Chapter 31
Minerva
We picked at our lunch. Well, I was picking—Sara inhaled her enchiladas in salsa verde.
It was nearly two hours past noon and we woke at dawn.
We had barely had time for breakfast before being put to work making sure there was not a speck of dust anywhere to be seen in the house.
I was dead on my feet; Sara nipped at my heels more than once, chastising me for cutting corners and unintentional sloppiness.
“Something’s off with you,” she said, punctuating this by putting a forkful of beans into her mouth.
My motions, even as I ate, were jerky and sharp with anxiety.
“I hate strangers,” I told Sara, casting a wary look around the kitchen. It wasn’t a lie. “Especially men. And there’s so many of them.”
The kitchen was packed with strangers acquainting themselves with the space and people.
The liveried staff of the house before the influx—Cosme, Antonio, Filomena—ate at their table in the center of the kitchen.
A few elderly footmen joined them—the Viceroy’s personal staff, a cook whispered to me and Sara as she handed us our plates.
“Just give them a wide berth,” she said, lowering her voice so as not to be heard over the tumult in the kitchen. “Heads down and be good.”
That was precisely what I intended to do.
Head down, be good, be invisible, until night fell and I released nightmares to pour through the house.
Aside from the fact that I was clearly irritating Sara with my exhausted slowness, I would say I wasn’t doing too terrible a job of hiding my panic at how that plan was now in jeopardy.
Until my idiot, awful, stupid brother sauntered into the kitchen.
I elbowed my half-eaten food away and reached for the pile of silver cutlery that Sara and I were to polish.
I kept my head down and began rubbing at dark oxidization.
I hoped it was not obvious that I was pointedly ignoring him, not even as I heard his voice filtered through the clink of cutlery and the sizzle of cooking oil and the rumbling exchange of news from the Capital that filled the room.
“—it’s repulsive is what it is,” Sara was saying.
I glanced up at her, not pausing my work. I pressed fingernails through the polishing cloth to get into the groove of the filigree on the dessert forks. Pressing hard. Scrubbing hard. Focusing very hard on not looking up at Arnulfo.
“I mean, first la senora’s son, now them. Does she have no self-respect?”
Sara chewed thoughtfully as she watched the table where the liveried staff sat.
Her focus was on Filomena, who toyed with a lock of her hair flirtatiously as she spoke to one of the Viceroy’s footmen, her pretty eyes bright and her cheeks a bashful shade of pink.
I recognized the footman as someone who had helped Arnulfo carry in the chest.
“Hm,” I agreed.
“Disgusting,” Sara said, and with a sigh put her fork down on her empty plate. Her gaze flicked to my plate, which was still mostly full. And still hot. “You going to eat that?”
I shook my head, smiling as she reached across the table, slid it toward herself, and dug in.
How spoiled I had grown since my days before Casa Azafrán.
Back then, I would never have allowed food to go cold or have passed it off to anyone else.
It wouldn’t have mattered if I was frightened or if my stomach grew more acidic and tense with dread, the way it did now each time I heard my brother’s voice from across the room.
Food was food. I used to be able to eat through feelings like this.
“Don’t know why she does it,” I said, a bit breathless. I hope it came across as both lighthearted and judgmental enough to convince Sara that I agreed with her.
Though, as I scrubbed the silver, it occurred to me that perhaps I did know why.
I returned to my polishing, just as vigorous as before.
I catalogued all the times Filomena had disappeared into Leoncio’s suite and emerged flushed and hair askew.
My heart still froze when I recalled how our eyes had met in the dark hallway on the third floor…
and how she let me escape. I did turndown service; she, as a liveried servant, needed to find her own way around the house without being noticed.
And she had.
Now, no one would ask questions if—or when—she snuck away with one of the Viceroy’s footmen. They would simply assume that Filomena was being Filomena.
Filomena was more cunning than anyone gave her credit for.
“Excuse me, senoritas. I have a concern that Senor Cosme said I should direct to you.”
I froze.
