Wandering Star (The Quintana Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Thiego sprang forward and grabbed for the artifact, but not before she touched the prongs to her right temple. The tips glowed with blue light. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and her legs collapsed. He grabbed her hand as she fell, used his gloved hand to pry the artifact loose and set it aside, then turned the girl onto her side as she began to convulse.

  Kara had read more to him about the mentabacus after the finders imprinted the object in his head.

  A lesser or unprepared mind cannot contain the glories of the higher arts, the sums and figures and formulas passed from the lords of the plenties. To attempt such a thing is akin to forcing the contents of a cask of wine into a small bottle. The wine will be spilled and the bottle damaged.

  “Child. Girl, listen. Can you hear me?”

  Her arms and legs beat frantically at the ground, more violently with every second. He couldn’t hold her still. If he didn’t stop her, she’d injure herself. He flipped her onto her belly, pinned her legs with a knee and her torso with a forearm, and held her down until the thrashing subsided.

  “Dammit,” he said as he climbed back to his feet. He was breathing heavily. He cast a glance at the artifact, which lay cool and gray and dim once more, then looked to the girl. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  No response, but at least she was breathing. Thiego let his breath out slowly and thought about what to do. Nothing, that was what. This girl was an urchin, no family, and there was no way he could either pay for someone to take care of her or convince the temple to do it. Besides, asking the Luminoso for help would force him to admit that he’d told the girl how to use the artifact.

  Gingerly now, he bent and reached a gloved hand for the artifact. He felt nothing as he picked it up, but made sure to keep it as far from his head as possible as he wrapped it in a cloth and tucked it into a bag inside his robe.

  That done, he looked down at the child one last time. She was drenched in sweat and unconscious. How much mental damage had she suffered? Could she recover? He’d have to leave her here and hope for the best. Hope that whatever had come gushing out of the mentabacus into her head hadn’t burst the blood vessels in her brain. If she did wake, hopefully she’d see how he’d left the pennies on the rock like he’d promised, and know that he’d never meant her any harm.

  Yet as he climbed the rusting ladder, scrambled up a rocky, weedy slope, and pushed through a rotting gate that led to some woman’s tiny potato patch in the lower stretches of the dumbre, he couldn’t help but think how grim the girl’s chances were, regardless of whether the artifact had caused her lasting damage or not.

  That easily could have been me, if the Luminoso hadn’t rescued me from the dumbre.

  Chapter Five

  Iliana Diamante waited impatiently on the wall walk, a lamp in hand. A light rain fell on her hood and ran in drizzles down her cloak. She wore a pistol on one hip and a dagger on the other.

  A gate, padlocked for the night, closed off the staircase leading from the wall down to the Thousand Terrace, and a pair of men from the upper watch stood nearby, eyeing her casually, curiously. One man held a musket, the other a lamp on a pole. Both men wore swords.

  “Gonna climb down, miss?” one of them asked. “Or are you hoping to bring your lover up and over? Easier ways to do it, you know. Bring the fellow up during the day, sign him off with the guard as an overnighter.”

  “You sure about that?” the other one said. “Maybe her husband ain’t too keen on overnighters.”

  This brought laughter. Whatever her concerns about this evening, it wasn’t from a pair of slouching watchmen, and she drew herself up and swept back her cloak.

  “You won’t be grinning when the captain of the watch arrives,” she said. “I suggest you move along.”

  Their expressions faltered, and they looked her over more carefully now, assessing her status. Of the Forty, yes, but where? Steady in her status, like they were, or moving down? If down, they had little to worry about. But the rings on her fingers and the pendant about her neck showed wealth and status—a woman to be reckoned with. She saw all these thoughts reflected in their expressions.

  “What is this?” a familiar voice said from the darkness. “Who is bothering Lord Carbón’s chancellor?”

  A figure came striding along the wall. The two guards stiffened and gave each other furtive looks.

