“The sooner, the better, Captain,” Julian said. “My wife should not have left her guards behind when she heard of my illness. Make it happen. Trusted men who will cling to her like a burr, if you please.”
“Julian!” Beatriz snapped. Her face had gone red, but she held his gaze. “That is not up to you! I will let Captain Gonzalo know when I need guards.”
He barreled onward. “There can be no question in this time of needing protection—”
“And how does that make me look,” Beatriz insisted, “to be buried by guards? What sort of impression would that give to our people? To the concejales? How does that make me an alcalde to trust? To follow?”
“Sir. Ma’am,” Gonzalo said lamely, looking from one to another.
“I apologize,” Julian said with a stiff bow. “My wife is right. She is the alcalde and makes the decisions, Captain.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue, but not from anger at Beatriz. She was right to speak so. No, the anger was at himself. As her husband, he should be aiding Beatriz in her new role, not hindering her. “I’m sorry, mi amor.”
“Leave the orders to me, if you please. I’ll have no more guards than would be given during a normal time.” She slipped her arm in Julian’s to show there were no hard feelings, but Julian feared he would need more lessons to get over a habit of command ingrained in him for over twenty years.
“Of course,” Captain Gonzalo said, looking not at all happy for this order. “I’m pleased the rumors of your ill health were exaggerated, former Alcalde Julian.”
The soldier stepped aside to reveal the room, and Julian felt as though he’d slipped from reality, leaving him unable to speak. The composed tone of the captain could not be at more odds with the sight unfolding in the meeting house. Tables and chairs had been pushed against the walls to give floor space to dozens upon dozens of corpses covered with sheets and blankets. Dark stains spoiled the white-painted floorboards under them.
“What has happened here?” Beatriz demanded with a rising voice. “Who are they?”
“The villagers, ma’am.” Gonzalo shrugged, looking to the two soldiers waiting among the discarded tables. “Your guess is as good as mine. Looks like they massacred each other. The survivors arrived at Suseph with . . . their stories yesterday. We came to see for ourselves and stayed to do burial detail. The wagon should be coming for the next load soon.”
“How many?” Julian heard himself ask. Then glanced at Beatriz to ensure he hadn’t stepped on her toes again. She gave him a nod as if in thanks.
“Nearly a hundred, sir.” Gonzalo gave a shrug. “The survivors say it came out of nowhere. Thin air killed them. Lies, of course—they obviously fought over food or just went mad.” Gonzalo frowned. “Though we found no weapons around them. No sign it was the work of bandits or Northern soldiers either. Nothing has been looted—no property damaged. Damn odd—forgive my language, ma’am.”
“They didn’t lie, Captain,” Beatriz said slowly. “We have a new adversary.”
Julian walked to the closest corpse and lifted the sheet. Staring brown eyes gazed emptily back. He jumped and dropped the sheet, but not before recognizing the head woman of the village. A graying grandmother, twenty years his senior but with a soul of kindness, she’d served the meal he’d eaten here with her own plump hands. He lifted the sheet again, taking in the cuts crossing her face and neck. Her midsection had been laid open from pelvis to collarbone, ribs forced apart, and her insides diced into small pieces. Julian shuddered and retreated.
“Tell me, Captain, were the only survivors those who were inside when the attack came?”
Gonzalo stirred uneasily. “So they claimed, sir. We found all the bodies outside—left to lay as they fell. Do you know what this is?”
“We do. You know of the Northern god?”
“The time of miracles has returned,” Beatriz said before the captain could answer, “and with it the time of trial.”
Julian gazed heartsore at the covered bodies, many of them child sized. Between what the surviving villagers had witnessed and the menace of the Northern army, no one would ever return to live here—at least not for many years. Who could return to a place where your loved ones had been slaughtered before your eyes by a ghost? How many other small villages would go the way of this one—dead and empty, never to return to life? How many cities?
“I’m not sure I catch your meaning, ma’am,” Gonzalo said.
Beatriz lifted her chin, though her expression remained more mournful than angry. “I mean there is a force loose in the world that seeks to end every human life, Captain. The way it ended every one of our pelotónes but yours. I’m sorry to have to tell you, Captain, that all your fellow soldiers are dead, including the ones from Aveston and Suseph. You are our last military force remaining.”
