Wandering Star (The Quintana Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  Carbón’s own father, the former lord of the Quinta and Master of the Mines, had suffered a terrible loss in his family, much like Torre himself, except in his case, it had been a single, swift blow, rather than a series of tragic deaths.

  Left without wife and children, the elder Carbón had adopted, as was his right by law and custom, instead of passing his title and wealth to a brother or cousin. The beneficiary had been a young servant by the name of Alan, an alert, studious orphan who was, according to Mercado, at least four generations removed from the Quinta. Perhaps even elevated from the Thousand, as unlikely as that seemed.

  That inspired a lot of gossip, naturally, although it had faded with the passing of Carbón’s father four years earlier, and the capable hand of the adopted son in managing the family affairs. Since then, Carbón had proven himself noble by deed, if not by birth. The gossip would start up again if he didn’t marry soon, but that wasn’t Torre’s concern, not when he had his own family issues to resolve in these waning years of his life.

  “You want my advice?” Torre asked.

  “I need to talk to someone, and you’re the only one I trust.”

  “What about your chancellor? Your steward, your mine foremen? Why me?”

  Carbón glanced around as if taking in the crowd, but Torre thought it was to search for cabalists or others who might be listening. A prudent move.

  “It needs to be someone from the Quinta,” Carbón said.

  “Ah.”

  “Lord Puerto doesn’t live in the city, and I hardly know him, anyway. De Armas is too martial—him, I don’t trust. Mercado is the other obvious choice, but she is a little too devout.”

  Torre caught on that final word. “Devout? Sounds to me like you’re planning to violate the code.”

  Carbón smiled. “Someone I can trust, and someone clever enough to understand. You have a sharp mind.”

  “When people say that, what they mean is, ‘a sharp mind for an old man.’”

  “Maybe some of them do, but that’s not what I meant when I said it.”

  Torre was flattered, an emotion he recognized as dangerous. “What is it?”

  “Not here. Can I join you in the baths?”

  He was tempted to say no. Whatever it was, Torre didn’t need the intrigue. Not now, with his worries about the Great Span sitting like a greasy, undigested meal in his stomach. Not with his concerns about Daniel and Pedro.

  You could use an ally, too.

  Torre’s wife, dead. His children—the ones who could have helped him, at least—gone. Jacobo and Aquino were tools—loyal, but incapable of creative thought. His chancellor, old Timo Crespo, was still physically spry for a man nearly eighty years old, but mentally, he was not what he’d been ten or fifteen years earlier. Half deaf, too.

  Most of Torre’s other acquaintances were either dead or had slipped into senility. The lords and ladies of the other four families of the Quinta he had known were all gone, except for the earlier Lord de Armas, who had retired in favor of his son, and was rarely seen in public.

  He hadn’t cultivated new friendships, new allies. That left him dangling now in a moment of need. He’d thought about speaking to Mercado later in the evening. If she sought him out for pleasures, he’d have to turn her down, being physically incapable, alas, but perhaps she could give him advice about this other thing. Or maybe not.

  Torre eyed Carbón, who was waiting patiently now that they’d finally gained the terrace.

  “Come with me to the baths,” Torre said at last.

  Chapter Ten

  Most of Mercado’s palace-like manor was built on a heroic scale: ballrooms with twenty-foot ceilings, massive stone fireplaces fed with actual firewood, not coal, spiraling staircases wide enough for servants to pass, arms full, without bumping into each other.

  In contrast, Torre had always thought the baths intimate. Possessing an understated beauty not seen elsewhere in the manor, it was almost as though it had been designed by another architect, and perhaps it had.

  The main pool was about twenty feet across and twelve feet wide. It was lined with stone, rough enough not to slip on, and with a satisfying texture to the hand, and rimmed with a submerged cedar bench. Hot water poured in from a spigot on the far wall and cascaded into the pool with a pleasant, burbling sound. The water left the spigot end nearly scalding, but cooled gradually until it drained out the far side.

