Page 42 of Mistress of Bones

XXIX

NIGHT OF HOPE

The night sky of Noche Verde arched above Cienpuentes, a deep blue green as if Azul were standing among the understars, looking up at the sea. These infrequent green nights of summer—when the Lady Dream forgot she once killed her child and Hope dared to rise—would they bring her good luck?

It had been a week since the failed kidnapping, and four days since her talk with Nereida.

Sergado was still unaware of the kidnapping incident.

Azul had tried to warn him about keeping a personal guard, but it was hard to do so without revealing the exact reason, and she didn’t want additional guards on top of her shadow.

Her brother was protective of her—he would put them on her if he ever found out.

Now, as they left Almanueva on foot and slowly approached the center of Cienpuentes on their way to the Noche Verde balls, Azul realized her plan to lose her escorts would be even easier than she’d expected.

The crowds made traveling by horse or carriage impossible.

They clogged the way, carrying torches and lamps, filling the air with songs, sloshing the ground with wine and ale.

Excitement had turned Cienpuentes’s streets and alleyways into living veins of thrumming humanity, cloaked humanity, masked humanity.

Azul could barely distinguish Enjul and her brother ahead—the gods must be smiling upon her, envious of the Lord Death.

She took hold of Enjul’s arm. He wore a mask today, too—still not the bone one—green and golden and sparkling with beads.

It softened the rough angles of his face, matched the blond tresses that appeared dark under the flickering torchlights.

“There is one here,” she told him, worrying her lip and looking toward one of the alleys. “A necromancer’s victim.”

Enjul’s attention snapped to the alleyway.

“Tall, dark hair, pale skin, wearing a blue hat and no cloak,” she added. “Should we follow?”

He disentangled his arm from her grasp. “No, stay with De Gracia and proceed as we planned. I shall catch up later.”

Enjul merged into the crowd, making his way toward the alley, and Azul was shocked by how easily he had left her side. It ought to concern her, but the relief was too overwhelming.

Her brother had stopped a few paces ahead, looking at her with curiosity. To him, she said, “I must follow Sirese Enjul, Brother, but I will meet you at the Heart later. If Sirese Enjul and I get separated, and he returns ahead, will you tell him this?”

“Of course, Sister, but what happened? Can I help?”

Azul shook her head with a smile and made for another street.

Swerving around a corner, she discarded her cloak and unhooked her earring.

She tied a simple mask around her head and unbraided her hair, then approached the other side of the alleyway.

She hoped the change was enough to distract her shadow, and was rewarded when, after rounding a few short blocks, she saw him walking ahead of her, his eyes darting everywhere, searching.

She slipped back into a narrow space between two houses and waited for him to walk farther away. Azul felt bad. He would likely be discharged after losing her now and the kidnapping failure, but—

“Please return to De Gracia for safety’s sake, sirese.”

Azul whirled to face a man lurking behind her, bareheaded and with clothes matching her shadow’s. Her heart sank and she cursed her daftness. Why hadn’t she considered the possibility that Enjul might put a second shadow on her?

Her mind was racing for a way to get out when the man grunted. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the ground. A stranger stood behind him, mask-free, dark brown hair loose around his shoulders beneath a black hat bearing a small plume. He was sheathing a dagger. She fought to find words.

“Don’t worry, he’s just unconscious,” the man said. “I’m Miguel Esparza, here to help you.”

“You’re a blue tabard!” Azul exclaimed. Nereida hadn’t told her that.

But then, Nereida hadn’t told her much.

“On my bad days.” His eyes narrowed, focusing on her ears covered by her hair. “You are Del Arroyo?”

Azul hurried to take off the mask and retrieved Isadora’s earring from her pocket, rehooking it after a few fumbling tries. “De Guzmán sent you?”

Esparza began walking. “Indeed. Come now. We are in a hurry, yes?”

“Yes.” Azul followed, shoulders hunched as if they could hide her from curious onlookers. “And Nereida?” she asked, fighting to advance through the crowd.

“Don’t worry about De Guzmán. She has her own appointment to meet.”

Nereida had mentioned she wouldn’t come with her, but it still didn’t feel right.

Sensing her reluctance, Esparza gave her a pointed look over his shoulder. “Come, don’t come. I don’t care, but I won’t offer again.”

