G.G. glanced around to see Ildaria staring at Lucian with incomprehension. “What do you mean? You know him?”
“Of course. He is the head of the South American Council,” Lucian said as if that should make it obvious that he would ofcourse know him, and then he added, “Aside from that, I have known him for at least a thousand years. We used to be greatfriends, and the man I knew was always honorable.”
“Does an honorable man raise the price of blood to force his people to give up land he wants?” Ildaria asked sharply.
Lucian scowled at the question. “Vasco mentioned that to me, and I could hardly credit it.”
“Well, credit it. It is true,” Ildaria assured him. “I lived and worked at the shore for decades and saw it happen.”
“You had property on the shore?” G.G. asked with interest and wondered if she still owned it. A beach house in Punta Canamight be nice, he thought and then recalled that Ildaria wouldn’t be safe there.
“No.” Ildaria shook her head. “I never had enough money to buy property of my own. But I knew an immortal who had an old hut on the edge of their property that they let me use when I was between jobs,” she said and then explained, “For a long time I took positions with mortal plantation owners, either as a house servant or laborer. Most of those jobs came with a bed in the barracks with the other single women working there. But I could only work so long in one place before one of the Enforcers would come sniffing around and I would have to leave. Even if that did not happen, my not aging made me leave eventually. Then I would return to the hut by the sea, and live off of what money I’d managed to save until I found another position where I thought I would be safe for a while. More recently though, I switched to jobs on the fishing boats.”
“Hmmm.” Lucian looked dissatisfied. “Vasco said Juan’s raising of the price of blood for immortals only started about tenyears ago?”
Ildaria shrugged. “That is when Vasco noticed and started the feeding tours. I am not sure how long it has gone on. I couldnot use the blood banks. There were always a couple of Juan’s Enforcers at the blood banks keeping an eye out for me.”
Lucian’s expression was grim. “Then how did you feed? Biting mortals is against the law in the areas governed by South AmericanCouncil as well.”
“It has only been banned there for the last thirty years,” Ildaria said, appearing amused. “And that is when I switched fromplantation work to jobs on the fishing boats.”
“You were feeding on the crew once the boats reached international waters,” Lucian said, sounding impressed, and then he asked,“Is that where Vasco got the idea for his tours?”
“Maybe,” Ildaria muttered. When Lucian’s gaze grew concentrated as he obviously tried to read the truth from her, she heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Oh, get out of my head, I will tell you. Si, he got the idea from me,” she conceded, and explained, “The immortal that was allowing me to use their hut was on the verge of losing his property. He had taken a mortgage out on it for renovations just before Juan started jacking up the price of blood. He could no longer afford the bank payments and the cost of blood too. He had gone to a canteen, considering risking biting a mortal rather than buy blood, so that he could pay his mortgage and not lose his property. I suspected as much and followed to stop him. I was trying to convince him to take the occasional job on one of the fishing boats with me to get the blood he needed without putting himself at such risk. I was so concerned, I did not check to be sure there were no immortals there, but Vasco and Cristo were and heard me pointing out that the Council could not execute him if he fed in international waters.”
She shrugged. “They approached me as we left. Vasco liked what I had said and had an old pirate ship. He wanted to fix itup and start tours taking tourists out into international seas where the poorer immortals and those under threat of losingtheir homes could feed. But he didn’t know many of the poorer immortals. And he didn’t think they would trust him if he approachedthe ones he did know of. He was Juan’s son, after all,” she pointed out. “So he asked me to take Cristo around to convincethose who needed it most to join his ‘crew.’”
G.G. smiled faintly to himself. He hadn’t known this, but leave it to Ildaria to be the clever one behind such an endeavor. It wasn’t just her fighting skill that had helped her stay alive and out of Villaverde’s clutches all these years. Her wits too had kept her safe and alive. It was probably the main reason for it. Thank God she’d been born with a sharp mind, he thought as he began to transfer eggs from the pan to the plates.
“Enough talk,” he said as he carried the first two plates to the island and set them in front of Lucian and Ildaria. “Timeto eat.”
He didn’t wait for a response, but grabbed a dish towel, opened the oven and grabbed the bowl of fried potatoes and the platethat held the toast. Carrying them to the island, he set them on the cutting board he’d set out earlier to hold the hot plates.
Realizing that Ildaria was no longer in her seat, he glanced around to see that she’d gone to retrieve silverware for allof them. Grateful for the help now that the cooking was over, he grabbed the plate of bacon from the oven next and quicklytransferred the newly cooked bacon onto the pile already there, then grabbed the plate holding his
