The Empire of Dreams Read online

  I don’t wait long before being proved right. Guardsman Bruno calls us to attention. “First years, line up against the wall!”

  We do as asked, many leaving their bowls hardly touched. Servants scurry to clear the tables while we mill about, eventually lining up shoulder to shoulder, backs against the stone wall of the mess.

  Guardsman Bruno walks down the line, hands clasped behind his back. “We have an opportunity here,” he says. “With so many of us gone, our stable is nearly empty. So you are going to clean it. From top to bottom.”

  Someone groans. The second years look on with obvious amusement.

  “Empty the stable completely of straw and hay, scrub the floors and walls, oil the hinges, make repairs to the gates, polish the spare tack, reset the rattraps, and replace the entire area with fresh straw.”

  “That’s going to take all day,” someone whispers, too loudly.

  “And well into the night,” Guardsman Bruno snaps back. “So you’d better get to it. Follow me.”

  He leads us down a dark corridor, past another bunk room, and into daylight. We’ve reached the dusty riding arena, which is shared with the palace Guard. The palace itself is at our backs now, a huge edifice rising high to block the worst of the sun’s afternoon rays. Before us is a long narrow stable, huddled up against the walls that encircle the palace grounds. Atop the walls, between crenellations, I glimpse the helmets of palace guards as they walk their rounds.

  “That’s a lot of stalls,” Aldo says.

  “Thirty-six, to be exact,” Bruno says. “Be grateful we’re not cleaning the army stable. It’s even bigger.”

  Horses peek out over the lower doors of a few stalls, hoping our approach means treats or at least a little exercise, and I’m sorry to disappoint them. The majority of stalls are vacant, just like Bruno said.

  To the left is an empty wagon. Leaning against it are several pitchforks.

  “Any volunteers to polish tack?” Bruno says. The Arturos raise their hands, and he directs them toward a stable hand for guidance.

  “And who wants to muck?”

  I raise my hand. I did plenty of mucking when I was a little girl living in the free villages. It’s been years, and my memories of that time are foggy, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the body remembers.

  Bruno indicates that I should grab a pitchfork, along with Aldo, Valentino, and Pedrón. We are to remove all the straw from the empty stalls and dump it in this wagon, which will haul everything away once we’re finished.

  The wooden handle feels rough in my hands. My calluses are different these days—from gripping a sword or dagger, from the string of a bow, from knitting. I hope they hold true.

  “You know,” Aldo says as he plunges his pitchfork into a pile of manure, “this Royal Guard thing might be a swindle. Maybe it’s just a way for the crown to get free labor.”

  “That’s good, right?” Valentino says. “Keeps our taxes low.” He winces as he bends over. Clumps of manure are already sticking to his beautiful blue silks.

  “Go easy, Valentino,” I say. “Work in the back of the stall where the Guards can’t see. We’ll cover for you.”

  “No, we won’t,” Pedrón says.

  “Yes,” I say, glaring. “We will. Just like we might cover for you someday.”

  Pedrón considers this. Then he shrugs and gets to work.

  “Thanks, Red,” says Valentino.

  An hour later, the wagon isn’t even half full, and a stable hand comes to check our progress. He’s a short fellow with long sideburns and weathered skin, and he sidles so close that I can smell the horse musk on his skin. I resist the urge to step away and make more space for myself.

  “Everything all right?” he asks, and his breath smells like something crawled into his mouth and died screaming. “Any questions?”

  “We’re fine,” Aldo assures him.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  I’m considering whether or not to tell him to back off when I feel his hand at my waist. Of their own accord, my fingers bend, my knuckles aim for his windpipe.

  I stop myself just in time. Because he’s not taking liberties. He’s slipping something into my pocket. Something light. A note, I’d wager, though I don’t dare pat my pocket to check just now.

  “I’ll let Guardsman Bruno know you’re all doing a good job,” he says, and the stable hand walks off, whistling a merry tune.

  “That was weird,” Valentino says between pained breaths. He’s tossing out one forkful of straw for every three of ours.

