Hammer of Witches

by Shana Mlawski

  The vengeful eyes of the hameh flashed in my memory, and the fiendish warriors from Jinniyah’s tale.

  “This is my future?”

  “No. This your quest. The same quest foretold in your father’s reading.”

  That made Jinniyah jump up from her seat on the floor. Before she could speak, I asked, “What did Amir say when you told him the prophecy?”

  The Baba Yaga leaned back in her chair. “Exactly what I expected. Your father vowed to travel west, to find this being and destroy it.”

  Jinniyah flew over to me as the Baba Yaga bit down on her last syllable. “Bal, that’s it!” the girl cried. “It all makes sense now! Your father goes to the Baba Yaga from Africa. She tells him his fortune. Then he comes to Palos to get you! Don’t you see? He must have wanted us to come with him out west so we could help him find this evil being and destroy it together! It’s the only thing that makes sense!”

  Between me and the Baba Yaga, the horned man let the pieces of the globe sprinkle to the ground before dissolving into nothing. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Jinniyah was right. Her story did make sense. Except . . .

  I swiveled around in my chair to face Jinniyah. “Except why would Amir al-Katib come to my room if he needed help? He’s the great warrior. What would he need me for? I don’t know anything about destroying evil spirits.”

  “He came to you because you are one of us,” the Baba Yaga interrupted. “One of the people of Story.”

  I swiveled back around to face the Baba Yaga. “You mean I’m a Storyteller. But I didn’t even know that until yesterday. How could Amir know?”

  “He knows because you are his son.”

  Oh. That.

  “I can’t help him,” I murmured down at the table. “I know I summoned that golem, but I don’t know how I did it.”

  “You will learn.”

  I turned away from the Baba Yaga’s humor-filled eyes. “Look,” I said, as delicately as I was able, “I didn’t come here to learn about any prophecies. I need to know how to get away from these Malleus people. That’s it.”

  “You seek escape, Baltasar. But there is none. You wish to run from your shadow, but a shadow will follow you no matter where you turn.”

  A shadow?

  What did she . . . ?

  No. Enough of this. I had better things to do than listen to some batty old woman who thought she knew the future. There were people after me. Real people, not shadows. I pushed back my chair with my feet. “Come on, Jinni. We have to go.” I fumbled in my coin purse for some of the copper coins Diego had given me and tossed them on the table. “Thanks for your help.”

  The Baba Yaga bubbled up with laughter. “I do not require money, Baltasar! I tell you this for your own sake. For the sake of the world.”

  “Right, the world. The thing is, the world doesn’t really interest me right now.” I picked my coins off the table and put them back in my pocket. If the woman didn’t want them, I wasn’t going to let them go to waste. “I know that probably sounds unfair, but my life is kind of complicated right now. Maybe when everything settles down a little, I’ll be able to help you.”

  I took a step backward and bumped into one of the woman’s piles of books, knocking several onto the floor. “Sorry,” I said automatically as I replaced them on the pile.

  “I am sorry too, Baltasar,” the Baba Yaga said. “It is unfortunate that you would leave without allowing me to answer your original question. You wanted to know the story of your future, did you not? I have told you your past, your present, your quest, your fears. But I have not yet told you about your future.”

  I wrapped my hands around the back of the chair I had been sitting in, my heart beating syncopation in my fingers. “Go on, then. Tell me.”

  The Baba Yaga pressed her hand against the final card in the top-right corner. The shadow of a tall, stately man with a pointed beard and a crown rose up in the air above her fingers. “Your future: the king of spades.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “The tarot tells a story, Baltasar. A beginning: a past. A middle: a present. An end. Like every story, it has many significances. Many different interpretations.”

  Over the palpitations of my heart, I could barely hear the seer’s words. “But what does it mean?”

  “Impertinent boy. The king of spades represents your future. It represents a dark man, full of wisdom and purpose —”

  “Amir!” Jinniyah piped in. “It has to be!”

  I agreed with her. “Because if I’m the jack of spades, then the king of spades has to be my . . . my father.”

  The Baba Yaga removed her hand from the table and shrugged, letting the image of the tall king shrink into nothing. “It is possible,” the Baba Yaga said, her voice uncharacteristically high. “With the cards, anything is possible.”

