The clouds had cleared up a bit, revealing the yellow half-moon hanging heavy in the sky, cold, white stars surrounding it. Cortez looked at the copper ring on her finger and for the first time in a year, felt something that was not anger or misery.
Fidel had left the Brotherhood. He'd chosen her.
So where in the names of the gods was he and why had he never found her? He was the only one who knew she had planned to travel to Verde for a time; he should have been able to find her. What had happened? How had those blue-blooded bastards captured him?
No one captured them. Of all the Brothers of the Black Rose, she and Fidel had been the most deadly. The Black Princesa and the Dagger. What had Fidel been doing that he had been so careless?
Only one way to find out, unfortunately. Cortez kicked her horse into motion and rode off into the night, through the cobblestone streets of the city and out onto the more poorly paved roads beyond. Eventually, stone gave way to dirt as she left the city well behind.
Cortez rode until she could no longer keep her eyes open, and veered from the road to go deeper into the woods to find a relatively safe place to sleep. She had planned to spend her night in a comfortable bed after a night of good food and drink. If she had known what was coming, she might have planned her night better. Nothing created problems like too little sleep.
Stifling a sigh, she tended her horse and laid out her bedroll. After a hasty supper of dry rations, she wrapped up in her cloak and fell asleep to thoughts of Fidel.
When she woke, bright sunlight was slipping through the heavy foliage. Grimacing, she stood up and took her bearings. As hard as she had ridden through the night, she couldn't have been far from the royal capital, Rosa.
She did not even want to think about the challenge of breaking into Rosa Palace. There would be time enough to give herself that headache after she reached the city. Leading her horse further into the woods, Cortez found a brook. After taking a piss and washing her hands and face in the water, she pulled dried meat and fruit from her saddlebags and mounted up, eating as she led the horse back to the road and on toward the capital.
The journey was uneventful, thankfully. More often than not, she was harassed by bandits at least once every time she travelled that road. But all she met that time was farmers and merchants headed to market. If not for the reasons behind the journey, she would have been in a good mood.
Rosa was a beautiful city, the whole of it made of pale gray stone that had stood the test of years save in a few patches here and there. When the rest of the world succumbed to the terrible destruction wrought by the Basilisk, Rosa had stood strong.
Cortez reached the great drawbridge that led into the royal capital and dismounted, leading her horse across it and joining the throng of people headed inside the towering walls. Inside, the city was a writhing, teeming labyrinth. The houses and shops were all built of gray stone, but that gray was periodically broken by temples of black or white marble.
Slowly making her way through the crowded streets, she finally reached the inn she sought: The Thorny Branch. Passing through the archway, she went to hand her horse off to the stable and headed inside to get a room.
The innkeeper startled when their eyes met. "Blood and bone! If my eyes do not deceive me—we heard you were dead or gone."
"Gone, but not forever," Cortez said, amused. "Who is saying I am dead? I will correct them."
Laughing, the innkeeper clapped her on the shoulder and then said, "Well, welcome back. Be wanting a room, I'd imagine? We have your back corner open, as it happens. I'll send up a bath and food, you look as underfed as ever."
"Thanks, Tio," Cortez said with a smile and pressed coins into his hand.
"Where's that handsome fellow of yours?"
Cortez mustered a smirk and said, "A question I am attempting to answer, as it happens." She walked off as Tio laughed, climbing the stairs and heading all the way back to the room there. Tio would send the key up with the food.
She dropped her saddlebags at the foot of the bed then moved to the single small window on the far wall. It looked down on the yard where a couple of footmen were sharing a cigarette, standing by a rain barrel and laughing about something.
Moving away from the window, Cortez began to strip off her outermost layer of clothing, piling it all neatly on the bed. From her saddlebags she drew out fresh clothes and laid them out as well. By the time she was done, a knock came at the door.
Old habits had her reaching reflexively for the dagger at her belt as she went to the door. She kept it there while servants filed in with a tub, hot water, and a tray of food. Thanking them, handing over coins, Cortez locked the door again once they had gone. She sat and began to eat, rapidly decimating a plate heaped with spicy beans and rice. The dark beer went down even faster.
