Mistress of Bones by Maria Z. Medina - XXXVII. The Witch With No Face

XXXVII
THE WITCH WITH NO FACE

DAYS EARLIER
“I wonder what happens now,” Nereida de Guzmán said. “Will

you die along with your host, Witch?”
The Faceless Witch had no wish to find out.
Panic overtook her as she awoke in her own body. Painful gulps of air barely made it past her throat—the slits of her nose were of no use, darkness enveloped her for she had no eyes, claustrophobic silence formed an impenetrable wall around her thoughts for she had no ears. She only had that mouth, that toothless mouth, working to suck in more air, and her hands, wrinkled and attached to stick-thin arms, clawing at her throat as if they could force the air inside. This weak, sagging body that had begun its existence so many decades past. This hated bucket of flesh, good for nothing but burning with white-hot rage.
How dare De Guzmán? How dare De Anví? The rage spread through the tethers connecting her to so many of Cienpuentes’s inhabitants, spreading from her consciousness like spiderwebs. A bounty of minds prime for her taking. Masks. Hah! Her power had nothing to do with masks, and everything to do with dreams.
To enter into a contract with the Faceless Witch was to ingest a dream. The mask was simply an added point of pride. She, who had no face, would hide the faces of those who granted her the use of their bodies.
But she did not need the mask.
Triumph surged in the dark, silent box of her mind when she found De Anví. She tasted revenge as clearly as the concoctions she was forced to drink to keep her body alive.
How sweet it would be to take control of him. To use his hands to squeeze the life out of his sweetheart, to see Nereida de Guzmán’s face as the only person faithful to her committed the ultimate betrayal.
Shivers of anticipation racked the Witch’s frail, old body.
And when De Guzmán lay dead in his hands, by his hands, then she’d allow her dreams to rot the count from the inside out. She’d allow him plenty of time to wish himself dead. Yes, this she would relish like nothing before.
But De Anví’s mind wasn’t so easy to overtake, even with the tether connecting them. While sliding into a willing host took no effort, trying to get into the count was like slamming into a brick wall. The Witch hadn’t attempted the latter since she was a child and took her first body, and realized now it had been too long since De Anví last consumed one of her dreams. Punching into his mind was taking too much out of her—her eviction out of Sío de Guzmán had weakened her.
Later then, she decided, when she had recuperated some energy. Let them think they were free from retribution—their shock would make her revenge all the more delicious.
Instead, she searched for Isile Manzar. For there must be a reason Nereida de Guzmán had chosen this moment to kill her brother—if she’d wanted to, she could’ve slain him long ago—so something must have changed. She would pry the truth out of De Guzmán first. And since De Guzmán was staying at De Gracia’s, and De Gracia himself had never partaken of her dreams, who better to gain access to the household than the marquess’s dear artist friend?
Because the temptation to seek the Faceless Witch’s dreams had proved too strong for him to resist. They all succumbed to it eventually—Sío de Guzmán, De Anví, Manzar.
Manzar put up a fight, much like De Anví had, but the remains of the Witch’s dreams were too fresh, his mind too malleable. It was still a wall, but brittle. Breakable.
And then she was inside. Noises bloomed in her ears, smells filled her chest. She savored them, as she always did, before forcing the body’s eyes open. Victory, so close to her fingers. They would pay. Oh, how they would pay.
The tethers snapped all at once.
The Witch stumbled. She reached for the tethers and found nothing.
The web of minds linked to hers—gone. The connection to her own body—gone. She was jostled to one side by the crowd, then to the other. She tried to find the connections again—nothing. Waves of dread rolled through her. She reached a wall and leaned against it, gasping.
Without tethers, how was she to go back to her body? To any other body? Even now, Isile Manzar’s consciousness dug into the edge of her thoughts, trying to claw back into control. Sweat broke over her brow. This … this takeover was meant to be temporary.
Had her true body chosen this moment to die?
No, the Witch reasoned, pushing away from the wall and directing her steps toward De Gracia’s house. This strange situation must be due to the energy she had spent trying to force her way into De Anví and then into Manzar. It did not mean the tethers were truly gone and she was stuck in this body forever. She only needed some rest. Simply that, rest.
She repeated this self-assurance with every step, as every sight, every sound, and even the taste of smoke intruded into her thoughts, her senses unnervingly unfiltered. There had always been a layer between her and the outside world, a screen filtering everything through her host’s thoughts. That buffer was gone now. She had no way to know whether the objects around her evoked desire or hatred in her host, if the voices rising in the air were familiar or those of strangers. She had been walled off, Manzar’s memories locked behind his stubborn mind.
The Witch was left clueless.