“Sorry. I’ve grown to be suspicious since my arrival in Cienpuentes.”

He accepted her apology by slowing his strides. As the crowds thinned, it was easier to walk. The freedom made her realize how nervous she was.

“Can you truly give me access to the ossuary?” she asked.

“We will soon find out, won’t we?”

His tone was jovial, and when Azul glanced up, she found his mouth widening with a smile and his eyes bright in the warm light. He reminded Azul of Isadora. Of when she did what she enjoyed best—card games, sword fighting, looking for trouble.

When the streets emptied of revelers and Azul was better able to gauge her surroundings, the memories of Isadora receded to give way to renewed suspicions. They had come to a part of the city she didn’t recognize. A part that held neither the ossuary nor the Temple.

Her hand touched her dagger, the bone hilt a reassuring presence. “Where are you taking me? The ossuary is not near.”

“The ossuary is a useful building for people who work aboveground. The real one is here.” Esparza pointed at a square structure illuminated by the two moons.

Old—no, ancient—it reminded Azul of the old fortress on top of Monteverde, with its big chipped boulders that seemed capable of carrying the weight of the continents as much as the Anchor did.

They approached through the empty street. After the overwhelming energy of the crowds, the contrast was eerie. Azul was unsettled by it, and the stranger must have been, too, because he motioned for her to be silent and hastened to a side entrance.

He had a key, a giant old thing for the big lock on the door. No lights came from inside once he unlocked and opened the door, no windows allowed Luck and Wonder’s shine. With a muttered curse, the man pulled a sheaf from under his tabard and studied it in the moonlight outside.

Azul peeked at it, too—a rough map of corridors and rooms.

“I hope your memory for these things is better than mine,” Esparza murmured, folding the page and returning it to his pocket.

They went inside. With the door closed behind them and their eyes not yet accustomed to the lack of light, they advanced in utter darkness.

“Is this a room or a corridor?” Esparza asked by an opening in the wall.

“A room.”

He stopped anyway.

“It’s a room,” Azul insisted. “Two rooms on the right, then the corridor.”

“Not a room, the corridor, and two rooms?”

Azul waited. Esparza crossed the doorway and crashed against something.

“It’s a room,” he agreed.

Slowly, they went deeper into the building, almost falling down sets of steps here and there until they found a room with a few embers still smouldering under a brazier’s cover.

Esparza was able to bring a flame to life and lit a lamp, and she heard him thank the gods as he passed the lamp to her and retrieved the map.

It was easy work then to backtrack and gain access to a cavernous hall that made her shiver and look longingly toward the dark maw they had emerged from.

The light didn’t reach the ceilings here, even though the building was only two stories tall.

The hall must’ve been carved into the ground, she surmised.

The walls sucked the light from their lamp, refusing to mirror it back.

For the first time in recent memory, Azul felt no urge to step closer and figure out how something like that was possible.

A formidable iron gate blocked a set of wide steps leading down into a tunnel. Esparza ran his hands against the thick bars and the intricately wrought middle mechanism locking them in place.

“This wasn’t on the map,” he murmured. He pushed, pulled, and nothing happened. The old key was of no use.

“There might be another entrance?” she asked. Despite speaking in low tones, their words still echoed in the cavernous space.

“Not on the map either.”

“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“Bring the lamp closer,” he said, taking out some small metal tools.

Azul watched in fascination as he tried to pick the lock. Did Captain de Macia know her men boasted these kinds of skills? “Will you teach me how to do this?”

“He will not.”

Azul jumped with a scream, her free hand slamming against her chest as if to stop her heart from galloping away.

The tools clattered to the floor. Esparza unsheathed his rapier and brought its tip perilously close to Virel Enjul’s stomach.

Azul couldn’t look away. Blood rushed in her ears, her mind gone blank.

Caught red-handed, and so easily. Enjul must’ve followed to see who was helping her.

She had overstepped, as Enjul knew she would.

He would now drag her to Almanueva and then to Valanje, and who knows when she would get another opportunity like this?

It might never happen. It would never happen—this, she knew with certainty.

He must be stopped.

But how? Render him unconscious? Tie him up?

How long until he awoke, or someone came across him and freed him?

