Tulio and Chel were at it again.
I covered my ears for a moment, glad for Altivo. The horse's bulk between my bedroll and theirs did something about the sound. He snored. If you've never heard a horse snore, you ought to count yourself lucky, but compared to Chel's clearly... exaggerated satisfaction, I'd take the equine sinus blockage any time.
He'd be tired of her in a month or two. Or he should be. Tulio's previous record with a single girl was a season, but that was our lovely summer on Ibiza, and even his womanizing had been slowed down by the hot sun and gentle sea. Bonita, Soldedad, Agota, Odalis, Herminia, Dulce... Even the small handful I remembered well enough for a name and a face hadn't held his eye for long.
And he'd never for a moment considered abandoning me for one of them. So the old rules were probably out the window. I hadn't bothered to hate any of them, either.
Except maybe Peppi. I'd definitely hated her. She was the first, and etched indelibly on my memory. Petite thing, rich brown hair and a bright complexion. Dark eyes, crooked nose, missing a tooth. Cute. Not beautiful. I might not have objected if she were really beautiful. It wouldn't have quite been his fault. He'd only been fifteen, after all. (About. Neither of us had any idea what our birthdate might be.) But no, she was just a sweet, cheerful little thing, a cutpurse whose territory hinged on ours and who sang in the same tavern where I worked evenings and slipped Tulio hot meals whenever his father tossed him out.
And so she'd been everything that would have suited him. She'd even liked me, sparing a moment for Tulio's awkward shadow. Unforgivable. That had been my previous low point, twisting my cleaning rags up until they shredded while I watched them make doe-eyes at each other. What could have been more utterly pathetic? Dishwasher and pickpocket, eaten up with jealousy at the sight of kids four years younger than I was sharing the vinegary wine I'd bought them. (Tulio'd already passed me in height, and the day he started needing to shave was the last day anyone ever realized I was his elder.)
What could be more pathetic? How about holding my spare shirt over my head to muffle the sound of the second girl I'd wished misery upon?
I'd tried to emulate him in dealing with women. It was a strange way to be closer to him. For about every three girls willing to swoon over Tulio's dark good looks and cockiness, there was one who found me sufficiently appealing to bed. One and a half figuring in the mandolin. And I often wound up with the ladies whose hearts he'd broken. Those were the best nights, when I could at least tell myself I still could smell him on their skin. I wasn't using perfectly nice girls. They were using me. To forget him. If I needed the opposite, the arrangement was mutually beneficial, wasn't it?
Remembering myself ten years ago, I had always assumed I hadn't offered to sooth Peppi's broken heart because I hadn't thought of it yet. With Chel not ten feet away, though, I had to reassess that guess. I wouldn't touch her any more than I would that little tavern singer. I could share the lack of Tulio, understand why that hurt. It was enough to get past a general distaste for women. But the idea of bedding someone he'd actually wanted? The jealousy would be too much.
He was making a bit of noise now, too. That took some work on the lady's part. I'd heard him through a hundred thin inn walls, or just across a room if we were short on funds. I knew his habits. When Tulio broke his calm, it was nearly over. Snoring horse or not, I lost myself in the sound of him for a moment, letting the image grow in my mind. Shining, lust-dark eyes, soft curls tossed everywhere, scratchy stubble, slim neck, narrow, scarred chest... I realized I was too warm, even for the jungle air, and felt myself blush. I wouldn't, would I?
Well, there wasn't exactly a comfortable cold stream to jump into. Oh, splendid, humiliations galore. I held one hand over my mouth to muffle any giveaway whispers and relieved the unavoidable pressure as quickly as I could.
Damn it all.
***
It rained the next morning. It rained so often that Tulio and I were getting used to it. Chel had been quite invaluable there, teaching the hopeless Europeans to survive in the steamy, hostile wilderness (if you asked Tulio), the tropical, verdant paradise (if you asked me). I could appreciate her for that. Really, I could like her when she wasn't twined around my Tulio. She'd been a useful guide and a flexible bargainer, picking up our supplies and keeping us clear of Cortés. Though she was only guiding us on a day-to-day basis. We'd discussed destinations, but not come to any consensus yet.
I was for looking for Portuguese colonies. I spoke the language pretty well and they wouldn't be looking for us. Tulio was of the opinion that they'd assume a couple of unattached Spaniards were criminals no matter how diplomatic I tried to be or how willing Chel was to remove her top for them—her offer. It was about all she had to contribute to the long term. As long as she was out of her home city, she seemed to be content with our wandering. Which I could understand. My partner and I had been in an immense hurry to get out of our native Toledo once upon a time.
