Chapter 38
Minerva
I waited until I heard more screams, then steadied myself and descended the servants’ stairwell.
I took the first two flights quickly, then slowed as I approached the ground floor.
The more chaos there was in the direction of the ballroom, the better my chance of slipping out into the jungle unseen.
Breaking glass—some of the sound muffled by walls, some crisper. I jumped at a gunshot. Terror erupted over my body, sheathing me in a clammy vise.
Arnulfo. Please be safe.
At the bottom of the curving staircase was the door to the ground floor. Before I reached it, the door swung inward so hard that it slammed against the wall and bounced back.
Antonio, Leoncio’s footman—the one who brought the poisoned tea to Senora Encarnación—flung himself screaming into the stairwell.
Dark tendrils slipped over his shoulders, around his neck, and gently, ever so gently, picked him up off the ground.
The tendrils multiplied, like tentacles, and like curving claws they sank into his chest. Into his throat.
Into his skull. His eyes popped stark from his face in a morbid imitation of Senora Encarnación; his pallor gleamed with a sickly sheen.
He heaved. He retched. Then his chin tilted up—and, when a spurt of chispa emerged, it was devoured by the dark.
Antonio’s body dropped to the ground. He was a dead cicada, dry and husk-like, his withered limbs curled toward his body.
The darkness lifted its head to me—sniffed, then retreated into the hall.
I had not eaten in hours. I had nothing to retch but acid. I swallowed it quickly and averted my eyes from Antonio—or what was left of Antonio—as I took the last steps two at a time. I stepped over his body, toward the door.
“Hey! You!”
I startled, but carried on to the door. I couldn’t afford to waste any time. Ygnacio would be here any moment, and I had to be ready to flee.
“You’re Trevino’s sister!”
I jerked my head over my shoulder. A young man, his shirt dark with sweat and his chest rising with sharp panting, leaned with one hand on the doorway. Gunpowder streaked across one cheek; he had a knife in his other hand. It gleamed wet.
I shrank back, heart in my throat, as he pointed at me with the knife. His eyes were wild with fear.
“The Viceroy is gone. His men aren’t falling. They’re supposed to, aren’t they? Aren’t they?”
Then his gaze fell on Antonio’s body; he screamed and leaped back from the door frame. He turned on his heel and disappeared down the hall.
More breaking glass. More gunshots. Screams. It all sounded so far away, when all I could hear was my pulse in my head.
I was alone in the stairwell. The house shuddered and writhed, but not where I stood; the breaking glass and screaming were all many rooms away. It was as if I knew an earthquake was convulsing through the ground just beyond me but the earth where I stood was steady.
I was apart. I was still.
No one had seen me. Others would be running, like the Valbuenistas. No one would notice one more form fleeing the house. The insurgents at the bottom of the hill wouldn’t wait forever.
I’m safe here, I had told Arnulfo in the garden of Casa Azafrán.
You are not. I can’t lose you, too.
I curled my hands into fists.
Senora Encarnación cleared the board. Click, click. She pushed the tiles back toward me.
You choose, she said. That’s the lion’s share of the strategy.
The hall outside the ballroom smelled of gunpowder and sweat.
“Stand back.” A footman—one of Arnulfo’s men—pointed a rifle at my chest. He guarded the door to a small drawing room adjacent to the ballroom.
My hands flew high.
“Trevino.” I shouted to be heard over the noise of gunshots from the ballroom, and pointed down at myself. “Where is my brother?”
“Tell the boss the Viceroy is in here,” he cried, gesturing to the drawing room door. “His niece is doing some witchcra—get down!” Then the insurgent—no more than a boy—cried out. I flinched as his hands moved. Something on his gun clicked.
“Someone needs to tell Arnulfo that—”
A crack from behind me. I ducked.
The boy slumped against the wall and slid to the floor. A perfect, round hole pierced his forehead. His hands clutched the rifle. His knuckles were covered in white scars.
A hand seized my shoulder and shoved me against the wall.
“You should be dead,” Leoncio hissed. Hot spit sprayed my ear and cheek. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the gleam of a pistol.
Ha! It needs to be reloaded after every shot.
I flung my elbow back into him with all my might. It struck him square in the chest. He released me with a strangled cry. I sprang away, leaped over the dead insurgent, and grasped the handle of the drawing room door.
A soft chanting emanated from within.
A metallic click from Leoncio’s direction. I slid a glance his way.
He pointed his pistol at me—my heart leaped, thoroughly taken by the bluff. An amulet made of twine sat on his right wrist.
“Don’t,” he warned.
He took Senora Encarnación. He would not take Arnulfo.
I opened the door and slipped inside.
I was momentarily blinded. Light—the brilliant, splendid yellow of noon—seared my eyes, and I stumbled, hand held to shield my eyes. Blinking, I thrust myself away from the door as it opened again, and Leoncio tumbled into the room after me.
I tripped, hit the carpet, and fell. I caught myself on all fours by the heat of the fireplace, and remained crouched, hidden behind an armchair.
“Mijo!” Octaviana’s voice cried. “I told you to leave!”
I peered out from my hiding place. I was glad the chanting continued, for it meant that no one heard my gasps.
In the center of the room stood Octaviana, dressed in her glittering ball gown.
A rope was nailed to the floor in a perfect circle around her and the Viceroy and Cirilo.
A rope with seven knots. Above each knot, at about eye level, hung a gleaming orb.
Like chispa, but brighter than it, like the searing brilliance of a sun.
Seven of them, all around the Viceroy in a protective cluster.
