Chapter 33
Minerva
My knees hit carpet. Someone had me by the plaits; they yanked my head back. My chin snapped up; pain licked through my spine to scalp.
“I have been told you’ve been snooping,” Octaviana said.
“You linger in my room when you should be cleaning. You leave your bed in the middle of the night, doing who knows what. And just yesterday”—here Octaviana leaned forward, scrutinizing me with eyes that glittered with victory—“you were in the Viceroy’s rooms while we were at lunch, pawing your filthy, half-breed hands through his things. ”
Three thoughts raced through my mind in tandem, three horses hitched to a carriage as they half collapsed, half careened down a mountainside.
The first: The Valbuenistas were sloppy.
Defensiveness flushed my cheeks. Whatever was wrong with the Viceroy’s rooms was their fault, and not mine. I had covered my tracks. I was careful. The fact that the Valbuenistas were caught snooping after being in this house for less than one day showed how reckless they were.
I could hear Ygnacio’s voice now—this was why they weren’t winning the war. Carelessness. Cutting corners. Desperation. It bred negligence. It would cost them—and maybe me—their necks.
The second: Octaviana had been waiting for this. I was the last vestige of Senora Encarnación in this house, and she had wanted me gone the moment her aunt died.
The third: Sara. Sara was the one I told I was going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Who saw me leave the kitchen yesterday afternoon with Arnulfo. At lunchtime.
I didn’t remember making the decision to trust Sara, but at some point between when Senora Encarnación died and mere minutes ago, I did. I assumed—how carelessly I assumed—that our similar station generated an alliance. I would certainly not betray her, so why would she do that to me?
To save her own hide.
Heat sang through my scalp as one of the Viceroy’s guards yanked my hair.
Octaviana and the Viceroy stared at me. Were they waiting for an admission of guilt?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, senora. I am loyal to Senora Encarnación to the last,” I said. The guards yanked my head farther back, exposing my throat to Octaviana and the Viceroy. “I would never—”
“Liar,” Octaviana crooned. “You took advantage of her. I bet you’re the one who poisoned her.”
The Viceroy looked on impassively. He drummed the finger of his right hand along the top of his cane.
Octaviana leaned back in her chair, arms folded over her chest, mouth in a gloating curve. She placed her Hounds all in a row, ready to attack.
There was a reason Senora Encarnación never wanted to play Mice and Hounds with her. She had no subtlety.
“It was your nasty son who poisoned her,” I snapped. “Ask him. You ask him, senor,” I said to the Viceroy. His wispy white brows flew to his hairline—it struck me in the gut, how he resembled Senora Encarnación—at my gall for having addressed him directly.
If I had discovered one thing about myself in this godforsaken house, I was this: when I am cornered, I bite.
“He is shockingly forthcoming about the murder of a del Valle,” I said, ignoring Octaviana as she sputtered and rose sharply.
She was going to cut me off, I knew it, so I spoke even faster: “Senora Encarnación called Octaviana and the rest of them turncoats. She was lonely. She was hurt because of how they abandoned her, how they left her in Casa Azafrán to rot, and when she came here, that is how they welcomed her.”
Octaviana slapped me across the face. My cheek stung; my ears rang.
“Enough, little bitch,” she sneered. “Did you or did you not attempt to spy on and steal from this family?”
I glared daggers at her. “I did not.”
Arnulfo was in this house. If they suspect there is a spy in their midst, they will hunt for one.
What if we lost the one golden opportunity Ygnacio and I had manufactured?
My heart railed against my rib cage. Get out, get out, it cried. Unless I protected myself, Octaviana would dispose of me, and cruelly.
I was a servant. I was dog shit beneath gilded del Valle soles.
I inhaled to steady myself, even as my whole body trembled violently.
“I am loyal to the last,” I spat at Octaviana. “That is why Senora Encarnación loved me.”
And then, like a draft from the window, a chill passed over me. I shivered. Goose bumps erupted beneath my ear and snaked down my neck.
Ygnacio was at my side.
We need to get you out of here alive, he whispered. Stand down.
Octaviana turned and picked something up out of my range of vision. A glint of metal in the light as she turned.
She held a knife.
It was not from the kitchen, no—it looked as if it belonged in the slaughterhouse. It looked like it was for butchering pigs.
