Bess involuntarily looked at Orellana, who still did not appear to be listening. Her hands had gone numb not only from pressure but from fear. None of the possibilities were good. Help Mendoza, and see the Incas slaughtered; refuse, and be tortured. But…she recalled all too well the images of European weaponry, Uturunku’s bloodlust, his thoughts of the jaguar warriors tearing apart helpless women and children. She wanted to prevent that, but she remembered the avidity in Mendoza’s eyes when he had looked at the Sapa Inca’s serpent ring, and she did not believe he had entirely altruistic motives. “You lie,” she whispered. “You want the gold.”
Mendoza laughed. “Then there is treasure. You have seen it?”
“I told you, it is nothing but rumor,” Bess lied.
“I do not believe you. Spain has some few Incan treasures that were not melted down in the Conquest. You wore a ring that is the twin of one such treasure.” Mendoza leaned in until she could smell his breath, hot and smelling of onion. “We know the Inca gold exists, Miss Hanley. And we do not need your confirmation to pursue it.”
“You are using this fight as an excuse to enrich yourself.”
“That treasure is the property of España,” Mendoza said, “and of course I will be happy to claim it in her name. And if the king rewards me with a portion of it, I will not refuse. But do not—” his voice suddenly rose to a roar—“insult me by suggesting I care more for wealth than for the lives of Spaniards!”
That, too, was a lie. Bess did not need her mind reading talent to realize that. But it did not matter. She cared about those lives, all those innocent people Uturunku and his warriors would kill without remorse, and as much as she hated Mendoza and his greed, there truly was only one choice she could make and keep her honor.
She said, “I do not know how much good I will be. I saw very little of the path w—I took, and do not know if I could find the city again.”
“That is where Joaquin comes in,” Mendoza said, once again placid and friendly. “He examined your eyes while you slept, and he tells me it is possible to enhance your vision for a time.”
Amaya’s trick. It was too much to expect no one else might know how to reproduce it. “Then I will help,” Bess said, hating herself for giving in so readily.
“Very well.” Mendoza rose. “There is a chamber readied for you. Do not be afraid, no one will molest you. But you will drink the bebida entumecedora without a fight. Joaquin is tender-hearted and dislikes having to force it on you.”
Bebida entumecedora. He meant the blackberry drink. Bess glanced at Orellana. This close, she could see he was handsome, but he also had the hard look of someone who enjoyed violence. It gave him a surprising similarity to Uturunku. She suspected Mendoza meant his words as humor. “I have agreed to help, sir, and you need not strip me of my talent.”
“You have agreed to help, yes, but I am no fool,” Mendoza said, “and I know very well you would see me at the devil if you could. This is a precaution only. I do not wish to have your War Office swoop in and rescue you before we defeat the Incas.”
Bess did not say that the War Office did not need her to Speak to them in order to find her. As clever and ruthless as Mendoza was, he might have discovered a way to thwart the Seers, but if he had not, she did not want him aware of that possibility. “Very well,” she said.
Mendoza offered her his hand. “Let me guide you down the stairs, so you do not fall. I will show you to your room, and in the morning, we will begin.”
Bess did not want him to touch her, but could think of no way to avoid it, particularly since she was under no illusions about her ability to descend those rickety stairs. Mendoza was surprisingly careful in guiding her, which made her hate him more; he maintained that triumphant smile the whole way down to the ground floor and through the arched doorway. They did not appear to be in the viceroy’s palace, but in a smaller building that was nevertheless grand and well-lit. Bess guessed that this was military headquarters, given how many blue and red soldiers she saw, and that she had first been held in the barracks attached to it.
The room Mendoza gave her was small but tidy, clearly not intended for visitors. “There is a guard posted,” he said, “for your protection, naturally,” and his smile became so blindingly wide Bess wished she were a man to strike it off his face.
