Wandering Star (The Quintana Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  “The men are going to be funny about going in there,” Zayas said. “Some of ’em will drop their picks and go home, their wages be damned, before they set foot in that chamber.”

  “There are always men who will take the dirty work for a bit of extra coin,” Carbón said.

  “Hate to set an example like that,” Zayas grumbled. “Once you start paying ’em extra it’s hard to turn back.”

  “Yes, it’s a bad precedent,” Carbón agreed. “That’s not what has me concerned, though.”

  Forty or fifty mine workers came walking along the dirt path from the direction of the station, rough-looking men, their skin scrubbed raw, picks and shovels gripped in meaty hands with wrapped fingers and palms. A dirtier collection of workers stumbled from the direction of one of the shafts to their left.

  Both groups glanced at the two outsiders talking to one of the foremen, but without any obvious signs of recognition in their eyes. When a few of the departing crowd lingered, staring openly, Zayas shouted at them to move on.

  “Are you worried about the witherer?” Iliana asked when the three were alone again. “Maybe it went back into its hole after it touched the boy. They don’t like to come out into the light—that’s what I was always told.”

  “If it was a witherer,” Carbón said, “then yes, it woke up from the dust and the noise, then either burrowed back down into the ground, as deep as it could get, and went back to sleep, or it fled to the bottom of the Rift. But I’m not sure it was a witherer. Otherwise, why did it wait for the boy to come find it? Why not lash out at the miners who disturbed it in the first place?”

  “Then what is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I need to find out. Meanwhile, we need to close that shaft.”

  “Close the shaft?” Zayas asked.

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  Zayas stared. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “I’ve seen the maps, I read the reports my agents prepare for me,” Carbón said.

  “I mean, I can keep the others busy for a while, and we’ve stockpiles, but . . .”

  “You should have between 13,200 and 13,600 tons on hand,” Iliana said.

  Zayas scowled at her. “I couldn’t say. I’m not in the business of counting lumps of coal.”

  “You may not be, but I am,” she said, which only deepened the foreman’s scowl. “And that will hold while we figure out what’s going on here.”

  “I need two days, maybe three,” Carbón told the foreman. “I’m going to ask some questions, then we’ll go down and take a look.”

  “You’re not going to talk to that snake, Salvatore, are you?” Zayas asked. “If those cabalists get wind of it, they’ll be in here, searching, mucking around.”

  “I know that,” Carbón said. “Don’t worry.”

  Carbón hadn’t actually answered the question, and could see in the faces of both his assistant and the foreman that they recognized it, too. He hadn’t yet decided if he would talk to the Guardian of Secrets, or anyone from the Luminoso for that matter, but he couldn’t order his miners to keep working the seam without knowing what had attacked the boy. He couldn’t permanently close it down, either. Not that one. Not the one that had only recently saved his mines, and perhaps a whole lot more.

  Nobody but Carbón knew how close—months, only—he’d come to collapse. The whole city, for that matter, had been at risk. Never mind that Lady Mercado and Lord Puerto thought that they were the sources of Quintana’s wealth and power, it was coal that fed the city. And a whole lot more—what about the lands where all that coal was shipped, used to heat, to smelt, to forge?

  Carbón cleared his throat, ready to address a concern that was as small in scope as the other was large, yet all the more painful for it.

  “Now, about the boy . . .”

  “Yes, what about him?” Zayas asked. “You gonna pay? It wasn’t an accident, and the nipper had left his post to steal.”

  Iliana looked puzzled. “What does he mean, pay?”

  “Ten silver escudos,” Carbón said. “Yes, I’ll pay. The boy shouldn’t have left his post, but I’d rather have it called an accident than anything else.”

  “Too much if you ask me,” Zayas said, “but it’s what you’ve got them expecting. Cut the death payment back to six like it were before and you’ll have trouble, mark my words.”

  “It’s only right,” Carbón agreed.

  “But why does the boy have to die at all?” Iliana asked.

  Zayas blinked. “Huh?”

