The Lords of Time Read online

  EVA GARCÍA SÁENZ

  THE LORDS OF TIME

  Eva García Sáenz de Urturi was born in Vitoria and has been living in Alicante since she was fifteen years old. She published her first novel, La saga de los longevos (The Immortal Collection), in 2012, and it became a sales phenomenon in Spain, Latin America, the United States, and the United Kingdom. She is also the author of Los hijos de Adán (The Sons of Adam) and the historical novel Pasaje a Tahití (Passage to Tahiti). In 2016 she published the first installment of the White City Trilogy, titled El silencio de la ciudad blanca (The Silence of the White City), followed by Los ritos del agua (The Water Rituals) and Los señores del tiempo (The Lords of Time). She is married and has two children.

  ALSO BY EVA GARCÍA SÁENZ

  The White City Trilogy

  The Silence of the White City

  The Water Rituals

  The Ancient Family Saga

  The Immortal Collection

  The Sons of Adam

  Other Novels

  Passage to Tahiti

  A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, JULY 2021

  English translation copyright © 2021 by Penguin Random House LLC

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Spain as Los señores del tiempo by Editorial Planeta S.A., Barcelona, in 2018, and subsequently in the United States by Vintage Español, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2019. Copyright © 2018 by Eva García Sáenz de Urturi.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: García Sáenz, Eva, author.

  Title: The lords of time / Eva García Sáenz ;

  translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor.

  Description: New York : Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2021.

  Identifiers: lccn 2020050162 (print)

  Classification: lcc pq6707.a7325 s4613 2021 (print) |

  lcc pq6707.a7325 (ebook) | ddc 863/.7—dc23

  lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020050162

  Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9781984898630

  Ebook ISBN 9781984898647

  Map illustrations © Gradual Maps

  Interior illustrations: first lines of the Vitoria population law granted by Sancho VI the Wise in September 1181, Jurisdiction of the Population of VITORIA, private collection © PHOTO HOZ

  Cover design by Henry Steadman

  Cover photographs: beetle © Vitalii Hulai/Shuttertock; wing © Darkdiamond67/Shutterstock; city square © Ververidis Vasilis/Shutterstock

  www.blacklizardcrime.com

  ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Eva García Sáenz

  Map 1

  Map 2

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1: Villa Suso Palace

  Chapter 2: The North Gate

  Chapter 3: The Rooftops of San Miguel

  Chapter 4: The South Gate

  Chapter 5: La Calle Pintorería

  Chapter 6: The Old Forge

  Chapter 7: Armentia

  Chapter 8: Álava-Esquivel Palace

  Chapter 9: El Cauce de los Molinos

  Chapter 10: Nograro Tower

  Chapter 11: La Cuchillería

  Chapter 12: La Romana Inn

  Chapter 13: “Lau Teilatu”

