Wandering Star (The Quintana Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

How had he known how to find this place? The specific room in the Red House she’d memorized from instructions passed to her from Zayas, the mine foreman, but her master had given her clear instructions to find the big tenement building itself, including that helpful bit about how to get to the Wood Road.

  It was almost like he’d been down here before, though she didn’t see how that was possible. Look at the reaction of the woman when she thought she’d found someone from the Thousand. Nobody from the Quinta made it even so far as the Thousand, except to cross the Great Span, let alone descended to the lower terraces.

  The gang of revelers had almost caught up to her again. Let one of them spot her and she might have a harder time extricating herself. Iliana stepped onto the fourth rope bridge, grabbed the sides to steady the swaying, and clomped across the planks toward the tenement building.

  Her purse of silver escudos hung heavy beneath her cloak. The letter with Carbón’s seal against her breast carried less physical weight, but would effect a greater change in Santi and his family than the money.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Naila found Salvatore on the rocky hillside above the uppermost balcony of Lady Mercado’s estate. She thought for a moment about palming the illusion egg and creeping up on him. Instead, she swung a leg over the balcony, lowered herself to the gravelly hillside, and came up on him in the dark.

  He had propped his far-glass to a tripod and was staring into the eyepiece. She was moving as softly as she could, but he cleared his throat dramatically.

  “More interruptions. Can’t you people see that I have work to do?” He didn’t lift his eye from the far-glass, but fiddled with a knob. “Someday you should learn to move more quietly, Naila Roja y Torre.”

  “I wasn’t attempting to move quietly,” she said.

  “Of course you were. Ball of the foot first, rolling from the outside of your foot in, am I right? But you picked the most gravelly path, and you were walking too swiftly. Sound built upon sound.”

  “I’m not surprised you heard me, but how did you know it was me?”

  “I smelled you—that incense you buy from Mercado carries—and I heard your breathing. It’s a distinct sound.”

  “In this wind?”

  “It was the wind that carried your scent. And I have sensitive ears.”

  Naila was glad she hadn’t used the illusion egg. Salvatore would have heard and smelled her anyway, and that would have exposed her secret. But did the man have a natural ability? Doubtful. Naila guessed he carried something to enhance his senses. Had he been drinking the black apple, or was it perhaps an artifact?

  A flash of fireworks split the sky, splashing red and yellow over the Great Span below them. The fireworks illuminated the pinched, hungry features of Salvatore’s face, now especially drawn and severe.

  “This cursed celebration,” he said. “It’s ruining the light.”

  “Why don’t you return tomorrow? The lights will be dimmed for the penance weeks.”

  “Tomorrow I will be up on the plateau. But tonight there is movement in quadrants two and three, and I need to see it.” He leaned down to look through the far-glass. “And perhaps coming out of the fourth, as well.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There are two wanderers passing through the same quadrant. It’s a night of power. And I have learned that a third star will enter the picture tomorrow, and then something will happen.”

  Naila had no idea what he meant by all this star watching, or frankly, why the Luminoso spent so much time studying the heavens when there was so much intrigue in the city to concern oneself with.

  “What sort of something are you expecting?”

  Salvatore looked up again. “Lemures will be about. Witherers from the Rift. I wouldn’t want to live in the lower terraces when that happens. The effect will only grow stronger through the next week or so. Beyond that, who can say what will happen? Miracles, I would expect.”

  He rubbed his hand along the brass surface of the far-glass, stroking it in an almost erotic manner. The device was a tube about four feet long and several inches across, with an eyepiece in the side for peering into. It was pointed skyward, slightly to the east and above the far side of the Rift.

  “It will be nothing compared to the time when all three wanderers enter the fifth quadrant,” he continued. “When that is overhead, the wisdom of the ancients will pour from the sky, and the Fourth Plenty will dawn.”

  “That would be blasphemy coming from anyone else.”

  “But I am not anyone else, am I? And you are a cabalist who knows how to keep her mouth shut, are you not?” Salvatore bent to the eyepiece once again. “But yes, of course. No man knows the day or the hour. That is true, and the movement of the wanderers is too complex to track.”

  Naila wondered about that. There were clever engineers in Lord Carbón’s employ, some of whom it was said had rediscovered the ancient mathematics. Perhaps with Salvatore’s device and their mathematical acumen, the stars might be charted and their future courses determined. Even the wanderers. It was even possible that Salvatore knew more than he would admit and was hiding something.

  “May I have a look?” she asked.

  “No, you may not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are an acolyte,” he said without looking up. “Only a master can look through the far-glass. Someday, when you have risen higher, when the cabalists have accepted you, when I anoint your head with oil and take you through the Valley of the Shadow of Death—then you will be ready to touch the devices of the past and learn their secrets.”

  “My very own artifact?”

  “Yes, someday. But not yet.”

  Naila felt the illusion egg resting in her pocket and suppressed a smile.

  How little you know, Master Salvatore.

  “For now you are a child,” he said. “You collect secrets for the Luminoso. You are not yet given them. If you were to look through this glass, what you see would blind you, leave you in a stupor from which you would not recover.”

