Secrets of the Silver Lion

by Emma Otheguy

  Ivy took the legs, and Carmen lifted the other end. They grunted as they carried the throne slowly down the stairs, and the sounds of the dog chase grew farther away.

  Then suddenly there was an angry yowl, so loud that Carmen and Ivy stopped in place, four steps from the bottom. Carmen cocked her head to the side.

  “CARMEN SANDIEGO!” It was Le Chèvre, screaming upstairs.

  “Guess they found the decoy!” Carmen said cheerfully. “Let’s move.”

  They brought the throne safely to the bottom of the stairs and stood it up just as Le Chèvre appeared at the top of the staircase. He shook his fist, and the others crowded around behind him. Salvador de Burgos was red in the face, and it looked like his neck might burst out of its collar. El Topo leered at them, and Paperstar reached into her pocket and sent darts slicing through the air. De Burgos’s bodyguards tried to push through the crowd from behind, but Paperstar’s unpredictable windups stopped them.

  Le Chèvre started down the stairs, and Carmen had to act fast. “Ivy, help!” There was a heavy wooden table in the foyer. Its plaque said something about finest oak, but Carmen didn’t have time for reading right now. She and Ivy shoved as hard as they could and slid the table in front of the last step just as Le Chèvre hurtled to the bottom. He slammed into the desk and fell backwards, landing on his back. His head hit the marble and he yowled in pain.

  “Help me!” Le Chèvre called. “Carmen Sandiego has killed me!”

  “Oh, knock it off,” Paperstar growled, forcing Carmen and Ivy to duck as her darts came fast and furious.

  “Not much of a team player, is she?” Carmen said.

  “Not much at all,” Ivy remarked.

  El Topo raced down the stairs to help Le Chèvre, while Paperstar kept up a volley of paper, forcing Ivy and Carmen to jump around as if the marble were hot lava. One of the paper darts hit a glass-blown vase and knocked it off of its pedestal. It broke into a thousand pieces.

  “NOOOO!” Salvador de Burgos cried. He turned to his guards. “Héctor! Gonzalo! Save my precious things!”

  The bodyguards closed in around Paperstar, pinning her arms to her sides.

  “I’m on your team!” Paperstar screamed, kicking the bodyguards, but they held firm, marching her and her vase-breaking paper away from the stairwell while she shrieked and yowled.

  Ivy leaped up onto the pillar of the statue they had shoved in front of the door and stood on tiptoe. She reached for two swords that were crossed over the doorway. She grasped one in each hand, jumped down from the pillar, and tossed one to Carmen.

  “Anyone want to play now?” Carmen swung the sword right and left, enjoying the whooshing sound it made with each motion.

  “Not my SWORDS!” Salvador de Burgos yelled. This time he himself scurried down the stairs, flapping his arms like a mother whose baby was in danger. “Those are encrusted with rubies! They are priceless works of art and—young ladies, I demand you replace them!”

  “Not if you don’t replace what you stole,” Carmen replied. She pushed the statue out of the way, swung her sword overhead, and kicked the front door as hard as she could. The hinges shook, but the door didn’t budge.

  “I’ll worry about the door, Carm, you worry about him!” Ivy pointed and Carmen whirled around.

  De Burgos had hurled himself over his fine wooden desk and landed right in front of Carmen. He reached for the sword, but Carmen brought it straight down, and de Burgos jumped out of the way just in time—seconds later and the blade would have ripped his hand in two. He shrank away, but his eyes still flashed with anger.

  Carmen held the sword an inch from de Burgos’s face. She fixed him with an intense glare. “You think it’s just okay?” she hissed. “You think you can just steal a throne because you want to feel important sitting on it?”

  De Burgos held his hands up. “Señorita,” he whimpered, “you don’t understand. The people who had that throne didn’t appreciate it.”

  “Oh, they appreciated it all right,” Carmen said. “Do you know the curator at the museum was preparing to bring the throne to Bolivia for a special exhibit? Yeah. It was going to be the first time Bolivians would see the silverwork their ancestors created, and it was going to be the curator’s first chance to see her father’s country. You ruined that for her. How dare you.”

