Page 33 of Mistress of Bones
There would be no forgiving now. No mercy.
“Emissary Enjul,” someone said.
He sat up, the muscles in his chest and left shoulder protesting at the sudden movement. His mask was a reassuring weight on his nose as he bared his teeth at the guard standing nearby.
“Fetch my belongings,” he snarled. “I will take the next ship.”
“Yes, Emissary.”
The man scurried out of the room. The dockworkers had brought Enjul to some fisherman’s shack. Nets and ropes lined the walls, and a rickety piece of wood trembled under him when he brought his legs off the table. The stench of fish warred with the smell of gunpowder clinging to his clothes. He took off his shirt and tossed it into a corner, then glanced at his chest and shoulder.
Satisfaction coursed through him.
His skin, barely marked.
The ball of metal he had felt enter his body, tear through muscle, and crush his bones nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be felt.
He closed his eyes, one hand over his beating heart, and searchedfor the spark that made him different from other Valanjians, the otherly piece he had been born with that marked him as belonging to the Lord Death. A piece so small it could be ignored if it hadn’t colored every aspect of his life.
Virel Enjul might carry a piece of the Lord Death within himself, but he was no god. There had been moments in the past, stolen moments of frustration, of indecision, of boredom, when he had doubted his faith. He had wondered what use it was to serve on behalf of the Lord Death, to exist in a world that decayed around him, when Death himself never bothered to speak directly to him.
Now his god was rewarding him for staying true.
It wasn’t uncommon for emissaries to survive an accident or a fever that would’ve killed anyone else, but surviving this kind of wound? Enjul couldn’t recall such a thing happening before.
The Lord Death had measured his soul, his belief, and concluded his mission was true. That he must go after the malady and keep her under his control. Stop the rot. Stop her.
And if she put up a fight, he thought, licking his lips,then he’d take great pleasure in teaching her to fear the Lord Death, just as she and her companion had taken pleasure in attempting to end his life.
Yes, perhaps he would simply kill her and test how much Sancia’s beloved gods liked their malady.
Azul del Arroyo would not escape his grasp again.
THE PRESENT
Azul could never tell how long she stood by the door with the rotting corpse of Silvo Zenjiel, Enjul’s fingers digging holes into her shoulders, his gaze trying to bore into her soul. It could’ve been seconds; it could’ve been eons.
Then the hands fell, his attention shifted to the guard, and the trembling began. Her fingers first, followed by her whole hands. And she prayed to Luck and Wonder it would not reach farther.
Azul dropped to her knees and reached for the arm lying on the tiles next to Zenjiel’s head. Bones peeked through the decaying flesh, the stench of rot inescapable, and Azul was certain she would never smell anything else again. Her fingers threaded through the skin and muscle until she touched bone.
She called on the Eye of Death.
It took so much more effort than the bird or the chicken or her own sister that Azul thought she might not be able to do it at all. The thought was scarier than never seeing Isadora again, so she stared hard into Zenjiel’s milky-white eyes and called on the instinct wreaking havoc in her veins, the one calling for her to deny death and remake what had been taken.
The muscle around her fingers became tougher, the skin re-forming. A chain of ripping sounds came from his clothing as the bone used the body and fabric to re-form. But it wasn’t enough. It sucked greedily at the spots where it touched the doorframe and the door itself—once a beautiful polished walnut brown, now a web of gray roots. The sunken skin tightened; the face no longer drooped. Another piece of Azul’s soul gone to fill Zenjiel’s eyes with awareness. She felt its loss, the tearing of her insides, a piercing pain in a place deep inside her. This was no simple animal.Deathdemanded more if he was to step aside and relinquish his claim on a human being.
Then Azul was torn away, thrown backward into the wall, where she crashed with a painful thud.
She blinked, trying to clear her vision. Zenjiel was staring at her from where he lay on the tiles, the tendons in his neck straining as he fought to lift his head, his mouth struggling to open.
Virel Enjul arched his sword and separated Silvo Zenjiel’s head from his neck.
Azul screamed. A hoarse cry that clawed up her throat and filled her ears. “What did you do?” she cried.
The Emissary of the Lord Death wiped his sword, mouth relaxed, the mask of bone hiding the rest of his features. “Death is death,” he said, “and should remain dead.”
Azul could barely understand his words. “But he was alive again!”
