Fires of the Faithful (38 page)

“I’d sort of planned to play it by ear,” I said. I’d mainly
been hoping the soldiers would stay out of the way when the uprising came—just stand back and not try to kill us—and that no one would try to kill them. “Leading you against your commander—” I shook my head.

“You could, you know.” Mario gripped my arm. “We’d follow you.”

“ ‘We’? Who are you speaking for, Mario? Not all the men who come to my concerts.”

“No,” he said. “But many of them.”

“You hate Teleso that much? And the Circle?”

“We’ve been abandoned here,” Mario said. “Just as you have. All I ask—” He paused. “All I ask is that you invite my men to join you when you lead your insurrection.
Ask
us to join you. Don’t just turn your people against us.”

“I don’t turn away allies,” I said.

“We can be of use to you. I can get you into the keep, once you’ve started your uprising.”

“How?” I asked.

“A soldier named Bassio.” I recognized the name; Bassio had recently started coming to my concerts. He was a tall, quiet man, and the other soldiers had been surprised to see him. I hoped Teleso would be similarly surprised. “Tell me when you’re ready, and he’ll get into position,” Mario said. “He’ll open the door to the keep.”

“That’s good to know,” I said.

Mario nodded, and turned away to go, then turned back. “Remember what I said about Giula,” he said, and strode quickly away.

•  •  •

Dono alla Magia preparations continued, and Margherita led nightly prayer services. I knew that there were nightly prayer services in the barracks, but Mario came each night
to pray with the Della Chiese prisoners, taking off his sword and kneeling in the dust. Teleso, too, saw Mario at prayer, and I could see his eyes glint with anger and a hint of satisfaction. He strolled the piazza with Giula regularly; I could see his eyes sweeping the crowd looking for me, so I stayed out of his sight as well as I could.

The popularity of the game, Lupi, continued to rise. Permanent teams had formed, and the people who weren’t playing the game were betting on the outcomes. Even Mario didn’t seem to suspect; it had worked perfectly.

There was another strange thing I’d noticed recently. Red sashes had become the fashion among Lupi players. I had no idea where all the red blankets were coming from, but there seemed to be plenty of red sashes to go around.

•  •  •

“We shouldn’t go,” Lucia said.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “I can go by myself.”

“I don’t understand why you won’t just stay here.”

“I want to see how they do the Dono alla Magia ritual,” I said. “Without magery.”

Giovanni sat beside Lucia, in Rafi’s tent, his eyes flicking from Lucia’s face to mine. “I want to go, too,” he said.
Great
, I thought,
just what I need. Giovanni as company all evening
. “I’m curious, too. I’ve been curious about all the Della Chiese rituals, but you never let me go to any.” This last comment became a whine, directed at Lucia.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll all go.”

The ritual was to take place in the piazza. The tents along the edge had been taken down again, making the space larger. Unlit torches on high stakes ringed the periphery of the piazza, and dried horse dung had been heaped in the center for a fire. It was still daylight, and would be daylight for a while yet. Margherita was nowhere in sight, but
the piazza was beginning to fill with the faithful and the onlookers. Some of the old women had brought drums to beat, and younger people were dancing. Not the careful ritual dance of the Old Way, though; they danced with their own internal partners, flinging their bodies in wild gyrations. Michel was dancing in the piazza; he was as graceful dancing for the Lady as he was with the Redentori. He had asked me several days earlier if Lucia and Giovanni could protect me for the day, and I had assured him that I would be fine.

“Harlots,” Lucia said, her eyes locked onto the dancers.

Giovanni rolled his eyes. “I don’t see any harm in dancing steps that God didn’t write out for you,” he said. “I always liked dancing before the Dono alla Magia service.” Lucia glared at him, and he stayed where he was.

We spread out our cloaks and sat down on the ground on a slight rise at the edge of the expanded piazza. “You should see Dono alla Magia in Cuore,” Giovanni said to me. “I thought there were a lot of lights in Varena, but it’s nothing compared to Cuore. The Circle participates, of course. The whole city is lit up.”

“I can imagine.”

“I doubt it,” Giovanni said.

Petro, passing by, offered us a swig from his clay jug. Lucia shook her head primly, but Giovanni took the jug. “You should have some, Lucia,” he urged with a smirk, but she shook her head again and he returned the jug to Petro with a nod of thanks. “Best wine I’ve had in months,” Giovanni said when he’d gone. “Should’ve figured Petro would have a stash.”