It was two against one, but he seemed so tall and wide and overwhelming she found it hard to believe they could best him in a fight.

They were at a disadvantage, for this man wouldn’t hesitate to end their lives.

And so, he must die.

No more talks. No more contests of words. No more standing by his side, wondering what truly lay beneath the mask.

Slowly, Azul turned her wide-eyed stare to Esparza. He had a calculating look on his face. He must be thinking the same thing.

A knot formed in her throat, the pressure in her chest becoming unbearable.

If she was to see her sister alive, Virel Enjul, Emissary of the Lord Death, must die.

The certainty made her mouth dry up and her heart pound and her hands sweat.

Nereida had tried to do away with him back in Diel, and it didn’t work. Would he stay dead this time, this far from the Lord Death’s land? It seemed impossible that he might disappear from her life with such ease.

“You plan to kill me,” he said with that arrogant lift of his mouth Azul knew so well, hated so much.

Esparza shrugged, his sword still pointed at Enjul’s chest. “No one saw us come, no one will see us leave. Someone else’s mess to clean. Or you could leave.”

“No need for such extremes. As it happens, I’m quite curious about this place myself. I suggest we join forces and get on with it.”

A hiss of disbelief escaped Azul at the same time Esparza tensed and said, “Somehow, I don’t believe this good fortune.”

The emissary ignored him and held Azul’s gaze—a tether he was daring her to snap. “Do not test my patience.” His voice reverberated in that strange way sounds travel in the cavern of a hall. It made him sound otherworldly.

It made her feel glad.

Oh-so glad.

Esparza cursed and lowered his rapier. Enjul pushed him aside to inspect the old lock.

Azul’s knees wobbled and she leaned against the cold bars of the gate, holding on to the lamp with both hands. He truly meant to help? Her stomach turned, part surprise, part hope.

Between Enjul and Esparza, they got the lock open.

The gate moved soundlessly, well oiled and well used, the spikes and swirls in the iron forming bizarre shadows against the ground.

The tunnel beyond was built out of the same dark stone as the hall, making her feel as if they were walking straight into the Void.

A series of octagonal rooms blossomed from the end of the tunnel, their surfaces hoarding the lamplight. Bones covered every open space and every carefully carved niche, artfully arranged in bizarre mosaics of skulls and limbs.

“Well?” Esparza asked from his spot at the end of the tunnel. His eyes flickered from room to room, his hand tight around his rapier’s grip. Enjul stood by his side, saying nothing, waiting, hands loose by his sides, long sword hanging by his thigh.

“Well?” she repeated.

Esparza gestured toward the closest room. “Ossuary. Do whatever it is you need done.”

Azul looked at them in confusion. “These aren’t real bones. They’re carved stone and wood.”

Esparza jolted. “What?” He entered the room and leaned in to inspect the nearby bones. He did not touch them, though.

“Go deeper,” was Enjul’s response.

Esparza and Azul looked at each other. She saw her thoughts reflected on his face: A trap?

With a slight grimace, Esparza motioned for her to run the lamp around the walls. They found a small wooden door, which Enjul and Esparza forced open, leading to a narrow spiral of stairs.

They began the descent, the unevenness of the steps making the trip treacherous.

An archway marked the foot of the stairs, and they walked into a wide tunnel.

A few rooms lined its length. One had a manual lift going back up to the surface, the rest contained slabs of stone, buckets, and carts.

Pale dust marred the floor inside the rooms and trailed into the tunnel.

And if Azul hadn’t been so distracted by the blue light coming from a hole at the end, she would’ve recognized the dirt for what it was.

She passed the lamp to Esparza so her fingers could grip the iron railing separating her from the hole. Precious blue stone began a distance below her, no end to the hollow space in sight. This hole had been drilled straight into the Anchor chain keeping Cienpuentes in place.

“Gods,” Esparza whispered, leaning over the railing. “What is this place?”

The railing, Azul realized belatedly, didn’t reach across the tunnel, leaving an open spot.

The floor there, old and uneven, dipped ever so slightly, showing the passage of wheel after wheel, foot after foot.

Someone had attempted to wash it not long ago, managing instead to smear the pale dust on the floor.

“There is no ossuary,” she said, perplexed. “They throw the bones into the hole.”

They had thrown Isadora away.