Page 90 of Mistress of Bones
De Anví sat back on his heels. “I trust your judgment. Of all of Sancia, of all of Luciente, you’re the one I trust.”
“Why?” she shouted. “If you trust me so much, why wouldn’t you help me before I was forced to do all this?”
“I did help you,” he pointed out. “I kept an eye on him, did I not?”
“That’s not… Why? We have barely talked in over a year, and now… what? What would make you trust me like that? Are you so daft you cannot trust yourself and you need someone else to guide you through life on a leash? Do you think you know me so well from some worthless conversation and a few dances? How weak you are! You had no trouble letting me go to the queen; you had no trouble staying away. Is that what you enjoy? Watching, knowing you’ll never be good enough to partake?”
De Anví leaned over her brother’s body and took her shaking hands in his. His gaze held hers, his voice steady. “Do not doubt, Nereida. Whatever it is you came here to do, whatever it is that made you scare the Witch away and end your brother’s life, see it through.”
Her eyes were a kind of witchery in themselves, a raging storm one moment, a calm sea the next. The agitation in her face ebbed; her breathing eased. With her hands still within his grip, she took a few deep breaths.
The familiar sharpness returned an instant later.
“What did the Witch mean,” she asked, freeing her hands and standing, “by asking if you were aware of the consequences?”
De Anví straightened up along with her. “It has been in my mind for a while now, the possibility that she might use her dreams to gain the ability to harm her clients. The possibility for blackmail is too high to pass up.”
“You mean something like poison?” Nereida asked, taken aback. “You think using her dreams gives her the chance to poison you?”
“Careful, De Guzmán,” he chided her, “your worry for my person is showing.”
“Not worry, De Anví, only shock that you would be fool enough to take her dreams.”
De Anví went to the door and peered outside the room. “It was the only way I had to reach you.”
“Even after suspecting she might poison you?”
A shrug was his answer.
“But even then, why help me tonight,” she insisted, “if you suspected this might happen?”
He gave her a small half smile. “I wished to be of real help, for once.” Opening the door wider, he stepped outside into the corridor connecting the room with a high bridge between buildings. “Grab the lamp. It’s time for us to leave.”
Nereida didn’t move. “How long do you think you have?”
“I do not know, so we better go ahead with the rest of your plan before I am forced to pay my due.”
“If you insist,” she said, kneeling again by her brother and pulling her dagger out of his body. “But I can only hope your willingness to help will remain after what must be done.”
Then, to De Anví’s shock, she proceeded to dig the dagger into one of Sío de Guzmán’s fingers and make an awful mess of cutting it off.
XXXITHE OSSUARY
“What?” Esparza asked sharply.
Azul loosened her grip on the railing and looked at the pale dust crossing her palms. “They throw the bones into the pit,” she repeated to herself. “They don’t keep them.”
Esparza peered over the railing. “Makes sense,” he murmured.
“Makes sense?” Stepping away from the hole, she shouted, “How does it make sense?” And damn the gods if it didn’t feel like each word was starting to shred her throat.
“Well, they do tell us over and over, don’t they? That our bones return in death to the gods.” Esparza’s voice held a note of fascination. “I just assumed it was more metaphorical.”
“Returned to the gods,” Azul repeated. With her mind still blank, that was all she could manage. But now she began to see it, too, the sense in it—their bones into the gods’ bones. Thrown into the Anchor, into a pit with no bottom. She looked down. The dust on her palms offered no answer. If the bones went into the Anchor, then…
Then Isadora…
She should’ve taken two fingers. Three fingers. She should’ve known. She should’ve prepared. She should’ve… She…