She didn’t enjoy the feeling. She hated being disoriented as much as she hated her own body. Gods damn De Anví and De Guzmán. At least De Anví would pay no matter what—the poisoning had already been set in motion before she was locked away from her tethers. The Witch hoped that he still had some of her dreams at hand, for when the pain got too severe and he dipped into them as a means of escape, they would only feed the sickness and worsen his suffering.
The thought put a spring into her step. Soon she was knocking on De Gracia’s front entrance and then was ushered into one of the parlors.
She hadn’t been waiting for long—and that time had been well spent imagining all the ways she would torture the truth out of De Guzmán—when a commotion arose from the front entrance: a pounding against the door, the footman’s feet, terse words she couldn’t quite catch. Curiosity overwhelmed the simmering rage in her veins, and the Witch slipped out of the parlor in time to see Azul del Arroyo charging down the corridor toward the stairs. When the footman didn’t follow, the Witch did.
Del Arroyo strode along the second-floor hallway, ignoring several doors and turning the corner. A door was open up ahead, and the Witch chanced a peek around the corner. Del Arroyo had entered one of the rooms, not bothering to close the door behind her. Soon, a ruckus followed. How intriguing. So late at night and Del Arroyo took no care to silence her actions, was unconcerned if servants became curious, lured by the noise.
Approaching the open door, the Witch could savor the mystery in every crash, every thud, every thump emanating from the room. Another door opened, slamming against the wall. Ah, definitely not her guest room, then, if there was a connecting room.
Yes, she thought once she had looked inside, this room was most definitely not Del Arroyo’s—one did not need to lay waste to one’s own property in the search for something. The girl had sought the key to the second room, the Witch assumed, glancing through the doorway. Paintings hung on the walls, and the furniture was beyond elegant. She waited for the tingle of recognition, but Manzar’s thoughts remained closed to her. If he had ever set foot in this room, the Witch could not tell. And surely, this room must belong to De Gracia himself, so why had Del Arroyo wrecked it instead of simply asking to be shown in?
Hmm-hmm. How delicious, all these questions winding into a great knot for her to unravel. She stepped into the room and reached the second doorway.
Azul del Arroyo stood by a big desk, lost in thought as she glanced down at a series of finger-shaped things spread over a cloth.
Yes, how delicious.
“Breaking into your brother’s rooms, Sirese Del Arroyo?” she asked. “How unsisterly.”
Del Arroyo jumped and spun to face her. “What are you doing here?”
“What are those?” the Witch asked.
Del Arroyo’s look dripped with disgust. “Fingers.”
The Witch could wait no longer. She went to the desk and held one up. The surface was smooth and solid under pressure. “A sculpture? Painted clay?”
“Bone.”
Gods. The Witch dropped the finger immediately. It thudded against the desk, then rolled away. She wiped her own digits on Isile’s shirt and rushed to follow Del Arroyo out of De Gracia’s room, around the corner, into another room. By the time the Witch caught up with her, Del Arroyo was kneeling by a trunk, searching its contents.
“It’s not on me to judge De Gracia’s interests,” the Witch said, allowing the gathering shiver in her nape to run down between her shoulder blades, “but are you sure it’s bone?”
“What are you doing here?” was the reply.
“Is this your room?” the Witch asked, then noticed dark smears on the girl’s breeches and hands. “Have you been wounded? Your hands…”
Del Arroyo paused her search. “It’s nothing.”
Soon she had appropriated a dagger from whomever this room belonged to—De Guzmán, possibly, judging by the blue waistcoat now lying discarded beside the trunk—and returned to the hallway outside.
“I was waiting for De Gracia when I heard you come in,” the Witch told her as they made their way back over to the stairs.
“Do you know where he is?”
The Witch laughed. “I wouldn’t be waiting here if I knew where he was, yes?”
Down the stairs they went, trotting like eager children until the sight of two footmen stopped Del Arroyo in her tracks.
“Sireses, please come back to the parlor,” one of them said. “The Marquess de Gracia will return shortly.”
And so, into the parlor they went. The Witch reckoned Manzar must’ve visited a lot—the room was cozier than the one she and the count had occupied during their visit days ago. This parlor was for close friends and dear family, not annoying visitors.
“Sister, stay put until I return, I beg you.” The footman’s words took the Witch aback. “I will explain everything—you have nothing to fear. Isile, I will talk to you later as well.”
Having said that, the man left, the snick of the door loud in the room.
“Did the footman lock us in? Why did he call you sister? Why would I want to talk to him?”
Del Arroyo appeared to find nothing strange in the situation. Instead, as if she were out for a stroll, she simply went for the window and opened it onto the patio.