For the first time in his life, Julian witnessed the steady Captain Gonzalo speechless and without the correct response. Julian stepped to the man’s rescue. “A shock I know, Captain, but I was there at the time and survived, thanks only to a miracle. The Northern army is now a fly compared to our true foe.” Julian winced at the rude comparison, all too aware of the welts he still bore from the flies sent by Dal. He gestured at the bodies. “What you see here is only a small part of his power.”
The tall soldier fumbled his way into a chair, fingers plucking at his beard. “Sir?”
“I think—no, it’s not up to me. The Alcalde can tell you more,” Julian said.
“Outside if you please,” Beatriz said, “in the fresh air.”
She waved a hand in front of her face as if that could help dispel the smell, then got an arm under the captain and helped him to totter out to the porch, leaving Julian with the dead and the two living guards. He looked out over the rows of bodies again and felt a small relief that they’d learned Dal still could not act inside structures. He calculated quickly in his head, taking out the time he’d assigned to go to Suseph—as now Beatriz could send Gonzalo there with the warning—and came up with three days to reach Vista Sur, the farthest of the ciudades-estado. Saints, let there be someone remaining there to warn.
Julian’s first instinct was to follow Beatriz outside and talk to Gonzalo, but he remembered that responsibility was no longer his to own.
Instead, his eyes turned inward to his landscape of self, the unrecognizable place, as he brought up his left hand and idly opened and closed his fingers, watching their freedom of movement, so changed from days ago. Why had he been wholly healed and these children left to die?
Slowly a white-hot rage formed. Too many children had suffered already in this war. Yet, to blame God was a fool’s errand. God helped those who helped themselves. It was his job to prevent their deaths, to protect children and their parents—or it had been his job. No longer. The people had lost faith in him, just as he’d lost faith in himself. But you did not throw away what you’d spent years creating. The burden of protecting his people had been carried for too long to set aside now. Beatriz would make the hard decisions, but he could be there to help her. And with that realization, some of the building blocks of his mind’s landscape rearranged themselves, becoming familiar once again. He was the one who saw to the safety of the weak. His job to see those with few opportunities were treated fairly. That could still be his task, though from the side instead of the center.
The world righted itself a fraction as he clung to that lifeline. He was proud the title of alcalde had passed to Beatriz—but his involvement and dedication did not need to be less or his part in the fight any smaller.
They sought for a way to stop this Dal. He approved that determination, but they needed a backup plan in case removing Dal proved impossible. A strategy that would protect their weakest and most vulnerable. It would no doubt be costly.
Julian nodded to himself. Sometimes to be truly brave required sacrifice.
Ramiro stood in the gray world of fog, though this time it was not entirely featureless. Tall buildings poked through the covering mist, which t
hinned and shifted enough to show cobblestones under his feet and the close walls of the same buildings on either side. The dream had found him in the desert, in the swamp, and now in a city—but not Colina Hermosa. The buildings were unfamiliar, their tops too rounded, the streets too narrow. The designers of Colina Hermosa had favored wide avenues and open spaces. This ciudad-estado pressed down, claustrophobic. Aveston then. It made sense, as that was his location in the real world.
Or was it?
For a moment, the world spun as Ramiro considered the implications of this being the real world and his life the dream.
He shook himself. Such speculation was better left to scholars or stray thoughts on rainy days when nothing else occupied him. Now, he had things to do. The gray world always meant a message of some importance.
The streets ran uphill ahead of him, and when he turned around, they ended in a cliff-like drop that was only imaginable in a dream—or a nightmare—or here. After all, if he could walk among the clouds as he had before, then anything was possible. Behind him, the ciudad-estado simply stopped, one building sheered right in half, to become empty air—a void. Somehow, Ramiro knew a fall backward would be a fall forever. He moved some steps away from the edge, but felt little relief.
A glance around revealed an opening in the fog and the one constant of the gray world, the expected sight of his brother. Sure enough, Salvador was there, standing at the top of a set of steps leading into a great church. The roof of the church was dominated by one mighty bell tower peeking through the fog and lording over the rest of the city. Once again Salvador wore the robes of a priest, but without the triple-rope belt of their order. No helm covered his brother’s face. Once again Ramiro’s heart jumped with joy only to drop in disappointment. The figure looked the same as Salvador: his eyes, his beard, his build—but this was not his brother.
