Chapter 9 Esmeralda
Esmeralda
Esmeralda grunted as she tried to lift one of Camila’s dumbbells. Camila grinned and took it, jesting about Esmeralda’s weak arms before chucking the heavy metal into an already heavy trunk.
Sometimes they stayed in a town for multiple days.
Sometimes only one night. When the ringmaster decided he’d had his fill or the laughter in the Big Top dulled, the carnival was immediately packed up into wagons, which would be wheeled onto the train or stuffed into boxcars and secured for departure once the carnival closed.
In the ten months since she, Gabriel, and the Sánchezes joined the carnival, they had almost always convened at the sisters’ wagon to help the girls pack… and to gossip.
“What happened after you knocked him out?” Gabriel asked as he exited the wagon Camila and Pilar shared, brushing the sweat from his brow.
“I checked his pockets of course,” Esmeralda said.
“He didn’t have much to offer. A flyer for the carnival.
A tin box and an officer’s badge, which I snagged.
” His mother’s ring was on his pinky finger.
She wasn’t so heartless that she would steal that.
Although, the thought had crossed her mind.
He had given it to her once upon a time.
She grabbed another dumbbell. “I found one of the ringmaster’s ratas and had them contact a jailer. I told them I found Ignacio trying to steal some golden eggs.”
Both Camila and Gabriel snorted.
“Remind me not to cross you,” Camila teased.
“He’ll be fine,” Esmeralda said, rolling her eyes. “His father is the second most powerful man in Costa Mayor.”
Gabriel gaped. “He’s the son of Comandante Olivera? The commander of the entire army? How did a thief like you meet the child of the most prestigious man in Costa Mayor?” He added a “No offense” to soften the slight.
“Offense taken,” she replied. “I’ll have you know it was the comandante’s son who pursued me.
Anyway.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder to prove she didn’t care that Gabriel assumed Ignacio was too good for her.
Ignacio clearly thought so too. He did betray her a year ago.
And what was his excuse for breaking her heart?
I can’t turn my back on my father. “I lived in the comandante’s manor from the age of ten, all the way until I ran away before my eighteenth birthday. ”
“Lived there? Why?” Gabriel asked.
“Yeah, why?” Camila chimed in. “And why did you never tell us this? It’s like you talk and talk but don’t actually say anything about yourself.”
“That’s because I’d rather speak about anything in the world other than my past.”
Camila and Gabriel stopped working altogether.
“I think we’re beyond that,” Gabriel said. “You’ve already spilled most of the beans anyway. You can’t leave us hanging now.”
Camila chimed in. “You can tell us stuff, you know. It’s kind of what friends are for.”
Esmeralda couldn’t help but feel a timid sort of warmth gathering inside her chest, but she ignored it.
Her parents had given her up the second she wasn’t of use to them.
Ignacio left her once she told him she wouldn’t wait for him to return from the Blackbirds.
Comandante Olivera had her thrown into a cell when she no longer served as his trustworthy spy.
The moment she wasn’t what someone needed or wanted or expected, the moment she didn’t offer anything of value, people were done with her.
She made Gabriel and Camila laugh. She trotted around with an arrogant grin and lackadaisical manner that put them at ease. What would happen when they saw the serious, sad side of her that didn’t offer them joy? They’d probably stay away, and she couldn’t risk that.
“We better hurry up and finish before the train leaves us. You know how much I hate running after things.” She moved to pick up one of Camila’s trunks. It didn’t budge. Camila had placed one of her sandaled feet right on top of it.
“Talk,” she commanded.
Esmeralda placed her hands on her hips. “Is the truth about my wretched history more important than getting ready to depart?”
“Yes,” Camila and Gabriel said in unison.
“You’re both insufferable.”
“We learned it from you,” Gabriel said. “Now spit it out before I expire from the morning heat.”
Esmeralda breathed hard through her nostrils before saying, “When I was ten, I was caught stealing from Comandante Olivera’s home. Instead of sending me to the dungeons, he turned me into his spy. Ignacio and I became friends as I worked off my indenture.”
“And then you became more,” Camila added with a wiggle of her brows.
“Unfortunately,” Esmeralda grumbled.
