Page 6 of Mistress of Bones

IV

AZUL

A zul fell back on the chair, hands gripped tight against her mouth. Politics, she had thought when Nereida came to talk to her, games of words and manners that she would win before returning to her land, her sister.

The emissary played no games. The emissary did not care.

The emissary knew what she was. He had known from that first widening of his eyes that she had mistaken for surprise at her appearance.

The tone of his words, the contempt in those golden irises when he had labeled her an affront to the world.

He would take her with him, either moving or as bones.

But she had until morning.

She grabbed the brazier’s iron poker and waited by the door, perched on the chair for a better angle than her short frame would allow.

But no servant came. No guard. The door remained closed; the poker too thick to do any lock-picking.

She abandoned her position to get some rest and, after a few hours of fitful dozing, was back at the door with the first light of dawn, pressing her ear against the thick wood.

When she finally heard footsteps, she hurried back onto the chair, her limbs shaking with the intense rush of blood through her veins.

Azul had doled out violence before—you couldn’t be one-half of a sisterhood prone to duels and brawls without meting out some—but there was something so unexpectedly raw and heartbreaking about doing it alone that made her feel like it was the first time.

It made her want to cry and rage and shrink with fear.

The door opened, and sweat covered her palms as she tightened her hold on the poker and lifted it over her shoulder.

Nereida de Guzmán entered, black hat low over her head and raven braid falling over her dark blue waistcoat. Her rapier hung low against her hip, and a satchel crossed her chest, resting on her other side.

Azul’s mouth opened in shock.

Unfazed, Nereida took ahold of Azul’s belt and wrenched her off the chair.

“If you want to leave, tell me the truth,” Nereida said, pulling Azul close to study her face. “Is it true you can bring someone back from death?”

Azul recovered and returned Nereida’s stare. “Why would you ask?”

“Answer, or stay in this room until the deathling takes you away.”

“You stopped me from getting back on the boat and left me to rot in this room. Why should I trust you now?”

Nereida narrowed her eyes in annoyance. “You can’t best Death’s man in a fight, and that poker won’t help you with the guards. What other option do you have?”

The empty hallway behind Nereida beckoned, growing lighter by the second. The building was silent now, but soon it would fill with the everyday noises of a household going about its morning business.

She fought to get the words past her throat. “It’s true.”

Nereida leaned closer. “How?”

“I’d need a bone,” Azul said.

Loosening her hold on Azul’s belt, Nereida leaned back to peer into the hallway. “Which?”

“Any will do. A leg, a finger, a tooth—it doesn’t matter.”

“How does it work, exactly? How does a bone bring a person back?” Tension hastened Nereida’s voice, but also cold calculation.

She spoke as if she had no feelings about the process—no shock, no curiosity.

Whatever her opinion, it remained locked behind her expressionless face. A mask of skin instead of bones.

“I’d need the bone and something organic or alive to grow the new body.”

“Such as another person?”

Azul gave her a look of horror. “Such as a tree, or food, or fertile mud.”

Nereida nodded to herself. “And what sort of person comes out of it? Must one teach them all they ought to know again?”

“The body will have the memories of the bone, will remember as much as the bone does until its life was shorn, and not beyond.”

“So simple,” Nereida murmured. “A bone and dirt to make a person.”

And a piece of Azul’s own soul to give it sentience. This, she didn’t mention.

“Can you promise the person comes back just as they were?” Nereida insisted.

“You’ve met my sister; you’ve talked to her. You wouldn’t have known the difference had we not arrived to Valanje.”

Nereida acknowledged this truth with another short nod and extended her left arm. “I will trust you, for now. These are my terms: I will help you out of the city and onto a ship, and in exchange, you will bring back to life someone of my choice.”

She could’ve offered a damp prison cell in Cienpuentes filled with rats, and Azul would not have cared. “Deal.” She took Nereida’s arm, gripping it tightly and feeling the answering hard grip. They shook once.

Then Nereida was striding across the polished hallway, Azul at her heels. They ignored the guard slumped by a set of winding stone stairs and took them at the same hurried speed, hands trailing the central pillar, heels echoing against the steps.

“Don’t hide your face, don’t hunch your shoulders. None of them have seen you except for the few servants and the emissary. They have no reason to suspect you.”

Nereida didn’t wait for an answer. She shoved a curtain aside at the end of the staircase leading to a wider, finer corridor growing brighter under the encroaching daylight.

Azul fixed her attention on the back of Nereida’s waistcoat.

Time, an enemy not even the gods could best. How long did they have until someone noticed her gone?

The building was never-ending, the halls interminable.

They passed servants and guards who paid the pair no attention.

Nereida’s footsteps matched Azul’s heartbeats, a steady trot, rising, rising, on the edge of turning into a full-out run.

