Wandering Star (The Quintana Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Carbón was bright enough; he surely knew there was a reason Torre didn’t want to talk about his own needs until he’d secured a commitment. And if pressed, Torre would have spilled it all right then, every last fear about the Great Span, but Carbón didn’t press. Instead, he stared for a long moment, face flushed with heat, then nodded.

  “I have no choice but to trust you,” Carbón said. “Now tell me—how do we manage it?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Naila Roja stood perfectly still as the two men rose dripping from the baths. She’d crept close while they bathed; it was the only way to hear their murmured conversation over the hot water pouring into the basin.

  But now she was standing in their way as they made for their clothing. Her hand gripped a small, egg-shaped object tightly, and she held her breath. She didn’t dare blink.

  One move, one twitch, and they see you.

  That’s all it would take to shatter the illusion. To break the camouflage that made her fade into the flagstones and the tiled wall to her rear. Any movement would make the illusion shimmer, and the human eye—while easily fooled—was also sharp enough to detect a fly. If these men caught her here, they’d swat her like a bug.

  Lord Torre and Lord Carbón would be on edge. They’d openly discussed one secret and hinted at another. And spoken blasphemy, both of them; Salvatore would love to hear about that.

  The two men passed her on either side, so close that Torre showered her with droplets, and Carbón nearly bumped her. He turned toward her, and she thought for one horrified moment that she’d been spotted, but he was only studying Torre.

  Naila found her father-in-law’s withered body disgusting to look at. The flesh hung from his limbs, muscle tone nonexistent. His bottom was flat and flaccid at the same time, and his penis looked so small and withered that she wanted to laugh. A pathetic old man.

  She was far more curious about Carbón, and when his back was turned, she crept after him, her bare feet padding silently, heel to toe.

  Naila was a collector of information, and the overheard conversation had delivered a trove of it. It would join her vault of knowledge, carefully gathered over the years. Some secrets she passed along to Salvatore; others, she kept for herself. She knew a good deal about the families of the Forty, and even more about the Quinta.

  She knew, for instance, that Lord Puerto’s wife drank black apple out of season and smoked so much hash that she went to bed stupefied every night. Puerto had not made love to her in six years, but though he raged at her for it, she dismissively told him to take lovers. He had apparently never done so.

  The supposedly devout Lady Mercado had an illegitimate daughter who was married to a boot maker in the Thousand and received a small sum of money every month without knowing where it came from. Lord de Armas had been carrying on a relationship with one of his male adjutants for years, and his wife didn’t seem to know.

  Torre, well, she had known all his secrets already. Or thought she had. How he moaned his wife’s name in his sleep and wept over the portraits of his dead children when he thought he was alone, especially that of a daughter who had died at the age of three. When Daniel did something that disgusted his father—which was often—Torre grimaced and could later be heard muttering about how he wished another of his children—any of them—had survived instead.

  Naila shared Torre’s low opinion of her husband. Daniel would be incapable of managing the Great Span or maintaining the watchtowers along the Quintana Way when his father was gone. When Daniel’s time came, it would be upon his wife, Naila Roja y Torre, to take command.

  But she’d never suspected that Torre meant to abandon his son until his stunning comments to Carbón. Or had that been bluster? Most likely bluster, she decided, but it bore watching.

  And what about Carbón? He’d been a cipher. A folded sheet of paper with an unbreakable seal, locked in a strongbox. The man had no family now that his adopted father was gone, no apparent secrets, or at least he had been circumspect about guarding them before this admission about the artifact in the mines.

  Still holding the illusion egg in her hand, Naila moved quietly to his side to study him as he dressed. He was well built and handsome. Why wasn’t he married?

  Maybe she would bed him later in the evening, if she could seduce him. And make him talk. A man drunk on black apple would always talk if given the right incentives.

  Naila had tried to infiltrate Carbón’s estate on two occasions, but never seriously. Once, the front gate had been open, but there were two guards armed with pikes, and they were more alert than she’d expected, and though it had been night, there was plenty of light from gaslights, and she’d guessed she would be spotted, illusion egg or no, if she tried to go through.

