Chapter XVIII
XVIII
Elías
That night, Elías curled on his side in bed, staring into darkness. El Libro de San Cipriano lay at his bedside, a small strip of leather marking the page he had read to before his candle burned low and drowsiness made his vision swim. Yet somehow, sleep evaded him.
Another afternoon of skirting the house had been eased by María Victoriana bringing food from the kitchen to the workshop.
It seemed she considered this the tax she paid for spending hours burrowing in Victoriano’s books there.
When asked if she was meant to be anywhere else, or if her mother was missing her, María Victoriana had given a dismissive wave, as effortlessly haughty as a duchess.
“She’s busy, she won’t miss me,” she said, not even bothering to lift her head from the journal she combed through as she added, in a deceptively light voice: “By the way, don’t go out at night. It’s not safe right now.”
Unease had swept through him upon hearing this. Alba’s fevered words from earlier wound through his mind, looping like a nightmare he could not escape.
What was Carolina busy with? He was not sure he believed in coincidences, not anymore. Not when whatever was plaguing Alba was…well, was . He was not sure of much, but he knew it was there and it was wrong , no matter how much that offended her.
“What do you mean?” he pressed.
He received another haughty wave of the hand. “Thank me later.”
All day, the mine had buzzed like a smoked wasp’s nest. It was no secret that Bartolomé’s wishes had been carried out: Heraclio saw the shrine destroyed.
He bragged that he and Bartolomé had been shoulder to shoulder, armed with hammers, as they brought down the shrine together.
A crusade against idolatry and the Devil’s work.
Was Bartolomé right? An evil spreads among your workers, your flock …
“That’s not at all ominous,” Elías said.
María Victoriana set her book down. She had produced slices of a root vegetable called jícama and was steadily snacking through them. When he tried one, it had crunched with the satisfying give of a tart apple. Not all things in Nueva Espana were as awful as they had seemed from the start.
She narrowed her eyes at him, chewing thoughtfully. If she was going to explain what she meant, she decided against it.
“You have enough on your mind,” she said. “Refining enough silver to leave, being accused of murder, mooning over Senorita Alba every time she walks by…”
“ Excuse you.” He was both too surprised and too offended to question the wisdom of defending himself. “Grown men do not moon .”
It turned out that defending himself was not wise. María Victoriana did not laugh at him, but amusement rippled across her face like a flock of birds alighting. She returned to her book with a smirk.
“It must be so depressing to be in love with Carlos’s fiancée,” she said.
“I would hardly call it that .”
María Victoriana shot him a look with brows raised high—how eerily she resembled Abuelo Arcadio in that moment. And, like Abuelo Arcadio, she had prodded him right where he was softest. He hadn’t even known that spot existed, and oh , it was tender to the touch.
He could see everything plainly now, as if they were players on a stage, the lights throwing their silhouettes into sharp relief. Let the folktale unfold: the prince, the princess, and an ogre, lumbering, enormous, horrifying. A monster devouring the stage.
Pathetic. He should have concealed his feelings better. But how could he have? Alba…she was a sickness that had not plagued him since boyhood; his defenses had grown weak. They were atrophied muscles that collapsed at the slightest breeze.
The feeling had caught him unawares, in that cold courtyard, and in that golden ballroom.
Before he could draw steel to defend himself, it had already drawn blood.
The wound wept all the way from Zacatecas to this purgatory, here in the mountains—and apparently, the gleaming trail it left was apparent for even this girl to see.
“You’re young, so I’ll explain it nice and slowly,” he said, echoing her own words from when he had first arrived. It was too easy to mock himself. So much easier than the alternative. “Infatuations come and go. So long as you don’t make any rash decisions, they’re harmless.”
Upon reflection, hours later, lying awake with the conversation looping through his skull on a bat’s drunken wings: what a rational thing to have said. He should take his own advice.
Not even when Alba sought him out, luminous in the doorway of the workshop, an apparition of loveliness as stark as this desolate place.
Alba was none of his business.
Bartolomé already sensed that something was wrong with her. Bartolomé had threatened Heraclio with the Inquisition. That priest was armed to the teeth. If his suspicions mirrored Elías’s in any way, then he would deal with the problem swiftly and as he saw fit.
Physical revulsion coursed through Elías at the thought.
