His father slept early, but Suerte stayed up some nights to keep Ricardo company while he stood watch. And to ask for stories. Suerte’s appetite for stories was vast.
“Tell me again about Coronado,” Suerte asked, sitting by the fire with his back to a piñon, carving on a walking stick.
“I’ve told you everything I remember about Coronado.”
“You say that every time, and every time you remember something new. So I keep asking. What was he like after the expedition? You don’t talk very much about that.”
“Because it’s very sad. He was a broken man. He was supposed to find not only his own fortune but everyone else’s. He was supposed to bring glory to Spain. He did none of these. I remember him slumped as he rode, his dented helm tied to his saddle. He couldn’t even look up, as if he depended on his horse to know the way home.”
“Did you love him?”
“I hardly even spoke to the man. There were hundreds of us in his company, after all. I’m not sure he even knew my name. But I followed him because I believed in him. I believed in the stories, and I believed that Spain would spread all over this continent to make a great empire. I . . . don’t believe any of that now.”
“How big is this continent?”
“It’s taking us weeks to simply travel between Zacatecas and the capital. Imagine this journey multiplied a hundred times over, then double it. That is how much land there is north of us. In Coronado’s company we never came close to the end of it.”
Suerte sighed in amazement, the wonder of it filling his vision. Ricardo grinned wryly. “You would break your father’s heart if you decided to trek north to find your fortune and leave the running of the estancia to him and Tomas.”
“They would be happy to have me out of their hair.”
“Maybe for a week, but no more.”
The boy gouged a particularly rough cut from his carving. He was restless; the estancia was confining, and he wanted an adventure. To be his own man, not his father’s son and Tomas’s brother. Ricardo had to remember how he was as a boy—he’d been only a couple of years older than Suerte when he left Spain to make his fortune in the colony. He had no way of explaining that once a boy left on such an adventure, he would age quickly, live more life than the actual years, and he could never go back. Boys never understood, did they?
“Are you laughing at me?” Suerte asked.
“No,” Ricardo said. “I’m smiling at the patterns. Life is patterns. It’s comforting, somehow.”
The boy furrowed his brow, confused, and went back to his carving without a word.
Ricardo left Henri and Suerte at the edge of the city, unwilling to bring them to the attention of Eduardo and his friends. His first nightfall in the city, he dressed in his finest suit, pulled a gold-trimmed velvet cloak over his shoulder, put on his sword, and set out.
He had been back to the city once or twice in the last century, and each time it seemed utterly transformed. He felt he would have to remove entire layers of it to see anything that he recognized. It wasn’t just that Spanish civilization had become fully entrenched here. No, more that the entire world was changing, and quickly. Buildings growing taller than ever, churches becoming more ornate than he could have imagined. The streets themselves were better: more skillfully paved, more comfortable. He was traveling through time, into the future, one day at a time, forever.
On a hunch he went to the wealthiest neighborhood, where the governor and commissioners had their palaces and the wealthiest merchants and landlords aspired to live. Here, the streets were wide, and the houses and courtyards sat behind walls with filigreed iron gates. Some folk had found their fortunes in the New World, obviously.
He wandered the streets of this neighborhood, imagining himself a shadow. A few guards and carriages passed by; they did not notice him. But in less than an hour he felt that ice in the middle of his spine, the chill of another unholy presence approaching. He stopped and turned, taking stock, making sure he could watch all avenues of approach.
And there was Don Eduardo, standing in the middle of the street as if he had appeared from nothing. Ricardo approached, imagining himself some acquaintance who had simply met him on the road, under a normal sun.
Eduardo’s smile seemed pleased. “You came! I very much hoped you would.”
“How could I refuse your invitation?” Let the man interpret whatever bite he would from Ricardo’s tone.
The prickling sense at the back of his neck continued, and more shadows took on life, figures emerging, visible now only because they wished to be. A gentleman in brown with riding boots; another in a short cape. A woman in her thirties wearing a gown of dark velvet. Her pale hair was braided into a crown around her head. Ricardo glanced at each of them in turn, acknowledging that he was surrounded. The situation recalled a memory of a long-ago confrontation, when Fray Juan’s four knights of darkness surrounded him, attacked him, made him one of them.
But that was a long time ago, and Ricardo was not so easily injured these days. He waited to see what they would do.
“Eduardo! You didn’t tell us how beautiful he is!”
Ricardo had just enough blood in his veins to blush at this.
“Didn’t I? Ah well, I apologize for the omission,” the man answered.
“The Mistress must see him,” the man in the short cape said. His beard was neat, and he had a hard look about his eyes. Ricardo had no way of telling how old any of them were. They all looked of an age, but they might have lived a thousand years.