Faleiro glared at her. “Commander. I serve as chief advisor to Lord Admiral Magellan. I am a master cartographer, as well as a cosmographer.”
Qhora laughed. “You claim to read the stars? To predict the future? Did you predict that your mission to recruit my husband would fail?”
Faleiro sputtered. “I’ve not failed! I’ve not even spoken to Don Lorenzo yet. And I’ll have you know I can be quite convincing when needs be.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s true. Prince Valero is a fairly shrewd man. You must have been quite convincing indeed if you talked him into making a feeble halfwit a commander in his navy.” Qhora smiled and leaned back in her chair. Words aren’t as satisfying as knives, but there is something to be said for stabbing at a man’s pride.
“Yes,” Faleiro said in a slow gravelly voice. “Well, better a commander in His Royal Highness’s navy than a worthless coward hiding in some ruin preaching nonsense to a handful of idiot children. And married to a heathen savage! Pathetic. Can your husband even read?”
“Of course he can read, you disgusting toad,” she said calmly. And if Lorenzo wasn’t in the house, I would show you what a savage I can be. “He’s writing his own fencing manual right now. It will make the books written by Capoferro and Carranza look like a child’s scrawl. My husband is going to change the world. He’s going to end war itself.”
Faleiro laughed a deep belly laugh. As he wiped the tears from his eyes, he said, “You poor stupid girl. What idiot could think that someone like Quesada could end war?” He laughed again. “But I suppose that’s what you get, living in filth surrounded by blood-thirsty animals.”
Qhora felt her blood rising, the heat flush in her chest and neck and cheeks. She wanted to pull the Aegyptian dagger from her left sleeve and slit the fat man’s throat. “What do you know about war? War isn’t natural. Animals don’t wage war. Not even people make war. Only cowards wearing fancy hats and titles make war. Enzo is going to change all that. He will break all the swords raised against him, and then he will raise an army to break all the swords in the world. And after he has become the greatest peacemaker in the world, he will become the greatest explorer in history. Have you heard the legend of the skyfire stone?”
Faleiro puffed his wet lips and rolled his little eyes. “The nun who saw a meteor fall to earth? That was hundreds of years ago. So what? Don’t tell me Don Lorenzo is reading that old garbage. The skyfire stone was just a rock, little more than a holy relic for idiots who understand nothing of science.”
“Enzo was trained to slaughter men by Don Jeronimo Carranza. He was trained in mathematics and anatomy, as well as metalworking.” Qhora leaned forward with her right hand edging closer to the dagger hilt hidden in the lace folds of her left sleeve. “I think he knows a thing or two about your precious sciences. He even knows a thing or two about mapmaking. And he’s already found the skyfire stone.”
Faleiro flashed a very brief smile and then stared at her for a moment. “What do you mean, he’s found it?”
A sudden stab of doubt twisted in her chest. He’s actually interested! Enzo said never to discuss the details of the stone with anyone. She feigned boredom. “He knows where it is.”
“No one knows where it is. In my school days, I read that nun’s letters to the bishop myself. She didn’t know where it was. And even if she did, who cares? It’s just a rock.”
Qhora felt her heart at war between her desire to protect her husband and her desire to lord him over other men. Especially this man. She said, “That nun, Sister Ariel, knew more than she said in her letters. And she told it all to Enzo.”
“She told it all to-” Faleiro’s eyes narrowed. “No. Her ghost told him? Him?”
Stop talking. Stop telling this bloated fool about the stone! But she still wanted to slash the man across the throat. To hell with Espani etiquette. She said, “When Enzo retrieves the stone, he’ll have the most powerful weapon in the world. His name and his deeds will be remembered for centuries, long after yours have been forgotten.”
“Weapon?” Faleiro sat up. “What weapon?”
Stop, stop, stop! Qhora smiled coldly at the man’s plain-faced eagerness. “Good day, commander.” She stood and left, still smiling to herself.
She spent the rest of the afternoon walking the grounds. With her shoulders aching under the weight of her coats and her breath steaming like a locomotive’s funnel, she trudged up and down the frozen muddy lanes around the old Diaz estate where Lorenzo had established his school. She passed through the dead remains of the apple orchard where the trees slumbered in anticipation of their two months of summer sun, and she crunched along the edge of the pond where the young boys liked to chop holes in the ice to fish with thread and wire. For months, she had stubbornly clung to this ritual of pacing around the yards, insisting to anyone who asked that with enough time she would grow accustomed to the Espani climate to the point at which she might wear as few as one coat. But she was still wearing two, in addition to her shawls and knit pullovers.
More often than not, she skewed her schedule later in the afternoon when the sun was already low and bleak shadows stretched across the snowy hills. Enzo had told her that the walking dead might be glimpsed only in the deepest cold and only in the dimmest light. But she also knew that the spirit had to choose to visit, and so far none had chosen to visit her. Not even Sister Ariel. She had no great desire to meet a ghost, but it was the one truly intriguing aspect to this foreign land. And yet that too seemed to be denied to her.
The sky was black as jet when she returned to the house by way of the stables. Beneath the brilliant winter stars she glanced over the horses and then entered the pen in the rear through the heavy leather curtain. Inside she found Atoq sleeping on a thick bed of hay, twisted and rolled mostly onto his back with his great furry belly exposed. He was all soft browns and warm blacks flecked with the odd patch of white, his hide wrapped tightly over layers of heavy muscle, most of it concentrated on his huge shoulders and neck. The enormous fanged cat had curled up against the wall opposite the stabler’s stove for warmth and the glistening red stain on the floor told her that Atoq had been fed within the last hour. Whatever regret she had about confining the hunting beast faded when she saw him sleeping contentedly on his bed. After all, his life back in the Empire would have been no more or less comfortable.
But across from the cat stood her feathered mount, the hatun-anka Wayra. The massive bird hovered by the narrow window, gazing out over the hills, her talons clicking softly on the stone floor, tiny chirps and hisses escaping through her hatchet-like beak. Her head and neck rustled with blue-green plumes, but her eyes were ringed in bright red feathers, and in the darkness she appeared as a bloody-eyed demon. She held her short wings tight against her sides and stood in a wide-legged stance, tensed as though ready to sprint through the jungles as she once had. Wayra turned and blinked at her mistress, then shuffled around and dipped her plumed head to receive Qhora’s gentle caresses.
Atoq may have been content to lie on the floor and bask in the glow of a full belly and a warm bed, but Wayra needed more than food and water. She needed to run. Time and again, Qhora had tried to find roads or trails where they might ride alone, far from the people of Madrid. But there was always someone on the road who would see them and run away screaming, to be followed by a visit from the local constabulary who required endless promises from Enzo that the bird would be kept under lock and key. And they couldn’t travel cross-country, at least not in the snow. Wayra had learned to run on the rocky mountain slopes and dense jungle floors, but the slippery ice and unreliable snow mounds made her uncertain, which made her angry, which made her dangerous.