Grudging (31 page)

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

R
ecently, I heard that ­people who follow their childhood dreams of employment to adulthood are the happiest. As a child, I never wanted to be a writer, didn't put pencil to paper in some school notebook and fill it with stories. My every-­girl-­must-­have teenage diary boasted mostly empty pages. According to my parents, I wanted to be Underdog or possibly Mighty Mouse. I never learned how to fly like them, but I had an imagination that didn't stop. My first characters were stuffed animals. That moved on to joining my cousins and little sister in acting the parts of Tom Sawyer or Robin Hood. Somehow, many years later, imagination returned, and this time I put those worlds on paper for others to, hopefully, enjoy.

Thank you to readers everywhere for wanting to live in someone else's imagination.

Also, I want to thank some of those ­people who nurtured and made this book possible. The Speculative Fiction group at Agent Query Connect taught me the ropes of writing and provided guidance. My critique partners Carla Rehse, Angie Sandro, and Joyce Alton deserve so much thanks for reading the early drafts and pointing out where it went off the tracks. I couldn't have managed without their shoulders to hold me up.

My terrific agent, Sarah Negovetich, for her support and always knowing when I needed to cut a character point of view or add more. And, more important, like the knights of old, I want to thank Sarah for having my back.

I thank all the team at HarperVoyager. To my editor, David, thanks for deciding you needed more epic fantasy and making
Grudging
one of them. I appreciate Rebecca for answering my unending line of questions. Sara, thanks for smoothing out my typos, and Zea for leading me through the scary world of promotion.

Huge hugs to my parents for encouraging me to always have a book in hand—­even if it was sometimes at the dinner table. To my sister, Tracy, for being my first fan. My teenagers, now young adults, who brought me down to earth in a way only your children can. But most of all thanks to my husband, who was the first to think I should be an author and who also reminds me there is a world that isn't in my laptop.

 

The battle is over . . . but the threat to Ramiro and Claire's ­peoples has only just begun.

 

Read an exclusive excerpt from Book Two in the Birth of Saints series

FAITHFUL

On-­sale Fall 2016

 

CHAPTER 1

R
amiro held the reins loosely in his left hand and combed through Sancha's mane with his right. There hadn't been time to give his horse a proper grooming in the two days since the walls fell at Colina Hermosa, and guilt for neglecting the mare added to the burdens on his shoulders. Sancha would forgive him.

He was not so sure others would.

A patrol through the desert, looking for lost evacuees in the middle of the afternoon, was pure duty. No one would do so for fun. Yet, the missing ­people had to be found, and his brother Salvador had beat the precepts into his head:
Always see first to Colina Hermosa and its citizens,
then fellow pelotón members, other military brothers, and last self
. So Ramiro tried to live to honor his brother.

Hot sunshine beat down on the back of his breastplate, making sweat run freely, and turning the metal into an oven. Heat waves shimmered off the packed sand of the hill ahead, and the air smelled of salty sweat, summer, and distant smoke. As he rode, his naked sword lay ready across his lap. Not all the Northerners had thrown down their weapons or leaped to their death on the orders of an illusion of their god. It paid to be vigilant.

But no matter how hot or unpleasant, he'd much rather be on patrol, broiling in full armor and saving lives, than lugging corpses from the bottom of the quarry to the burn pile. And it was a thousand times better than sitting around with too much time to think.

It's way too hot to think. . .

Sancha's ears twitched, and Ramiro darted sharp glances to the men riding spread out on either side. A search-­and-­rescue party worked better with distance between them to cover more ground, but that meant most of his patrol was out of eyesight. He relied more on Sancha's sharp senses than his own. Yet, even the nearest men rode on without a word, as they had for hours.

A pang of what could only be termed homesickness washed over Ramiro and a knot formed in his throat. He hadn't expected riding a patrol without his friends Alvito and Gomez would create such a hole in his gut. Or that orders given to him from a captain other than his brother would sting quite so much.

It had been over a week, but he felt their loss more keenly in the silence out here, only broken by the desert wind and calls of cactus wrens.

He unclenched his fist from Sancha's mane and forced himself to resume freeing an embedded sandbur. The new captain of the
pelotón
, Muño, was a good man. Ramiro had known him forever, and he'd been a loyal and capable lieutenant for years. The sergeant from the gate guards they'd brought in to replace Gomez seemed competent. But nothing was the same. Not the fact that he could never see his brother Salvador again, or that he could never return home to a city burnt by the Northern army.

He didn't even have Claire for company, having left the witch girl behind with his mother as he attended to duty. His mother might not be a warrior—­or approve of Claire—­but she would do the best she could for his sake to guard the girl from harassment and catcalls. He just wished he felt right about leaving Claire with
anyone
, once more thinking how strange it was he thought of her at all, considering he hadn't always worried for her safety.

