Carbón came up behind her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and to his surprise, she turned and threw her arms around him and leaned into his shoulder, sobbing. He held her, and was surprised to discover how much he was warmed by the human contact. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared such an intimate moment—probably the final time he’d embraced his father before he died.
At last she pulled away, sniffling and looking embarrassed. He gave her a warm smile and rubbed her shoulder to comfort her and assure her he wasn’t judging her behavior. He was, of course, even as he told himself again and again that it was the fault of the code. How could she have done it?
“Maybe you should tell Thiego,” he said.
“By the Elders, no! I couldn’t do that. What would happen if word got out?”
“That’s what you’re worried about, if word got out? What does that matter? After all these years—let them gossip.”
“There are always consequences.”
“None that should worry you. The Luminoso couldn’t possibly condemn you, and your son is a master cabalist anyway. He’s so far removed from the dumbre these days that there’s no more taint on him than there is on me. Talk to him. He’s your son.”
“My son,” she repeated, the words emerging timidly. “What if he condemns me?”
Carbón gave her shoulder another warm squeeze. “He won’t do that.”
“Oh, I wish I could believe you.” For a moment Mercado looked like she’d break down again, but she regained control of her emotions.
“There’s only one thing to do. Sit down with Thiego and have a conversation. He’ll want to know—what son wouldn’t?—and anyway, so many years have passed. Nothing that happened a quarter of a century ago matters in the slightest.”
Mercado looked at him, her face so sincere and open that he thought for sure that she would agree. But then she shook her head. “No. I won’t do it.”
“Listen to me. I’m from the same background. I swear to you, he’ll—”
“No!”
He stopped, took a deep breath, and glanced back inside to the small room with its tapestries, each representing thousands of hours of labor from workers as poor as a breaker boy. All so a woman like Mercado, connected by blood to the dumbre, could gaze at them when the whim struck her.
Another thought hit him, even darker than that. Rodi. The boy from the dumbre who’d come to Mercado’s during the Festival of Fools, overstayed until dawn, and been pitched into the void. Carbón would always remember the terror on the young man’s face and the sound of Rodi’s lover from the Thousand screaming in the background.
But now he remembered Mercado’s righteous fury. The ice in her voice and the anger on her face. The code had been violated, and the penalty for that was death, which her servants had carried out at once, in spite of others trying to intervene.
But in Lady Mercado’s mind, who had really gone over the edge that day? Was it Thiego’s father, who’d lied his way onto the Quinta Terrace and into her bed? Or maybe it was herself? The suicide she’d always wanted, but had refrained from carrying out because she’d been carrying a child?
Either way, Carbón finally understood her actions that morning.
Chapter Seven
Illusion egg in hand, Naila stayed in the shadows away from the gaslights, watching the coal train. It had hitched its way down the cog rails from the mines on the plateau, and men were shifting it onto the tracks approaching the Great Span and hooking up the locomotive that would carry it all the way to Puerto’s canals.
A pale moon hung low over the city, rimmed with gold where a haze had drifted across the sky. One of the watchmen she’d spoken to on the upper wall said that the Scoti were burning forests and farmland hundreds of miles to the south as part of their campaign to batter the Cheksapa into submission. It must be some kind of fire to send smoke this far north.
Naila was looking for a suitable place to stow away on the train when Torre inspectors came by with lamps held on the end of poles, which they poked between the cars while others looked underneath and among the coal loads themselves. She shrank into the shadows between the two nearest cars and waited for them to pass. They drew near, but their gaze didn’t penetrate the illusion egg.
It made her grit her teeth to see their stupid, dull expressions. Those servants were hers by right. She recognized all three men—last year she’d ordered them about as she pleased. If she had commanded them to carry her all the way to Dalph, by God, they would have done it.
But all of that had been taken away, and now even her husband had turned against her, thrown her from her house and denied her access to her own children. Not that Naila had asked to see the girls in the intervening months—she had other priorities—but surely Daniel would have denied her anyway, with others whispering poison into his ear.
And so she waited, seething inside but motionless, until they’d moved on. Soon, they gave the word to Carbón’s engineer that the train was clear of smugglers and coal thieves, and the train heaved into motion. Naila scrambled up the metal railing of one of the cars and clenched it with her gloved left hand, holding the illusion egg to her breast with the right.
It was a rough start. Soot from the engine cast cinders that coated her mouth with grime, irritated her eyes, and forced her to cough softly into her elbow as the train picked up speed and rumbled, wheels squealing, onto the bridge.
And the danger wasn’t past, by any means. In addition to Carbón’s rail guards, Torre posted armed men at both ends of the bridge, and the Basdeenians had guards at their construction camp on the far side, as well. It wasn’t until the train had crossed the Rift, passed through the large camp of workers laboring to secure the bridge against collapse, and begun a slow climb over the final hillock ahead of the valley on the other side that she relaxed.
The train’s progress was slowest right around the time the engine reached the crest of the hill. After that, the weight pulling down the other side would allow the engine to gradually gain speed, dragging more and more cars with it. Naila waited until the moment when a little tug indicated the cresting of the hill and jumped clear of the train. It was traveling no faster than a person could jog, but she still stumbled in the dark, rolled, and landed in a snarl of brush.
