Blood and Vows.

Chapter 29 — Hawks and Cages

Dawn turned the villa the color of a lie that wanted to be forgiven. The east wall drank first light; the greenhouse glass took the rest and returned it in thin coins across the gravel. Sprinklers whispered on the lower lawn, counting out seconds like a patient accountant. Somewhere a gardener tuned a hedge with the devotion of a violinist. Sebastian had slept none. He’d left the apartment while Leila breathed under Alvarez’s orders and Alex lay awake in the other room, eyes open to a ceiling that did not know what it had owed her. He had showered the night off without success, tied a knot in a dark tie, and driven south with the kind of composure people misread as peace. It was only discipline. The villa had always asked that of him. At the citrus walk, a boy in a man’s jacket waited with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders pretending not to be knives. “Brother,” Ernesto said, as if they had met by accident at the end of a familiar street and not because both had measured the house and chosen the one place where its mirrors couldn’t follow perfectly. “I thought you’d creep in by the tunnel and write yourself a ghost.” “I prefer doors when they obey,” Sebastian said. He stopped beside a potted kumquat, pressed a leaf between his fingers, and lifted them to breathe oils that smelled like the inside of their mother’s favorite drink. “Smelling like oranges won’t make you sweeter,” Ernesto said lightly. “Only sticky.” “Your metaphors,” Sebastian said, “have always suffered at breakfast.” Ernesto laughed, and the sound was mostly real. He’d dressed like an heir someone else had designed: open collar, clean shave, the watch their mother had given him to remind him that time was a trick you could sell. He was beautiful the way men called lucky without admitting the practice behind it. “You look terrible,” he observed, tipping his head. “In a very expensive way.” “You look rested,” Sebastian said. “In a very expendable way.” “Ah,” Ernesto sighed happily. “We’re doing honesty. I like this game.” They stood in a quiet nothing for a few heartbeats, listening to the villa breathe through vents and vents pretending to be walls. In the corner of the greenhouse, a fan turned a patient circle. Beyond the glass, the long drive lay empty, every stone sure of its place. “Mother asked for you at five,” Ernesto said. “You missed it. She had to rehearse anger without you.” “She never rehearses,” Sebastian said. “She auditions.” Ernesto grinned. “She cast me as Messenger. I told her you were composing your face.” “Did she applaud?” Sebastian asked. “Silently,” Ernesto said. “The way she did when I was six and got through an entire dinner without asking for love.” A shadow crossed his expression and went on walking. Sebastian could have followed it. He didn’t. There was too much to do to go collecting ghosts. “I won’t stay long,” he said. “I came to set expectations.” “Yours, hers, or mine?” Ernesto asked. “Yes,” Sebastian said. Ernesto pretended to think, tapping a knuckle on the railing. “For the record, I prefer my expectations in writing. Monogrammed. Linen paper. Smells like the memory of rain.” “Your problem is never the stationery,” Sebastian said. “It’s the content.” “My problem,” Ernesto said, “is that every page I write, someone else edits.” He turned, leaning his back against the railing and facing Sebastian full. “Tell me something true before the house arrives to translate it.” “You were never meant to be a decoy,” Sebastian said. “That part of the story is the only one I’ll still argue with the author about.” Ernesto blinked. Then he smiled—not the public one, not the one for waiters and minor officials, but the quick, crooked line that lived under the rest. “Liar,” he said, almost fond. “I was born as a decoy and you know it. Spare key. Spare heart. Spare son. Mother needed a threat that looked like a boy and could be counted at dinners without frightening the help.” “Mother needed a mirror that could move,” Sebastian corrected. “And she gave you a name that sounded like a promise when it was only insurance.” He waited for anger. He got delight. “Insurance is the only romantic language we speak in this house,” Ernesto said. “See? You’re being honest again. It becomes you.” They walked. The gravel accepted them the way money trains ground to behave: without question. A pair of peacocks in the far garden turned like gossip. A window in the east wing opened and closed with the discretion of the well-paid. “Is it true?” Ernesto asked, as if passing a note in class. “The story I am not supposed to have heard? The banker, the intruder, the wires singing at the wrong hour.” “What version did the walls tell you?” Sebastian said. “That you led a prize on a leash before men who prefer their women congratulatory,” Ernesto said. “That Mother loved the theater and wished for an encore at breakfast. That a stranger slipped into the house and the house learned humility. That