This was possibly incriminating, but people in Costa Mayor had been taught to hate and fear people from Dos Palos for a dozen years. Without proof that the war wasn’t Dos Palos’s doing, Ignacio’s countrymen could only be glad to see the Blackbirds fighting sovaliantly.
He needed hard evidence that the war had never been about protecting Costa Mayor from invaders. That it was, in truth, the Blackbirds who had been chipping away at Dos Palos’s borders. That thousands of lives had been lost on both sides because King Amadeo wanted to obtain whatever resources were in their springs. Ignacio had to find something he could take without his father’s notice. Correspondence with his generals or the king, notes about what lay beneath theX’s on the map…somethingto give to the Defiant, which operated the one printing press in all of Costa Mayor that was ready to expose what was truly going on.
He thumbed through ledgers and notes. There was nothing there. It was as if his father didn’t even trust the walls of his own home with his sins.
Horse hooves clopped on the cobbled road outside. Ignacio paused. From within the hidden office, it was hard to decipher if the sound was close or a street over.
Did I get the days wrong? Perhaps Father changed his plans?
No. Ignacio was merely being hyper-vigilant. Father wouldn’t be back yet. And he preferred to use his motorcar. Their carriage hadn’t been hitched in years.
Either way, Ignacio didn’t want to be inside his childhoodhome any longer than necessary. He strode over to the lone bookshelf. A broken hand mirror lay face up on the dark wood. That wasn’t like Father, to keep around things of no value. Ignacio’s gaze landed on a tattered spine tucked amongst the tomes.
“My stars,” he whispered.
Slowly, so as not to rip the fraying edges, he pulled out a small book. The cover had been torn off, but Ignacio still remembered it clear as day. It had been a vibrant drawing of two young men smiling before an inky-black locomotive. Ignacio hadn’t seen this book since before his mother died. She had read the peculiar fable to him on nights his father was away because Father loathed fantastical tales about the gods of old. He claimed it was blasphemous to our true god, the crown.
Ignacio had thought this book had been lost to him for good. Not a single shop in Costa Mayor sold such stories any longer. If a work wasn’t in praise of King Amadeo, it was forbidden. As were most vices, like alcohol consumption, gambling, and other illicit affairs, unless you were part of the court or the Blackbirds.
Dogs barked outside.
Ignacio quickly placed the book back. There was no time to reminisce.
He started for the desk but stopped when the rubbish bin caught his attention. The metal basket was filled with crumpled parchment. Ignacio quickly snatched a wad of paper from the top of the pile and flattened it.
His eyebrows flew up in confusion.
It was a flyer for a traveling circus.Carnival Fantástico.
He’d heard the name many times over the years. Boys from school dared each other to climb the fences that lined the perimeters whenever it suddenly showed up outside of town, but the guards were good at finding anyone who hadn’t paid the entry fee. Authentic magic was rumored to exist within the carnival. His bunkmate at cadet training swore he saw a man fly there once.
Ignacio didn’t believe in magic, but there must have been something strange at play because the carnival was the one place the king and his men never touched.
Scratching his head, he flipped the paper over.
Héctor,
Please come and see me.
“Héctor?”Ignacio whispered. No one ever called his father by his first name. Even when his mother was alive, she used honorifics.
Ignacio grabbed a few more crumpled flyers and smoothed them out.
Héctor,
We need to speak.
Héctor,
We have business to attend to. Don’t be such a wet blanket. Come to Carnival Fantástico. It is magnificentindeed.
Héctor,
The carnival will be stopping near your home on the 16th of March. Will I see you then?
The sixteenth? Ignacio checked the clicking timepiece on the desk. That was tonight.
Héctor,
