Fires of the Faithful (23 page)

“May I remind you whose tent you are in?” Rafi said. “My origins are also somewhat humbler than yours.”

“If
you
aren’t a peasant, then what are you doing here?” I asked Giovanni. “I saw you in Pluma. But you claim to be from Cuore. So what are you doing
here
?” For a heartbeat, I wondered if he was another runaway mage.

Giovanni opened his mouth to answer but Lucia cut him off. “Shut up, Giovanni,” she said. “Get out of here. Go for a walk. I want to talk to Eliana without your constant interruptions.”

“Why can’t
you
go for a walk then?” he said.

“That’s an order, Giovanni,” Jesca said. It was the first I’d heard her speak. She had a deep, melodious voice. Giovanni stomped out with a curse word. “Charming boy,” Jesca said. “Beneto and I will go, too, Lucia. I think Eliana is probably feeling a bit overwhelmed.” She smiled
at Lucia, then turned to me. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Eliana,” she said. She clasped my hand briefly, and I noticed that her hands were as soft and delicate as a baby’s. Beneto clasped my hand as well; he had calluses, but they were in the wrong spots for farm work. Beneto and Jesca ducked out of the tent, leaving me alone with Rafi and Lucia.

In the silence that followed, I picked up Lucia’s hand and flipped it over to study her palm. Her hands were callused, like a peasant’s, but small and slender. Her skin was brown, her hair bleached to straw from the sun. “But you come from Varena,” I said. “What are you
doing
down here?”

“I came down before the war,” she said. “Several years before.”

“Why?”

“I got into a bit of trouble.” There was a hint of satisfaction in her voice. “The Fedeli wound up not at all pleased with me. Fortunately, I skipped town before they could arrest me.”

“But all the way down here?”

“I came to learn the Redentore music,” she said. “And the dances.”

My heart quickened when she mentioned the music, and I felt my cheeks flush slightly. Lucia watched me carefully, gauging my reaction. “You also feel their power, don’t you?” she said.

I nodded, not speaking.

“Do you know songs, or dances, or both?” Lucia asked.

“In the conservatory, many people played the music secretly. I know six songs. I don’t know any dances. Or, actually—I passed through a village while I was traveling.
They had a festival and sang songs to the Lady, but they used an Old Way melody. And they danced.”

“That’s very common,” Lucia said. “There are also towns where they dance, but with different music. Or sing, but without dancing. That’s why I came to Verdia. To learn everything, to piece it together.” Her eyes sparkled in the dim tent.

“How many songs are there?” I asked.

“Hundreds,” Lucia said, and she smiled at the flush that rose to my cheeks again. “I can teach you the songs, if you’d like.”

“But there’s nowhere private here to play,” I said. “If I play the music, everyone will hear.”

“Teleso likes to say that the Fedeli don’t rule here, he does,” Lucia said. “And when it comes to Redentore practice, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass, as long as it keeps people quiet.”

Rafi laughed bitterly. “Just wait till the next time he needs an excuse for a massacre.” I jumped—Rafi had been so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was there.

Lucia looked at him sharply. “This is Jesca’s theory, not mine,” Rafi said. “Come on! Everyone knows that he gets a set amount of food to ration to everyone in Ravenna. Are you saying that some of those riots weren’t provoked?” Lucia didn’t answer, and Rafi went back to cleaning out the teapot.

“Through the music and the dances, God pours out Her light into the world,” Lucia said. “I will teach you the songs, if you will play them for our rituals.” Lucia looked across the tent at Rafi. “God has not forsaken us; She dances with us, even here.” She looked back at me. “And don’t worry. You can play them openly in Ravenna.”

“All right,” I said. “You teach me, I’ll play.”

Lucia gave me a brilliant smile. “Good,” she said.

Neither of us spoke for a minute.

“You still haven’t answered my question to Giovanni,” I said. “What’s he doing down here? And Beneto and Jesca. They aren’t peasants either.”

Lucia drained the last of her cup of tea and wiped out the cup, then studied the ground for a moment. “Had you and Giovanni met before?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “When I was passing through Pluma, he accused a friend of mine of spying on him, and slapped her. He
terrified
Giula.”

Lucia sighed. “Giovanni has all the charm of a leashed dog that’s been kicked too often,” she said. “He’s hostile and suspicious with everyone. Which is basically why he’s down here.”

“I don’t understand.”

