Chapter 30
Minerva
Four days passed full of preparation for the Viceroy.
The night before he arrived, I snuck out of bed after midnight, retrieved a small bundle from beneath my bed, and padded to the fourth floor.
I no longer needed a lamp to light my way or bring me comfort.
I no longer feared what I could not see in this house.
The only thing I had to fear was the living.
Ygnacio waited for me before the three sarcophagi.
There was no moonlight, no weak tendrils reaching through the fog to line the windows of the fourth floor with silver.
It was perfect darkness, thick with anticipation.
I felt it on my skin like someone’s fingertips, tracing so softly over my forearms that the sensation raised hairs in its wake.
Ygnacio beckoned me to come close. The floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I did. There was no one beneath me to hear it—Senora Encarnación’s rooms were ready for the Viceroy’s men, but empty. Cavernous and gaping and hungry.
“Take off the amulet,” Ygnacio murmured. To my eyes, he was but a glimmer in the dark. A shift of shadow out of the corner of one’s eye. “Just for a moment.”
I did so, holding the string in one loose, clammy fist.
“Go close enough to touch,” he said.
I stepped forward on the board of Mice and Hounds, each of my footfalls deliberate, each of my feet leaving behind a perfect imprint in bright, wet blood.
I was one piece; Arnulfo was another. He must make it to the other side of the board.
I didn’t care if that meant he won or lost, only that he was alive.
I watched the burial of the guards from the third-floor windows as Sara and I polished and dusted the glass.
The bodies were wrapped in white cloths.
I wondered if they were the same fabric that had covered the furniture in Senora Encarnación’s suite to protect it from dust. It would not protect the guards’s corpses from rot, nor their spirits from the strange pull of this place.
Would they join Ygnacio in the rafters of the house?
Those consumed by his kin certainly wouldn’t.
Hunger. I could taste it on the air. It tasted like dread. It tasted like waking up angry, frothing to sink my teeth into the first living thing I saw.
“Put your hand on that sarcophagus,” Ygnacio said. “The largest one.”
I hesitated. I still held the bundle from beneath my bed in one hand.
I had to trust him. If I was to unleash his kin and live to tell the tale, they had to know me. So I offered myself now, like meat on a platter to sniff while they were still bound and shackled.
My hand trembled.
I set it on the top of the stone. It was cold against the flat of my palm. Smooth. My fingertips found ridges where precious metal had been pried away, leaving ragged wounds in its wake.
I waited. Ygnacio put his hand over mine; a shiver passed through my body at the flush of cold. It was somehow comforting.
“Wait.” His voice was but a whisper. He was little more than a whisper.
If anything went wrong, was he strong enough to defend me?
The sarcophagus beneath my palm trembled. Like an earthquake, it was tentative at first, then grew in strength and vigor.
A thump from within.
I resisted the urge to yank my hand back.
Ygnacio kicked the stone.
“Hey,” he snapped, voice deepening in timbre. He leaned down to the sarcophagus’s lid and snarled. “Put the offering on the sarcophagus,” he whispered.
I unwrapped the bundle with my left hand: I had stolen pieces of bread and fruits—sliced papaya, pieces of guayaba—from the kitchen in a folded napkin. As I did so, I caught a glint of pearl in the darkness, curved and sharp.
Perhaps I should have been more afraid of Ygnacio than I was.
“Do you smell this one? Do you smell her offering? Yes, I know you do.” His voice was a rich, throaty rumble. “This one is not for eating.”
The sarcophagus vibrated softly.
A soft veil of dust rose as it moved. It shifted barely a centimeter, but I heard it scratching the floorboards.
And from within, I heard an aching, famished groan. I could almost feel sorry for whatever creature made it…
If it were not followed by a vicious hiss. Spit and bared teeth and hot breath.
I snatched my hand back.
My heart was a wild thing, throbbing panicked against my sternum.
“Put on your amulet,” Ygnacio said. “Quickly.”
My hands shook so hard that it took longer than I would have liked. I fumbled the thread in the dark, trying to tie it one-handed. I resorted to teeth to succeed. My muttered incantation of yancho jiarú, yancho jiarú tasted of thread.
“Now put your hand back on the lid,” Ygnacio whispered.
I sensed that he wasn’t looking at me. His full focus was on the monster within, on his kin.
This time, the stone was warm beneath my fingertips.
“Smell this one,” Ygnacio snarled. “Know her.” He leaned closer, and again I saw that flash of pearl that was bared fangs in the black.
I had rehearsed this line. Ygnacio fed it to me, but it was my piece that moved forward across the board, shielding Arnulfo’s, as I whispered:
“I am here to command you.”
The Viceroy and his retinue climbed the mountain like ants: soldiers marching in orderly rows, following black carriages drawn by frothy-necked dapple-gray horses.
Flags declared the diplomatic importance of those held within.
Each flew a banner with a sigil: deep emerald fabric and a gardenia, as white and pure as fresh cream.
The household staff were arrayed in a row before the garden walls.
I shifted, gravel crunching delicately beneath my feet.
My hands were clasped before me. The morning was sweating beneath its veil of mist. Somewhere, high above the fog, there was blazing sunlight.
Silver sheathed the windows of la Casa de las Gardenias, and though I could not see his form, I knew that Ygnacio watched from the fourth-floor windows.
This was the curve of the stream where the waters sensed the approaching downhill and dug deep into each bend to build speed. Where the surface grew white with chop.
The Viceroy’s carriage stopped before Octaviana. All I could see were the backs of Filomena’s and Cosme’s heads, and all I could hear was the impatient stamp of horses’ hooves.
Over Cosme’s shoulder, I watched the back of Octaviana’s head as she approached the carriage. I caught a flash of white hair emerging from the darkness of the box.
The Viceroy had arrived. And I couldn’t see anything. There was no catharsis for me, only a further build of anxiety, winding up my throat, tightening like a jungle vine.
Tonight, when all went to bed, I would return to the fourth floor. It would be the very last time I snuck from my bed, the last time I whispered lies to Sara about where I was going.
I would go directly to the sarcophagi.
And, with all my might, I would shove the lids away.
This image looped in my head as Octaviana and the Viceroy exchanged pleasantries and as she led the white-haired man—whose back was slightly humped, like Senora Encarnación’s—past the line of servants into the walled garden toward the front door. I barely caught a glimpse of him.
The Viceroy’s footmen followed with his belongings.
They walked two at a time from the carriage into the walled garden, up the path leading to the grand front entrance.
They carried chests between them and held their heads high; their hair was slicked back and their expressions were serene and noble.
It was the ears that I noticed first.
Ears that were just like mine.
Arnulfo, clad in dark green livery and carrying a chest filled with the Viceroy’s personal belongings, walked into the garden and out of sight.