Page 3 of Mistress of Bones

II

AZUL

Azul del Arroyo had once as a young child sneaked into the kitchen and stolen a piece of chicken.

The wing had been delicious, the resulting bare bones a source of guilt.

She had sought to assuage it by burying it in the yard—the bone, not the guilt, but perhaps both—and that’s when she had first felt the singing in her heart, the excitement, the need to follow this instinct to wherever it led.

So, she had let it happen, curious to see what would come of it.

And something had slipped out of Azul—although she wouldn’t identify what until much later.

The mud around her sunken hands had turned gray, the nearby weeds brown, as the chicken bone had grown other bones under her fingers. Bones and flesh and skin and life .

And then the animal had clucked, shocking Azul into releasing it.

But Azul had gone after it, caught this revived chicken, and brought it back to the kitchen.

She meant to kill it and put it back in the pantry so nobody would notice her small theft.

She had watched their cook prepare chickens plenty of times.

She could do it. But the moment she had chopped its head off, the chicken’s flesh had turned back into dirt and its blood into mud, with not even the original bone to be found.

The life Azul had given back on a whim, taken on another.

Azul had told no one, had rarely touched another bone until her favorite cat had run under a cart, until her pet snake grew hungry and then fell limp and unmoving. Until Isadora had died, aged fourteen.

Until now.

Because now she must go back to Isadora’s remains—to Sancia and the ossuary keeping them in the city of Monteverde—steal one of her bones, and bring her sister back to life.

Any other option was unfathomable.

But they had locked Azul in a room in one of the huge buildings on the very top of the Anchor city.

The room was big, comfortable, with wide windows opening into the valley, the sprawling city a sharp drop of three or four floors below.

A cliff of a building, half carved into the mountain itself, even if there was no hint of Anchor in its bare, whitewashed walls.

A big bed occupied a corner near an empty brazier, and a delicate writing desk and upholstered chair graced the opposite side of the room.

A wardrobe and a settee around a low table finished the ensemble.

Her trunk had been brought in, but Azul hadn’t touched it.

Instead, she had chosen to dig into Isadora’s, changing her dirty travel clothes for one of her sister’s billowing shirts and a pair of breeches a tad too big for her slighter frame.

Azul had forced Isadora’s earring, saved from the pile of green dirt that had been her sister’s body, into her own earlobe, discarding the simple hoop their mother had once gifted her.

“We can’t accept their invitation,” Isadora had said in an uncharacteristically curt tone.

“It would be a waste not to,” Azul had mused, like she didn’t quite care—as if, after so many years stuck around Agunción, the urge to explore the continents weren’t an itch under her skin that had finally blistered open.

“How can we trust them?”

“They come from the Cienpuentes court. How can they not be trusted?” Sensible words. Smooth. Designed to pick at her sister’s strange defiance of what was a perfectly sound plan.

“And how will we come back?”

“Diagol told me they’d arrange for guards to come back with us.

” Azul had kept her irritation under control, willing Isadora to come back to her normal self, to the sister who demanded crossing rapiers outside the tavern if anyone so much as looked at Azul the wrong way.

“The route is well traveled. De Guzmán was once the queen’s lover—you’ve seen her, with her rapier and elegant shoulder plate. Nobody would dare attack her .”

Still, Isadora had shaken her head. “I don’t know, Azulita. It doesn’t feel right, going to Valanje. Not while Mother is away.”

Azul had smiled. “Mother said she would take us on trips, and where is she now? Having another baby. We’ve traveled before, Isadora. What’s one more trip?”

“We’ve never gone that far.”

“It won’t be far once we’re there.”

“I don’t want to go, Azul,” Isadora had finally said.

And Azul had not listened. She had nagged until Isadora gave in. She had put her curiosity above Isadora’s wishes.

She should have listened.

Servants came to bring her food, fill her basin, or empty the chamber pot. They refused to answer her questions or take messages. The guard posted outside would turn the lock after they were done.

How was she to make her way back to Sancia if nobody would talk to her? If she couldn’t convince them to hand over the key?

Azul sat facing the door, playing solitaire on the low table and getting ready to shove the next visiting servant aside and try her luck with the guard, when the door opened, and Nereida de Guzmán appeared on the threshold.

Azul dropped her cards at her appearance, too surprised to hide her expression. “Sirese De Guzmán!” she exclaimed. At last, someone to be convinced.

Nereida de Guzmán, part of the Cienpuentes envoy to Valanje, watched her with something hard and cold and calculating gleaming in her eyes.

A courtier’s usual demeanor, or something else?

Nobody had been able to explain exactly why she had joined Sancia’s delegation, except perhaps as a sign of goodwill—here was a noble important enough to become the queen’s lover, part of a Sancian family powerful enough to make things happen both in Sancia and Valanje.

Why was she here now?

Azul clenched her jaw but held on to hope that she might finally get some help.

She had been holding on to too many things the last few days—rage, composure, sanity—and would not fail now.

Roughly stacking the playing cards into a pile, she retreated to perch on the chair by the desk and waved toward the settee.

“Please, come in,” she said, as if the woman were an honored guest and these Azul’s quarters.

Nereida sat on the settee with an innate elegance that spoke of wealth and status.

