“So you agree?” he said.
“I’m not convinced I need your help. You ask a lot, and you offer very little.”
Another cunning smile. “What if I brought you something to help you defeat your enemies?”
Naila waved the pistol and nodded at the rifle, still slung over her shoulder. “I have all the weapons I need.”
“Yes, I see that you’ve discovered an ancient armory. That will surely help,” Camastrón said. “But you will be outnumbered all the same. Your enemies will carry devices of their own. Even if I join you, we’ll be at a disadvantage.”
“And?”
“And what if I told you that beneath the very floor of the temple there is another secret repository? Not guns, not artifacts of any kind. But containing another, greater weapon. One I know how to control.”
Chapter Twenty
Carbón studied Lady Mercado’s face as Thiego stepped in off the balcony. Her proud expression had dissolved at the first mention of the Guardian of Secrets, and her face fell further when Pedro brought Thiego out. For his part, the young cabalist looked confused, glancing briefly at Mercado before settling on Carbón with a question in his eyes. Daniel, Iliana, and Grosst seemed to notice Mercado’s strange reaction, and turned to Carbón as well.
Alone among them, Mercado’s servant, Mota, kept his face neutral. Maybe he knew his mistress’s secret, maybe not, but he had mastery of his emotions. Lady Mercado had chosen that one well.
“I told you in confidence,” Mercado said. There was strain in her voice. “How could you break my trust?”
“I haven’t broken your trust,” Carbón assured her. “I swear by the Elders, not a word has slipped from my mouth. It’s up to you to share or not. I’m only asking you to listen to what Thiego has to say.”
“How can I trust you when you’d ambush me like this?”
“You’re right, and I’m very sorry. But this is a desperate situation, and you must know everything. I need you to listen, and if this is the only way . . . please, every last detail must be laid out on the table. If after that you still decide to support Naila Roja, there’s nothing else I can do or say. But I’ll know I tried.”
“Don’t you try to manipulate me like that,” Mercado said. “Naila is getting nothing. I’m throwing in my lot with Quintana. Assuring our survival and stability. That’s why I oppose you, nothing more.”
“Supporting Quintana? You’re doing exactly the opposite,” Carbón said. “Look at you, always rigidly following the code. Fine, I let you throw that boy off the balcony, I didn’t fight you when you refused to punish Naila for her part in the rebellion. But not anymore. This time, you’ll wreck everything.”
“Naila can be contained. She doesn’t have as much power as she thinks.”
“I’m not talking about that. Even if we somehow survive Naila, let her rule the Luminoso, turning our backs on this opportunity will strangle the city in the long run.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I don’t know. Not even the Elders knew for sure—and before you accuse me of blasphemy again, the Guardian of Secrets would say the same thing. He’s standing right in front of you—go ahead, ask him.”
“Could one of you explain what this is all about?” Thiego asked. “What’s this secret you’re talking about? I’m completely in the dark.”
“I think we all are,” Grosst said from her seat in front of Daniel’s desk.
“I’ll lay out my own secrets, first,” Carbón said, still addressing Mercado. “Once they know mine, it will lessen the shock of hearing yours.”
He glanced around the room to see them all staring, riveted, Iliana most of all. He cringed inside to think of what she might think of him when he’d finished. Better to lay it out as succinctly as possible.
“I was born in the dumbre.”
Light dawned in Thiego’s eyes. “So that’s what I saw on your face when we were going on about the castes.”
Carbón nodded in acceptance. “My parents were both from the lower terraces. Nobody of note—they loved me, of course, but could do nothing to help. Then they died, and my situation turned desperate. I was fortunate enough to secure work in the breaker—if you can call that hell fortune—sorting coal from culm until my hands bled and I could scarcely breathe through the coal dust. That would have been my entire life if there hadn’t been an accident at the mine when I was still a boy. It almost killed me, left me unmanned.”
