Chapter 2 Ignacio
Ignacio
Ignacio used to believe that everything in life could be categorized into one of two options: right or wrong. He had lived, quite rigidly, within the boundaries of what he’d been told was right by his father, a man Ignacio had idolized.
He was a perfect son. A perfect student. A perfect…everything. He listened to his father. He obeyed his teachers and leaders. He said yes to whatever they asked of him.
Until he didn’t.
The heat of the day still lingered on the stucco, warming Ignacio’s back through his coat and shirt.
His fingers slid over the rough walls as he inched toward the back entrance to the staff’s kitchen.
It was well past midnight. Everyone who worked in the great and powerful Comandante Olivera’s home would have fallen asleep long ago.
Ignacio turned the knob gingerly. His brows pinched together. Someone had engaged the bolt. Odd. No one ever locked this door or any door within the gated manor. Who would have the nerve to break into the home of the Blackbirds’ leader?
There had been only one person who had dared to try. And she was long gone, having scurried off to some country across the sea, never to return. He clenched his fists and willed his thoughts to flee far away from the girl who had run away with his heart—and his savings.
He knelt beside the planter box that flanked the door and lifted the small statue of a dove. The clay figure had been here since he was fourteen and so had the master key it concealed.
Ignacio shook his head in disappointment. The comandante was cautious enough to keep the doors locked, but he didn’t think highly enough of Ignacio’s competence to remove the key to said door.
With a sigh, Ignacio brushed the dirt off the rusted metal and slipped it into the keyhole. He eased into the familiar space.
It smelled of soap and vinegar, just like he remembered.
Shiny pots still lined the walls, kept perfectly clean and hung impeccably straight like the comandante ordered.
The wooden countertops were clear of clutter, and the checkered floors gleamed in the moonlight let in by the spotless windows.
There wasn’t a single speck of dust within the entire space.
Not even the dust’s ghost would dare remain.
Comandante Olivera often proclaimed that his home, staff, soldiers, and family were extensions of him. Therefore, they must be perfect. Always perfect. As he saw himself to be.
Ignacio scowled at his boots. He should wipe the dirty soles on the rugs out of spite. But that would only get the serving staff in trouble. His qualms didn’t lie with them, only with the comandante.
Tiptoeing through the shadowy hallway, he focused on the staircase at the opposite end. He wouldn’t dare risk his gaze slipping to the room three doors down on his left. Even after a year, the thought of the final moments he spent inside that cramped space made his guts gurgle with resentment.
He bounded up the steps leading to the comandante’s office.
He’d been up and down them so many times, he knew the rug would conceal any sounds he made.
There were no longer portraits on the walls.
Any sign of the family the comandante once boasted about had been wiped away as if they never existed.
As if Ignacio’s mother had never mattered. As if Ignacio himself didn’t matter.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Even before his mother had died at the hands of Dos Palos spies, Ignacio’s father had kept him at arm’s length. It seemed his father wanted an obedient soldier, not a son. Ignacio had given him what he wanted until he couldn’t any longer.
And his disobedience fractured what little relationship they had into a thousand shards that could not be pieced back together again.
The door to Father’s office was ajar. Ignacio peered back over his shoulder, searching for a single looming shadow in the darkness. But Father wasn’t home. Ignacio had memorized his weekly routine.
The comandante would have supper at El Portal del Rey first. It was a known haunt for members of the Blackbirds.
Then he’d make an impressively fast stop at Muneca’s, a secret establishment where Blackbirds could also be found, but under silk sheets instead of sitting at linen-draped tables.
Such businesses had been banished by the king of Costa Mayor several years ago, but, unsurprisingly enough, his soldiers were beyond the laws of the land they served.
Father’s final stop of the night would be a swanky speakeasy on the other side of town, where other arrogant worms assembled in tucked-away rooms and bragged about their great wealth while drinking booze that cost more than what most people earned in a month.
Father wouldn’t be back before daybreak.
And yet, Ignacio couldn’t force himself to move past the threshold and into his father’s office.