“Yanchu jiarú,” the Viceroy murmured. He repeated it over, and over, and over…
A bloom of rage swept through me. It was wrong to hear those words from the Viceroy’s mouth, from Octaviana’s mouth as she rejoined chanting with her uncle.
Whatever those words meant, whoever breathed power into them—they had been slain by a viceroy. I thought of sarcophagi stripped of precious stones, of Ygnacio’s body broken by the beams of this very house, buried in a corner of the garden. Of his father and sisters, all long dead.
I burned like the fire behind me.
And I reached for it.
“She’s in here!” Leoncio was yelling at Octaviana. “That insurgent mongrel bitch.”
I caught only a glint of the fallen insurgent’s rifle in his hand.
My vision was filled by flames. I reached into the fire and seized a log that was burning at one end.
I turned, and without rising to my feet, I crept out from behind the armchair and touched the log to the knot in the rope closest to me.
Rope caught flame.
The orb above it sputtered and dipped. I flinched, thinking it would strike me, but it swerved and flung itself into the wall—
And dissipated into a thousand gleaming sparks. Like a bowlful of chispa flung at the wall.
A blisteringly loud crack; a thud as a bullet buried itself in the mantelpiece over my head.
My heart throbbed in my chest. I felt it distantly, like a voice shouting my name from many rooms away. Perhaps it was. Was it Ygnacio? His kin?
“Stop shooting, you idiot!” Octaviana snapped at Leoncio. “You’ll hit tío.”
She whirled on me. Amulets lined her thin forearms; a burning, almost inhuman rage limned the darkness of her face.
A second orb dipped and crashed. Though the Viceroy’s chanting continued, meditative, trancelike, the amulet was broken.
“In here!” I cried out. To Ygnacio, to his kin, to the Valbuenistas, to anyone who would listen. I stumbled backward; I felt the heat of the fireplace against my thighs as Octaviana bore down on me. “The Viceroy is in here!”
The rumble filled the room like a storm building. It grew darker, I thought—but I could not see much beyond the form of Octaviana as she pulled something metal and gleaming into her hand—knife or pistol, I would never learn, for I took the burning log and swung it at her as hard as I could.
Her hair caught flame first. Perhaps her cheek, too. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Amid the screaming, I thrust the burning log at her again, aiming for skirts, and dove away from her.
I slipped out, slamming the door as I went.
The hall seemed so quiet. The boy’s dead body splayed before me. The door handle rattling behind me.
I had to get to Arnulfo.
I sprinted to the ballroom doors and opened them.
My ears rang. The room was full of smoke. Tables were overturned and pulled to different sides of the room; I ducked behind a lone armchair pocked with bullet holes. Shattered glass crunched beneath my shoes. Puddles of champagne wet the hem of my dress.
A freezing draft poured over me.
“What are you doing here?” Ygnacio cried. He was smoke, enveloping me in the scant shadows of the ballroom.
At last. I could weep.
“Where’s Arnulfo?” I cried. “The Viceroy is across the hall. Someone needs to tell him.”
“I will, but—behind you!” he barked.
The stock of Leoncio’s rifle was overhead. I wrenched around, but too late. It glanced off my temple instead of striking me square in the skull. Pain ricocheted white through my head, I was crying out, and then he yanked me up by my hair.
“No!” I screamed, but I couldn’t hear myself, not over the gunfire. Smoke burned my nostrils. My throat. I whirled to strike him, to fight him, but, with a gasp of pain, he released my hair and shoved me out of the hiding spot, taking it for himself.
I fell.
The ground tilted beneath me. Glass in my palms; pressing into my thigh.
The smell of spilled sparkling wine went straight up my nostrils.
It was mixed with blood. It fizzed pink.
My ears rang. Senora Encarnación cackled as she raised the green bottle; the pop of the cork; the shining cascade of wine into crystal.
“Minerva!”
Arnulfo was around me, yanking me upright. I caught my weight on my feet and stumbled into him, with him, toward the barricade of tables that the Valbuenistas had set up on the other side of the room. Shattered glass crunched beneath the soles of my shoes. My palms were full of it.
A few more steps toward safety. We were practically leaping now, ducking and weaving through the smoke.
I heard it first.
It was a whistle; a crunch of ribs; a percussive, wet sound. My own gasp—ragged, echoing.
Then searing. Wet and searing.
I fell.
Arnulfo caught me in his lap.
“The Viceroy,” I forced out. My tongue felt heavy, thick, as if I was trying to talk through a mouthful of liquid.
I spat. It was warm on my lips and chin.
Must have lost a tooth? Couldn’t think about that now.
“He’s in a—a drawing room, down the hall, protected by a large amulet.
A rope one. Around him and Cirilo. I got Octaviana, but you—”
It was like a bad dream. Arnulfo held me in his lap, his face streaked with soot and tears.
He was warm. It made me tired. Breathing made me tired—it hurt so much.
I must have broken a rib when I fell. Did the insurgents have any medical knowledge?
I couldn’t feel my feet, either. Running to the gates was going to be hard.
I drift.
It’s like sliding down the side of a hill where I have no footing, where the mud is rainy-season slick and rising to my ankles.
Time has passed, I think. Arnulfo is talking. First to others, shouting, then to me. He’s shaking me gently, pressing rags to my chest. Where did those come from? His hands are redder than a butcher’s.
“Don’t leave me,” he’s saying, his voice cracking. “You can’t leave me, too. You can’t. You’re not allowed to, you hear me? You can’t leave me.”
“Pfft,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I’m not, after all.