Fires of the Faithful (22 page)

I was stiff and cold when I got up in the morning, and damp with dew. To my relief, no one had stolen my violin or my chits. Everyone seemed to be heading to the food line, so I joined in the slow shuffle. I had risen early, so I got my breakfast—more gruel—a bit faster than I’d gotten my dinner. When I’d finished the last of it, I wandered around Ravenna a bit, hoping to see a familiar face.

There was a little bit more to Ravenna than I’d seen the previous night. In addition to the keep and the sea of tents, there were occasional bits of stone walls. Ravenna had been a town once; destroyed in the war, bits and pieces remained and were used to hold up some of the tents.

Things were packed so tightly that anywhere I went off the main road, I felt that I was trespassing on someone’s territory. People were still staring at me, and an old woman glared as I stepped over the edge of her tent. Finally, I returned to the piazza next to the keep; at least this didn’t seem to belong to anybody.

A thick pillar of wood stood in front of the keep; iron rings were screwed to the sides, on level with my head. It looked like a permanent installation, but I’d missed it last night in the dark. As I studied the pillar, a door in the side of the keep swung open, and four soldiers led out a struggling boy. It was the boy I’d seen yesterday trying to steal ration chits. One of the soldiers unbelted the boy’s tunic and tried to pull it off, but he continued to struggle and almost slipped out of their hands, so the soldiers bound his hands to the iron rings on the pillar and then tore his tunic open to bare his back. One of the soldiers read from a parchment: “For attempted theft of ration chits. Fifteen lashes.” The boy cried out, though the lash hadn’t touched him yet.

Three of the soldiers returned to the keep; the fourth picked up a long whip and brought it down on the boy’s
back. The snap echoed across the piazza and the boy screamed. His cry was echoed by a woman watching—his mother? She clapped her hands over her mouth and moaned in anguish, watching the lashing.

I didn’t want to see this, but I stood frozen, counting the blows. The boy went limp as they finished. They cut the bonds and pushed him away from the whipping post; the woman rushed forward to gather him up. I could hear a low moan from the boy. The soldiers coiled the whip and went back into the keep. No one else in Ravenna seemed to have noticed.

With my week’s worth of ration chits, I had no need to go work on the wall, but within a few hours, I realized that I was terribly, stunningly bored. There were a surprising number of other Ravenessi who didn’t seem to be working, either. I found out later that many fed themselves some other way—begging, prostitution, theft, or the largesse of family. The children, elderly, and ill were forced to rely on this, but there were other able-bodied young people as well, sitting around and killing time. We had no fields to tend, no crafts to occupy our hands, nothing to do at all except stand in line for food twice a day and wait for death by slow starvation. By midmorning, I was hungry again. I drank some water to give me the feeling of fullness for a little while.

It had been a few days since I’d played the violin. At least practicing would give me a way to pass the hours until dinner. Sitting in the spot where I’d slept, I took out my violin and tuned up. I played my half of the duet I’d played with Giula, then my section of the ensemble piece we’d been working on right when I left the conservatory. Around me, people ducked out of their tents, staring at me. I flushed slightly, but ignored them and kept playing. Some settled down in the dirt across from me, and others began to clap
time with my playing. I realized, with no little surprise, that they were listening to me for pleasure.

I hadn’t played for such an uncritical audience since my mother became a sophisticated enough listener to evaluate my technique, back when I was just a child. At the conservatory, I never listened to another violinist without quietly noticing every mistake, every fumble, every note I could have played better, and I knew the other violinists returned the favor. In Ravenna, though, people seemed to view my playing as high entertainment. An old woman closed her eyes, a slight smile on her face, and one or two people got up to dance. Nothing formal like the Redentore dance I’d seen; they just wanted to move to the music. I almost started enjoying myself; it was nice to feel like a concert star. I segued into some of the folk songs I’d played with Mira, and people sang along. There was some inconsistency in the words they sang, but no one seemed to notice.

I scanned the faces of the audience as I played, hoping to see someone I knew. I caught a glimpse, in the late afternoon, of a young man who looked familiar, but he was gone before I could place him. My first impulse was to race after him, but I couldn’t just leave my violin case and bag behind, and by the time I gathered everything up, he’d be long gone. Besides, thinking it over, I was fairly certain he wasn’t from my village. If I knew him, I knew him from somewhere else.

