Reyna laughed, digging her heels in as Blaise tried to nudge her off the chair and take her place. “What were you drawing over there?” She indicated the sketchbook on the bed, hoping to change the topic.
Blaise, mercifully, let her. Returning to the bed, she held up the book so Reyna could see its open pages. Reyna recoiled. There was a dead man, completely naked, his torso dissected to show his innards: ribs, lungs, heart, liver, intestines. The detail was gruesome, but neatly labeled.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Blaise said, beaming.
“No!” Reyna exclaimed. “You should warn me before you show me these things!”
Blaise laughed. She leafed through several pages before commenting, “Do you know there are only eight physicians in Cortes? Eight, Reyna. For a city this size.”
Reyna kept her eyes on her parchment, waiting for inspiration to strike. “That can’t be correct.”
“It is. And most of them serve the castle. Or St. Medina Parish. Tell me, who helps the people who are not rich?”
Reyna pointed out the obvious. “Master Mori?”
“Yes, he’s the exception,” Blaise conceded. “But for every Uncle Mori, there are fifty charlatans out there. Or midwives who can’t birth kittens properly, let alone a human baby. We need more doctors.”
The laughter had gone from her friend’s voice. Reyna looked over her shoulder. “How much do you have saved?”
Blaise closed her book with a snap. “Enough for a year.”
The medical school at Caffa required three years of early study, followed by a more rigorous five years, and finally a year under the supervision of an experienced physician. Nine years total. Reyna had more gold than she would ever need in twenty lifetimes.
“Blaise—”
“No, Reyna.” Her expression was set in a way that had Reyna biting her tongue. It was an old argument, one she had yet to win.
There was a knock on the door. Jaime stuck his head in before Reyna could answer, and addressed Blaise.
“Did you bring a horse?”
Blaise smiled, because girls could never help smiling at Jaime. “I walked.”
“Too dark for that now,” Jaime said. “I have to talk to your uncle anyway. I’ll take you home.”
They agreed to meet downstairs momentarily. Before Jaime could duck out of the chamber, Reyna asked, “What do you have to see Master Mori about?”
A dull flush worked its way up Jaime’s neck. He frowned at her. “Men . . . things. Honestly, Reyna.”
“What sort of—” Reyna began, but the door closed before she could finish her question. She grinned at Blaise, pleased with herself. “It never grows old, needling . . . What’s wrong?”
Blaise, no longer smiling, sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m glad I saw you today. We nearly missed each other.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going home tomorrow. First thing. Uncle Mori’s taking me.”
Blaise did not mean down the hill to St. Soledad. She meant home to Montserrat. Reyna stifled her disappointment. She could not expect her friends to always be around when she returned. She was lucky Jaime was here and not off on expedition. Still . . .
“You’ll give your maman my love? When are you coming back?”
Blaise dropped her head into her hands.
Panicked, Reyna shot to her feet and hurried to her friend’s side. She put an arm around her. “What is it?” Was someone sick? Had someone died?
Blaise spoke into her hands, her words muffled. Reyna heard this: “I’m never coming back Maman wants me to stay in Montserrat and be a midwife like her and I’m going to deliver a thousand babies and marry a goat herder and then I’ll grow old and die and that will be it that is my life forever and ever.”
“Oh no!” Dismayed, Reyna pulled Blaise up by the shoulders so that she could see her face. No tears, but Blaise’s eyes were full of misery. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I didn’t want to ruin your homecoming” was her glum confession.
This was terrible news. Despite her village roots, Blaise was a city dweller. She loved Cortes: the immensity of it, the people, the noise. Even, strangely, the smells. But that was Blaise. How could this have happened? “What did your uncle say? Can’t he help?”
“He tried. She’s put her foot down.” Blaise pressed her palm to her forehead. “I love babies. You know I do. It’s just . . . there’s so much else I don’t know, and I want to know it. When there’s plague in a city, why do some fall ill and not others? Why do some die and not others? Or . . . how do I cut off a leg without killing someone? How do I sew it back on? I know it’s been done before. Uncle Mori was starting to teach me. Then Maman sent her letter and . . .”