  A pair of doors hung open to a small covered balcony protected from prying eyes by high walls. Two large, barrel-like tubs rested outside, also fed by spigots, one hot, the other chill. Just inside the doors was a running channel of cool water, lined with buckets and soap for washing before entering the communal basin.

  Mercado’s baths held no statues, no embellishments in either wood or stone. Light came from a pair of flickering gas lamps on either side of the room, enough to see by, but not so bright as to dissolve one’s privacy altogether.

  Torre was grateful for the dim light as he moved away from Carbón to undress. So many emotions and passions ran cool these days, giving only a flicker of the heat they’d once generated, but embarrassment had never left him, and he felt every bony joint, every sagging bit of flesh under his companion’s gaze.

  I used to be a man, he thought. Strong enough to ride across the plateau, kill my own supper, down it with a bottle of wine, and make love to my wife, all in the same day.

  Carbón turned discreetly away, as if sensing Torre’s embarrassment, and the two men washed as far from each other as possible before entering the basin. There was no one else in the baths. Another small mercy.

  Torre groaned as he slid his body into the water.

  Carbón had entered first, and moved to sit on the bench opposite. “That first touch is a jolt, isn’t it?”

  “Not at all. The hotter the better. I was groaning with pleasure.” He glanced at the younger man, who leaned back with his arms stretched on the stone lip for support. “What do you think of my son?”

  “Daniel? He’s a fine-looking young man. I understand he’s quite a hunter. His wife is said to be very clever.”

  “So many compliments,” Torre said dryly.

  “I don’t know him well. I assume he will maintain the family’s position in the Quinta when you are . . . well, when you step aside.”

  “I don’t plan to step aside until they’ve laid my corpse on a slab and fed it to the crows.”

  “It helps that you only have one son. There shouldn’t be a crisis when it comes time to pass your ring to the next generation.”

  A hollow feeling inside. “No, there shouldn’t be.”

  Carbón must have heard something in his voice. He straightened. “I’m sorry, I know you lost children—I didn’t mean to sound callous.”

  “And my wife.”

  “The plague took a lot of good people.”

  “Two plagues, plus an accident on the bridge and a foolish late pregnancy. That’s how my family died. Analina was too old for another—I told her that. She died in childbirth.”

  “She was trying to give you more children after you’d lost the others.”

  Torre gave him a sharp look. “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody told me. But I know how people think in the Quinta. You must pass your title and honors to someone. If you have . . . well, a son, and he is something of a disappointment, then it would be better to have other options.”

  “A lesson you should consider as you approach the age of thirty without wife or heir.”

  He expected Carbón to laugh this off. Young men often did, until suddenly they looked around and realized that they were thirty-five or forty years old and had built nothing solid. That was the role of a father, to force an understanding on his sons at an earlier age, but Carbón didn’t have a parent or any other relative to check his youthful passions.

  Except it wasn’t amusement, or even recognition that passed over the young man’s face. Worry, maybe? Or was it guilt?

  Torre glanced toward t
he entrance at the sound of voices, suddenly regretting that they’d used their moments of solitude to talk about trivialities instead of whatever Carbón had followed him here to discuss. They might need to find some other quiet corner, and that would mean leaving the baths.

  Fortunately, the noise moved on, and nobody appeared. Yet.

  “Is there a topic you wanted to discuss?” Torre asked.

  “I found something in the mines.” Carbón hesitated, uncertain of voicing the conclusion that had been building in him since yesterday. “I think it might be an artifact.”

  Torre was cautious. “That is the bailiwick of the Luminoso. Why aren’t you speaking with a cabalist?”

  “Like Salvatore?”

  “Is there some reason not to?”

  “Do you trust him?” Carbón asked.

  “Of course not. He’s the head of a poisonous snake.”

  “Not the head, not exactly.”