  Ignoring her, I took Jinniyah’s hand. “Come on, Jinni. We have to go.”

  The Baba Yaga swept her cards into a pile. “Be outside tomorrow at dawn. The man you seek, the carpenter. You will find him there. And Baltasar? Remember what I told you.”

  “Oh, I will,” I said as I dragged Jinniyah back out into Palos. But to tell you the truth, as I crossed through the threshold, for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was she wanted me to remember.

  Jinniyah and I somehow managed to make our way back to the inn without being noticed by any Malleus men. Still exhausted, I soon fell asleep. It was a restless sleep, though, full of golems and Malleus soldiers and those glowing yellow eyes I had seen in my window two nights ago, and the next morning I awoke clammy and fatigued.

  A din was roaring outside — surprising, given that it was newly dawn. I pushed my battered body upright, opened the window a crack, and peered down at the port. Dozens, maybe hundreds of colorful figures were muddling through morning fog, rolling barrels up long ramps onto the three ships anchored across the way.

  The sight threw me into a minor frenzy. I kicked off the sheets that had knotted themselves around my ankles and slung my bag over my chest. “It’s the Santa María!” I said to Jinniyah, who was busy praying on the floor. I yanked her up by her elbow. “Come on! They’re going to leave without us!”

  As we ran out of the attic, Jinniyah transformed into a curly-haired peasant boy wearing a simple linen gown and feathered cap. “Oh, Bal,” she said in her chiming voice, “they won’t leave without us. The Baba Yaga said we’re going west, so we’re going west!”

  I wondered if things could be that simple. It would only work if we weren’t too late. The Baba Yaga had said we’d meet Antonio de Cuellar at dawn, but once outside, I had no idea how we would find him. On every side of us men were rushing about in a blur, barely giving us a moment to catch a glimpse of their faces. Many I could tell had been sailors for years; others appeared to be servant boys who had never even seen a ship before. While most of the men wore linen shirts and plain cloth hats, there were others too, wearing embroidered doublets, silk gowns, and fur-lined mantles. And it seemed that everyone was barking some order to the poor man just below him in rank.

  “Load that one on the Pinta!”

  “Dry up the deck, you lout!”

  “Get the cabin ready for the admiral’s arrival!”

  Somehow one command managed to stand out from the rest: “You tell your brother the next time he makes an ass of you in public, he’ll have to have a long conversation with Antonio de Cuellar!”

  And sure enough, not too far from where I was standing, a stout, grizzled man was clapping a hand over his belly. Antonio de Cuellar. Sure, the man was rough, drunk, and possibly a criminal, but I couldn’t be happier to see that mottled, bearded face. Here was my ticket out of Spain, my balding savior from the Malleus Maleficarum!

  Antonio was currently guffawing with a handsome young nobleman with shoulder-length black hair. “Speaking of that brother of yours,” Antonio said as Jinniyah and I made our approach, “he and Colón still at each other’s throats?”

  Traces
of pity and amusement lined the nobleman’s voice as he answered. “More than ever. I don’t understand it. They were on such good terms to begin with! But Martín refuses to believe that Colón’s calculations are anything but faulty. According to him, we’re all going to die of thirst in the middle of the Atlantic unless Colón starts doing things Martín’s way. My brother’s just lost the adventure in his heart! I keep telling him, even if he’s right and the trip is longer than Colón thinks, who’s to say there’s only sea in the way? Marco Polo spoke of far-off islands east of Cathay, filled with all manner of food and jewelry and drink!”

  “Knowing our luck, we’ll run into man-eating barbarians,” Antonio said.

  “And beautiful women with bones pierced through their noses!”

  As excited as the nobleman sounded when he said that, I was growing more and more concerned. Faulty calculations? Man-eating barbarians? Dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean?

  Just what kind of mission was this, anyway?

  But I didn’t have the luxury of worrying about it, so I stepped up to the old carpenter and said, “Excuse me. Señor de Cuellar?”