As I brushed Altivo down and Tulio pretended to still be asleep, she got up to pack down our camp. "So, Miguel, you have to vote with me today. We're going to keep following this river, right? Until we hit the ocean? I haven't seen the ocean since I was a little girl." She was more of a morning person than one would expect. For some reason, I tended to assume that the vice-ridden and morally bankrupt liked to sleep in. I sure as hell did.
"I'm fine with the ocean. It's big, and blue, and it's really very appealing if I'm not floating in the middle of it without drinking water." I patted Altivo a few times and went over to help. "Why, does Tulio have another grand scheme?" Why hadn't he told me? Should I just admit I'd lost my partner?
"Pfft, he wants to go straight across land. Thinks we can navigate by the stars or something. I disagree. All rivers go to the ocean." She blew a wet lock of hair out of her face. I noticed she wasn't really dressed, even by Chel's standards, and I hadn't remembered to pretend to care.
"Um, well, it might be nice to take a direct route... I've seen a lot of rivers. Generally full of water. Some fish. We could see some new sights." I wasn't likely to contradict Tulio without good reason. He'd earned his place as the plans guy.
"Oh, come on, it's time to agree with me now." She bumped me with her shoulder. "Do I have to convince you? I'll flirt. I will. Tulio, get your butt out of bed or I'll flirt with Miguel. I'm doing it! Look!" She put one arm around my waist and batted her eyelashes at me. I was mostly confused.
Tulio said something that was muffled, probably because his face was buried in what looked like Chel's… shirtish thing After a moment, he lifted himself up enough to be understood. "There is no flirting with Miguel. He's short and he drinks cheap wine and he subsides on sloppy seconds." He then collapsed into the bedroll again. I threw a clod of dirt at him, but all the accusations were perfectly true.
Ah, but I was an old hand at feigning interest, if I had a reason to. "Chel, have I ever told you about this young lady in Barcelona? Seems she had a drastic weakness for mandolin players."
"And that's where that story stops." Tulio was behind me and yanking my hair, moving with the swiftness only irritation or city guardsmen brought out in the lazy bastard. (Not that I had anything against bastards. Was one myself.) He was no more clothed than Chel, and I immediately brought my attention to breakfast. Sitting next to the slow, muddy water while the lovers bickered was calming. And it gave me the cover of a small stand of bushes to steal some extra glances at Tulio. I'd seen him naked a thousand times and it was pretty mundane. The fact of sneaking made it a very different experience.
My fishing net was more of Chel's handiwork, and it did require at least a little of my attention. Encouraged a certain moderation. I could only look every so often. Tulio lighting the fire under a leaky tarp, Tulio kissing along Chel's spine while she rolled up the bedding, Tulio remembering to dress again (damn). I had a few small fish by then and brought them over to roast. We ate our way through them very quickly. We'd both learned the pleasures of breakfast now that we weren't hung over most mornings. No fault of our own, of course. There wasn't much wine in the depths of the jungle.
"You're a lousy fisherman, Miguel." Chel stuck her tongue out at me. "I think we're near another inn. Real breakfast there?"
"I'm in favor of a non-Miguel breakfast." Tulio's cheerful taunting normally ranged from uninteresting to comfortable, but everything rankled at the moment. Nothing was handy to throw at him, though, so I hopped up onto Altivo. They both raised their eyebrows at me. "And why do you get to ride the horse?" Tulio asked as he picked at his teeth with a fish bone.
"Because Altivo loves me best. Also, I didn't get to fuck anyone last night." Chel nodded immediately. Glad she found it fair. With all our camping supplies also loaded up, only one person could ride at once, no matter how cozy the second was willing to be. I wasn't giving up my spot. I felt about twelve years old, but sometimes being petty was the only way to feel better.
They chatted and argued and I joined in most of the time, though I had to duck an awful lot. Throwing stuff was an effective way to end an argument when all your missiles were wet and slimy and mildly suspect, and being the bastard who'd taken the horse (and figured out the throwing stuff trick), I was the usual target. At least it wasn't far to the village.
I'd imagined the kind of little settlements one saw in woodcuts of Darkest Africa, naked savages gathered around tents of skin, but it seemed El Dorado was far from the only civilized place in the New World. There were traders, roads, taxes... Every inconvenience of daily life back home, but a different set of diseases and horrifying heathen temples instead of nice, wholesome churches. I missed churches more than I'd admit. At least the only dead guy in a church was disguised as bits of bread, rather than sprawling everywhere with his heart and eyes conspicuously missing.
Chel brought us to one of the small trading outposts, an inn, a selection of small houses, and a farm or two. Tulio was convinced that Cortés would find us if we tried the roads, and I rather preferred our hiking through the jungle, so we emerged rather comically, I thought, wet and dripping from the trees and onto a wide, well-maintained path where the few other travelers seemed tidy and organized. They gave us a wide berth, which was for the best.