  “Guardian of Secrets—that’s close enough,” Torre said. “Unless you personally know the Master of Whispers. In which case, please don’t tell me—I don’t want to know. But if you found something, the Luminoso should have it.”

  “A boy touched it, and it made his hand blacken and die.”

  “Sounds like a witherer.”

  “That’s what I thought at first. But there’s no evidence of it. Nobody saw one, and we didn’t find the oily residue you’d expect. I think it was an object of some kind, not a spirit.”

  Carbón, apparently overheating, moved around Torre toward the cooler part of the basin. He continued to explain.

  “I had my foreman close the seam and barricade the rail tunnel leading out of the mine. A man named Zayas, trustworthy. One of the men helping Zayas saw lights—blinking, twinkling green lights. They were humming, he said, but beautiful. If he hadn’t already been terrified—the foreman had apparently put some kind of fear into the men he’d handpicked—the miner might have touched it.”

  “This sounds serious. How many people know?”

  “Six. The foreman and his assistant, an engineer, the two of us, and Iliana Diamante. Oh, and the boy makes seven, but I expect he’ll be dead by now.”

  “You let him wither, or you had him killed?”

  Carbón seemed to hesitate. “No, actually. I’ll tell you the truth—I couldn’t let him die. I had his hand cut off, and . . . well, the rest of it will be taken care of. I was fortunate in the foreman on duty—Zayas can keep a secret.”

  “Glowing lights, humming, a withering—it sounds like something from an earlier age.”

  “Exactly what I’ve been thinking.”

  “Then why keep the blasted thing from the Luminoso? Let them have it. Salvatore will hide it below the temple, and the cabalist fools can puzzle over it and dream of bringing on the Fourth Plenty.”

  “It’s in the main shaft. Down with a new seam of coal. Millions of tons of it.”

  “So it comes down to money,” Torre said. “You don’t want cabalists meddling with your business.”

  Torre felt the sting of hypocrisy as he said this. He could have called off yesterday’s demonstration of the Great Span while he consulted with the other lords of the Quinta, even called for help from the Luminoso.

  Tell Carbón. He opened to you, and you can open to him.

  “You think I’d keep this hidden for money?” Disgust dripped from Carbón’s voice. “I’ve got a vault of gold quintas already, and little use for it. I don’t have Mercado’s tastes, or de Armas’s troops to maintain, and I don’t spend like that son of yours and his wife.”

  Torre rose to his feet with as much dignity as a naked, wrinkled old man could manage. “If you are done insulting my family, I will retire from your company. Excuse me, Lord Carbón.”

  “I’m sorry. Please, sit. I didn’t mean that. It was unkind and unnecessary. I’m rattled, and I need your advice. Please, Lord Torre.”

  Torre settled back down to the wooden bench with a grunt. It wasn’t just indignation that had made him rise—he was too seasoned and introspective to tell himself that particular lie—but a recognition that his accusation about Carbón’s pecuniary interests could easily be turned inward.

  “You’re more right than you know,” Torre admitted. “My son is profligate, and that’s not my biggest worry. A man can learn discipline when it’s forced upon him, but I’m not sure you can change his nature.”

  “What sort of nature needs changing?”

  “Never mind.” Torre wiped the sweat and condensation from his brow. “I still have a few years left in me. Time enough for Daniel to change or to find another man to take his place. Or woman,” he added. “I hear your chancellor is showing some promise. Maybe I’ll adopt her.”

  Carbón smiled, but it seemed perfunctory, and didn’t erase the worried creases on his forehead for long. “This is . . . please, you’ll have to keep this private,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “This isn’t about filling my coffers,” Carbón said. “It’s about the survival of Quintana. The city dies without my coal.”

  “And it dies without my bridge, too. It dies without Mercado’s deft managing of coinage and trade, without de Armas’s—”

  “And it’s true in every case,” Carbón interrupted. “But your bridge isn’t about to collapse now, is it?”

  The chill along Torre’s spine penetrated the hot water of the baths. For a split second he thought that was an actual question.