He pulled his shirttails out of his pants and pulled down his trousers enough to show the scar that began just below his naval and disappeared into his smallclothes.
“Good hell,” Daniel muttered. “Am I the only one who doesn’t want to hear this?”
Pedro gave him a hard look. “Nobody is asking you to do anything, cousin, except to not insult a man who is in every way your better.”
Carbón lifted his hand so that Pedro would ease off. “It’s all right—I don’t want to tell it any more than Daniel wants to hear it. My father—my adopted father, I mean—waited until I’d recovered on his estate, then took me into the Rift to show me our history and test my mettle. To see what kind of man I would become. He then let everyone think I’d been adopted from the upper terraces. These were the years after the plagues, and there were plenty of orphans. Nobody ever questioned him.”
“So that’s why you were so soft with the nipper from the mines,” Iliana said. “And why you pay the men and boys from the dumbre more than you need to.”
“I like to think it’s because my heart isn’t made of coal.” He turned back to Mercado. “There. That’s my ugly secret, and if people think less of me in the future, so be it. My goal is to break down the divisions of the city anyway—it’s the only way to regain what we once had.”
“Yes, you’ve made your goals abundantly clear.” Some of the rigidity had reentered her voice, and he needed to press forward before the opportunity was lost.
“Do you have something you’d like to share?” he asked.
“No.”
“You don’t have to do it in front of everyone. The rest of us will leave the room if you’d like.”
“No.”
“For the love of . . . do you have to be so stubborn?”
Mercado folded her arms. “Resolved, not stubborn. Someone has to stay strong when everyone else is wavering. What I told you, I told you in confidence. I expect you to keep it that way. It has nothing to do with this situation, any more than does your accident at the mines. That was an irrelevant story, meant to gain sympathy, nothing more.”
Carbón fought to control his anger, knowing he couldn’t afford to alienate her further. Instead, he forced his tone to remain conciliatory. “Will you please listen to what Thiego has to say, at least?”
Lady Mercado licked her lips. She gave the cabalist a sideways glance without fully meeting his gaze. “What more is there to say?”
Carbón seized the opening. “I told Mercado everything that happened in the Rift,” he said to Thiego, “but she knows nothing of what Naila did at the temple.”
“I heard it all from the balcony,” he said.
“Tell her about Naila—maybe she’ll change her mind.”
“I know all about Naila Roja,” Mercado said.
“Did you know she attacked a pair of geometers?” Thiego said. “She found her way into a hidden vault in the temple, stole weapons, and shot a gun at Kara and Maralisa.”
“Why would she do that?” Mercado asked.
“Because they were trying to stop her from stealing artifacts. Naila won’t leave the artifacts alone—she’s been into the vaults before, trying to get her hands on things she knows nothing about and that are my responsibility, not hers.”
Carbón expected Mercado to say that the Master of Whispers had the right to remove any artifact that she wished, but instead a cloud darkened her face.
“Kara and Maralisa—are they all right?” Mercado asked.
“Kara is dead,” Thiego said in a
grim tone. “Maralisa ran for her life, or she’d be dead, too.”
Mercado closed her eyes. “What kind of gun? Something from the Elders, you mean?”
“An artifact,” Thiego said, nodding.
“It was grotesque,” Iliana broke in. “Like Kara’s bones had dissolved and she’d melted into a puddle of body parts.”
“That’s the worst of it,” Thiego continued, “but not the most dangerous part. You think it’s a problem Lord Carbón went into the Rift to look at the artifact? A problem that we’re talking to the foreigners?” He nodded in Grosst’s direction. “How about the fact that Naila allowed several of de Armas’s men into the temple and sent them off with weapons of the Third Plenty?”
“Then why are you here instead of trying to stop them?” Mercado demanded.
“Because we stopped them on the road, yeah?” Grosst said, although they hadn’t yet received confirmation of that fact, only that her fellow Basdeenians had received the message. “We held ’em before they got to the Quintana Way.”
