At the Castle of the Ten Heavens they inquired, after a mythological ascent through endless frozen peaks — tortuous and desolate, their lungs bursting and a dizziness that would not dissolve, having barely drunk — and the guardian and master of the Reborn, a sage of the School of Breath, his voice extinguished and his eyebrows frosted, calmly announced that the Predestined Acind Issacs was not there, and had in fact relocated two years prior to the lowlands of sand and sea, to the tip of a cape at the northernmost latitude of New Granada.
They had to turn back, descend the steep slopes they had climbed — where a single misstep meant a fall of more than five hundred meters — use the Monk Rodrigo's Stairway and then the Bull's Path, until their feet touched short grass and mud again. Then they set out northward. They crossed the endless ceiba forests and reached the city of Tacucú, where they suffered for the first time the far-from-gentle lash of sandstorms. Two days later they had pushed into the Waiy Desert.
After weeks and weeks of crossing dune after dune, they finally reached the Cape of the Sail — a place beside the most paradisiacal beaches one could imagine, beautiful, translucent, and purifying, just as those lucky enough to have seen it had promised. The four auditors — Melobar, Brielga, Virtol, and Farcil — breathed the pure air and made their way toward an uncertain destination, praying that everything would go according to plan.
They found him lying on a rug at the elevation of land that formed the tip of the cape, soaking up the scorching sun and watching the clouds where falcons circled. He was a tall man, with lean muscle and an angular face, long thin eyebrows, and full, almost feminine lips. For some reason he wore a gray wool cap that contrasted with his half-naked body, and a few strands of wine-red hair were visible beneath the wool. What finally confirmed that this was indeed Acind Issacs, however, was the entirely rose color of his eyes and the absence of pupils in them.
Brielga had heard about this condition, but seeing it in person was something else entirely. Most people possessed an iris of two colors fused at the equator of the circle — hers was half blue and half red. But Acind was different. The pale rose circumference of his eyes was deeply strange — no pupils, no blending of colors. The great rose circle, with the characteristic patterns of human eyes, harbored no center of its own, neither foreign nor familiar. It suggested a mutation. One couldn't help being drawn to it, as though it were a vortex; its clarity left those who saw it bewildered.
"Yes. I can see," said Acind, reading their minds.
He did not turn to look at them, but he had heard them. He lifted his upper body and propped himself on his arms with such ease and indifference that it nearly dissolved the travelers' tension. The defined and symmetrical abdominals carved themselves into thick lines, sweaty and bronzed, and the pectorals emerged from a long sleep — prominent, burning. Brielga couldn't help thinking that she was a solitary woman, young, barely at the beginning of some discovery. She blushed without knowing why.
"Hello, Master Acind," introduced Melobar, the company's captain, with a bow. "We've com—"
"Don't call me master," Acind interrupted, eyes on the sea. "And I know why you're here."
"We're auditors—"
"Looking for a dangerous experge," Acind finished.
"That's right. The head of the Auditory sent us. We went to find him at the Castle of the Ten Heavens some months ago, but he wasn't there. The honorable guardian told us of this place. We ask that you hear us out, please, Mr. Acind. I've lost ten of my men on this journey."
Acind narrowed his pale rose eyes and studied the horizon, as though somewhere in the deep of the water there was something only he could perceive. Without pupils, it was difficult to believe he was taking anything in.
"Did you see Divad? How is his health?"
"He seemed healthy and energetic."
"Ha! I miss that kid."
Divad was eighty years old.
"Did Gerardián send you?" asked Acind, his expression unchanged.
"No. The former chief died last year."
An uncomfortable silence followed. Melobar added:
"He was murdered."
It was not easy to say.
"I see," said Acind — yet his voice did not change in tone. "I suppose you need my help."
"You're correct," said Virtol, the youngest of the group. His brow was furrowed. He clearly did not like the man, or had expected something different.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I won't hear you out. Let me remind you that I retired from the business two years ago and that you promised you would not come looking for me again. It's clear your superiors forgot to keep their word — as if that were surprising — and it seems I'm growing accustomed to solitude. It's cool here. No great luxuries, but it's a spectacular place to live. I can offer you a glass of wine and smoked fish if we don't speak another word about the matter."
