“I can help you,” he whispered.
Eva’s green eyes blazed. “I will not be dragged from one man’s mercy to another. Least of allyou. Do you expect me to trust you after you killed them? They were…good… people.”
Séverin held Eva’s gaze. “And if I told you they were safe?”
Eva paused. “How?”
“Does it matter so long as it is true?”
Eva released his hand. “Only if you can prove it.”
“Tomorrow,” said Séverin. “One, or all of them, I don’t know, will meet me at the Bridge of Sighs at midnight. It’s all planned. We can get you out.”
Eva’s mouth twisted. “And how do you know they will come for you, Monsieur? You may not have killed them, but even I could see that how you treated them was a death of its own.”
Séverin sat back, the words buzzing in his skull. Eva was wrong. They would understand… they would give him one more chance. Wouldn’t they?
As the gondola slipped through the water, Séverin regarded the inky lagoon beneath them. It seemed alive. A hungry thing that swallowed the reflections of cathedrals andpalazzos, lapped up stone archways and chewed off the faces of angels carved into the frames.
The water fed upon the city.
Séverin leaned away from his reflection in the black surface.For a moment, the canal seemed to mock him, whispering to him in the dark.
My belly holds the bones of empires. I’ve eaten sighs, and I’ve eaten angels, and one day I’ll eat you too.
9
ENRIQUE
Enrique touched his bandage gingerly. In the three days since he’d lost his ear, the pain had subsided to a low ache. He traced the strange new flatness against his skull, the little nub of scabbing skin where his ear had once been attached. As a child, he had been willing to give up his ear. Eager, even. For he thought it meant that his dreams would come true. When he was nine years old, he’d even gone so far as taking a knife to his earlobe before his mother caught him and started shrieking.
“Why would you do such a thing?” she had demanded.
“For the trade!” Enrique had replied. “For theenkantos!”
His mother had not been impressed, and she had promptly complained to his grandmother, who only laughed. After that, his mother forbid hislolafrom telling him more tales, but the very next day, Enrique crept to her side and sat by her feet and tugged at her long, whitebaro.
“Tell me a story,” he begged.
And she did. Hislolaused to tell him tales of theenkantosin thebanana groves, their long fingers parting the shining leaves and their wide eyes aglow in the dusk. Even though she wore a cross around her neck and never missed mass on Sundays, his grandmother never forgot theenkantosoutside. Each week, she left a bowl of rice and salt outside the door. When they went on walks and passed beneath the trees, she would bow her head and whisper, “tabi tabi po.”
“Why do you do that?” Enrique asked. “Why do you say ‘excuse me’ when there’s no one here?”
“How do you know,anak?” his grandmother would say, with a twinkle in her eye. “Theyhave been here long before us, and it is only polite to ask that they allow us to cross their territory. Theenkantosanddiwatasare a proud folk, and you would not wish to offend them, would you?”
Enrique shook his head. He did not want to be rude. And besides, he would love to see the creatures from his grandmother’s tales. Maybe if he was very polite, they would come out and say hello to him. He even tried to see them. Once, he had stayed up all night watching the hallway outside his bedroom, convinced that if he simply waited long enough, a dwarf would appear in the shadows and ask him what he wanted. Enrique planned to give the dwarf a gift of rice cakes that he’d stolen from the family breakfast table, and then he’d ask to be taken to the grove where theenkantoslived. There, he would make a trade.
“Theenkantoslove a good bargain,anak,” his grandmother used to say, lowering her voice as if she were letting him in on a secret. “For your most precious memory, they might give you a bag of gold. For the length of a young bride’s hair, they will give her immortal beauty for a year.”
Enrique had sat by her feet, enchanted. He remembered her reaching down, tugging gently at his ear.
“I once heard of a farmer who gave anenkantohis ear, and in return, he could see the future.”
Enrique brightened. “If I give theenkantomy ear, will I see the future too?”
“Why would you wish to see the future,anak?” Hislolalaughed. “What a terrible burden that would be.”
Enrique disagreed. If he could see the future, he would know when his elder brother Marcos was planning to tease him. He would know when his mother planned to bring homeputo bumbongbefore anyone else, and he could help himself to the best pieces. And most importantly, he would know who he would be. Perhaps a sea-faring pirate with a deadly crocodile pet who adored him and ate all his enemies…