the police looked away and called it professionalism, and that somehow, after all the doors were counted, two were open that should not have been.” “That’s a good version,” Sebastian said. “It will sell.” Ernesto’s eyes glittered. “And the private cut?” “The same,” Sebastian said. “With fewer adjectives.” Ernesto clucked his tongue. “I hate it when you do that. It feels like reading a menu for food you can’t pronounce.” They reached the end of the walk, where shade made a chapel of the air. Ernesto stepped into it and took off his watch, weighing it as if considering throwing it into the hedge. He didn’t. He put it back on, snug as a habit. “I used to think I envied you because people obeyed you,” he said, conversational, light, as if asking about a car. “But I think I envied you because you didn’t have to ask them to. They arrived already halfway to yes.” “That’s not obedience,” Sebastian said. “It’s expectation.” “Expectation is obedience with better taste,” Ernesto said. He lifted a leaf and let it go. “Do you know what it is to be the second son in a house that only learns first names? You do, don’t you? You guessed. The second son spends his life as a rumor and a correction. He is a toothbrush in the drawer for a guest that never arrives.” “Mother kept you,” Sebastian said, “so I would know what she does to things she does not need.” Ernesto leaned his head back and laughed at the ceiling as if it were a punchline. When that stopped, he looked at Sebastian with something like triumph. “And here we are. Two objects, arguing about use.” “You are not an object,” Sebastian said. “Of course I am,” Ernesto said cheerfully. “I’m just a more charming one than the furniture. Don’t ruin my day with sentiment.” They were quiet for a long ten seconds. Ernesto broke it by producing a coin from nowhere and rolling it across his knuckles the way children roll marbles when they’ve learned to be bored by rules. “Do you know why I really envied you?” he asked finally, not looking at Sebastian. “Because no matter what room you walked into, the room shrank to fit your outline. I have tried that trick. The room laughs at me. Then it pats my head and offers me dessert.” “Rooms learn what you teach them,” Sebastian said. “You taught them to laugh.” “I taught them to underestimate me,” Ernesto said. “It’s the only power second sons can bank. We cash it later, with interest.” “And what do you buy?” Sebastian asked. “Air,” Ernesto said promptly. “I buy the right to breathe however I like. Better to fly like a hawk,”—he flicked the coin and caught it, grinning—“than to sit in a cage like a turkey waiting for the knife. Even if the hawk gets shot, at least he saw the sky.” “Turkeys don’t sit in cages,” Sebastian said. “They waddle around courtyards until someone feeds them compliments and a holiday.” “Exactly,” Ernesto said. “Hawks feast and are feared. Turkeys are fat and festive and dead.” He tipped his head, studying Sebastian. “So which are you today?” “Neither,” Sebastian said. “I am the man who makes the menu.” Ernesto’s smile widened like a wound and healed into a salute. “There he is,” he said. “I was worried you’d come back as a moral.” A door latch clicked further down the colonnade. The sound carried gentler than it deserved. Ernesto’s body changed by a hair, schooling itself into filial grace. “Mother,” he said lightly to the air, for practice, then back to Sebastian under his breath: “She wants your face at her window. She wants to angle it toward her reflection.” “She’ll have to settle for a postcard,” Sebastian said. “I’m leaving.” “Of course you are,” Ernesto said brightly. “Important men always are. Where? To pray over your accounts? To kiss a ring? To pretend to court a princess with a pedigree who thinks money is a metaphor?” “Work,” Sebastian said. “The tiresome kind.” “Let me come,” Ernesto said. He made it sound like a joke. It wasn’t. “No,” Sebastian said. “Why,” Ernesto asked, and for a heartbeat a child lived in the word. “Because you hate boredom,” Sebastian said. “And because you confuse danger with entertainment. And because if you’re near when something breaks, Mother will rewrite the shrapnel as your idea.” “Mother rewrites everything,” Ernesto said. “She would rewrite the weather if the clouds had the decency to listen.” “She expects a storm,” Sebastian said. “Give her a breeze. Be harmless for six hours.” Ernesto spread his hands, saint of obedience. “As you wish, brother. I’ll go feed the peacocks compliments until they consider a career in politics.” He started to turn, then paused. “One more true thing?” he asked, not quite smiling. “You could have let the girl die.” Sebastian kept his eyes on the hedge. “Which one.” “The intruder,” Ernesto said, his voice gone from play to something cleaner. “The one with the wrists and the look. You could have let the house correct her.” “The house is clumsy,” Sebastian said. Ernesto’s gaze sharpened. “That is not an answer.” “It’s the only one you get,” Sebastian