Melobar did not yield. The company's captain had been enthusiastic from the start.
"We appreciate your hospitality, but I must insist. We won't leave until you change your mind. We came with an explicit task, and to return empty-handed would be like betraying the trust placed in us."
Acind said nothing, but he was thinking about it. He kept his gaze forward. He didn't even blink.
"I expected nothing less from you lunatics," he finally answered.
Virtol scoffed and muttered something under his breath. Melobar smiled. He had spent hours and hours assuring his team that Acind was a trustworthy man, though he had never met him. Yet neither Virtol nor Brielga believed it, and he was surprised to discover the strangeness — and a certain disappointment — creeping across his own face.
"I don't blame you. You were raised following those idiotic Statutes, badly copied from military doctrine," Acind continued, then dropped his voice: "Cursed be whoever invented them."
"We were told you have a weakness for coffee," Melobar ventured, trying to find common ground.
Acind went quiet. The four auditors waited, tense. They had nearly died because of that wretched product, which only the sleep-deprived seemed to consume. Virtol had floated the idea of disposing of it, arguing that Acind was no god and they were not his subjects.
"Did you bring some with you?"
Melobar gestured toward the bag that Farcil — the quietest of the company — was holding.
"Yes. Along with a bottle of cognac."
"Tempting, no doubt," Acind reflected. "But not worth it."
Virtol wanted to say something, but Melobar stopped him.
"May I ask what's holding you back?"
The company's captain believed that a man cut off from society for so long would kill for a taste of it. There really were strange people everywhere.
"How old are you?"
Melobar blinked. He glanced at the others; Brielga and Farcil shrugged, and Virtol twisted his lips. He hadn't expected to lose the thread of the conversation so quickly, but that was Acind's particular gift.
"Thirty-five. My birthday is in August," he answered, just to oblige him.
"What day?"
"The fourteenth."
Acind murmured some unintelligible words and began counting on his fingers.
"I believe you're a Leo, though so much time has passed I can't be certain. You're supposed to be a leader — charismatic, self-assured. In adversity you tend to become more decisive, and it's often then that people discover your true potential."
They heard Virtol's snort. It was difficult not to think of madness.
"Would you mind speaking somewhere else?"
Melobar was confused. He hadn't expected Acind to be so unpredictable.
"There's nothing to talk about," Acind said, cutting it off.
He studied the rug, where he had gathered several pebbles of different colors and shapes. Some were flat, others cone-like, others spherical.
"Do you have something against auditors?" asked Virtol, in a sarcastic tone.
"You noticed," said Acind, running his hands over the pebbles. "Though I wonder — what is it that bothers me most? Their ninja aura? Their psychopathy?"
Melobar gestured for the others to sit, but they didn't obey. They kept silent, looking at one another, until Acind spoke again after a while:
"Basically, yes, you bother me. But I already explained that you made me a promise. On top of that, I can't be bothered to travel again. Dunes, forests, rivers, trails. All that misery just to end up in a swamp full of leeches starving for the pure blood of those born with the greater máter." Virtol let out a low laugh. "One second in this paradise is worth more than all of you combined. The last time I was at the Archivadora, I had to watch a child stripped of his freedom simply because he had been born with an extraordinary amount of máter. I remember his eyes — half purple, half amber. What happened to him?"
Acind picked up a pebble and held it in front of his eyes, as if it were an unknown instrument for measuring the length of the sea. It seemed that at certain moments, they vanished from his radar entirely — invisible. Brielga sighed.
"We turned him into a great asset," answered Melobar. "He now goes by the name the Prodigy of the Twelve Thorns."
Melobar had never agreed with the Fiscals' methods and what they did with the children in the Archivadora, but sometimes a person was nothing more than a single drop in the middle of a lake.
"I see. No, auditor, I won't go with you," Acind decided. "You're just like them. Go back the way you came — keep exploiting gifted children and kill anyone who refuses to follow you."
"I think you're wrong," Brielga broke in, her voice pained. "We do feel it when we lose someone."