  Chapter 14: La Herrería

  Chapter 15: Saint Agatha’s Eve

  Chapter 16: Santiago

  Chapter 17: The New Cathedral

  Chapter 18: The Count’s Chamber

  Chapter 19: The River Zadorra

  Chapter 20: K, +THN1

  Chapter 21: La Plaza del Juicio

  Chapter 22: Arkaute

  Chapter 23: The Lady of the Castle

  Chapter 24: Carnestolendas

  Chapter 25: The Lords of Castillo

  Chapter 26: ANP

  Chapter 27: The Sacristy

  Chapter 28: Valdegovía

  Chapter 29: El Jardín de Samaniego

  Chapter 30: The Hanging Oak

  Chapter 31: The Avenue of Pines

  Chapter 32: Santiago Hospital

  Chapter 33: Yennego

  Chapter 34: Locard’s Principle

  Chapter 35: Quejana

  Chapter 36: El Portal Oscuro

  Chapter 37: The Old Lecture Hall

  Chapter 38: Beyond the Walls

  Chapter 39: The Old Burial Ground

  Chapter 40: The Ramparts

  Chapter 41: The Forge

  Chapter 42: Reinforcements

  Chapter 43: A Split Tombstone

  Chapter 44: Santa María Chapel

  Chapter 45: A Broken Pencil

  Chapter 46: Parley

  Chapter 47: The Chameleon

  Chapter 48: Land of the Almohads

  Chapter 49: Jardín de Etxanobe

  Chapter 50: The Storm

  Chapter 51: The Carnicerías District

  Chapter 52: The Underpass

  Chapter 53: The Faithful Munio

  Chapter 54: The Apple Grave

  Chapter 55: The Circle

  Chapter 56: A Sea of Bottles

  Chapter 57: Beneath the Wall

  Chapter 58: The Glassworks

  Chapter 59: In the Rain

  Chapter 60: The Interview Room

  Chapter 61: Altai

  Chapter 62: The Chancellor’s Tomb

  Chapter 63: Kraken

  Chapter 64: Ramiro

  Chapter 65: One Town

  Chapter 66: The Lords of Time

  Acknowledgments

  Selected Bibliography

  1

  VILLA SUSO PALACE

  UNAI

  September 2019

  I could begin this story with the shocking discovery of a body in Villa Suso Palace: one of the richest men in the country, the owner of a ready-to-wear fashion empire, poisoned with la mosca española, or Spanish fly—the legendary medieval equivalent of Viagra. But I’m not going to do that.

  Instead I’ll write about what happened the evening we went to the book launch for The Lords of Time, the novel everyone in Vitoria was talking about.

  We were all fascinated by this work of historical fiction, especially me. It was one of those books that completely transported you; from the opening paragraph, it was as though an invisible hand grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and drew you into this ferocious medieval world. It was magnetic. You couldn’t resist, even if you wanted to.

  It wasn’t so much a book as a trap made of paper, an ambush of words…and there was no escape.

  My brother, Germán; my alter ego,
Estíbaliz; my entire cuadrilla…No one was talking about anything else. Many people had polished off the four hundred and seventy pages in only three nights. Some of us, however, preferred to enjoy it in small doses, as if it were a poison or a bewitching drug, prolonging the experience of being transported to the year of our Lord 1192. I was so immersed that sometimes when Alba and I were enjoying our early-morning rendezvous between the sheets, I called her “my lady.”

  But there was an added attraction to the experience—a mystery: Who was the elusive author?

  A week and a half after the novel was released, it was flying off bookstore shelves, but there was not a single photograph of the author anywhere, not on the novel’s cover, not in any of the newspapers. He hadn’t given any interviews, and there was no sign of him on social media. He didn’t even have a website. He was either a pariah or an anachronism.

  Some people thought that Diego Veilaz, the author’s name, was a pseudonym, a nod to the novel’s protagonist, Count Diago Vela. It was impossible to know anything back then. The truth had not yet spread its capricious wings over the cobbled streets of Vitoria’s Medieval Quarter.

  * * *

  —

  The evening was sepia colored as I crossed the Plaza de Matxete carrying Deba on my shoulders. I was sure my two-year-old daughter (who already considered herself grown-up) would not be a nuisance at the book launch, but Grandfather had come along to help out just in case, even though it was the night before La Fiesta de San Andrés, and he would be celebrating the patronal holiday in Villaverde.

  Alba and I were delighted when he’d appeared at our apartment. We were desperate for a chance to relax.

  The previous two weeks we’d been working overtime on a case involving two young sisters, aged seventeen and twelve, who had disappeared in very strange circumstances—and we needed sleep.

  We were hoping for a few hours’ respite after fourteen fruitless days of investigation, time to collapse under the duvet and recharge our batteries. Saturday was already shaping up to be just as frustrating as the past couple of weeks had been.

  All the routine work was done. We’d organized searches with volunteers and dogs, and we’d gotten the judge’s authorization to seize family’s and friends’ cell phones. Our team had examined all the CCTV footage in the province, and the forensics team had painstakingly gone through the family’s vehicles with a fine-tooth comb. We had interviewed anyone who had come into contact with the girls over the course of their brief lives. And we had found nothing.

  They had vanished into thin air.

  There were two of them, which meant the drama was twice as intense, as was the pressure Superintendent Medina was putting on Alba, his deputy.

  People had lined up for a mile under the warm streetlights in the Plaza del Matxete, waiting for the book launch to begin.

  The event coincided with the traditional September medieval market. The paved square was filled with the smell of corn on the cob and chinchorta cake. Furious violins played the theme from Game of Thrones. A performer dressed in green velvet juggled three red balls, while a bullnecked man stuffed the head of an albino boa into his mouth.

  The square that had once been the city market was busier than ever. The line of readers disappeared under the Arquillos del Juicio, where vendors were selling pottery and lavender essential oil beneath the arcades.

  I suddenly caught sight of Estíbaliz, my partner in the Criminal Investigation Unit. She was with Alba’s mother, who had adopted her as one of her own after their first meeting and had included her in all our family traditions ever since.

