“We will finally be the family Juan Vicente denied us all these years. You and I.”
8
Tigra Mariposa
Anytime Néstor snuck out to see Don Jerónimo, Eva snuck out as well.
They fed Do?a Antonia half-truths. They claimed the Contadors had hired a foreign tutor from the freed colonies west of Venazia and that Eva and Néstor sought his lessons on history and politics, for personal enrichment.
Rather, once they arrived at the downtown house, Néstor and Don Jerónimo locked themselves away somewhere in the Contadors’ large residence, while Eva scurried to the small house flanking the yard. The one shielded by an herb garden brimming with yerba buena and mayaca, under the mamoncillo tree’s shade.
Eva nurtured a fickle friendship with Do?a Rosa, one she knew wouldn’t exist if she didn’t bring the three gold escudos for every visit. But Eva didn’t begrudge her for it. They occasionally attempted an invocation or two from the scribbled instructions in Do?a Rosa’s journal, using up her reagents, which weren’t abundant, nor cheap.
For several months Eva studied geomancia in this sanctuary she’d created for herself, away from her family’s watchful eye. It was her escape.
Heavy rain fell on Eva’s latest visit. It weighed the air with the smell of decay, mud coating her espadrilles and clinging to the hems of her araguaney-colored skirt. Eva sat by the table with her chemise still wet from the downpour. She’d come hoping to attempt a barrier of litio, but Do?a Rosa was in a mood, and the air felt heady and wrongly sparked. Maybe Eva was uninspired today, because in her rings, the litio solution behaved as nothing more than inert oil.
Do?a Rosa crushed herbs in her mortar under the window’s dim light, preparing a poultice for her father.
Idly, Eva flipped through the sun-bleached pamphlet Do?a Rosa had abandoned on the table. “What’s this about?”
Do?a Rosa glanced back and said, “It calls for a meeting to discuss the legitimacy of the new king, by El Cónclave Llanero.” She chuckled in derision. “Heard of them? I have. But anytime I hear of their chisme, I only think to myself: They don’t care about the caudillos crowning a king. They’re just angry they’ve been shut out of lawmaking, without the possibility of having a senate, like in Fedria.”
Eva skimmed the page and was impressed by Do?a Rosa, as the printed words didn’t clearly reveal the true purpose of the conclave. Eva had personally heard the grumblings about the new king because she lived under the same roof as the governor of Galeno. Do?a Antonia and Don Mateo often complained about how the bloody war for independence had ended, how instead of freeing them from the yoke of a monarch, the caudillos gave themselves power by crowning Don Rodrigo Silva king. The puppet king, Don Mateo called him.
“How do you know the meeting is about not having a senate?” Eva asked, raising a brow.
Do?a Rosa wrapped the poultice in a bundle of dried maize leaves. “You see that I live as an outcast, and you wonder how I know gossip from your grandfather’s office?”
Eva shrugged.
“My father’s old, and sick, and he long ago stopped caring that I’m supposed to be the bastard curandera. He talks about anything and everything when I go up to his room to treat him. I know many things about the families of this city.” She shot Eva a vulpine smirk. “Like I know how the Serranos are loyalists to Segol at heart. Father never gets tired of saying how the Liberator didn’t go after them once the war was over because they know a dark, dark truth about him.”
Eva’s mouth parted. “What truth?”
“And once the truth comes out, the Liberator will wipe the Serranos off the face of Galeno, and then the Contadors will rise to power. It’s father’s greatest dream.”
Eva frowned. Where would she stand in this alleged massacre? Her position in the family was a weak one, without even the Serrano name to bolster it. Either way, it all sounded unlikely. The Liberator was the lionized hero of the revolution because he was an honorable, benevolent victor. He’d freed the colonies and advocated for nozariels. The Serranos weren’t actively going against his wishes in lawmaking. As far as Eva was concerned, her grandfather was a good governor.
“What’s the truth that they know?” she asked again, impatient for the gossip she wasn’t privy to. Whatever it was, it certainly colored her grandparents’ opinion on the Liberator. Though they moaned about the new king, Eva’s grandparents weren’t fond of the Liberator either. Their approval of him always manifested with thinly veiled disgust for his being half valco. For changing their lives, which had once so thoroughly profited from nozariel labor and connections to the Segolean aristocracy.
“Stupid girl, that’s the point. Only they know it.”
“But I’m a Serrano,” Eva muttered, then immediately felt foolish.
Do?a Rosa laughed. “You’re a Serrano like I’m a Contador.”
Eva glared at the back of Do?a Rosa’s head.
“My father’s a nasty old man. Don’t take him too seriously.” Do?a Rosa returned with a small flask and two tiny clay cups. “I hope he dies soon.”
“You hate him?” Eva thought of her own father. She supposed she hated him for what he’d done to her mother. But never meeting him in person definitely dampened her rancor.
“How could I not? He keeps me locked up in this house, afraid the world will see how a Contador bedded a nozariel—afraid they would know he’s a hypocrite, living with his human superiority while lusting for my mother. And now he uses me as his obedient little galio healer, chasing death away when the Virgin would have claimed his life long ago.”
Do?a Rosa poured a viscous carmine liquid from the flask into the tiny cups and slid one toward Eva. “Here, some mistela, so you don’t feel like you didn’t get your money’s worth.”
Eva sighed loudly; there was so much to unpack there. She merely accepted the drink with an untrusting twist of her lip. The strawberry-juice-and-anise-liqueur concoction was something the Serranos only drank in celebration after a new birth.
“I don’t feel like I don’t get my money’s worth,” she grumbled and took the shot. Crinkling her nose at the cloying strawberry flavor, she said, “Why mistela?”
“I spiked it a little bit.”
“Really,” Eva bit out with sarcasm.
Do?a Rosa chuckled. “To open up your spiritual mind.”
Eva’s eyes flitted to the icon in the room’s corner. The clay sculpture was a rude depiction, yet Eva could somehow feel the god’s gaze boring into her. She made a point not to think his name and shuddered. “Are there other kinds of geomancia, besides litio, galio, and bismuto?” Eva knew of iridio, but she wanted to hear it from the older woman’s lips.
Do?a Rosa followed her gaze. “There are, like iridio, which is not understood well yet. We call it geomancia because we use metals, and the world has many metals with many properties that lend their uniqueness to each spell. So I’m sure other kinds of magic are possible with the right substance: oro, plata, the list goes on.”
Eva looked away from the icon. “Have you tried other kinds? How do you know?”