Gabriel narrowed his gaze. “When you and I met inside the jailer’s wagon…”
“That was two months after I ran away from Comandante Olivera. Like I said, I scuttled off before my indenture was up, but his officers found me easily enough. The comandante then left me to rot in a dark cell as punishment until he decided all us criminals would serve him better in the war. And that’s where I met you, another pitiful prisoner heading for certain death. ”
“And aren’t you lucky for it,” Gabriel said. “If I remember correctly, it was I who got us free from our manacles before we reached the trenches.”
“I think that hooch you procured from the bootlegger has done something to your brain. I freed us from the jailer’s cart. You got us out of the manacles long after we escaped.”
“You both played pivotal roles in your freedom,” Camila said. “Now back to you and Ignacio falling in love.”
Esmeralda groaned. “Do we really need to talk about it?”
“Yes,” her two friends said again.
This brought on a wave of giggles.
Pilar’s head popped out of the wagon. “What’s so funny?”
Pilar Sánchez looked nearly identical to her sister Camila, though she was eleven months older.
She was tall and lanky but with muscles that showed themselves whenever she had need for them.
And Pilar, like her sister, wore her black hair in two plaits that she pinned up like a crown.
There was no denying her queenly beauty.
The sisters grew up on a massive farm in El Sueco.
Their unnatural strength was built through years of exertion like the rest of their family.
But because half of their uncles, aunts, and cousins had been called to war, the Sánchezes had fallen on hard times.
The girls came to the carnival to earn enough coin to send home to their grandparents and keep their home afloat.
But once Pilar got a taste of fame, her priorities shifted.
She wanted to be a star not a ranch hand.
She hopped onto the grass and lifted one of the marble columns she and Camila used to show off their strength during their act.
The post was weighty. Esmeralda could only lift it inches from the ground with both arms. But Pilar rested it on one shoulder and walked up the step to her wagon with ease.
She placed the column down next to the others that had already been stored.
“We were just talking about Esmeralda and her beau,” Gabriel said.
Pilar’s pretty face knotted in surprise. “You have a beau?”
“He is not my anything.” Not anymore.
Once, Ignacio Olivera had been her everything. He was the one person in the entire world she loved with every fiber of her being. Her veins and bones and organs buzzed whenever she so much as thought of him.
In fact, they were doing it now. She grew feverish when she thought of those long lashes curled over his light brown eyes. Of the last night they’d spent together. The warmth of his bare skin against hers.
Stop it, she hissed in her mind.
But her body didn’t listen. Seeing Ignacio for the first time since he left her for the Blackbirds had brought back a thousand sharp memories and the feelings that came with them.
She remembered the way he smelled. The way her head fit perfectly against his chest. The shy smile he’d give whenever they saw each other after being apart for long. Almost every good memory she had of her life before the carnival involved Ignacio in some way.
They were so young when they found each other, just ten years old. The first time she’d seen him in the daylight was when she caught him watching her from his bedroom window.
She had been in the courtyard of the comandante’s estate, waiting for Comandante Olivera and his general to finish whispering to one another so they could tell her what to do.
She didn’t mind being the comandante’s errand runner so much.
Having a warm bed to sleep in and food in her belly was rather nice.
Plus, someone kept leaving her little treats on her pillow and extra socks in her dresser.
Growing bored while waiting on the comandante, she tried to crease the parchment in her hand into the shape of a bird.
She had seen a few paper doves left about the estate and wanted to try, but she couldn’t get it right.
Frustrated, she let her eyes roam over the grounds and spotted him, the gangly boy who had been responsible for her having to work for the comandante in the first place.
He’d been the one to find her when she and her family snuck into the comandante’s home to steal his prized collection of rare figurines.
Ignacio had been the one to rat her out.
She stuck out her tongue at him. His eyes widened, and he disappeared behind his curtains. But when she got to her room in the servants’ quarters that night, she spotted a small bird made from folded paper hanging through the overhead vent.
Esmeralda had been ecstatic to see the fluttering dove, but that emotion was quickly devoured by suspicion. She stood on a chair and plucked it from the fishing wire it was attached to. Two words had been scribbled onto the wing.
Open. Please.