Hammer of Witches (17 page)

The admiral answered for me by smacking a pile of papers off his desk. “Job, who had promised — nay,
swore
 — to heed the word of the Lord . . . Our man Job broke the rules. He demanded an explanation for his suffering. He started
questioning
the Lord. Can you imagine anything more insolent than this, de Torres? Can you imagine anything more abominable than questioning your maker?”

“No,” I murmured, feeling my face go warm with shame.

“‘How dare you?’ God said to Job. ‘How dare you question the one who made you from nothing, the one who created and bounded the seas? I am the one who created the skies and the earth! I am the one who made the sea beast Leviathan, a dragon large as a mountain, with scales of iron and breath made of fire! I created all of this! I, not you, Job!’”

Colón’s face was red as he paused in his speech, and he held onto the back of his chair as he caught his breath. “Do you understand this story, Luis?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I murmured, but Colón pretended not to hear.

“On this ship,
I
am your God, de Torres!
I
am the one who created this voyage! Not you, not Martín Pinzón! I am the one who makes the rules. And when I say, ‘Do not use your magic, Luis, do not use it under any circumstances,’ I mean: Do not use your magic, Luis, not
under any circumstances!
And when I say, ‘Do not summon one of your infernal creatures, Sorcerer,’ do you know what I mean?”

“Sir, I —”

“You better believe I damn well mean it!”

Colón’s anger hit me like an invisible wave of power, so strong that it pushed me back almost into the door. I waited for the blood to rush out of the admiral’s face before muttering, “I know you think I summoned it. But I didn’t. I didn’t summon the hameh.”

“What did you call it?”

“The demon. I didn’t summon it. I swear to you.”

“Then who did?” The man dropped into his chair with a huff. “If you didn’t call the demon to these ships, why did it come here?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why did it focus its attention on you, and you alone?”

“I don’t know!”

Colón let out another huff through his nose and crossed one leg over the other. “This is your last warning,” the admiral said without looking at me. “What you did tonight might have caused a mutiny. And I have no problem with having mutineers hanged. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, but —”

“Do not question me, Job. You are dismissed.”

The next day marked the seventh week of our journey, and the ships seemed to straddle two worlds. One was normal, a world where you woke up, did your duties — almost without thinking, like the ropes were part of your body. At dusk you chanted your prayers, ate your supper, dropped to sleep. Day after hazy day it was the same.

That was the normal world for us on that seventh week — but there was another world hiding beneath the surface. This world was a spirit world, one you could only see through the dead eyes of a sailor. It was a world of demons, of fear and false promises, of ghost ships cursed to roam the Atlantic forever. The bird — once a symbol of hope and nearby land — had degenerated into something more dire. Each time any of us saw a petrel or a seagull, we held onto our brooms and thought of Hell.

Before long we were eight weeks at sea, and the men had grown sick as well as weary. Scurvy had painted Antonio’s teeth red, and open sores dripped pus down his legs. Every night Martín came aboard to rail at Colón for his errors, but there wasn’t much the admiral could do to solve the problem. The wind around us had died down almost to nothing, leaving us nothing to do but swim beside the ships and wait. Jinniyah, afraid of the water, looked down on me from above, her boy’s eyes wide and full of worry.

The wind returned to us on week nine, but it was weak and brought only halfhearted cheers. By this point even the admiral looked ill. He had turned waxy, seeming to melt anew
each day under the autumn sun. And each night at dusk he seemed to droop a little more as he preached patience during our prayers at vespers.

Patience. It was the word of the hour. But there was another word too, sitting unspoken on everyone’s lips —“mutiny.” The threat of it worsened every night when Martín Pinzón came aboard to discuss strategy with Colón.

Week nine and a half, and I could hear Martín yelling through the cabin wall I was leaning against. It was the same speech he always made. By now I could recite it by heart.

“Why do we not turn back?” the
Pinta’s
captain challenged the admiral. “We are nearing the point of no return. If we turn back now, we’ll have enough water to survive.”

