WASHINGTON, D.C.
1837
THE WHITE HOUSE smelled like an open toilet.
Simon had heard that the new president styled himself a man of the people. He’d heard about the inauguration that was open to every citizen and ended with most of the White House’s furniture stolen or in splinters.
But he did not imagine that this president’s common touch included the stink of feces in the air.
Simon had lived a long time already, and he supposed he should be grateful there were still some surprises left.
Max, at his side, made no comment, but kept a bright handkerchief soaked in perfume in front of his nose and mouth. It wasn’t because of any foresight or planning on his part. He’d rarely been without it since returning to America on this trip. He said there was a special kind of smell that existed only here: “a mongrel breed of a new form of odor.”
Despite the offense it caused everywhere they went, Simon found it difficult to reprimand Max for this. He was constantly appalled by the habits of these people himself. As poor as his family had ever been, they had held on to their dignity. They knew their place.
In America, any man felt comfortable speaking to them without a proper introduction and pressing his opinions on them. And once they heard that Simon and Max were from Spain, they were insufferably smug about their lack of royalty. In the pub where they had supper the night before, one man had even made a show of looking at Simon’s breeches. “I was wondering if they got worn out quicker from all the bowing and scraping,” the man had said, and the entire crowd had erupted in laughter.
Simon had considered killing the man but reminded himself that he had better things to do. There was a time when you could kill someone for insulting your honor, but he found people were growing increasingly intolerant of the practice. Times change.
He and Max were escorted up the stairs and into the presidential library on the second floor of the White House, and into the presence of the great man himself.
President Andrew Jackson.
Jackson sat behind a table covered with maps of Florida. His hair was white now, and his teeth were yellow, but the years had not bent him. His back was still ramrod straight, and the undeniable physical power that made men follow him was still there. Jackson looked up at them and dismissed their escort with a curt nod.
“Mr. President,” Max began, smiling and courteous, “please accept our belated congratulations on your elevation to office. We must apologize that we did not send our regards sooner.”
Jackson spat something brown and foul in the general direction of a spittoon. It hit the wall with a meaty sound instead.
It was not as easy as it once was to see Jackson. For all his talk of being a true democratic president, he’d learned to lock the White House doors in the past few years. The United States was still writhing in a financial crisis sparked by his shutdown of the federal bank, causing a massive explosion of credit and speculation, followed by an inevitable crash. There had been blood on the streets in the major cities as rioters screamed for food and jobs. Everyone wanted something from Jackson now.
Simon and Max had arranged for this meeting through the Freemasons. They were not members—Catholics were not allowed to join—but they had contacts within the organization that they used regularly. They’d found the Masons especially useful in forging new connections in the nascent United States, where it seemed nearly every man in public office was also a member of a lodge. They had paid their friendly Masons well. Under the Masonic code, Jackson would have found it difficult to refuse a request from them. But he clearly didn’t like it.
“You’ve only got so much of my time and patience today, sir,” Jackson said. “You want to waste it on pleasantries, that’s your right. But I’d suggest you come to the point a bit quicker.”
“The general is kind enough to be blunt,” Max said. “So we will return the favor. We are here to ask permission to bring a number of men and arms into Saint Petersburg, with an aim toward an expedition into the nearby jungle.”
Jackson laughed, which caused him to hawk and spit again. “Seems to me I went to a considerable amount of trouble to remove you Spaniards from Florida the first time I was there. I don’t know why I should let you back in now.”
Jackson had claimed Florida for the United States in 1817, when he led U.S. troops against the Seminoles in Florida on the command of President Monroe. He’d slaughtered as many of the Indian tribes as he could find, and then kicked Spain out of the territory completely. Spain had been too weak to offer more than diplomatic protests. It was another one of the victories that helped him forge the legend that led to his election as president.
Behind his scented silk, Max frowned. He was losing patience with this jumped-up warlord, and Simon couldn’t blame him.