Our dear guide had no trouble. Chel's father, she'd explained to us, had been a trader of sorts, and he was the reason she knew her way around so well. And the natives didn't seem to have any difficulty with a woman who spoke for her party. My sister would have liked this place. Tulio tended to keep quiet, his perfect lack of pride letting him remain unmoved when Chel referred to him as her servant.
I was the difficulty. Tulio was the perfect specimen of dark, Spanish manhood and all, and even in the murky forest depths, he was tanning dark enough to be unremarkable here when he kept his head down. There was nothing to be done for blond hair, though. And though Chel had suggested simply shaving it, I'd still stick out like a sore thumb, even were I willing to sacrifice my vanity's crowning glory. My skin wouldn't darken. I just turned pink. The solution was to have me wear a large, hooded poncho thing of sorts and hope no one cared enough to ask why.
Altivo, we'd discovered, was even trickier to explain than I was, and we were sure to run into an inn where rumors of Cortés had been before us. So we stopped a distance from the outskirts of one farm. I stayed with Altivo and told him jokes, sang him ballads, and whined of my sorrows. The other two went to the inn.
I had been biding my time with the horse for under an hour when Chel returned. Alone. That was odd. I rose from the tree stump I'd been sitting on, concerned. "Where's Tulio?"
"He discovered a gambling table. Don't worry, I told him how to cheat."
"We might still need to rescue him. He gets cocky." I nodded and sat back down. "So why aren't you with him?"
"I can't decide to chat with a traveling companion without being interrogated?" She smiled beatifically. I raised an eyebrow. She nodded. "I need to ask you some stuff. Tulio tries, but you're more, um, observant? If I'm going to Spain or wherever, I want to know what I'm walking into."
"Oh." Made sense. I considered. "Well, what about? We'll probably put down roots for a while in a port town. Good place to move money around. Though Tulio could tell you more about the business end of things..."
"Heh, no, that I could figure out for myself." She patted my head. "It's cute how you both think you're smart, though. No, I wanted to ask about this marriage thing, first of all."
I acted exactly as though blood still ran unfrozen through my veins and there was no black, sparking flame of hatred nestled in my core. "Hmm, well, I suppose you'd have to marry him. Frankly, we're lucky if no one tries to sell you to a circus even if you're married. Maybe we should all join a circus. I'll juggle, you can ride around on Altivo, and we'll bill Tulio as the world's sulkiest man." I gestured grandly with each pronouncement, envisioning playbills, lights, adoring fans.
"…Miguel, are you using your imagination again? We've talked about that."
"No. I'm a serious person. Uh, well, anyway. Tulio, uh, wouldn't be the first man to marry a native girl, so you two would need a nice, out of the way house and to throw around enough gold to make yourselves too respectable to bother." I thought for a moment. "Oh, well, maybe you should be circumspect, actually, try to attract the least attention, not let anyone know you have means. Pity can calm down a lot of resentment, let me tell you!" I had a horrible realization as I spoke. I had let myself fall out of the life I was trying to help her plan. And nothing for that but to plunge forward. Once you jumped off the docks, climbing out again just meant your clothes would be wet and the constabulary would be there. "Maybe a farm would be better than a port town, and you could ride off for scams and gambling whenever the cows were doing well. I've heard Galicia is very-"
Chel covered my mouth. "Miguel. Honey." She smirked at me. "I wanted to know how getting married works in Spain."
"Oh." Right. Right then. "You go into a church, which is a big pretty building that smells like incense and where God takes requests, and you talk to the priest, who doesn't decapitate people almost ever over in Spain, and you make a donation to his beer fund, and he says the magic words and you get to be married." I'd seen the affair handled twice, once when my mother had talked Ramón into marrying her and once when Tulio had talked a nun into hiding the two of us under an alter for a day. The first time I'd been five and the second Tulio had been half in my lap due to close quarters, but I was sure I remembered the gist.
"Well, that's stupid." Chel tried to lean on Altivo, who moved. She managed not to fall into a pile of wet leaves, something I wouldn't have managed. "Wonder why he even asked. But what's this I hear about me not getting to own anything?"
In some ways it was wonderful listening to her, finding out what might be different that I'd never even considered. "Well, legally, but what do we ever do legally? I'm pretty sure it's against the law in Spain for me and Tulio to take a piss. Special law. The Miguel and Tulio law."
"And I'm just supposed to be Tulio's wife and give him all my stuff?" She looked more confused than put out. Strange to think of Spain as a peculiar, foreign place with perplexing customs. "Ah, whatever, I don't even know why he asked about the wedding thing."