  De Burgos puffed out his chest, as if Carmen’s words had empowered him instead of shamed him. “Pero a throne of this importance, that was sat on by a king—if they only understood!”

  Carmen’s eyes flashed. “A king who forced people to do horrible things just so he could make more and more money. Like someone else I know.”

  “¿Quién? . . . me?” De Burgos’s eyes were wide and innocent. “I don’t make money off of art, I spend money!” He put his hand over his heart. “As I told you yesterday, I would never sell the Throne of Felipe. I stand by that promise.”

  “So you can pad your house with treasures that no one else gets to enjoy!” Carmen retorted.

  “Why, I gave a public tour just yesterday!”

  Carmen was scornful. “The first one in your entire life. I bet that was a cover-up, so the police wouldn’t suspect you. Well, too bad, I’m about to let everyone know what you’re up to. Carmen waved the sword around the first floor. “You just wanted to feel rich and important and you didn’t care who you hurt in the process. Pathetic.” Carmen thrust the sword forward, feigning an attack, and de Burgos jumped back. She walked steadily toward him, sword extended menacingly. “You stay right there.”

  “Pero—but—my things!”

  Carmen turned her back on de Burgos.

  “Yippee!” Ivy yelled. She had used an iron poker to slide open the door, and now their exit was wide open.

  “NOOO!” Salvador de Burgos yelled again, but Ivy and Carmen lifted the throne, balanced the swords on top, and heaved it toward the door.

  Outside, they set the throne down and slammed the door shut. “Phew, that thing is heavy,” Ivy complained. “Zack!” she called, waving down the carriage. “Come help!”

  Meanwhile Carmen was shoving the swords across the doorway, creating a temporary jam. It wouldn’t stop the likes of Paperstar, but Salvador de Burgos was too petrified of ruining the sword to try anything rash.

  Zack met them, tipping his hat like a real carriage driver. “Got some luggage, I see. Hey, wait a second.” He bent down. “You dropped something!”

  Ivy clapped her hand over her mouth and Carmen knelt down. The silver arrow was lying on the ground a few inches from the throne.

  “It fell off. I guess we set the throne down too hard.”

  “It was heavy,” Ivy said.

  Carmen scooped up the silver arrow tenderly, as if the shape were a living baby bird far from its mother. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “It’s not even scratched.”

  Across the plaza, a pale glow spread out from the horizon. Sunrise had begun, and the day would soon be bright and warm. A ray of light fell on the spot where the silver arrow had lay just a moment ago, and Carmen glanced down.

  There was a folded piece of paper. It fluttered slightly when a breeze came by. Without taking her eyes off the paper, Carmen tucked the silver arrow neatly inside her jacket, next to the silver castle. Two out of three, she thought. If only it could be three, for Milly’s sake.

  Carmen reached out and grabbed the folded paper.

  “Carm!” Ivy said sharply. “Look!”

  The metal blades of the two swords were bending like rubber. The doorknob shook.

  “I guess de Burgos didn’t like those swords as much as I thought,” Carmen said.

  “They’re coming!” Zack shouted. “Run!”

  Carmen scooped up the paper and raced after Zack, Ivy, and the heavy wooden throne. They heaved the throne inside the carriage, and Carmen and Ivy hopped in next to it as Zack shouted, “¡Arre! ¡Arre!” and the horse sprang into a canter.

  The sound of the hooves was deafening, and the carriage, not built for these spe
eds, swung uncontrollably in different directions. It was all Carmen and Ivy could do to hold the throne securely in place.

  But as they rounded the corner, Carmen sneaked one look behind her—the swords finally snapped, clattering to the ground—but VILE was far too late to catch them now.

  “Player,” Carmen called into her earpiece. “We’ll be needing flights to New York, stat—with any luck we’ll be there in time for Milly to prepare for the special exhibit in Bolivia—because we got the throne!”

  “HOORAY!” Player shouted, so loudly that Carmen almost had to rip out her comm-link earring, and Zack and Ivy whooped and hollered in agreement.