"Is that so?" Acind mocked. "You're quite the little angel. Then why did you end up in this organization of stray dogs and psychopaths?"
Acind turned the pebble over and laughed under his breath.
The fact that the man they had sought across land, sea, and sky — at the cost of human lives, of their companions — wouldn't even spare them a glance stung in a particular way, like a thorn lodged in the throat, even after the commanders had warned them about this cold reception. Brielga pressed her lips together. Sometimes one simply hoped that certain things were universal — like basic courtesy — no matter how indifferent you were.
"He should at least look at us," she murmured.
She noticed her blood was beginning to boil. Giant waves gnawed at the rock of the nearby islets.
"Why would I?" Acind wondered, genuinely. He truly didn't care.
"I lost my wife on this journey — coming to find you!" Virtol cut in, his tone now openly challenging.
He was worked up. Until now, none of them had noticed — or perhaps hadn't wanted to see — that Virtol had slipped back into the explosive behavior for which he'd once been known, and Marrin was no longer there to keep him in check.
"I'm sorry to hear that, but it's irrelevant to me," said Acind. "People have given me thousands of titles over the course of my life, and of one thing I am absolutely certain: I am not a wise man. The best I can tell you is that you should not have let your wife accompany you in the first place."
Virtol's eyes went red and his right hand closed around the hilt of his saber. Distant waves, carrying the scent of a storm.
"Don't do anything stupid, Virtol," Melobar said, his gaze disapproving.
"Listen to him," Acind advised, still holding the pebble in front of his eyes. The object was glowing. "Value your life. I believe a man raised in the Temple of Fire understands that there is a time for everything."
Brielga took Virtol's right hand and looked at him. Eyes full of hatred. Eyes thirsting for a fight that might help him forget. Brielga understood at least a part of his suffering. It wasn't fair that the Predestined treated them this way, as though they were incapable of feeling. There were parts of the heart that doctrine could not reach, parts that left a person vulnerable — more often than not with catastrophic results.
"This is a waste of time," Acind sighed.
He squeezed the pebble in his fist and crushed it without effort, as though it were an eggshell. The fragment of rock let out a squeal before crumbling into fine powder — as soft as flour — lost among the clay. Then Acind rose, so quickly that Brielga couldn't follow him with her eyes. She only saw the enormous silhouette of that superhuman being cut against the vast and blinding sun on the horizon when he was already standing before her, poised to strike like a predator from the tropical jungle. His eyes had turned blue and radiated silver light. Acind pulled off his wool cap and revealed his hair — independent and alive, like a living creature, wine-red, long, and curly. At last, he looked at them, one by one, with a piercing intensity. Virtol drew his saber. Brielga reached for her bow. Farcil adopted the School of the Wall. Melobar stood motionless.
"Of all the beings in this dreadful world, the only ones I had no desire to deal with today are you — the auditors." Acind scratched his head. "Why do I have such terrible luck? I'm retired! Do you understand? Re-tired. Years ago I renounced violence, and its manipulation. I regret this, but I will honor my word."
With that, Acind flicked his wrist.
"No, wait—!" Melobar tried to stop him.
From the ground rose a sudden wave of wind — violent as a hurricane's breath, elongated, a sword stroke invisible to weaker eyes. The attack swept the dust and sent the rug and pebbles tumbling down the hillside. The four members of the Auditory barely felt the blow before they were airborne, landing hard far from where they had been thrown. The bow shattered, the saber drove itself into the earth, and Farcil dislocated a shoulder. Acind remained standing, perfectly still.
"Son of a bitch!" Virtol exclaimed.
Brielga spat blood and coughed several times. The young auditor was injured as well. As best they could, they dragged themselves toward their weapons, ready to fight back. Both had lost something precious on this journey and wanted the chance to throw convention aside and prove they were people of flesh and blood. It seemed that death was capable of transforming even the most immovable of personalities — like a botfly whose larvae burrow in and infect you with a parasitic disease.
But Acind wouldn't allow it. Before they could get back on their feet, he leapt from the top of the cliff and landed on the beach as if a fifteen-meter drop meant nothing to him. Virtol made an attempt to go after him, but Melobar shouted from the other side:
"Enough, Virtol!" He was shaken. "We can't beat him. We were forbidden to fight. Behave yourself."
