Page 5 of Mistress of Bones
Servants came to bring her food, fill her basin, or empty the chamber pot. They refused to answer her questions or take messages. The guard posted outside would turn the lock after they were done.
How was she to make her way back to Sancia if nobody would talk to her? If she couldn’t convince them to hand over the key?
Azul sat facing the door, playing solitaire on the low table and getting ready to shove the next visiting servant aside and try her luck with the guard, when the door opened, and Nereida de Guzmán appeared on the threshold.
Azul dropped her cards at her appearance, too surprised to hide her expression. “Sirese De Guzmán!” she exclaimed. At last, someone to be convinced.
Nereida de Guzmán, part of the Cienpuentes envoy to Valanje, watched her with something hard and cold and calculating gleaming in her eyes. A courtier’s usual demeanor, or something else? Nobody had been able to explain exactly why she had joined Sancia’s delegation, except perhaps as a sign of goodwill—here was a noble important enough to become the queen’s lover, part of a Sancian family powerful enough to make things happen both in Sancia and Valanje.
Why was she here now?
Azul clenched her jaw but held on to hope that she might finally get some help. She had been holding on to too many things the last fewdays—rage, composure, sanity—and would not fail now. Roughly stacking the playing cards into a pile, she retreated to perch on the chair by the desk and waved toward the settee.
“Please, come in,” she said, as if the woman were an honored guest and these Azul’s quarters.
Nereida sat on the settee with an innate elegance that spoke of wealth and status. It shone on her finely tailored breeches, the fabric of her white shirt, her exquisitely embroidered green vest, the bejeweled hair combs holding her long, curling midnight-black hair away from her tan face. No Anchor peeked from her hair jewelry—only silver and precious green stones.
Valanjians, they had been warned during the crossing of the Sea of Eyes, did not like overly ostentatious displays of mined Anchor. Being from the countryside, Azul and Isadora had been awed by the many heavy blue necklaces, Anchor-and-pearls bracelets, and ornate brooches adorning their traveling companions on the way over. They all rested in the depths of the nobles’ trunks now, as if being hidden under their shirts and linens made their existence any less damning to Valanjians.
What a shock to see De Guzmán now. Everyone else in the envoy had been friendly enough, but Nereida had shown no interest in the trip, her companions, a good talk, or anything beyond the edge of her upturned nose.
“Sirese Del Arroyo,” she said in that cool tone of hers. She turned slightly, her hand reaching for something by her hip but finding only empty space. Abandoning the quest, she focused on Azul. “You are being treated well?”
Unwilling to waste time with niceties, Azul leaned forward and asked, “Why won’t they allow me outside the room?”
“They are suspicious of the happenings at the dock.”
Azul’s nails dug into the fabric of her breeches. “My sister has died. They have no right to keep me a prisoner while I mourn.”
De Guzmán’s assessing gaze seemed to miss no detail, and Azul felt like a strange creature on display, an oddity that had caught someone’s attention and must be studied and measured to see if it fit into a certain frame.
“A curious end, your sister’s,” Nereida said.
Azul had expected comments like this from the moment they brought her to this room and had prepared her answer. “An act of the gods.” People were happy enough to blame the gods for all their misfortunes, even those who didn’t think them real beyond their bones, so why shouldn’t they bear this blame as well?
“Is that so?” Nereida asked, calm as the night sky.
“You were there the same as I was, Sirese De Guzmán. Nothing touched my sister. There was no assailant, no bolt or arrow. She just…” Azul squeezed her eyes hard, her voice failing under the weight of the fact. “She just passed on to the Lord Death’s embrace.”
“If there is anything…” A rare trace of hesitation entered Nereida’s voice. “Anything you want to confess, I will not share it.”
“Confess?” Azul inhaled sharply. Did the woman think she had murdered her own sister? Or… Cold sweat gathered on her lower back. Did Nereida suspect her secret? How? She had done nothing for years. How could this woman from the Cienpuentes court, so far removed from her and Isadora’s life in Agunción, have any inkling of what she could do? No. De Guzmán was only digging around. “There is nothing to confess, sirese, and I don’t want to speak about the matter any longer. I wish to mourn my sister in front of the Lady Dream, in Sancia, where she spent her life.”
And if her voice hitched at that last word, she hoped Nereida de Guzmán hadn’t noticed.
“They have sent for an Emissary of the Lord Death,” the woman said.
Azul recoiled. “No! Why?”
No other god had emissaries; only Valanjians felt the need to represent the Lord Death with such zealousness.
Nereida’s gaze drifted around the bland room until it fell to the stack of cards on the low table and the crude design on the front of one. Isadora had drawn it when she first won the deck on a dare. Oh, how they had laughed at Isadora’s lack of artistry!
“Why an emissary?” Azul insisted through the lump forming in her throat.
“They want your sister’s death explained.” The maelstrom of disgust and dread curling Azul’s stomach was nowhere to be seen on Nereida’s expression. She might as well be a piece of flesh-colored Anchor—cold, beautiful, and above mundane concerns such as death. “They will keep us here for a few more days while the emissary conducts their investigation.”
Azul burst out of the chair. “They can’t do that!” She paced between the screens separating them from the bed to one of the windows looking onto the fields and the forest and the mountains. To the screen. To the window. Finally, she whirled toward the settee.
