Isle of Blood and Stone

by Makiia Lucier

The stranger couldn’t hide his surprise. The question had been asked in Mondragan. “Yes,” he replied in del Marian.

  Elias switched back to his native tongue and gestured to the maps. “What is your price?”

  “Ten gold squid. Apiece.”

  There were hoots from the queue. One man said something particularly rude. Reyna’s ears turned pink, though she didn’t look up from the ledger. Frowning, Elias glanced around the Mondragan. He did not know the rude man, with his pocked skin and the whites of his eyes a disturbing shade of yellow.

  Elias returned his attention to the Mondragan. “This is not Alaattan’s cave, sir,” he said, provoking laughter from the crowd.

  The Mondragan held his gaze. “Ten gold squid,” he said quietly. “No more, no less. That is my price.”

  In the queue, the jaundiced stranger spat. “You’ll be lucky to leave this island with your arms unbroken. Filthy Mondragan.”

  The Mondragan mapmaker stiffened; the hand around his strap clenched. He said nothing.

  Annoyed, Elias looked around him once again. “Be silent,” he ordered. The man’s rants slowed to a grumble. Turning back, Elias said, “It’s a ridiculous amount for a simple chart.” A pause. “One gold squid. Apiece.”

  “They’re not simple charts, I think you know.” The Mondragan tapped the first map. “I’ve used only the highest-quality vellum and inks. The blue is made from the indigo plant. The red from hematite. And the green—”

  “Is from malachite. Yes, I know.”

  Something that was almost a smile flickered across the Mondragan’s face. “Then you know it will last. And they were drawn after the earthquakes.”

  Elias’s interest was piqued. “I’ve just come from Hellespont. Was Mondrago affected?”

  “Yes,” the Mondragan said. “The entire eastern coastline has been altered. I’ve redrawn it, as well as marked the new shoals and sandbars. It’s all here.”

  Where had this man gained his skill? Not on his native island, certainly. “Where did you apprentice?”

  “With Master Abner. A chart maker on Lunes.”

  “I know of him.”

  Elias did not need four maps of Mondrago. But Mercedes would, one day soon.

  “Reyna?” When she turned to him, he said, “Give this man ten gold squid. Apiece.”

  Elias was looking at the Mondragan as he spoke. Saw his stunned expression, followed by immense relief, before his neutral expression returned.

  “Elias,” Luca hissed, “that beating must have turned your brains. Ten squid! To a Mondragan! Madame Vega will have your head.”

  Elias shrugged. “Then let her have it.” There were more than a few mutters in the crowd. Well. It was time for him to go, anyway. He would leave the disgruntled men for Luca to manage.

  Reyna dipped her quill in an inkpot. “Your name, sir? It’s not on the maps.”

  Hearing that, Elias looked at one map, where, instead of a cartouche, a T in the bottom right-hand corner served as signature.

  “My name is Tycho,” the Mondragan said.

  Reyna copied his name into the ledger, then counted out forty gold squid and poured them into a leather pouch. She handed over the coin. A smile flashed across his face when she said with perfect seriousness, “Del Mar thanks you. This is fine work, Master Tycho.”

  Elias gathered the four maps and rolled them together. “You may bring additional work to me at the castle if you choose. I’d be glad to look at them.” And then in a move that had everyone around them but Reyna gaping, he stuck out his hand. “I am Elias.”

  Even the Mondragan looked at him as though he were deranged. Elias kept his hand extended and waited. Finally, the other man clasped his hand and said, “My thanks.”

  That should have been it. Tycho likely would have disappeared into the crowd without incident, but his self-control was not without limits. The man with the yellow eyes could not keep his mouth shut. As Tycho walked past, the heckler said something crude and explicit about the Mondragan’s mother. Reyna’s mouth fell open. Tycho punched him in the face.

  The heckler went down. To make matters worse, the other men in the queue had grown bored with waiting and joined the fight. Someone swung a fist at Tycho. There was a sharp crack as knuckle connected with chin.

  Chaos ensued.

  “Stay here,” Elias ordered a wide-eyed Reyna. He vaulted over the booth into the fray. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Luca do the same. Elias shoved his way through the crowd, dodging blows, trying to get to Tycho, knowing the man would be beaten and robbed of forty gold squid if he didn’t. He cursed himself. He should have been more discreet about offering that much coin.

