Chapter 34
Minerva
My head hit the bars, temple first. The metal rang.
I collapsed. My hands flew to my head as I hissed in pain. The padlock clanked as guards locked the cage and dropped the lock dispassionately against the bars.
By the time I lifted my throbbing head, placing my palms gingerly on the filthy floor of the cage, they were gone.
Octaviana, it seemed, would do everything to circumvent the Viceroy’s orders while still appearing to obey him.
Daylight slanted through the shack’s single window, dully illuminating the instruments of slaughter that hung on the walls.
Machetes. Butcher knives. Chains. Everything smelled like meat gone off.
I retched. My hand flew to my mouth. I turned it at the last moment—the clean back of my hand hit my lips. My palm was littered with dirty straw from the floor of the cage. I pinched my nose to seal it off from smells and swallowed, then inhaled deeply through my mouth to steady myself.
I had grown spoiled enough to give half my lunch to someone who would later turn and stab me in the back, but not so spoiled that I would let myself lose a meal.
A flash of movement; fevered cursing erupted from the padlock. It moved as if jumbled and yanked by an unseen hand. Clanging; another tangle of curses.
“Ygnacio?” I whispered.
“I am trying.” His voice cracked, strained. “I am—”
Pale outlines of his hands seized the bars, which were warped from having been wrenched apart and hammered back together. He grunted with effort.
Nothing moved.
This time my voice rose in panic. “What’s wrong?”
“I have so little chispa left,” he said. “I…I don’t have the strength.” He cursed again. “I swear, that backstabbing rat will wish she was never born. I swear on my own fucking corpse—”
“Get my brother.” I cut him off. “He needs to know where I am.”
“I can’t leave you.” The words pitch sharp and desperate. “There are guards just outside. What if—”
“I’ll shout for you,” I said. Could the guards hear me?
Fortunately, the sound of carriages coming up the gravel drive and the arrival of more guests for the party appeared to be filling the grounds with a racket.
“You heard the Viceroy. He doesn’t think I’m guilty.
It’s Octaviana.” A thought occured to me.
“Can you infiltrate her thoughts while she is waking?” I asked.
“Or when she takes her siesta this afternoon—”
“She replaced her amulet first thing in the morning,” Ygnacio said bitterly. “She’s no idiot.”
“Forget that idea, then.” I tapped a finger against my chin as I thought. “Go to Arnulfo. He might be able to think of something.”
“You. Can’t. Die,” Ygnacio said. Firmly enunciated.
He cared. My heart wrenched, the muscle tender and sore. A fanged nightmare with a soft spot. I would miss him when I left this place.
“I won’t,” I whispered. It left my tongue as light as breath. Death was not frightening to me, not in the way it was to him. “Now go.”
Though he was invisible, I sensed when he left. His absence was a blow.
I was alone. I was caged like an animal, surrounded by instruments of slaughter and the stench of old blood.
My breath hitched. I was not awaiting execution. I was not. If Octaviana wanted me dead, I would already be dead. The knife to my throat had taught me that much. She wanted to punish me.
Let her try.
I lifted my head. I could not rise from a crouch without my hair catching and ripping on the bars overhead.
I had had more stripes carved into my thighs by a belt than Octaviana could count. I had endured more slaps across the face than she had ever given in her life. She was a spoiled tyrant. But she was soft. She would flee from hardship if it so much as glanced sideways at her.
I knew how to survive.
When Ygnacio returned, my jaw was set. My shoulders were firm. My body ached and trembled, but I was ready to receive bad news.
Which was good, because he bore it.
Arnulfo, Ygnacio reported, was terrified.
One of his men had slipped. The entire household was under scrutiny—Octaviana’s staff and the Viceroy’s alike.
They wanted to sniff out the mole, but the party had to begin.
The staff were required to settle the arriving guests and serve appetizers and aguas frescas in the gardens.
There simply wasn’t time to question them all, not unless the del Valles wanted to serve their guests themselves.
And of course they did not.
But the fact was this: Arnulfo could not get away now without sacrificing his cover, or the cover of one of his fellow insurgents. And once one of their covers was revealed, the whole plan would unravel.
“You could almost see the scales tip back and forth in his head,” Ygnacio said. “You, or the plan. Back and forth.”
They couldn’t throw the plan to the wind, even to save me. They needed this night. It was a night that could change everything in the war. Perhaps end it.
I set my forehead against the bars. I breathed through my mouth. I had been trying to do so this whole time, to avoid going dizzy from the smells.
“I understand.”
And I did.
I thought I was leading the charge of Hounds across the board, but I was still a Mouse. I was being swiped brusquely off the board for the greater good.
There was no Senora Encarnación to reset the board this time.
I moved and I lost. My piece fell into oblivion; the great battle waged on.
I was ready to receive bad news, but it still hurt when it landed.
“Fuck their plan,” Ygnacio spat after trying the bars again. “I need more chispa. I could do anything. Break this cage, spirit you away, unleash my kin—”
“You can’t touch the living.” And there was no time for someone to be murdered to feed him.
I dropped my head into my hands. Tried not to let my shoulders sag. Inhale; stop sharply and gag. The smell was overwhelming.
“What are you capable of now?” I asked, keeping my voice low. A lull had occurred in the arrival of carriages up the drive; I heard the guards shifting in boredom and whistling to themselves.
A frustrated sound. “Nothing.”
“Not nothing,” I countered. “You’re here. You’re talking.”
“I could conceal you from sight,” Ygnacio said, “but not in full sunlight. I’d need shadows.
That means waiting for the sun to set. I can do what I used to do: rattle around the house like a mopey poltergeist, making echoes, moving in shadows, spinning nightmares… I am useless when no one is asleep.”
“Does speaking burn chispa?” I wondered.
“Very little,” he said shortly. “Why do you think I am running at the mouth?”
Because he was panicking.
“Then stay with me,” I said. “Talk to me.”
Quiet. For a moment, no response.
“Stay until Arnulfo comes or sends someone,” I said. “He will.”
It rang false. Papá and the stepmother were far, far behind me and Arnulfo. The stakes were different now. I didn’t know how the scales in his mind would tip, but I had a sinking feeling that I didn’t want to be left alone.
A wave of cold fell over me like a blanket. I shivered. The cold had a secondary effect: it dulled the sharpness of the smells. That, at least, was a mercy.
Ygnacio stayed by my side in the cage until the shadows grew long.