When he was gone, Bess lay on the bed without disrobing and stared into the darkness; he had not bothered leaving her a lantern. She hated the position she found herself in. Perhaps if Mendoza had been an honorable man who simply wanted to protect Spanish villages from slaughter, if he had not been intent on genocide and plunder—she did not believe for one moment that he intended to spare any Inca—she would have helped him wholeheartedly. As it was, she could only hope that she was, in fact, doing the right thing.
Chapter 30
In which Bess is pressed into unwilling service as a guide
She slept fitfully, uncomfortable in her ball gown and convenables, until pink light filled the small rectangular window opposite her bed and she gave up the pretense that she was sleeping at all. Mr. Quinn, she Spoke, but felt nothing but that same blank emptiness. She tried addressing everyone she could think of as she sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the door, dreading the moment when someone would come through it. There was no answer, not even a faint tremor of a connection as if the drug was wearing off. Time passed. She grew hungrier and thirstier by the minute.
Finally, when the pink light had turned golden-white, the door opened. Bess’s heart sank; it was Orellana. He carried a battered metal tray that smelled deliciously of pork and less deliciously of blackberries. “You drink,” he said, his accent thick but intelligible, and handed her a small wooden cup. Bess took it and drank down the cool draught, glaring at Orellana but otherwise not resisting. She had not forgotten how it felt to be helpless against him, and she had no desire to experience it again. Better to pretend unthinking compliance, and look for a different way to resist.
Orellana took the empty cup from her and set the tray on the bed. There was a pile of ham diced into bite-sized pieces and a bowl of some kind of porridge, along with another wooden cup, this one filled with beer. There was a spoon, but no knife or fork. Mendoza intended to take no chances.
Bess awkwardly spooned up the bits of ham and the porridge and drained the cup under Orellana’s watchful eye. He made an awkward dining companion, surly and menacing, and Bess pretended he was not there.
When she finished, Orellana took the tray, but shook his head when she would have followed him out the door. “Salvador comes soon,” he said, and shut the door behind him.
Bess threw herself backward on her bed and tried once again to Speak to her reticulum. She strained so hard to break through the emptiness sparks filled her vision, and she had to stop Speaking or fall unconscious. She breathed in slowly and let the breath out in a long, thin stream until the dizziness passed. She would have welcomed the constant nagging intrusion of overheard thoughts, if it meant she was not subjected to this dreadful silence. She was too angry to cry.
Mendoza opened the door only a few minutes later. He was accompanied by a middle-aged woman bearing an armload of clothing. “Sabina will help you change your clothing,” he said. “It is a lovely gown, but perhaps not best suited to travel in the wilderness.”
“Thank you for your consideration,” Bess said icily. Mendoza smiled and left the room.
It was immediately clear why Mendoza had chosen Sabina to help Bess; the woman appeared to be mentally deficient, capable of communicating only in grunts and gestures. Bess, who had hoped for another clever helper like Julieta, gave up her plan to send a message via Sabina almost immediately.
She also saw that Mendoza had meant it when he spoke of traveling in the wilderness. The clothing he had provided for her to choose from was not European gowns, but peasant clothing, long, full skirts in bright colors and blouses that pulled over the head and tied at the neck and wrists. It was all clothing a woman might don without
assistance, and Bess’s spirits again fell, her vision of suborning a companion disappearing like morning dew. She discarded her convenables without a second thought; they would be irrelevant and possibly awkward in these clothes.
When Bess was dressed in a sky blue wool skirt over a heavy petticoat and a white cotton blouse, Sabina gathered up the rest of the clothes and left, revealing that Mendoza had been waiting outside the door. I should have delayed longer, Bess thought, clinging to that small pettiness as the only act of rebellion available to her.
“The clothing of my country suits you,” Mendoza said. “Shall we go? We will follow the path the soldiers observed you taking until we are beyond sight of the walls, and then Joaquin will alter your eyes and we will proceed from there.”