People began lining up for dinner just before the work crews were expected back, in late afternoon. I joined the line soon after that; I was ravenous. The soldiers hadn’t started serving the food yet, so the line wasn’t moving, but at least close to the head of the line, I’d get fed sooner.

“Hey,” a voice said behind me. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

I turned. The young woman behind me in line was as
thin and ragged as anyone else here, but she had an inner warmth that lit her eyes with life. She smiled kindly, the first welcoming look I’d seen in weeks. “You are new,” she said, without waiting for my response. “I’d know you, if you weren’t.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I am new here.”

“My name is Lucia,” she said.

“Eliana.”

“Where did you come from? You haven’t been living in the wasteland.”

“Doratura. I’m looking for my family.”

“Doratura,” she said. “Where were you before that?”

“Conservatory.”

“Ah, yes. That explains the violin case.” She touched my arm gently. “Doratura was destroyed by the Circle—you knew that, yes?”

“Yes.” My voice nearly caught, and I cleared my throat. “A woman in the neighboring village told me that soldiers took the survivors south, to Ravenna.”

Lucia nodded. “That’s right. There were ten survivors from Doratura who were brought here, plus three of the refugees that they had sheltered.”

Hope leapt in my throat and blinded me. “What were their names? Can you tell me?”

She closed her eyes a moment. “From Doratura—Bino, Adria, and their children Idi, Pamfilo, and Masina; Eleanora, and her son Duilio; a man named Alessandro; and two orphan children, Neri and Balbo.”

I remembered Bino and Adria, Eleanora and Alessandro. Bino had been a good friend of my father’s. Alessandro once brawled with my eldest brother Agrippo over a girl; they’d both wound up with cracked heads, and the girl decided they were both louts and married someone else. I realized
dimly through my sobs that Lucia was holding me up; I had not even realized that she’d slipped her arm around my waist to support me.

“Let me go,” I choked. I wanted to get away from the crowd, to cry somewhere more private, where no one could stare at me.

“Stay here,” she said. “You don’t want to lose your place in line.” I struggled, against her and against my own uncooperative legs, but she held me firmly. “You need to eat,” she said. “You’ll need all of your strength. And don’t give up hope. Those were the survivors brought here. If any of your relatives were gone from the village when the Circle attacked, they might have fled and avoided both death and capture.”

“Perhaps.” I could almost stand again. “Alessandro and the others. Where are they now?”

I could feel her arm tighten around me again. “They escaped a few nights ago,” she whispered. “All of them. Your village sticks together.”

My knees held, this time, and I found myself laughing. “So now I’m truly alone.”

“You’re not alone,” she said. “God is with you.”

I stiffened, then straightened up slowly and turned to look carefully into her face. Lucia looked steadily back at me. After a moment, she let go of my waist and took my hand. “You’re one of us, aren’t you?” she said, and traced a cross on my skin. I jumped, starting to pull away, and she squeezed my hand. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The Fedeli don’t come to Ravenna. This is perhaps the safest place in all the Empire to be a Redentore.” She smiled at the irony and I gave her a tentative grimace back.

“Why do you know everyone here?” I asked.

Lucia smiled, and again her eyes lit like candles behind
a screen. “It’s not such a big valley, really,” she said. “I try to meet people as they come in.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Varena,” she said, and my face must have shown my surprise, because she shrugged and added, “It’s a long story.” Varena was weeks north of here—even further north than Cuore. “Where did you go to conservatory?” she asked.

“The Verdiano Rural Conservatory. In Bascio.”

The line began to shuffle forward. “Hey,” Lucia said. “Why don’t you join me while we eat? There are some friends I’d like to introduce you to.”

In the torchlight at the head of the food line, I noticed that Lucia’s eyes were a beautiful deep blue. Where had I seen eyes that color before? I couldn’t remember. “I’d love to,” I said.

The tent Lucia led me to was a little larger and more solid-looking than the tents around it. The residents seemed to have claimed at least one solid wall and pulled down their canvas over the edge. Lucia stuck her hand through the flap and waved. “Rafi,” she said. “It’s Lucia. I’ve brought a friend.”

Rafi flipped the tent flap back and peered out. He had a shock of curly black hair and long black lashes. “Come on in,” he said.

