“Give her over.” Commander Aimon nudged Mercedes aside. He gathered Madame Vega in his arms and laid her out in the aisle upon the stone. They knelt beside her. One look at the wound and Mercedes knew there would be no more questions for Madame Vega.
Who blinked at the candelabra directly overhead. Blood trickled from her mouth. Her eyes rolled back once before focusing on Mercedes. “Elias is gone. Reyna . . . is gone. We are all gone.” Her eyes fluttered closed. They did not open again.
Mercedes saw the stunned look on Commander Aimon’s face, and cold prickles rose along her forearms. She had not misheard.
Reyna is gone.
Commander Aimon said, “I’ll stay here. Go now!”
Mercedes’s hands were covered in blood. She wiped them on her dress. And then she ran.
The hour had grown late, and the corridors were sparsely populated. The few servants about pressed up against the walls, eyebrows raised, as Mercedes flew past. She rounded a corner and nearly ran into Ulises.
He reached out to steady her. “I’ve looked everywhere for you. What’s happened?”
In response, she grabbed his arm and dragged him along. Across the castle grounds, into the Tower of Winds, up the stairs toward Reyna’s chamber. He listened as she spoke, interrupting once. “She’s dead?” And again when she came to the part about Reyna. “No, she’s safe, Mercedes. There’s a guard at her door.”
It was as Ulises said. A soldier, Lazar, bowed when he saw them. “Mistress Galena is sitting with her. She came just after supper.” He opened the door and stepped aside to let them pass.
Mistress Galena sat by Reyna’s bedside, reading from a book as the child listened sleepily. Jorge was tucked beneath her arm. A small hearth fire had been lit, and a candle flickered on a table beside Commander Aimon’s toy catapult. All three looked up when the door opened.
Smiling, Madame Galena set the book aside and rose. “We’ll finish tomorrow. Look who has come to see you, dear.”
Ulises glanced at the book, then smiled at Reyna. “The Travels of Antoni, Lord of del Mar? You must know this one by heart.”
“It’s my favorite,” Reyna said with a smile. She looked past him to Mercedes, brows crinkling. “Are you well, Lady?”
Mercedes found her voice. And could only be grateful her dress was so dark that Madame Vega’s blood was unnoticeable. “Certainly I am.” She settled at the foot of the bed and studied the small glass dish on Reyna’s table. It was empty. “What was in that bowl? Sweets?”
Madame Galena answered. “I’ll fetch a fresh bowl, Lady. There were sweets, but Jorge would not touch them, and he eats everything.” She scooped up the dish. “I knew they must be off, so I threw them out.”
Mercedes looked at her cousin, who appeared thunderstruck. Poison once again. It had been Madame Vega’s weapon of choice.
Ulises swallowed before managing a parody of a smile. He reached out and patted Jorge on the head.
“Good monkey,” he said.
The following morning, Mercedes rode out as soon as the portcullis had lifted. Not far, only outside the city walls and across the fields where the castle walls did not feel as if they closed in upon her.
The news had spread quickly. Sometime in the night, Madame Vega, del Mar’s beloved geography mistress, had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. A horrific, tragic accident. The morgue attendant was one of Commander Aimon’s trusted few. She would keep Madame Vega’s knife wound to herself and ask no questions. Already, the servants hurried about, draping the Tower of Winds in black.
As for Lord Silva, a messenger had been sent to Esperanca to inform him of the terrible news. Commander Aimon had made sure to send an even faster messenger to find the Royal Navigator before he learned of his daughter’s untimely death and decided it would be prudent to flee.
The ride did nothing to ease Mercedes’s gnawing fear. She was afraid to face the truth. That she was too late. That Elias was gone, and she did not know where to find him.
When she returned to the castle gates, a soldier on horseback was speaking to the guard. Neither looked happy. They paused to greet her, resuming their conversation as her horse cantered past.
She heard the castle guard say, “You’ll have to wait, I said. Go to the kitchens and find something to eat.”