“Hi-­ya!” came distantly from his left.

Ramiro dropped the burr and scrambled to don his helmet and pick up his sword. To his relief the men closest to him did the same, proving just as unready. That call could mean anything from a party of aggressive Northerners to a group of lost refugees to simply a break to eat. Sancha picked up her feet and pranced as Ramiro used his knees to guide her toward the call.

“Steady, girl, steady,” he told her as her urged her in the direction of the call. No matter what it was, there was enough time to assess the situation. He was no longer the naïve
biso
ño
, striving to earn his beard and be considered a man. Those days of eagerly throwing himself forward were also gone.

A bit of bright yellow peeked above an outcropping of rock. His mind dismissed it as a prickly pear flower before his eyes jerked him back. The yellow was too large and too flat to be a flower. Ramiro edged Sancha in that direction and saw a piece of bright shirt. Cornering around the rock revealed a plump woman clutching two children to her breast, all three crouched small against the stone. They had the same brown hair and brown skin as himself, proclaiming they could not be the pale Northerners.

Eyes clenched shut, one boy had his hands clamped over his ears. The other boy had burrowed his face into the woman, as if her presence could save him. They trembled and shook in the grip of great terror, though all around them was calm.

A shiver ran up Ramiro's back. He hastily glanced around but saw only sunshine, rocks, and cacti. What had happened here to instill so much fear?

“San Andrés protect us,” the woman was chanting in a dry whisper. “Santiago shield us. San Andrés protect us. Santiago shield us.” When she looked up, he was shocked—­he knew her.

“Hi-­ya!” Ramiro called out before sheathing his sword and swinging down from Sancha. “Over here! Survivors!” He stepped forward and grasped the woman's shoulder. “Lupaa, you're safe now.” Even without the woman's apron, he recognized the motherly face of the citadel's head cook, the woman always ready to sneak him bread slathered in her special honey. What were the odds that of all the ­people of Colina Hermosa he should rescue someone he knew?

“What happened here?” he asked. “Lupaa!” He shook her.

Only then did her eyes open slowly, as if doing so pained her after clenching them too tight. But instead of greeting him, her gaze darted in all directions, passing over him.

One of the boys moaned and actually folded himself smaller, pressing into the rock. The new sergeant, Jorge, and a second soldier arrived and dismounted from their
caballos de guerra
. The horses had the same dapple-­gray coloring as Sancha, and every
pelotón
member had their own bond with one of these intelligent animals.

“Report,” Sergeant Jorge said. Everything about the sergeant spoke of precision and exactness to detail, from the crease in his uniform to the careful placement of his equipment on his saddle. His beard, simple and cut close, reminded Ramiro painfully of his brother's.

No time for that now.
Ramiro drew himself up. “Refugees, sir. This one is Lupaa from the citadel kitchen. One of my mother's cooks.”

“It's not every
bisoño
who has his own chef,” the other soldier teased. Gray tinted Arias's hair and spread liberally through his thick beard. The man had been a member of the
pelotón
for longer than Ramiro had been alive, but he remained lean and fit.

Ramiro bristled and grit back a sharp retort lest he look childish in front of Sergeant Jorge. “I'm a rookie no longer.”

Arias held out his hands. “Old habits. No offense meant.”

Sergeant Jorge cleared his throat. “The matter at hand,
caballeros.
”

Ramiro bent over Lupaa and met the woman's brown eyes but found no recognition in them. “Lupaa. Lupaa.” He snapped his fingers close to her face.

“Santiago shield us. San Andrés . . .” She started and recognition flooded back. “Ramiro? Thank the saints! Is it over? Tell me it's over!”

“Over? What happened here? Why . . . this?” He waved a hand at her and the boys. “How did you get here?”

“I . . . we assembled at the Santa Teresa section of the city. Ran with the other evacuees when Colina Hermosa's wall fell to let us out. I couldn't keep up.” She gave the boys a squeeze, and one lifted his head. “My grandsons stayed with me. We ended up with a smaller group, going in what we hoped was the right direction.”

“You are south of the swamp,” Ramiro said. The evacuees from the city had meant to head west for the swamp of the witches to hide, or to Crueses, the closest safe city. It was his father, the
Alcalde's
, plan to save the ­people of the city from the Northern army, and it had worked well . . . for the most part. But many of the ­people were too slow to stay with the soldiers guarding them, too old or weak, and had been left behind. “Off course. And then? Why this hiding?”

“Northerners found us. We took what shelter we could and prayed.”

“Then the screaming started,” the boy added.

