Reina squinted at her.
“Yes, far from the manor.”
Reina’s frown only deepened. A headache prodded at her temples. “Are we still in the Páramo?”
Celeste nodded.
“But not on the same side?”
Celeste shook her head. It was impossible. One had to hike up the Páramo to higher peaks to find views like these.
“How?” Reina said, walking back to the corridor and down the staircase. The door to the tunnel was still open, and she chased it back to the entrance burrow. This time she was a lot less careful and uncaring about the lack of light—almost slipping once or twice in the mud. Thankfully, Celeste caught up to her with another flame wisp.
Reina emerged onto the clearing at the other side. Here the air was moist and acidic, with less of that chilly bite. She could taste the forest’s decay in her mouth. The sky was hardly visible through the trees, but it was cloudy.
“How are we in both places at the same time?”
Patiently, Celeste tugged Reina’s arm back to the underground chamber. “Try not to attract too much attention. The entrance is still connected to Papá’s land.” She didn’t explain until they reached the table surrounded by the standing stones. “The house is connected to both places because of this.” Her hand swept over the table’s rough surface, where lines glowed dimly in the shape of capillaries, sprouting from the looping symbol at the center.
Celeste met Reina’s bewildered gaze with pride in her eyes. “Mi mamá grew up here.”
Reina approached the table. The capillaries were lighted in a soft white, pulsing sleepily.
“Mamá’s ancestors were miners and cartographers, and her father, my grandfather, studied geomancia here. He spelled this table to create a tether from this house to anywhere that has an underground vein of metal that responds to geomancia. We only walked for a few moments in the connected tunnel, but we crossed a very long distance.”
Do?a Ursulina’s warning about Do?a Laurel echoed in the depths of Reina’s memory. “The Benevolent Lady also knows geomancia?”
Celeste nodded but worried her lower lip. “Yes, but she doesn’t practice it anymore. She says it’s unnecessary for her life, which I guess is true.”
“So where is it really located? Where are we?”
Celeste strolled to one of the largest maps hanging from the moist stone wall. Her hand hovered around the homestead illustration drawn near the center of the Páramo. She jabbed her finger on the cursive label. “We’re very close to Apartaderos, perhaps only a half hour away on foot. I can show you the land and the conuco later.”
Reina nodded, very much liking that. She wanted to take it all in, to marvel at the magic embracing every part of Celeste’s life. There was such an open use of geomancia in ?guila Manor, a wanton expenditure of iridio. Geomancia was something Reina had only acknowledged on the fringes of her desperation in Segolita, but here she had an actual shot at living with it. She inspected the illuminated lines stemming from the looping symbol on the table.
“Is this powered by iridio?”
“Lots of it. That’s why I mostly just keep it connected to home. That way I don’t have to explain to mi papá why I suddenly need to take so much iridio from the stores. With the proper amount of iridio fuel and the right guidance, we can probably connect it to any place in Venazia, even to your home in Segolita,” Celeste said this enthusiastically, as if she wanted the news to impress Reina.
“Segolita’s not my home,” Reina said without missing a beat.
Celeste quirked her brows.
Reina stared at her dirty fingernails. She hated talking about it. But Celeste was curious, and she had already been so forthcoming. It’d be selfish of Reina to never let her in. “I hated living there, especially after my father died. I was alone.”
Celeste reached for her hand, using her index to lift Reina’s pinky, asking permission to offer comfort.
“Just surviving, you know? Being hungry and dirty.”
“You’re here now,” Celeste said softly. “？guila Manor can be your home.”
Reina nodded. She was already happier than she’d ever been, despite the long days working with the staff and the darkness of her heart. “So does Don Enrique know about this place? Do?a Ursulina?” she asked.
“No, and you can’t tell them. Mi mamá’s kept this secret all these years because she wants to make sure it only goes to me. She doesn’t want Javier to think he can use the magic in this house, so she never told Papá.” Celeste licked her lips and returned to the wall, with its plethora of illustrated maps. “She brought me here a few years ago and told me to keep it secret and to use it for whatever I need. At first I thought, wow, how selfish of her to never tell Papá, but then it dawned on me how powerful it can be.”
Reina pressed her fingertips on the rough surface, feeling its soft pulse of magic like a lap of warm water. Don Enrique was already master of all the iridio in Sadul Fuerte. She couldn’t fathom the kind of influence and power he would also have if he could be anywhere he desired at a moment’s notice.
What would happen if she attempted to connect the iridio of her heart with the table’s? She pushed her palms against the stone and closed her eyes, focusing on the darkness of her transplant heart. The uttering enveloped her, almost gleeful at being acknowledged. The ore and the table connected with a spark. Reina flinched, but she was glad. Perhaps, with some practice, her own iridio could help her control the table itself.
Celeste rummaged through one of the storage chests and retrieved a weapon with an “Aha!” The blade whistled as Celeste drew it from its scabbard. “It’s only a machete, but it was forged with iridio.”
Heat rioted in Reina’s cheeks as she accepted it. Her jaw dropped a little, and she was without words for a moment, that the caudillo’s daughter deemed her worthy of receiving any gift, let alone one with such weight and build. The blade needed sharpening, but Reina could see the iridio alloyed to it, as the metal had a gradient of color from its black tip to the steely gray approaching the hilt. Honestly, it reminded Reina of rot.
“It’s perfect,” she whispered earnestly. It was fitting for someone with her monstrous heart.
Once it was time to recount the day’s events to Do?a Ursulina, as was her daily duty, Reina kept Celeste’s secret. Instead, she drew focus to what had occurred in the yard, and her grandmother ordered her to follow Javier’s tracks.
Do?a Ursulina gave the instruction haphazardly while drawing angles and tangents on the star map, as she was consumed with unearthing the requirements for fulfilling Rahmagut’s legend. “See where his loyalties lie,” the witch told her.
At first Reina imagined her grandmother was doing it in service of the caudillo. After all, his younger brother was not harmless, and his status was day in and out threatened by the lady of the house, who could give birth to a boy who would further displace him. But as Reina left her grandmother’s study with her orders at the forefront of her mind, she realized Do?a Ursulina merely saw Javier as another player in her schemes for power.
The task sounded simpler than it was, for Javier no longer saw Reina as insignificant since she arrived to spar with a machete of iridio. He observed her, perhaps more shrewdly than the rest of the ?guilas.