“I’m surprised he’s sharing it,” I said, and Giovanni laughed. Lucia glared at both of us.

More of the old women arrived, joining the drummers. Some of them brought drums, but most just had pots or
tin cups to bang together. The noise increased and sharpened. I wrinkled my nose. “We had drums at the conservatory,” I said. “
Just
drums.”

“You drive away the Maledori with noise,” Giovanni pointed out. “Any noise. We had all sorts of noisemakers in Varena and Cuore.”

“There’s nothing that says it has to be an unpleasant noise,” I said. Most of the old women had gotten onto the beat together, but a few were a hair behind, creating a clattering cacophony that sounded like a drunk cat in a room full of cymbals.

Twilight fell, and the faithful began to leave the piazza. The old women stayed, of course, still banging on their pots. Someone—Petro, maybe—was starting to light the torches. Giovanni fell silent. “I’ve never watched this before,” I said. “I was always one of the Blind, at the conservatory.”

“Figures,” Giovanni said.

“Give me a break, Giovanni. I suppose you were an honorary drummer.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Of course I was one of the Blind, too.”

“Yes, you were,” Lucia said softly. She was smiling a little bit when I glanced back.

On a signal from someone I hadn’t seen, the drumming became more insistent, and more regular. They were almost all on the beat now. I remembered this moment, from the conservatory, standing blindfolded in the vestry of the church, my hand on Bella’s shoulder and Giula’s hand on my shoulder. Straining for the sound of the beat, for the signal that we could stop standing around and could wind our way into the church.

Here they came, finally. I’d never realized quite how simultaneously frightening and silly we must have looked. At
the conservatory, we all had matching white blindfolds, but here people made do with what they could find. I saw more than a few red sashes used that way. The line was led by the priestess, Margherita, whose eyes were covered only with a thin veil that she could easily see through. Behind her was Giula, who had claimed the place of honor by virtue of her position as Teleso’s lady, and behind her, one of the women who lived by the latrines. To be next to Giula was no honor. Each person was blindfolded, led by the person in front. The faithful wound through Ravenna like an endless blind centipede. When they reached the piazza, Margherita began to spiral the line, so that it wound tight, packing people in. She signaled, and the drumming stopped. Silence was the cue: everyone dropped hands and sat down in the piazza, feeling carefully underneath them first. Margherita pulled off her blindfold and spoke to the crowd.

“Tonight is the Night of the Gift of the Lady.”

Crash
. I jumped at the echoing cymbals.

“Centuries ago, our land was dark with war, ignorance, and superstition. The Empire that had kept the peace for a thousand years was crumbling, and barbarians invaded from the north. The Maledori nipped at our heels and leered at us from the shadows. Our people cried to their god in fear, but there was only
silence
.”

Crash
.

“Then on this night, those centuries ago, the Lady came to a man called Gaius, shining in the darkness like a star come to earth. ‘Behold,’ She said. ‘I bring the greatest of gifts.’ ”

“ ‘Behold,’ ” Lucia muttered beside me, “ ‘I am a stranger among you, yet I bring the greatest of gifts.’ The Journey of Gèsu, chapter 1, verse 1.”

“So the Lady borrowed,” Giovanni said. “She steals only from the best.”

Margherita continued from the center of the piazza. “Gaius said, ‘What have you brought us?’ And the Lady said, ‘Open your eyes, Gaius. Open your eyes, and see!”

Crash
.

That was the cue for everyone to pull off their blindfold, to see the ring of light that surrounded them.

“In Cuore,” Giovanni said, “the Circle created lights in the sky—not magefire, it wasn’t dangerous. Just pretty. All colors, too.”

At the conservatory, we were ringed by teachers, each of whom held a globe of witchlight. No one held witchlight here in Ravenna, of course. Instead, torches flickered brightly in the summer night.

“The Lady’s Gift to Gaius was magery,” Margherita said. “Gaius also learned the other things the Lady wanted for Her children—peace, prosperity, fertility, abundance, freedom. To provide these things, Gaius taught as many people magery as he could, and gathered in those with the strongest talent to serve the Emperor and protect the land.”

Giovanni snorted softly behind me. “To take over from the Emperor,” he said under his breath. “And divide power with the Fedeli, as poachers might divide the spoils from their hunt.”