Ramiro looked around again. There was no sign of Northerners or of other evacuees from his city. He turned to Sergeant Jorge and shrugged. Perhaps fear had caused Lupaa to imagine things. Maybe she mistook normal sounds of the desert for the enemy.

“I told my grandsons not to look, never to look, and we prayed,” Lupaa said. She struggled to get her legs under her, and Ramiro took her arms, levering her to her feet. “We prayed so hard.” The taller boy, probably twelve winters old, stood under his own power. The smaller child still clung to his grandmother.

Sergeant Jorge waved Arias to go ahead toward where the first call had originated. “You're safe now, ma'am. In our custody. Soldier, bring her and catch up with us.” The sergeant followed after Arias, pulling his
caballo de guerra
after him.

“Hi-­ya,” Ramiro acknowledge, though the man had already forgotten about him. It shouldn't sting that the sergeant didn't remember his name. The man had barely time to learn all the officers, let alone every ordinary soldier under his command—­though maybe he pretended not to remember in order to avoid showing favoritism toward the
Alcalde's
son.

Sancha sidled up against him, and Ramiro plucked a water skin from his saddle, offering it to Lupaa. “Drink.” By the time they had all taken a turn, color came back to their faces and the younger child had his eyes open.

“You hid from the Northerners,” Ramiro said. “How many were there?”

“Many,” Lupaa said. “I could not count them all. It was dark, and we were few. Unarmed. I ducked against the rock with my boys and prayed for the evil to stop. Thank you. Thank you a thousand times for saving us. My kitchen is always open to you. We owe you our lives.”

“You are most welcome, but the danger was long gone.” Ramiro glanced at the sun. If her story was true, they'd been against the outcropping for at least six hours. No wonder they looked to be in shock. But he couldn't quite figure out something:
Why had they stayed like that once the Northerners passed them by?
“You said screaming.”

The youngest put his hands back over his ears, eyes wide. “Horrible,” the older said. “For hours.” He shook, and Lupaa drew them close again.

Something didn't add up. The Northerners would have done their killing and moved on. Unless they'd spent time on some elaborate torture. That sounded like the enemy's way, but again, he was missing something, because Claire had routed them. Her magic had sent them running like devils were in pursuit. Most believed the Northerners would not stop until they reached their distant homeland. Indeed, none of the patrols over the last two days had met with sizable resistance, if any at all.

That
had
been two days ago, though. What if the Northerners managed to regroup? His own ­people were far from recovered. Still in smaller groups and spread over distances, they reeled from the loss of their city and from the death around them. The ­people of Colina Hermosa were not up to fighting an organized enemy.

The feeling of unease along his spine grew, urging him forward to investigate. His mother's stories of the Sight in his family came to mind again, but this felt more like a suggestion than an outright warning of danger. “Which direction did the screaming come from?”

The boy pointed after the sergeant, and Ramiro gripped Lupaa's hand. He fixed a relaxed smile on his face to reassure her. “Wait here for me. Then I'll take you to the camps. Sancha, stay,” he ordered. The warhorse would keep them safe for the few minutes it would take to scout around and discover what had happened here.

He pushed through a cluster of tall ocotillo, its thorny branches spreading out six feet in all directions. He could see that most of the fifteen members of his small patrol gathered in a spot ahead. The needles of a barrel cactus scraped against the steel of the greave below his knee. Too many flies filled the air. A rust-­colored stain spotted the flat leaf of a prickly pear. He bent closer.
Blood.
Dried by the sun.

He soon spotted another splotch on a rock, and then larger discolorations in the dirt. Puddles he would have walked right past if not for the tingling along his spine.

The first clump of what could only be flesh showed a few steps later, a torn and unidentifiable bit the size of his thumb. It could be from an animal.

Ahead, one of the soldiers vomited into the sand. Ramiro stopped, heart racing.

Saints.

An arm hung from the crook of a tall saguaro cactus, the skin intact and too pale to be from one of his countrymen. It ended near the elbow in a jagged tear. The hand was missing.

Ramiro's stomach rolled, the hair at the back of his neck standing up. As Santiago had taught centuries ago, he touched mind, heart, liver, and spleen in quick succession to clear his body centers of negative emotion.

It almost helped.

That wasn
't done with a sword or ax
, he thought.
Nothing sharp
. None of the vegetation nearby looked hacked or disturbed as if a battle had taken place. He quickly spotted more body parts and pieces of flesh. Here a torso missing its head and wearing the bright colors of an evacuee. There, under a pincushion cactus, an ear. A scrap of fabric in the black and yellow of a Northern uniform. An eyeball under a buzz of flies. Blood covered everything, as if thrown from buckets. Too much blood even from the number of bodies he could see. The smell, sharp and metallic, filled the air. Some of it in the shade still looked wet.