Page 16 of Mistress of Bones
The Witch lifted her chin with an arrogant grin and ran her hands down her waistcoat. “No, this one suits me quite well. I have grown attached to it.”
Yes, hope wasn’t for the likes of De Anví.
“Still,” she added, her features sobering, “something feels amiss. I shall visit the Heart tomorrow. We might find more.”
De Anví was brought back to the moment a year and a half ago, when the Faceless Witch had become his constant companion; the moment she had decided to become his shadow, mere months before De Anví was finished with his family’s tradition of a stint in the Golden Dogs.
He had found her amusing at first, always speaking as if she were best friends with everybody. Because of this, everybody indulged her, no matter which body she wore—a servant’s, a soldier’s, a noble house heir’s—never realizing they were all the Witch.
And then one day she had come to De Anví with rumors of a plot to abduct the baby king.
Foolishly, he had allowed the Witch to explain further.
Even more foolishly, he had agreed to help end the plot.
If only there were a god of time he could beg to take him back to the moment he’d told the Witch he’d help. Maybe then the child king would be gone, De Anví’s tenure in the Royal Guard over, and he wouldn’t have to see the Witch and her new face, have a constant reminder that he was stuck.
But even if there were such a god, what did gods care about humankind? As a child, he had often pondered this. Why did they create such feeble beings that they had needed to raise the continents so humanity could thrive? Why not wipe everything and begin anew?
He would have.
“Let us talk of happier things,” De Anví said. “Are they ready?”
“That, they are, my friend.” She retrieved a pouch from under her waistcoat and put it on the table.
De Anví took the Witch’s pouch and tossed Esparza’s across. “For the next round.”
A playful smirk crossed her face as she secured the slivers of Anchor inside her waistcoat. “If you would only wear a mask, I’d gift you as many dreams as you want.”
The count stood and set his hat onto his head. “Once again, I must refuse. These single dreams will do.” With a nod, he made his exit.
He was willing to deal with the Faceless Witch, give her Anchor inexchange for dreams, stand her presence for the sake of his promise, but he’d never allow her to look into the deepest recesses of his mind.
He rarely allowed himself.
Later that night, he opened the Witch’s pouch and found three marbles, smaller than pearls and ten times—no, a hundred times—more valuable.
De Anví sprawled on his bed and swallowed one of the Faceless Witch’s dream pills. The bleakness of the day faded away into eagerness, into this hope he kept locked inside himself.
Because tonight, he would dream of Nereida de Guzmán.
VIAZUL
Azul huddled in a corner of her and Nereida’s cabin, hiding from the gods’ blood, from Luck and Wonder, from the stares of sailors and travelers. The seas were neutral zones—to spill human blood on the gods’ own blood was unforgivable—so even if the tale of the incident at the port had spread, nobody would bother her. Nereida had vanished somewhere, leaving her alone with the image of Virel Enjul falling to the ground, his mouth half open, the cloud of gray and black gunpowder obscuring the sight of his chest.
So different from her first trip across the sea a few days earlier, when Azul had leaned over the handrail of theSeven Hearts, talking with Rudel Serunje in her rusty Valanjian while Isadora disappeared into Diagol’s cabin. The seawater had run clear those nights, revealing the handful of understars blinking in and out of view through the thick clouds beneath the sea.
The clouds under the sea were dark at night, but Azul hoped they might be masses of pastel pinks and soft violets under the sun’s light, no different from the clouds in the sky. Back on theSeven Hearts, she had wished them gone so she’d catch a glimpse of the chains of Anchor keeping the continents attached to the Void below.
Her current ship followed the coast north before turning east and arching around the maelstroms in the middle of the sea. Could the Anchor be seen from this route more easily than the southern oneshe had taken into Valanje? Azul didn’t care to test the idea. She did not want to look at the gods’ bones just as she did not want to look at their blood.
Seeing the world without her sister had never been an option—what if something happened to Isadora while Azul was away? And yet it was because of Azul that something had happened to Isadora after all.
The Lord Death had destroyed Isadora, and Azul had caused his emissary’s death. A fair trade, she told herself, but she doubted the god saw it as such.
She was about to go peek at the sea anyway when Nereida entered the cabin wearing her usual mix of coldness and haughtiness.
Questions inundated Azul. Whom did she need Azul to bring back to life? A parent? A past lover? She had been the queen’s mistress, and the queen was now dead. Was that whom she intended to steal from Death?
