Mistress of Bones by Maria Z. Medina - XXXIII. Azul

XXXIII
AZUL

Isile Manzar stood unmasked on the threshold of her brother’s study, ignoring Azul’s shock while he surveyed the room with open and obvious curiosity.
Voice unsteady, Azul asked, “What are you doing here?”
His attention went to the desk. “What are those?”
Azul glanced down at her brother’s art. “Fingers.”
Joining her at the desk, Isile picked one up. “A sculpture? Painted clay?”
Azul had enough of her brother’s rooms, so she answered as she left, “Bone,” and heard a gasp of dismay and the dull thud of the finger hitting the desk’s surface.
She went to the guest rooms next. Nereida’s door opened easily, her room a haven of tidiness compared to the rooms she had just left. Kneeling by Nereida’s trunk, she began to search its contents.
Isile loitered by the door. “It’s not on me to judge De Gracia’s interests,” he said, shuddering, “but are you sure it’s bone?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked again, pulling a few shirts out of the trunk.
“Is this your room?” he asked, then inhaled sharply. “Have you been wounded? Your hands…”
The concern in his voice stopped Azul. Dried blood still crusted her fingers, and dark smears tinted her breeches where she must’ve unconsciously rubbed her palms against them. “It’s nothing,” she told him, returning to the trunk and taking out a dagger. Azul doubted Nereida had any more weapons left in the room, so she slipped it into one of her boots and went back into the hallway.
Isile allowed her through, then followed. “I was waiting for De Gracia when I heard you come in.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I wouldn’t be waiting here if I knew where he was, yes?”
Azul nodded, then took the stairs to the first floor and stopped abruptly, a muscle working her jaw. Two footmen waited at the bottom of the steps. The one who had opened the entrance door for her, and one of her brother’s victims.
“Sireses, please come back to the parlor,” the former said. “The Marquess de Gracia will return shortly.”
So, Azul and Isile were herded into said parlor and left alone with the other footman, but not for long.
“Sister, stay put until I return, I beg you,” said De Gracia through the footman, the living corpse. “I will explain everything—you have nothing to fear. Isile, I will talk to you later as well,” he added before leaving and locking the door behind him.
Isile was speechless, but also, not for long. “Did the footman lock us in? Why did he call you sister? Why would I want to talk to him?”
Azul went to the window facing the patio, opening it with ease. Insect calls and the scented heat of a summer night drifted in.
“Have you no concern about all of this?” Isile demanded, coming to her side.
Azul boosted herself onto the windowsill, slipping a leg across. “My brother is a necromancer.” She slid into the patio with a small hop. “And he spoke through the footman.”
Dolls. Puppets. That was all her brother’s creations were. That was why they stood by, allowing life to pass them, why they attacked over and over again, and why her brother could speak through them with so much ease.
Their souls were gone, not reborn.
“By the Heart, what?” exclaimed Isile, awkwardly following her. “What do you mean by ‘necromancer’?”
She used another entrance onto the patio to reenter the house, then carefully made her way toward the back door into the small stables area. Apparently knowing better than to make a ruckus, Isile followed without making a sound.
“He kills people, then brings them back to life using their bones,” Azul said once they were by the outer door separating them from the street.
“Such a thing exists?” Isile asked, shocked.
Azul wished Isile could be shocked while helping her with the heavy door, instead of standing uselessly by her side. She managed to pull it open enough to nudge her shoulder in and push in earnest. A pair of hands helped push from the street side. Her shadow, she recognized with relief. He tipped his hat after she thanked him.
Isile slipped out after her. “What you say isn’t possible.”
“And yet,” she told him grimly, “you’re about to experience it.”
Two figures approached from the main entrance.
“Sister, I do not wish to harm you,” said the footman. He carried no weapons, but the man by his side held a sword.
Isile stepped back toward the door they had just opened, his gaze darting from the footman’s face to his companion’s sword to Azul’s shadow. “Surely there is no need for violence?”
In answer, Azul took out Nereida’s long dagger. By her side, Azul’s shadow covered her back, his rapier in hand.
“No serious harm,” the footman warned. His companion moved toward Azul.
His aim was obvious—with no vital parts available for him to hit, arms and legs were his only options—and Azul deflected his lunge with ease, then blocked his swinging punch. She scraped her dagger up his blade to the guard, then pushed it to the side. She grabbed his wrist with her free hand but found gloves instead of skin.