Virtol coughed, pressed his lips together, and muttered:
"You saw what he did! He attacked us!"
"Forget it."
Acind cackled as he picked something from his nose.
"Hey, come and eat! Aren't you hungry? Bring that cognac. I'll be your host as long as you forget about taking me with you. Trust me, I'll attack you again if you bring it up. Besides, I've sensed suffering in your souls — as if a viper had bitten them — and I'm no longer the scarecrow you used to unburden yourselves on. No sir, not anymore!"
"What do you know about—" Virtol snapped, blood still on his nose, but he stopped himself halfway.
Melobar shook his head. Things had gotten out of hand. Despite his efforts to keep the mood steady, the team was fraying under the weight of irreplaceable losses, and the slightest friction would finish the job. On top of that, Acind was an extraordinarily unpredictable man — a dangerous combination.
Virtol ignored the pain and glared furiously at the Predestined, who was walking away down the beach toward a hut where he apparently lived.
"I'm sick of this," he said. "I'm tired of putting up with these idiots. It's always the same: 'Don't provoke them,' 'don't fight,' 'take the hits.' Dealing with arrogant fools like him who think they own the world, when they're nothing more than ordinary men with a borrowed power, is worse than wiping an old man's backside."
"That's enough, Virtol!"
The strain showed on Melobar's face too — rusty, powerful, unyielding — despite his expertise at concealing it. Virtol was like a son to him. He carried the weight of having pulled the boy from the Temple of Fire at the age of ten and tried to set him straight, ignoring the voices of the commanders who would sooner believe a fish could learn to fly than trust in the apprentice's redemption. But it wasn't only about him. He recognized that the reduction of the team had taken its toll on him as well.
"Let's go," he ordered, his voice weary. He found it strange to decide at that very moment that after this mission, he would never do this kind of work again. "Pick everything up."
Brielga and Virtol exchanged a look — they were clearly thinking about doing something reckless. Melobar couldn't hold it against them: they were young, inexperienced, and had lost the most irreplaceable things they possessed. In a way, so had he.
"Do as I say."
The three of them looked at Farcil — the team's silent one — who was crying as he gathered the supplies on all fours with his good arm. He had always been shy.
"So you do know how to talk," said Virtol, exhaling.
"Of course I do, idiot."
Melobar raised an eyebrow.
"Is that the mouth you kiss your wife with?" Brielga teased.
And the four of them laughed. Without meeting each other's eyes, without saying a single word about it, they all knew they would quit when it was over.
They went down the path and crossed the beach. The waves lapped the sand in silence, turning the land into a place where violence was inconceivable. The hut was nestled between two enormous palm trees, surrounded by a pile of firewood.
Acind had already lit the fire and set a grill to heat when the four auditors appeared at the broken-down doorway of the hut. Inside there was nothing but a straw mat and a string of fish hanging from the ceiling. Flies buzzed.
"This is my humble home," he said, extending his arm so they would pass him the coffee. "I had a feeling when I woke up this morning that there'd be trouble today." He set a clay pot to warm. "The crooked stem shall be straightened, the cross shall shine clean as alabaster. One day I will come to you, in the darkest of nights, and cast two suns upon you: one burning, which shall consume you, and one still, which shall guide you. Which sun did you choose?"
Virtol sighed. He didn't like talking about his past.
"It's not called the 'still sun.' It's 'the wise star.'"
"Is that so?" Acind reflected. He took two fish from the ceiling and laid them on the grill. "One name or another, it's all the same — monks are always making life more complicated than it needs to be."
He looked at them again, one by one. The rope went taut, but held the elephant's weight.
"Are you a swordsman, Captain?"
Melobar didn't talk about it either — Brielga knew that. The truth was, the team's captain met every condition required to be considered a famous man. Were it not for his humble origins, even someone as carefree as Acind Issacs would know his name.
"Yes," said Melobar, tersely. He believed his destiny was to spend his winters in anonymity, but it was still hard to face that bitter reality head-on.
