Mistress of Bones by Maria Z. Medina - XXXI. The Ossuary

the Ossuary

XXXI
THE 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 …
“But it can’t be,” she said in a small voice, her gaze fluttering everywhere. “There are still bones nearby.”
Enjul gripped her arms, turned her to face him. “Where? Take me to them.”
“Why?” Azul asked, shaken by the ill-concealed eagerness in his voice, the excitement cracking what was usually a stoic or mocking expression.
Comprehension dawned, a horrific kind of understanding. A sense of betrayal so deep if her heart wasn’t already breaking, it would have cleaved in half. “You knew. You knew Isadora … You knew about the bones.”
Arrogance claimed what she could see of his features outside the mask. “You keep forgetting I am the Emissary of the Lord Death, no matter how many times I tell you. I know all there is to know about death. You would, too, if only you listened, if only you bothered to ask. How many times have you been told that the living return to the gods? It is only you who is at fault for not knowing, not I. Now take me to the bones.”
Azul wrenched her arms out of his grasp. “Why?” she yelled. Then another scream, inside her mind, for Isadora. Then a third, when she answered herself, “The bones … The other necromancer?”
“Necromancer?” Esparza asked, suddenly wary.
“You think the other necromancer is here,” Azul accused.
“What better place for one who deals with death than among the remains of the dead?”
“But I hate bodies.”
“Yet you are attracted to bones, aren’t you?” Enjul advanced on her. “You are attracted to death. You are curious to figure out what you are, although you won’t admit it. It corrodes your insides, that need to know. That’s why you were so eager to visit the land of the Lord Death when the opportunity arose.”
“Why wait until now? Why…” The answer presented itself once again: because he couldn’t gain entrance to the ossuary either. Not without making his presence as the emissary known. So, he had waited for her to find access for him.
Azul laughed, a short, rough sound. “How disappointed you must have been! Leaving me alone so much, allowing me so much freedom.” She laughed again. This back-and-forth she thought they had been playing as equals hadn’t been a duel at all. It had been a children’s game where he moved the toys, and she made for a pretty doll. “How frustrating it must have been for you to see me fumble over and over, getting no closer to the ossuary.”
“Until now.”
Her fist came up, but Esparza caught her arm.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Esparza said, letting Azul’s arm go, “but rather than brawl, we should leave if we’re done.”
Enjul took her wrist. He wore gloves tonight. How smart, Azul thought viciously. How well planned it all had been. “We are not done,” he said. “Where are the bones?”
Azul fought to free her wrist, saw Esparza reach for his rapier. “I’m done,” she told Enjul. “The Void take you.”
The emissary pulled her closer, and Azul was tempted to spit in his face. What a contrast to the last time they had been this close! “But what if she’s there, with those other bones? Your Isadora.”
Her heart sank, then jumped with a furious beat. “You godsdamned asshole. Why do you hate me so much?”
“I do not hate you,” he snarled.
“Liar. It reeks out of you!” she shouted. “We’re the same—”
“We are not the same. I am dying. We are all dying, except for you. You are not dying.”
“I don’t understand!”
He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. Go to the bones,” he added, pushing her.
And Azul went, because he was right. It was grasping at unraveling threads, but it was a chance: Isadora, simply forgotten in one of these rooms instead of resting somewhere in the bottomless hole. Isadora, not lost at all. Isadora—a litany in Azul’s head stopping her from punching the walls, from screaming until her words were made of blood, from tearing her ribs apart so air could get into her lungs. From wrenching her heart out so it stopped hurting so much.
Esparza stepped up to her side, still skimming the sheath of his rapier. He did not like the situation—that much was obvious—but he had no stake in it. Maybe he would help her kill Enjul. Maybe he would stand aside and watch.
But he would not stop her.
And she had Nereida’s dagger, with its beautiful bone hilt.
Virel Enjul deserved to die. For his games. For Zenjiel’s death and the deaths he meant to cause when he caught the other necromancer’s victims.
The certainty of this conclusion calmed the rage in her veins. Azul would check these bones, then she would end the Emissary of the Lord Death.
And after … Ah yes, why not? Afterward, she would simply step into the pit to join Isadora and the gods.
It’d be easier than trying to figure out who Azul del Arroyo was without Isadora by her side, why she existed, and why her heart didn’t seem to do anything but break.
