Their leader was the only one fast enough to cast bismuto on himself to pursue her. He leapt up as well. But before he could steady himself, Reina kicked him square on the stomach and off the roof.
Reina fled as his body thumped on the ground. She vaulted onto another roof, landed, then sprinted to another, her body blurring out of sight in the fog. Finally, she stopped when the distances between homes prevented her from leaping any farther.
Reina crawled on all fours to the roof’s edge, listening for the ?guila men. She heard faraway grunts of complaint and the leader’s orders to “search every home for that bitch duskling and the dama she stole.”
Her blood boiled. How could Don Enrique assume she had stolen one of the damas? They couldn’t mean Celeste… Reina gripped the ledge hard as she imagined jumping down and dueling them one by one—taking their swords and humiliating them just as they undoubtedly wanted to humiliate her.
She squeezed the scutes on her nose bridge as the implications settled on her throat like bile. She couldn’t stay in Apartaderos, but she was so fucking exhausted.
The notes of a faint whistle made her still. She squinted and watched the streets, which were so cold and solitary that not a stray cat nor a drunk dared to step out. The houses, with their moss-covered stone fa?ades and clay flowerpots hanging from balconies, were silent. The cobbled roads usually trodden by mules and shepherds now empty. As if time itself had yawned and paused on the town.
Then Reina heard the whistling a second time. A whistler was still around.
She jumped off the roof and landed gracefully on a graveled road.
The blood spilling from that woman. The way the whistler ripped raw sinew and innards. Reina’s belly threatened to retch at the memory. She had to find it—she couldn’t leave it prowling about to harm another innocent. So she took off jogging toward the small stone chapel flanking the town’s burial grounds, apexed by a rusted Pentimiento cross. The whistling grew fainter as she went, reassuring her she was heading in the right direction.
A thick mist settled low, draping over headstones and wilted flowers. Reina took out her machete, the squelching of her boots on wet grass hardly audible. A feminine gasp made her stop. She listened. Then came a scream.
She sprang in the direction of the cry and ran around the chapel. There a cowering figure crouched beside a statue of the Virgin. A woman. And separating the crouching person from a whistler that slashed and snarled and bashed was a litio barrier shimmering with violet light. Reina could see it, like valcos could, because of the bismuto still pumping through her veins.
She sprinted to them, her past failure incensing her strides. The fiend saw her and slashed at her, overwhelming her with its reek. Reina ducked beneath its reaching arm. She swerved around behind it, then returned a doublehanded decapitating swing. Headless, the whistler hit the ground with a squelch.
Silence descended on the graveyard once it was over, save for the woman’s sniffling.
Reina kicked the whistler body far away, then kneeled in front of the young woman, ready to tell her it was going to be all right. To beg her not to fear the scutes of her nose and pointed ears. Even as she imagined herself a disgusting sight with whistler blood splattered all over her jacket and face.
She extended a hand as the barrier disintegrated.
The light left. Her eyes adjusted. And she saw the litio rings, the moles on milk skin, the afterimage of a noblewoman with blue eyes, and she froze.
“Ma-Maior?”
Maior pressed herself harder against the Virgin statue, her legs kicking dirt between them. She pointed a litio ring at Reina—the one she had given her—and said, “Get away!”
“What are you doing… here?” The last word came out a whisper as realization dawned on Reina. Maior was the runaway dama. “How did you escape?”
Maior wasn’t listening. She murmured some incantation and pointed the ring at Reina, sparks of magic uselessly hitting her on the chest. Litio geomancia was only meant for protection, never offense.
“You can’t take me!” she said.
Reina seized her wrist, and Maior thrashed so much Reina had to let her go. “All right—all right—stop or you’ll hurt yourself. Did you use my ring to escape from ?guila Manor?”
If there were any traces of Reina’s geomancia left in the dungeons, then it was no wonder Don Enrique was pointing fingers at her.
“Well?”
“You can’t force me to go back to that—to that place!” Maior was disrupted by sobs that seemed like beasts of their own. She bowed her head and let her hand fall to the ground, where one litio ring slipped off, the cap opening and spilling the last of the potion. “Please,” she begged.
Reina stuck her machete in the ground and sat across from her. They were close enough that the fog didn’t dampen Maior’s features. Her cheeks were pink from the cold but missing the glow of health. Her wavy black bob was knotted with muck.
Reina picked up the fallen ring. If Don Enrique thought she had helped Maior escape, it complicated everything… And of course he would think so. Taking Maior could only be interpreted as a play to secure more influence in their united, twisted goal, for even as Celeste was the ninth dama, she was still missing.
“Why did you return to Apartaderos?”
“It’s where I’m from!” Maior said, still not meeting her gaze.
Reina rolled her eyes. “I know. Don’t you think this is the first place they’d come looking for you?”
When Maior looked up, Reina saw eyes that made her nervous for a second. That made her want to look away same as when Celeste caught her staring.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Maior said. “Do you know what it’s like to cross the Páramo with this stupid dress?” She yanked on the blue dress meant to mimic the Benevolent Lady’s style. Maior was too short and fat to fit into Do?a Laurel’s old clothes, so it looked like Do?a Ursulina had given her something similar to what the Benevolent Lady would wear. But the mountains had turned it into a muddied and frayed mess.
“Speaking of the Páramo—how did you do it?” Reina said.
“Do what?”
“How did you cross the Páramo by yourself?”
Maior huffed. “I was born and raised in Apartaderos, and I’ve had to come down to the markets in Sadul Fuerte every year. I know these trails.”
“But you escaped Do?a Ursulina’s wards.”
A glimmer of satisfaction brightened Maior’s eyes. “That was your mistake, giving me geomancia to use.”
Reina’s jaw rippled. She was paying dearly for it.
Maior extended her open palm. The inside of her arm was scarred where Do?a Ursulina had hurt her, a line still red and crusted with scabs. “Can I have it back?”
Reina hesitated. In Maior’s expectant gaze, she could see Maior desperately needed the rings if she was going to have a chance at evading the ?guila men. But this would not be an issue because Reina knew exactly what she needed to do now. So she plopped it on Maior’s opened palm—watched the delight pinken her cheeks as she now had the pair once again.
In their silence, it was easy to pick up on the hushed conversations beyond the chapel, as neighbors discussed the recent happenings. The ?guila soldiers were still around, shouting angrily and accusing townsfolk of hiding Reina.