  The carpenter’s eyes smiled under ratty eyebrows. “Now, looky here, Vicente!” he said to the nobleman. “A native of dear Palos if there ever was one.” The carpenter clapped a sturdy hand against my back and said, “Now if I could only remember where I know you from!”

  “We met the other day by the Santa María,” I said. “You said I should look for you at the Dark Sea Inn?”

  “Yes, of course! My young friend from the docks. Sorry I didn’t see you at the Dark Sea. I checked in at one of Palos’s other fine establishments. One with a better selection of, ahem, barmaids.” De Cuellar scratched his graying beard. “Can’t say I remember your name, though.”

  “Luis. De Torres. And this is my friend, uh, Juan.” If Jinniyah’s expression protested against her new name, I didn’t notice it. Instead I stayed focused on Antonio and Vicente.

  “So did you consider my offer, Luis?” Antonio asked me. “Of being Admiral Colón’s new cabin boy?”

  “Actually,” I said with a bit of pride, “Juan and I would like to join you.”

  The carpenter whacked the back of his hand against the nobleman’s upper arm. “You hear that, Vicente? More members of our splendid crew!”

  Vicente didn’t seem as thrilled by the news as Antonio did. “You’ll have to see Martín about that. He’s the one in charge of that sort of thing.”

  “That brother of yours. Always a pain in everyone’s side.” To me Antonio said, “Don’t let it worry you, Luis. It’s just a formality. You know how these rich folk like to stand on ceremony. Come on. I’ll take you to him now.”

  So Jinniyah and I followed Antonio through the chattering crowds in the direction of the Santa María. We passed a swarthy, short-bearded man, and Antonio said, “That’s our master-at-arms, Juan de la Cosa.” Next, we passed a heavy, extremely hairy man. “That’s Bartolome. He escaped from prison back in Portugal.”

  As I hastened past the felon, Jinni inquired, “Who are we going to see now?”

  “Captain Martín Alonso Pinzón, the one and only! He’s captaining one of the other ships — the Pinta, they’re calling it now. And his brother Vicente’s the captain of the Niña, that little stack of splinters over there.”

  I could hardly believe my ears. These men were the Pinzón brothers? But they were local heroes in Palos, who had served as sailors in a recent war against Portugal. Their family had always been one of the wealthiest in town, and as fishermen and shipping magnates the brothers had amassed even more wealth. The fact that men as influential as the Pinzóns were involved in this mission was an encouraging sign. This trip had to be important if they had signed on.

  “Now look, Martín’s a bit of a grouch, I’ll tell you that now,” Antonio said. “But he’s the best captain there is, and good to his crew. Every man you see here would follow him to the ends of the Earth. And they’re going to, in less than an hour.”

  We found Martín Pinzón standing near the base of the Pinta. A man of about fifty, Martín sported the same rich clothing and dark hair as his brother. Unfortunately for Martín, he did not enjoy Vicente’s handsome features. Where the young Vicente enjoyed a fair but healthy complexion, Martín’s skin had a greenish undertone and dry red spots around his nostrils. Where Vicente’s mouth was mischievous, seeming to hold back an untold joke, Martín’s lips were thin from being pulled into a grimace. And where Vicente’s dark eyes twinkled with hopes for adventure, Martín’s were sunken, heavy from adventures past.

  Currently Martín was being waylaid by a gangling man of about eighteen with an upturned nose, lank brown hair, and a chaotic pile of papers balanced on his forearms.

  “I need you to sign here, initial here, and another signature goes here,” the gangling man said, and he attempted to adjust the papers so Martín could read the fine print.

  Martín looked down on this tornado of a man with half-lidded eyes. “And what would you like me to sign them with, Señor Sanchez?”

  The young Sanchez quailed when he heard that, and he sputtered something incomprehensible as he stuck his papers under his chin and hastily patted himself down in search of a quill. At last he appeared to find one in one of the many bags drooping from his belt, but as he reached for it he somehow lost his balance, twisted his foot, and went crashing down onto his elbows. His papers, needless to say, went flying in all directions. Martín turned away from Sanchez without another word.

  While Sanchez chased down his errant papers, Martín threw his hand out toward Antonio. “This is what the queen sends me,” the captain said. “Some idiot accountant to report on every last maravedí we spend!”