The first corridor led nowhere interesting. Her sense of bones was stronger this deep, away from the city, and so close to the Anchor, but not focused enough. The second corridor proved to be of more use, forking deeper into a web of tunnels and rooms. These were blocked by doors that looked like they hadn’t been opened in years. Ahead, they could see the warm glow of lamplight across a bend in the tunnel. Carefully, Esparza placed their own lamp on the floor and waited to see Enjul’s next move.
Enjul addressed Azul in a low voice: “Can you tell how many?”
She glared, disgusted. “No. That’s not how it works.”
“Chance a look.”
Why her? She didn’t ask, for it mattered little, so she simply did. And after she did, a hiss escaped her.
“Two men guarding a door,” she whispered. “Living corpses. Necromancer’s victims,” she corrected herself.
“Excuse me?” asked Esparza.
Enjul ignored him. “We need to get inside, then.”
“Is that some sort of secret order?” Esparza asked. “The living corpses?”
Enjul assessed him, then said, “Get us inside, guard. Use your blue tabard to send them away. It’s best if they don’t see us.”
Esparza hesitated, clearly torn between giving in to his curiosity and bristling at the emissary’s tone. In the end, he simply shrugged and muttered, “Ah well, this—my lot in life.”
Sauntering, he rounded the corner. “Blessed Noche Verde, folks.”
“Stop,” said a voice. “These are restricted quarters.”
“I’m under official City Guard orders. I need you to step away while I conduct my business.”
“Stop,” another repeated, “upon penalty of death.”
Esparza snorted, plenty familiar with the threat. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
“You have no power here, Blue Bastard. Go back outside.”
A pause, then the noise of scuffling. Enjul, mouth tight in a grim line, rounded the corner to join him, Azul right behind. Esparza had twisted one guard’s arm around his back so the man couldn’t reach his rapier, and was using him as a shield against the other guard, who had produced a pistol.
“Couldn’t have warned me about that?” Esparza asked of Azul.
“I didn’t see—” Azul winced as Enjul landed a blow on the second guard’s arm, forcing him to drop the pistol.
The first guard twisted his free arm to try to rake Esparza’s face. Grunting, Esparza leaned backward. The guard finished the turn and jerked his arm free, then reached for his rapier. Esparza landed a fist on his jaw, sending him staggering to the wall. A punch to his stomach followed, and then another finishing blow to his temple. The guard fell to the floor, unconscious.
Esparza turned to help Enjul with the other guard, but there was no need—the emissary had dealt with his foe by impaling his guts with his sword, then twisting it home.
The guard fell, gurgling and convulsing, specks of blood splattering the ground.
“Gods!” Esparza had gone pale. “There was no need for death.”
“They were already dead,” Enjul said simply, sinking his sword into the other guard’s chest.
Esparza jumped away. “Well, now you’ve made sure.”
The emissary cleaned his sword on the guard’s clothing and returned it to its sheath. Kneeling by the door, he started to work on the lock. Esparza eyed him warily, moving until he was between him and Azul.
Azul understood the fast glances Esparza sent over his shoulder to the corridor beyond. She wanted to leave, too, but where was she to go? If there were bones in that room, she had to know. And she wasn’t eager to be alone with Enjul.
So, she didn’t encourage him to run, and his stance relaxed. Maybe he had convinced himself there had been no other option but to kill the guards. Maybe it wasn’t such an outlandish occurrence in his daily life. Whatever his thoughts, Esparza eventually approached the door, Azul following him as if tethered by a rope.
“Smaller lock,” he surmised. “Newer. Harder to pick.”
Azul studied the mechanism in question and found that he was right. The whole door appeared new compared with the ones they had seen along the way.
Enjul stepped aside to allow Esparza to try his hand at the lock and glanced at Azul.
In the warm light of the lamp ensconced into the nearby wall, his golden-violet eyes showed no remorse, only determination verging on stubbornness. Such human emotion for such inhuman acts—killing like it meant nothing and not asking for forgiveness in return. This logic, Azul could never understand.
But had she not done the same? Had she not stood by as Nereida had attempted to kill Enjul because he stood in their way? Had she not sworn to kill him herself minutes earlier? She had said it before so many times—at their core, she and Enjul were not so different.
These unsettling thoughts were stopped by Esparza’s exclamation of triumph. The door opened. Azul rushed forward, pushing him out of the way, and stumbled into the room.
Inside were two tables, and shelves lining a wall. Papers, parchment, and sheafs of vellum lay spread over the tables or rolled into scrolls. Azul walked to a collection of small wooden coffers neatly stacked on a shelf, their lids unlocked for her to lift. Pieces of bones filled their insides. Old, new. None felt like Isadora’s.