  “It was no bother, Captain Diamante,” Iliana said as her brother emerged from the gloom. “These fellows were keeping watch until you arrived.”

  “That’s right,” the one who’d been taunting Iliana squeaked. “The gaslight was out at the third tower, and we wanted to make sure she was safe until you arrived.”

  “Is that so?” he growled. “If I hear that either of you has been abusing my sister, I’ll have you both flogged.”

  Rafael Diamante was tall and broad shouldered, and spoke in a booming voice. He looked, sounded, and acted like he was born to be captain of the guard. In truth, if not for his rise in the watch, he’d have been sent down. There wasn’t enough wealth and status in the Diamante family to maintain them all in the Forty, and that meant Rafael had to make other arrangements to keep his status.

  “Captain, please. It was dark—we were being careful with the lady, is all.”

  “I told you, they were really no trouble,” Iliana said.

  “And I know you’re defending these two louts for some unfathomable reason.” Rafael gave the pair a once-over. “Which one of you has the keys? Open this gate, and be quick about it.”

  “Yes, Captain.” He passed his lamp to his companion, fumbled at a chain of keys, and reached for the padlock. He shot Iliana a grateful look as he unlocked it.

  “Good, now wait here for our return.”

  “They were harmless enough,” Iliana told her brother as they descended the stairs. The gate clanked shut behind them, and the key rattled in the lock.

  “They have a duty to perform, and it has nothing to do with harassing their betters.”

  The staircase made a series of switchbacks as it dropped from the wall toward the Thousand Terrace, following the track of the cog railroad that descended at a sharp angle before cutting toward the bridge. The stones were wet and dark, and Iliana picked her way carefully. They emerged onto a small plaza backed by a massive retaining wall. Emerging from the wall was a spigot in the shape of a spitting fish, where a young woman filled a bucket.

  A line of men and women and children stretched across the square and to the alley beyond, where two-story buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, with the upper floors protruding so far into the street that someone upstairs could throw open the shutters, lean out, and shake hands with the neighbor opposite.

  Rafael stared at the line of water seekers. “What is this? Why are you all filling buckets?”

  “The water ran dry today, sir,” the woman said. “Some of us have been waiting here all afternoon.”

  “I bathed after supper,” Rafael said. “There was no problem with the water supply.”

  “Yes, in the Forty, sir.” She hefted the bucket to her shoulder. “Not here in the Thousand. It just came back on a few minutes ago.”

  Iliana took her brother’s arm, impatient to keep moving. “Lord Torre drained the cisterns, remember?”

  “Oh, right. His mechanical contraption. All that water gushing over the hillside. Everyone knew the bridge test was coming—this lot should have planned ahead. Stored up their cook water so they didn’t have to stand in line. Typical of their type, isn’t it?”

  “Tomorrow is the Festival of Fools. They want to bathe like everyone else.” She glanced at Rafael as they moved past the line of water seekers. “Don’t you ever come down here?”

  “Not when I can help it. I don’t like being reminded.”

  “That you almost got sent down?”

  “Exactly right. And if you don’t want to be sent down yourself, you’d better either marry or make sure Lord Carbón keeps you in wages for a good long time. I’d br
ing you on as my nanny, but you’d be living on wages of the Thousand, and once that happens . . .”

  No need to finish the sentence. You could only go down, never up. Five families up top, then forty families, and a thousand on the middle terrace. Below that, the vast, teeming, suffering dumbre.

  Gaslights marked the homes of the more prosperous—merchants, apothecaries, and the better sort of craftsmen—but the alleys of the Thousand were much darker than on the Forty, and cave-like compared to the Quinta, to the point of smothering the small light from Iliana’s lamp in shadow. A small square punctuated the terrace every two hundred feet or so, where the light from the upper terraces fell down, and here they could walk without fear of stumbling.

  But even in the darker stretches, the Thousand Terrace felt safe enough, as evidenced by the presence of women and children in the streets. Maybe later, when twenty-four bells had marked midnight, they’d be replaced by the shiftless sorts that made Iliana nervous, but she would be safely up top long before then.