  “Hector told me they’d be evaluating us,” I say. “All the time, no matter what we were doing. So I’m sure that stable hand will report back to Bruno for true.” I’m dying to reach into my pocket. The imperial spy network uses pickpockets and sleight of hand to pass messages. Or maybe it’s an enemy, and the note contains a threat.

  “You know the prince consort well, do you?” Aldo says.

  I freeze, pitchfork raised, unsure how much I should say. Once again, I fall back on the truth. “He was going to be my adopted father, remember?”

  “Oh. Right. Well, I thought maybe that was all for show.”

  Pain needles my gut, as though Aldo had sifted through my mind for my worst fears, plucked them out, and stabbed me with them. It was all for show.

  Valentino says, “My father thought it was a political ploy. To force people to start accepting the Invierno presence in Joya.”

  “I’m not an Invern—”

  “I’ll never accept Inviernos,” Pedrón says. “Inviernos killed my uncle.”

  He’s not the only person in the capital who feels that way, even if he’s the only one who has said it to my face. We are silent a long moment, tossing straw into the wagon, and my own tossing is perhaps a little more violent than necessary. It’s a nice, distracting rhythm. Scoop, carry, toss. Scoop, carry, toss.

  Valentino is the one to break the silence. He leans against the wall, hand to his side, and breathes heavily. “So, Pedrón. If you disagree with the empress’s foreign policy, why did you join the Royal Guard?”

  Good question. We all look to Pedrón for his answer.

  The army recruit responds without pausing his work. “I do hate her foreign policy, but I like her quite a lot. She saved us all. And she’s . . . nice.” He tosses a huge pile of straw into the wagon, wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and plunges the pitchfork into another pile. “I think she’s not taking the Invierno threat seriously enough. That’s all right. I’ll take it seriously for her. Maybe next time an Invierno comes for her, I’ll be there.”

  I say, “So you want to protect Elisa from herself.”

  “Sort of. I guess.” Pedrón grins. “Also, joining the Royal Guard is great way to meet girls. Girls love Royal Guard recruits. Even more than army.”

  “Gross,” I say as Aldo rolls his eyes.

  “Little did I know,” Pedrón continues unabashed, “that I’d meet some girls on my very first day.” He winks at me.

  “Girls?” I say. “More than one?”

  “You and Aldo,” he says.

  “Next time we spar,” Aldo says, “I’m going to kick your ass.”

  “If you can reach it, little girl.”

  Aldo shrugs it off, but his face is stony and he avoids our gazes as he mucks.

  “By the way, Red,” Pedrón says, “do you want to sneak into my bunk some night?”

  “Are you always this disgusting?”

  “I promise you’ll have a good time.”

  “I said no!”

  “No, you didn’t. You said, ‘Are you always this disgusting?’”

  “You really need to widen your definition of the word ‘no.’”

  “Well, if you change your mind . . .”

  “Let it go, army reject,” Valentino says.

  Surprisingly, Pedrón doesn’t push things further. We fall back into silence, mucking, mucking, mucking until the sun is low. The dinner bell rings. We all look up expe
ctantly.

  “Sweet God, I’m so hungry,” Pedrón says.

  “Keep working,” Guardsman Bruno yells. “No chow until the job is done!”

  Pedrón groans. My stomach growls, even though I’m one of the few who made sure to get a decent meal.

  Once the stable is empty of straw, we sweep it of dust and leavings with whisk brooms. Two second years bring buckets and rags, and we get to work scrubbing the stone floors.

  An hour later, a stable hand comes to light all the torches. Crickets sing as we polish the hinges, tighten loose latches, replace all the straw with a fresh load just delivered. My hands are raw, my back aches, and I’ll never, ever get the smell of manure out of my hair.

  At last Guardsman Bruno takes pity on us. “Get yourselves back to the dining hall. After you eat, you may all use the latrine, then get to bed. Do it fast, because you’ll need your sleep for tomorrow.”