  She gave Carbón an imploring look. “The rot can be stopped, right, Your Grace?” She turned back to the foreman. “Fetch the surgeon. Cut the boy’s hand off at the wrist. If it has spread farther, take it off at the elbow—that should do it.”

  “Cutting off his hand is the cruelest thing you could do,” Carbón said.

  “Crueler than leaving him with the rot? You know what will happen.”

  “I do. It will spread. You don’t need a surgeon or a cabalist to confirm it. By noon it will be at his elbow. By night, his shoulder. From there, it goes into his chest, withers his heart . . . he’s dead by morning.”

  “So let him lose the hand, instead,” she said. “Give him black apple or poppy juice so he won’t suffer when they cut it.”

  Her voice was climbing, and Carbón felt sad to see her educated in the ways of the mines. Cushioned by class, without the hard decisions of the ruling Quinta or the economic stress of the Thousand, let alone the masses of dumbre in the lower terraces, Iliana had been raised in comfort among the Forty. Today, she would learn a lesson. A hard one.

  “That’s not what your master means,” Zayas said. His voice was firm, but not unkind. “Your old girl was more clever than this,” he added in Carbón’s direction. “What happened to her, anyway?”

  “She married—that was six months ago. Hadn’t you heard? Anyway, Iliana is clever enough. Maybe I should have shown her the realities of the mines earlier. I’m . . . not so fond of them myself.”

  “Then what do you mean?” Iliana asked.

  “The boy’s hand is worth twenty brass pennies,” Zayas said. “No more. Lose the forearm too, and we can toss in a few more black coins. About as much as he earns in two weeks, all told. You can’t pay more than that. You can’t.”

  “So he dies?”

  “It’s cruel to let him die,” Carbón said, “but it’s more cruel to his family to let him live. If he lives, they lose the wage, but keep the hungry mouth.”

  “Santi called for his mother,” she protested. “She won’t want him dead, not for a few silver coins.”

  “His mama won’t want him dead,” Zayas said, “but she can’t keep him alive, neither. The nipper doesn’t have a father. Got four sisters, though. And a brother, who worked up yonder till about a year ago.” He cast a glance at the breaker building, which was still banging away. “The brother got his hand caught in the crusher, dragged him in. Them ten pieces of silver will be just about spent by now, unless the woman drank it up in gin already. So what’s she do now? Too old to whore, too weak to haul in the bat lines. Washing, sewing? The nipper’s wage is the only thing keeping the family fed, and he can’t get the door open with only one hand. Can’t work the breaker, either. The belt moves too fast for that.”

  “So either the boy dies now, or he dies later,” Carbón said. “Of starvation. And his sisters, too, most likely.”

  “Unless one of ’em is old enough to whore herself,” Zayas said. “Could be—some men like ’em youngish.”

  Tears filled Iliana’s eyes. “No. There has to be some other way.”

  Carbón studied her, and something turned. At first he thought he was feeling his own memories, remembering the mercy once shown to him; his childhood was ever present when he made these terrible decisions. But no, it was the anguish on his assistant’s face that made him waver. She was only seven years younger than he was, but without the bite of experience.

  “We’
ll talk on the way back to the city,” he told her. “There might be something we can do.”

  “Lord Carbón,” the foreman said sternly. “You got six hundred men and boys working this operation. A few of us foreman types is from the Thousand, but the rest of ’em come from the dumbre—you can’t be handing out silver, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “No, I can’t. And the Quinta wouldn’t stand for it, anyway. The code sets limits. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Fetch the surgeon. Have the hand cut off like Iliana says. Send him to his family with twenty brass pennies. Make it twenty-five, in case the rest of the forearm comes off at a later date.”

  Zayas’s eyes narrowed, and he studied Lord Carbón for a long time before finally giving a curt nod and turning back toward the mine. The foreman would do it, Carbón knew, all of it. See the boy to the surgeon, then back to his family in the lower terraces, and finally, close up the coal seam until he heard back from Lord Carbón, no matter the consequences.

  How long does that buy you? Three days? Four?

