The Second Siege (16 page)

Five days later, Max stood on the banks of the river Tormes and contemplated Salamanca. The city was lit from within like a brilliant jewel: a conspicuous blaze of golden light after many miles of navigating the dark Spanish countryside.

Cooper had taken them on a detour around the city so that they might enter from an unexpected direction. It was clever, Max acknowledged, but now they were required to cross an ancient Roman bridge for entry, and a narrow way was easily guarded.

“Why do you think it’s so light?” asked David. “It’s like they’re celebrating something.”

“I don’t know,” said Cooper, setting down his pack and rifling through several pockets. He produced the black velvet bundle that held Cúchulain’s spear.

“Can you slip this up your sleeve, Max?” he asked.

Max glanced at his travel-worn father. Mr. McDaniels looked gravely at the black shape but nodded his approval. Max reached inside the velvet wrap and removed the broken spear.

“Careful now,” said Cooper. “It’s still very sharp.”

Max loosened his shirtsleeve and slipped the weapon inside, along the inside of his right arm. Even broken, it was a bit too long, extending several inches past his elbow, so he would be forced to keep the arm straight. The cold blade began to grow warm against his skin.

Cooper wrote an address down on a slip of paper and handed it to Miss Boon.

“We’re going to use Mystics to disguise ourselves,” he explained to them. “I’ll enter first, ahead of you, in case they have means of detecting illusions. If anything should happen and we get separated, take them to this address. Will you do that, Miss Boon?”

“Of course,” said the young Mystics instructor, swallowing hard and gazing across the river.

“Mr. McDaniels, you’ll have to carry Nick.”

Max’s father groaned a moment later as he hoisted the improbably dense otter-sized lymrill into his arms. “He must be a hundred pounds!” he huffed before lapsing into awed silence. Cooper was murmuring words in a low strange language while river mist snaked up over the banks to envelop them. The golden lights of Salamanca were obscured for a moment until the mist washed over them and dissipated into the clear night sky.

“Say nothing unless absolutely necessary,” said Cooper. “Follow me.”

As they walked along the river’s edge, Max felt utterly exposed. Cooper walked up ahead of them, tall and terrifying with his black knit cap over his white, scarred face. A pair of Spaniards wearing red armbands stood at the entryway to the bridge, passing a bottle between them. Cooper did not give their pistols a second glance and merely offered a pleasant wave as he strode past.

Miss Boon wiped pearly beads of perspiration from her forehead. “Just follow me,” she whispered, and the group approached the bridge.

“Buenas noches, abuelita,”
said one of the guards, nodding at Miss Boon. He was very young—no more than a year or two older than Max and David. He tipped his cap and waved them past the gates. As Max walked past, he glanced at the young man’s armband and saw that it was not merely red but included a circular white design. Max had time to catch a star and several strange symbols that were reminiscent of an illustration he had seen in the
Conjuror’s Codex,
but he dared not look closer. Up ahead, Cooper was already halfway across the bridge, a dark silhouette against a golden wall of light and music. When Max crossed over to the other side, it was like nothing he had ever seen.

The city was filled with people: young people, old people, all singing and dancing to a blaring cacophony of music played by musicians stationed at every corner. It was almost midnight, but young children ran giggling through the streets. Others were running, too. Max saw tall costumed figures whose faces were hidden behind masks painted in the likeness of grinning, mustachioed men with rosy red cheeks. Atop their heads, they wore tall, spade-shaped hats that rose and fell as the frightening figures ran like a phalanx through the crowds.

Max saw Cooper stop to cheer a masked passerby before striding ahead onto a wide street lined with buildings constructed of a sandy stone. Max made to follow him, but a trumpet blared nearby and he instinctively clapped his hands over his ears. Max saw immediately that his movement had caught the attention of a masked figure that had been running past. It stopped abruptly and swiveled its head to gaze at Max.

“Stay calm,” said Miss Boon, squeezing Max’s hand as the dead-eyed mask bobbed toward him.

Max’s heart pounded in his chest. The hideous mask hovered just inches from his face.