Cortez locked the door, then stripped off the rest of her clothes and sat down in the tub. As much as she would have loved to linger, baths a rare luxury as frequently as she traveled, she had work to do. Picking up a scrap of flannel and a chunk of cheap, rough soap, she began to scrub dirt and sweat away, raking her fingers through her short hair.
Standing up in the tub, she used the bucket of water that had been left nearby to rinse off. Stepping out of the soapy, dirty water, she used another, larger piece of fabric to dry off, examining the dozens of scars across her body. The Brotherhood of the Black Rose had not taken to calling her 'the Black Princesa' on a whim. It was as much about her ability to escape death as it was for all the deaths she had caused.
Cortez moved to the bed and quickly dressed in black breeches, black stockings, and her heavy, knee-high boots, lacing them up and tucking the extra length into the boots. Next she pulled on a black shirt followed by a high-collared waistcoat that also served as light armor. When that was done, she shrugged into a plain, hip-length jacket that was also more substantial than it appeared and secreted a few weapons as well.
Last she strapped on her sword belt, making certain the sword was settled comfortably at her left hip. Ready to face Rosa, she headed downstairs and back out into the bustle of the city that never closed its eyes.
Her first stop was the candlelight district, which was very different from the candle makers' street. Windows in the candlelight district glowed with warm, colorful light—blue, green, red, violet, and far besides, every color indicating a different pleasure.
Walking up to a building with blue-lit windows, Cortez leaned on the wide ledge of an enormous window where three women lounged artfully. They smiled when they saw Cortez, the nearest woman leaning down to kiss her briefly. "Clear evening, big sister."
"Clear evening, little sisters," Cortez replied. "How's business?"
"Slow," said another one of the women. "How about you?"
Cortez gave a half-smile. "Fast. Got any gossip for me?" She placed five silver coins on the ledge. "Particularly about bloodwork."
"Nasty business, but you'd know that better than us," the third woman said, and Cortez noticed her eyes had the distant look of a dream-chaser. Pity, that, but too many whores used dream smoke to hide from their lives. Sometimes Cortez thought it might have been the wiser option. Certainly her choices had been foolish. "I haven't heard much, but all I ever hear these days is 'Yeah, do you like that big, fat cock?'"
"I see the conversation has not improved," Cortez said dryly.
The first woman rolled her eyes. "Does it ever? Witty customers are so rare, it's a pity. What sort of bloodwork rumors are you chasing, Corazon?"
"Anything you've got. I'm not sure what I'm looking for yet, only that I'll know it when I hear it."
"Hmm," said the second woman. "There really isn't much. I did hear that Spider and his little shadow died trying for the impossible kill. They say the reward for that is up to the sky, though nobody knows who can afford to pay such a sum. It seems a little high even for the Brotherhood to put up. It will be a few months before someone else gets desperate enough to try for it again." She shrugged. "Otherwise, I think a merchant was poisoned, a priest had his throat slit and a couple of unknowns were found in an alleyway at the end of the street. The usual."
The first woman grimaced. "The gray city is as red as ever."
Cortez nodded in agreement, but said nothing. Given how much red she had added to the city with her own hands, she really had no right to say anything. "Does the name Jorge mean anything to you?" All three women froze; even the drugged woman appeared suddenly less dazed. Cortez eyed them. "What?
"Bad eyes, that one," the first woman said. "Even you would have trouble there, Corazon."
"The last person I spoke to knew the name, but had no real information to bind to him. What do you know that he doesn't?"
The women all shrugged, and the first one said, "He hasn't been in Rosa for a long time, but there's only one Jorge we all remember. Never knew what he did, only what he liked in bed. He only visited the red houses, and he left two bits and a bird so broken they can't whore anymore. Like I said: bad eyes on that one. They won't stone you, but they'll stop you, sure enough."
"I see," Cortez said softly. She added another couple of coins. "Thanks for the help. You birds be careful."