“I believe we’ve already paid you well for passage into Florida,” Max said. “Do you forget your promises? Or are you simply seeking more coin now that you’ve bankrupted your country?”
Jackson’s scowl grew even deeper. “That’s enough out of you,” he said. “You get the hell out of here. I’ve never taken a single damned piece of Spanish silver, and I’ll see you with pistols if you spread that slander around.”
Simon sat down, since it was clear there would never be an invitation from the president. “More than a piece and more than silver,” he said. “And while the general is a fierce dueler, I don’t think he would be happy if he raised pistols against either of us.”
Jackson glared at them both. And then the expression on his face changed as he looked—really looked—at them.
“Hell and damnation,” he said quietly.
Simon smiled. “It hasn’t been so long, has it, sir?”
Jackson’s mouth remained open. They had last seen him when he was the territorial governor of Florida. He’d been a young man then. So had they. Now he was old. And they had not aged a day.
“Impossible,” Jackson said. “I must have dealt with your fathers.”
“Tell yourself that if you like,” Simon said. “Either way, you were well paid for unlimited passage into and out of Florida.”
It was an easy favor to grant. Florida was still too wild and too vast, and the United States too small to offer much in the way of government. Simon and the others did not feel any special loyalty to Spain by then; they’d become a power unto themselves. Having lived more than two centuries already, they had learned that countries were made up of men, and kings were nothing more than men on thrones. They thought they had more right to call Florida their property than Spain, or the fledgling nation known as America.
When Jackson left Florida, the Seminole tribes were mostly left to themselves. Simon and his men continued to move in and out of the area with little or no interference.
That had changed over the years, however. American settlers kept moving south, as did escaped slaves. Clashes between them and the local tribes gave Jackson the excuse he needed to send the army into Florida again.
However, the Second Seminole War was not going as well as the first. This time, the U.S. troops were not up against largely unarmed and unprepared tribes. This time, the Indians knew what was coming; they fought a guerrilla war against the invading forces, using their knowledge of the swamps and forests to hide and harass the American troops.
A company of 110 soldiers was attacked by the Seminoles. Only three survived. Shortly after that, more than a hundred commissioned officers resigned from the army, rather than go to Florida. Every attempt to find and punish the Seminoles failed. The Indians simply melted into the swamps and disappeared.
Simon and the Council were, admittedly, caught off guard by the conflict. They were long-lived, but they could be shortsighted. They didn’t believe Jackson would mount a full assault with the United States reeling from a massive depression.
But Jackson took the presence of escaped slaves living in Florida, as well as the Indian tribes who defied him, as a personal insult. He wouldn’t have a lawless refuge within the United States’ borders.
Any pale face in Florida was now a target. Villages were burned. Settlers fled back north. The army retaliated by slaughtering whole tribes. No one was safe, and there was no end in sight. The entire war was rapidly becoming a quagmire, with Jackson second-guessing his commanders and changing generals at every disappointment and defeat.
As a result, the Council found itself cut off from its supply of the Water for the first time.
Simon and the others did not panic. They still had thousands of gallons of the Water in storage. But the lesson of Miruelo weighed heavily on them; after living so long, none of them had become any more reconciled to the thought of dying.
And there was another, more personal reason for Simon to return to Florida as well.
Jackson shook off his unease and put up his brave face again. Simon expected as much. Successful generals dealt with the facts in front of them, not the hidden truths behind.
“Even if you are who you say you are, I can’t be held to promises made twenty years ago,” Jackson insisted.
“Your word is only good for a limited time?” Max asked. “What a new and innovative concept of honor you Americans hold.”
If looks could have killed, Jackson would not have needed to duel either Simon or Max right then.
“My compact was with your fathers,” he said stubbornly. “Not you.”
“You misunderstand us, General,” Simon said. “We’re not here to take something from you. We are here to offer you a solution to your war. One of the reasons your generals have been unable to deal with the natives is because they do not know the territory. Those maps you are looking at? They haven’t been updated since you fought there. Your soldiers can’t even find your enemies, much less fight them. We, however, have been in the territory countless times. We know the terrain. We know the tribes.”