  Carbón and his assistant set off toward the station on the footpath taken by the workers. They wouldn’t take the rail into the city—too sooty and loud and slow as it clanked down the cogs—but ride in the carriage, which had been kept waiting. Two armed guards would ride ahead to ensure their safe passage, although the coal thieves wouldn’t trouble them, and there were few real bandits on the plateau. It was too cold and rainy, with little cover or way to make shelter on the treeless marshes.

  In spite of the horror of the injured boy, Iliana’s usual bright expression returned with the foreman’s departure, and there was a spring in her step the farther they got from the mine entrance. The day was clear, and the road mostly dry, but here and there remained puddles of shimmering water from yesterday’s rain. Iliana jumped over one of them like a young girl, and when she fell just short and her boots kicked up mud, she gave a sheepish grin.

  “Go ahead,” he told her. “Get your puddle jumping out of the way now. Although I think the contract specifies decorum, doesn’t it?”

  “We sat all morning in that blasted carriage, and now we’ve got all afternoon to look forward to more of the same. I think I’m entitled.”

  “An hour is all morning? An hour and a half back is all afternoon?”

  “Anyway, tomorrow is the Festival of Fools. I’m getting my practice in.”

  “Don’t let Lady Mercado hear you say that,” Carbón said. “One day and one day only. Then it’s stern expressions and proper behavior for the next 364.”

  “So, what is it you’re planning for the boy?” Iliana asked.

  “I’m still working on that,” he confessed. “It can’t just be silver. But whatever it is, I’m putting you in charge. You pushed me to it, and maybe you’re right. But that makes it as much your responsibility as mine.” He nodded, a decision coming to him. “The first thing I’m doing is sending you down to the lower terraces.”

  “Wait, me?”

  “Yes, Iliana, you.” She had stopped, and he took her elbow to urge her along. “I’d send you with protection, but I need you to leave the Quinta Terrace so quietly that not even the cabalists will know that you’re gone. In any event, if the gossip about grain riots is accurate—and I suspect it is, based on reports from the lower watch—an armed guard in the lower terraces would likely only increase your chances of being robbed or killed.”

  Chapter Three

  Two objects sat on Lord Torre’s massive oak desk. One was an invitation to the most lavish party in the city, to occur the following night at the end of the Festival of Fools. The other was a piece of crumbling, stone-like material about the size of a small melon. The lump smelled damp, of rain and moss.

  The invitation had arrived by trumpeting courier. Yes, five men and women in green stockings and golden cloaks had arrived at the gate bearing four-foot-long straight trumpets, and they had blasted notes at his home until servants rushed out to tell them to stop the racket. While Torre watched, amused, from a balcony on the third floor of the house, a sixth person, this a professional crier, had bellowed the details of the invitation before handing it to Torre’s steward.

  The invitation sat before him now on a sheet of fine, linen-colored paper, enticing with its embellished letters and the wide, broad signature of Lady Ámbar Manríquez Mercado, with the broken seal still giving off a scent of wax and cinnamon. How many of her parties had he attended, and how many of her father’s had he attended before that?

  The invitation all but demanded that he bring his best wine and several peach cakes from the kitchen. Lady Mercado loved those cakes, made with dried peaches soaked in brandy, and it wouldn’t be a banquet without them. Torre loved them, too, and these days only allowed himself to indulge on special occasions. What occasion was more special than one of Mercado’s famous parties?

  Yet the thought of climbing the alley and scaling the sixty-odd stone steps to her mansion left him feeling dyspeptic. Even getting off his property, past the servant cottages and through the gates, was an effort these days. Could his tired old bones handle one more climb? There were no roads for a carriage on this side of the Quinta Terrace, and he wouldn’t be carried up the stairs on a litter. Not to Mercado’s Festival of Fools banquet.

  But it was the crumbling stone that held his attention. It had arrived late at night, delivered by a faithful servant named Marco Aquino, who’d entered through the servant entrance, then used a private key to admit himself to Torre’s library and study. Aquino had used another key to open a small drawer on Torre’s desk and stuck the stone inside.