There were four people in the tent: Rafi, a beautiful young woman, and two men. “Move over, Giovanni,” Lucia said to one of the men.

“For what?” he demanded. “Some other bloody stray you’ve picked up?” Giovanni looked up to glare at me and I realized with a sickening drop of my stomach who he was.

“You,” I gasped.
This
was who I saw while playing earlier.

“Giovanni of Cuore,” he said, looking at me nervously. “What do you mean, ‘you’?”

It was the violet-eyed pretty-boy from the inn in Pluma. The louse who’d slapped Giula. “Never mind,” I said. “If you don’t remember, there certainly isn’t any point in reminding you.”

He continued to stare at me for a moment, and I gave him my most threatening glare. “Oh!” he said suddenly. “From Pluma.”

“Yeah,” I said. “From Pluma.”

“This is Eliana,” Lucia introduced me, completely ignoring Giovanni’s outburst. I realized where I’d seen her blue eyes before. They were the same color as Giovanni’s. “She’s the one I heard playing violin earlier today.” There was an approving murmur through the tent, though not from Giovanni.

“I still don’t see any reason that
I
should move over,” Giovanni said.

“Shut up, Giovanni,” the other man said, rising slightly to bow to me. “My name is Beneto, and this—” he gestured to the beautiful woman, “is Jesca. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to our tent, although we could choose more hospitable surroundings.” He gave me a charming smile, then glared at Giovanni, who moved out of the way to let Lucia and me sit down.

Beneto was startlingly clean, cleaner than anyone I’d seen since I’d arrived at Ravenna, and his clothes were cut just a little too nicely—as if he had gone to the best tailor in a substantial city and said, “Make me peasants’ clothes.” Jesca was Beneto’s quiet shadow, with a gentle smile that could melt marble. She was just dusty enough not to stand out like a duck in a henhouse, but the worn elbows of her dress were carefully mended and her long, straight hair was brushed smooth.

“Tea?” Rafi asked. “It’s not exactly the best Verdia has to offer, but it’ll be hot.” Rafi, at least, looked like an ordinary Ravenesse, and it was clear that this was his tent. He wore a cross openly on a leather thong; it dangled over his dishes as he bent to get cups.

“Yes, please,” Lucia said, and Beneto and Jesca nodded, so I nodded as well. Giovanni was still busy sulking and didn’t answer.

Rafi lit a tiny fire, using flint and steel, and set a pot over it. Beneto was studying me. “Do you think this is the one Amedeo spoke of, Lucia?” he asked.

“Well, he was speaking pretty, ah, poetically,” Lucia said. “But she seems right.”

Beneto nodded, giving me a long, meditative look. I met his eyes with a glare. I don’t like being stared at, especially by someone who’s talking about me as if I’m not there. He looked slightly surprised, then smiled warmly. “She’s the one.”

“The one
what
?” I demanded.

“Your arrival here was not entirely unanticipated,” Beneto said. “Amedeo is a prophet. He’s a little, well, unstable. I don’t know if you’ve met a prophet before—”

“No.”

“They say that the Light is too bright for anyone to hold by himself,” Rafi said.

“Which is a polite way of saying Amedeo is crazy,” Giovanni said, poking at the fire. “Rafi, did you make enough tea for me?”

Rafi rolled his eyes. “I should say no. But yes, I did.” He checked the pot. “And it’s ready.” He filled the cups and passed them around. I cupped my hands around my tea. It smelled good, but it was weak and bitter. At least it was hot.

“Amedeo said you’d be coming. Or rather, he predicted a musician, ‘as tall and straight as a tree in winter,’ and he said you’d have the Gift,” Lucia said.

“What gift?”

Beneto shrugged. “We don’t have the slightest idea. Amedeo seemed to think it was very important, though.”

Lucia shrugged as well. “Although, as Giovanni noted so tactfully, Amedeo is crazy. Sometimes what he says is inspired, and sometimes it’s just ravings. He’s not an especially easy man to be around.” She looked a little uncomfortable. “In any case, I think it is God’s will that you’re here.”

“Whatever,” Giovanni said. “I think it’s the Circle’s will that brought her, like the rest of us, to this godforsaken desert of a valley. And it’s Lucia’s will that brought her to Rafi’s tent.” He turned to glare at me again. “Peasant.” He said it as an insult.