He asked. Why did I get the sense it hadn't been just pragmatic? Tulio actually wanted to marry her, didn't he? Settle down at a nice room over a brothel, raise a pack of kids to take on the burdens of loaded dice and breaking into wine cellars. I just hoped Uncle Miguel would be in this story. I managed a smile for Chel. "You know, I'll have to introduce you to my little sister."
"Neat, does she have your funny monkey hair?"
I'd objected to that until she'd pointed out the monkey she thought I looked like. It was sort of cute. "No, Rosalía takes after her dad. Hers is brown and likes sticking in every direction. Out to here if she doesn't braid it." I held my hands a few inches out from my head.
"How did your father die, honey?" She put her hand on my knee. Usually she only did things like that to annoy Tulio. I forgot to be flustered and she didn't seem to mind.
"Mine? No idea. Might still be alive. Mom was almost sure he was the blacksmith two streets over, but every time I tried to ask he'd threaten to brand me in places you shouldn't mention to a kid. Also might have been a Gypsy tinker she met around the right time." I'd inherited her deplorable taste in men. "Rosalía came along after Ramón made an honest woman of her." I stopped. Chel wore an expression I hadn't seen before. "What?"
"You didn't have a dad?" The look on her face made me think of El Dorado. The place had had its troubles, what with a homicidal magician-priest, but no one had really seemed hungry or alone. Not a place where a girl would be tossed out on the street after her own uncle seduced her to turn into a very drunk prostitute, raise her first surviving kid alone, marry a thief who'd turned murderer and left her with a daughter when he hanged, and walk into the Tagus river one morning and not walk out.
"Mom took care of us," was all I said to Chel. There were things she didn't need to know. Tulio was the only one who knew it all. Even Rosalía had been told a gentler story. "So, sister. You'd like her. She's a pirate."
Chel looked impressed. "On the water and everything?"
"On the ocean, for real and true. I'm not sure if she's with the same ship as when I saw her last." We'd owe each other a lot of stories when we managed to meet again.
"And they let her do that?" Chel looked at me with wide, batting eyes and spoke sugary tones. Poisoned sugar. "Even though she's got girly parts?"
"Hmm, well, I think the last one who tried to stop her was tossed overboard in shark-infested waters." She'd pulled him back out, but the truth shouldn't get in the way of a good story. "I'm sure she'd be a better help to you than I would. If nothing else, she's better with a sword. Ask Tulio."
"She fought Tulio?"
"No. Well, yes, several times, but not with a sword. Usually she tries to hit him with a brick." My little sister was privy to certain issues surrounding me and my partner and felt the best solution to my hopeless affection was blunt force trauma. Terrible Rosie was a dear girl, but a little simpleminded. Some would say it runs in the family. "She and Tulio together fought a small garrison in Huelva. I'd have helped, but we only had the two swords and someone had to sneak out back with the loot."
"Was it good loot?"
"Mostly pastries, actually. We ate pretty well for the next week. I said it wasn't heavy enough to be a rich woman's luggage, but Tulio still complained." I shrugged. "Oh, I'm not boring you, am I? I've definitely wandered away from the question again."
"Nope." Chel gave an exaggerated shrug. She was usually pretty economical in her movements, which always seemed odd to me after so much time with Tulio, the only person on earth more given to waving his arms around than me. "Go easy on yourself, Miguel. You two don't talk much about home. They're cute stories." Only Chel would think attempting to duel five armed guards from inside a stable while I snuck churros out the back was cute. But maybe only I would think it was boring.
I liked this idea, though. I liked stories. "You want to hear about the first time we were arrested? Er, together."
"Maybe later." The rain picked up viciously before she could go on, the way it tended to around here. Chel said something that was probably very rude, though I couldn't hear it over the drumming. Being up on Altivo all morning I'd gotten pretty wet already from bumping into branches, so I closed my eyes to avoid any debris and hummed a bit, ignoring the squall. It'd be over in a minute.
Ignoring it until Chel ran over and pulled my poncho out to hold over her head. Well, that was awkward. But not a bad plan, I supposed. I stood still, and she crouched, until the rain returned to a slow, annoying drizzle. "Right. You going to get out of there, now?"
"Hmm, well, while I'm here, feels like I shouldn't waste getting my knees all dirty…" The conversation was being held through a big, soggy sheet of wool, but I could hear her smirking. "We've got time…"
"Oh, ha." I pulled my poncho back into place. "You suppose there's any point to wringing this out? I don't think it's going to stop raining today. You know that point where you're so wet it doesn't matter anymore? I… What?" Chel had climbed back up to her feet and was giving me the strangest look. "Do I have something on my face?"
"You're not very good at pretending to like women when Tulio's not watching, are you?"