Page 47 of Mistress of Bones

XXXII

HEARTS

ONE YEAR EARLIER

“Have you ever been in love, Azulita?”

Azul looked up from a lovely spread of daggers on sale at the local market. The seller was on her way to Valanje, so none of the hilts sported any Anchor. This suited Azul fine—to have a hilt adorned with Anchor only attracted thieves and trouble.

“Solis Monte, two years ago. You bet my heart in a game of cards, then chased him out of Agunción with Maravillosa after you lost.”

Isadora laughed. “If he had truly returned the depth of your feelings, he would’ve stayed put.

” She bumped Azul’s shoulder with her own, uncaring of the wonders spread on the linen cloth in front of them.

Daggers were nothing to Isadora but rapiers cut short.

“But, then, I don’t think your feelings went that deep, did they? ”

Azul remembered the nights spent with Solis’s letters under her pillow, the afternoons looking inside the patio and imagining their future house. The Lady Dream had cast a spell on her, and it had disappeared when Solis did, leaving nothing but a small feeling of loss and a lot of bafflement.

But Azul had too much pride to admit as much. “What was he to do? Meet you in a duel at dawn and risk harming my older sister?”

“Ah, Azulita. Love makes you risk everything!”

Azul would agree, remembering how she had sneaked into the inn’s pantry to cut Isadora’s finger. But her sister was talking about another kind of love. A kind of love Isadora had experienced over and over—sudden, bright, and powerful like the hottest of fires, then ashes after a few days.

To risk everything for such a love seemed inconvenient at best and unwise at worst.

“Perhaps one day I will meet a person like that,” Azul said, unconvinced.

“I think you will. Someone who makes you want to be close even if you don’t understand why.

Someone you want to meet again and again, to exchange swords with, to place bets, to goad into submission.

Sometimes you will hate them for it, and you won’t understand why you cannot think of anyone but them.

And sometimes you’ll think you’d be nothing without them. ”

Isadora’s gaze grew distant, and Azul followed it to the pink sky of winter.

“And if you’re lucky,” Isadora continued, “you will recognize the feeling for what it is before it’s too late and they slip out of your reach.”

Miss something so obvious? Azul asked herself. Doubtful.

THE PRESENT

Esparza cursed and charged the man behind Enjul—one of the two guards left for dead outside. Lightning-fast, he ran a dagger across his throat.

Azul caught Enjul as his legs buckled. Grunting, she dropped to the floor, hard on her knees. With growing horror, she looked over his shoulder to see the guard stumble back, throat gaping open, then steady himself, rapier raised, ready to strike again.

“Fuck!” Esparza exclaimed, hitting the guard’s face with the hilt of his dagger.

The man crashed against one of the tables, then tried to right himself.

Esparza fell on him, smashing his dagger on the guard’s head, over and over until all the body did was twitch, and then again and again until that, too, finally stopped.

Breathing hard, Esparza stepped away, his face and the front of his tabard spattered with blood. “Gods!” he yelled. “ Gods! ”

“The other!” shouted Azul.

Esparza jerked back. The second guard filled the doorway, a hole in his waistcoat marking the spot where Enjul had twisted his sword. Losing no time, the guard lifted his pistol and fired.

The explosion tore into their ears. Azul hunched and wrapped her arms around Enjul, squeezing her eyes tight, then blinking away tears. Esparza looked shocked but unhurt and, recovering much faster than her, tackled the second guard.

Azul loosened her grip on Enjul and let him slide to the floor. Stumbling forward, she reached for the living corpse as he grabbed Esparza’s throat, grasping the guard’s sleeve, pulling the fabric until she found skin.

The guard’s hold slackened immediately. The muscle under his clothes shrank until he crumpled to the floor in a mass of cloth and fetid flesh.

Esparza retched. “Fuck,” he said in a broken whisper, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He dared a look at the remains of the guard and shuddered.

Bringing two crossed fingers to his chest, he muttered, “Blessed Heart have mercy on me, keep me safe from those who’ll drag me into the Void. ”

Azul knelt by Enjul. Coughs shook his body. He lifted a hand and tried to rake at his mask, so Azul removed it for him. His eyes were naked in their shock. Terror stiffened every line of his face.

Trembling, she opened his waistcoat and shirt. An ugly puncture wound was seeping blood down his chest. She pressed her hands against it, trying to stem the bleeding. His skin had lost all color; sweat had plastered his hair to his temples and neck. She pressed harder.

“But at Diel…” She faltered, caught by the strange brightness in his eyes.

He opened his mouth, coughed more blood, then wrinkled his brows. He tried again, and she leaned down.

His hand sneaked up to touch her face, trembling and clammy against her skin.

“Go, Azul,” he managed. “He cannot know what you are.”

“No,” she said, hands firm on his chest. “He must already guess I killed his guard and Zenjiel.”

“Might still… doubt which of us… Go. You’re a… liability… for him.”

Still Azul refused. “We’ll get help.”

A smile curved his lips, small and genuine and the most unguarded thing she had ever witnessed from him. “Too late, Azul. The god…”

“But you can’t die,” she said, voice hitching. “You’re not supposed to be able to die. Ask your god to save you!”

“Not here. Not… this time.”

Then she understood. How could the Lord Death do that in Sancia? This was not his domain. Unlike in Valanje, Sancians had killed all connection between the gods and the land by ransacking their bones.

Enjul’s eyes widened, and his mouth suddenly twisted in horror, his body attempting to recoil from her.

