The Eternal World (20 page)

One of Narváez’s lieutenants came from the burned huts at the edge of the village. He and Narváez spoke quietly for several minutes. Simón couldn’t hear the conversation, but he there was no mistaking the anger on Narváez’s face.

Narváez then turned on Simón, his one good eye squinting. “Where is the gold?”

Simón was unprepared for Narváez’s rage. “There is no gold.”

Narváez crossed the ground between them in a few quick steps, his saber at Simón’s throat before the younger man could blink. “You told them there was treasure here. You swore to it.”

“There is—there is treasure,” Simón said, and then stopped. His life was in his commander’s hands now. A twitch of that blade and Simón’s life would spill out all over the ground.

Along with the lives of every man, woman, and child of the Uzita.

He had never intended this. He felt shame and fear and anger. He thought about Shako.

He looked into Narváez’s eye and said, “Find it yourself.”

The look on Narváez’s face was pure murder. For a moment, Simón was certain he was about to die.

Then Narváez withdrew his sword and stepped away. He called to his second-in-command. “Alvar,” he said. “Divide the savages’ food among the men. We will continue into the interior on foot.” He pointed to Simón and his friends. “The traitors stay here. Strip them of weapons and armor and supplies.”

Aznar wailed as if stabbed in the gut. “No,” he said. “You cannot abandon me here. I was loyal! I told you! I came to you!”

“You repeated his lies,” Narváez spat back. “You gave me nothing.”

Aznar began to protest, but the nearest guard clubbed him hard with the hilt of his sword. Aznar went down to the ground, gasping for air.

“Tie them up,” Narváez ordered. “If they resist at all, kill them.”

He looked at Simón one last time. “You kneel to a savage? Then you can rot here with the rest of them.”

FOR THE REST OF
the day, Simón and his friends watched, bound and seated on the ground, among the buzzing flies that feasted on the dead bodies of the Uzita. The other conquistadors swept through the remains of the village, gathering what little food remained in the storehouses. They took fresh water from the nearby stream and packed the supplies on the horses.

By midafternoon, the expedition was ready to move on. Narváez ordered every man to march past Simón and the others, both as a torment to the disgraced and a warning to those who remained.

Aznar did not stop wailing the entire time, no matter how often he was kicked or punched. “Please,” he screamed to Padre Suárez as the priest passed by. “For the love of God.”

Suárez averted his eyes. The other soldiers were stone-faced as they walked away into the jungle. Simón knew they were hungry as well as angry, and eight fewer men meant eight fewer mouths to feed.

The others were stoic, but Simón could feel their fear and tension. They blamed him for this. They were right. This was all his fault.

Despite that, Simón was calm. He had been sitting among corpses for the better part of a day. The fat black flies landed on his face and, unable to brush them away, he no longer even flinched as they bit him.

In his mind, a part of him had already died. A piece of his soul was gone. He had lost everything: the woman he loved, followed shortly by his rank, his position, and his few possessions.

His body, however, went on living. As his mind turned over his new circumstances, he forced himself to see the advantages.

For the first time in his life, he was truly free. Free of expectations, free of obligations, free of the chains of family and honor and duty and loyalty. Free of anything but his ambitions.

As soon as he was certain Narváez and the rest of the expedition were well away from here, he would make the others see as well.

They had been left alone with the greatest treasure any man had ever known. And Simón would make certain they used it right.

He had intended none of this. But he would take the responsibility.

This was the New World. His world.

IT TOOK SIMÓN THE
best part of an hour to squirm out of his bonds. His wrists were slick with blood by the time he got the ropes off. He didn’t feel the pain.

He released the others, then convinced them to follow him. He promised food and shelter. They didn’t want to move at first, but they had been baking in the sun all day, and whatever anger or misgivings they had, they still got up and walked behind him. At this point, he was their only option.

Aznar never shut up. He implored them to go after Narváez, and then threatened to go himself when no one listened. It was an empty threat. He hurried after them as they kept trudging through the tall grass and among the trees. Finally, he contented himself with cursing Simón, an endless muttering stream of promises of hellfire and damnation and insults.

It made Simón grind his teeth, but he kept on walking, even as the sun began to set. He knew the way from here. He could find it, even in the dark.

They reached the caverns by the light of the moon. The others were tired and hungry, their eyes hollow. The reality of their situation was beginning to impress itself on them, Simón knew. They had been marked as traitors, abandoned an ocean away from home, and left for the savages.

He led them into the cave. They followed, because they had nowhere else to go.

They stopped at the edge of the pool. The blue glow reflected over all their faces, and Simón saw the fear there. Good. They were not dead yet. They were not completely broken, because fear was the only appropriate response for something as otherworldly as this.

Aznar, of course, was the first to find his voice again.

“What is this?” he demanded. “Is this some kind of pagan sorcery? Is this the work of that savage whore? Was she a witch as well? Answer me, Simón! What kind of abomination in the eyes of God—”

Simón hit him in the face.

Aznar fell down hard. He looked up at Simón and struggled to rise.