Jackson snorted. “The day I need help from a perfumed Spaniard to win a war, I truly will be damned. If that’s all you’re offering, go home. The United States will prevail, as always, without any European interference.”
“Somewhat hard to prevail against warriors who can’t be killed,” Max said. “We’ve heard that the fiercest Seminole warriors have taken wounds that would end another man, but they show up again, and again, and again, as whole and healthy as ever.”
Jackson looked startled for a moment, then regained his iron composure.
“Stories,” he said. “One savage looks very much like another. It’s easy to confuse them on the battlefield.”
“I’m sure.” Max smiled. “Even so, your men must be suffering from some fear, if they’re spreading these kinds of ghost stories.”
Jackson said nothing.
Simon rose and crossed to Jackson’s desk. He leaned down and looked the man in the face. “Look at us, Mr. President. Do you really believe these are just stories? Or that we are the sons of the men who paid you twenty years ago?”
Jackson held Simon’s gaze for a moment, then turned away. “And you propose to come in and save me? You might be sorcerers,” Jackson said, “but there are still only two of you. Unless you have an army hidden up your sleeves, I don’t see how you’re going to do any better than my generals.”
“Let us into Florida, and we can stop these unkillable warriors. We can end the problem at its source. And we will deliver you a trophy that will break the spirit of the renegades.”
Jackson sat back in his chair. He finally met Simon’s eyes again.
“Just how do you propose to do that, sir?”
Simon smiled. He knew he had the man now.
“We can bring you the Seminole Witch,” he said.
AT FIRST SIMON THOUGHT it was just bad luck.
They would lose things. They used Narváez’s money to finance a small expedition inland into America, searching for more gold and possibly more sources of the Water. It started on the same path they did in Florida, and then vanished without a trace.
They attempted a small armed settlement near the site of the Uzita village. That was sacked by Indian raiders, and only a few of their hired men escaped to tell them about it.
This was not surprising, or even unexpected. America was a dangerous place. People died. Simon and the others decided it was better to leave the Fountain unguarded, and let the savages do the work of eliminating any Europeans who might stumble upon the secret. They were still able to make trips in and out of the territory, and they could visit the Fountain whenever they needed to. Besides, they had hundreds of casks of the Water, and a few sips were all it took to keep them young and healthy.
Then in 1573, a shipment of their gold was hijacked by the English pirate Francis Drake. All of Spain’s holdings and territories in the New World had become a machine that cranked out nothing but wealth by that time. Now called the Spanish Main, the area produced gold, silver, gems, and spices, and then shipped it all back to Europe. The Council had extensive holdings throughout the Americas. They were shipping nearly twenty tons of the natives’ gold and silver from a port called Nombre de Dios.
The shipment never made it out of port. Drake and his men stole it from the mule train carrying the treasure overland. They managed to escape despite hundreds of troops chasing them through the jungle.
This was the first time Simon heard the rumors. The Spanish troops reported that Drake had a native woman with him—a copper-skinned, dark-eyed witch who fought like ten men and had some sort of Indian magic that kept her from dying even when she was severely wounded.
Most people who heard the tales thought the soldiers were making up excuses for their own failure.
Only Simon knew differently.
Shako was alive.
Somehow, she had survived.
And she wanted revenge for her people. She blamed Simon and the others. Of course she did. He knew how it must have looked. She would have found her people slaughtered, and she would have known someone had been in the cave. She was out to kill them all, because they were the only ones left.
The other members of the Council were reluctant to believe him at first. Her own father had said she was dead. But Simon reminded them all that they should have been dead by now, too. Death was not as final as it should have been for anyone who knew the secret of the Water.