  Chapter 20

  CARMEN HAD NEVER SEEN a carriage move so fast. Zack kept yelling, “¡Arre! ¡Arre!” which he confessed he had learned from the man who had lent him the carriage. “It’s Spanish for ‘giddyup,’ he explained.” The horse maneuvered through the streets of Sevilla as if it were running from a fire. By the time they reached the city limits and turned onto an open country road, there was no sign of VILE. Zack jumped down from the driver’s seat and patted the horse.

  Now that they weren’t going so quickly, the carriage ride became much smoother and more comfortable. Zack was leading the horse on foot to a farmhouse in the distance. Carmen was glad; this horse deserved some oats and water after their madcap escape from Sevilla.

  “Carm,” Ivy whispered.

  Carmen lifted her head. It was hard to see Ivy over the throne’s bulky shape.

  “When are you going to look at that piece of paper?”

  Carmen looked around. They were on a rough dirt road that Zack had found once they left the city. They were surrounded by leafy vineyards, gray-green and sprawling in every direction around them. The carriage kicked up dirt from the road, giving the morning a hazy, dusty feel. Carmen could see to the horizon, and they were completely alone. She reached into her coat and retrieved the paper.

  It was folded tightly, with deep creases. The paper must have been pressed under the silver arrow for years, probably even centuries. Carmen unfolded it and spread it across her lap. It was a very official-looking kind of letter, with a great seal across the top.

  Villa Imperial de Potosí it said in very large letters, with a coat of arms depicting two columns, and in between the columns, a shield decorated with castles and lions, flanked by wings on either side. A motto was written around the edge of the coat of arms—in Latin.

  “How’s your Latin, Ivy?” Carmen asked.

  Ivy waved her arm majestically. “Oh yes, I learned it all in finishing school—I can tell you the root of the verb and the tense of the nouns.” She giggled and dropped the act. “Can’t help you there, Carm.”

  Carmen snapped a picture of the coat of arms. “Player?” she said into her earpiece.

  “We found another clue as we were loading the throne, and we need some translation help. I don’t know much Latin.”

  “Sometimes Latin is a lot like Spanish,” Player said helpfully. “Did you try that?”

  Carmen looked at the words on the coat of arms. There was “Rexis”—perhaps that was like rey, for king—but she didn’t know much else. “I’m sending you the seal, can you get to work translating it?”

  “Sure thing, Red.”

  Carmen examined the rest of the letter. She was pretty confident from the heading that it came from Potosí. But when she took a good look at the handwriting below the coat of arms, she gave a yelp of surprise.

  “It’s León de Mondragón! He wrote this!”

  “Who’s that?”

  Carmen filled Ivy in on the silversmith León de Mondragón.

  “I thought he shipped those inlays to Spain? When would he have been able to hide a letter in the throne?”

  Carmen frowned. “I know León Mondragón visited Spain at some point.” She filled Ivy in about the hidey-hole of León Mondragón’s letters she had found beneath the AGI.

  “So he was definitely here—”

  “And when he was here, he hid all those papers beneath the AGI—”

  “And put this letter behind the silver arrow!” Carmen’s heart was fluttering and she felt a wild excitement. “It all makes sense. He would have had a good excuse for wanting to see the throne; he could just tell everyone he wanted to see what the silver shapes looked like once they were in place. Then once he was there, he found a moment alone—lifted off the shape—and slipped in this piece of paper.”

  “Or,” Ivy added, “they could have even asked him to fix something. He was the expert, after all. Then it would have been like they handed him an excuse to lift up that silver arrow.”

  “Yes!” Carmen said excitedly. It was all coming together now. León Mondragón had been the silversmith who had loved his work so much. He wanted to see it cared for properly. He hadn’t liked that King Felipe IV had just wanted the silver shapes to sit at his feet and make him look good, hadn’t properly appreciated the artistry, any more than Carmen liked Salvador de Burgos ferreting the throne away to feed his own ego. And he was trying to tell them something. Maybe the other clue had been a dead end—but maybe it had been a decoy. Maybe the silver lion hadn’t vanished into thin air. Maybe León Mondragón could still point Carmen in the right direction. She bent down and squinted at his dense handwriting.