  “Aw, give the kid a break,” Antonio said about Sanchez. “Rodrigo’s a good lad.” Glancing in my direction, Antonio went on, “And speaking of good lads, I have two more for you and the admiral. So I’ll be taking my maravedíes now, if you don’t mind.”

  Martín’s thin lips curled up slightly at the edges. “Looking for money again, de Cuellar? What, your girlfriends raise their rates again?”

  The way Antonio flashed his teeth, you’d think the captain had given him a compliment. “That’s what I like about you, Martín. Always such a good sense of humor.”

  “Yes, I am hilarious,” Martín said dryly. “And you know what else is funny, de Cuellar? The fact that I’ve already paid you your salary:”

  “I’m not talking about my salary! I’m talking about the bonus! The ten extra maravedíes for supplying a spry young cabin boy for Admiral Colón. And I brought an extra boy if he needs one. Juan could be a servant or something.” Antonio moved aside to reveal Jinniyah and me to the captain. I gave the man an awkward bow; Jinniyah, a kind of curtsy.

  Martín appraised us like we were part of a recent catch. “This is all very nice, de Cuellar, but you’re too late.”

  The carpenter eyed the captain. “What do you mean ‘too late’? The ships aren’t leaving for another hour —”

  “I mean we already have a cabin boy. A Don Pedro Terreros, the first son of a very eminent — and highly unpleasant — family from Burgos.”

  “Well, I’m sure you have room for Luis and Juan somewhere. There must be some job these boys can do.”

  Martín’s body grew rigid as he whipped an angry hand toward the Santa María. “Room? Have you been on these ships, de Cuellar? We’ve barely enough room for our supplies as it is, let alone two more street urchins. We’re about to die of thirst and starvation in the middle of the Atlantic, and Antonio de Cuellar brings me two more mouths to feed!”

  “Aw, come on, Martín —”

  “‘Captain,’ de Cuellar! I am a captain, which means I make the decisions! And those boys are not coming with us, and that is final! Send them home, or I will send you home with them!”

  And Martín stormed off, leaving me and Jinni alone with Antonio.

  “But that’s not fair,” the carpenter mumbled as
he went. And it wasn’t fair, not at all. The Niña. The Pinta. The Santa María. In less than an hour, these ships would be leaving without me, leaving me to deal with the Malleus Maleficarum on my own. The Baba Yaga’s prophecy would unravel itself without me, and whatever Amir al-Katib wanted from me would remain a mystery forever.

  “No,” Antonio said, reaching back to anxiously pat the front of my tunic. “No, don’t you go anywhere, Luis. God as my witness, I am getting you on that ship! It’s a matter of honor . . . and . . . integrity . . . and . . . and . . .”

  “The admiral’s bonus?” I tried for him.

  Antonio shoved his sleeves up his brawny arms. “You stay here, Luis. The admiral will hear about this.” Continuing to mutter to himself, Antonio lumbered past me toward the Santa María.

  I smiled weakly as he left. Though his heart was in the right place, I didn’t expect any success out of him. “I guess we go back now,” I said to Jinni.

  The girl’s lips barely moved. “Go back? Where?”

  “I don’t know.” To the inn? To the Baba Yaga? “Maybe we can get onto another ship. There has to be another one around here that —”

  “No!” Jinni exclaimed. A layer of tears glazed over her huge, currently-brown eyes. “These are the only ships going west, Bal! The Baba Yaga said we have to go west to find Amir! If we don’t . . .”

  “No, Jinni,” I said in a low voice, hoping no one would hear. “The Baba Yaga just threw a bunch of cards on a table and told us what she thought they meant. The fact is, the Baba Yaga’s not helping us get on the Santa María, and neither are her cards. If we have to go west, you’re going to have to think of a way to do it, because I’m all out of ideas.”

  Jinniyah, however, didn’t seem to be listening to me. She was standing on her tiptoes and listing to one side. When I opened my mouth again, she shoved a finger against my lips. As hard as I strained to hear what she was hearing, all I could make out above the roar of the crowds was the conversation of the two fair-haired men standing next to us on the dock.