Lucia didn’t elaborate right away; she looked at Rafi, who checked outside the tent, then came back in and nodded. “I think you should tell her,” Rafi said. “If she’s to be playing for you, she has every right to know.”

Lucia nodded, then took my hand again. “Beneto, Jesca, and Giovanni are the local leaders for the organized reform movement,” she said.

“The what?”

“There is a group, organized from Cuore, that is trying to restore the Empire as it was before the Circle,” Lucia said. “Do you know what caused the famine?”

I nodded. “Magefire.”

“More and more people are realizing that,” Lucia said, “but to say it aloud in Cuore invites a death sentence. The Circle will never relinquish their power voluntarily, and they will never stop what they do, no matter what the price. Through their magic, and their cruelty, they have
condemned everyone in Ravenna to slow death by starvation.” She flushed with anger, and paused to collect her thoughts. “The reform movement began at the university. That’s where Beneto, Jesca, and Giovanni met.”

“So they were sent down to Ravenna to organize the people here?”

“Beneto and Jesca were sent to Ravenna to organize,” Lucia said. “Giovanni was sent to Ravenna because no one in Cuore could stand him.” She sighed, her eyes on Rafi. “It’s my fault, in a way. The organizers in Cuore used me as an excuse; I’m his cousin. ‘You already have family down there.’ So of course Giovanni blames me, and so do Jesca and Beneto and Rafi …”

“That’s not true,” Rafi scolded. “I don’t think Jesca blames you.”

Cousins, I thought. That explained the eye color.

“He’s harmless, really,” Lucia said. “Useless, but Beneto and Jesca keep him in line.”

“On a short leash, you might say,” Rafi said.

I laughed. My head was spinning.

“So,” Lucia said, and clasped my hand more tightly. “Now you know. I hope we haven’t misjudged you—you aren’t going to run off and tell Teleso?” I shook my head. “But we need you, Eliana,” Lucia said. “We need you on our side. We need you to be one of us.”

“Why?” I asked. “What is it you want from me?”

“Your music,” she said. “And—Amedeo believes you’re important. We don’t know why, not yet, but—I know we need you.”

“I said I’d play for you,” I said. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

Lucia smiled at me, and again her face lit like the evening star. “Thank you,” she said.

I spent the night in Rafi’s tent, squeezed in between Lucia and Beneto. Giovanni slept on the other side of Jesca, as far away from me as he could get. Despite the crowding, I slept later and more soundly than I had outside, where I was woken by the light and activity at dawn.

Beneto and Jesca were up and gone by the time I woke; I found out later that they did not work on the wall. Giovanni had just begun to stir as Lucia and I got up, glaring at us from below his drooping lashes. Lucia and I left him rubbing the sleep out of his eyes while we lined up to get breakfast. “You can leave your violin and your cloak here,” Rafi said. “I’ll take care of them.” I left my cloak and bag behind, but took my violin with me. I liked Rafi, but I wasn’t leaving my violin anywhere.

“We’re celebrating Mass this afternoon,” Lucia said.

I gave her an uncertain look. “Celebrating what?”

Lucia was startled. “You haven’t celebrated Mass before? But you are one of us, I know that. How much do you know about the Old Way?”

I shook my head. “I learned some songs and prayers at the conservatory, before the Fedeli came and scared everyone too badly to play Old Way music even in secret. While I was coming home, I saw a little bit of a ritual in the woods—and one of the farmers I stayed with had a woman come to ‘seal’ me.”

“That’s all?”

I nodded. “There’s no way you could play a song here without everyone hearing. How can you do an Old Way ritual in the camp?”

“The Fedeli don’t come here,” Lucia said.

“You said that before,” I said. “How can you be so sure?”

Lucia grinned broadly. “
Nobody
comes down here if
they can help it. And the followers of the Lady are afraid of the wasteland, because magery doesn’t work.”

“There must be priestesses and priests here,” I said.

“Of course,” Lucia said. “But they’re refugees, and stuck here just like the rest of us. Even if they complain to Teleso, he’s happy enough to have us squabbling among ourselves.” The food line had stopped moving, and Lucia craned her neck to see what had caused the holdup. She turned back to me with a shrug. “So. We’re celebrating Mass this afternoon, and if you haven’t ever received God’s Light, it’s high time you did. I’ll teach you the dance after breakfast.”

“I thought you wanted me to play the music,” I said.

“You need to know the dance, too,” she said. “You should learn that first.” Lucia craned her neck again, then settled back into the line. “We don’t celebrate Mass as often as I’d like,” she said. “You need bread and wine, and as you might imagine these aren’t the easiest things to come by here.”