Bess had expected to walk, for she had seen very few wheeled vehicles in Lima, so she was surprised when Mendoza escorted her to the building’s courtyard and led her to a donkey. She looked at the animal’s elaborate saddle and said, “I fear I cannot ride. My eyes, even with spectacles—”
“I will lead your donkey, never fear,” Mendoza said. He unceremoniously boosted her into the saddle, which was not a sidesaddle and shoved her skirt and petticoat perilously high. Bess squeaked and tried to push the fabric over her legs, which stuck out awkwardly on both sides. How fortunate no one she knew would see her like this.
Mendoza mounted, not a donkey, but a horse, and Bess squeaked again as the donkey stepped out in response to some signal she did not see. She clung to the short ruff on the donkey’s neck and hoped she would not fall off. But the donkey moved as placidly as if he were a sofa, and eventually Bess relaxed her grip enough to observe her surroundings. The streets of Lima were crowded with pedestrians and riders, all of them speaking at the top of their voices, arguing, trading, laughing, even cursing. If she closed her eyes, which she would not do because she might fall off the donkey, she could almost imagine herself in London, albeit a London full of Spaniards.
She heard more horses behind her, and behind that, many marching feet. She swiveled around and glimpsed Orellana and the Bounder and a handful of other men, most of them in uniforms. Everything beyond that was blurry blue and red, but the movement was regular enough that she could guess at dozens, perhaps hundreds of soldiers, drawn up in ranks about twenty yards behind their procession. The sound of their feet on the road chilled her. She could imagine them clashing with Uturunku’s warriors, but could not guess who might win that battle.
The thought of Uturunku’s men made Bess wonder what had happened to Amaya. If she had been Amaya, she would have gone into hiding while she reshaped her skull and grew out her hair, anything to lose her resemblance to the jaguar warriors. But once Amaya was capable of passing for Spanish—yes, technically she was Spanish, but Bess was not at all certain how Amaya thought of herself—what then? Bess could not imagine any role in Spanish society, even the poorest of that society, for such a warrior. Bess began to Speak to Amaya before she remembered she could not, and once more felt like screaming with rage and helplessness.
They left the city by a different gate than the one Bess had entered by and splashed across the river, which ran low enough that Bess’s skirts were not even dampened. Bess breathed in the smell of the ocean and cast her gaze far to the left, wishing she were close enough to see the waves dash against the shore. To her, it was not much more than a moving grey-blue emptiness, but she could imagine the crests of the waves as she had seen them from the Mary Peirce’s deck all those months ago.
“This is far enough,” Mendoza said, bringing his horse and the donkey to a halt. “Joaquin?”
Orellana dismounted and walked to where Bess still sat astride the donkey. “Move no,” he commanded her, and put his very large, not too clean hands on either side of her head. It felt uncomfortably as if he meant to crush her head in his palms, but he only laid his thumbs gently atop her eyelids. A familiar tingling sensation began in her cheeks and moved upward to behind her eyes. Orellana held her for the space of three breaths, then removed his hands.
Bess opened her eyes and found her vision had expanded just as it had for Amaya. She blinked, her heart lifting despite her circumstances. If only she could see like this forever!
She looked around at the landscape and recalled memories she had barely any recollection of making. “We took the long way, to avoid the warriors,” she said. “I do not know how to make the trip shorter. It was…we came west, then north, then southwest.”
“We?” Mendoza said sharply.
Instantly Bess knew her mistake. Cursing herself, she said, “Someone helped me escape. One of the Incas.”
“Why would an Inca man help you?”
Bess considered lying, making up some story to protect Amaya, and realized there was no way she would be able to keep that many lies straight. “It was a woman,” she said, “and she was Spanish, not Inca. A captive for many years. She knew they wanted to kill me and chose not to let that happen.”
“I see,” Mendoza said. “Then why did she not join you when you came to the palace?”
“She was afraid of being mistaken for an Inca. She wanted to find her own place.” Also true, if not entirely so.