“Have you no concern about all of this?” the Witch asked, going to her side.
“My brother is a necromancer,” she said, and, truthfully, the Witch wasn’t too aware of what happened next, other than she scrambled after Del Arroyo and asked her to explain herself.
“He kills people, then brings them back to life using their bones.”
Euphoria exploded inside the Witch, so strong her fingers tingled with it.
As she watched Del Arroyo fight De Gracia’s men, then accompanied her and her guard through Cienpé, the Witch’s mind whirled and disentangled everything she had learned. Plans flowed, hopes swelled.
Getting out of the room Azul and the stranger had left her in for the night proved to be somewhat of a hurdle. She had no tethers, but concentrating hard, the Witch found she could reach those sleeping nearby. Not Del Arroyo or her guard, for they had never partaken of her dreams, but with some time and a lot of energy, she was able to slip into someone else.
The feeling was unendurable, like being in two places at the same time. Nausea rolled her stomachs, the link so weak both bodies soaked in shivers and cold sweat. If the connection were to snap, like the tether to her body had, would her consciousness die along with it, adrift like the understars in the Void? One body heaved, the other retched. The pressure was insurmountable, Manzar’s mind using the opportunity to attempt to reclaim its territory.
The Witch wouldn’t let it. Manzar’s closeness to De Gracia was too convenient to lose. She fought back, and the connection between the bodies weakened further. Like a children’s tug-of-war, the Witch managed to bring one body to her room while she wavered in and out of the other’s mind. Drunkards’ dreams were so much easier to control.
The window was opened carefully, if in small jerks rather than the smooth motion she’d have preferred, then the Witch forced Manzar’s body to stand. She sent the drunken gent to pass out a street over and retreated fully into Manzar.
The trembling of her limbs abated, the racing pulse calmed. She felt Manzar hide in a corner and lick his wounds. And stay there, she added viciously, as if she could communicate with him. His body was young and strong, but so were any number of other bodies that had hosted her. His wasn’t special—once her need was met, Manzar was welcome to have it back.
She ran through Cienpé back to De Gracia’s residence. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since Del Arroyo and her guard locked her in the small room, but a fast glance at the sky told her Luck and Wonder were well on their way down, dawn a couple of hours away.
De Gracia was home, seemingly worried and frantic, a calculating gleam in his eyes. The Witch recognized it easily. She’d have preferred him angry, for angry people made mistakes, but, alas, at least he was willing to talk.
She was ushered into the same parlor they had escaped from, the window still open, a slight nightly breeze rustling her hair.
De Gracia seated himself on the opposite settee.
“I have a proposal for you,” the Witch wasted no time in telling him. “I know what you are, and I know who you want. You raise corpses; you are attempting to make your own body.” She watched carefully for his reaction, but it was as if he were a corpse himself. “I would like a body of my own too.” Giving voice to the hope that had carried her the whole night was like eating the most decadent dessert. She wanted more. “Raise a beautiful body for me, De Gracia.” A body with no mind of its own to fight her off, young, powerful, completely hers—a rebirth. Shivers of pleasure ran along her back, and she closed her eyes briefly. “If you will do this for me, I will give you your sister’s whereabouts.”
“I don’t haggle. I can find my sister on my own.”
The Witch gave him a sardonic smile. “Ah, but it will take time, and she is intent on escaping you, isn’t she? She’s cunning, that young woman. She might give you a chase you could easily avoid.”
De Gracia shrugged, unbothered. “That might be so, but in the end, I will still find her. Is that all?”
“Of course not. That was simply the initial lure. I feel we are similar, you and I, De Gracia.”
“I doubt that.”
“I’m willing to offer you something else in addition to Del Arroyo’s whereabouts.”
“And that would be?”
“It’s obvious by now that Isile Manzar is not in command of this body. Give me another one, one that fits my wishes, and I will return this one to him. Otherwise, you will never speak to him again. And you hold him in great esteem, don’t you?” the Witch added with a touch of malice.
“I hope you are bringing something else to the table, because that is no concern of mine.”
The Witch fought the blink of shock and the floundering of her thoughts. Had the footman not appeared unsurprised at Manzar’s appearance in the middle of the night? Had Manzar and De Gracia not been sitting so cozily when she and the count had visited? Were they not always together at gatherings? “You have no wish to see your darling free?”
De Gracia laughed, a surprisingly genuine sound. “Is that what you thought? That we are lovers?”
The Witch cursed herself. “I can see you are not, and that you hold no regard for your friends.”
“Oh, I regard them well, and I shall miss his company and his words. But as I told you before, I do not haggle, whoever you are—and who are you?”