“But—”
“The commander is busy. He doesn’t have time to hear some strange tale of lepers and blue fire. Go . . . Lady? Is something wrong?”
Mercedes had whirled her horse around, and whatever showed on her face caused both men to fall silent. The soldier on horseback had removed his helmet and cradled it beneath one arm. Sweat matted his hair; his face was weary. She knew this man, had seen him only days before. He was one of the king’s messengers.
A soldier from Alfonse.
Twenty-Five
ROTHER FRANCIS FOUND Elias sitting on his stoop with his head in his hands.
“I didn’t know monks were allowed to lie,” Elias said without looking up.
Brother Francis stopped a few feet away. His sigh was a long one. “I don’t think we are,” he admitted.
The glare Elias sent him would have scared off most men. “Why did you?”
“I would do anything for your father. He asked for silence.”
“You weren’t silent,” was Elias’s bitter reminder. “You told me he was dead. I am told again and again that he is dead.” And when Francis said nothing, Elias asked, “What is he called here? Robert? Matías? Does he hide behind a false name, too?”
A sudden, painful grip on Elias’s arm. Brother Francis’s face was inches away, his eyes narrowed. No longer the benign monk.
“Don’t think of being unkind to him.” The warning was low and fierce. “Every choice he’s made has been for you.”
“Get your hand off me.”
They had drawn an audience. Elias’s neighbors stood by, watchful, men and women and children. One man holding a shovel stepped forward, stopping only when Brother Francis shook his head.
The monk released Elias’s arm. “He’s known as Antoni. It’s a common name here, and he keeps to himself.” Once again he was Brother Francis, who straightened and calmly dusted the sand from his robe. “Your father lives in the keep. I think you remember the way.” He walked away.
“Brother Francis,” Elias said.
Francis didn’t turn around, but he stopped.
“Whose graves did you show me?”
Quiet. “Bartolome’s. And Hugo’s.”
The door to the keep was open. Elias hovered by the threshold, winded from the walk. His first thought was that the chamber looked like any other in the Tower of Winds. Paint and parchment on a table, maps on the walls. The skin of a white hog lay flat across the table surface, its bristles washed, dried, and ready for plucking. A good number of painter’s brushes would be made from that unlucky beast. Even Lord Antoni, watching him quietly beside the skin, would have blended in with his white shirt and ancient trousers streaked with paint. Only the small gold hoop in his left ear would have raised eyebrows. Especially from Madame Vega. Royal explorers were not encouraged to look like pirates.
One more thing out of place. Behind Lord Antoni was a life-size painting of Elias’s mother holding an infant high in the air. Mother and child appeared in profile. She wore an emerald dress; Elias was without a stitch of clothing. They were both laughing. If he could force the words past his throat, still he would not know what to say.
His father spoke first, the same rough voice as before. “Your maman. She’s in good health?”
Elias turned away from the painting. “Yes.”
Lord Antoni kept busy with mortar and pestle, grinding a stone with water. Elias was fairly certain the stone was hematite, for his father’s hands were now a cardinal’s red. “And your . . . Lord Isidore. He’s been good to you?”
“Yes.” Then, helpless, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you.”
The grinding stopped. A small smile emerged
. “I’ve spoken to you a thousand times in my mind. Now that you’re here, I find that I, too, am tongue-tied.” Lord Antoni swiped his cheek with one hand, transferring the red paint. “Francis has told me all of it, but I don’t wish to speak of such ugliness just now.” He gestured toward a chair opposite him. “Sit. You should not tax that leg. We’ll talk of small things, perhaps, and make our way from there.”
Elias was grateful to give his leg a rest. He leaned his stick against the table and sat, wondering what small things they would begin discussing.
Lord Antoni said, “You’ve earned master status,” and when Elias looked surprised, pointed to his robe, tossed on a bench near the door. The compass pin was visible. “You wouldn’t have worn it otherwise.”
“It was sold to you?” Elias had thought the pin lost forever when he’d offered his cloak to Rafael that long-ago day in Cortes.