He rolled over and stared at the ceiling, a vain effort to shake off the dread blackening in his chest.
If he shut his eyes, he knew what he would see: black pits, bared teeth.
Staring into the darkness now, all he could see was how agitated her face had been as she paced the workshop.
How it twitched, as if she were rehearsing an argument in her mind and could not keep the aggression from bubbling to the surface.
The other forzados at Almadén had called the man El Loco.
Elías had never learned what his conviction was nor how long he had been in the mines—no one grew close enough to speak to him, and El Loco only spoke to himself.
Long, spirited conversations, his eyes rolling with agitation, his laughter filling the dark, airless tunnels and sending Elías’s hair standing on end despite the heat of the furnaces.
Possessed , the guards explained to newcomers among their ranks. Do not engage .
He had not seen El Loco in many years, not since leaving Almadén. He had not thought of the man in just as long.
And yet.
When Alba had come into the workshop, the name rang through him like a bell. El Loco’s face—and how it moved—were as fresh in his mind’s eye as if he had seen him yesterday.
It was not comforting, looking at Alba and being powerfully reminded of a man possessed. To say the least.
A long, thin creak splintered the darkness.
Elías sat up. Squinted through the gloom. Had the latch of the door come loose somehow? Had he not shut it? He could ignore it, but he was already awake, so he rose—might as well shut the door properly.
It swung open.
A woman in white stood in the doorway.
He fell back a step, heart thick in his throat, as the woman swept into the room. A glint of metal at her side—in one hand, she held a long knife.
He registered this in a quick glance; then his eyes were drawn back to her face and he could not look away. Even in the dark, he knew what he was seeing: pits where there should be eyes, lips peeled back from teeth as she charged forward.
He turned to flee, but tripped.
His back hit the hard mattress. Breath cracked from his lungs; he gasped, and she was on him, straddling his chest, a black curtain of hair pouring down as she curled over him.
Cold metal pressed against his throat.
He was going to die.
He did not want to die.
Almadén had given him reflexes; he had to fight or would rot in the mine forever, his body tossed down an abandoned shaft like so much refuse. He gritted his teeth and seized her forearms. Forced the blade away from his neck.
She forced back.
They remained locked like that, his hands gripping her arms, her weight pinning him down, a strength that belied her slim arms forcing the blade toward his throat—
And those eyes . Gazing down at him, blacker than mines, blacker than coal—
Ask for the demon’s name . This was what El Libro de San Cipriano had instructed. Ask it questions. The more you know, the more deliberately you can proceed with harnessing or banishing it.
“Are…you,” he forced through gritted teeth, “the Devil?”
To his horror, she replied.
“The Devil,” she repeated. Her voice raked like stone on stone, a metal pickaxe deep into his teeth. Her red tongue moved behind canines that were too long, as if the mouth were gumless, fleshless, the maw of a skull. “As if there were only one!”
A trill of laughter—it was silver castanets, it was water falling on coins, it jerked at his heart with how lovely it was.
“Is your master the Devil, then?” he asked. Sweat slicked his brow and palms; she was still pressing down hard, fighting to bring the knife to his throat, and she was stronger than anyone he had ever fought off, impossibly strong. “Why are you here?”
“Men want kings!” she trilled. “Order, tidy, clean. No luck for you, ya Elías, ya Elías, ya Elíasssss-sssss-sss .”
That red tongue flicked out and caught the tip of his nose. He flinched in disgust; his grip slipped.
The knife stuttered down.
He caught her wrists and shoved back. His hair was wet with sweat, sticking to his clammy nape.
“Whom do you serve?” he forced out.
“There were gods here, once.” Her breath was metallic. It washed over him like being submerged in fouled mine water. “When we arrived. Don’t know where they are now. Maybe we ate them. Maybe we became them.”
Another trill of impossible laughter, punctuated with a toss of the head, revealing white throat.
A second of distraction. Elías seized it: He inhaled sharply and wrenched his weight to the left. The crack of a skull against the wall.
A soft cry of pain, like a cat’s mew.
Alba .
He faltered. It was a mistake.
She sprang on him, jaw wide, so wide , as if she were going to devour him whole—
He flung her off him and ducked out of the way.
A strangled cry; the knife flashed. It soared and fell to the floor, striking it with a sharp clatter.