“You forget your place, Captain,” the admiral warned. “The queen put me in charge, not you. I’ll have you remember that this is
my
mission —”

“But this is
my
crew! And they are dying, Colón! Look at them! Most of these men have been sailing with me for years now, and I will see to it that they sail for many more. The time is soon coming for them to make a choice. And I think we both know where their loyalty lies.”

I adjusted my posture outside the cabin door. It seemed this old play had a new scene, one I had never heard before.

“Is that a threat?” Colón said in the cabin.

“It is the truth. Tell the queen that, if you make it home to see her.”

Martín exploded out of the cabin and onto the deck. “Out
of my way, Jew,” he said as he blew past me. The admiral chased after him, his face peeling and covered with sweat.

“Pinzón!”

Martín stopped short in front of the gangplank leading to his
Pinta
and held up three fingers. “Three days, Colón. You have three days to find land.”

“Or what? Do you actually believe you frighten me?”

Martín’s thin mouth twisted up in a smile, and he answered by striding across the gangplank.

On the
Santa María,
Colón pushed his lips together so hard that I could see them shaking with rage. I felt myself trembling inside, too. Three days. In three days Martín would take over, lead the mutiny himself, and sail the lot of us back to Europe. Europe, the land that had exiled me. Europe, where the Malleus Maleficarum waited.

Of course the thought of reaching Cathay didn’t ease my mind much either. There was a hameh out there, somewhere beyond the horizon, and a long-lost father who for some reason wanted me dead. And I couldn’t forget about the evil being that the Baba Yaga’s prophecy had predicted — but I had begun assuming he and Amir were the same person.

I dealt with the pressure the only way I knew how. I trotted over to the mainsail and said, “Hey, Antonio. I remembered something else about that flower girl, Dirty Mary. Did I ever tell you she had a twin sister?” But I felt the story wilting as I told it, and the words tasted like rot inside my mouth.

“Sorry, kid,” the old carpenter said, barely able to hold onto the hammer falling out of his hand. “The only story I want to hear is the one about the sailors reaching the Indies.”

That night as I tried to sleep, I lay on the deck of the
Santa María
feeling completely trapped. Above the stars winked at me, but they provided no comfort. They were only pallid reminders of how small I was in comparison to the wrathful black ocean.

In my hard and desolate sleep I dreamed of a dark, faceless man. A windswept beard covered his chin, and layers of robes pooled around his feet. Two corpses — my aunt and uncle — lay dumb and glassy-eyed beside him, and their mouths opened in silent cries. Then the faceless man reached out to suffocate me, and I heard the hameh’s scream, and I awoke on the
Santa Marías
deck calling out, “Jinni!”

Jinniyah’s human eyes fluttered open at the sound. She was lying next to me under a gauzy night sky, squished in a fetal position between me and the rail. “Hi, Bal,” she said in a sleep-drenched voice. “What happened? Did we find land?”

I pushed my hands madly over my hair and looked around at the dozens of crew members sleeping around us on the deck. On my other side, Antonio muttered something in his sleep, half-woken by my outburst, but it seemed I had bothered no one else.

“No, Jinni,” I whispered so no one would hear. “We haven’t found land. Something’s wrong.” I don’t know how I knew,
but I knew. On an instinct I reached back and flung my bag open.

It was empty. Completely empty. My coin purse, my money — even my hat had disappeared. And the scroll, that script-covered scroll, the one sealed shut with the image of the hammer . . .

“Gone,” I said, barely able to comprehend the word.

Jinniyah brought a shaking hand to her mouth. “Oh, Bal. Your money!”

“Forget the money!” I said in a panicked whisper. “They’ve got the scroll! The one from the Malleus Maleficarum. My whole life is on that paper! Who my father is, who I am.
What
I am.”

I buried my head in my hands. They were here. Here. On this ship, hiding in the shadows. They were going to find me. They were going to torture me. They were going to —

“No, Bal!” Jinni exclaimed in a whisper. “No one knows that scroll is about you. It could be about anyone. The scroll says Baltasar Infante, remember? But everyone thinks you’re Luis de Torres!”