Brielga had never seen him so incongruous. The scent of the beach, the sound of the breaking waves, his short hair. Since they had assembled as a team, she had admired him every day, and today she felt certain he deserved to be treated with far greater reverence.
"'I clear the fog, on a sunlit day.'"
Melobar drew the Measuring Rod, the blade dancing, his eyes closed.
"That was not kind, Mr. Acind," he said. "I was optimistic about you."
"I'm sorry, auditor. You are an educated and noble man, and it is not your fault that your superiors sent you on a mission that was always going to fail — believe me. Nevertheless, I must honor my word, even if the faces of those who swore it are no longer here."
"I had to do it," Melobar said, unyielding.
"And what will the punishment be?"
"I will be executed." Melobar's expression suddenly fell. "And that is precisely why I want you to hear me out one last time. I know I'm risking my life — I don't doubt your word. When we were coming here, after watching the sunlight reflected on the sea, after hearing the gulls and watching the crabs gather at the shore, I found myself ready to die. I don't believe I could ask for a better grave."
He got down on one knee and raised his sword.
"What are you doing, Captain?" Acind said, taken aback.
People acted desperately sometimes — perhaps more often than most would think. The three subordinates were just as surprised.
"Please, Predestined," Melobar implored. "Come with us. I'll admit I was a fool for believing things would go smoothly when those idiotic Fiscals told me I could convince you. But who doesn't make that kind of mistake from time to time? That is what it means to have a soul — to be quaternary. So I ask—"
"What?" Acind interrupted.
"Please, accept my sword. I don't want my subordinates to die because of their captain's failure."
Brielga, Virtol, and Farcil couldn't believe it. The captain's unshakeable professionalism had become supplication — in the midday light, before the salt breeze and the hardness of the coconut palms, before the eyes of the subordinates he had tried to raise in strength and stoicism. And yet they recognized that desperate acts were sometimes the only alternative, the only card that humble hands could play — and that such acts often demanded more courage and strength than any sword stroke. They followed Melobar's lead.
"Please, Mr. Acind, help us!" they called out together.
"What?"
Acind looked each of them in the eyes for one infinite instant. Then, suddenly, the rhythm broke.
Something stirred within him — a stimulus, a vague shadow. The Predestined furrowed his brow and, confused, sat down cross-legged on the ground. He relinquished his earthly spirit. He stared into the void. His eyes took on a gray tone — tired, as if wounded, older than the age of the Constitution. Perhaps they had convinced him. Or perhaps something else had. He waited, his nerves at the edge of breaking.
"What did you just say?"
Melobar was puzzled.
"I said we offer you this small gift in exchange for your help."
"No!" Acind snapped. "What you said before that."
"Ah. Do you mean 'to be quaternary'? It's from a quote I read on a parchment, a footnote to a text written in the ancient language. It was on the upper floor of the Record of Account."
Acind was trembling.
"Someone said that before," he spoke, his voice deep. "Long ago, when the earth was predominantly democratic. Days when the sky was streaked with contrails from airplanes and black smoke from factories. Where did you say you read it?"
Melobar looked up. There was suspicion in his eyes.
"In the Record of Account," he said, visibly confused.
Those pale rose eyes passed through the swordsman's skin and came to rest, stunned, before the truth. Acind sighed.
"Melobar, son of Jalar. I am an ordinary man carrying a power far too immense to understand or control. Virtol is right — what I have is not mine, nor anyone's, nor even its own."
Acind bowed his head.
"I don't like being myself, Melobar. I prefer being that unbearable man they met. It is a burden to live with so many thoughts that breed like rats in the basement of some wretched sorcerer. Being erratic saves me from madness."
Acind stretched out his index finger and pressed it to the earth. He waited a few seconds, then lifted it. There, in that small and insignificant patch of world, a shrub with yellow leaves sprouted — rocked by the sea breeze beneath the watchful gaze of the migratory birds.
Melobar said nothing. The moment didn't call for words.
"May I ask," he said instead, "why it matters?"
Acind stretched his legs and stood. He looked each of them in the eyes, then turned away. With his gaze fixed on the picturesque horizon of the Caribbean Sea, his expression pensive, his posture taut, he said:
"Because Hycanothia is alive."