The Rigidity of Whales

The sharp jerk backward emptied my lungs all at once.

"Slower, for God's sake!" I blundered out, swallowing the air that wouldn't quite go in.

The girl holding the strings gave such a violent start that the hemp ribbon almost slipped from her fingers. Her knuckles were white and the freckles on her nose were squashed with terror. It was no wonder: I was supposed to have been burning with fever for three days in that bedchamber smelling of dry thyme burned in braziers, melted wax, starched sheets, and the salty breeze rising from the citadel's cliffs.

I expected the unbearable beep of my cell phone alarm in my tiny apartment in Chapinero. I expected the roar of the TransMilenio grinding to a halt on Caracas Avenue and the smell of reheated coffee from the diner urn. Instead, I got a rib cracking beneath a textile armor that looked designed by a personal enemy.

[Inventory: Raw silk corset with whalebone boning. Protection level: zero against daggers, critical against autonomous breathing. Status: suffocating.]

"M-my lady Violante," the maid stammered, taking two steps back with her gaze fixed on my eyelashes, as if expecting fangs to sprout. "The doctor said the leeches hadn't drawn the black bile... that you wouldn't wake until the waning moon."

"Well, tell the doctor to find another trade. Or better yet, loosen this contraption before I break my sternum."

The girl didn't move. She stayed nailed to the cold flagstones, with glassy eyes and a fine tremor in her chin that reminded me of stray cats when it rains over the roofs of Teusaquillo.

"What is your name?" I asked.

"C-Caterina, my lady."

"Good, Caterina. Let out the bottom lace two notches. I'm not going to bite you. Yet."

She gave a clumsy tug, easing the pressure right at the diaphragm. The air rushed in like a swallow of ice-cold water, but the relief didn't last. Outside, in the corridor, came the metallic snap of two halberds crashing against the granite, followed by the whining screech of a forged iron bolt whose hinges had been welded shut by the sea mist's rust.

"Lady Moncada is coming," Caterina whispered, and this time the tremor dropped all the way to her knees.

The side service door, camouflaged behind a tattered tapestry showing a faded deer hunt, cracked open with a muffled groan.

It wasn't Sibila de Moncada.

A broad-shouldered boy with an unfriendly face, a smear of rye flour crossing his left cheek and breeches full of wool lint, poked his head in. He carried a coarse burlap sack under his arm that gave off a miraculous aroma: toasted butter, fermented dough, and fresh lemon zest.

Damián Sanchis entered sideways, closing the door with his heel.

"Still alive?" Damián asked, not bothering to bow. "Down in the lower kitchens they were already playing dice for your rings."

"Still alive and in a very bad mood, thanks for asking."

Damián let out a snort that kicked up a white speck from his doublet and tossed me something wrapped in a clean rag.

"Here. It's still hot."

I unwrapped it carefully. It was a thick, warm butter biscuit, lightly stained with black ash from the lower oven. It had the grainy, buttery texture of freshly baked sweet bread. I took a bite without hesitation; the sugar crunched between my molars, mixing with the bitter taste of a licorice shaving Damián had smuggled into the dough.

"Is there any sugar left in the old storeroom?" Damián asked, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

"No," I said with my mouth half full. "Caterina says the gatehouse guards ate it all on Tuesday."

"Damn brutes. They don't even have the decency to sweeten their aguardiente."

Chewing brought my pulse back to the earth.

Through the leaded transom windows high up on the wall you couldn't see the sky, only a dying light of continuous rain that dyed the floating dust of the cupboards a leaden gray. Down below, the sea roared, crashing against the rocks like a caged beast.

Damián scratched the back of his neck, leaving a grayish streak on his own hair.

"Sibila was here two hours ago," he said, lowering his tone. "She brought her notary. That old guy with the wet dog face who stinks of sour wine and old parchment. They were checking the Albalat account books. He says that since you're on your last legs, the regency of the fief and the keys to the keep pass to the Moncada council today at noon."

"And the trial?" I asked.

"Still on. Only now they won't bother carrying you out on a stretcher. Sibila convinced the jurors of Peñafiel that the block in the square is too merciful for a traitor, but that the law requires keeping to schedule."

"How considerate."

"She fears your brother more than you, but your brother is on a galley three weeks away by sail if the wind helps," Damián added, shrugging. "You're alone on this board, Violante. And the main square has no back exits."

I swallowed the last piece of the biscuit, feeling the ashes scrape my throat.

"Nobody teaches you how to negotiate with an executioner when your greatest diplomatic achievement was surviving a traffic jam on Seventh Avenue."

Damián blinked, furrowing his brow as if I were speaking ancient Greek.

"What the hell is a seventh?"

"A dreadful avenue full of yellow carriages spitting black smoke," I replied, brushing crumbs from my skirts. "Forget it. Delirium things."

Caterina had retreated against the cedar chest, holding a stiff-bristled brush as if it were standard-issue armor.

I stood up. My legs felt like sacks of wet sand and the corset drove its ends right under my floating ribs every time I tried to take a long step. I walked slowly toward the dim corner, skirting a rolled-up rug that smelled of marine dampness.

There was the mirror.

An oval slab of silvered metal, clouded by saltpeter and set in a moth-eaten walnut frame.

I wiped a drop of cold sweat from my temple and looked at myself.

There was no trace of my round cheeks or the horn-rimmed glasses I used to leave on the nightstand next to the rent receipt. The reflection gave back a jawline sharp as a butcher's knife, high, pale cheekbones that looked carved from dirty marble, and dark, almond-shaped eyes charged with an aristocratic fury that wasn't mine but now inhabited behind my forehead.

Violante de Albalat.

The very one who, according to the game I finished out of sheer boredom three days before the collapse, ended up with her head in a wicker basket in front of the cathedral.

I did the mental math.

Three months.

Ninety exact days for the steel blade to fall upon the flagstones of the main square, unless I learned to play by the rules of a world that didn't have a pause button.