His body shifted. Her knee came up into his groin before he could grab her, forcing him to bend. She pressed her hand against his face and watched his eyes bulge, his skin recede, his blade fall to the flagstone with a clatter before his body followed.
A new pair of arms went around her from behind, pinning her own arms to her sides. The footman. Azul struggled. By the house, Isile watched it all, wide-eyed and gulping like a fish. Ramming her booted heel into the footman’s foot earned a small break in his hold. She wrenched free and spun, but he held her wrist so she couldn’t touch his face. His other fist delivered a heavy blow into her side. She doubled over, grunting.
Then her shadow was there, digging his dagger into the footman’s neck.
“Not enough,” Azul bit out between needles of pain.
Her shadow kicked the footman’s knee, the crack like thunder in her ears, and the man buckled to the ground. Azul yanked her arm free and gave him a kick to the face.
“We must leave now.” She bent with a grimace to touch the footman’s forehead. Unlike the other bodies, it remained intact. A fresh corpse, she realized, her stomach turning. Maybe killed that very night.
She glanced at the looming house, which grew darker with each passing heartbeat. If she were to visit the servants’ quarters, how many other living corpses would she find hiding away from her and the emissary? Her brother had suspected them to be the cause of Zenjiel’s death from the start and had prepared accordingly.
This game, Virel Enjul and Sergado de Gracia had played with each other, with Azul none the wiser.
How smart she had felt sneaking around, so focused on Isadora she had missed how everyone around her was using her as card stock for their games. How shameful to see it so clearly now.
Straightening, she sheathed her dagger and began to walk away.
Azul’s shadow fell into step by her side, and Isile recovered enough to follow them.
“You allowed me to slip away earlier,” Azul said.
“Me?” asked Isile.
The shadow nodded.
“How did you know to return here?”
At the wry twist of his mouth, Azul understood. “You followed me with Enjul to the ossuary, waited while he went inside, then followed me back to Almanueva.”
“What did you do to that man?” Isile asked. “His face … was it some kind of mask?”
“He had been dead for a while,” Azul answered, distracted.
“You were serious about De Gracia?”
Isile’s tone was more contemplative than shocked, but Azul didn’t quite notice. She touched her shadow’s sleeve. A knot in her throat made the next words hard to voice: “Enjul … The emissary is dead. You are no longer employed and are free to go.”
The man flinched, his steps slowing down to a standstill. He glanced at her form, found the bloody smears on the front of her breeches, her dirty fingers.
“It’s true. My brother killed him—”
“De Gracia?” asked Isile, sounding quite incredulous now.
“—so you are no longer required to look after me.”
With a slight shake of his head, he took her by the elbow and urged her forward.
“You are not jesting?” Isile said, keeping up on her other side.
“I am not,” Azul told him, reassured by the grim expression on her shadow’s face. He believed her and still kept by her side. “You should go.”
“I can help,” Isile argued.
“Do you know where my brother could be, or where he might keep a set of private rooms? A studio of sorts?”
“No…”
“Then you can’t help.” Addressing her shadow, she asked, “Did Enjul mention such a place?”
He shook his head.
Azul thought for a few moments. “I know of someone who might be able to help with that, a woman Enjul met for business on at least one occasion. But I’m not sure I can find her house at nighttime.”
“Then wait until daytime?” Isile suggested as if she had lost her intelligence somewhere back in the fight.
“The longer I wait, the higher the chance my brother might disappear.” Disappear with all his treasure, with all the hopes for Isadora’s bones. With no repercussions for the things he had done.
They stopped at an intersection, the crowd pushing them together, the warmth of the torches and lamps mixing with the summer heat. “This is where we go our separate ways,” she said, looking at Isile.
“I can help you track whoever this is,” Isile said. “I know Cienpé quite well.”
“So does he,” Azul retorted, pointing at her shadow.
“But what if you encounter more of your brother’s men?”
“And you were such a help at Almanueva.”
His cheeks darkened. “I was recovering from the shock! I vow that you will not find me quite so useless again.”
“You are in danger, as much as I am,” Azul said. “You know my brother’s secret. Who is to say he might not kill you and take control of your body? No, Sirese Manzar, go home, gather your belongings, hide for a while. This is not your battle.”
“But I wish it to be.”
Azul and her shadow shared a long look. “I can’t stop you, then.”
“Indeed. Now, tell me of this person’s place.”
Azul described some of the more memorable alleys and riverbanks she had seen through the mouse. Her shadow nodded or shook his head at Isile’s suggestions, eventually growing tired of the discussion and simply stalking away.
Following him through the carousing crowd, Azul and Isile remained side by side.