“Have you said these things to her?” Reyna said.
“I sent her a letter. So did Uncle Mori. It’s no use. I wasn’t supposed to stay in Cortes this long to begin with.”
They sat side by side on the edge of the bed. Reyna said quietly, “What can I do?”
“Nothing.” Blaise leaned sideways, rested her head on Reyna’s shoulder. “I can’t think of a single way out of this. She needs the help, Reyna. And she is my mother.”
* * *
It was much later, and with a far heavier heart, that Reyna picked up her quill. Knowing strangers would read her words, she wrote this:
Captain,
I am safe at home on del Mar. I’m sorry I worried you. It was not my intent, given your many kindnesses, to add to your burden. My deepest apologies.
She signed the letter Reyna, Tower of Winds, Kingdom of St. John del Mar.
Nine
“THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE, Master Sabas. How am I supposed to clean this?” Reyna spoke to the old explorer whose cobwebbed domain she had been assigned to tidy. She had thought she’d come prepared this morning. Dressed in her oldest shirt and trousers and with a sack full of rags. Braced for a day of drudgery, of boredom.
There was no tidying this. It couldn’t be done, not if she lived twenty lifetimes. This chamber was one of the tower’s three storage vaults. The farthest underground and the least visited, if the thickness of the dust was any indication. Centuries’ worth of discards filled the space: books, instruments, furniture. Heaps of furniture. Mountains of furniture. Odd bits of statuary loomed around every corner. Paintings moldered in their frames. The only light came from candles spiked onto iron floor stands. Reyna’s mind shied away from what would happen if one of those stands fell over in a place like this.
Master Sabas did not look overwhelmed by the task ahead. But then, it was not his task to complete. “Clean?” he repeated. “Oh no, I wouldn’t waste your skills on something so mindless. That I will save for . . . ah. There you are. Late again, boy.”
Jaime strolled toward them, yawning. He was also dressed for labor, his white shirt so thin from use and repeated washings that she could see through it to his skin. Jaime had brought a broom, carried over his shoulder like a fishing pole. He stopped when he saw her. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“Being persecuted,” she informed him. “What are you doing here?”
Jaime shifted his broom to the other shoulder. “Same.”
Master Sabas snorted. “Jaime is here because he cannot be trusted around Lord Fausto’s daughter.”
“Lord Fausto? But Ellisande is twelve.”
“Not Ellisande!” Jaime glared at her.
Reyna made a face. “Beatrice is married.” And older. At least twenty-five. What was Jaime thinking?
“Don’t you start.” Jaime turned to the older man, face full of resignation. “Where do you want me?”
Master Sabas pointed to a far corner. “And no napping,” he warned.
Jaime lifted a hand in a yes, yes gesture and trudged off, disappearing around a stack of broken chairs.
“As for you, my dear,” Master Sabas continued, “today will be more of a treasure hunt. There are quite a number of instruments lying about. A complete waste. Find what you ca
n: astrolabes, cross-staffs, sextants. Anything that might still be used. God’s blessings to you,” he said when Reyna sneezed twice in quick succession. “Once you’ve completed that, we’ll decide what can be repaired and what must be discarded permanently. The repairs are your responsibility.”
“Yes, sir” was all she said. What use complaining?
Master Sabas explained that she was to spend her mornings here until he said otherwise. The remainder of her day was not his business. He took himself off, but not before informing her that Jaime, too, was her responsibility.
Reyna had already spotted her first astrolabe. It lay half concealed behind a looking glass: a brass disk two feet in diameter with intricate engraving. Numbers and scales and symbols. Before its banishment to the vaults, it might have been among an explorer’s prized possessions, helping him find his way by measuring the distance between the land and the stars. It did not appear broken. Only dusty and forgotten. How did you come to be here? Reyna wondered, blowing away the first layers of dirt. When Jaime appeared, she said without looking at him, “Back to work, you. It’s my head if he finds you loafing.”
