“And you need someone to guard your back,” Ulises said. “We’re going with you.”
Elias stared at his friend, touched and dismayed in equal measure. “But Commander Aimon—”
“Commander Aimon, Commander Aimon,” Ulises said, testy. “Who is king here?” And without another word, he spurred his horse through the doors. Marco prudently disappeared into one of the stalls.
Mercedes wore a forest-green traveling dress. A single thick braid fell to her waist, intertwined with streams of emerald ribbon. Elias said, “Don’t look at me that way, Mercedes. I only wanted—”
“I know what you wanted, Elias, you wretch!” she burst out. “What was your plan? To pay some poor village girl to take my place?”
The pouch hanging from his belt felt heavier than it had a moment ago. Guilt gave him a surly edge. “Since when did you become a mind reader?”
“It’s a simple thing to read your mind,” she retorted. “You’ll risk a stranger but not me?”
“You’re the last person I’d risk,” he said, not meaning to say it, and watched as all expression fled her face. Marco peeked over a stall, ears straining.
“Enough,” Ulises said from the stable doors, his horse stamping impatiently. “We’re wasting the sun. If it makes you both feel better, we can argue on the road.”
Once the city walls were behind them, Ulises pulled up sharply and swung his horse around to face his companions. To Elias’s complete and utter bewilderment, he started to laugh. Even Mercedes gave her cousin a worried look.
“What is so funny?” Elias demanded.
Ulises grinned. “Do you know, I don’t remember the last time I’ve left Cortes without an army at my back. This I could grow used to!”
Elias held Pythagoras’s reins loose in his grip, struck by his friend’s words. He thought of the soldiers at the arena the day before. Always watching, always near, out of necessity, and his aggravation vanished like the morning mist. It was early enough that the path north up Marinus Road was deserted as far as the eye could see. They were alone with the cypress and the yew and the purple orchids that grew in clumps by the roadside. Mercedes made sure Ulises was not watching, then mouthed a single word in Elias’s direction.
Peace?
And what could he say to that?
“Fine,” Elias said, resigned. “If the commander is going to have our heads, we might as well make the most of it. A race to Portras?” Before his question was even finished, Ulises and Mercedes had flown past him.
“Cheats!” Elias yelled. He urged Pythagoras on to the sound of their laughter.
From Cortes, the landscape gave way to rolling pasture and fields covered in red poppies. The sky was an endless canvas of blue. A stream offered respite for their horses. On the opposite bank, a herder waited as his goats took turns in the water, oblivious to his king across the way. In their garb, well-made but simple, and without guards, they warranted no special attention.
Elias crouched by the water’s edge, a waterskin in one hand. A goat lifted its head out of the stream and shook itself dry. He heard the cicadas among the branches. Unlike most places he’d visited, the tree crickets on del Mar chirped not only at night, but throughout the day. He listened to their rhythm; it reminded him of Lea’s old wooden rattle. Something tickled his consciousness.
Just there.
So close.
Now lost.
“What do you have against goat herders?” Mercedes knelt beside him to fill her own waterskin. When he glanced at her in question, she added, “You’re glaring at that poor man like he stole the silver.”
The herder eyed him nervously, pulling goats from the stream before they’d finished and hurrying them on their way, even after Elias checked his scowl and raised a hand in greeting. “I saw something on that map last night,” he said. “Something out of place. And I can’t think what it was.”
Several feet away, Ulises fed his horse an apple. “It might need fresh eyes. Mercedes and I will have a look when we’ve left Javelin.”
If we leave Javelin, Elias thought, though it felt surly to say so out loud when Ulises was so clearly enjoying the day. He held his tongue. They rode on, abreast of one another, Mercedes in the center.
They had not gone far when she said, “Elias, you’ve been to Mondrago. What do you think of it?”
A question out of nowhere. Elias glanced quickly at Ulises, who was quiet. He answered, “What makes you think I’ve been there?”