  Aquino was long gone from the city. By now he’d have crossed the Great Span, taken a horse from Torre’s stables on the far side, and ridden down the Quintana Way toward the canals. By this time of the afternoon, he’d be inspecting the second or even third watchtower along the highway. Three of Torre’s engineers rode with him, and they would stop periodically to assess the pitch of the road surface, note any buckling caused by the recent earthquake.

  There would be the usual verbal sparring with de Armas’s men, who were charged with protecting the way from bandits, and resented the continual presence of Torre’s men on the highway. But nothing serious—the lords Torre and de Armas were rivals, not enemies. Hopefully, their respective heirs would be as mellow in their rivalry.

  Torre had placed the stone on the desk to stare at it, and now hefted it in his hand. His mind said it was moderately heavy, but the flaccid muscles on his forearm, eroded by the passage of time, struggled to hold it up. He set it back down with a cursed tremble in his hand and contented himself with turning it over. He prodded with a fingernail. A crumbling bit of stone about the size of his fingernail flaked off.

  The tremble in his limbs now came from another source. His mouth was dry, and a worm of fear took a turn low in his gut. That worm was small, but active, and threatened to metamorphosize into a creature of biting mouth parts and hard, chitinous limbs, clawing at his belly until it tore him apart.

  A bell chimed. Torre grabbed the chunk of stone and heaved it into the drawer. He shut the drawer as the doors to his study swung open and his son entered.

  Daniel Roja y Torre had just turned thirty, and watching him stride across the room with his gleaming black boots slapping the flagstones, it was as though Torre was looking into a mirror. A mirror that revealed an image forty-five years in the past, that only existed now in the dim memory vault of an old man. Daniel cast his glance first toward the glass balcony doors and the view beyond, then at his father. He swept his cloak over one shoulder in what looked like a practiced move.

  Torre thought about the stone.

  Tell him. He is your son and heir. He should know.

  A second figure came into the room, his nephew Pedro Torre, the youngest son of Torre’s sister. Pedro was slender and pale and short, and carried little presence with him, unlike his cousin, Daniel. The boy was only eighteen, and had a charming, if overly gentle pastime of carving tiny b
irds from blocks of wood and painting them into finches and chickadees.

  Daniel reached for something on the desk while his father was looking at his cousin, and came up with the thumb-size flake of stone that had broken off under Torre’s fingernail.

  “What is this?”

  “A new source of road base,” Torre lied smoothly. “Perhaps. Aquino discovered some ruins in the Rift. A vast temple-like thing built in the Third Plenty, near as he can tell. The chemists are testing it first.”

  “And how will you haul it up to the city?”

  Torre waved dismissively with one of his gray, bony hands. “I’ll talk to Carbón if it comes to that. Some new machine or other. He has engineers.”

  He plucked the flake of stone from Daniel’s hand and tossed it casually on the desk, then swept up Lady Mercado’s invitation and handed it over.

  “Another year, another gathering of the fools,” Torre said. “I’m too old for it—think I might stay behind.”

  “I thought you liked the spectacle, Uncle,” Pedro said.

  “Oh, I do. And a glimpse of my rivals at the same time. Not many chances to get all five of us in the same room. It’s always amusing to see what ridiculous things they do.”

  “Naila is dragging me there,” Daniel said. “She wouldn’t miss it. You know how she loves gossip—she’d make a good cabalist, if she isn’t one already.”

  Daniel said this last bit with a laugh. And with the smile, his face showed glimpses of his dead mother, eighteen years gone now. And his dead siblings. Childbirth had taken the boy’s mother, an accident and plagues had killed the other children. There was no one left of a once bustling family but an old man and his lazy, morally weak youngest son.

  In spite of his son’s protest, it wasn’t only Daniel’s wife Naila who enjoyed Mercado’s parties. In fact, the hedonism of that night was said to follow Daniel Torre through the subsequent three weeks of penance, when the devout sorts like Lady Mercado set aside their pleasures, took on sackcloth and ash, and proceeded through the streets of the Quinta Terrace and down to the Forty Terrace, banging pots and chanting to frighten away lemures and other wicked spirits.