them apart.

Inhaling sharply, Azul avoided looking at the emissary. She would act like nothing had happened. Like her heart wasn’t inhabiting her throat and her stomach all at once.

“Do you know those people?” she asked Enjul, pointing toward the steps on the opposite side of the plaza. And if her voice had shaken a little, she hoped it had escaped his notice.

“Why, yes. I sure do!” answered the Faceless Witch.