  My mother-in-law, Nieves Díaz de Salvatierra, was a retired actress who had been a child prodigy in 1950s Spanish cinema. She had now found the peace and quiet she so longed for as the manager of a hotel in Laguardia. The fortress-like space was set between vineyards and the mountains of Toloño. The range was named after Tulonio, the Celtic god I prayed to when the universe turned dark.

  “Unai!” shouted Estíbaliz, waving an arm. “Over here!”

  Alba, Grandfather, and I headed in their direction. Deba gave her aunt Estí a sloppy kiss on the cheek, and we were finally able to enter the Villa Suso, a stone Renaissance building that had stood proudly for five centuries on the hilltop where the city was first built.

  “I think the family’s all here,” I said, extending my phone to a sky that was already turning a deep indigo. “Look here, everyone.”

  Four generations of the Díaz de Salvatierra and López de Ayala families smiled for our selfie.

  “I think the launch is in the Martín de Salinas room on the second floor,” said Alba, cheerfully leading the way. “Such an innocent mystery, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The author. This evening we’re finally going to discover his identity,” she replied, intertwining her fingers with mine. “If only the mysteries at work were so innocuous—”

  “Speaking of mysteries,” Estíbaliz broke in, pushing Alba as we entered the room. “Don’t walk on the woman trapped in the walls, Alba. The security guards say she appears at night in the hallways near the restrooms, and her moans are terrifying.”

  Alba jumped to one side. Swept along by the crowd, she had accidentally stepped on the glass panel that covered the skeleton of a medieval woman, according to a plaque on the wall.

  “Don’t mention ghosts or skeletons in front of Deba,” she said with a wink, lowering her voice. “I don’t want her to have any trouble going to bed tonight. I need her to sleep like a hibernating bear. Her mother desperately needs rest.”

  Grandfather smiled, the half smile of a centenarian who had many more years of assessing people than we did.

  “You’re not going to scare the chiguita with a few piles of bones.”

  I could have sworn there was a touch of pride in his gruff voice. He seemed to really understand Deba. They shared a simple, effective telepathy that excluded the rest of us. Deba and her great-grandfather communicated through looks and shrugs, and, to our bewilderment, he understood better than anyone what made her cry, the reasons she refused to wear her rubber boots even when it was pouring, and what the scribbles meant that she drew on every surface she came across.

  We finally managed to get into the room, although we had to settle for seats in the next-to-last row. Grandfather sat Deba on his lap and let her wear his beret, which accentuated how similar they looked, turning her into his tiny clone.

  As he entertained my daughter, I tried to forget my worries from work for a moment. I looked around the narrow, stone-walled chamber with its thick wooden beams across the ceiling. Behind the long table with the three empty chairs and three unopened bottles of water, a faded tapestry of the Trojan Horse dominated the back wall.

  I glanced at my cell phone. The book launch was almost forty-five minutes behind schedule. The gentleman to my right, who had a copy of the novel on his lap, was fidgeting, and he wasn’t the only one. None of the speakers had appeared yet. Alba shot me a look that said, If they take much longer, we’re going to have to take Deba home.

  I nodded, stroking the back of her hand and silently promising that we would enjoy our night together no matter what.

  How good it felt not to have to hide in public. How good it felt to be a family of three. How good life could be. For two years now, from the day Deba was born, my life had been marked by the pleasant accumulation of family routines.

  And I really enjoyed those innocent days with my ladies.

  Just then a stout, sweaty man walked past me. I recognized him immediately: the owner of the publishing house Malatrama.

  We had met a few years earlier during the Water Rituals case. He published the graphic novels of the killer’s first victim, Annabel Lee, who was, among other things, the first love of my entire cuadrilla. I was pleased to see him again. He was followed by a man with a thick g
oatee. Could he be the elusive author? An expectant murmur grew around the room, a murmur that seemed to forgive what was now almost an hour’s delay.

  “Finally,” whispered Estíbaliz, who was sitting on my other side, “another five minutes and we would’ve had to call the riot police.”

  “Don’t joke about that, we’ve had enough to handle over the last two weeks with those girls disappearing.”

  Her flame-red hair brushed my face as she leaned over and whispered in my ear. “I’ve told you a thousand times, they’ll be home with their mom and dad soon.”

  “May the good fairies hear you so we can get some sleep for once,” I replied, stifling a yawn.

  I had almost completely recovered my ability to speak after the Broca’s aphasia I had suffered in 2016 as the result of a gunshot wound. Three years of intensive speech therapy had made me a loquacious investigator once again. Other than temporary lapses due to exhaustion or stress, my oratorical skills were triumphant.

  “One, two, one, two…” the publisher squawked into the microphone. “Can you all hear me?”