“How do you get them?”

“We have a few friends among the soldiers, and there’s always the black market … If you know so little about the Old Way, Eliana, do you know about the Journey of Gèsu, at least?”

“I recognize the name.
Rachamin, Gèsu. Asaya, Gèsu
.”

“Gèsu is the son of God, healer of the earth.” She sketched a cross. “When you say,
B’shem Arka, v’barah, v’nehora kadosha
, that’s, ‘In the name of God, and Her son, and the Holy Light.’ Gèsu is Her son.”

I nodded, although this didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

“Gèsu was killed and His blood was spilled upon the sands. Where His blood fell, flowers bloomed, even though the land had been dead before. The Journeys say that we
shall be redeemed through blood; the blood of Gèsu will give new life to the land.” Despite her words earlier about how the Old Way wasn’t secret here, she had lowered her voice to a whisper. Habit, perhaps. “Each time we celebrate Mass, we help to bring that day closer.”

I nodded again.

“Before He left for the last time, He broke bread and shared wine with His disciples and said, ‘This bread is My body, and this wine is My blood. Eat, drink, and live forever; dance with Me and know the glory of God.’ So that is the Mass.”

I nodded again.

“I’ll teach you the dance after breakfast. It’s not hard.” Lucia peered around the line again. “Almost there,” she said.

We did finally make it to the front of the line for our gruel. Lucia led me through a maze of tents, bowl in hand, before finally sitting down in a tiny clearing, a miniature piazza formed by a gap in the tents. We sat down to eat. As soon as we were done, she put away the bowls and pulled me to my feet. “Right,” she said. “Time to learn the dance.”

I laid my violin aside and stood, feeling nervous. I had been dragged through those dances in Bosco, but I felt much more exposed in the bright daylight with just me and Lucia dancing. People started coming out of their tents to watch. “Don’t mind them,” Lucia said, which didn’t make me feel any better.

“What do I do?” I asked.

“It has a three-beat rhythm.
One
two three
one
two three
one
two three
one
two three. And the steps go like this:
side
hop step
side
hop step
side
hop step
side
hop step.” She showed me. “Now, slowly,” she said. “You try.”

I took a tentative step to my left, then hopped, then
took another step. My feet got tangled up and I flushed. Our audience laughed, not unkindly, but I could feel my face flush hotter.

“It’s all right,” Lucia said. “Most of them can’t do it either. Come on.
One
two three.”

It took several repetitions to get the steps down. “During Mass, you hold hands with the people around you,” Lucia said. “I’ll teach you the song now, so you can play it next time.” She sang it for me; she had a very pure soprano voice that sounded almost like a violin. I took out my violin and played the song through several times; I was tempted to harmonize a bit with Lucia’s voice, but I was afraid that Lucia would disapprove of alterations to music that was sacred to her.

At around noon, she led me toward the edge of the camp, to the side of a hill guarded by a soldier. Rafi joined us a bit later, along with a dozen other men and women. Rafi produced a chalice, filled it with water, then added a few drops of wine; someone else produced a small piece of bread and gave it to Lucia.

We joined hands in a circle around Lucia. She closed her eyes and started chanting in the Old Tongue. On some cue that I didn’t see, we started to dance, stepping in a circle to our left. “Arka, v’barah, v’nehora kadosha. Arka, v’barah, v’nehora kadosha.”

On another signal I missed, the dance stopped, and everyone around me knelt briefly to touch the ground. I caught up with them and crossed myself with everyone else. “B’shem Arka, v’barah, v’nehora kadosha,” Lucia said, and everyone said, “Amen.”

I didn’t catch much of the ritual; it was all in the Old Tongue. Finally, Lucia raised the bread and the chalice to the sky. “Iyt gufay,” she said. “Iyt damay. Achal. Ashti. V’chaya ad alam-almaya.”

“Amen,” we said, and crossed ourselves.

Lucia took a sip from the chalice, then a bite of the bread. Then she stepped into the circle and crossed to face me. “Gufa d’go’el,” she said, and broke off a tiny piece of the bread. “Eat it,” she whispered when I hesitated. It was stale bread, terribly dry; I was thirsty from dancing in the noon sun, and was barely able to choke it down. “Dam d’go’el,” she said, and gave me a sip from the chalice. The wine was a faint aftertaste in the bitter wasteland water.