“Do you have a secret name?” she asked.
His arm stilled, the glass freezing in midair. He placed it down, carefully, on the table. “Do not ask silly questions,” he told her, his tongue whip-hard.
“Then I’ll ask a smart one,” she said, irritated by his scalding tone, hotter than the coffee they were drinking. “How will we find your cousin? The city is large.”
“We will let him find us. As I’ve explained, he is fond of pretty young women he can seduce. You will do for bait.”
He looked at her with a certainty that would accept no excuses, the certainty of a god before a mortal, yet she felt compelled to protest. Casiopea had a gap between her two front teeth and heavy-lidded eyes; neither trait had ever been declared attractive. The papers were full of ads for whitening creams that would yield an “irresistible” face. She was dark and made no effort to rub lemons on her skin to acquire what people said was a more becoming shade.
“You must be joking,” she told him.
“No.”
“You claim he is fond of pretty young women, and I am not a pretty young woman.”
“You have never gazed at your reflection, I suppose,” he replied offhandedly. “Blackest of hair and eyes, black like the x’kau, and as noisy.”
She could tell he wasn’t trying to flatter her; he had remarked on her looks like he might remark on the appearance of a flower. Besides, he’d insulted her in the same breath.
He did not mean it as a compliment. He couldn’t have meant it like that, she thought.
“Even if he’d look at me—”
Hun-Kamé rested a hand flat against the wooden surface of the table.
“Some of my essence drifts in your body. This means some of my magic rests upon your skin, like a perfume. It strikes a strange note, which will surely attract him. The promise of something powerful and mysterious cannot be ignored,” he said.
It puzzled her to imagine death as a perfume that clung to her and, rather than striking the sour note of decay, could be as pleasant as the scent of a rose. But she did not give this too much thought because she was busier summoning her outrage.
“I do not want to be seduced by your cousin,” she countered. “What do you take me for, a woman of ill repute?”
“No harm will come to you. You will lure him, bind him, and I will deal with him,” Hun-Kamé said.
“Bind him? You are mad. How? Won’t he know—”
“Distract him with a kiss, if you must,” he said, sounding impatient. Clearly they had been discussing the point far too long.
“As if I would be going around kissing men at the drop of a hat. You kiss him.”
She stood up and in the process almost toppled the table. Hun-Kamé steadied it and caught her arm, lightning fast. He stood up.
“I am the Supreme Lord of Xibalba, a weaver of shadows. What will you do? Walk away from me? Have you not considered my magic? It would be foolish. Even if you managed it, the bone shard will kill you if I do not remove it,” he whispered.
“Perhaps I should hack off my hand,” she whispered back.
Casiopea realized she should not have said this, alerting him to her knowledge of this exit clause, but she’d spoken without thinking, needled by his haughtiness. She wanted to bring him down a peg, and though it is impossible to humble a god, her youth allowed her to naïvely think it might be done.
“Perhaps. But that would be unkind,” he replied.
His gaze was hard as flint, ready to strike a spark. Despite her outburst of boldness, Casiopea was now forced to lower her eyes.
“It would also be cowardly, considering you gave me your word and pledged your service to me. Though it might merely reflect your heritage: your grandfather was a traitor and a dishonorable man. He knew not the burden of patan, nor its virtue.”
She closed her hands into fists. There was nothing she had in common with her grandfather: it was Martín who inherited all his virtues and his vices. Casiopea liked to believe herself a copy of her father or closer to her mother, even though she did not feel she possessed the woman’s kindness. Like many young people, ultimately she saw herself as a completely new creature, a creation that had sprung from no ancient soils.
“I’m no coward,” she protested. “And when have I pledged anything to you?”
“When we left your town. ‘Very well,’ you said, and accepted me. Is that not a promise?”
“Well, yes…but I meant—”
“To cut your hand off at the first chance?” he asked, taking a step forward, closer to her.
She echoed him, taking a step too. “No! But I’m also no fool to…to blindly do your bidding.”
“I do not consider you a fool, although you do raise your voice louder than an angry macaw,” Hun-Kamé said, gesturing toward their table and its two chairs. His movements were those of a conductor, elegant and precise.
“It might be that, in my haste, I have been crude,” he said. “I do not wish to give you a poor impression. At the same time, I must emphasize that we are both united by regrettable circumstances and must proceed at a quick pace. Had I been given a choice, I would not have inconvenienced you as I have. Yet your assistance is quite necessary, Casiopea Tun.”
On a table nearby, old men shuffled their dominoes with their withered hands, then set down the ivory-and-ebony pieces. She glanced at the game pieces, lost for a moment in the contrasting colors, then looked back at him.
“I’ll help you,” she said. “But I do it because I feel sorry for you, and not…not because you are ‘supreme lord’ of anything.”
“How would you feel sorry for me?” Hun-Kamé asked, incredulous.
“Because you are all alone in the world.”
This time his face wasn’t flint, but basalt, cool and devoid of any menace or emotion, though it was difficult to pinpoint emotions with him. Like the rivers in Yucatán, they existed hidden, under the surface. Now it was as if someone had dragged a stone upon a well, blocking the view. Basalt, unforgiving and dark, that was what the god granted her.
“We are all alone in the world,” he said, and his words were the clouds when they muffle the moon at night, they resembled the earth gone bitter, choking the sprout in its cradle.
But she was too young to believe his words and shrugged, sitting down again, having accepted his invitation. He sat down too. She finished her coffee. The slapping of dominoes against wood and the tinkling of metal spoons against glass around them was music, possessing its own rhythm.