Over the years, they all saw the evidence. She picked at them, harassed them from afar, and stole from them. With Drake, she attacked their ships—and only their ships, no one else’s. In Cuba, Aznar was stepping from a whorehouse where he’d done some particularly nasty things to a girl inside when an arrow buried itself in the door by his ear.
It wasn’t until France in 1790 that Simon got an actual glimpse of her. She nearly killed him under the cover of a riot in revolutionary France. He escaped, barely. Francisco was not as lucky. His head was later sent to Simon in a wooden box.
They mourned Francisco, but they did not panic. They were protected, somewhat, by the fact that any Indian woman who showed up in most of the places they went stood out as a freak. She could not travel in the same way they could. They learned to avoid the places where she was safe, where she could hide or blend in. One of those, unfortunately, was Florida.
They still had plenty of the Water, and she was just a savage girl in the world they ruled.
Now, however, she planned to cut them off at the source. This was intolerable.
They heard the stories again. The Seminoles had a witch who led them, who fought more fiercely than any man, and who carried a magic potion that would heal any wound and restore the dead to life.
The rumors would have been enough to bring Simon, but when he’d learned that the Seminoles were massed around a certain area, repelling any outsiders, then he knew. Shako had come home, and she meant to deny him and the Council from ever drinking the Water again.
He had to break her hold over the territory, and if that meant breaking the Seminole rebellion, then so be it. They had suffered her attacks for too long. They would not be truly safe until she was truly dead.
Simon felt a slight pang at that, but knew it was necessary. He had to make the world a better place. If Shako stood in the way of that, then she had to die. No matter what he felt in the past.
“SHE NEVER MAKES IT easy, does she?”
Simon didn’t reply, but he didn’t think Max really expected an answer. He still remembered stumbling through the plants and trees of the jungle with an arrow through his leg, dying step by step, on his way to Shako and the Water the first time.
He hadn’t expected that to seem like a pleasant stroll by comparison.
Jackson granted their request for free passage, but balked at their request to bring in their own paid mercenaries. He insisted that only U.S. troops would operate on Florida soil. They’d traveled overland to Fort Lonesome, where they were given command of three hundred soldiers, the men all either veterans or seasoned frontiersmen. They were not likely to drop from fever or exhaustion like the raw recruits who came to Florida for the first time and wilted in the heat. It was better than Simon expected.
He and Max were joined by Carlos and Aznar. They each carried a flask of the Water with them. Simon believed the four of them would be worth at least a dozen Seminole lives each.
They had been marching for five days since leaving the fort. They were currently camped barely a dozen miles from where they’d started.
The trail was difficult enough on its own: a winding track between the trees, too narrow and choked with roots for horses, occasionally leading through swamp and quicksand, clouded with swarms of biting flies.
But the Seminoles made it worse. Soldiers at the back of the line would vanish if they stepped off the trail to piss. Arrows flew from nowhere when the company would sit down to eat and make camp. They were attacked at night by screaming ghosts who ran past their sentries, slashing with knives and axes and firing rifles before they disappeared back into the darkness.
The troops Jackson had granted Simon were now sleepless, hungry, and frayed at the edges. They fought among themselves and took every order from the Spaniards with a reluctance that bordered on outright defiance.
They were losing, Simon realized, and they hadn’t even had a real battle yet.
That was not to say they hadn’t had some small successes. Last night they had managed to capture one of the Seminole raiders. He’d taken a bullet to the leg and was unable to flee with his fellow warriors.
They gave him to Aznar.
Simon checked the sun in the sky. Almost noon. Time to see what was left of the raider.
“See to the men, and have them begin breaking camp,” Simon told Max. “Find Carlos. We’re going to move soon.”
Max nodded and left, while Simon gestured to Deckard, a veteran infantryman who’d been assigned to them as master sergeant. Deckard fell in step behind him, and they walked away from the camp.
Simon had no doubts where Deckard’s real loyalties lay, but he was competent, and the other men would listen to him when they pretended not to hear Simon or the others. He’d proven crucial in keeping the march going.