Simón hit him again. And did not stop. Despite the pain in his arms and the bone-deep exhaustion, he hit him again and again and again.

The others watched. Perhaps they saw the demon lurking behind Simón’s eyes then, or perhaps he was simply doing what they’d wanted to do for a long time.

Whatever the reason, Simón stopped beating Aznar only when he could no longer lift his fists.

He looked at the others. They looked back, wary and anxious or dull-eyed and apathetic. It made no difference to him. As long as they were watching.

Aznar lay on the ground, blood bubbling through split lips and broken teeth.

Simón went to the pool and took one of the ceremonial bowls from the stack by the pool, just as he’d seen Shako do. He filled it from the pool and held it to Aznar’s lips, almost tenderly.

Aznar struggled slightly, but there was no power to it. He was half-dead.

Simón forced him to swallow.

Then he drank deep from the same bowl himself.

Aznar sputtered. Beneath the congealing blood, the broken bones of his face shifted. The bruises softened, cleared, and then faded. The broken skin closed and healed.

“Holy Christ,” one of them whispered.

Now they all looked at him with only one expression: fear. Even Aznar, who sat up, blinking, not comprehending what had just happened. They all feared him.

That was good. That was a start. He needed them to listen.

“This is the treasure I promised you,” he said. “This is where our new lives begin. We are reborn here and now. This is the Water. The Water is Life.”

Simón’s fists and arms no longer hurt. His hands were whole and unbroken when he passed the bowl.

They all drank.

NARVÁEZ NEVER MADE IT
back to Spain, or anywhere. He wandered, lost in Florida, until starvation forced him and his soldiers to melt down their weapons and armor to make parts for boats. A hurricane drowned the would-be ruler of Florida somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. The surviving members of the expedition washed up on an island that would one day be named Galveston. From there, they made their way back to land, before trekking on foot to Spanish settlements in Mexico. Of the eight hundred men who began the expedition, only four survived.

At least, that was the version the history books recorded.

Simón and his conquistadors returned to Tampa Bay, where they found the shipwrecked remains of the two ships. They dragged the timbers onto the beach. They collected rope and damaged sailcloth. They boiled sap from the nearby trees and made pitch.

They worked steadily, morning until night, every day for months.

They made barrels. Hundreds of barrels.

MIRUELO RETURNED WITH THE
fifth ship of the expedition, as he promised Narváez he would, and found them waiting on the beach. At first, it seemed as if Simón and the others were to be captured and chained as deserters.

But Simón convinced Miruelo to speak with him privately. He took him to the place in the jungle they had cleared for their camp. Simón gave him a drink of water and made his offer.

From that moment on, Miruelo was another member of the Council.

They sailed back to Cuba and used Narváez’s credit to begin their real work.

They found the Water made them stronger. Tougher. Smarter. Faster. They never got sick. It was amazing how much of a difference these advantages made, in a world racked with danger and disease.

They began as scavengers, picking over the world’s graveyards. When plagues ran through Valencia, Brazil, and Chile over the next several years, Simón and Sebastian walked through the cities without fear and paid almost nothing for the properties of the dead. When the Thirty Years’ War shattered Europe, they were able to amass a fortune selling food at extortionate rates to the millions left starving by the chaos. They even worked for a time as mercenaries, returning to the field despite wounds that would have killed other men.

Then they became bankers. When the Dutch economy collapsed in 1637, they were there, profiting from the speculation as well as the sudden crash. They could lend money at a fraction of the cost, and make investments that would not pay off for decades, if not longer.

At some point, Max began calling them the Council of the Immortals. He twisted it with irony, as he always did, but the others took it seriously. The name stuck, at least among themselves.

Eventually, they became so rich and owned so much that the rulers came to them, seeking advice, approval, and protection, along with the money they always seemed to need. Simón and the Council were always happy to provide what was asked, for a price. Nothing was ever free.

They used their influence to pull levers and strings behind the curtains of history, to nudge and shove and force the world in the direction they wanted.

It wasn’t easy. They backed the wrong men time and time again, and were often blinded by their prejudices to losses that looked inevitable in hindsight. They didn’t have any love for the British, but Simón was stunned when an only marginally competent general named Washington managed to scrape out a victory for his colonial rebels. Their belief in the natural superiority of the aristocracy put them on the losing side of the French Revolution as well.

It was not long after that when Simón Anglicized his name and began calling himself Simon Oliver. He learned English, and forced the others to do the same.

He still believed he could make the world behave. He could force it to be the paradise he dreamed, given time.

And they had nothing but time.

At least that was how it seemed for almost two centuries.

MIRUELO WAS THE FIRST
of them to die, and the one who taught them the danger of going too long without a drink.

He set out overseas to visit Mexico and manage some of the Council’s holdings there. His ship was caught in a hurricane and blown hundreds of miles off course, delaying him by months. He’d left without any of the Water.

Simon received a report from one of his trusted subordinates a year later that chilled him down to his soul.

