Page 71 of Mistress of Bones
This strange kinship, this ease… It was dangerous. She had no doubt he didn’t share the feeling.
“How did the Order find you?” she asked. “Do they test every newborn baby for the god’s blessing?”
Enjul’s gaze took on a faraway, almost fond, quality. “No, I looked for them when I realized what dwelled within me.”
“So, the god chose you, and you had no choice,” she said.
“None of us has any choice,” Enjul answered.
“You imply people are set in stone, when it’s obvious people can change.”
“You can chip away certain parts, if you insist on that analogy, and you can certainly break them, but they’ll always be the same type of stone, won’t they?”
“I should’ve used another example.”
An actual laugh. “It doesn’t matter what you use, all things created remain what they are. You can bend them, mold them, attempt to turn them into something else, but that won’t transmute them. A sword will always be the metal it was forged from.” He lifted his cup. “Wine will always be the grape it was squeezed from.”
“Unlike those things,” Azul pointed out, “we have souls. We have the ability to think, grow, change.”
“A seed will only grow into a certain tree. It won’t change, no matter how much we care for it. It will be sickly if it doesn’t get enough water, or lush and fruitful if it grows by a stream—but it will still be the same tree.”
Azul read the amusement in his eyes but did not mind it. He had his belief, and she had hers. He lifted his cup, not to hide his features this time but to drink. Azul had grown accustomed to meeting his direct stares, even though he seemed to see right into her soul.
“Had I never raised anyone from death,” she said, “would you still think me a foul malady?”
His gaze became pensive. It feathered over her face, her arms, the hands busy with the edge of the plate. “Yes,” he said reluctantly. “But perhaps I would have thought better of you.”
And Azul couldn’t understand why his words hurt.
XXIVSERGADO DE GRACIA
De Gracia had a reputation for being congenial, for his witty remarks, for his interest in anything from music to nature to philosophy. Any other time, he might’ve lamented not earning a more dangerous edge to his fame, but for now, all he lamented was the lack of a mace to shatter every bone in the man in front of him.
The man wore a mask, because of course. De Gracia hated those things. There was something suffocating in using them, and something extremely vexing in being unable to read the expressions of those wearing them.
They stood, he and the mask-wearing fool, alone in one of De Zoilo’s small parlors. The same one, he had been assured, where Azul should be waiting.
Instead, this.
“I’ll need proof that you have her,” De Gracia said nonchalantly, “before I go anywhere with you.”
“Of course,” agreed the man. “Would you like a finger or an ear?”
“Her earring will suffice,” replied De Gracia smoothly. By the end of the week, he would make sure the man had no fingers and no ears.
The man sneered, as if De Gracia had proved to be the gutless fool he believed him to be. “Wait here for my return.”
“And before you go,” De Gracia added, “know that your employer has made an enemy today.”
A shrug, because it didn’t concern him, and then the man left the room.
De Gracia sat on the single settee, every movement cautious, every muscle tight.
The masked man took his time in returning, and when he did, he carried a simple golden hoop in his hand.
De Gracia wanted to laugh. How much of an idiot did they think him? Judging by the fast flicker of the man’s eyes toward the rapier hanging by De Gracia’s hip, notthatmuch. The sneer had deserted the man, his back grown stiff.
Gone. Azul was gone from wherever they had stashed her. She was his sister, after all, a woman who didn’t recoil from sneaking around at night or looking at paintings of stripped flesh and bones.
