Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century 6)

Two years passed.

And then Eduardo returned.

He returned quietly the first time—strolling into the chapel at midday, on a Thursday, when no one was present except for Juan Rios and the lone altar boy who swept the floors and scraped wax off the windowsills. The padre flashed the child a warning look, and he left without finishing.

The two men faced one another in the center aisle, with the cross and the Mother watching them both.

Eduardo stood with his feet apart, hands on his hips. Almost the pose of a man about to draw, but not quite. His hair was longer but his clothes were no cleaner, no better mended. He did not look very different, except for a dark tattoo that snaked out from his collar, and up along his neck.

“What the hell is this?” he asked, waving one hand at the pews, the candles, the padre.

“Things change.”

“People don’t,” he countered, eyeing the chapel and all its modest accouterments. “What game is this? What plan? Are you learning about a new treasure, buried someplace beyond the town?”

“If there’s any such treasure, I’m unaware of it.”

“It’s a shithole, this place.”

“It’s my home now.”

Eduardo lowered his eyebrows, and narrowed his gaze. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe any of this. You look ridiculous in that frock. Mother of God, what would Roberto say?”

“Not much. Him or Luiz, either. And if you’re going to swear, you could at least do it outside.” The padre turned his back. He pretended to tend the candles. He was careful to keep his eyes off the altar.

“There must be something of value here.”

Juan Rios did not like the tone, or the implication. He’d used it before himself, and he knew it for the threat it was. “There is much of value here. Treasure in Heaven, or a map to take you there.” He waved toward the cross, the Mother. “Otherwise, as you said yourself: There’s little to recommend the place. No money here, just farmers and cooks, serving girls and the caballeros who come and go with the season. If it’s treasure you want, you’ll find more of it almost anywhere else.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“I told you,” he sighed, and turned around again.

Eduardo’s hand was on his gun, not brandishing it, but resting there—an old stance, an easy pose that Juan Rios remembered very well. He remembered the feel of a gunbelt slung around his pelvis, the weight of the firearms and the calluses they’d rub through his trousers, against his hipbones.

“I don’t believe you. You are a liar, same as me.”

“There’s nothing here for you. You left me once, so leave me again. The first time, it turned out to be a favor. Do it again, and I’ll remember you well. If you have any friends, they can bury you here in the yard. That’s all I have to offer.”

“But people pay tithes. They pay their pennies to the church.”

“Not very many. You could find more beside the road, lost by the stagecoach drivers. Search the place if you want, I don’t really care. I’m telling you the truth. You should try it sometime. I find it…liberating.”

But Eduardo did not search the chapel. He turned on his heel and left.

He did not return until mass, on the following Sunday.

He did not return alone.

Eduardo came back noisily this time, with twelve men at his side.

They burst into the chapel together and fired their pistols into the ceiling, raining adobe and splinters down onto the people who came there to pray and be blessed. They strolled up and down the center aisle, and made sure everyone saw the guns—they pointed them at everyone, darting their aim back and forth, catching every terrified face for a second at a time.

Old women huddled in their shawls; mothers clutched their children. Babies cried, startled by the sudden noise. Men looked wildly between the bandits and the door, and their wives and sons, and at the padre—who stood behind the altar.

Juan Rios held a black-beaded rosary tangled in his fingers. He barely breathed.

“Up,” Eduardo directed him, meaning he should raise his hands.