  On another occasion, she’d heard that he was absent from the estate, along with several of his servants, and she explored the boundaries of his property, up and down the hillside, looking for a second, weaker entrance, or some other way to gain access to his property. There was no gate that she could see, and the tree limbs had been trimmed back from the wall, which made climbing up and over problematic.

  Carbón didn’t hold dinner parties, and he’d never invited Daniel to his estate, either, which would have given her an excuse. Given his solitary nature, she hadn’t concerned herself overly much. If Carbón had secrets, she’d discover them sooner or later, but she doubted they would amount to much. She’d been more wrong than she could have imagined.

  You have the biggest secret of all, don’t you, Lord Carbón?

  A thrill tingled down Naila’s spine to think of it. An artifact in the mines. Something big, from the sounds of it. Something dangerous. Should she tell Salvatore? No, she thought not. Not yet.

  Carbón plucked a towel from a niche in the wall, then reached for his clothes, which he’d folded carefully. He kept his back to Torre, and that gave Naila a full view of his front. A large scar twisted from his navel to his groin, turning from pink to white and disappearing in a mass of scar tissue. It was an old wound, never stitched, and ugly in how it had healed.

  More than one secret, apparently.

  Naila had discovered why Lord Alan Carbón had never married.

  Once the two men had dressed, Naila followed them out of the baths and up the staircase to a balcony—Carbón helping the feeble old Torre with the steps—and then to the general revelry of drinkers and eaters. Naila stepped back against a marble wall, dropped the illusion egg into her pocket, and joined the crowd.

  Her husband Daniel was there, wineglass in hand, leaning in to whisper in the ear of a young woman, who giggled loudly. The woman turned, and Naila saw it was one of her own sisters. Naila gritted her teeth.

  She didn’t care so much that Daniel was trying to seduce her sister—wouldn’t have cared overmuch even if it had been any other day of the year, in fact—but that he was wasting his time on hedonistic pursuits. So many important people here tonight, so many loose tongues. So much to learn.

  Maybe Torre was right about his son. No, she knew he was right. Daniel could never stand alone atop the Quinta. He’d need someone to prop him up. Today his father; eventually, his wife.

  Her thoughts turned to her master. Salvatore. And she made a decision. No need to tell him about Carbón’s discovery in the mines—not yet—but there were other, lesser secrets that he would be keen to learn. Torre’s secret, for example, unspoken, but hinted at. And Carbón’s terrible scar at his groin and belly.

  She declined offers of wine and food, knowing that was a seductive trap to dull her wits and destroy her ambition. One woman seemed almost offended that Naila wouldn’t take wine, and a man tried to foist some sort of fatty duck liver thing at her, insisting she take a bite. She finally did, only to get him to stop following her, and made a face, as if it were disgusting, even though her mouth was watering for more. That put him off. It was almost as if they needed her to share their feast so as to justify their own appetites.

  Still searching for S
alvatore, Naila crossed the balcony to get away from the crowds, the torches, and the gaslights. The balcony pushed up to the cliff edge here, and in the day the view into the Rift was dizzying. She shrank against the wall to stay clear of the edge, trying to ignore the gusts of wind that billowed her sleeves and sent her cloak flapping behind her.

  The night was clear, and except in those moments when the celebrants below her in the Thousand launched skyrockets, dark. A new moon and stars gleamed overhead.

  Naila glanced skyward as a wandering star drifted through the heavens. A second wanderer appeared moments later, this one moving more slowly than the first, and lower toward the horizon.

  And suddenly she guessed where she would find Salvatore.

  Chapter Twelve

  Less than an hour after his discovery in the temple vaults, Thiego found himself climbing into the upper terraces. His calves were shortly aching from the steady, heart-pounding ascent from the temple, over the wall, and up a series of torturous staircases that led through the Forty toward the Quinta. The terraces and balconies of both the Thousand and the Forty had come alive with lights and music. The shouts of revelers, the smell of hash from pipes, and the high, bell-like laughter distinctive to those who’d been drinking black apple carried through the night.