Travel to Mondrago was not exactly forbidden, but neither was it encouraged or looked upon with favor. After King Andrés had laid waste to the island, burning the crops, destroying the bridges, setting fire to the grand homes, he had placed a del Marian governor in charge. The man’s duties were simple: he and his soldiers were to leave the island as it was. Nothing was to be rebuilt; no roads were to be repaired. Collapsed bridges were left fallen in the rivers. Ulises’s father had wanted Mondrago to remain a wasteland, an example of a king’s might and a king’s grief.
“Elias,” Ulises said in a matter-of-fact tone, “if someone tells you that you cannot do something, you’ll do it. It’s simply your nature. And if you haven’t set foot on Mondrago, I will give you a thousand gold squid.”
Mercedes smiled.
“Wait a . . .” Elias said, offended, before his words trailed away. Grudgingly, he said, “The castle was spared. But the rest . . . it’s not a place you’d want to linger.”
Mercedes was no longer smiling. The Mondragan king had been a distant relation of hers on her mother’s side. “It’s uninhabitable?”
He considered her question. If del Mar was celebrated for its explorers, then Mondrago, it could be said, had been equally known for its artists. Painters, sculptors, skilled artisans who had crafted exquisite stained glass and intricate mosaics. All gone now. Its people were allowed to live, but only just. Certainly they did not thrive.
“You could see what it had been once,” he answered. “It’s primitive now. Most of the people have left, and the ones who’ve stayed are just . . . downtrodden.”
Ulises looked thoughtful. “What about the roads?”
“Rubble,” Elias said.
“The bridges?” Mercedes asked.
“Rubble.”
“And the governor?” Ulises asked. “What sort of man is he?”
Elias shrugged. “Competent enough. He does what he’s ordered to do.”
“Which means he does nothing,” Mercedes said.
“Yes,” Elias said. “This feels like an inquisition. What are you two up to?”
Ulises was blunt. “Mondrago’s a waste as it is. We can’t have it sit there for another twenty years, rotting away to nothing.”
“It’s like a fairy-tale kingdom that’s gone to sleep,” Mercedes said, and when they both looked at her, eyebrows arched, she turned defensive. “What? It’s true.”
Amused, Ulises said, “That is unusually whimsical of you, cousin. But yes.”
Elias understood. A kingdom’s true wealth was not measured by the amount of gold stored in its treasury. Like so many others, St. John del Mar was judged by the extent of its possessions abroad, its territories. These acquisitions were the driving force behind the School of Navigation. The ambition behind every expedition that sailed past the great harbor and into uncharted waters. Mondrago, as it stood now, was a worthless possession. Producing nothing.
“What will you do? Rebuild?” Elias asked. He thought of what that would mean and felt an unexpected excitement creep into him. The most current maps of Mondrago were two decades old. And, just as quickly, he remembered that if Mondrago was to be rebuilt, he would not be around to see its beginnings. He would be long gone, sailing west on the Amaris.
“I’m planning many things,” Ulises answered. He might have read Elias’s mind, because he looked over with a smile. “You can’t be in two places at once, old friend.”
Elias frowned. “What will happen to the governor?”
After a
pause, Ulises said, “It might be time to bring him home.”
From Marinus Road they turned onto a path far less traveled, bordered by cypress and winding downward into a valley known as the Cicada Pass. They skirted the village of Montserrat, Mori’s boyhood home, the peal of church bells trailing after them, along with the bitter perfume of peppers drying in the sun. Elias was coaxing Pythagoras around a pile of sharp rocks when Ulises said abruptly, “I found one of my mother’s letters yesterday. Among my father’s things. She wrote it when Teodor was an infant.”
Elias and Mercedes looked at each other. They had never known their queen. She had died when they were babies.
“What did she write about?” Mercedes asked softly.