“You may know me as the Faceless Witch,” she answered to earn herself some time, her thoughts chasing each other into never-ending loops as she tried to come up with a new plan.
“Ah yes, of course, the Conjurer of Dreams. I should have guessed,” De Gracia said. “I’m sorry our meeting must be cut short, but I have other things to do.”
“Wait,” the Witch cried. “You want to make a body, don’t you? Those fingers in your study are proof. But without a mind, it will simply be a puppet. What if I could help you give it thought? Dreams are made of thoughts, after all, and dreams are what I do best.”
Or she hoped she still could. Was her gift of dreams dependent on her consciousness, her essence, or her body? If the latter, she was truly, royally screwed.
De Gracia snorted. “I don’t want the body to think. I want it doing as I wish.”
The Void take this man. What was it going to take to crack him? “Why not simply make a doll out of wood, then?” the Witch asked in irritation. “Why not keep using these bodies, like your footman?”
“Humans are inefficient, flawed. My aim is to construct the perfect conduit for my will. A body made from the best pieces of the best bones.”
“Wouldn’t that still make it a human—an inefficient—body?”
“Ah, but not all our bones are made of humanity.”
The Witch leaned in, unable to hide her curiosity. “How so?”
De Gracia made a sweeping gesture. “Anchor seeps into the land, Conjurer of Dreams, and the land feeds us. We all carry vestiges of the gods within our bones—some more than others.”
Sergado de Gracia wanted to make a god. The idea was too absurd. And yet, he must know it could be possible; otherwise, why continue with his plan? He must be able to sense which bones carried the gods’ essences within. A new god, made from human bones. And what of the gods’ powers? Would this new god have them too? Was that his true aim? To somehow become a god himself?
And why was he speaking so honestly about his plans?
It came to her notice, then, that two armed guards had slipped into the room behind her, and the answer to her last question became alarmingly obvious: She would not survive this meeting unless she thought fast. Faster.
“If this is your aim,” she said, uncaring of the panic betrayed by her hurried words, “you should make sure it does have a mind you can take over, one that supersedes the gods’ will, or they might decide to steal your body away from you. How else would you make sure it remains under your control?”
De Gracia frowned and the Witch thanked the gods, the moons, and every piece of Anchor she had ever seen at court.
“If we work together,” she continued, “we could make these godly bodies—or simply the one, I do not care for godhood—and rid ourselves of our current shells. A body with the possibility of thought would be easy to claim for yourself, wouldn’t it? Think of this, De Gracia. Think of the possibilities death and dreams could achieve if we work together.” Offering her hand, she allowed a faint smile. “And I will even tell you where Azul del Arroyo has gone.”
THE PRESENT
Two Blue Bastards waited outside Almanueva’s main entrance, their shoulders leaning against their pikes in boredom. They barely paid the Witch any attention as she was ushered inside. De Gracia took his sweet time to receive her, and when he did, he simply asked if she had taken care of making the arrangements for their travel.
She had, the Witch assured him, somewhat peeved at De Gracia’s lack of awe and gratitude that she had achieved so much in so little time. It had been two days since the marquess was escorted back to Almanueva and ordered to remain within. Didn’t he realize how much effort went into arranging horses and carts with Manzar’s thoughts hammering her mind the moment she stopped thinking for too long?
She had checked on her body, the pathetic carcass that used to host her mind. A body so useless the midwife would have thrown it into the river if not for her mother’s pity. She had covered the remains with a sheet and paid her servants for months in advance, making sure they would not open the door if they wanted their blissful dreams to continue.
Now the Witch and De Gracia were ready to leave. De Gracia had told her they could not stay in Cienpuentes, not with Del Arroyo around, not until he found a way to nullify what she could do to his “studies.” And while the Witch wasn’t privy to what had transpired inside De Gracia’s second house, she couldn’t help but feel there had been more to the story than Del Arroyo and Virel Enjul calling the Blue Bastards on him.
But it didn’t matter, did it? The Witch would figure it out. She would figure him out, same as she had figured out everyone else, and then she would know how to own him. The excitement and hope at the thought of a new body had faded into cautious optimism, but the curiosity—ah, that remained in full force.
Four horses were brought out—for her, De Gracia, his main guard, and his treasure trove of bones—and then off they went, out in the streets and toward Bremón.
The blue tabards charged with keeping Sergado confined to Almanueva didn’t blink when their four horses trotted out right under their noses. Didn’t try to stop them, didn’t even twitch.
The hairs at the back of her neck stood on end. Even Manzar faltered in his incessant hammering against her mind.
And then a new voice, a melody of a female voice that brought meadows and wildflowers and sunny skies and gods to mind, spoke within the Witch’s head.
Well, well. What do we have here?