Page 17 of Mistress of Bones
Azul felt no qualms about the possibility. As long as Nereida helped her get to Isadora’s bones, Azul would bring back Nereida’s childhood nanny if that’s what it took.
“Stand,” Nereida said.
Azul did so, dusting the back of her breeches and turning to face the woman.
And found a rapier aimed at her heart.
She jumped back, startled, her hand going for her dagger.
But she didn’t have it. She only had Isadora’s clothes on her back and Isadora’s earring dangling from her ear.
“Show me proof of what you can do, or you will go no farther,” Nereida said with the same cool politeness she had used when firing her pistol.
Gray and black and specks of dark red spattered over a white shirt. Azul tightened her fists. “You can’t intentionally cause harm over the gods’ blood, they…”
Nereida harrumphed. “I have killed Death’s emissary. I am already damned in their eyes. Now, demonstrate that you can do what you say you can.”
She had expected this, Azul reminded herself. She had a plan.
“I need a bone.” She cursed the shakiness in her voice, the sudden onslaught of doubt. It had been so long since she last used her power—what if she could no longer access it? What if the Lord Death had taken more than Isadora from her? The thought made her feel faint. This, she had not accounted for.
“Use one of those you pilfered from the ship.”
Of course, Nereida wasn’t wrong, and pilfered Azul had. Slowly, she took out a small bone from inside her shirt. She had discovered it hanging from a chime right outside their cabin. She had acquired other bones, too, from the remains of their first repast aboard the ship, and a small flute abandoned in a corner that was now hidden inside her boot. Azul would not allow herself to be powerless again, locked in a room with no choice but to follow someone else’s whims.
“I’ll need that.” Azul gestured toward what should’ve been her evening meal, abandoned on one of the two cots in the cramped space.
Nereida nodded, and Azul knelt by the meal tray. She put the big untouched chunk of bread into the untouched bowl of stew and pressed the bone into the soft crumb.
Her heartbeat slowed. Life, it felt, halted around her, waiting with bated breath, the magnitude of the moment overwhelming nature itself.
The bone under her fingertips strummed a silent song to her soul, a chord that reminded Azul that bones were the basis of everything. A chord she’d felt every day since the moment she was born, small and angry under a summer’s blue sky.
Relaxed by the reminder, she allowed the bone’s calling into her flesh, into her blood, into her own bones. Euphoria filled her chest as power ran down her arm and gathered in her palm. It took what life remained out of the food and beyond, leaving behind decaying gray tendrils over the wooden bowl, the wooden tray, even the rough fabric of the thin mattress.
Then life re-formed beneath her hand, the swirl of power on her palm forming the shape of an eye. The Eye of Death, she had alwayscalled it in her mind, sucking the life surrounding it to give back what it had once taken.
Bone spread, muscles formed, blood seeped into being, and a piece of her soul, of her essence, made the leap into this new being, leaving an aching hole in her chest that only time would refill. The feeling was nothing compared to when she’d brought back Isadora. Then it had felt as if half her soul had been sucked out of her bones until only a brittle husk of Azul remained.
Feathers caressed the inside of her hand, the bird thrumming with renewed life. When she cradled it, it chirped and attempted flight.
“Necromancer.” Nereida backed against the door, free hand covering her mouth, rapier shaking in her loose grip. Her expression contained everything Azul had never seen in it: shock, disbelief, fear.
Elation.
Nereida fought to blank her features. “It’s true, then,” she said in a wisp of a voice. Then, louder, “And you can do this with people?” A grimace escaped her self-control. “You did this before… with your sister?”
Azul nodded, the aftermath of using her gift shaking her arms, clattering her teeth. The gaping ache between her ribs made it hard to breathe.
“Why bone? Why not flesh or hair?”
“I… I’m not sure. Maybe hair doesn’t remember flesh, and flesh doesn’t remember skin, and skin doesn’t remember blood. But bone remembers all.”
Nereida looked away, hid her frown with the rim of her hat, its single pale plume overly bright in contrast with the black felt. A handful of heartbeats passed. A hundred. Then she glanced back at Azul. “Are you not afraid of the gods’ retribution? What stops them from destroying you where you stand, like your sister?”
“It was the land,” Azul said. “The… the emissary said the Lord Death would not allow her existence in Valanje. Isadora never had trouble in Sancia.” The reminder reaffirmed her convictions. If Azul were a malady, as the emissary had insisted, then wouldn’t one of theother gods have struck Isadora down as soon as she had been reborn? “Had I known Valanje’s god would react like that, I would never have suggested the trip,” she added fervently.
“A small price to pay, to stay put in exchange for a second life,” Nereida agreed. “But have you no qualms for your soul after you die? Have you no fear the Lord Death will throw it to the understars and the Void?”
