Eva stared at Javier in awe, then at her hands.
He stared back in equal wonder, his face and clothes stained with char.
She hadn’t fantasized the eruption. It had been real. She had burned him.
Eventually Javier gathered himself, the nonchalant arrogance dissolving from his fa?ade.
Eva stepped back, heart thrumming at all the inevitable scenarios. The energy was still in her. She hadn’t used the entirety of her supply. Just like she could tell how much potion her rings had, she could feel the iridio stored in the pendant. If he came at her, with or without his corruption, she was ready to unleash the fire on him a second time.
“You burned me,” he said, fingers grazing his sizzling eyebrows.
“Stay back,” she warned, though he didn’t look like he wanted to pounce.
“How did— Have you cast iridio before?”
“Don’t come any closer.”
“Oh, for Rahmagut’s sake, Eva. Just answer my question.”
“I can’t trust you.”
“I’m not interested in hurting you. I’m interested in knowing how you almost blew me up.”
Eva didn’t have a special equation for it, or an answer. It was annoyance that had fed the fire, so she shrugged.
Javier ran a hand over his face, then his hair. “Fine. Well—can you do it again?”
Eva nodded. She couldn’t name it. The attack had come so effortlessly, like knowing how to breathe. “I… always had the lock, and the iridio was just the key.”
He gave her a face of utter disbelief. “Did the fireball burn your wits?”
In a growl she said, “I did it because I could. I didn’t have to learn it. I just did it, and I’d do it again.”
“And did you use up all the iridio?”
“No.”
The look Javier gave her reminded Eva of her first impression of him, back at her cousin’s wedding.
“A huge burst for a fraction of the cost…” he muttered, staring at her chest, then at the fire rampaging through the jungle, threatening to surround them, spooking the poor mule. “Did you just break every iridio principle?”
Eva grimaced. “Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen?”
Javier shook his head, teeth glinting behind a hungry smile. “No. Unless you’re a falling star.”
29
The Plume
Reina and Maior headed to the tabletop mountain behind La Cochinilla while the day bled into dusk and the smear of Rahmagut’s Claw resurfaced in the darkening sky. There was no need for a map, as the Llanos were easily crossable, all knolls and short grasses and half-dried reeds. The Plume was their guide, an indomitable blot on the horizon feeding Reina with the anticipation of seeing Celeste again. She had a good feeling about it, the intuition that she was on the right path singeing her shoulders. Or maybe it was just the heat.
The trail to the summit ascended in zigzags, with visible footsteps made by the adventurers the curandera had mentioned, foolishly following a legend and journeying to their demise. The night shrouded Reina and Maior, and the breezes ended, abandoning them to silence as if time itself had ceased passing. Up above, a million stars took the heavens in a whirl of white and blue and magenta, lighting their path. As Reina glanced up at those faraway worlds, panting from the hike, she couldn’t shake the hope out of her bones. Would Celeste be looking up now, wondering if they were sharing the same never-ending sky? Reina clung to that.
Maior followed in furious indignation, building a robust wall between them. In the silence, Reina replayed their conversation over, turning it this way and that, massaging it and imagining what she should have said instead. She had thought it would be easy to wrangle Maior into following her, to treat her like a prisoner. But despite what she had absorbed from the caudillo and Do?a Ursulina, Reina couldn’t bring herself to be completely devoid of warmth. And Maior was in the right. She had cared for Reina, saved her. She didn’t deserve this treatment.
Regret gnawed at Reina until she had no choice but attempt to make it right.
Conversationally, and because she couldn’t handle Maior’s silence anymore, she said, “Have you heard the tales of the Plume?” When Maior didn’t immediately answer, she went on. “The final battle for independence was won here.”
“I was just a babe when that happened,” Maior said curtly.
“Didn’t anyone tell it to you? Teach you the history?”
Maior gave her a long look. “I spent most of my life worrying about having a roof over my head. I didn’t have time for history or books.”
“Can you read?”
Maior shrugged noncommittally. “I can read the scripture.”
Reina almost laughed. She knew the sort, who had the holy books memorized but could hardly hold their own against the most basic signage. She was privileged in this way, that Juan Vicente had taught her many things before passing.
Maior gave her a sour look, as if she knew exactly what Reina was thinking. “It was Las Hermanas who saved me from the streets. The scripture is all they have.”
Reina couldn’t blame her, so she nodded. “The Liberator had his final battle for independence here.” She told the tale because it was better than withstanding Maior’s quiet reproach. “According to the stories, Segol’s last standing general was holed up in La Cochinilla. There was a long siege, and the emperor’s reinforcements arrived from the north, through the Cow Sea.” Reina pointed in the general direction, where Rahmagut’s constellation was tattooed among the clusters of stars. “But the Liberator predicted the move, and he used the mountain’s elevation to smite the Segolean army with geomancers, with Feleva’s iridio.”
“It sounds like cheating,” Maior muttered.
“Not if you consider that for every day of siege, the Segolean general was flaying enslaved nozariels and hanging them from the turrets to taunt the Liberator. In war, anything goes.”
Juan Vicente had told her that tale. He had been at the Battle of the Plume, as advisor in geomancia to Don Enrique, who led the vanguard. Did Do?a Ursulina also play a role? As Don Enrique’s left-hand woman, it sounded unlikely that she wouldn’t. Everyone who was anyone likely had been involved. As Don Enrique had once said, the victors were the writers of history. For such an infamous witch, Do?a Ursulina seemed oddly absent from this chapter of history.
Reina rubbed her hands, noticing a chill as they left behind the sounds of night from the lower altitudes. Sweat coated the back of her neck from the switchback hike, yet the cold felt unnatural, enveloping her.
“Well, that’s not the worst part,” Reina went on. “The Segoleans caught on, and they sent their infantry up to the summit. Apparently they emerged from the other side of the battle with the rising dawn, and they gained the advantage and slaughtered most of the geomancers.”
Reina awaited Maior’s reaction. Her wonder or disgust. But Maior stood behind that wall of hers, unfazed.
She tried again. “According to the tale, there was so much iridio used up in the battle that even to this day, the corpses of all the fallen soldiers are stuck in perpetual decay.”
Maior didn’t even grunt in acknowledgment.
Reina clicked her tongue. She grazed the back of Maior’s elbow, casually, and Maior yanked her arm out of reach.