  We rush toward the mess. Valentino lags behind, and I slow down to keep him company.

  He says, “I think I need to use the latrine before we eat.”

  “If you sneak in, I’ll guard the door.”

  “Thank you.”

  And that’s exactly what we do. While the others go on ahead, we peel off at the door to the latrine. The room contains a row of holes across a long stone bench. Beside each hole is a bucket of mulch with a scoop, used to tamp down the smell. It’s not as disgusting as it could be. This place is kept clean, the latrine regularly emptied, and I find myself pitying whoever has that particular task.

  I turn my back while Valentino tends to his needs. After a moment, he taps me on the shoulder.

  “Any blood?” I ask.

  “None.”

  “Good sign.”

  “Are you always so . . . frank?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hear that’s an Invierno trait.”

  Before I can answer, he adds, “Your turn. It’s a chance for you to get a little privacy. I’ll watch the door.”

  “Thank you.” I rush to comply because in addition to taking care of my needs, this is my chance to read the note in my pocket.

  I pull it out while I sit. It’s a folded parchment, sealed with a bright blob of red wax, which is stamped with the imperial crest. I break the seal. My heart begins to race when I recognize Rosario’s handwriting: characteristically rushed and marred with a few small ink blots.

  come to the place we first met

  at the second hour

  let no one see you

  bring Iván

  I shove the note back into my pocket, finish my business, and pull up my pants. As Valentino and I rush to catch everyone else, my thoughts are a maelstrom of worry.

  When I spoke to Rosario, he was afraid for his life. Has something gone wrong?

  The place he and I first met is a hideout located beneath the city district known as the Wallows. The prince mentioned that he might spend some time there. I can reach it through the catacombs, but no one is supposed to know about it. I hate the idea of sharing it with Iván.

  We’ll have to sneak out of the bunk room and hope everyone is sleeping too soundly to notice. I really picked the wrong bunk. I’ll have to traverse the whole room just to get out the door.

  Rosario knows I understand this vast palace better than anyone, except maybe Hector and the spymaster. Once I’m in the latrine, I can get us almost all the way to the catacombs using secret passages. So, by ordering us to arrive unseen, the prince fully intends for me to reveal some of the palace’s most ancient secrets to Iván.

  My muscles burn from working all day, and I need rest more than anything, but I won’t dare let myself fall asleep even for a moment, lest I miss the second hour. I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow. If we have any training exercises, I won’t be able to perform creditably.

  I’ll have to worry about that later. Rosario is my friend, and my future emperor, and he might be in trouble. If I could leave right this second, I would.

  But if it turns out he’s just lonely and frightened, I’m going to whack him upside the head with my baby rattle. No, no, that can’t be it. Rosario isn’t an idiot, and he’s no stranger to peril or intrigue. If he’s summoning me, he has a good reason.

  In the dining hall, I make a point of sitting next to Iván, which turns out to be easy because no one else wants to. He glares at me when I settle beside him, but says nothing. His knuckles are scraped raw. While I was mucking stalls, he spent the whole day mending the thatch roof and patching mortar in the walls.

  When everyone is distracted, I slip the note out of my pocket, just far enough so that he can glimpse the imperial seal.

  I whisper, “The prince wants to meet with us tonight. Just you and me. We’ll have to sneak out. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”

  Iván’s hand holding his spoon freezes. A dollop of cornmeal falls from the spoon and plops back into the bowl.

  Then he nods and continues to shove slop into his mouth, treating me with stony disregard.

  9

  Then

  WEEKS passed. The pain of her tattoos faded. But her ankle was not healing.

  The monster woman made her do everything: boil turnips, wash dishes, weed the garden, chop firewood, empty and clean the slop buckets, fetch water from the stream, mend clothing, darn socks, scrape and tan hides, scrub the stone floors.

  Mula fell onto her cot every night exhausted, and even though she was given two small meals a day, they weren’t enough. Her dreams were filled with running through the forest after quick rabbits and one-eyed squirrels, while the hole in her tummy grew wider and wider. Sometimes she could see the hole in her tummy, like the giant eye of a needle. She was a hollow girl, with nothing to her insides at all.

