Gods of Jade and Shadow(24)

She closed her hands into fists. There was nothing she had in common with her grandfather: it was Martín who inherited all his virtues and his vices. Casiopea liked to believe herself a copy of her father or closer to her mother, even though she did not feel she possessed the woman’s kindness. Like many young people, ultimately she saw herself as a completely new creature, a creation that had sprung from no ancient soils.

“I’m no coward,” she protested. “And when have I pledged anything to you?”

“When we left your town. ‘Very well,’ you said, and accepted me. Is that not a promise?”

“Well, yes…but I meant—”

“To cut your hand off at the first chance?” he asked, taking a step forward, closer to her.

She echoed him, taking a step too. “No! But I’m also no fool to…to blindly do your bidding.”

“I do not consider you a fool, although you do raise your voice louder than an angry macaw,” Hun-Kamé said, gesturing toward their table and its two chairs. His movements were those of a conductor, elegant and precise.

“It might be that, in my haste, I have been crude,” he said. “I do not wish to give you a poor impression. At the same time, I must emphasize that we are both united by regrettable circumstances and must proceed at a quick pace. Had I been given a choice, I would not have inconvenienced you as I have. Yet your assistance is quite necessary, Casiopea Tun.”

On a table nearby, old men shuffled their dominoes with their withered hands, then set down the ivory-and-ebony pieces. She glanced at the game pieces, lost for a moment in the contrasting colors, then looked back at him.

“I’ll help you,” she said. “But I do it because I feel sorry for you, and not…not because you are ‘supreme lord’ of anything.”

“How would you feel sorry for me?” Hun-Kamé asked, incredulous.

“Because you are all alone in the world.”

This time his face wasn’t flint, but basalt, cool and devoid of any menace or emotion, though it was difficult to pinpoint emotions with him. Like the rivers in Yucatán, they existed hidden, under the surface. Now it was as if someone had dragged a stone upon a well, blocking the view. Basalt, unforgiving and dark, that was what the god granted her.

“We are all alone in the world,” he said, and his words were the clouds when they muffle the moon at night, they resembled the earth gone bitter, choking the sprout in its cradle.

But she was too young to believe his words and shrugged, sitting down again, having accepted his invitation. He sat down too. She finished her coffee. The slapping of dominoes against wood and the tinkling of metal spoons against glass around them was music, possessing its own rhythm.

“You said you’d bind him. How?” Casiopea asked.

“A piece of ordinary rope.”

“A piece of ordinary rope,” she repeated. “Will that work with a god?”

“It’s the symbolism that matters in most dealings. I’ll speak a word of power to the cord, and it will be as strong as a diamond. It will hold him, and I will do the rest. Do not be frightened,” he concluded.

“It is easy for you to say. I bet gods don’t need to fear many things while regular people have an assortment of fears to choose from,” she replied.

“You are not a regular person, not now.”

For how long, she wondered. And she had to admit to herself that part of what kept her next to him was not just the promise of freeing herself of the bone splinter or a sense of obligation, but the lure of change, of becoming someone else, someone other than a girl who starched shirts and shone shoes and had to make do with a quick glimpse of the stars at night.

“Do not be frightened, I say,” he told her and took her left hand with his own.

It was not a gesture meant to provide comfort, at least not the comfort that can be derived from the touch of another person. This would have required a trace of human empathy and affection. It was a demonstration, like a scientist might perform. And still her pulse quickened, for it is difficult to be wise and young.

“Feel here, hmm? My own magic rests in your veins,” he said, as if seeking her pulse.

He was right. It was the tugging of a string on a loom, delicate, but it ran through her, and when he touched her it struck a crystalline note. Upon that note, another one, this one much more mundane, the effect of a handsome man clutching a girl’s hand.

She pulled her hand free and frowned. She was not that unwise.

“If your cousin frightens me, I’ll run off, I don’t care,” she swore. “Angry macaws bite, you know?”

“I shall have to take my chances.”

She tapped her spoon against her glass, summoning the waitress, who poured more coffee and milk for them.

“Do you like it? This drink?” he asked her after the glass was refilled, a frown upon his brow.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“It’s too thick and awfully sweet. The milk disrupts the coffee’s bitterness.”

“We must not disrupt the purity of the coffee bean,” she said mockingly.

“Precisely.”

She chuckled at that, and he, of course, did not find it amusing. Not that it would be likely that a god of death would be very merry, not even in Veracruz, where no one must wear a frown, and not even during Carnival, when every trouble must be thrown to the air, left to be carried off by the winds.