She signaled to the guards; they wrenched me to my feet like a rag doll, so fast it felt as if my heart was left behind. My chest was empty. Echoing. Cold and in shock as Octaviana brought the knife to my neck.
Its edge was cold.
Her regard met mine. It was detached, disdainful. As if she were displeased by dust on the floor and about to butcher me in front of the Viceroy.
“I wanted to replace the carpet anyway,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll have your friend clean up your mess.”
“Wait.” The Viceroy’s voice cracked across the room. He stood, a belabored, arduous process. “Don’t be rash, mi sobrina.”
Octaviana’s eyes flicked to the side. The hard line of the blade pressed harder. Skin split; I gasped. Warmth trickled down my throat toward my collar.
She lowered the knife and stepped back. Her eyes flashed, but her mouth was set in a firm, silent line.
The Viceroy was walking toward me. He took slow, shuffling steps across the plush carpet. One stiff breeze would knock him over.
“You have but one maid’s testimony,” he said. “Chita valued loyalty above all else. I know she would not suffer disloyalty beneath her roof.”
He was so frail, but his voice rang with authority—it was rich in timbre and commanding.
A voice that was accustomed to being obeyed.
A voice that could sway people to follow, that could inspire faith.
I imagined it ringing across an army gathered in a plaza, falling upon crowds of followers from the balcony of the Viceory’s Palace, tumbling down like banners of emerald velvet adorned with gardenias.
The Viceroy cupped my chin in one hand, forcing me to look up at him, as I had seen him do with his dog.
“Chita wrote about you,” he said. “She said she had good help. A good girl, for once, who was steady and reliable. You were different from the others.”
The tears that welled in my eyes were genuine. I could not fake them. My nose burned.
“She protected me, senor.” I smelled aniseed-scented sweet breads from Palacio Monterrey and saw pink jacaranda blossoms. I heard the rustle of the encyclopedia pages as she chose an entry for me to read at night.
I didn’t know where she was—if Ygnacio consuming her chispa had erased her from the world forever, or if she was still somewhere in this house as a quiet echo, as a shadow, as a creak of the floorboards or a groan of a door.
If you’re here, I pleaded silently to her, help me. One last time.
My voice shook. “She was good to me. When no one else was. When no one else cared.”
I knew she was a del Valle. I knew Ygnacio hated her, hates her, and had reason to.
“Senor.” My voice cracked at last. “She was good.”
I had no argument left in me.
The Viceroy released my chin. His rough fingers left a sickly sweet fragrance of gardenias in their wake. They were wet with my tears. He did not wipe them.
“Keep her someplace secure,” the Viceroy said to his guards. “I do not want her running off. Others must be questioned before we jump to conclusions.”
To Octaviana, he said: “Rashness is not a mark of good leadership. It is a mark of tyranny.”
Her cheeks flushed ruddy. If possible, her mouth found an even thinner, firmer line.
“Send your son to me. I wish to speak with him.”
Octaviana’s regal fingers curled into fists. “Of course, Tío Fernando.”
To his guards, the Viceroy said: “You may go.”
I stumbled as I was half carried to the door by the guards.
The room spun. Dizzy victory rose in my throat like the sparkling wine Senora Encarnación raised the day el Presidente was executed.
Sharp, mineral bubbles burst through my running nose and against the inside of my skull, popping and fizzing through my thoughts and over my skin.
Was I safe? Had I gotten myself out of this? He had asked for Leoncio—had I successfully deflected his attention away from Arnulfo? As soon as the guards left, I would ask Ygnacio to spy for me. He could still get me out at midnight, when the Valbuenistas planned to attack.
I felt the knife’s edge slide over my throat and up against my cheek. So close that it nicked the skin.
Anxiety loosened in my chest. Guards still surrounded me, but so did the Viceroy’s words. Even if they thrust me in a broom closet, I could curl up on the ground and rest. No more cleaning, no more polishing, no more. I’d sleep until nightfall, unleash Ygnacio’s kin, and then flee this house.
Octaviana followed the guards and me out into the hall. She shut the door behind her.
“Where should we take her, Senora?” one guard asked.
Octaviana considered me for an agonizingly long moment.
I had implicated her son. I had danced too recklessly against that knife’s edge.
And now I would pay the price.
“To the slaughterhouse,” she said icily. “Leave her there to rot.”