  They were challenged once by an unarmed neighborhood guard as they emerged from the gloom, but the man deferred quickly when Rafael announced himself. They soon arrived at the stouter, more heavily guarded lower curtain wall, where he exchanged shouted pleasantries with his counterpart, the captain of the Thousand Terrace wall, who stood above them on the wall walk.

  The captain of the lower watch was Arturo Plata, a broad-shouldered man with a nose reddened by burst vessels—probably from too much ale drinking, given the reputation of some of these watchmen—but his face was otherwise pleasant. The men who served under him were said to be extremely loyal, and yet softened by Plata’s light hand in guiding them.

  “I’ll need five of your best men,” Rafael called up to him. “None of your slouchers, your one-armed rejects, you understand. Nobody whose loyalties you suspect.”

  A slight scowl crossed Plata’s face. As captain of the Thousand Wall, he technically served under Diamante, and his men had status below that of the upper watch. But like everyone in Quintana, he was protective of his position, and prickly at being ordered about by those above him.

  “Give me five minutes,” he grumbled.

  “No,” Iliana said as Plata turned to go. “No watchmen.”

  “Listen to me,” Rafael told her in a low voice, meant only for her ears. “With five men, I’ll clear a way straight into that cesspit. You won’t have any trouble.”

  “You’ve already called too much attention to me. I want to go down alone.”

  “Don’t be naive.”

  “I’m a chancellor of the Quinta. I’m hardly naive.”

  “You are if you think you can go down there by yourself. Just that pendant at your throat would get you robbed and murdered.” Rafael nodded. “Have you ever set foot in the lower terraces? No? I didn’t think so. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

  “I don’t know what you’re muttering about down there,” the other captain called, “but I’m not here at your leisure, Diamante. Do you need the blasted men or not?”

  “I won’t go under armed escort,” Iliana said firmly to her brother. “I told you that in my note, and I meant it, too.”

  Rafael grimaced and called up to the captain. “Never mind the men. Open the wall walk for us and give us an escort to show us the ways down—all of them.” To Iliana, he said, “You’re twenty-two years old, unmarried. Straight from Father’s house to being coddled in Carbón’s employ. I call that naive.”

  She thought of what she’d seen that afternoon at the mines. The boy with the withering hand, the rot spreading up his arm on its way toward the heart. Let the poor child die, or amputate? That was the brutal choice facing them. She’d pushed for amputation, and Lord Carbón agreed.

  It wasn’t the first hard decision she’d made, either. Every week she revised her master’s figures from the mines: the production of coal, the incoming shipments of material, and the outgoing expenditures. She’d ordered men sent off, either for sloth or because their services were no longer needed. Men whose families depended on the handful of black coins they earned every week.

  “What is your wage?” she asked.

  Rafael blinked. “Two escudos and ten per fortnight. Why?”

  She ran the numbers in her head. “So, fifty-seven and twenty annually? This week I spent five gold quintas on flour alone. Bread for the miners. Another ten to pay Torre for shipments across the Great Span. Three quintas for household expenditures. I can spend probably fifty times your annual wage in a single day.”

  “Sounds like an important responsibility. Do you brag to everyone about spending Carbón’s gold, or just me?”

  “Dammit, you know what I mean.”

  “I know you should probably keep your mouth shut if you want to keep your post.”

  Iliana was bristling now, in part because Rafael was right. She shouldn’t have mentioned money, not even to her brother. She shouldn’t have tried to convince him at all. Give him orders, let him obey or not.

  If he didn’t obey, what of it? She’d come down alone and show her chain of office and her orders from above. But Carbón had explicitly told her to use her brother to open the way.

  “What’s he like, Ili?” Rafael asked as they continued, using his pet name for her.

  “Carbón? He’s a decent man. What you hear—his reputation in the Forty—is accurate. He doesn’t cheat or abuse his servants.”