“Thank the Elders for that.” Mercado shook her head. “What the devil is Naila thinking? Didn’t she learn anything from last fall? Someone has to get through to her.”
Carbón could no longer control his anger. “Are you seriously . . .? How would Naila have learned her lesson when you wouldn’t let us stop her? She joined Salvatore and de Armas in attacking the city, and didn’t receive one iota of punishment for her crimes. Instead, you let her profit from it. She came out on top. Of course she was going to make another play for power. It was only a matter of time.”
“Yes, perhaps it was a mistake,” Mercado said. “I had . . . other priorities.”
“You and your damn code,” Carbón said. “You can fight me if you’d like, call me whatever kind of blasphemer you want, but I won’t follow it for one minute longer.”
“Please don’t stop us, Your Grace,” Iliana said. “Help us put an end to Naila once and for all.”
“And help us bring about the Fourth Plenty,” Thiego said. “It’s not blasphemy, it’s the desire of the Luminoso.”
Mercado cast a glance at Mota, whose perpetual scowl had deepened into something approaching worry. They’d convinced him, that much was obvious.
“Mota,” Carbón said. “You know we’re right—tell your mistress.”
The man hesitated. “That’s not my place. But . . . the situation does seem grave.”
Carbón seized on this opening. “You see, there’s not one person in this room, not even Daniel, not even Mota, who thinks we can let Naila get away with this.”
“You’re right, something must be done,” Mercado said at last.
“And quickly,” Carbón said.
“But it will be done my way. We can’t simply move against the temple, send in armed men to find Naila and drag her out by the hair. Attacking the temple would throw us into even greater chaos.”
He didn’t know if he should allow himself to hope or not. Why had Mercado been so hard, so cruel that night when she threw the young man from the dumbre into the Rift, but was so soft now, when they faced a threat graver than if a Scoti army had suddenly appeared on the other side of the Great Span? Was Mercado really that deferential to Naila’s status as Master of Whispers?
He forced his jaw to unclench. “Then what, exactly, do you propose?”
Mercado gave a decisive nod. “We will go down to the temple and speak with the woman. Once she sees that the entire city is united against her, she will surely abandon her plans.”
Carbón couldn’t help the groan that came out of his mouth.
#
Iliana was roiling with emotions as she joined the procession leaving the Torre estate. Pedro and Daniel stayed behind—but only after Carbón whispered something in the younger cousin’s ear, presumably instructions to carry on the struggle should Mercado’s diplomatic attempts fail. As they would. And should they fail in such a way as to leave them all dead. Which Iliana feared.
Grosst also stayed. Her crippled foot would only slow them, and when Iliana glanced over her shoulder, she saw the woman furiously pecking at the buttons on her strange communicating device. No doubt warning the Basdeenian encampment on the far side of the Rift that Quintana’s leadership was about to undergo a radical change.
Mota led the small group, taking a lantern from Torre’s guards at the gates, as dusk was falling, and shadows were deepening across the hillside. Lady Mercado followed. She’d retrieved a heavy cloak from the servants, and it swept behind her, giving the impression of a queen among her entourage.
Lord Carbón caught up with her, and the two soon carried on a heated discussion in low voices, with Iliana’s master still trying to convince his fellow Quinta lord of the folly of negotiating.
That left Iliana and Thiego at the rear. She couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder when they’d rounded the corner of the first steep staircase and began a switchback descent through a defile that left them in shadows. What if Naila had been lurking outside the Torre estate? She could come up behind them and melt the whole party with a single shot.
“Do you have the ring?” she asked Thiego.
He held up his hand to show her. It had turned a brassy color again, the energy absorbed by Naila’s gun bled back into the air, apparently. He held Iliana back to let distance build between them and the other three.
“Grosst slipped me an artifact, too,” he said. “It’s on a chain under my tunic. Said it will burn hot if someone tries to sneak up on us.”