“Traded,” Lord Antoni said, “for a heavier cloak. They catch chill easily, even in summer, once their condition progresses.” He spoke in the same matter-of-fact tone used by Brother Francis. Two men long accustomed to living among the lepers.
Elias wondered aloud, “How are you not sick?”
Lord Antoni shrugged. “Who can say? Maybe something else was meant for us. Certainly, Francis has a calling. Me, I’m not so sure.” He’d resumed grinding. Beneath his hands, the blood-red stone was slowly turning to paste. “If you’re a master geographer, you must have an apprentice.”
Elias could have been on del Mar, speaking to Madame Vega. “I’m considering one, but I can’t see how to make it work.” A small knife lay within reach beside several unsharpened quills. Absently, he picked up a quill and began trimming it with the knife. He caught himself—he was not in the tower, and these were not his supplies—and looked up to find Lord Antoni watching him.
“No, it’s fine,” Lord Antoni said when Elias would have put them aside. “This almost-apprentice of yours. What is wrong with him?”
“Her,” Elias said. “There’s nothing wrong with her except that she’s a girl. And Lord Silva’s granddaughter.” He explained about Reyna discovering the first map. How she had brought it to the king’s attention. He described her attack at the harbor, and her attacker: Lord Silva’s faithful, callous servant, who must have known who she was even as he robbed her.
Lord Antoni had stopped grinding. “Was she hurt badly?”
Elias scowled at the memory. “Her ribs were cracked. Three fingers broken. Her face is black-and-blue.”
“My God,” Lord Antoni breathed. “How old?”
“Nine,” Elias said. “The doctor says she’ll be her old self, eventually. She’s stronger than she looks.” She would have to be, to weather the coming storm. Lord Silva would not go unpunished this time. And then what would happen to her?
They did not speak for some time, and their work continued, until Lord Antoni said, “Most people are content never to leave their place of birth. And others, it is all they can think about. Sailing off, discovering new places, meeting different people. It’s part of who they are. You would know this, I think.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t think of her as Silva’s granddaughter. Or even as a girl.”
Elias was sitting here, with his father, and he was amused. “She wears dresses. Her braids are three feet long. How else am I supposed to think of her?”
Lord Antoni smiled. “As an adventurer, just like you. Think of the good you can do her.”
Elias caught his likeness in the knife’s surface. He made an effort to smooth his frown. “It’s not that simple.”
Lord Antoni shrugged. “If you say so.”
A child cried out in the distance, a reminder of where they were and why. Elias set the knife and quill down. “Would you have let me leave this island without a word?”
Lord Antoni looked away. “I’m a danger to you. You’re better off forgetting I’m here.” He resumed his grinding, but not before Elias saw the slight trembling of his hands.
Small things, and we’ll make our way from there.
Quietly, Elias left his walking stick by the table and went to study one of the maps on the wall. This one was of Cortes, fine and extremely detailed. “You painted this map from memory?”
“I did.”
“It is extraordinary.”
Lord Antoni glanced over at the map, pleased by the compliment. “Archaic, maybe. I imagine it looks nothing like that today.”
“Cortes hasn’t changed as much as you think. Though”—Elias pointed—“that brothel in St. Mark’s burnt down seven years ago. They built a church in its place. It’s not as popular, I think.”
It worked. Amusement flickered in his father’s eyes. He looked at the map. “What else?”
But his questions could not be postponed indefinitely, and Elias found himself asking, “Why would Lord Silva say you killed his son?”
By now Lord Antoni had finished with the hematite and had scrubbed the red from his hands as best he could. He was drying them with a rag when he heard the question. His answer was quiet. “Because I did. Vittor died because of me.”
Not I killed Vittor, but Vittor died because of me.
Elias said, “I don’t understand.”
Lord Antoni dried the mortar and pestle as he spoke. “I was a boy when I first saw a map of the Bushido Territories. It was bordered in the north by mountains, mountains so tall their peaks were never without snow, even in high summer. But beyond the mountains, the map was empty. And for me, for any geographer, there is nothing more thrilling than a blank space on a map.”