  “Why are we helping a Mondragan again?” Luca shouted. He ducked, narrowly missing a fist. “We have the maps. To hell with him!”

  “Just do it, Luca!”

  The Mondragan was holding his own, fists flying, his map carrier jostled behind him. Someone reached for Tycho’s coin pouch. Elias elbowed him in the face. The Mondragan glanced at the foiled thief, then at Elias. A brief smile conveyed his thanks.

  The next few minutes passed without clear thought, in a blur of fists and cracks and laughter. A sharp whistle pierced the air—soldiers—and the crowd dispersed as if by magic. Luca, his ear bleeding, gave someone a final kick.

  Tycho stood with his palms on his knees, panting. He eyed Elias. “You seem to like fights, del Marian.”

  Elias wiped the blood from a cut on his knuckle. He was going to need more of that awful salve. “I’m as peaceful as a monk. I know it’s hard to believe.”

  Tycho looked disbelieving. He glanced past Elias, his eyes widening. “The girl,” he said sharply.

  Elias turned, and what he saw nearly stopped his heart. Beside the mappers’ booth, Reyna lay curled on the ground, trying desperately to hold on to Elias’s map carrier as a man—the turd with the yellow eyes—tried to pull it from her.

  Elias raced toward them, shouting. Reyna cried out as a boot connected with her back. She let go of the carrier. The man looked up, saw Elias, Tycho, and Luca bearing down on him, and took off running. Elias skidded to his knees beside Reyna. Luca was only a second behind him, full of shock and wrath.

  “Her ribs,” Elias said, breath faltering. He was afraid to touch her, move her. Thinking fast, he said to Luca, “Go find—”

  “No!” Reyna’s words came on a gasp. “He’s getting away!”

  The man was halfway across the harbor with Elias’s carrier. And the last map. Torn, he met Luca’s eyes over Reyna’s head.

  “Go,” Luca said.

  Elias took off; he ran faster than he ever had before, his eyes trained on the stranger. Who had provoked a fight, and when Elias was distracted, had gone straight for his map carrier. Someone had planned this. Elias dodged a man holding an ape on a leash, narrowly missed two merchants having some sort of disagreement over salt barrels. And realized suddenly that the man he chased was favoring his right leg.

  Elias had stabbed an intruder just days ago. With a brass divider. In his right leg.

  At the opposite end of the harbor, a fire burned in a barrel. A vendor stood by it, frying up his wares, and as Elias watched in horror, the map thief flung the carrier into the blaze. He turned to look at Elias and grinned. Teeth as yellow as his eyes. He ran off.

  Too far away to be caught. He would get away, this man who would kick a little girl until her ribs snapped. And who very likely had beaten Lady Esma to her death.

  A red haze settled over Elias’s vision. He grabbed his dagger and dropped to one knee, his gaze never leaving the man’s retreating back. He threw his weapon. The knife lodged in the man’s neck. Elias heard him cry out, saw him stumble, before the crowd closed in around him.

  His carrier was alight in the center of the barrel. Elias felt the flames as he approached. In desperation, he swung his leg out, overturning the barrel. The vendor had been frying fish. He was incensed as they went flying to the ground. He came at Elias with a long fork but w
as forced to stand aside when Tycho held a sword to his jugular.

  Elias’s flaming carrier had also fallen. He stomped on it, then yanked off his vest and used it to protect his hands as he twisted the cap off and pulled the map free. Relief coursed through him. The parchment was singed about the edges, but largely unharmed. All around him were shouting and whistles, along with the curses from the fish vendor.

  Tycho’s eyes were on him. “That must be a very important map, Elias of del Mar.” The Mondragan sheathed his sword. He looked at the map thief, sprawled face-down in the dirt. “I think you killed him.”

  Twenty

  N THE LOWEST chambers of the castle, the air smelled of death and damp.

  “I don’t recognize him,” Ulises said. “He’s a del Marian, clearly, but other than that, who knows?”

  The king stood with Elias and Commander Aimon. Reyna’s attacker lay on the stone slab before them, his yellow eyes staring up at the ceiling. No one reached to close them. A robed attendant, the same woman who had removed Lady Esma from the tower courtyard, hovered in the doorway, awaiting instructions.