“Why are you so interested in helping us?” she asked, stepping aside to avoid a man in a hurry. “Sergado is your friend, why help me against him?”
Isile waved that aside. “He is not that much of a friend.”
“Friend enough for you to wait in his house late at night. Friend enough to gift him a masterpiece for his rooms. Friend enough for you to make sketch after sketch of nothing but human body parts.”
Isile fell silent until they arrived at an alley so low the river’s water spilled over the edge. It smelled of dampness and rot, weeds sprouting everywhere. Azul recognized this from the mouse’s travels. Conjuring more of the memory, she chose one direction, and they continued their trek through Cienpuentes’s alleyways and narrow paths, stopping here and there while she tried to reconcile the mouse’s viewpoint and how things looked to the human sight.
“I cannot condone it, if he’s truly killing people,” Isile said.
“Why did you think he asked for so many sketches?”
“Curiosity? Studies?”
“Like Sirese Norel at the mortuary?”
Isile brightened. “Indeed! Just like him. Why should I arrive to some bizarre conclusion? It’s not unheard of, these tendencies to investigate human nature. What do you think he’s trying to accomplish, making those fingers? Controlling those men?”
“I don’t know. At first, we—I—thought maybe he meant to spy on the court,” Azul said, worried. “But you don’t need knowledge of the human body for that, and he’s already a marquess.”
“Might that be it?” Isile asked thoughtfully. “That he means to create a body?”
Azul stared at him, aghast.
Isile shrugged. “Why else practice making fingers—out of love for doll-making?”
“But a body needs blood and flesh.”
“As you say,” was Isile’s noncommittal answer. He said no more, but became thoughtful, paying no attention to their surroundings until Azul found their destination—a two-story building of gray stone and dark brick squeezed between an overhead bridge and a more elegant house.
They pounded on the door to no avail, then settled on finding somewhere to rest nearby and trying again at dawn. There would be no point, Azul supposed, to breaking into an empty house when the owner was all they needed.
Luckily, it didn’t take them long to find someone willing to rent out a room for the night. They were lent a small storage space, dusty and empty with some rags thrown into a corner. A second, smaller room was adjacent, not unlike Sergado’s rooms.
Isile walked inside, surveying it with distaste. “I suppose this one is mine, yes?”
Azul and her shadow exchanged looks again. Isile snickered. “You don’t think me smart enough to know you mean me to remain locked up for the remainder of the night?” He offered up his wrists. “I am your brother’s friend, after all.”
Azul’s shadow grabbed and tested one of the rags. Approaching Isile, he motioned for him to turn around.
With a groan, Isile complied. “This will make sleeping quite difficult. Have you no pity?”
Her shadow didn’t, apparently, since he deftly brought Isile’s wrists behind his back and tied them tightly.
Azul watched this with relief. She hadn’t wanted to hurt Isile—he was curious, yes, too curious, and had surprisingly taken everything in stride—but she couldn’t risk him having a change of heart and running off to tell her brother of her plans. Shock had made her tongue too fluent. She had said too much; she had shown him too much. At the time, it hadn’t mattered.
But now her tired limbs begged for mercy, and the throb in her side reminded her of the damage a fist could do to a body. Now the woman the emissary had contacted was gone, or dead asleep, or dead.
Now Azul only wanted the nightmare to end.
Her shadow closed the door between the rooms. It had no lock, but he didn’t seem bothered by that. He gave his half cape to Azul and pointed toward the floor. She thanked him, made a roll out of it for her head, and lay on the thick coating of dust. Her shadow had closed the shutters in the other room, but he kept these partly open, and Azul could hear some distant shouting and singing, could see a slice of the dark green sky.
Her shadow sat across from her, back against the connecting door, rapier close at hand. Ah yes. Azul took out the dagger she had pilfered from Nereida’s room and put it under the roll.
“You still won’t tell me your name?” she asked.
Her shadow simply lowered his hat until all that was visible was a half smile.
“Sombra, then,” she couldn’t help but say. When the smile widened, she reckoned he didn’t mind. “I shouldn’t trust you. Everyone else has stabbed me in the back, so why should you be any different?”
His answer was to close his eyes, settling in for what was left of the night.

Isile was gone by the time they awoke. The shutters in his room were open and the rag was cut through, discarded on the floor. Sombra had searched him for weapons earlier, and yet, not well enough. Isile Manzar had turned out to be craftier than he appeared, but then, with Sergado as his friend, one had to be.