Elias selected a new quill to sharpen. “I know it.”
Lord Antoni smiled slightly. He set the mortar and pestle on a low shelf, then brought the skinned hog close and began plucking its hairs, quick and efficient. “No one knew what lay beyond the mountains. Not for certain. But there had been stories. Some said that at the end of a dangerous and narrow road, part of the Blue Horn Pass, was an unusual door. One made of iron, that rose hundreds of feet toward the heavens. And through that door was . . .”
When Lord Antoni trailed off, Elias took over. “A kingdom that had turned its back to the world a thousand years ago. One that had hoarded its gold and treasures. The richest kingdom in the world. Or so the stories went. No one had ever made it through the Blue Horn Pass. Until the del Marian expedition.”
“Vittor led us,” Lord Antoni said. “He had dreamt of finding the Iron Door since we were boys. There were thirty in our camp. Myself, Vittor, Braga, Grec. The Bushido guides and servants.” His fingers were a blur on the hog skin. The bare patches grew rapidly wider. “The first days were uneventful, but as we drew farther into the pass, it all started to go wrong. Our guides vanished one night, along with most of our food and supplies.”
“Do you think they left on their own?” Elias asked. There were some who believed the Bushido guides had known what lay ahead of them and had fled, leaving the rest of the expedition to their own sorry fate.
“I do,” Lord Antoni said, with a hint of grimness. “We decided to take turns guarding the camp each night, but the men of the first watch also disappeared. It was clear they had not left by choice.”
Great pools of blood had remained, Elias knew, and tracks. It looked as if the men had been dragged straight up the mountain. By something large and horrible.
Lord Antoni said, “Several of us followed the tracks, but we turned back before nightfall with nothing to show for it.” By now, a small mountain of hog bristles had amassed on the table. “Vittor and I argued. I wanted to turn back. We were low on food. We were losing men. I said no expedition was worth the lives lost. The lives we would continue to lose if we did not turn back.”
Elias set aside the sharpened quill, chose another. “Lord Vittor disagreed.”
“Yes. Part of me couldn’t blame him. Vittor was Silva’s eldest son, and the only one of the three who showed promise as a navigator. He had always been his father’s favorite. Our sendoff from
Cortes had been tremendous. There were fireworks over the harbor. It looked like the entire kingdom was there to wish us well. To return home and admit failure . . . I understood his decision, though I could not agree with it. The next night, we lost the boys.”
Elias looked up from his quill, saying nothing.
Lord Antoni said, “Four apprentices had accompanied the expedition. Vittor’s, Braga’s, Grec’s, and mine. When we woke the next morning, there was no sign of them. Jonas was gone.”
“Jonas?” The name was out before Elias could think to hold his tongue. The names of the four apprentices had not appeared in his book.
“My apprentice. He was twelve.”
Lord Antoni waited until Elias admitted reluctantly, “Jonas is my brother’s name.” It was only because Elias looked directly at his blood father that he saw it: the flash of pain in Lord Antoni’s eyes, quickly gone.
“Yes. Well. Jonas lived in our home. Sabine was fond of him.” Lord Antoni looked at the painting of his wife and son before he picked up the thread of his story. “A key had been left on Jonas’s pallet. It was as tall as a grown man. By then, the morning mist had lifted and we saw the Iron Door only a short ride away. It had not been there when we had stopped to make camp a day earlier.”
“Vittor and I fought even worse than before. I told him he was a fool to fall for such a trap. He told me I was a coward for wanting to turn back when we were so close. And I—” Here, Lord Antoni broke off, took an unsteady breath. “I said better he had been taken first and the rest of us spared.
“Those were the last words I said to my friend before he swung open the door. That was when we discovered it had been lined with bells along the very top. Large ones. Imagine a hundred church bells being rung at once with the mountains all around us packed tight with snow. I had never seen an avalanche before.”
Elias’s glass of water was half full. He held it out. Lord Antoni took it with thanks and downed the contents.
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