“Don’t bring me back,” he begged in such a frightened voice it raised the hairs of her arms. “I want to stay with him.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. She saw herself then as he saw her: a monster, something worse than death.

“Stop,” she begged. “I promise. Save your breath.”

Enjul stopped moving. And still, she pressed against the wound.

And pressed.

Until Esparza grabbed her arm and jerked her to her feet. “He’s dead,” he said grimly. “We have to go.”

“No.” She reached for Enjul, her vision blurry. “We can’t leave him.”

Unrelenting, Esparza dragged her along with him. “We can’t be seen here. We must leave before the change of guard.” He stepped over the remains of the guard, and Azul stumbled on the man’s bones, squelching through the putrid flesh.

Esparza winced but didn’t stop. He took her back to their abandoned lamp, to the main tunnel, up the stairs, through the open door and the iron gate and the maze of a building upstairs. Her free hand left a trail of bloody smears as she used the walls to steady her faltering limbs.

Outside, he forced her to face him. “With Luck’s help, they’ll think they killed each other,” he said, his tone low, hurried, and quite serious.

“Tell no one of what happened here, not even De Guzmán. Make your excuses to whomever you have to and leave town. Leave tomorrow, if you can. Make something up—a missive from your family or some such. It doesn’t matter. ”

And then he was gone and Azul was alone.

Alone.

No Isadora. No Enjul.

Dazed, she made her way back to the crowded streets, walking aimlessly. Captain de Macia’s name came to mind, but her head was spinning, the smells and the sounds and the heat from the crowd so overwhelming, Azul couldn’t pin down her thoughts.

She stumbled into someone, murmured some apology, bumped somebody else, apologized again. Then someone ran into her, patted her back, and kept going. Invitations were shouted her way; songs drifted in and out of her ears. A hand checked for a purse, alas she kept her few coins inside her breeches.

No Esparza to keep people at bay. No shadow to ask for directions. No emissary to keep track of.

What was this despair carving a hole inside her? Shouldn’t she be glad Virel Enjul was dead? Hadn’t she wished for him to get lost, leaving her all the time in the world to find Isadora’s bones?

Now she was free of him—free of their deal, free of her promises. It had only cost another rip in her heart. Another death she couldn’t undo.

And Azul hated death.

She hated death almost as much as she hated her brother.

How she had begged to gain access to the ossuary! How she had trusted him! How he must have delighted in seeing her fumbling to achieve nothing.

How enraging.

Azul found a few citizens able to give her directions and headed toward Almanueva.

A footman opened the main door for her and tried to tell her something.

She ignored him, crossed the tiled floors with fast strides, and stomped up the stairs.

A musty smell assaulted her nose, like wet plants left in a closed room for too long.

It permeated the long dark corridor. She knew her way by now and lost no time in flinging open her brother’s door.

The woman on the painting sneered at her under Luck and Wonder’s brightness, the man with the axe was suddenly leery. She couldn’t face the flesh-stripped back on the wall.

The door to her brother’s private study was locked. She slammed her shoulder against it, but the lock held.

Rubbing her shoulder, she approached the closest window.

Leaning across the sill, she confirmed the study had its own window, but although the exterior wall had a ridge she could use to cross between the rooms, she wasn’t sure she could open the other window from the outside.

She was only a floor up, but the drop was significant, and Azul did not possess the gift of mending bones.

She started with the drawers in the desk, then the trunk at the foot of the bed.

She didn’t hide her intentions; she emptied every nook with no care for their contents.

Nobody came to stop her, and she welcomed the sense of accomplishment as she threw thing after thing to the rug or the wall.

She laid waste to the room until she found a key for the locked door.

Her brother’s study was a simple continuation of his bedroom: same white and gold walls, same elegant furniture.

A bigger desk was set flush below the window, with a tall-backed chair abandoned at an angle.

Another shelf lined the far wall, an ornate creation of golden lines and blond wood with grates of thin, painted metal protecting the heavy tomes inside.

A chest of drawers stood alone in a corner, and when she opened them, she found another collection of bones.

The problem with being aware of bones, she realized, was that there were always bones. Dead bones, living bones—they were all the same, a constant surrounding her.

To anyone else, these might look like animal bones, but she knew better. Some looked new, others yellowed with age. How young had her brother been when he began his collection?

On top of the desk, she found more sketches, and in a locked drawer she managed to wrench open, a few bundles. She carefully unwrapped the bundles on the desk. They all held bone pieces that had been glued together to make fully formed fingers. She didn’t dare touch them directly.

Another drawer contained jars filled with clear viscous liquid, while another had a box filled with brushes and small, delicate metal tools.

She wished to look away from the bone fingers, but couldn’t. They were mesmerizing.

Her brother was an artist. A sculptor of bone.

And an artist must practice , she thought.

But not in such a small room. The ossuary was his place of study; this was his home away from the ossuary, a place to test things when inspiration struck in the middle of the night.

He must keep his main collection—a collection that might include her sister’s bones—elsewhere.

And why not? Azul raged to herself, fighting against the crushing despair.

He was old enough, he might’ve seen Isadora’s bones in his first forays into the ossuary; he might’ve taken a liking to them. Was she not Isadora, after all?

Don’t bring me back.

The terrified look in Enjul’s eyes haunted her from the edges of her mind.

Now that she had proof of her brother being the other necromancer, now that she couldn’t ignore the truth, it chilled her to the core.

Would Isadora ask for the same fate, given the choice?

“Breaking into your brother’s rooms, Sirese Del Arroyo? How unsisterly.”

Azul spun toward the door.