They ate the marble floors one step ahead of the morning light.

The guards at the entrance must’ve known Nereida, because she did not ask to be allowed outside, and they did not halt them to ask the reason for their hurry.

The taste of salt in the air shocked Azul, increased the prickling on her skin. She was leaving the land as she had entered it—without its owner’s permission.

Hurrying, she took her place by Nereida’s side. A town sprawling from the top of a mountain was easy to navigate—spiraling streets and steep stairs tumbling toward the azure sea. Seagulls cried overhead, as if they were raising the alarm.

Azul wiped her brow. The lack of food and sleep was catching up to her.

Sweat stuck the back of her shirt to her skin, clammy in the chill of dawn.

She’d had no time to grab a waistcoat, to grab anything.

What she wore was all she owned now: her own boots, her sister’s breeches, one pair of well-worn shirtsleeves. One gold-and-Anchor earring.

The town leveled once outside the Anchor tip, the houses becoming wider rather than taller. Daring a peek behind, Azul again marveled at the number of buildings covering the Anchor, their faces forming straight cliffs, their square windows watchful eyes for the god’s bones.

Nereida’s sharp inhales were the only hint that the trip so far was affecting her in any way.

Her features were handsome, her green eyes alluring and so stone-cold.

Azul could see why such a beautiful, closed face had found favor with the late queen.

This face would give nothing away, no secrets, no distaste.

It could spew a lie as much as it could invoke a truth, and one would never be the wiser.

They rounded a corner, and the flagstone turned into mud and horse manure as the main port blossomed in front of them.

Azul gaped at the two enormous ships anchored near the harbor and the few farther back—so much bigger than the one that had taken them across.

Their sails were tied up, the oars retracted, seemingly ready to slide right into the city.

Carts and donkeys and sailors and farmers filled the space between town and seawater.

Shouts, curses, neighs. Nereida herself appeared lost as she surveyed the spread.

Azul grew restless, her gaze drifting over her shoulder.

Sunlight was firmly in place now, the silver orbs of Luck and Wonder in hiding.

Azul missed their reassuring visages. So many things could go wrong when you didn’t have the moons watching over you.

At last, Nereida began walking again. Dodging people and beasts of burden, they made their way to a far dock marked by a pole covered in strips of fading blue.

A few workers were unloading one of two small boats moored to the floating deck below the stone of the port itself. Nereida and one of the men standing by the pole exchanged coins, and it was done, the relief intoxicating. Azul turned to give Diel one last view.

And found the mask of bones staring back.

The emissary prowled toward them, the throng of activity parting around his form. He was in simple shirtsleeves, his hair disheveled, his armor gone, the bone mask firmly in place.

Death, here to take her back.

Azul took a step backward. She willed her legs to take another and another. He was almost on top of her. She could see the violet around his irises, nearly black in the shadows of the mask.

She felt Nereida’s presence at her side. Azul turned to warn her.

Nereida de Guzmán needed no such warnings. Taking a pistol out of her satchel, she leveled her arm and shot the Emissary of the Lord Death right in the chest.

The sound was deafening; an acrid stench filled the air. Azul flinched and covered her ears, then watched in horror through the re sulting gunpowder cloud as Virel Enjul staggered back and crumbled to the ground, the front of his shirt a mass of black and darkening red.

“Move,” Nereida said through gritted teeth. She shoved Azul toward the ladder to the floating platform, and Azul stumbled down the rungs. Then Nereida was there again, pushing her until she jumped onto the boat.

Azul scrambled over the benches until she was as far as she could go. The boat rocked under her, a couple of sailors pushing it away from the platform with an oar, away from the growing gathering of people, their shouts, and their pointing.

Nereida sat in front of her, blocking her view of the port. And she, too, was a sight. Her face, a blank canvas of calm except for the tight, pale line of her mouth, her eyes hidden by the hat’s brim as she returned the pistol to her satchel.

Azul couldn’t look away.

The sailors rowed. The port became distant.

Nereida looked up and met Azul’s stare. Cool. Collected.

Azul should be thankful Nereida had dealt with the emissary. Azul was now in a boat, about to board a ship in neutral waters, where nobody could imprison her again.

Where was the relief? The hope? For someone who had never killed a person, Azul was leaving many corpses in her wake.

This is the price, Nereida’s dark green eyes seemed to say. This is the price of your wishes. The price for not listening, for venturing into the land of the Lord Death. Isadora. The emissary. Two deaths. How many more would her wishes cost?

Azul turned her focus on the ship that would take them back to Sancia.

The sight kept her insides rolling. The Lord Death would find no joy in losing one of his emissaries. How long until Valanje sent another after her?

And if an emissary caught up with her, Azul acknowledged with grim certainty, she would not be granted the mercy of staying alive long enough to escape again.