The hairs on my arms settled slightly at her words. “Still. The scroll was in my bag. If anyone on this ship suspected me of being a Storyteller, now they have proof.”

I scanned around me, studying the faces of the forty sailors sleeping on the
Santa María’s
deck. Antonio, Salcedo, Bartolome, Pérez. Any of them could have taken the scroll. Any of them.

“Bal.” Beside me Jinniyah had gone rigid. “Bal, my nose is tingling like crazy.”

I removed my hands from my bag, trying to puzzle out what the girl said. “You mean someone’s using magic? Here?” I took hold of the girl’s hands far too tightly. “Where?” I said in a harsh, urgent tone. “Tell me, Jinni! Where is it coming from?”

The fake boy recoiled from me. “That’s tricky, Bal. There are so many people on this ship, and they’re all so close together. I don’t know if I can —”

“You have to! You have to find him! Whoever’s using that magic . . .” I trailed off, my imagination racing. What if al-Katib wasn’t in the Indies at all? What if he’d been hiding on this ship all along, waiting to attack? And Diego had said that, for all their talk about the wickedness of Storytelling, the men of the Malleus Maleficarum weren’t above using magic when they needed it.

“Please, Jinni. I’m begging you.”

Jinniyah sucked at her upper lip, her eyebrows knit with worry. At last she took my hand in hers. “Come on.”

Jinniyah led me around the main deck methodically, stopping here and there to adjust her course. Nearby a few sailors watched us, wary, but only Rodrigo asked us where we were going. “Running an errand for Colón.” I ran off before he could ask any more questions.

After another minute of wandering around the crowded
deck, Jinniyah stopped and let out a breath. “Here,” she whispered to me. “I think the magic is coming from here.”

We were standing in front of the cabin door.

“Colón . . . ?” I whispered.
“He’s
the one using magic?” I rose up on my toes to see what was happening on the aftcastle. No, Colón was up there after all, so deep in conversation with the helmsman that he didn’t notice me lingering around the entrance to his cabin.

But if Colón was up there, then . . .

I shaded my eyes as I peered through warped glass that covered the tiny porthole in the cabin door. “No one’s there,” I said, disappointed and relieved. All I could see inside was a blurred image of the admiral’s desk, dimly lit by candles.

“Bal, let’s go,” Jinniyah said, looking nervously around her. “Someone’s going to see us. I made a mistake. Let’s go back to sleep.”

But I couldn’t. I had to know what was in that cabin. “You go, Jinni. I’m going inside.”

Jinniyah didn’t move. I steeled myself and reached out to open the cabin door.

It wouldn’t budge. I jiggled the handle a few times more. Nothing. The door was locked.

“Ali Baba,” Jinniyah whispered behind me. “Have you heard it?”

“You’re talking about a story. A Moorish story?”

Jinniyah whispered quickly, “One day Ali Baba found a
group of thieves hiding in the woods. He tracked the thieves to this cave, which was their hideout, but it was locked. The cave would only open if you said the right word.”

“You’re saying Colón locked his cabin with a magic password?”

Jinniyah slapped me lightly on the arm. “Baltasar, sometimes you are the silliest person! I mean someone locked the cabin with a regular key, but you can use a magic key from the Ali Baba story to open it. I saw Amir do it once before. Ali Baba’s key will open any door you want to open.”

Summon a key, hmm? Tapping the sides of my legs, I paced in front of the cabin door. “I don’t know.” I hadn’t used magic in weeks now, plus Colón was right there, mere yards from where I was standing.

Then again, it was only a key. And I had to know what was inside that cabin.

I closed my eyes.

The Ali Baba story. Though I’d never heard it before, it seemed familiar all the same. After all, how many stories had I heard over the years about magic words? Even Diego’s golem came to life with the word
ameth.
And using a magic word to open a door . . . wasn’t that almost the same as using a magic story to open one? I’d bet my life that this Ali Baba character was a Storyteller — or at least the person who jinxed the cave door in the first place was.