“¿Es tu hora de acostarte, muchacha?”
cackled the figure’s high voice. Its gloved hand swung forward to tap him on the shoulder with a wooden baton. Just then, a gaggle of children ran screaming past Max, and the figure lumbered off after them. Max watched as they disappeared down a side street, and his eyes fell upon several men in trench coats and fedoras surveying the scene from beneath a café awning.

Miss Boon tugged at his sleeve, and Max followed her down the street where Cooper had disappeared, the group swimming against a tide of revelers.

They followed Cooper at a cautious distance, passing by a great university. Its doors had been torn off their hinges and lay broken and splintered against its archways. As they walked, Max saw that many buildings had been destroyed, gutted and burned in a panorama of broken glass and charred stone. Other buildings were intact, and Max quickly noticed that these all displayed the same symbol as the red armbands. Some of the marks were painstakingly perfect in their symmetry; others were scrawled in haste upon thresholds or windows in a seeming mad dash for compliance.

They walked for several more blocks before Cooper finally stopped at a small bookstore built of the ubiquitous sandy stone. Its windows were dark, with Astaroth’s sigil painted carefully upon the door.

Glancing up the street, Cooper gestured at them to come quickly. Max shivered and rubbed his arms while Cooper rang the bell. There was no answer. Cooper frowned and pressed the bell again. Another phalanx of masked men ran past them to the crashing accompaniment of a round, jolly man playing cymbals down at the corner. Cooper watched them go before pressing the bell again with rising urgency.

A light appeared at an upstairs window. Half a minute later, the door opened. A white-haired man with intelligent eyes and thick glasses stood in the doorway. His mouth sagged in irritation as he reached into his trouser pocket to flick a few coins onto the step. He gave them a stern, disapproving glance before turning away to close the door.

“We need shelter, Brother Lorca,” said Cooper quickly.

The man’s eyes widened as though he’d seen a ghost.

“Which of you is William?” asked the old man gruffly, blinking from face to face.

“I am,” said Cooper, inclining his head.

“What’s my one true love?” inquired the man, snapping his fingers impatiently.

“You have two,” responded Cooper. “The wines of Rioja and the incomparable María.”

The imperious scowl tightened to a twinkling smile; the door opened wide to admit them.

Max crowded into a small foyer while the white-haired man closed the heavy door and locked it. A woman’s voice called from the top of an elegant staircase that rose and twisted out of sight.

“¿Quién está allí? ¡Envíelos lejos!”

“Tut, tut,” scolded Señor Lorca, with a sharp laugh. “Come down, María. It is William and some friends, although he looks prettier than when I saw him last.”

Cooper nodded, and turned the group’s attention toward their reflection in a nearby baroque mirror. There they stood—two aging men, a plump nurse, an elderly woman wrapped in a brown shawl, and two girls no older than six. The plump nurse pointed.

“Is that
me
?” asked Mr. McDaniels.

“In the flesh,” said Cooper.

Mr. McDaniels turned away from the mirror and looked himself up and down.

“But I look normal,” he exclaimed, wiggling his fingers and examining his clothes.

“Mirrors reflect all illusions,” said Cooper. “Very useful tidbit, that.”

Max waved at himself in the mirror. A bundled, black-haired girl with round cheeks waved back. Everyone wore red armbands—even the children.

“Did anyone follow you?” asked Señor Lorca, bolting the door.

“No,” said Cooper, stealing a peek out the bookshop’s front window while drawing a pair of heavy crimson drapes. The Spaniard grunted his approval and herded the group through a large, two-story room of gleaming, glassed-in bookcases filled with old manuscripts, texts, and tablets. As they filed toward the rear, Max saw that the front of the building was dedicated to the bookstore but that the back rooms were private living quarters. They arrived at a large, comfortable kitchen with frescoed walls, cascading plants, and gleaming copper cookery.

“Ooh!” said Mr. McDaniels, eyeing a large cheese and a hanging ham.

Señor Lorca chuckled as he lit several candles and placed them on a sturdy table of sanded oak. Collapsing into a chair, the old man peered at the group standing assembled in the kitchen doorway.

“William, put your trickery aside so I may see you,” he rumbled.