It shone on her finely tailored breeches, the fabric of her white shirt, her exquisitely embroidered green vest, the bejeweled hair combs holding her long, curling midnight-black hair away from her tan face.

No Anchor peeked from her hair jewelry—only silver and precious green stones.

Valanjians, they had been warned during the crossing of the Sea of Eyes, did not like overly ostentatious displays of mined Anchor.

Being from the countryside, Azul and Isadora had been awed by the many heavy blue necklaces, Anchor-and-pearls bracelets, and ornate brooches adorning their traveling companions on the way over.

They all rested in the depths of the nobles’ trunks now, as if being hidden under their shirts and linens made their existence any less damning to Valanjians.

What a shock to see De Guzmán now. Everyone else in the envoy had been friendly enough, but Nereida had shown no interest in the trip, her companions, a good talk, or anything beyond the edge of her upturned nose.

“Sirese Del Arroyo,” she said in that cool tone of hers. She turned slightly, her hand reaching for something by her hip but finding only empty space. Abandoning the quest, she focused on Azul. “You are being treated well?”

Unwilling to waste time with niceties, Azul leaned forward and asked, “Why won’t they allow me outside the room?”

“They are suspicious of the happenings at the dock.”

Azul’s nails dug into the fabric of her breeches. “My sister has died. They have no right to keep me a prisoner while I mourn.”

De Guzmán’s assessing gaze seemed to miss no detail, and Azul felt like a strange creature on display, an oddity that had caught some one’s attention and must be studied and measured to see if it fit into a certain frame.

“A curious end, your sister’s,” Nereida said.

Azul had expected comments like this from the moment they brought her to this room and had prepared her answer.

“An act of the gods.” People were happy enough to blame the gods for all their misfortunes, even those who didn’t think them real beyond their bones, so why shouldn’t they bear this blame as well?

“Is that so?” Nereida asked, calm as the night sky.

“You were there the same as I was, Sirese De Guzmán. Nothing touched my sister. There was no assailant, no bolt or arrow. She just…” Azul squeezed her eyes hard, her voice failing under the weight of the fact. “She just passed on to the Lord Death’s embrace.”

“If there is anything…” A rare trace of hesitation entered Nereida’s voice. “Anything you want to confess, I will not share it.”

“Confess?” Azul inhaled sharply. Did the woman think she had murdered her own sister?

Or… Cold sweat gathered on her lower back.

Did Nereida suspect her secret? How? She had done nothing for years.

How could this woman from the Cienpuentes court, so far removed from her and Isadora’s life in Agunción, have any inkling of what she could do?

No. De Guzmán was only digging around. “There is nothing to confess, sirese, and I don’t want to speak about the matter any longer.

I wish to mourn my sister in front of the Lady Dream, in Sancia, where she spent her life. ”

And if her voice hitched at that last word, she hoped Nereida de Guzmán hadn’t noticed.

“They have sent for an Emissary of the Lord Death,” the woman said.

Azul recoiled. “No! Why?”

No other god had emissaries; only Valanjians felt the need to represent the Lord Death with such zealousness.

Nereida’s gaze drifted around the bland room until it fell to the stack of cards on the low table and the crude design on the front of one. Isadora had drawn it when she first won the deck on a dare. Oh, how they had laughed at Isadora’s lack of artistry!

“Why an emissary?” Azul insisted through the lump forming in her throat.

“They want your sister’s death explained.

” The maelstrom of disgust and dread curling Azul’s stomach was nowhere to be seen on Nereida’s expression.

She might as well be a piece of flesh-colored Anchor—cold, beautiful, and above mundane concerns such as death.

“They will keep us here for a few more days while the emissary conducts their investigation.”

Azul burst out of the chair. “They can’t do that!” She paced between the screens separating them from the bed to one of the windows looking onto the fields and the forest and the mountains. To the screen. To the window. Finally, she whirled toward the settee.

“Sirese De Guzmán, can’t you do anything?

” she pleaded. “I need to get back to Sancia. To Monteverde.” To Isadora’s bones.

To Isadora. To the end of the dread eating her from the inside out that would only be satisfied when her sister was standing in front of her, alive and safe.

“Surely they can’t simply hold us as long as they please?

You’re an official envoy, do something.”

Nereida held her gaze, unfazed by her desperation. “There are more important matters involved in this visit than your sister’s death.”

Azul felt slapped. The Del Arroyo name was solid enough, but Isadora and Azul by themselves had not enough value to risk whatever negotiations the envoy had been sent to secure. If one of their half siblings high in Cienpuentes politics had come with them, would her wishes have carried more weight?

Azul lifted her chin. “What is it, then,” she asked, “this matter that is so important?”

The door opened, and the outside guard appeared. “Your visit must come to an end now, miss.”

Nereida stood, giving the cards a last lingering look. “The Anchor ban.”

With those words she exited the room, leaving Azul to punch the mattress until the burning rage had spent itself and dispassionate composure filled its place.

Let the emissary come, she dared the city sprawling under her windows.

She would deal with him. What could he find but a strange accident of nature?

An act of the gods? People did not turn into dirt.

Azul would answer his questions, charm him if needed, then talk her way into freedom.

For could she not bring the dead back to life? She could also make this fanatic of death acquiesce to her will.