  The letter was in Spanish, but even though Carmen had a lot of practice with León’s script at this point, there were tons of unfamiliar words. The letter was dated sometime late in the seventeenth century, and Carmen realized that it must have been toward the end of León Mondragón’s life, and long after King Felipe IV had died. This was a letter meant for the people who would outlive Mondragón, a time capsule, a message in a bottle for the people of the future.

  “What’s it say, Carm?”

  “I . . . there are a lot of words I don’t know.”

  “I thought you knew a lot of Spanish? Didn’t your nannies teach you all those languages?”

  Carmen nodded. They had, but this was tricky. There were words sprinkled throughout that she had never seen before—she wasn’t sure if they were even Spanish at all. Didn’t León Mondragón speak another language?

  They had reached the farmhouse, and Zack knocked on the door and asked for permission to let the horse use the family’s stable. He parked them in a shady spot near the stable and led the horse to a water trough. Ivy wiped sweat from her forehead, and Carmen went back to examining the letter.

  “Player?” she asked. “I’m having trouble reading everything this letter says.”

  “I’ll run it through some of my translation software,” Player said.

  While she waited, Carmen concentrated on finding words she did know. She had been reading the same sentence over and over again, so she moved onto the next one. Eventually, a few words popped out to her.

  “Hurto, that means stealing,” Carmen said to Player. “And españoles, that means the Spanish.”

  “Sooo . . . he thinks the Spanish stole the silver?”

  “Maybe?” Carmen said. She scanned the letter for more words she recognized.

  Egoístas was repeated several times.

  “He thinks they’re greedy,” Carmen told no one in particular. “He thinks the Spanish—or the king, I’m not sure who—he thinks they’re selfish and greedy.”

  “Sounds about right,” Player commented.

  Carmen wrinkled her forehead. “But what are all these squiggles at the bottom of the letter?” León Mondragón—or someone—had drawn several lines. They looked somewhat like veins branching off from a central artery, and at the end of one of the lines was a little x.

  X marks the spot, Carmen thought. Could there be treasure . . . or—she gulped—the remaining silver lion, hidden there? And if the squiggly lines were a map, what were they a map of—where was this place? She shook her head. She was getting ahead of herself. After all, León Mondragón had said that the silver lion had vanished into thin air. She shouldn’t get her hopes up. Carmen steeled herself and decide
d that she would just tell Milly what she had found in Mondragón’s hidey-hole below the AGI. She would tell her that the lion was gone—it had been lost, or destroyed, sometime far in the past, and neither VILE nor Carmen would ever find it.

  Zack emerged from the stable and leaned casually against the carriage. “The farmer told me he can help get the horse back to its owner in Sevilla,” he said. “Saves us an extra trip. Plus, he has a van we can borrow and leave at his daughter’s apartment in Madrid.”

  “Nice guy,” Ivy commented.

  Zack tipped his hat. “We understood each other.”

  As if on cue, the farmer came out of the house carrying extra oats for their horse, and big bags loaded with snacks and water bottles for Carmen, Zack, and Ivy. They thanked him profusely and told him again and again that they would be okay, but he seemed determined to help the strangers who had come his way. He loaded them into his van, smiled happily, and slapped the dashboard as if saying, “¡Arre!”

  Some people could be surprisingly generous, Carmen thought—and it made her even more angry to think that a farmer on the side of the road could want to give them his things and help them get to their destination safely while people like VILE members and Salvador de Burgos and the colonists in Potosí so many centuries ago just hurt people to make themselves richer and more important.

  “Red,” Player said into her earring, “I’ve got you on a flight back to New York City later today. Save that paper—I think Milly would want to see it.”

  Chapter 21

  “PLAYER!” CARMEN HISSED INTO HER EARRING.

  “What’s the trouble, Red?”

  The trouble was that they were halfway down a landing strip, headed to the private plane that would take them and the throne from Madrid to New York City, but someone was following them. She sensed movement behind her, like someone was tracking her footsteps, but every time she turned around they were gone. “Any intel, Player?”