Azul refused to waste any time figuring this out. Dawn had pushed Noche Verde away, Luck and Wonder long gone. She and Sombra returned to the woman’s door. More knocking, and still, no response.
But the upper shutters were now open.
Azul pointed at the corner where the building met one of the upper bridges. A series of lovers’ footholds had been carved into the brick and mortar, and with Sombra’s help, she climbed to the second story, then slipped inside the nearest window.
The woman who had met with Enjul slept on a narrow bed. Azul made sure no one else was in the room, then shook the woman’s arm.
She woke with a start. “Who are you?” she demanded, scooting back until she was against the wall. Her eyes flickered over the room, trying to ascertain how many intruders had invaded her quarters.
Azul towered over her. “The Valanjian Virel Enjul sends me. I need whatever information about the Marquess de Gracia he had you search for him.”
The woman swallowed, appeared meek. “You lie. He already knows everything.”
“And now I need to know it,” Azul said, lunging for the pillow and taking hold of the dagger hidden there. In the next breath, she tossed it out the window.
“Hey!” the woman exclaimed.
“I need the information. Enjul is gone, he can pay you no more.”
“And you can in his stead?”
“I can.”
“Now?”
“After I know the information to be truthful.”
“Then you are of no interest to me.”
Azul knelt on the mattress and pressed Nereida’s second dagger to the woman’s throat. “And now?”
The woman huffed. “You won’t kill me. You’re not the type.”
She had a point. And dead people could give no information, so Azul straightened and spun the dagger, offering the hilt. “A good quality blade, sharp, with a beautiful hilt. It will fetch plenty.”
The woman studied the dagger with a critical eye. A curt nod of agreement before she went to take it from Azul’s hand.
Azul moved it out of her reach. “De Gracia. You were hired to investigate him. Did you find any gossip? Any secret lodgings bought under someone else’s name?”
“He has property in the countryside, and investments in several ventures.”
“In Cienpuentes?”
“There’s a small house. Been in the family for years. Meant for lovers, but he hasn’t had any reside there.”
Could it be so straightforward? Azul wondered. Or was her brother smarter than to use his own building and had bought another property to use as his studio through one of his puppets?
But then, why go through the bother? Nobody would ever suspect him of being a necromancer, so why should anyone be curious about what he did on his own property?
After paying with the dagger, Azul and Sombra made their way to the address provided by the woman. Azul’s muscles ached, and her head hurt from the lack of proper sleep, and there was not a damn horse or empty cart to be found to ease their trip. It was a long walk, and the house at the end of it bigger than Azul had expected. The higher echelons of Cienpuentes aimed to keep themselves in their lovers’ good graces by giving them plenty of beautiful space, apparently.
The structure was made of even white stone, with glass windows on the second floor and a lovely layer of gables covering its roof. A tiny spread of bushes around a central tree adorned the plaza it bordered. Beautiful, soothing, far enough from the busier center of Cienpuentes to ensure a certain level of quiet.
Perfect for lovers’ meetings. Perfect for secret studies.
After checking the building for any other accessible openings, Sombra worked on the front lock while Azul kept an eye out for anyone who might call the blue tabards on them. The neighboring houses were similar in style and wealth, some with glass-paneled windows, others with simple shutters. Luckily, no one was peeking out at them, as far as she could tell.
The door finally opened, and they found themselves in a deep, wide hall. A staircase rose from the back and forked into narrower steps leading up the sides. Second-floor windows focused all the light onto the steps, inviting guests to investigate the upstairs. A hearth opened on one side, tapestries and paintings adorning the half-timbered walls. Two doors led to what must be the kitchen area and the servants’ rooms.
The moment Azul and her shadow walked farther into the hall, a handful of men and women—living corpses—poured out of the doors to block their exit. Some wore tabards of different colors and different insignias, some stood in simple shirtsleeves, one wore an apron, as if they had all been plucked while in the middle of conducting various duties. They were all armed.
Another four men trotted down the stairs, effectively closing the trap.
Sombra immediately faced the threats behind them.
Azul wished she could face the truth in front of her.
She was too horrified. It truly cost Sergado nothing to bring people back to life. He endured no pain, sacrificed no part of his soul: the proof surrounded her. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have no soul left? No soul to carry his thoughts, and no soul to share with those he raised from the dead? It took him nothing, nothing, to maintain these many bodies.
How could this be?
“Thank you for visiting, Sister,” came her brother’s voice from above. He went down the steps of the staircase slowly, savoring his grand entrance. “But you really should have waited at home.”