That voice’s tenor was different than it had been in my head the last few weeks. It was clipped and polished. He sounded like he had lived his whole life without setting a foot off Calle Jacaranda. I would have believed him, too, if we didn’t wear the exact same ears.
Arnulfo was always the sly one, the fox with many faces.
“And you are?” Sara asked, polishing off the first of my leftover enchiladas.
“Tiago Fernández, at your service,” Arnulfo said with a crisp bow. “And you are?”
Sara gave him her name, and when he looked at me for mine, I mumbled and did not meet his gaze.
I prayed Sara would not notice the similarities between us.
She gave him a wan smile. “And what did Cosme send you to us for?”
Arnulfo made an apologetic expression. “The Viceroy’s beloved companion joined us from the Capital. Comandante is, unfortunately, unused to this new environment and has relieved himself on a carpet.”
Sara’s nose crinkled with undisguised disgust.
“Are either of you comfortable around dogs?” Arnulfo asked.
“I am,” I said, putting down my polishing cloth. Silver spoons clattered with the suddenness of my movement. I disguised this with a belabored sigh and met Sara’s eyes with a meaningful look, as if to say, can you believe this?
“Are you sure?” Arnulfo asked as I stood and straightened my white apron, still affecting the upper-class crisp voice of “Tiago.” He gave me a slight sneer, as if he couldn’t believe someone as pathetic as me did not, in fact, fear dogs. “Comandante bites.”
Sara recoiled.
I still had nightmares about reaching for an orange and looking up at dark forms circling me in the dump.
But I suspected that there hadn’t actually been any accident on the carpet.
“Finish your lunch,” I told Sara. “I’ll be back soon for my portion of the silver polishing.”
“Good luck with Comandante,” Sara said, and returned to eating.
I followed Arnulfo out of the kitchen, keeping my eyes on the floor before my feet. There was enough bustle during the lunchtime hour that anyone who might notice us was instead distracted by food, the noise of cooking, or one another.
He was taking me away in plain sight.
My heart flung itself against my ribs in a panic.
I survived by being as quiet and unobtrusive as possible. Why I would so dearly love to be invisible.
Arnulfo strode through la Casa de las Gardenias as if he owned it. He never cast a look back at me. With an affected, aristocratic arrogance, he simply assumed I would follow when told. He asked a passing maid for her name and gave her a wink; she blushed.
We walked right past the tea room where Octaviana and the Viceroy sat. A door was ajar; I caught a glimpse of Octaviana’s gestures through it. Heard her tinkling laughter and a smattering of Eugenia’s piano playing.
Arnulfo sauntered by, a creature of untouchable confidence.
I wanted the floor to swallow me whole.
There were fewer and fewer people as we ascended the central stairwell. Everyone was preoccupied with the bustle of the move-in; no one cast us so much as a second glance.
We reached the third floor and, in between one moment and the next, my brother whirled and pushed me into a linen closet. He followed a half step behind, closing the door with the utmost care.
“What on earth are you doing?” I fought to keep my voice low. It strained my throat.
He gestured up at the linens. “Need privacy to chat, obviously,” he said lightly.
“I risked my life to get you out of here.” I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. “They’ll recognize you and then kill us both!”
Arnulfo put a finger to his lips. “Keep your voice down. Any guard who would recognize me was shot,” he whispered. “We’ve been monitoring the situation very closely.”
“You’re ruining everything!”
“We spent weeks infiltrating the Viceroy’s ranks as footmen.
This is the perfect opportunity!” he said.
“He’s isolated, easily surrounded, and the officers will all be drunk.
It’s perfect.” I couldn’t read his expression in the dark of the closet, but his voice was rapturous with possibility.
“We thought something like this would never happen.”
“So the Valbuenistas are surrounding the mountaintop?”
“The Valbuenistas are here. We’re going to attack at the party,” Arnulfo affirmed. “This could end it. All of it.”
He caught me in a hug so tight it snatched the breath from me. He smelled like his disguise: like he had enough money for cologne—which smelled floral and somewhat familiar—like he was not an insurgent living in the jungle but a Calle Jacaranda dandy who just so happened to serve the Viceroy.