His fingers twitched at his sides. Memories poured over him.
The smell of leather varnish. The mausoleum-like quiet.
The sting of Father’s wrath when Ignacio was five years old and burst into the office without being summoned.
How many punishments did he suffer for not knocking properly, for not showing enough regard, for not being exemplary in every way?
Enough to still feel the repercussions deep in his marrow even now when he was a few days shy of turning nineteen.
Ignacio shook his head. That was the dreadful thing about memories. One could try to flee from them, but they always caught up. And often at the most inconvenient moments.
Nevertheless, he had a job to do. A task far more important than his own discomforts.
The day after Ignacio turned eighteen, Father had enlisted him in the training core to become one of his elite soldiers—the Blackbirds.
Ignacio grew up believing he would follow in his parents’ footsteps.
Mother had been King Amadeo’s comandante before she was killed protecting him.
Father was given the title of comandante soon after.
Both his mother and father had served in the military with honors.
When he was a boy, Ignacio had believed he would do so as well, but as he matured, his dreams had begun to change.
Still, he went to training camp, and he endured it for six long months, even while suffering a broken heart.
The day before he was going to receive his official Blackbird marking, he and the cadets had been called to action.
They stormed into a tiny village across enemy lines and destroyed everything, believing their adversaries to be lying in wait.
But there were no opposing forces. The army of formidable soldiers constantly trying to demolish the barriers between his country of Costa Mayor and the neighboring kingdom of Dos Palos, the villains he’d been taught to despise and fear, were nowhere to be found.
As Ignacio marched into the village, he quickly realized the people he had been ordered to take down were only farmers and their families.
The rulers of Dos Palos and their soldiers had retreated north, leaving their subjects who couldn’t escape at risk.
And they were so obviously lacking in provisions because King Amadeo’s army had cut all supply chains going in or out of the village and between Costa Mayor and Dos Palos.
These citizens were the monsters he was supposed to kill? These thin and weary people who hardly had clothes on their backs?
When the first shots rang out, screams tore through the sky. And Ignacio did nothing but stand there like a shell-shocked fool as the Blackbirds obliterated whatever lay in their path.
General Keara, the leader of the platoon and his father’s right hand, commanded the cadets to stand guard while she and the other officers charged ahead.
Ignacio followed them. He didn’t know why.
Probably to ease his guilt. To try to convince himself that he was wrong, that what they were doing was imperative to the safety of Costa Mayor.
That didn’t happen.
Whooping and laughter led him to the truth. The general and the senior Blackbirds were digging through a steaming stream in the middle of a meadow. Water sloshed around them as they filled thick satchels to the brim with whatever was inside the hot springs.
“We’ve hit a payload!” one of the Blackbirds yelled.
“I was starting to believe we’d drained these lands dry,” another added.
“Just keep digging,” General Keara ordered. She stood, stretching her long back. “I’ll send word to the comandante. Congratulating him on his magnificent find.”
Ignacio had tried to get a look at what they were stashing away, but he couldn’t without being spotted.
He felt sick. The Blackbirds under Keara’s command were not hunting for enemies of Costa Mayor.
They were searching for whatever lay within that meadow.
The enemy he had been taught to hate all his life was not trying to infiltrate Costa Mayor.
Costa Mayor was trying to infiltrate them because they wanted something Dos Palos had.
In a haze, he ran until he reached the next village, thinking he could at least warn the citizens of the soldiers nearby. But it had already been decimated by the Blackbirds. The corpses picked clean by vultures.
That was the day Ignacio defected. The day he turned his back on everything he thought he knew.
He’d once thought his father was the epitome of what it meant to be righteous and noble.
But there was nothing righteous or noble about what Ignacio had witnessed in the war.
Under Father’s command, innocent people had died.
And Ignacio had done nothing to stop it.
He was going to do whatever it took to make up for that now.
Emboldened by these memories, he took a deep breath and stepped into his father’s office. The place was still cold and bare, much like his father’s soul.