“What is all this?” Esparza asked, disgusted.
Azul drifted to where he stood, searching for more boxes that might contain bones. He was looking at some of the papers piled on one of the tables, lifting one here and there with the tips of his fingers to see them under the light spilling from the doorway. Most of them featured inked drawings of bones, the rest of the space filled with annotations.
“Studies of human bones,” she told him, herself inspecting some of the pages.
Her words brought Enjul closer.
“A leech’s studies,” Esparza said. “Why keep them behind lock and key and armed guards?” He made a disagreeable sound. “Upon penalty of death, my ass.”
“Can you read?” she asked him.
Esparza narrowed his eyes. “Enough to pass by.”
“I meant no insult,” Azul said. “But try these.”
He did as she asked with the page she was showing him. “I can’t make any sense of this.” Glancing at Enjul, he added, “Valanjian?”
Enjul shook his head. “It looks like an abbreviated version of Sancian.”
“A sort of code?” Azul asked. “Meant to be read only by its author.”
“Some of these look normal,” Esparza said, disturbing more of the parchment.
“Borrowed studies?”
“Why keep them behind locked doors?” Esparza insisted, then looked thunderstruck and snatched his hand back from the table. “Living corpses, you called them? Void arts? No. It’s not possible.”
Azul turned so he couldn’t read her face. The stark denial in his voice did not settle well, nor did his disgust. Her gaze fell on sketches of much better quality. Bringing them into a better light, she openly admired them. Arms, legs, torsos, heads, all in various stages of being stripped of their fleshy layers. Then a series of drawings she recognized well. A human back in different poses, some with arms extended, others with arms close to the sides. Studies that had resulted in a masterpiece.
The masterpiece that hung in her brother’s bedroom.
Alarmed, Azul went through the other pages. The strokes were easily recognizable, with the occasional signature leaping out. Shock left her speechless. Was Isile Manzar the other necromancer, after all? His fascination for the human body was obvious. He could’ve gained entrance here like he had gained entrance to the mortuary—by using his friends. But again, what care would Manzar have for infiltrating the City Guard, the court? For taking over Zenjiel?
No, Manzar must’ve made these sketches for the other necromancer as some sort of commission …
Ah.
She saw it now. On the crest of some of the papers, on the dried rose petals in a vase in the corner. In the handwriting, the same as the letter she’d received at the ambassador’s residence agreeing and delighted to host her and her party at Almanueva.
“It’s my brother, isn’t it? He’s the other necromancer,” she said as if waking from a dream. She faced Enjul. He showed no surprise or interest in the discovery. “You knew this too.”
She thought he might mock her, laugh at the lack of awareness on her part. Instead, he kept his voice measured: “A conjecture so far. The ossuary falls under the marquess’s purview”—Azul jerked back as if slapped—“and he is your half brother. Knowing I am from Valanje, he probably grew cautious and hid his living corpses from my sight and thus from yours as well. That made it harder to confirm.”
Azul’s mind was a moving puzzle, trying to make all the pieces fit.
“I thought … You said you could recognize the other necromancer.”
“His foulness is different, undetectable, unlike you. It could be he’s already lost what makes you unique, from using it too much.”
“A necromancer?” Esparza exclaimed. He ran a hand through his hair. “Do such things truly exist?”
Enjul’s attention remained fixed on Azul. “If we kill him, will it end his creations?”
Azul sputtered at this. “You can’t. He’s my brother!”
“He’s murdered, don’t you understand? One or two: accidents, perhaps, as with your sister. But this many? He must be stopped.”
“Not by death! How would you be any different from him, then? Take him to your Order, lock him somewhere like you planned to do to me. Allow these people he’s brought back to fulfill their lives. It is their right.”
“Their right is to rest with the Lord Death.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I carry his will within me!”
“And why is your god’s will more important than theirs? That’s what makes you so enraged, isn’t it, Enjul?” She spat the words. “You’ve seen death all your life and resigned yourself to it, and now you’re scared to hope there’s an alternative, that your faith has been for nothing. Prove to me I’m wrong.”
“You mean to say that they are still people?” Esparza said, his nervous hand roaming over his stubble, over his neck.
Azul glared at Enjul. “Of course they are.”
To her surprise, instead of sneering, Enjul’s eyes widened at her words. She didn’t quite understand why until she looked down and saw the tip of a rapier sticking out of his chest.