Faleiro laughed a deep belly laugh. As he wiped the tears from his eyes, he said, “You poor stupid girl. What idiot could think that someone like Quesada could end war?” He laughed again. “But I suppose that’s what you get, living in filth surrounded by blood-thirsty animals.”
Qhora felt her blood rising, the heat flush in her chest and neck and cheeks. She wanted to pull the Aegyptian dagger from her left sleeve and slit the fat man’s throat. “What do you know about war? War isn’t natural. Animals don’t wage war. Not even people make war. Only cowards wearing fancy hats and titles make war. Enzo is going to change all that. He will break all the swords raised against him, and then he will raise an army to break all the swords in the world. And after he has become the greatest peacemaker in the world, he will become the greatest explorer in history. Have you heard the legend of the skyfire stone?”
Faleiro puffed his wet lips and rolled his little eyes. “The nun who saw a meteor fall to earth? That was hundreds of years ago. So what? Don’t tell me Don Lorenzo is reading that old garbage. The skyfire stone was just a rock, little more than a holy relic for idiots who understand nothing of science.”
“Enzo was trained to slaughter men by Don Jeronimo Carranza. He was trained in mathematics and anatomy, as well as metalworking.” Qhora leaned forward with her right hand edging closer to the dagger hilt hidden in the lace folds of her left sleeve. “I think he knows a thing or two about your precious sciences. He even knows a thing or two about mapmaking. And he’s already found the skyfire stone.”
Faleiro flashed a very brief smile and then stared at her for a moment. “What do you mean, he’s found it?”
A sudden stab of doubt twisted in her chest. He’s actually interested! Enzo said never to discuss the details of the stone with anyone. She feigned boredom. “He knows where it is.”
“No one knows where it is. In my school days, I read that nun’s letters to the bishop myself. She didn’t know where it was. And even if she did, who cares? It’s just a rock.”
Qhora felt her heart at war between her desire to protect her husband and her desire to lord him over other men. Especially this man. She said, “That nun, Sister Ariel, knew more than she said in her letters. And she told it all to Enzo.”
“She told it all to—” Faleiro’s eyes narrowed. “No. Her ghost told him? Him?”
Stop talking. Stop telling this bloated fool about the stone! But she still wanted to slash the man across the throat. To hell with Espani etiquette. She said, “When Enzo retrieves the stone, he’ll have the most powerful weapon in the world. His name and his deeds will be remembered for centuries, long after yours have been forgotten.”
“Weapon?” Faleiro sat up. “What weapon?”
Stop, stop, stop! Qhora smiled coldly at the man’s plain-faced eagerness. “Good day, commander.” She stood and left, still smiling to herself.
She spent the rest of the afternoon walking the grounds. With her shoulders aching under the weight of her coats and her breath steaming like a locomotive’s funnel, she trudged up and down the frozen muddy lanes around the old Diaz estate where Lorenzo had established his school. She passed through the dead remains of the apple orchard where the trees slumbered in anticipation of their two months of summer sun, and she crunched along the edge of the pond where the young boys liked to chop holes in the ice to fish with thread and wire. For months, she had stubbornly clung to this ritual of pacing around the yards, insisting to anyone who asked that with enough time she would grow accustomed to the Espani climate to the point at which she might wear as few as one coat. But she was still wearing two, in addition to her shawls and knit pullovers.
More often than not, she skewed her schedule later in the afternoon when the sun was already low and bleak shadows stretched across the snowy hills. Enzo had told her that the walking dead might be glimpsed only in the deepest cold and only in the dimmest light. But she also knew that the spirit had to choose to visit, and so far none had chosen to visit her. Not even Sister Ariel. She had no great desire to meet a ghost, but it was the one truly intriguing aspect to this foreign land. And yet that too seemed to be denied to her.