“Small things,” he said. “What she did during her day. My father had gone to Hellespont to attend Ari’s wedding—his third one.” Ulises frowned as he avoided a second clump of jagged rocks. Elias could almost see him taking note of the road conditions. He wondered how soon it would be before workmen were sent here to begin repairs. “She would spend afternoons outside the castle visiting with the townspeople. And she would toss sweets to the children. From great sacks of it in the square. It was a tradition.” He turned to Mercedes, who had gone quiet. “I’d never heard of anyone doing that before. Have you?”
Mercedes shook her head.
“Well.” Ulises spoke almost to himself. “It would be nice to see something like that again in Cortes.”
Ulises did not look as if he expected a reply. Just as well, because Mercedes did not offer one. As the road narrowed, Ulises nudged his horse forward so that he rode ahead of them, alone in his thoughts. Elias kept pace beside Mercedes.
He had watched her as Ulises spoke. Had seen the dread in her eyes and knew what spooked her. Until Ulises married, she was the kingdom’s highest-ranking female. She would be the one expected to maintain such traditions. It would be Mercedes in Cortes’s main square, tossing great handfuls of sweets to the children. Would they dive for the treats, laughing and screaming? Or would the children remain silent and disappointed, their shoulders anchored by their mothers’ disapproving hands? He pictured Mercedes standing alone, humiliated once again by someone who held her Mondragan blood against her. He nearly broke out in a sweat thinking about it.
Waiting until Ulises had moved well out of earshot, Elias said to her, “He would never force you to do it.”
She gripped her reins tight. “He should have someone who will do these things for him, and do them gladly. Someone the people admire. I need to find him a wife.”
That seemed to Elias a drastic measure. “You could do that,” he agreed. “It might be simpler to ask others to help you. You wouldn’t have to do it alone.”
She sent him a blank look. “Who would I ask?”
Did she really not know? He started with his cousin. “You get on with Dita, don’t you? With most of my family. And there’s Reyna.” When she did not answer, he said, “Mercedes.” He waited until her eyes lifted to his. “Not everyone is like that old woman. Especially the little ones. They would not turn away sacks full of candy and shame you. Especially if you gave them . . . more.”
“More sweets?”
“It doesn’t have to be just sweets, does it? Make it so they can’t say no to you. Make it so they have no wish to.”
There was small silence. “Bribery? You think I should throw coins along with the sweets?”
He shrugged. “I would never turn down silver.”
She was startled into a laugh. At the same time, Ulises slowed his horse and said, “Look.”
They had come upon a meadow surrounded by a lemon grove on three sides. On the fourth side was a hill Elias knew was covered with leading stones. It had once been the compass makers’ main source for magnetic stones, but no one ventured up there anymore, instead traveling to the hills on the opposite end of the island. They stopped their horses at the edge of the meadow. A plain white cross, twelve feet high, had been erected at the center.
“I’ve not been here in years,” Ulises said quietly.
“No,” Elias said. The sadness was thick here—it clung to his clothes and skin, pushed its way into his lungs as he breathed. He could almost picture the outing: soldiers and servants and princes, his father, colorful blankets thrown about, pigs roasting. A happy place, once.
They had all lost something that day. Not just Ulises and Elias. Mercedes’s father, the old king’s beloved brother, had died at Mondrago before her birth. A battle that never would have taken place but for what had happened here during that fatal picnic. And beyond even them, the widows and orphans and parents left to mourn the poisoned soldiers and loyal servants. Mercedes rubbed her arms, her skin having turned to goose flesh.
In the distance, the cicadas buzzed and rattled. And again, Elias had that feeling that he was missing something right in front of him. They did not linger, but turned their horses north, toward Javelin.
Ten
HEY WOULD HAVE to leave the horses behind.
As they approached the forest, with its graceful palms anchored in white sand, all three horses revolted. They pranced backward in nervous circles, nearly unseating their riders, and their neighing reached a pitch that sent a nest of warblers fleeing the treetops. No amount of coaxing or soothing would calm them. Only distance helped. They were led to a nearby copse of cypress where they could graze. Elias tried not to think of what the horses had sensed that he had not.