But he was openly skeptical of their quest. “There ain’t no witch,” he’d said repeatedly. “Just a story the savages are telling to keep us scared.”
He didn’t have much faith in Aznar’s ability to get answers from the Seminole, either. “You can’t get one of them to talk,” he said. “They don’t feel pain the way white men do.”
“All men feel pain,” Simon said.
“We’ve captured them before. We’ve put questions to them, too, sharp questions,” he said. “Not a one of them broke before he died.”
They found the place where Aznar had set up to do his work. It wasn’t too difficult. You could hear the screams.
Aznar stood over the Seminole warrior, drenched in blood up to his elbows and chin. It looked, at first glance, like a hunter had skinned a deer for meat and left the job half-finished. Aznar had flayed the Seminole open down to the breastbone, his skin pinned back with nails to the tree where he was bound. The warrior must have sampled the Water at some point; there was no way he could be breathing otherwise.
“God Almighty,” Deckard said, and turned away.
Aznar smiled at the soldier. “Oh, it would take more than this to get His attention,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Simon rubbed his eyes. He was too tired for this. “Aznar, stop trying to frighten the men. It’s becoming annoying.”
Aznar’s smile faded, but only a little. In truth, he was becoming more frightening every day. As time went on, they were all changing, little by little, like stones being eroded under a stream. Simon supposed it was inevitable. They’d all had to give up certain beliefs as they remained alive while everyone around them died. They had all been forced to adjust, and to discard the habits that might have given them comfort as they navigated their new, eternal lives.
But Aznar seemed overjoyed to throw away any pretense to his former morality. He had grown to be the most vicious of all of them in a fight, secure in the knowledge that there was no wound that his enemy could inflict that wouldn’t vanish with a sip of the Water. He acted without restraint, even when in public, even when restraint was necessary to keep normal men from guessing what they were. Some days Simon feared he was the only thing keeping Aznar from murdering and raping in the streets in broad daylight.
Still, he couldn’t deny that Aznar’s savagery had its uses. The Indian was broken. Simon could see it in his eyes. There was still contempt, still some defiance, but it would have taken inhuman reserve to remain silent while Aznar peeled back his flesh and showed him his own insides.
“He says they have a thousand warriors,” Aznar said. “By which I take to mean they have perhaps a hundred.”
“A hundred men who cannot die is still a formidable number,” Simon reminded him.
“Oh, they die.” Aznar stuck his knife deep into the Seminole’s flesh. The man screamed, a hoarse and ragged sound. “Eventually.”
“Stop,” Simon said. “I want to know more.”
Aznar sighed. “As you wish.” He withdrew the knife. He listens to me now, Simon thought, but sooner or later, he’ll want to turn that knife on me.
Simon shoved it aside. There would be time for Aznar later. There was always more time later.
Right now, he spoke to the Seminole in his own tongue. “The Witch,” he said. “Where is she?”
Deckard muttered, “Maybe sometime you’ll tell me how you learned to talk like a Seminole when you lived in Spain.”
Simon shushed him, and turned back to the warrior. “Answer me truly, and I’ll put an end to the pain. I swear it.”
That brought a rasping laugh to the Seminole’s lips. “I’ve heard promises from your kind before,” he said. “I know what they’re worth.”
“I’m not one of the men who broke the treaties with you. I only want the Water.”
“She said you would say that.”
Simon tried to keep the hope out of his voice. “The Witch. So you have seen her.”
“She’s no witch. She is our Mother. And she has returned to wipe you from our lands.”
Simon shook his head. Maybe the Seminole believed that. But he knew Shako could not. There were too many settlers, too many white men, too many guns, and more arriving every day. The United States was ever hungry for more land, more space, more territory. Shako couldn’t hold them back from this meager swamp any more than she could roll back the sea. And she had to know it. All she was trying to do now was keep Simon from the Water.
“She’s using you,” Simon said. “She cannot stop us. All she wants to do is keep the Water for herself. Are you willing to die to keep her young?”