“Did you see Grosst using her device when we left?” Iliana asked. “The Basdeenians must be about done with us by now. Written us off as superstitious, benighted idiots who deserve what’s coming to us.”
“They need us, too. Don’t forget that. Before they needed our coal, now they’ll want access to the Elders’ furnace.”
“Maybe they’ll negotiate with the Scoti once the raiders sack and enslave the city,” Iliana said glumly.
“Grosst gave me one of her artifacts—she must not have given up on us entirely.”
“Good point,” Iliana said. That brightened her outlook a little.
Thiego continued to hold her back several paces from the others and spoke in a low voice. “What was your master talking about back there? What’s this about Lady Mercado’s secret?”
“No idea. I didn’t even know His Grace’s own secret until now.”
She was still in turmoil about Carbón’s revelation. It was ridiculous to hold onto prejudices about the lower terraces when her own family had very nearly been sent down from the Forty, but she couldn’t help but look at him in a new light. That, even more than the fact that he’d been unmanned in the mine accident, had shaken everything she’d known about him, or thought she’d known. By the Bones of the Elders, Lord Carbón had been born into the dumbre.
You thought you loved the man, she reminded herself. Isn’t he still the same person as ever?
“Everything will change after today,” she said. “One way or another.”
Thiego was apparently still turning over the question of Mercado’s secret. “Some sort of code violation, I’m guessing. That’s why she acts so strange when she sees me. Guilt. Maybe that’s why she wants to negotiate with Naila, so she doesn’t make herself a hypocrite.”
The two Quinta lords had stopped their argument up ahead, and Iliana and Thiego fell silent, too, rather than risk being overheard as they caught up with the others.
The Forty terrace was surprisingly quiet as they descended, but Iliana didn’t think much of it until they approached the upper wall, and the nervous, jittery watchmen at the gate claimed that a cabalist had come through a few minutes earlier, warning about witherers as the sun gave up its final, dim light and left the city in darkness. The watch passed the group through with a warning to hurry indoors.
“Sounds like one of Naila’s tricks,” Iliana said. “A lie to get people off the street so she can go about murdering people undisturbed.”
�
��There are frequently witherers about,” Mercado said. “It might be a real warning.”
“I suppose it could be,” Iliana said, disbelieving, but wanting to offer a conciliatory note.
“Stay together just in case,” Thiego said. “Those of us with underworld bracelets can keep them at bay.”
They picked up their pace and came down through the Thousand to find doors closed, garlic on strings and nailed to posts, and half the gaslights unlit, as if the lighters had fled for their homes as word of the witherers spread through the Thousand. Not only did it serve to empty the streets, but it would keep cabalists away from the temple, as well, Iliana thought.
They reached the plaza outside the temple to find it deserted and dark. A few lights burned from windows inside the building itself, but it had a desolate, deserted air. Mota held out his lamp and chased away shadows from the plaza, while Thiego waved something ahead of him with his right hand, with the ring held outstretched on his left.
He gestured to a spot some forty or fifty feet south of the temple steps. “There’s something over there. Or someone.”
“Yeah, I see it too,” Mota said. He handed off the lamp to Carbón and drew his sword and pistol. “Stay here, all of you.”
The others waited while Mota approached whatever it was he’d spotted. Mercado had fallen silent since leaving the watch. She was rubbing her hands together, as apparently nerves were getting the better of her.
Good. Maybe she’d reconsider this disastrous idea of negotiating with Naila.
Mota called over, his voice darker than the shadows in which he stood. “You’d better come look at this, Your Grace.”
They made their way over, and Carbón lowered the lamp to the flagstones. Iliana peered over his shoulder and tight bands constricted her chest at what she saw. It was Dorano, the man they’d sent to warn Carbón, and later ordered back down to keep vigil at the temple. There was a hole in his chest, and his eyes stared glossily up at the night sky. Behind him, another dead body, her neck broken at a gruesome angle.
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