  Other times, the one-eyed squirrel would turn around and taunt her, saying things like, “I only have one eye, but at least I have nuts,” or “Even I’m not as disgusting as a half-breed.”

  The monster woman worked her so hard because she herself had work to do. Important work, that made her disappear into the glassblowing shed for hours, sometimes all day. And if she came out of that shed and Mula’s chores weren’t finished, the girl could expect to go to bed without even her meager dinner. Once in a while, if the monster woman was especially disappointed, Mula would get a cuff across the face or a vigorous shaking.

  The girl was slow about her chores, it was true, but only because she could hardly walk. She was a big girl, precocious even, and she knew how to do all the tasks given to her. But her body wouldn’t do them. Her ankle was still too broken, her belly too empty, her eyes too sleepy, to ever do a good job, the kind of job that would have made Mamá proud.

  Mula remembered how, when Horteño the blacksmith broke his leg, he walked around on a crutch for a while. So Mula begged the monster woman for a crutch, even remembering to say, “Please, my lady.”

  In answer, the monster woman backhanded her, sending her flying into a pile of freshly washed, neatly stacked dishes.

  Head pounding, vision blurring, Mula set about cleaning up the mess without another word. Fortunately, only one wooden plate had chipped. If she was lucky, the monster woman wouldn’t notice.

  After that, Mula stopped asking for things. Instead she watched, and she learned.

  She learned that she and the monster woman lived in one of the free villages, which wasn’t exactly Joya d’Arena, but not exactly Invierne either, and both Joyans and Inviernos lived there. Once, on her way to market day to trade glass baubles for some winter apples, she stopped in her tracks, right in the middle of the snow. Because only a few paces away was a boy, a few years older, with delicate features, ebony hair, and light eyes the color of molten gold. He was skinny and barefoot in the snow, and every time he took a step, his heels flashed the bright blue of his slave marks.

  When he saw her, he winced and turned away in disgust, and something inside her died. She’d been hated her whole life, by everyone except her mother. But there was something particularly awful about being
hated by someone just like her, another mule slave. Like maybe she had missed the point all along. Maybe she should be hating herself.

  Mula also learned that her mistress, the monster woman, loved ale. At first, the girl merely smelled it on her breath. Later, the monster woman would return to the house with an unsteady gait and words that were too slippery to make sense. Mula realized that instead of working in her shed, she was drinking, drinking, drinking. The day the woman took off her own shoes and sent Mula to the market to trade them for eggs, she knew they were running out of money.

  The girl began to consider escape.

  She was scared by the prospect of fleeing through the forest in winter, all alone and hungry. But she was scared of the monster woman too. The forest might kill her, for true, but the monster woman might do it gleefully, with hatred in her eyes and drunkenness in her speech. Mula realized she had to choose between scary things, pick which kind of scared was the best kind of scared.

  She picked the forest.

  But first she had to heal her ankle. So one morning while chopping firewood, she sidled quietly into the woods and poked through the snow and underbrush for a long branch, which she dragged back to the chopping stump. With her ax, she cleared it of offshoots, sized it to her armpit, and used the hood of her mother’s cloak to create a cushion on top. There. Now she had her crutch.

  That night, Mula held her breath when the monster woman walked in the door and saw what she had made. Would she let her keep it? Would she box Mula’s ears?

  The woman shrugged, then crumpled onto her cot, already passed out.

  Over the next few days, Mula hoarded food. Just tiny squirrel-sized bits of turnip and jerky, a very small pinch from a loaf of bread. She hid it all in the snow, beside the cottage foundation, where the cold temperature would keep it from turning black with mold.

  But when she returned to her stash later to add a withered apple, she discovered that mice had found her food and eaten it all, leaving nothing but a tiny bit of shredded turnip.

  Mula started over.

  She tried hiding food in a little hole in the cottage foundation and covering the opening with stones, but the mice managed to tunnel through.