At the very edge of Javelin, Mercedes unfolded a yellow dress with lace trimming. “From Reyna,” she explained. She laid it on the sand and smoothed out the creases. Ulises followed with miniature lemon cakes wrapped in wax paper. Elias, for his part, scattered about carved whistles shaped like the more common sea creatures: serpents, fish, molluscs. Beside them he placed a compass he had built himself. It wasn’t really a toy, but some of the girls would have been the daughters of mariners, he’d reasoned. It could not hurt.
With that done, he knelt in the sand and steepled his hands before him in prayer. His companions followed suit. A full ten seconds of silence passed before Mercedes looked past Ulises to frown at Elias. “What is the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Elias was sure, but it had been some time since he’d recited the oratio. Once again, he ran through the prayer in his mind. Begin with the tree; end with the curse.
Mercedes was not helping. “Then why do you look like you’ve swallowed something sour? Surely you haven’t forgotten it?”
Both Ulises and Mercedes stared at him now with identical incredulous expressions.
“I’m thinking,” Elias said, exasperated. “I haven’t spoken it in months. Give me one moment to be sure I have it right.”
“To be sure?” Mercedes echoed. “Wouldn’t it have been simpler to write it down? What happens if—?”
Ulises held up a hand, weary. “Mercedes, let him alone. Elias, get on with it. Already this place makes me uneasy.”
Elias answered Mercedes’s huff with an unfriendly look, then bowed his head and tried to concentrate. He recited, “From Saint Matthias, honored son of del Mar, I beg protection in daytime, and at night . . .” He paused, continuing only after his companions had repeated each line:
“That no tree fall upon me,
No flood rise against me,
No weapons, no steel, no iron cut me,
No fire burn me,
No enemy hinder me,
No witchcraft, spell, or enchantment curse me.”
And that was all. Within moments of entering the forest, the densely packed palms blotted the light, pitching them into semidarkness. Elias turned full circle, taking in their surroundings. The old paths had crept in on themselves, leaving little room for two people to walk side by side. Just as well, then, that the horses had stayed behind. He could hear water trickling from a stream and birdsong in the trees. Pleasant, peaceful sounds, even as every nerve within him was pulled tight. The air had a faint smoky quality to it. He breathed deep, feeling the
slight tickle in his lungs.
Ulises spoke in a hush. “Something’s burning.”
Elias said, “Mori says it always smells like this. Ever since the orphanage burned down.”
Ulises was dumbfounded. “That was two hundred years ago.”
“I know it.”
“Where do we go now?” Mercedes asked.
“The orphanage was built northeast of here,” Elias said. A small box was strapped to his hip. He removed the compass from within and studied it. “That way,” he said, pointing.
Ulises led the way. Their pace was swift and silent, helped along by the powdery sand cushioning their footsteps. With their swords, they beat back the grass and brush. Tension had coiled around Elias like a noose, but when an hour passed with nothing more alarming than a brown tree snake crossing their path, he found himself breathing easier. He could kiss Mori. He would kiss Mori, the next time he saw him. His friend had kept them safe.
Just ahead, Mercedes slapped uselessly at the summer gnats feasting on her arms. Red welts appeared on her skin. Elias offered her the tin of sheep fat. “It will keep the bugs away.”
She took the tin. “What is it?”
“Better not to know.” Elias tried to gauge the position of the sun through the tree cover. Even with the oratio and with Mercedes as their talisman, he had no great desire to linger in this forest come nightfall.
The palms were nearly identical, but the shrubs and grasses surrounding them were not. One in particular caught his attention: a waist-high plant with glossy green leaves and blue flowers. Mercedes stopped to watch him tear off a handful of both and crush them in his hand. When he opened his palm to show her, his skin was smeared in plant juice, a brilliant midnight blue in color. He smiled and explained, “It’s an indigo plant. I’d no notion they grew on del Mar.”
She touched his palm with the tip of her finger. “It’s like sapphire. Is it for your paints?”
Isle of Blood and Stone Page 11