“That is unfortunate. Had she done so, we would not have needed you.” Mendoza shrugged. “It matters not. We go northeast, then, and you will look for landmarks until the light is gone.” He shouted something in Spanish and waved, and Bess heard the soldiers fall into step once again. Orellana mounted, and their procession moved on.
They moved so slowly by comparison to that last scrambling flight Bess and Amaya had made that Bess felt the illusion that the landscape was shifting minutely around them, creeping along inch by inch. At times Bess was impatient with their slowness and wished she could again run across the cliffs, but then she remembered the reason for the journey and anger made her heart beat faster.
To calm herself, she watched the ocean. It was beautiful, and this was the most she had ever seen of it. And the sound of the waves crashing against the shore…it sounded like a lion’s roar and the hissing of afternoon rain and the shout of an opera chorus all at once, and it sounded like nothing in the world but itself. Perhaps when this was all over she might convince an English Extraordinary Shaper to alter her eyes, even if it was only temporary, and then go to Brighton or Dover or even Plymouth and watch the ocean roll in for a few hours.
The day was beautifully warm, and Bess was quite comfortable in her borrowed clothes. Though the landscape was dull, birds flew past, too far away for Bess to make out details but with high, hoarse cries that broke the monotony. Around noon, a soldier handed her a hunk of yellow cheese, soft and delicious, and she ate that and then turned her attention to the distant mountains. She was not certain she could find her way back to the Inca city. She recalled a number of landmarks, but the last day and a half of their journey had been through foothills that resembled each other too closely for that. And she and Amaya had not left trail markers, obviously. Mendoza’s faith in her memory might be misplaced.
Discouraged by these musings, she turned her thoughts to Mr. Addison. It made perfect sense that he was Mr. Quinn, his sometime aloofness and abrupt manners, his reassuring intelligence revealed when they were alone. He was someone one might expect to know how to read a map and plot a nautical course. But Bess could think of no reason for Mr. Addison to conceal his identity. He was irascible, but not enough so to mark him as rude, and nothing else about his life or manners was objectionable or embarrassing.
It worried Bess that she could not guess what secret he might be hiding. And she was not certain she had the right to ferret it out, even if she only did so because she could not bear concealing her love for him. Suppose it were something truly dreadful—would she still love him if he were a murderer, or secretly married to a madwoman, or…Bess could not imagine anything else at the moment, but the list of possibilities was potentially long.
She recalled how it had felt to Speak to Mr. Quinn, how comforting and reassur
ing his Voice was, and her resolve hardened. She could not bear letting him go on believing she cared nothing for him except as a friend. She would tell him the truth and let him decide. After all, he might not return her feelings, though based on his behavior, that was unlikely. It was a frightening decision that made her heart beat faster even though she had no way of implementing it at present. But she distracted herself for the next quarter of an hour holding imaginary conversations with him, after once more testing the limits of Orellana’s drug and nearly falling unconscious again. Then she gave up and went back to staring at the foothills.
As the sun began to sink into the ocean, Mendoza turned to Bess and said, “We must camp soon. Are we on the right track?”
Bess pointed ahead and eastward. “I recognize that rock that looks like a bear on its hind legs,” she said. “We should turn to follow that crease between the hills eastward.”
“Tomorrow,” Mendoza agreed, and dismounted. He came to help Bess off her donkey and steadied her when she wobbled, biting her lip against the pain in her legs and hips. “You have borne up well. Riding all day is not easy for one who has never done so.”
“This is the first time I have ever ridden by myself,” Bess confessed. “When I was younger, my father took me up before him on his horse, but my eyesight has never been good enough for me to be safe riding more than at a gentle walk, led by someone else.” She hurt as she had never hurt before, and leaned on Mendoza without caring that he saw her weakness.
“It is unfortunate. I find riding exhilarating.” Mendoza led her to one side as soldiers began pitching tents and lighting cookfires. He produced a short camp stool that reminded Bess of the Sapa Inca and indicated she should sit. Unfolding a second stool, he sat beside her. “How long was your journey?” he asked.
Whispering Twilight Page 31