The Seminole tried to spit at Simon, but he’d been bled almost dry.
“I know who you are,” he said. “And you are a liar.”
“If you know who I am, then you know I will kill you.”
“I’ve already been dead. I’m not afraid.” His eyes were clouding. He didn’t have much more time.
“Tell me where she is,” Simon snapped, his patience at an end. He could have restored the Indian with one sip from his flask, but he suspected he’d need every drop for himself soon.
The Seminole lifted his head as much as he could. He smiled, although it was more like a grimace of pain.
“You won’t have to look for her much longer,” he said, his voice almost gone. “She’s coming for you.”
Then he rasped out one last breath and died.
SIMON WALKED THE SHORT distance from the camp to the spot where Aznar did his work. Aznar had his own tent. It made everyone breathe a bit easier to keep him at a distance. He seemed to like it better as well.
Simon carried two plates of the stuff the soldiers called supper. Ordinarily, this would have been taken to Aznar by the lowest-ranked man in the company. But Simon wanted to talk to Aznar. It seemed as if it had been decades since they had really talked. Perhaps it had been. He never liked Aznar, and they had not grown closer over time.
He worried he’d let things slip for too long with the former priest.
Aznar sat on the dirt by his tent in front of a small campfire. “Simon,” he said, by way of greeting. He didn’t bother to hide his surprise or his annoyance. Things like courtesy tended to evaporate after so many years together. Anything but basic honesty was exhausting over the long run. “What an honor. To have our august leader serve me himself.”
Simon dropped the tin plate on the dirt next to the spot where Aznar sat.
“No one else was willing to come out here,” he said. “The stink is too much.”
He sat down across the fire, holding his own plate.
“It’s not the smell,” Aznar said, digging in to his food. “They’re terrified of us, you know.”
Simon thought of the casualties they’d taken so far, and the bloody fighting they had to do for every step of progress. “The Seminoles? Then they do a good job hiding their fear.”
“I didn’t mean the savages. I meant the soldiers. Living this close, for this long . . . We can’t hide what we are. We go on marching when they’re ready to drop. We don’t get sick like they do. Our wounds heal while theirs fester. They know we’re not like them. We scare them.”
“We’re foreigners. They don’t like our accents. They don’t like our looks. They don’t like us. They don’t suspect.”
“Don’t fool yourself. They know, even if they can’t bring themselves to put it into words. We’ve left them behind, and they hate us for it.”
“As long as they follow us. That’s enough.”
“They should be frightened of us, Simon. It’s the smartest thing they could do. We will replace them. We’re their death, whether they know it or not.”
Simon looked at the gutted corpse, still roped to the tree, then back at Aznar, who ate his dinner as if sitting by a garden. He thought of a dozen ways to begin, discarded them all. Again, basic honesty was so much less tiring. He simply asked the question that was on his mind.
“What in the name of God happened to you, Juan?”
Aznar laughed, almost choked, then managed to swallow. “God has nothing to do with us, Simon. Not anymore. If He ever did.”
“You would have called me a blasphemer for saying that once.”
“You never would have listened,” Aznar said. “You always hated me. Admit it.”
Simon shrugged. He’d had a long time to learn to accept himself. He looked back on the man he was before he found the Water with the affection one might have for a wayward child. There was so much he simply didn’t understand back then.
But Aznar was right: he’d never had cause to reconsider his initial judgment of the former priest. He saw someone who was never willing to risk his own life but was fearless with the lives of others, someone who would stand in judgment without knowledge or understanding, someone who spent the unearned credit given to him by the Church; someone who saw God’s power as his own.
He didn’t see the point of admitting this to Aznar, however. What he needed to know now was if one of his lieutenants was sliding fully into madness.
“Well. That was a long time ago. And I think we’ve both lost any right to judge the other by now.”
“You think so?” Aznar’s face turned dark. He continued eating, but now he looked more like a dog, ready to snarl at anyone near its food. “You still think you’re better than I am.” It wasn’t a question.
