Page 4 of Mistress of Bones
“Del Arroyo first.”
Serunje pursed his lips into a disapproving line, but spoke no further. Enjul followed him through the hallways and stairs of the building, disregarding the muted signs of comfort and riches surroundinghim, until they stood in front of one of the guest quarters. His gaze remained fixed on the door, anticipation rolling his insides. He allowed it, savored it—it did not come often.
First Serunje knocked, of which Enjul didn’t approve. He wished to see the malady’s reaction at their sudden presence, drink in its shock and surprise and fear.
Then Serunje opened the door, and the young woman—not a wraith or a string of flesh held up by brittle bones, as he’d imagined—stared defiantly back at them, dressed in a shirt and breeches too big for her, brown wavy hair loose over her shoulders and back, a single drop of Anchor hanging from one ear. He watched her brown eyes widen at the sight of him, and forced his not to do the same, forced the shock down his throat to simmer inside his gut.
Virel Enjul, Emissary of the Lord Death, had taken a good look at Azul del Arroyo, and the lands tilted on their Anchor stands.
For she had so muchlife.
IIAZUL
Azul del Arroyo had once as a young child sneaked into the kitchen and stolen a piece of chicken. The wing had been delicious, the resulting bare bones a source of guilt. She had sought to assuage it by burying it in the yard—the bone, not the guilt, but perhaps both—and that’s when she had first felt the singing in her heart, the excitement, theneedto follow this instinct to wherever it led.
So, she had let it happen, curious to see what would come of it. And something had slipped out of Azul—although she wouldn’t identify what until much later. The mud around her sunken hands had turned gray, the nearby weeds brown, as the chicken bone had grown other bones under her fingers. Bones and flesh and skin andlife.
And then the animal had clucked, shocking Azul into releasing it.
But Azul had gone after it, caught this revived chicken, and brought it back to the kitchen. She meant to kill it and put it back in the pantry so nobody would notice her small theft. She had watched their cook prepare chickens plenty of times. She could do it. But the moment she had chopped its head off, the chicken’s flesh had turned back into dirt and its blood into mud, with not even the original bone to be found. The life Azul had given back on a whim, taken on another.
Azul had told no one, had rarely touched another bone until her favorite cat had run under a cart, until her pet snake grew hungry and then fell limp and unmoving. Until Isadora had died, aged fourteen.
Until now.
Because now she must go back to Isadora’s remains—to Sancia and the ossuary keeping them in the city of Monteverde—steal one of her bones, and bring her sister back to life.
Any other option was unfathomable.
But they had locked Azul in a room in one of the huge buildings on the very top of the Anchor city. The room was big, comfortable, with wide windows opening into the valley, the sprawling city a sharp drop of three or four floors below. A cliff of a building, half carved into the mountain itself, even if there was no hint of Anchor in its bare, whitewashed walls.
A big bed occupied a corner near an empty brazier, and a delicate writing desk and upholstered chair graced the opposite side of the room. A wardrobe and a settee around a low table finished the ensemble. Her trunk had been brought in, but Azul hadn’t touched it. Instead, she had chosen to dig into Isadora’s, changing her dirty travel clothes for one of her sister’s billowing shirts and a pair of breeches a tad too big for her slighter frame. Azul had forced Isadora’s earring, saved from the pile of green dirt that had been her sister’s body, into her own earlobe, discarding the simple hoop their mother had once gifted her.
“We can’t accept their invitation,” Isadora had said in an uncharacteristically curt tone.
“It would be a waste not to,” Azul had mused, like she didn’t quite care—as if, after so many years stuck around Agunción, the urge to explore the continents weren’t an itch under her skin that had finally blistered open.
“How can we trust them?”
“They come from the Cienpuentes court. How can they not be trusted?” Sensible words. Smooth. Designed to pick at her sister’s strange defiance of what was a perfectly sound plan.
“And how will we come back?”
“Diagol told me they’d arrange for guards to come back with us.” Azul had kept her irritation under control, willing Isadora to come back to her normal self, to the sister who demanded crossing rapiers outside the tavern if anyone so much as looked at Azul the wrong way. “The route is well traveled. De Guzmánwas once the queen’s lover—you’ve seen her, with her rapier and elegant shoulder plate. Nobody would dare attackher.”
Still, Isadora had shaken her head. “I don’t know, Azulita. It doesn’t feel right, going to Valanje. Not while Mother is away.”
Azul had smiled. “Mother said she would take us on trips, and where is she now? Having another baby. We’ve traveled before, Isadora. What’s one more trip?”
“We’ve never gone that far.”
“It won’t be far once we’re there.”
“I don’t want to go, Azul,” Isadora had finally said.
And Azul had not listened. She had nagged until Isadora gave in. She had put her curiosity above Isadora’s wishes.
She should have listened.