"We always are. Tell Fidel to take better care of you."
Cortez smiled, ignoring the ache in her chest, and kissed each of them in parting. "Farewell."
Slipping away, she headed higher up into the city to begin the next stage of her job: finding suitable soldiers and servants to bribe for information. The last time someone had bothered to count, thirty-one assassins had tried and failed to kill the Basilisk Prince.
To the best of her knowledge, no one had ever tried to kidnap him. It was something the Order of the White Rose was always poised to do, but she had not yet heard if they had another one of their mad restoration schemes in place. She was not certain what to think of men who hired the best assassin in the country—well, former best assassin—to execute a kidnapping.
She only knew that if they had killed Fidel, she would remind them why all of Piedre feared the Black Princesa.
Dario was drunk. Lately, drunk was a near constant state. In fact, he was having an increasingly difficult time remembering when drunk had not been his permanent state. He had tried going back to sober, taking up new work, and acting as if he had moved on with his life.
The efforts were doomed to failure, however, because he most definitely had not moved on. He never would. His brother, his first lover, was dead, and his remaining lover had thrown him out. Culebra had phrased it nicely enough with the 'don't deserve you' and 'be happy somewhere else' bits, but Dario knew when he was no longer good enough. Granito had been the keystone. Without him it had all tumbled down.
He took another long drink of his spiced, honey-sweetened wine, willing the pleasant, fuzzy feeling to return and banish all the memories plaguing him. Better to be drunk and useless than sober and remember all the reasons he was useless anyway.
Swatting away a couple of flies, he went back to staring out across the landscape. His little cabin sat at the top of a hill, the village off to the west and nothing but forest and mountains to the east. If he traveled that way for seven and a half days, he would reach Rosa. The palace guards would let him in and nobody would impede him on his way to Culebra's room. They would probably be happy to see him, given that he and Granito had been the only ones who could make Culebra smile.
Except he couldn't. Not anymore. Not alone. Culebra didn't want just him. Alone he just was not good enough and that cut almost as deeply as losing Granito and Culebra had. He had thought love was supposed to be enough to endure anything. If that was not true, then what was the point? But if it was true, then it meant they had all never really been in love. Dario guzzled wine to drown that heartbreaking thought.
He'd been dismissed months ago, but it still cut so deep that it may as well have been yesterday. Dario took another swallow of wine and let his head fall to thunk against the door frame.
There were things he needed to do. Clean the cabin. Clean himself. Start living again. Just the idea of it made him desperate for more wine, and he greedily downed several more gulps.
He did not want to live a new life. He wanted Culebra. Wanted to see him, sit with him, fuck him, and curl up around him as they slept. Remember Granito with him because he was the only other person in the world to know what it was like to be in love with Granito. Two would never be the same as three, but two was still so much better than one.
One was depressing. They should be together. But Culebra had sent him away.
Eyes blurring, he finished the bottle he was drinking and threw it into the grass with its brothers then clambered to his feet and went inside to get another. Stumbling back to the doorway, holding onto the door frame for balance, he slowly stepped back outside and set the bottle on the ground just outside the door.
He then made his unsteady way over to the woods that circled around half the cottage and unlaced his breeches, pulling out his cock to take a long piss. Lacing his breeches back up, he returned to the house and dropped down beside his wine. Uncorking it, he took a generous swallow and then looked out over the immense, dark forest.
Years and years ago, he and Granito had traveled through that forest alone, determined to find more than a little village where they would never amount to anything. They'd joined the army and worked their way to the royal guard, determined to someday climb the ranks all the way to the top. They were good, they knew they were; they had not climbed out of their peasant beginnings because they were mediocre.
All that changed the day they saw Prince Culebra, the mysterious, feared, and oft whispered about Basilisk Prince. The rumors did the fact absolutely no justice. He was not terrifying, only a sad, lonely boy. He was not evil, only scared. He was certainly beautiful, but he was also breathtaking. Sitting in the garden, playing with the dozen or so snakes coiled around him, he had seemed far too exotic to be real.