  Elias said, “I’ve seen his face before.”

  “Have you?” Commander Aimon eyed the dead man with contempt. “I’ll ask about. Maybe someone will come forward and claim him,” he added with skepticism. And then, to Elias’s surprise, the commander placed a hand on his shoulder briefly and said, “The first one is always the hardest.”

  Elias had never killed a man. He worried that he should feel horror, or at least some sense of guilt, but he could think only of Lady Esma and Reyna, and all he felt was numb. “I don’t feel much of anything, Commander. Is that normal?”

  Commander Aimon was quiet. “You will.”

  “Elias,” Ulises said, “he beat a child without thinking twice, and I doubt he was a saint before then. I think your eternal soul is safe for now. I just wish we knew who he was.”

  “It wasn’t just Reyna,” Elias said, and slid his dagger from its sheath.

  Ulises asked sharply, “What are you—?”

  Elias ripped the dead man’s trousers, his right pant leg, from waist to knee, exposing a hairy thigh wrapped in dirty bandaging. Both Ulises and the commander stared at the wound.

  “From you?” Ulises asked, his expression hardening.

  “Yes.” They knew he’d injured one of his attackers in his chambers, stabbing him in the leg with, of all improbable weapons, a compass divider. The dead man was not only Reyna’s assailant, but Lady Esma’s, at least one of them.

  A look passed between Ulises and the commander, who beckoned the attendant over. “Keep him for three days,” Commander Aimon ordered. “We’ll see if someone claims him.”

  “If no one does?” she asked.

  “Feed him to the dogs,” Ulises said quietly.

  It was the kind of order Elias expected from the commander. Not Ulises. And he discovered Commander Aimon had been right. Elias would feel something. It came, quick and merciless. He doubled over, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the stones until there was nothing left inside him.

  Reyna had a black eye, two cracked ribs, and three broken fingers on her left hand from where her attacker had stomped on them. She was asleep in her bedchamber. Her door had been left open, and directly outside, well-wishers had gathered in the hall and on the adjacent staircases.

  Madame Vega was just inside the door, stiff with outrage and worry. She spoke in low tones with the physician who had just seen to Reyna’s injuries. Lord Silva sat by his granddaughter’s bedside, haggard.

  “Sit, Elias,” he ordered. “It’s exhausting to watch you.”

  Elias had been pacing at the foot of the bed. He had not come here directly after visiting the morgue but had gone to his chambers first to bathe and change. He had not wanted to enter Reyna’s chambers smelling of death and sickness. At Lord Silva’s words, he took a chair opposite him. He could barely look at Reyna. There was something wrong, something profoundly unnatural, about seeing a small girl with a bloody and blackened eye.

  Instead, he studied the curious object that had been placed on her bedside table: a miniature wooden catapult, only a foot in height, an exact replica of the siege weapons in the arena. Lord Silva saw him looking and explained, “Aimon sent it over earlier. It’s his own work. She was quite taken with it when the children visited the armory last month. He thought it might cheer her.”

  Nonplussed, Elias asked, “Commander Aimon carves children’s toys?”

  Lord Silva’s weary shrug said, To each his own interest.

  Madame Vega came to stand beside Elias. He half rose, offering the chair, but she shook her head and waved him back into his seat. She kept one hand on his shoulder, and he reached up and held on to it, letting go only when he felt its trembling subside. It was then that Reyna opened her eyes.

  She looked at the worried faces around her. “The map?”

  Something shifted inside Elias, very close to his heart. Of course, the map would be her first concern. “It’s safe.”

  “Don’t think of it, my dear child,” Lord Silva said. “You must rest.”

  Reyna tried to move her left hand and gasped. A moment later, the fingers on her right hand wiggled. “Not my drawing hand. Good.”

  “Not your drawing hand,” Elias agreed. “Only everything else. You’re looking more like me every day, Lady Reyna.”

  She managed a smile, which faded as she said, “I’ve seen him before.”

  Madame Vega’s hand slid from his shoulder.

  Elias leaned close to Reyna, excitement creeping over him. “That’s what I thought, too. Was he a mariner, do you remember? Has he been to our booth?”

  “This can wait, surely?” Madame Vega asked.