The sky was black as jet when she returned to the house by way of the stables. Beneath the brilliant winter stars she glanced over the horses and then entered the pen in the rear through the heavy leather curtain. Inside she found Atoq sleeping on a thick bed of hay, twisted and rolled mostly onto his back with his great furry belly exposed. He was all soft browns and warm blacks flecked with the odd patch of white, his hide wrapped tightly over layers of heavy muscle, most of it concentrated on his huge shoulders and neck. The enormous fanged cat had curled up against the wall opposite the stabler’s stove for warmth and the glistening red stain on the floor told her that Atoq had been fed within the last hour. Whatever regret she had about confining the hunting beast faded when she saw him sleeping contentedly on his bed. After all, his life back in the Empire would have been no more or less comfortable.
But across from the cat stood her feathered mount, the hatun-anka Wayra. The massive bird hovered by the narrow window, gazing out over the hills, her talons clicking softly on the stone floor, tiny chirps and hisses escaping through her hatchet-like beak. Her head and neck rustled with blue-green plumes, but her eyes were ringed in bright red feathers, and in the darkness she appeared as a bloody-eyed demon. She held her short wings tight against her sides and stood in a wide-legged stance, tensed as though ready to sprint through the jungles as she once had. Wayra turned and blinked at her mistress, then shuffled around and dipped her plumed head to receive Qhora’s gentle caresses.
Atoq may have been content to lie on the floor and bask in the glow of a full belly and a warm bed, but Wayra needed more than food and water. She needed to run. Time and again, Qhora had tried to find roads or trails where they might ride alone, far from the people of Madrid. But there was always someone on the road who would see them and run away screaming, to be followed by a visit from the local constabulary who required endless promises from Enzo that the bird would be kept under lock and key. And they couldn’t travel cross-country, at least not in the snow. Wayra had learned to run on the rocky mountain slopes and dense jungle floors, but the slippery ice and unreliable snow mounds made her uncertain, which made her angry, which made her dangerous.
“Shhh, my love.” Qhora stroked the beast’s head between the eyes. “Soon it will be summer again and we’ll go running over the hills and through the forests. I promise.”
By the time she returned to the house, supper was nearly over. Not that the evening meal was a formal affair, indeed she preferred to avoid too much familiarity with Enzo’s students. They may have been only a few years younger than she was, but they acted like children. They were in turns boastful and shy, awkward and smarmy, anxious and proud, and generally thoughtless, though Enzo insisted these youths were no different from any others in España. Qhora allowed him his fantasy.
As the diestros-in-training filtered out of the dining room, she sat beside her husband and smiled at him as he wiped the last of the sauce from his plate with a crust of black bread. He raised an eyebrow. “If you stare long enough I might start to think that you like me.”
“Can’t I admire the finest swordsman in the country? I have to do it now, before the novelty wears off and I have to find someone else to admire.”
He winked at her. “How are your walks coming along?”
“Still cold.” She frowned at the crumbs and stains on the old table. “And lonely.”
“Mm.” He patted her leg. “Well, I wouldn’t worry. Most Espani don’t spend their time standing around in empty fields hoping to make conversation with passing strangers, so there’s really no need for you to put in so much practice at it.”
“Thank God for that.” It still felt strange to say. God. One god with three faces. Father, Mother, and Son. The triquetra medallion around her neck, however, was far less uncomfortable than the words. After all, it was only a piece
of jewelry. That was the price of marriage in this country, and she had paid it willingly, if not happily.
Lorenzo pushed back from the table and stood up with his plate in his hand and a frown wrinkling his forehead. “Have you seen the commander? Faleiro? The Medici boy scampered down for a quick bite before running back to his room to sulk, but I haven’t seen Faleiro since the match this afternoon. He must have fallen asleep. I guess I should go see if he wants anything to eat.”
Qhora felt a small knot in her belly. Her little victory over the naval officer suddenly felt hollow and foolish. It was difficult to remember that politics and honor and gossip were more powerful in España than actual strength or reputation, and that the wrong word to the wrong person might hurt her Enzo’s future. Still, I was more honest than boastful and I didn’t stab him at all. Surely an important man like Faleiro wouldn’t bother with a tiny fencing school over a few angry words.