  “You mean I’d suffer an apoplexy?”

  “More or less, if you want to call it that.”

  A gust of wind came curling over the plateau and forced back the warm air mass rising from below. Naila shivered and pulled her cloak in tight.

  “I have a secret, if you are interested.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “But in the morning. Find me in the temple and tell me then.” He was still looking through the glass. “Ah, there she is. My beautiful wanderer.”

  Naila glanced skyward. She’d spotted two wandering stars earlier without even searching, but now she couldn’t find what he was looking at even when she followed the angle of Salvatore’s far-glass.

  “It is a secret of the Quinta,” Naila said.

  Multiple secrets, actually. But the big one she would keep to herself.

  Now Salvatore stopped in earnest. He looked at her through the gloom. “Yes, my respected acolyte? And how did you collect this information?”

  “Listening in the baths. Torre and Carbón were speaking. I came upon them unawares.”

  “Really?” Suspicion touched his voice. “You must have been quieter than you were just now.”

  “I was already waiting in the shadows,” she lied. “Anyway, they were discussing matters.”

  “How clever you are. And what did you hear?”

  He sounded entirely conciliatory now, none of the dismissive tone of a minute ago. A few years ago, Naila would have jumped at the chance to share her secrets—would have blurted out Carbón’s discovery in the mines. Now she was more . . . circumspect.

  “I’ve shared too much with you, and received nothing in return.”

  “I’m the Guardian of Secrets—the one who collects these things, manages them, decides their importance.”

  “Are you? And that’s why you’re up here staring at the sky instead of down in Mercado’s party, collecting information?”

  “Don’t quest
ion me, acolyte. This business in the heavens is far more important than you can imagine. Besides, I’m too well known below. Mouths close, and people look away when they see me. That’s why I rely on people like you to do the gathering for me.”

  There would be other cabalists below, Naila knew, though she had only spotted three. A nephew of Mercado’s. A woman from the Forty. A young man from the Thousand who’d made his way to the Quinta Terrace. There might be others.

  In all, it was whispered that there were no more than eighty or ninety cabalists in the Luminoso. Naila knew twelve whose identities were open because of their functions in the temple: archivists, geometers, and other functionaries. She’d collected the names of eleven others through careful observation—the secret cabalists like herself—but was desperate to discover the identity of the most important, the only one above Salvatore in status: the Master of Whispers. Who was he?

  “Tell me,” he urged.

  “I’m not so sure anymore,” she said. “There’s someone else I could tell.”

  “The Master of Whispers?” Salvatore scoffed. “You don’t know who he is.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Go off, then. Run down and find him if you think you can.”

  Naila bristled at his tone. She should leave him with his glass, staring at the heavens until he was blind. But she was struggling to rise in the Luminoso, and saw no other way except giving up at least some of what she knew.

  “Something has gone wrong for Lord Carbón,” she said at last. “He called Torre to the baths to ask for help.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she lied, “but it’s something important. Something that has Carbón scared. Promises were exchanged—don’t ask me what, because I didn’t get close enough to hear. But it was clear from the reaction of both men that Torre is giving Carbón something valuable in return.”

  “Ah, so you have uncovered two secrets.”

  Naila kept her tone neutral. “I suppose so.”

  “I don’t like those men,” Salvatore said. “We have little leverage over them.” He waved his hand. “I know what you told me about Torre and his grief, but what does that matter? So he’s a sentimental fool. Nothing we can use there. And Carbón, even less. I can’t even find the origin of his natural family. Nobody in the Thousand seems to know.

  “And now they’re forming an alliance,” he continued. “Over what? For what purpose? To strike at the Luminoso? To seize power atop the Quinta?” Salvatore snapped his fingers. “Perhaps it is a favorable marriage. Could they be arranging a wife for Lord Carbón?”

  Naila allowed herself a smile. “No, Master Salvatore. Not that.”

  “How can you be sure? A marriage would cement their alliance. The two of them together could seize power and put one of the families as grand duke, like you see in Basdeen. Well, then, we could put that to use. Your husband is Torre’s heir. He could wear the ring, and through you, the Luminoso could control him.”

  “Lord Carbón won’t be marrying. Not now or any time in the future.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Carbón suffered an injury. His belly and groin are a mass of scars. Ugly, poorly healed. The man will not be fathering children or, I think, having carnal relations.”

  “But Lady Mercado’s boast . . .”

  “Means nothing,” Naila said. “I know what I saw. Carbón is only half a man.”

  Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and there was enough illumination from the flickering gaslights, candles, and oil lamps from the city below that she could see Salvatore’s eyes narrowing and the calculating set to his mouth.

  “So it’s something else, this secret of theirs,” he said. “I’ll pursue Lord Carbón. He’s the harder quarry. You’ll get to Torre—you have an opening already through your husband. Search the old man’s quarters, his library, his correspondence.”

  “You think I haven’t done that already?” she asked. “A dozen times. There’s nothing to find.”

  “Do it again. And have your husband pry, too. A father will tell his son things that nobody else can know.”