“I could sweep in here for a hundred years and no one would tell the difference.”
It was so close to her own opinion that she smiled at him. There was no sign of his broom. “I’ve never been in here before. Have you?”
“No, the doors are always locked.” He eyed the astrolabe. “What are you doing?”
When she told him, he decided to help her instead. They cleared away a space. Then Jaime, easily distracted, happened upon a rug. He could use a new rug, he told her. The one in his chamber was covered in paint. He unrolled it, snapped it in the air three times—the dust that emerged sent them both into coughing fits—and spread it onto the floor. They knelt at the edge and studied the images before them.
“Is she a siren or a harpy?” Jaime asked. “I can never remember the difference.”
A naked woman sat on a rock playing a lyre. The rock rose from the sea; among the waves were sailors trying desperately to swim to her, lured by her beautiful music. A ship, anchored and abandoned, drifted in the background.
“A siren,” Reyna decided.
“But she has legs. And . . . you know. Lady parts. No fish tail.”
“They’re not always painted with tails. Sometimes they look like humans. Sometimes they have feathers. I don’t think you want this rug. It has a hole.” She showed him a small tear by the ship.
Jaime’s gaze went from the tear back to the siren. He shook his head. “You’re the only one who would notice. Wait. Don’t harpies have feathers?”
“I suppose so,” Reyna acknowledged. That part was confusing. “But a harpy never has a lyre. The siren lures the sailors with her music and pretty face. The harpy is a hideous bird-woman who swoops from the sky and snatches people up.” She remembered the stories from their childhood: When a man vanishes so completely, it’s said he’s been carried off by the harpies.
“Huh. So the siren is a beauty and the harpy is a hag.”
“If that makes it simpler for you.” Reyna rose and dusted her hands on her trousers. “Quit ogling the rugs. We have work.”
The instruments they found were placed in three rapidly growing piles. The first, perfectly usable items that only needed a cleaning and polish. The second, instruments requiring mending. And the last, instruments beyond repair.
Reyna thought she saw a cross-staff on top of a bookshelf packed tight with scrolls. “Lift me up,” she said.
Gamely, Jaime grabbed her around her knees and raised her high, long enough for her to grab the cross-staff. He set her down. “Didn’t they feed you at Aux-en-villes? Carrying you is like carrying air.”
“I eat plenty,” she informed him. “What are you doing with Lord Fausto’s daughter?”
“Not one thing.” Jaime snatched the cross-staff from her and stomped off toward their clearing.
She followed him. “Jaime, her husband is scary.” She pictured him, a fat man with a loud voice and a quick temper. “You could get hurt if he finds out—”
“I said I’ve done nothing!” Jaime burst out. “I don’t try to see her. I don’t even like her. She follows me everywhere, leaves me these letters. And she doesn’t care who sees. No one believes me, and when I try to explain to Father, he throws a broom at me and sends me here!”
There had always been ladies coming out of Jaime’s ears, out of his pockets, falling from the cuffs of his trousers. Females around every corner with their batting eyelashes and tinkling laughter. But Reyna had known him a long time. Knew when he was genuinely upset. He gripped the cross-staff in both hands. It looked a breath away from being snapped in half.
She took it from him. “I believe you.”
“What?” He scowled down at her.
“I believe you,” she said again, and then, “You shouldn’t look so surprised when people say they believe you. It doesn’t help.”
Some of the tension eased from his shoulders. Jaime managed a half smile.
After closer scrutiny, she tossed the cross-staff onto the beyond-repair pile. Its pole was soft with rot. She asked, “Where is her husband?”
“Off island somewhere.” Jaime sat on a chest beside his rug. “He’s been gone a month.”
Which was likely why Jaime’s head remained on his shoulders.
“What are you going to do? He’s a mean one.”
A dejected shrug. “I dunno. Hide out here, I suppose. Hope she goes away.”