She was just about to go to the kitchen and put together a plate of something less greasy than the men’s fare, perhaps yesterday’s soup of red peppers, eggplant, onions, and peas, and a handful of almonds if she could find them. But Enzo strode back through the room and cast her a worried glance. “He’s not in his room. And his things are gone, if he ever put them there. I think he’s left.” And the hidalgo swept down the hall toward his study.
For a moment she debated whether she wanted food in her hands when she explained to her husband what she had said to the fat man from the navy, and she finally decided against it. Better to enjoy her meal later, in peace. When she stepped into the doorway of his study, she found him frozen in place standing over his desk, his hands hovering over his papers. He looked at her, his eyes tense. “It’s gone. My journal with all my notes, everything Ariel told me, it’s gone. The maps. The drawings. Everything was in that journal. It was right here.” He patted the corner of the desk.
“You think Faleiro took it?” she asked innocently.
“You talked to him, didn’t you?” He narrowed his gaze at her. “You told him about the stone.”
“What do you mean?” She swallowed, wondering whether it was helpful to play the naïve housewife for a few moments while he calmed down or whether she should just tell him and get this little scene over and done with.
“Or was it someone else, sometime earlier?” He rubbed his eyes. “In Tartessos last month, wasn’t it? You told one of your new friends about the stone. Of course you did.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back for a moment. “I told you, I asked you, to keep this private. I told you there were people who might try to get to the stone first. Treasure hunters, thieves. And you told some officer’s wife, and she told her husband, and he told his commander. And that’s why Rui Faleiro was here today.” He turned to stare out the window.
“He didn’t come for the skyfire stone, Enzo,” Qhora said, mildly annoyed at the strange tangent of her husband’s logic. “He came to recruit you to train his sailors to fence. He told me so right after your little match with the Italian brat.”
Lorenzo turned. “What? Why didn’t he say anything to me?”
“He came to me first to feel you out. He asked me what you might say.”
“I hope you told him I’d say no.”
“That’s exactly what I told him.” Qhora’s stern look melted a bit and she felt her resolve to win this pseudo-argument fading quickly. “And then he insulted you a little, so I insulted him a little.”
The hidalgo’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, Qhora. Did you really?”
“Yes. And he said something about how you couldn’t read, I think, so I bragged about your book, and your research, and then your other research, and somehow the stone may have come up in passing at some point.” She paused to wet her lips. “I’m sorry, Enzo. I was angry and he was a bastard and he’s lucky I didn’t stab him, to be honest.”
“And now he has my book. And he’s been missing for hours. Gone for six, maybe eight hours. I can’t catch him now. It’s gone.” Lorenzo dragged his hand down over the thin black beard around his mouth while he stared at her. She knew the look. He was measuring the situation, calculating his options, and practicing each of them to see where they might lead. He was probably practicing what he would say to her to sound angry but not too angry. She knew how much he hated fighting with her.
Lorenzo exhaled and sat down at his desk. “My God, Qhora. Didn’t I tell you the stone was dangerous? That it could be used as a weapon?”
She hesitated, suddenly unsure of his meaning. “Well, yes, but it’s just a rock that fell from the sky, Enzo. How dangerous can it be? It’s just a political weapon, right? Or a religious one. I mean, I know how pious some of your people are, but would they really kill or die for a holy relic like that?”
He looked up at her bleakly. “Qhora, the skyfire stone isn’t just a relic or a symbol.”
“Meaning what? You want to melt it down to make swords? Or shoot it out of a cannon? What else is it good for?”
“Sit down.” He played with the pen on his desk. “I never told you exactly what happened after we escaped from Cusco, when we were separated on the way to Cartagena.”