Days ago, he was in a cage. He was going to be shot.
The tears hit like a kick in the shins. They were sharp, their pain sinking into the roots of my teeth. They relieved nothing.
He could be shot tomorrow anyway. If anything went wrong, it wouldn’t matter how much I strategized about Mice and Hounds or how much sleep I had lost—it would be his blood slick on the floor.
He hushed me gently, rocking me back and forth. When he let me go, and pressed what felt like a handkerchief into my palms, he said: “Pull it together. We don’t have much time.”
As if on cue, someone walked past the closet. I held my breath as the footsteps neared, then grew fainter. Voices called to one another down the hall; then those also faded.
I released my breath. It came out short and stiff, and I inhaled again quickly. Perhaps I was still crying. I couldn’t tell anymore.
He was here, and that changed everything.
“What are your odds?” I asked.
I imagined his shrug more than saw it. “They’re not worse than in open battle, which is more than I can ask for.”
That wasn’t enough. “You’re going to need help.”
I sensed something in Arnulfo shift. My eyes adjusted to the gloom; I thought I could glimpse the suspicion settling on his brow.
“Like what helped me escape?” His voice was angled in a way that made me think of wariness.
Impossible. Arnulfo was brazenness incarnate. He feared nothing.
“Yes.” He had seen the truth. I wouldn’t explain it too much, but he—he and his men—needed to know what I had planned. “This is going to sound a bit mad, but you’ve seen him, and—”
A wave of cold filled the closet.
“Hello,” a disembodied voice said.
Arnulfo yelped. I slapped a hand over his mouth.
“Shut up,” I whispered, then released him. He was breathing sharp and wild, like he might scream. The whites of his eyes glinted. “He’s not going to hurt you.”
“I’m not?” Ygnacio drawled.
I ignored the bait. “Now is not the time for taunting.” To my brother, I said: “There are more like him, but worse. Much worse. I was going to release them to attack the Viceroy’s men tonight, but now you’re in the way.
I don’t want you to be…” I let the sentence dangle.
How could I describe what Ygnacio’s kin would do?
“Maimed,” Ygnacio supplied, the hint of bared, pointed teeth made all the worse because the rest of him was not visible.
I heard Arnulfo swallow.
“Or,” I said, disparate pieces of a plan flying together as I spoke, “we can use them to help you.”
Ygnacio scoffed. I ignored him.
“When do you plan to attack?” I asked Arnulfo.
“The party tomorrow, once they’re drunk enough,” he said, short of breath. “Around midnight.”
“Do you remember the amulets Armando would make?” I said. “The yancho jiarú ones with the seven knots?”
“Mamá’s amulets,” he murmured. Wonder landed the words softly between us.
“You must make one and wear it at all times,” I said. “You and all of your men. Do you promise?”
“I promise,” he said. “If you promise to get out of here when the time comes.”
That surprised me. “I need to be here,” I said. “For the kin. I need to be the one to unleash them.”
“Kin?” Arnulfo shuddered. “Then do so and then get the hell out. I can’t keep an eye on you when I’m fighting.”
“I agree,” Ygnacio said, his voice quieter than before. It was a tickle against my neck, a cool waft of night. “You’ll need to leave.”
“I’ll arrange for one of the men to meet you and get you down the mountain,” Arnulfo said. “He’ll take you and Filomena to the Valbuenistas. You two have done more than enough for us.”
I felt as if the tail of my apron was caught in a door and yanked me back.
I always knew that I would one day leave la Casa de las Gardenias.
I never expected that I would feel this hollow at the prospect.
I came here with Senora Encarnación, but I would leave alone. Without my brother, without Ygnacio. And once I stepped beyond the grounds of this house, I might never see them again.
“All right,” I said, the words hitching.
I still wasn’t sure if I ever stopped crying.
A cool brush against my shoulder. “You should return to the kitchen,” Ygnacio said. “Sara will be wondering where you are.”
I inhaled deeply. I flung my arms around my brother, and we held each other tight.
Beneath it all, he smelled like home.