  “My mines are,” the younger man said. “They’ve been nearing depletion for years. Since before I took the Carbón name. We had five mines on the plateau, and have somehow scraped out enough production by attacking small side seams, by making a few small, necessary discoveries.”

  “Mercado has been screaming at you for years to increase exports,” Torre said. “The cities and nations of the coast will take everything we can ship. We’d all be richer if you did.”

  “I didn’t increase production because I couldn’t.”

  Torre considered the ramifications. “And the new seam?”

  “Exactly. Discovered just in time. It’s fourteen feet thick, and it might run for miles, right down into the Rift, in fact. Could buy us fifty years, and who knows what else we’ll discover in that time?”

  The news was stunning. It had never occurred to Torre that the coal might be finite; the Carbón family had mined it for generations, and he’d assumed . . . well, he’d assumed that one could keep digging coal from the plateau indefinitely. It probably went straight to the center of the earth—or so he’d always thought. The truth was worrying, to say the least.

  “So you see,” Carbón said, “I can’t afford to let the cabalists know there’s something down there.”

  “Damn their obsessions. They’re not going to bring about the Fourth Plenty with a bunch of mystical trinkets, they’ll only awaken an army of witherers that will kill us all.”

  It was blasphemous talk, and even as it came out, Torre regretted his words. He took a quick look around to be sure they were still alone. Yes, thankfully.

  “Which may be true, but what do I do about it?” Carbón asked. “If I tell them, they close the mine while they dig and pry and search for artifacts. That might cost us years. We’ll be shivering in our homes by fall, and starving to death by spring. And the blasted Luminoso wouldn’t care, they’d let us all die.”

  The young man was spouting his own blasphemy now, which eased Torre’s conscience.

  “But right now it doesn’t matter,” Carbón continued. “I’ve barricaded the mine so nobody else goes in to see it or touch it. So we’re as good as depleted already. I can only hide the truth for a little while, and my stockpiles will be gone.”

  “Bypass the object. Cut around it. Get into the seam from behind.”

  Carbón let out a bitter laugh. “You don’t think I’ve thought of that already? The reason it took so long to discover the seam in the first place is because it passes behind a hundred and fifty feet of solid rock. It on
ly emerges in that one place—we’ve got to follow it down. I’ve studied the maps, turned it over a thousand times looking for alternatives. Discussed it with my engineers. The best of them is Eli Lozada—you know him? There’s no realistic way to get around the object.” Carbón shook his head. “I know you must have problems of your own—”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “—but by the Elders, you’ve got to help me. What do I do? Six men and women know of this thing.”

  “And one boy.”

  “Yes, one boy, although that should be taken care of shortly. I don’t dare tell anyone else, and I have no idea what to do.”

  “There’s only one solution,” Torre said. “You have to go into the mine—or send someone—confront this object, and quietly remove it. And then you have to hide it from Salvatore and the rest until the seam is fully excavated and you can be sure there are no more artifacts where that came from. No, better yet, hide it in one of your depleted mines, then let the cabalists have at it. They’ll tear the old mine apart, but it won’t matter, because you’ll still have the coal from the main seam.”

  “People will be exposed to the thing. They might all die.”

  “The alternative is worse,” Torre said.

  Torre hesitated, torn between stepping back and moving forward by providing more concrete support. Twenty years ago it wouldn’t have been a problem. He’d have relied on Crespo, no doubt, and the two older Torre sons. There was uncertainty in Carbón’s eyes, too. He sank back into the water until it climbed above his chin almost to his mouth.

  “I’ll help you,” Torre said at last. “Together, we’ll make it happen. But I’ve got a favor to ask you in return.”

  Hope gleamed in Carbón’s eyes, followed immediately by suspicion. “And what is that?”

  “I’m not sure that the exact nature of the favor is relevant at the moment. We’ll talk about it later—for now, we need to figure out how to get you—how to get Quintana—out of this mess.”