She shrugged. “You got lost, you were hurt, your horse died, and you crawled out of the jungle with some filthy bandages wrapped around your ribs a few days after I reached the coast. What didn’t you tell me?”
He stared dully at the bare spot on his desk where his book should have been. “I was riding along a steep hillside in the rain when my horse slipped and we fell down the slope, sliding through the mud into trees and rocks. My horse was dead before it reached the bottom. I only survived because I landed on the horse, but my ribs were cracked, my arm was broken, and soon after a spider gave me a nasty bite on my hand,” Lorenzo said. “I was probably only a day or two from death when someone found me.”
“Who?”
“I’m not really sure. I think they were priests, but not like the priests in Cusco. Different hair, different clothes. Just men, no women. They lived in a small stone building on the edge of a river, which is where they took me. It took a couple days to recover from the spider bite and to get my ribs on the mend. The day after I woke up, I was still very weak and sick. I lay in my little room, sweating and listening to the priests singing or chanting. Suddenly they stopped. They were shouting in some sort of Quechua that I didn’t know, so I had no idea what they were saying. Then I heard more voices outside and I stood up to look out the window of my room.”
“What did you see?”
“Espani soldiers. Probably Pizzaro’s men,” said Lorenzo. “The soldiers were on the far side of the river, and they were demanding that the priests use their boat to bring the soldiers across the water. The priests refused. And then the soldiers began wading across the river. That’s when I left my room. I meant to talk to the soldiers, to call them off, but I never made it outside. I collapsed in the large common room outside my doorway, still too weak to do anything. Lying there, I saw the priests run past. They carried a sort of litter or stretcher between them. Whatever was on the stretcher was covered with a cloth. The priests ran outside and a moment later I heard the soldiers screaming in agony, and through the high narrow window of my room I saw steam rising from the river. Soon the screaming stopped and the priests returned. This time the stretcher was uncovered and I saw what was on it. A stone. It was about the size of a man’s head, mostly round but a little lumpy, and a dark fiery orange color, like copper, or red-gold.”
“What happened to the soldiers?” Qhora asked.
“I learned later that they were boiled alive when the priests placed the stone in the water.” Lorenzo shook his head. “It’s unlike anything else in nature. This stone, this metal, can be perfectly cool from just a few inches away but still burning hot to the touch. It can melt steel, scorch the earth, and boil the water just by touching it. The only way to handle the stone safely is with clay, as the priests used on their stretcher.”
“So, the stone only had to touch the river to
kill all the soldiers in the water?” Qhora felt a sick twisting in her belly.
Lorenzo nodded. “Over the next few days, I managed to learn a few things about the priests and their stone. Not much. They said it fell from the sky, and made certain sounds and lights across the heavens as it fell. It matches Sister Ariel’s description of the skyfire stone in every way.”
“I see.” Qhora looked down and began smoothing her Espani skirts across lap. Her hands trembled and she rolled them into fists. I should have killed Faleiro. I should have slit his throat when I had the chance. Now there’s going to be more war and death. More killing. More innocents being killed. “So your little hobby, this rock, this skyfire stone, whatever it is, is actually a deadly weapon. And you couldn’t tell me that?”
Lorenzo shook his head. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t think of it that way. It’s really so much more than a weapon. It could help rekindle our faith, and it could help to rebuild our cities or improve crops for generations to come. How many ways might España benefit from something that provides endless warmth to anything it touches?” He sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to, really. But this had to remain a secret, and I know how much you enjoy talking to other people about…me.”
Qhora stared at him. Only because no one has any interest in discussing me and my homeland. Did it ever occur to you that they all see me either as an invader or the spoils of your conquest? “And why shouldn’t I talk about you? You’re a warrior and a hero, despite all your Espani modesty. You’re as fierce in battle as you are wise in counsel and pure of heart, and most of the men on this continent aren’t fit to lick your boots!”
He smiled a little. “I don’t know if I would phrase it in quite that way.”
Aetherium (Omnibus Edition) Page 46