“The trouble is you’re too pretty.” She had told him this before. His hair flopped over his brows just so. His smile was full of mischief and invitation. A full-length looking glass propped up a corner of Reyna’s chambers. She had seen Jaime using it to practice that smile, many times.
His lips turned up at the corners. There it was. “Not as pretty as you,” he said.
She was not even a little flattered. With Jaime, sweet words were as common as fresh fish at the harbor. “Maybe that’s why Lord Braga sent you down here,” she suggested. “To hide. Your father’s protecting you.”
“Ha. You wouldn’t believe that if you’d heard his shouting.” He eyed her curiously as she inspected a mountain of moldering furniture. “Why do you believe me? No one else does.”
“I already know all the bad things about you.” She plucked a small statue off a table, examined it, put it back. “Why bother lying to me?”
There was a silence. Then, in a perfectly serious voice, he said, “I’ve missed you, Reyna.”
She glanced over and they smiled at each other. Something glinted in the corner of her eye. Brass? She backed up a step for a better look . . . and tripped, landing hard on the stone floor.
“Ow!”
Jaime was there in a thrice, pulling her to her feet. She rubbed her backside, and they stood looking down at what she had tripped on.
“Huh,” Jaime said. “That’s not unsettling.”
A life-size statue lay on its back. A soldier in armor, made of clay. The sculptor had not captured a traditional soldier pose: a man standing tall and proud as he gazed off into the distance, or a man with his sword at the ready. This man was in a crouch, arms flung up to shield his face . . . which someone had covered with a handkerchief. The way one would cover the newly dead, on a battlefield. Reyna tugged off the handkerchief and felt the hairs prickle at her nape.
“Jaime.” She knelt before the statue.
Jaime crouched beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“He looks like the raider on the Simona.” The same gathered knot above his head. The same wide face and sharp cheekbones. “And look at his sword,” she said. It hung from the statue’s belt without a scabbard to protect it. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
“No.” Jaime was certain. “Pretty fancy for a Coronad.”
The men of Coronado favored function over beauty. Their swords and daggers were as lethal as their neighbors’, but they did not bother with engravings or jewel-encruste
d hilts. Or elaborate chrysanthemum carvings, like on this sword here.
Not too far off, a door creaked open. Master Sabas come to check on them.
Jaime sprinted off, back to his broom. Reyna stayed where she was. There was another difference between this statue and the living raider. The raider had looked cold, commanding, a man who inspired fear. This statue . . . he looked frightened. Eyes wide with horror, mouth opened in a scream.
The shuffling footsteps grew louder. Reyna shook out the handkerchief. It was more grayish yellow than its original white, but it would have to do. She draped it carefully over the statue’s face, so that she would not have to see his terror.
Ten
REYNA’S MORNINGS WERE SPENT in the storage vaults, her afternoons in the humble parish churches of St. Soledad. Eight funerals over two days without a single body to bury. She dressed plainly, in black, a lace veil concealing her features, and kept to herself in a back pew. Some would say she was hiding. There was truth there. She did not want to make her presence known, to see the anger and bewilderment on the faces of grief-stricken mothers, wives, daughters, sons. Why are you here and not them? She had asked herself the same question with no answers. Halfway through the first funeral, someone slid into the pew beside her. She jumped slightly when a hand covered hers. Warm. Familiar.
Jaime.
Soberly dressed, hair neatly brushed, he said not a word. Only took her hand in his and held on tight. Through all eight funerals.
* * *
Reyna returned again and again to the statue. It was like a compulsion. She would gather up an instrument or two, then find herself back before the Coronad. Studying him. Studying his sword. How had he come to be here? Which explorer had brought him home? Had the sculptor used a muse? Or was this terrified man created purely from someone’s imagination?
With Jaime’s help she had pulled the statue upright. It had taken some doing, even with the two of them. The clay was solid, not hollow. There was much heaving and grunting involved. But leaving him on the floor had felt like an indignity to her. She ignored Jaime when he pointed out that the statue was not real.
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