  “All of it?”

  “All of what, his reputation? How do you mean?”

  “He’s a strange man. Lives alone, never married.”

  “He’s only twenty-nine.”

  “What about bastard children?” Rafael asked. “Does he have any?”

  “How would I know? No, I don’t think so. He doesn’t have women coming and going, if that’s what you’re thinking, and there’s no gossip among the staff.”

  “So he prefers men?”

  “No gossip about that, either.” She shook her head. “Like I said, I wouldn’t know. And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

  “My mistake. I should have asked about gold quintas. Your tongue is free enough when it comes to your lord’s treasury.”

  “That was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  “Keep an eye on Carbón tomorrow night. That will be your answer.” Rafael threw up his hands in mock surrender at her glare. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I don’t care, not really, but you might want to satisfy your curiosity. You work with the man—don’t you want to know? Whatever he does on Fool’s Day will be your answer as to his true nature.”

  Maybe, maybe not. Carbón kept his emotions and his inner thoughts closed from her, and closed to the others around him, too, from what she could see. Whatever it was that kept him unmarried, it was clearly by choice. He was rich, handsome, and generous, at least in his outward behavior. As to what motivated him internally, she had no real insight.

  The captain of the lower watch reappeared, and with him a watchman who was to take them along the wall walk and answer their questions.

  Chapter Six

  The watchman was a slouching fellow who beckoned them to come up, then leaned into Iliana’s lamplight to peer at her with weasel eyes. His mouth split in a grin, gap-toothed from a missing canine and two chipped incisors.

  He told Iliana to watch her step on a cracked flagstone and to keep clear of crumbling crenelations, and she heard a dumbre accent. Like Santi’s, or the men with sandpaper-rough voices working the mines. He got a cunning look when Rafael told him what they were looking for.

  “There are four major descents into the lower terraces,” the watchman said. “If you’re intent on going down, you don’t want those. Not a fine-dressed lady like you.”

  “Why not?” Iliana asked.

  Rafael stopped at one of the bastions extending out from the wall. “Look down, and you can see for yourself. See those people slouching in the alleys, smoking and the like?”

  Iliana handed the lamp to her brother
and cupped her hands around her eyes to peer into the smoky, gloomy mass of wooden buildings with sagging, rotting roofs, leaning against each other for support like a line of drunkards. The alleys were barely wide enough for a person to slip through sideways. The smell of cookfires, burning rags, and rotting vegetables wafted up to her.

  There were people directly below, none of whom seemed to be engaged in any particular activity. Mostly men. They saw her, too. Some stared, some glanced up furtively. All seemed to notice.

  “You mean because they’re watching us?” she asked.

  “Aye,” the watchman said, “because they’re always watching. A man comes down from the Thousand to smoke some hash or spend a few coins on a whore, and maybe he’s not paying attention, know what I mean? Or it could be one of their own, a little too much to drink, carrying his wage in his pocket.”

  Iliana chose her words carefully, unwilling to let slip her entire plan. “What about in daytime?”

  “Daytime, nighttime, it don’t matter,” the watchman said. “There could be a fire burning down the lower terraces, and the bad sorts would be waiting in the shadows to rob people fleeing with their possessions. There’s a kind of fellow down there who will rob his own brother if he thinks he ain’t paying attention.”

  “Five men,” Rafael told Iliana firmly. “Plus myself. Swords and muskets. We’ll march in, get your business done, and get out of there just as quick. Might have to lop off a few heads, but that sort of thing is useful now and then.”

  “Nah, no need for that,” the watchman said. “Tell me what it is you need done, and I’ll make it happen. I live down there, you know. They know me, know they’ll lose a kidney if they lay a hand on me. It’ll cost you a small fee, but nobody will come along to tickle your ribs with a dagger.”

  “How much?” Rafael asked.

  “I’m reasonable, and you’re the captain up top. Depends on what you need done.”

  “A delivery, nothing more,” Rafael said.

  “Big or small.”