“If I hate you so much, Juan, why have I kept you alive all these years?”
“You know the answer to that. At first you needed all the hands you could get. Then, later, you feared the others would rebel if you cut me off.”
“And now?”
“Now I am too valuable to you. I do the things you won’t dirty your own hands with,” Aznar said. “I’m a resource. A weapon. Nothing less, nothing more.”
Simon didn’t see much point in denying it.
“You were always wrong about me, you know,” Aznar said. “I believed. I believed in God.”
There was such sudden passion, such pain, in Aznar’s voice that Simon was caught short. “What?”
“Is it that hard for you to conceive that you might have been wrong? You did not share my faith. So you assumed I was lying to myself in my robes.”
Simon felt as if something shifted, all around him. Perhaps Aznar had a point. He had never considered that the young, sour-faced priest, all those years ago, might have been sincere.
“Did you ever consider how hard it was for me? I believed, Simon. I wanted to serve. I wanted to be a soldier, but that role, in my family, went to my brother. So I did what I could. I saw death everywhere. And still I believed: life everlasting, beyond this one, to those who were worthy. To those who would open themselves to the glory of God. It was never easy for me. I doubted. I lusted. I hated. But I had faith. Faith is never easy, Simon. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Faith is believing when everything in the world says you are wrong. Faith is designed by God to be tested. I believed. I had faith. And then you robbed me of it.”
“You blame me for your lack of faith?”
Aznar laughed. He seemed delighted by Simon’s lack of comprehension. “Who else? You took me to some pagan altar, and you sacrificed me. Humiliated me. Beat me. I thought I would die there. And I comforted myself with this thought: At last my pain is over. At last I will know God. I knew, Simon. I knew I was going to see our Father in Heaven. And then you gave me the Water.”
Aznar paused. He was quiet for a long moment. “I thought that God would provide me life everlasting. Instead, it was you.”
There was another long silence.
“Do you want me to apologize?” Simon finally asked.
Aznar seemed to shake off the silence, along with whatever thoughts haunted his eyes. The old gleam of malice returned. “For giving me all this?” He gestured all around them. “You must be joking. You freed me, Simon. From everything. From belief, from faith, from God. From Heaven and Hell. It took years, but eventually I learned. There are no rewards or punishments waiting for us. We broke the Covenant. I believed we were meant to suffer, to return to the dust, but that’s not true anymore, is it? We can do whatever we want.”
“As long as we get more of the Water,” Simon said.
Aznar nodded. “True. I admit it would be quite a shock to find myself standing in front of Saint Peter at the gates after all this time.”
“I thought you didn’t believe anymore.”
“I would hate to be proven wrong.”
“You fear God won’t forgive you?”
Aznar smiled. “I’ve done everything I can to earn His contempt. If there are unforgivable sins, I committed them. We both did, the moment we drank the Water. Of course, you drank it first.”
“You can tell God I led you into temptation.”
“That answer didn’t work for Eve, did it? No, Simon. I have to rely on this being our only world. And the Water. I have nothing else. We have nothing else. Just survival. And whatever amusement falls our way.”
He sopped up the last of his gravy with the hardtack roll that served as bread out here. Simon’s dinner was still untouched.
“That’s not true,” Simon said. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to argue with Aznar, only that he did. “I still believe in the perfectibility of this world. This is why I still fight. I have not lost my faith. Perhaps mine was always stronger.”
Aznar looked bored. “Perhaps your illusions simply take longer to die. Once your mind is set, it’s like stone. That’s a terrible habit for men who live as long as we do. It’s going to cost you someday.”
This was trying Simon’s patience. “So why do you go on, Juan? Why bother? What keeps you going, if you truly have no faith anymore?”
“Why, I follow you, Simon. It’s been entertaining so far. Isn’t that enough?”
Simon stood up then. Aznar was still laughing as he walked away.