  At several turns people spotted his geometer’s robes and, thinking it was a costume, tried to drag him into parties. Glasses of wine and trays of food were pressed upon him from celebrations that often spilled into the streets. He declined all offers and shook himself free. When he could, he took side alleys, the darker the better. A childhood in the dumbre had given him all the contact with loud, sweating masses of people that he would ever need.

  Finally, the Quinta. He’d never been up here, but it wasn’t hard to find Lady Mercado’s estate, simply by following the biggest crowds, the brightest-lit alleys, and the loudest music and revelry. When he arrived, he was dismayed to see a line still stretching down the stone-walled alleyway leading into Mercado’s property. A servant dressed in a long blue coat with a three-cornered hat was speaking briefly to every person seeking entrance, while a pair of sharp-eyed guards armed with swords and pistols stood nearby, giving a further once-over to every person who entered.

  Mercado may have thrown her doors open to the public tonight, but her servants remained vigilant. There were those who resented her wealth, extracted penny by penny from the lifeblood of the city, as she maintained a tight control of the arrival and departure of goods. There might be other sorts, too, who would look at the night of foolishness as an opportunity to lift a goblet or a bit of silver from the banquet table.

  Only a fool would try it. Mercado was simultaneously respected for her rigid adherence to the laws, customs, and regulations of the city—the code—and feared for her infliction of ruthless punishment for those who violated the same.

  Nevertheless, Thiego couldn’t afford to queue with the rest and spend the next half hour in line. Not if he hoped to reach Salvatore in time. It was already dark, the stars in full glory in the night sky. Among them would be the wanderers, and he didn’t follow celestial mechanics well enough to know how long they had before the moment passed. He feared it had passed already, in fact.

  So he pushed to the front of the line, ignored the grumbling of the others, and approached Mercado’s chancellor, a tall, thin man who arched an eyebrow.

  Thiego lifted his left hand to show the temple ring on his middle finger. “I have business with the Guardian of Secrets. Is he here?”

  The chancellor pointed a bony finger toward the house. “You’ll find the lady in the ballroom. Ask her—she’ll know.”

  Thiego found Lady Mercado surrounded by men and women from the Forty, themselves rich enough individually to buy the lives of half the dumbre. They seemed enthralled by the large woman with her larger personality, as Mercado held forth on some subject or other that had them laughing. Thiego was too distracted by the object lying against his side to follow the conversation. He’d tucked the mentabacus into a pouch within his robes after receiving it from the archivist, and it had been weighing there ever since, seemingly heavier with every stair climbed into the upper terraces.

  He stood off a pace for several long moments, anxious to question Mercado, but not sure how to approach. This wasn’t like muscling his way to the front of the line, it was interrupting a lord of the Quinta. He’d only even seen the woman on two occasions, and then from a distance, when she’d come to the temple accompanied by a crowd of servants and bodyguards to deliver her offerings.

  Lady Mercado’s eyes swung in his direction. They brushed past him, as if not really seeing him, then darted back and stared. Her face seemed to go slack. A look of—what? Fear? Intense worry? Whatever it was vanished.

  Thiego blinked, unsure what to make of her reaction. Had she mistaken him for someone else? Or was it his temple robes that surprised her?

  In any event, it gave him the courage to approach the knot of people, some of whom seemed to have noticed Mercado’s reaction and had turned toward him with expressions of curiosity. Quickly, he explained who he was looking for. Mercado only shook her head, but someone else said he’d spotted Salvatore on the uppermost balcony making celestial observations.

  A few minutes later, Thiego found the master sitting on the balustrade, his back to the Rift, polishing a brass tube with a cloth. A tripod stood to one side, and at its feet was a polished leather case to hold the entire apparatus. It was darker up above, beyond the lights of the estate, and the stars flickered overhead with increased intensity.