Cooper murmured several words. Max didn’t feel anything different, but the old man sat straight up and gasped as his attention focused immediately upon Max and David.

“You’ve brought
them
here?” he asked. “This is a strange omen,” he muttered, glancing at a worn wooden staircase.

“You know them?” asked Cooper quietly. “You know their faces?”

Señor Lorca nodded gravely, rising to his feet.

“I do. And I welcome you, David Menlo and Max McDaniels. I am honored.”

Señor Lorca shuffled forward for introductions. There was a quiet dignity to the man, an elegant assuredness to his movements and a sharp, handsome profile unbowed by age. As they shook hands, Max saw a dozen faded scars on the man’s papery skin. After pecking Mum on the cheek, Señor Lorca stooped and blinked at Nick, who sat on his back haunches sniffing the kitchen’s delicious aromas.

“My heavens,” he said. “Is that a lymrill?”

“Yes, sir,” said Max.

“What a marvelous creature,” said Señor Lorca, reaching out a hand to stroke Nick’s quills. Nick’s tail rattled, and he unfurled his lethal, curling claws to stretch luxuriantly, scoring the kitchen’s worn red tiles in the process.

“Nick—no!” scolded Max just as an elderly woman arrived at the foot of the stairs, wrapped in a blue silk robe. She looked puzzled, alternating her gaze between Nick and the group.

“Bah!” the old man chuckled, waving off the damage. “Everyone should be so lucky as to have a lymrill in their kitchen. Please meet my María.”

The woman smiled politely but hurried through the introductions until she reached Cooper.

“My William,” she cooed, pulling off his black cap to hold his face in her hands. She gazed up at him, searching his face with tender affection, while Cooper’s pale, scarred features writhed into something approximating a grin. The woman patted his face and prodded his belly. “Too thin,” she said with a conclusive frown. “Someone is starving my boy.”

“Shhh, María,” said Cooper. “Mum’s a cook.”

Señora Lorca glanced over at Mum, whose scowling face would have curdled milk. The woman laughed and took Mum by the arm, leading the indignant hag into a side pantry. “You are a cook, eh? Then you can help me fatten him up!”

A half hour later, even Mr. McDaniels waved off a final pass at leftover fabada, a rich stew of pork and sausages and buttery beans in a savory broth. Señor Lorca watched with obvious pleasure on his creased face, refilling Mr. McDaniels’s glass with a strong red wine.

“That is your first real supper in some time, eh?” asked the Spaniard.

“Delicious,” rumbled Max’s father, dabbing his mouth.

“Good,” said Señor Lorca. “I like to watch you eat. Reminds me of when I was younger. Now, I just peck, peck, peck like a bird.” The old man rolled his eyes and sighed. “Are you tired, my friend?”

Mr. McDaniels gave a groggy nod.

“I’m sleepy, too,” croaked Mum, sitting on several cushions. “I miss my cupboard.”

“We have many beds and several baths, but no guest cupboard,” laughed María. “We do have a linen closet you might like. I will show you.”

Mr. McDaniels and Mum shuffled off after Señora Lorca; her husband’s shining eyes watched them go. The old man sighed and patted Cooper’s arm.

“It is good to see you, William. Now, perhaps you will tell me why you bring these two to me.”

“Cooper,” interjected Miss Boon, “perhaps we should discuss what is suitable to share.”

“It is all right, Miss Boon,” said Cooper gently. “Antonio has saved my life many times over.”

“Does he have security clearance?” asked Miss Boon, stirring a cup of black coffee.

Señor Lorca looked at Miss Boon with an amused expression. He pushed back from the table to pluck a framed photograph from an antique side table. He handed it to Miss Boon. The young Mystics instructor peered at the photo and shot a startled glance at Cooper, who looked uncomfortable.

“Yes,” said Señor Lorca, “that is our William and myself, some years ago.”

Max leaned close to Miss Boon for a glimpse. There was Señor Lorca, receiving a medal from Ms. Richter in what looked to be a great hall. In the photograph, Señor Lorca’s hair was darker and the line of his jaw had a finer cut. But it was not the younger version of Antonio de Lorca that made Max stare; it was Cooper.