After that, it took several minutes for the rest of the coal train to pass her by and disappear over the top. The rear lamps swayed at the end of poles on the final car, and then it was gone. She squeezed the illusion egg until the light-absorbing process reversed, and a cool yellow light illuminated her path long enough to find her way back to the rails, at which point she extinguished the light and followed the tracks by moonlight.
When she got up over the hillock, she was surprised and annoyed to see that the train had come to a stop a few hundred yards ahead of her, near where the rail met the beginning of the Quintana Way, the road that eventually tracked the canal into Dalph. There was a military encampment there, a collection of tents and shacks surrounding one of the Torre watchtowers, and she’d apparently missed a dozen or so recruits loading onto the rear car who were now hopping off to report at the barracks. The train whistled steam and started up once more.
Naila’s irritation at the wasted effort faded as lamplight and loud conversation from the encampment provided enough distraction to study the situation before she revealed herself. To her eye, there was housing for no more than two hundred men in the camp, which meant it was a staging ground to organize men for light training, to be followed by a march east. Not a major military base like de Armas maintained in Dalph.
Men wearing the colors of the army sorted the new recruits, full of jeers about their poor physical condition, their shabby clothing, and their dumbre accents. However, the camp itself seemed to be under command of a combination of Torre guards and men from the city watch. Not a surprise. The other four lords of the Quinta wouldn’t want Lord de Armas to have a military base this close to the city, especially considering what had happened la
st fall.
It was the men not under de Armas’s command who drew Naila’s attention. She studied them one by one. There was a Torre guard she didn’t recognize—he must have lived for many years outside the city manning the watchtower—and her interest in him increased when a second man emerged from the camp and whispered something in his ear. A watchman. The guard and the watchman exchanged a few words in private with the army lieutenant overseeing the new recruits. What was that about?
Naila approached quietly, but didn’t dare enter the encampment itself. Too many lights, too many men coming and going. She failed to catch anything useful from their conversation before it broke apart. Only something about double rations to make sure the weaker recruits could build up strength. As if better rations could help the dregs Carbón’s efforts were raising from the lower terraces.
When the lieutenant departed, and the Torre guard shortly thereafter, Naila studied the watchman. He was a tall fellow, about thirty-five or so, wearing a downturned mustache, but with his hair trimmed short in the military style. Looked vaguely familiar the longer she looked at him. He’d been present in the city during the uprising, hadn’t he? Former military, perhaps?
The watchman didn’t leave the encampment, as she’d hoped, but soon enough the recruits were marched to their temporary barracks with all the discipline of a flock of bedraggled, dispirited goats, and the watchman gave a weary shake of the head before making his way back through the camp toward the more permanent looking buildings in the shadow of the Torre watchtower. Naila followed. When he opened the door of his shack, she shoved him inside, then hurried in after him and closed the door behind her.
The watchman recovered his balance. “Damn you,” the man said, turning around. “I’m gonna . . .”
He looked about in confusion when he didn’t spot Naila, who was barring the door, illusion egg in hand. He fumbled to a lamp on the desk of the small room, turned up the flame, and snatched a dagger that had been holding down a stack of papers.
“Who’s there? I’ll cut your damn throat. I’ll hack you to—”
Naila pocketed the illusion egg. She held out her hand with the glove and its strange material in full view while she slowly drew back the hood of her cabalist robes with the other.
“Naila Roja y Torre?” the man said slowly. “The Master of Whispers?”
“Naila Roja. There is no Torre any longer.”
She was more certain than ever that she knew him, but still couldn’t place his face. Ah, there it was. A cabalist had reported on him when she’d been studying the watch in the run-up to the violent events of last fall.
“What is your name, soldier?” she asked.
The briefest hesitation. “Anderos. Second lieutenant of the watch. How did you come up on me like that?”
“Are you really surprised?”
“That’s not the point. What if you’d been a spy?”
She chuckled. “I am a spy—I just happen to not be an enemy spy. The Elders granted me magic to come and go unseen—that’s all you need to know.” She put an edge in her voice. “Are you going to put down the dagger? You know you cannot kill me, of course.”
Without taking his eye off her, he reached behind him and set the lamp on the table, then placed the dagger back atop the papers, strategically placed, she noticed, to snatch up should she try anything.
“Who are you really, Anderos?” she asked.
“I told you, a second lieutenant—”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said impatiently. “Are you still de Armas’s man?”
“I belong to the watch, nothing more. I answer to Captain Plata.”
“You’re former military—anyone can see that. And the army has called back all of its ex-soldiers until the Scoti are defeated. I need to make contact with de Armas, and I need your help.”
“I don’t work for that man. The army threw me out, said I was no good for service. I suffered a battle wound, never made a full recovery.”
“What was your injury?”
“Took a knife to the ribs. Cut my lungs, and now I can’t ever catch my breath.”
“You’re breathing fine now,” she pointed out.