  “Enough, Elias,” Lord Silva said. “She needs to rest.”

  “Not from the harbor,” Reyna said. “Not from Cortes . . .”

  “No?” Elias thought hard. “A villager, maybe? Or a farmer—”

  “I said enough!” Lord Silva came to his feet. The bite in his voice surprised the onlookers, who went silent and watchful in the doorway.

  Elias also stood, trying to hold back his frustration. Everything he did lately displeased Lord Silva. Every step he took was the wrong one. “Forgive me.”

  Madame Vega had gone around to Lord Silva’s side. The warning look she gave Elias was clear. It hardly mattered, because Reyna’s eyelids had grown heavy. Elias leaned over the bed and dropped a light kiss on her forehead. She didn’t stir.

  Lord Silva returned to his chair. “We all want to know who did this. I, most of all. For now, I want her out of Cortes. As soon as she can travel, I’m taking her back to Alfonse. She’ll be safer at home.”

  Safer at home.

  Home.

  Home was where you went to rest your head after a long and weary day. It was where your family lived, if you were fortunate enough to have one. Elias had not visited Judge Piri at his home, had not spoken to the man of family. A mistake. It was Piri’s home that was missing from the maps.

  Footsteps echoed on stone as he hurried down the tower’s endless steps. Judge Piri lived in the parish of St. Cruz of the Mountain. The day was winding down. If the judge was not yet there, he would be soon. Elias would go to him and ask . . . what?

  “Careful.” The warning came around the final bend in the stairwell and saved Elias from tripping over Luca, who sat on the bottom step.

  “How is she?” Luca asked. He looked wretched.

  “Awake for a little while.” Elias sat beside him and told him what the physician had confirmed: the cracked rib cage, the broken fingers. Luca had seen the black eye for himself. It was he who had carried Reyna back to the castle.

  Luca flinched. He asked, “What are you up to?” and when Elias did not, could not, respond, he said, “Madame tells us to leave you alone, that whatever you’re doing, it’s not our concern.” Luca turned his head, looked at Elias directly. “Someone attacks you in your chambers, and we’re not to
ask you about it. A dead woman ends up in our courtyard. Reyna is upstairs with her ribs kicked in, and you—” He broke off. “You don’t even like to kill spiders, let alone . . .”

  Elias hung his head. “I threw up all over the morgue,” he admitted.

  After a moment, Luca handed over a waterskin that was not filled with water. The sweet burn of Kaska made its way to Elias’s empty stomach and left him lightheaded. He handed the skin back and said, “If it was only about me, I would tell you.”

  It was the answer Luca expected. He set the skin on the step, and they sat for a time in companionable silence. Elias’s thoughts drifted back to the harbor, before everything had turned ugly. He said, “The Mondragan mapmaker . . .”

  Luca frowned. “What about him?”

  “How many people do you know who can draw charts like that?”

  Luca shrugged. “Plenty.”

  “Luca.”

  “A few,” Luca conceded, grudging. “What of it?”

  Voices drifted from above. Still faint, but they would not be alone for much longer.

  Elias said, “If he were anyone else, a Lunesian or a Caffeesh, we would have offered him the hospitality of our tower. Offered him our friendship, asked about his travels. Instead, we send him on his way, even when it’s clear he could use our help.”

  Luca was unsympathetic. “You gave him forty gold squid,” he reminded Elias. “He’ll be fine.”

  Elias picked up the waterskin but did not drink from it. “Someone tried to spit on Mercedes.”

  Luca’s head snapped up. “What? Who?”

  “An old woman in the courtyard,” Elias answered. “In front of everyone. It wasn’t the first time.” For all his prejudice against Mondragans, Elias knew Luca held a soft spot in his heart for Mercedes. It did not hurt that she was only half Mondragan. Or that she was beautiful. He said, “That mapmaker, Tycho, he’s like us, Luca. Just a baby when it happened. Mercedes wasn’t even born. How much longer are we going to spit on them?”

  Luca looked away, scowling at the wall. “My grandfather died at Mondrago.”

  “I know it,” Elias acknowledged. Luca’s grandfather; Commander Aimon’s brothers. Countless others. It felt a hopeless thing, trying to set things right. The voices above grew louder; the footsteps, closer. He got to his feet, handed back the skin. “I have to go.”