“Mario is loyal to the Emperor,” I said.

Giovanni shrugged. “What good is the army without the Circle?”

“The Circle united the land, and magery spread,” Margherita said.

“Actually,” Giovanni said, “the Empire fell apart anyway. Magery spread all right, and now there are thousands of little Circles out there. Tough to control an empire with a handful of mages who don’t want to leave their comfortable enclave …”

“Our people abandoned superstition. The Lady does
not ask us to believe in things we can only imagine, but gives us light we can
see
by and faith we can touch,” Margherita said. “We can hold the Lady’s Gift in our hands.”

“Not here!” someone shouted. I realized with a lurch that it was Rafi. I looked at Lucia, but her eyes were as wide and horrified as mine.

Margherita never missed a beat. “The Lady promised Gaius that She would
never
turn away from us; Her love is perfect, true, and complete. And so, Her blessings were passed from Gaius to our grandparents to us. Please join with me—” and everyone joined in with her in a long hymn.

Lucia shook her head, not quite able to hide her smile. “You never expect
Rafi
to be the one who makes trouble, you know?”

Giovanni shrugged. “So what did you think?” he asked me.

“It’s strange, with fire instead of witchlight. It looks like we’re saying that until the Lady came, we didn’t have fire,” I said.

In the piazza, Margherita lit the bonfire and people tossed in handfuls of incense. A wave of rose-scented smoke washed over us.

“I’m going to be ill,” Lucia warned us. “I can’t stand that smell.”

“I’ve seen what I came to see,” I said. “We can go.”

“I’m staying,” Giovanni said. “Next is more dancing. I always liked dancing.”

“Harlot,” Lucia said to him.

“I’ll repent tomorrow,” he said with a mocking bow. “Or the day after. Tomorrow night is Midsummer’s Eve, isn’t it? And you
know
what they say about Midsummer’s Eve.”

“You’re hopeless,” she said, and turned her back on him. I followed her toward the hills.

“What do they say about Midsummer’s Eve?” I asked when we’d gotten a ways away.

“Oh, you know,” Lucia said. “Didn’t they say this in your village? Anything that happens that night doesn’t ‘count.’ ”

I grinned. “That does sound familiar. People said that sort of thing at the conservatory, but you know, if we were caught with a boy it would count no matter what night it was.”

“Well, the priests and priestesses at the seminary always said it was heresy, but it’s a very popular heresy all over, I think.”

We sat down on the hillside. From here, the torches looked like a ring of dancing jewels against the darkness. I sighed.

“You can go dance, too, if you like,” Lucia said. “I won’t hold it against you.”

“That’s all right. I’ve never been a very good dancer.”

Lucia leaned against my shoulder. “Lying’s a sin too, you know. You’re a fine dancer.”

“How would you know?” I said. “I play, I don’t dance.”

“I
know
,” Lucia said. She turned her head to look up at me, and give me a wry smile. My gaze nearly faltered, but I managed to smile back at her.

Lucia pulled away from me briefly and spread out her cloak; we lay down on her cloak and covered ourselves with mine, leaning against each other to stay warm in the wasteland’s chill night breeze. “Do you ever think about your parents, Lucia?” I asked.

“Not very often,” she said. “I haven’t seen them for a long time.”

“Are they alive?”

“As far as I know.” Lucia sighed. “I tried to write to them once, last year. Before I came to Ravenna. Apparently, they refused to open my letter. So I might just as well be dead, as far as they’re concerned.”

“And Giovanni?”

“I don’t know what his parents think. He was their only son and they always let him get away with a lot. Joining a reform movement is probably just another little boy’s game, as far as they’re concerned.”

“I don’t know what my parents would have thought,” I said.

“Would you be here, if they were still alive?” Lucia asked.

“No.”

Under the cloak, Lucia’s hand found mine. “Your hands are cold,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said, and my voice trembled slightly.

Lucia turned her face toward mine in the moonlight; she smiled. I pulled one hand free of the cloak, and reached to touch her cheek. It was as soft as velvet; she closed her eyes briefly at their cold touch.

“Lucia,” I said, and my voice shook. “The last time I saw Amedeo, he said something—about women who feel toward women as Giula feels toward men.” I wanted to stop, but I had gone too far not to finish asking now. “He said that—that it’s one of the things that goes against God. Is it?”