  “I’m waiting for the wanderers to make their appearance,” Salvatore said. “But what are you doing, Thiego? You’re not here for Mercado’s party. You’ve been handling an artifact, haven’t you?”

  Thiego blinked. “How did you know, Master?”

  “Because you were wearing a glove of protection not an hour ago.”

  “Well . . . yes. But how did you know that?”

  Salvatore waved a hand dismissively, as if the very question were either impertinent, or so obvious that it didn’t need answering. “And what was it? What is this object you touched without my permission?”

  “It’s the mentabacus I found after Lord Torre’s demonstration with the bridge and the waterworks.”

  “Ah, I heard that you’d found the lesser artifact. Well done—it will be noted. But why were you in the vault touching it? That is the part that concerns me. It concerns me deeply.”

  “I wasn’t in the vault. An archivist brought it out, and I had to handle the artifact long enough to put it in a bag and bring it up to show you.”

  Salvatore stiffened. He slid off the balustrade and glanced around as if worried that others might be near and listening. They weren’t; this terrace was too far from the food and drink, and lovers hadn’t yet paired off to find quiet corners of the estate.

  “You brought it with you? Are you mad? What possessed you to do such a thing?”

  It struck Thiego as odd that the master could see that he’d been wearing a glove of protection, but had no way of sensing the artifact itself. Even now, days after Kara put the discs over his eyes, there was enough residual effect that Thiego could sense the mentabacus at all times.

  “Do you know what the mentabacus does, Master? I only ask so I don’t waste your time repeating information,” he added hastily.

  “Provides mental stimulation for geometers, doesn’t it?” Salvatore took the brass tube and slid it into the leather sheath.

  “Yes, along those lines. It incites the higher mathematical centers of the mind.”

  “Fascinating. And forbidden. Return the object to the vault until a master calls for its use. That is all. I’m going to look for a better vantage for my far-glass.”

  “Master, please. Look at this before you do.”

  Salvatore threw up his hands as Thiego reached into his robes. “Don’t give it to me! I told you, it’s forbidden.”

  But Thiego was only removing a sheet
of paper that he’d copied from the book on weather observations. Salvatore seemed to recover and grabbed for it. He read it, frowning. Light slowly dawned in his eyes.

  Thiego cleared his throat. “And so I thought if you had the numbers—the expected trajectories—and the formulas, you could possibly locate the stars and confirm.”

  “What is the date?” Salvatore demanded.

  “Today? The Festival of Fools is always the eighteenth day of—”

  “No, in the old calendar. It is the Fourth of Planting, is it not?”

  Thiego had already consulted the old calendar. “No, because the moon cycle changed. It’s now the Sixth of Planting.”

  “Then it might already be too late. If it happened, it might have already done so.”

  Salvatore stared at the paper, then glanced skyward. That single line from the scriptures, mentioning wandering stars during the first week of Planting Month—an archaic term for the month, several weeks out of sync with the actual dates when crops were seeded—had commented that a well-known treble alignment could not always be spotted due to seasonal storms. A treble alignment of stars. Even more exciting was that the book had mentioned the quadrant where the wanderers could be found.

  “It might be too late,” Thiego admitted. “But you could use the artifact to be sure. I also brought the formulas to calculate—we copied them from the sacred books before I left the temple.”

  “No need. I have them memorized.” The master snapped his fingers. “Let me see the mentabacus.”

  Thiego was still carrying his glove, and he put it on before loosening the drawstring of the bag and removing the artifact, which was wrapped in a heavy cloth from the vault whose weight suggested a lead lining. He peeled back the cloth.

  To his surprise, the tips of the horseshoe-like object were glowing blue, as they had when the urchin girl touched it to her forehead.

  “You used it already?” Salvatore asked.

  “No, Master. I didn’t touch it with anything but the glove.”

  “Anyone else? That girl you work with, maybe?”