said. Ernesto’s laugh returned, shorter now. “You know, for a man who sells information, you are very bad at gossip.” “I don’t sell gossip,” Sebastian said. “I sell leverage.” “And what is she,” Ernesto asked softly. “Leverage? Currency? Liability? Or something that will make you hesitate when a knife deserves to be used.” Sebastian looked at him then, steady, unamused. “I do not hesitate,” he said. Ernesto’s eyes glittered with delight. “There,” he said again. “Honesty. It tastes like salt.” He stepped closer, close enough that Sebastian could count the flecks in his irises and remember a summer when the two of them had thrown stones at the same bottle and missed on purpose. “I always envied you,” Ernesto murmured, and there was no joke left in it. “Not the way the room fits you. Not even the way you walk through fire and come out smelling like oranges and scripture. I envied that nobody ever knew why you did what you did. They all guessed and feared and wrote poetry in their heads. But they never knew. That’s power, brother. That’s the only real power I’ve ever seen.” “Is it,” Sebastian said. “Yes,” Ernesto said. “Because if nobody can name you, nobody can chain you.” “Some chains don’t need names,” Sebastian said. “They need history.” “History is a rumor that lived long enough to buy a house,” Ernesto said, playful again. “And Mother is its landlord.” The corner of Sebastian’s mouth acknowledged point scored. “Keep your envy clean,” he said. “It turns rotten faster than meat.” “Rot feeds gardens,” Ernesto said. “Mother taught me that. I will grow something from mine.” Sebastian waited for the blow. Ernesto did not swing it. He pocketed it like a gentleman saving a scandal for a better party. “Go,” Ernesto said, cheerful, clapping once, soft, as if calling a bird. “Be important elsewhere. I will stay and be ornamental until the bell. Then I will flutter and charm and convince her I am an i***t. She likes me that way.” “Everyone likes you that way,” Sebastian said. “Not you,” Ernesto said, and his grin turned human. “You like me best when I’m quiet. It means you can pretend we’re on the same side.” “We are,” Sebastian said. “For now,” Ernesto agreed, delighted. They started back along the walk. At the far end, a maid slipped through the door with a tray and the guilt of someone who had witnessed a secret by accident and wasn’t sure whether to keep it. Ernesto smiled at her like salvation. She blushed because she had been taught to. “Tell Mother I’ll come at noon,” Sebastian said when they reached the step where their paths separated. “I’ll tell her noon,” Ernesto said. “She will hear now and ask you why you are late. It is our family’s favorite time zone.” Sebastian almost smiled. “Try to live the morning.” “Try not to die the afternoon,” Ernesto returned. They stood one heartbeat longer than necessary. Then they left each other the way professionals leave rooms: without checking whether their backs were visible in the glass. Sebastian crossed the courtyard toward the garage. A driver he did not bother to know opened the sedan with the timing of someone who understood how to be useful and survive. Sebastian paused with his hand on the door and looked back once. Ernesto was on the terrace now, framed by stone and shadow, the posture perfect, the smile faint, the hands loose at his sides. He looked like a prince waiting for a story to fall on him. He looked like a hawk learning the patience of a turkey. He looked like a second son who had decided the word spare was a whisper he would make into thunder. Sebastian got in and closed the door on the view. As the car eased down the long drive that taught men to admire other people’s money, his phone buzzed once. A message from Martin: Sálmo’s people confirmed dinner. Eight. Elena will be “convenient.” Under it, another—shorter, colder—from a number that did not save names: Selma wants a show. Bring a leash. He typed Understood to the first and nothing at all to the second. At the gate, the guard dipped his head without meeting his eyes. The road beyond the hedges blinked awake. The city would open its throat and ask for explanations, and Sebastian would give it stories dressed as facts until facts remembered how to serve a purpose. In a window behind him, Ernesto raised two fingers in a salute only a brother would recognize. Better to fly like a hawk, Ernesto had said, than sit like a turkey in a cage. Sebastian didn’t believe in cages or hawks. He believed in weather. And if he was designing it correctly, today would be overcast, with a storm where he needed one and sunlight where he didn’t. He told the driver to take the long route and to avoid the cameras that had learned him too well. He closed his eyes, just once, and saw a chessboard where bishops had become useless and pawns had learned to sing. Then he opened them and did the only thing that had ever made sense in this house or any other: he chose the next move and the cost he was willing to pay for it.