By the time Miruelo made port, the letter said, he was barely recognizable. He’d lost all his hair and teeth, his eyes were milky with cataracts, and he was bent nearly in half with arthritis. It had happened within a few weeks on the ship, so quickly that the sailors suspected witchcraft. Miruelo lasted a few more weeks once the ship made land, and then died in his sleep, a shriveled husk of his former self.

But the most frightening thing, to Simon, was what had happened to Miruelo’s mind. It was as if all the experiences of the past century had crushed him under their weight. At one moment, his lieutenant wrote, he would speak in the confident tones of a master pilot, barking out orders on a ship. And in the next he would be weeping like a child for his mother. Most of the time, however, he simply reacted to everything and everyone around him as best he could; he’d become a new, third person with no memory at all.

Simon’s lieutenant was utterly baffled. Simon was not. He wrote back about mysterious diseases that befell longtime sailors, and dismissed all of Miruelo’s desperate pleading for “the Water of Life” as the need of a repentant man to confess his sins before he died.

Simon knew what had really happened. Without the Water, the years they had cheated would come rushing back all at once—and would take their minds as well as their bodies.

From then on, Simon declared that every member of the Council would carry at least a flask of the Water with them at all times. He thought that would be enough.

He didn’t know it at the time, but Miruelo was the only member of the Council who would die peacefully. He didn’t yet know that someone was hunting them.

CHAPTER 22

PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA

NOW

D
AVID WOKE LIKE
a drowning man trying to escape the ocean.

He sucked down air in a huge gasp, kicking and thrashing hard, trying to push himself free of the massive weight that had been crushing him only moments before.

Then he realized, sweating and panting, that he was in a bed.

The details came to him more quickly and sharply than he would have expected. The room was dark but appeared merely gray to his eyes. He felt the high thread count of the sheets; saw the modernist design on the wall; the chunky, faux-custom furniture. Hotel room. Not a cheap one, either.

David saw her in the chair across the hotel room, watching him, her eyes reflecting the dim light like a cat’s.

“Take it easy,” she told him. “We’re in no danger. You’re safe. We have plenty of time.”

With her voice, it came flooding back: the panic; the gunfire; Max, with his cruel smile, stepping calmly from the crowd and leveling the pistol at him—and then the terrible, crushing pain, like someone put a fist through his chest. And the blood. So much blood.

He touched the skin above his heart gingerly. If this were a dream, this is the part where his fingers would come away red and he would remember he was dead.

There was nothing. No blood. He looked down. No wound. Not so much as a scar. He was bathed in sweat, but it was panic rather than pain. He took another moment to run an inventory of himself. Nothing hurt. Nothing ached. Despite the adrenaline pulsing through him, he almost felt as though he could hop out of bed and run a marathon.

“You’re safe,” she said again. “Just breathe.”

He felt his own chest again. Whole and unmarked. “What happened?”

Even in the dim light, he could see the white of her teeth as she smiled. “I think you know,” she said.

“He shot me.”

“Yes.”

“He shot me through the heart. I saw the gun, I felt it, I was dying—”

“Easy. Just breathe.”

“Why?”

“Now, that is a very long story. The short version is you’ve just seen the true face of Simon Oliver and the men around him.”

Words failed David for a moment. “No, I mean—I mean—why?”

“Why are you alive?”

David swallowed. He didn’t really want to think of it like that. But he nodded.

“Because I saved you, David.”

“The Water.”

She nodded. “The Water.”

“What’s going on? Who are you? Who are you really?”

“Hush,” she said. “Your body is healed. Your mind is going to take a little more time to deal with the trauma.”

David realized he was shaking. “The trauma of being dead, you mean.”

“If that’s how you want to put it.”

“I had a great big goddamn hole in my chest where my
heart
was supposed to be, what else am I supposed to call it?”

She just looked at him. He realized he was shouting. He struggled to take a deep breath. Then another. The hotel room smelled like jasmine and jet fuel.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine. As I said. You need a little more time.”

“Can they find us here?” David rubbed his chest again. He was not particularly interested in seeing if he could rise from the dead twice in the same night.

“You’re safe,” she said for the third time. “No one will disturb us here. This hotel charges a great deal for privacy and security. And no one is even looking for us here.”

“All right,” David said. He slid back into the pillows, relaxing a fraction of an inch at a time.

She stood and crossed the room to the bed. He realized she was still wearing what remained of her gown from the party. The scent of cordite and blood still clung to it.

She recognized his discomfort immediately and slid out of the dress, tossing it far across the room. She drew the sheets back and straddled him.

Despite everything, he was already rising to meet her.

Before his mind shut down completely and his body took over, he had one last question. “Who are you?”

She smiled again, but this time it looked sad to him.

“Shako,” she said. “My name is Shako.”

WRAPPED IN THE SHEETS
afterward, sweat cooling on their bodies, she told him the story.

A young Indian girl, Spanish conquistadors, and an impossible secret to keep. An inevitable betrayal. And then slaughter.

“I should have seen it coming,” she said, fingers playing lightly over his chest. “I was young. It was the last time I was young.”