  “My husband is a clumsy oaf. If Daniel asks his father about Carbón’s secret, it will be only too obvious that I know. Torre is more likely to trust his nephew than his own son, but Pedro is a boy. Eighteen. And I have no leverage over him, anyway.”

  “You must find a way.”

  “I could find a way,” she said. “If I were given help.”

  “Another cabalist?” Salvatore asked. “There are none in Torre’s household but you. Could you hire a servant who would be loyal to the Luminoso? I’ll give you a name, and you can bring him on. It would be slow to earn Torre’s trust, but might open doors.”

  “I don’t need a servant to spy on him, I need an artifact. One of my own.”

  “One of your own? Artifacts are only given to master cabalists.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  She didn’t mention that she already had an artifact. It was on her person, in fact. So perhaps that made her a master already. A master by her own efforts.

  There was a long beat before he answered, as if he were considering it. “You are young. You have few years of service. Impossible.”

  “I just brought you information about two members of the Quinta that might bend them to our will.”

  “Might. Maybe you’ve got nothing. Maybe you misheard. Maybe they were talking about Lord Torre’s burning piles, and Carbón promised to bring him a balm to ease the itching.”

  “Did you know about Carbón’s injury?”

  “I’d have found out eventually.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” Naila said. “I’ve brought you plenty of information before. More than you deserve, the way you’ve treated me. And I just brought you a secret held by a lord of the Quinta that changes everything you thought you knew about the man. Now will you see me anointed in the temple, or do I have to find the Master of Whispers and bring my case to him directly?”

  “You would never find him.”’

  “Watch me, Salvatore. I’ll find him, and he’ll give me what I want. Meanwhile, you’ll get no more cooperation from me.”

  Salvatore stroked the brass tube of the far-glass. It wasn’t itself an artifact—the craftsmanship was too clumsy—but Naila guessed it had been built from a ruined piece of equipment discovered from the Third Plenty. They had also been star watchers.

  He rolled up his sleeve, unsnapped a bracelet, and handed it to her. She turned it over in her hand. It had a strange, fleshy feel, like rubber, but more pliable. Smooth as a snake’s belly.

  “Put it on. It will shield you from evil spirits.”

  “A charm?” she said. “I asked for an artifact to help me get information from Lord Torre, and you’re giving me a charm to chase away ghosts?”

  He chuckled. “You’ll want that charm by the end of the week, believe me. When the witherers and lemures claw their way up the hillside, you’ll be glad to have it.”

  “Because of your wandering stars?” Naila let the sarcasm show in her voice, and this brought a cold look from Salvatore.

  “Be careful,” he said. “Be very, very careful. You know little of what you’re meddling with—far less than you think—and cabalists can be guilty of blasphemy as easily as anyone else.”

  There was something dangerous in his voice, and she remembered that he was not just a star watcher, but someone who could have her stripped of status and sent down to the lower terraces if he wished.

  She bit back her anger and lowered her head. “My apologies, Master Salvatore. I am impatient, I want to know more.”

  “That will come.” His tone softened. “You have your artifact. Bring me Lord Torre’s secrets, and you will be anointed.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Iliana waited in the doorway as her eyes adjusted to the gloom inside. A small cookfire filled the room with smoke, and the smell of roasting potatoes mingled with the slightly sweet scent of smoldering coal.


  Two women with long, greasy hair, dressed in sack-like shifts, squatted next to the fire, cutting potatoes into quarters and putting them on top of a flat roasting pan. Another woman stirred something in a pot. A large dead bat hung from a hook on the ceiling, its wings dangling and limp, waiting to be butchered and cooked.

  A man slouched in one corner, hat pulled low over his head, a jug between his knees. Two boys shared a cot on the opposite side of the room. They gave dry, barking coughs. Rags and blankets lay in piles on the edges of the room, and some of them stirred.

  Iliana lifted a kerchief to her mouth, afraid of catching whatever had these people too sick to go outside on the evening of the Festival of Fools. If those boys had the black cough, they’d die from it, and she might too if she entered the room and caught it. How could she even be sure this was the right place, anyway?

  A groan came from one of the piles of blankets. A head, hair matted with sweat, poked out. “I’m thirsty.”

  It was a boy, and the voice sounded familiar.

  “Hush,” one of the women cutting potatoes said. “I’ll bring ye water in a minute.”

  Iliana stared pointedly. “Is that boy named Santi?”

  “What’s it to you?” the woman asked.

  “Are you his mother?”

  “Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t. Who the devil are you?”

  “I’ve come to find Santi and his mother. I’m Lord Carbón’s agent. Can I speak to you in private?”

  The two women had barely glanced up when Iliana opened the door and stood in the threshold. Now they stared.

  “You come to cut off his other hand, too?” the woman asked. Her voice was bitter. “Throw him into the breaker like you did Santi’s brother?”

  “You are his mother, aren’t you? No, I’m not here to cause him harm. It must have been a blow to lose his wage. And we know about the brother. I brought something from Lord Carbón that might help.”

  The man slouching in the corner with the jug suddenly opened his eyes. He made as if to climb to his feet. Iliana wasn’t going to take any chances. She drew back her cape to show her pistol.

  “Stay where you are,” she said. “I don’t need anything from you.”