“You haven’t seen me wheezing up and down the stairs of the city walls. Not such a good thing in the army either. I couldn’t march the twenty miles they need you to, so I had to return to Quintana. Plata made me lieutenant after I came over during the fight against Espejo.”
It all sounded plausible, but she had her doubts. What’s more, his initial fear and respect seemed to have curdled into defiance. He stared back at her with a hard look, daring her to contradict him. This was a man accustomed to giving orders, as well as taking them, and had identified her as one to push around.
Before Anderos could flinch, Naila took a step forward, grabbed his shirt with her gloved hand, and tore it from his body. Buttons popped loose, the cloak fell, and the iron ring holding it closed clanked to the flagstones and rolled across the floor. She tossed the shirt aside like it was a rag. The man gasped and took a step back, mouth open, rage and fear mixing on his face.
“What the devil did you do that for?”
She pointed to the scar on his ribs. “That little thing? Is that your so-called wound?”
Anderos thrust out his chin. “Aye. Damn near ended my life. Why the hell would you do that? It’s going to cost me two and twelve. A proper shirt of the watch doesn’t come cheap.”
“It’s a slashing wound, not a stab. Anyone can see that.”
“Huh?”
“The knife didn’t puncture your lung or anything else. And it certainly didn’t justify kicking you out of the army. Especially now, when de Armas is desperate for men.”
“You know nothing about battle wounds, woman.”
“I know who you are now. I recognize you. It’s that ugly mustache that threw me off. You’re the bastard son of a Forty merchant who sent his mistress to Dalph when he found out she was carrying his child. You’re not from the city—you arrived in Quintana just before Espejo, didn’t you?”
Anderos gaped, but quickly recovered. “What do you want?”
“I need to know right now if you’re still working for Lord de Armas. I don’t have time for banter, so tell me straight out. If you’re not, then go your way, and I’ll find someone else. If you are, this could be an opportunity.”
He grabbed for his ruined shirt and ran his hand through the torn back where she’d ripped it off him, then eyed her glove and face before finally meeting her eyes. He looked fearful but determined.
“No more threatening,” he said. “No more intimidation.”
“I didn’t do either of those things.”
He thrust the shirt at her. “What do you call this?”
“I call it an attempt to cut through layers of obfuscation. I believe in the army the technical term is bullshit. Now that we’re clear you were lying about the extent of your injuries, I want to know if you were lying to the army or lying to the watch. Who was your audience when you feigned serious injury?”
He gave a final glance at his dagger, still sitting atop the table, perhaps thinking he might drive her out of here. Instead, he made his way to a footlocker at the base of his cot. He threw it open while Naila watched warily, but he was only getting another shirt, like the first, but yellowed with age, and with a collar that needed replacing. He buttoned it slowly, the wheels in his head evidently turning.
“I still work for de Armas.”
“As I thought. How many of you are there in the city?”
“It’s a treacherous place,” Anderos said, as if that were an answer to her question. “The other members of the Quinta are resentful of my lord. And the Luminoso proved itself an unreliable ally. You, especially.”
“Don’t be delusional. Our enemies were better at backstabbing than we were. It won’t happen again.”
“No, it won’t. Because de Armas had his fingers burned, and doesn’t intend to get involved a second time. He has oth
er priorities now.”
“The Scoti, you mean? Is that real?”
Anderos scoffed. “No, woman. The Scoti are purely an invention of Lord de Armas. Entire barbarian nations—none of them exist.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. I’m talking about the Scoti threat. Is it real, or is your master looking for an excuse to rebuild his army?”
“Why the hell would he do that if he doesn’t plan to enter the city again?”
“I have no idea. Because he’s jealous of Mercado’s wealth, maybe, or he sees Carbón and Torre working with the Basdeenians. Or he’s angry with Puerto for staying aloof—who knows?”
“Go outside and smell the air. You’re breathing the forests and farms of the Cheksapa. That bitter taste? That’s little bits of burned villagers in your mouth, their infants burned alive in their cradles. Their livestock. The Scoti threat is most definitely real, and we don’t know if we can defeat them with the rubbish you’re sending us as recruits.”
Naila found herself taking the city’s side against this insult. “If you think there are better men to be found in the dumbre, you’re welcome to have a look. Or maybe you should make friends with Basdeen and get their armies on your side.”
“Ha! They’re tinkerers and shopkeepers. What kind of soldiers do you think they’d make? Anyway, they’re jealous of us. You want to see backstabbing, let an army from Basdeen march the Quintana Way and see them come right across the Great Span, which you’ve so helpfully anchored into place for their use.”
Anderos’s argument—which she assumed represented current thinking in the army, all the way to Lord de Armas himself—held the contradictory position that Basdeen was both worthless as an ally and dangerous as an enemy. The truth was, Naila had no use for the arrogant Ann Grosst and her fellow engineers and workers that Carbón had encouraged to set up camp on the far side of the Rift. A threat? She wasn’t so sure about that.
“What if I were to provide a way for your master to win the war quickly?” she asked. “Without involving Basdeen or any other foreign power. Would he bring back his army and help us finish what we started last fall?”
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