“Why do you bring me here?” Ramiro asked. Even as he tried to draw nearer, his legs bogged down, dragging and resisting his efforts. He ceased trying as it became clear he would not be allowed to get close this time.
As always the figure refused to speak, lifting his arm and pointing over Ramiro’s shoulder. Ramiro whirled. Northern priests came boiling from every direction out of the void, running on thin air. All carried the killing white Diviners lifted high with unmistakable intent. Ramiro tried to flee but his legs remained unresponsive, moving like a man traveling through quicksand. He reached for a weapon but wore only his smallclothes.
“Oh saints!”
The more he struggled, the more his panic grew. The Northerners converged on him. Diviners pointed at his heart. He cringed from the killing touch . . .
And woke with a gasping start, heart beating like a rat’s in a trap. His limbs scrambled out of his bedding before his brain could even pull free a clear thought, tearing the stab wound in his side. He spun to look behind him.
An unthreatening whitewashed kitchen wall returned his stare. Their packs and bags sat against the wall on the hard-swept dirt floor with the wooden kitchen tray from the monastery leaning against them.
No Northerners. No danger. No Salvador.
And no message that made any sense.
Why take him to the gray world if not to relate something of use? He already knew they were outnumbered.
He rubbed his jaw.
Stupid head. Overreacting. He was as jumpy as a frog with a heron wading across the water. There was never any danger in the gray world, he reminded himself, and the message would come with time—or maybe he’d woken before it could be delivered. He adjusted the bandage wrapped around his torso where his wound had been stitched and dabbed with honey to keep off infection. It still took his heart long minutes to settle into a normal rhythm, helped by the unconcerned snoring of Father Telo on the floor nearby.
Thankfully, there had been no one to see his panic. The man slept like the dead, pulled up close to the banked hearth for warmth. Ramiro envied the peace the priest had found since the healing of Julian. He wished he could leave aside his fears and doubts as easily and trust in God to bring them though their trials. Faith came harder for him. Or maybe he felt he had more to lose.
Ramiro left the priest to sleep and headed out the back door for a glimpse of the stars. His nerves refused to let him attempt sleep again yet, and he was reluctant to go traipsing around this house in the middle of the night to wake Teresa for a chat. She slept in a spare bedroom upstairs. No, crashing through their house in the middle of the night was a poor way to repay the people who had come to find them when they were separated from Teresa, helped them bury the soldiers’ blood, and opened their house to them. Ramiro didn’t intend to put them at risk for long. He hoped to be out by morning now that they had a destination—the Northern priests were apparently holed up in Aveston’s grand cathedral. A fitting enough place, especially since their story to the guards at the gate was supposed to lead them there anyway. With that information, the sooner they were gone, the safer these good people would be.
The open door let in the chill midnight air, as even in the height of summer, the nights could be cold in the high desert. Ramiro shrugged a blanket around his shoulders and looked toward the stars, reflectively nudging aside hair that had become stuck to the cut on his temple and getting a dab of honey on his knuckles for his pains. Clouds muffled the sky, blocking out everything but the thin shine of the moon trapped behind their layers.
When one lived in the desert, clouds were a welcome sight. Often hoped for. But these were too insubstantial to bring the needed summer rains.
As useless as his dream.
Had the gray world been a message to be careful? That they were doomed to fail in their pursuit of Santabe?
None of those questions felt right. A nagging along his spine said the message was there—he just couldn’t see it.
From out of the clouds came a haunting sound, like an unseen hand trailing fingers drawn across his bare skin.
“Ramiro.”
He blinked and took a step forward. “Claire?”
Whatever it had been, it was already gone. A wisp of magic carried by the clouds. But real, unlike the gray world. Claire, or her voice, had spoken to him. In the too brief instant, he felt her well-being but loneliness. She missed him.
“I’m here,” he said to the empty clouds.
I miss you, too.
His face clenched and his throat worked, wishing there was some way to send word that he felt the same. But he had no magic. Just tasks to perform before they could be reunited—as did she.
“Until then.”
Time to get some sleep so he was fit for those tasks. He stepped inside, closed the door, turned, and stopped as his eyes landed on their bags. Wait . . .
And then the message of the gray world became clear.
He hurried forward to jostle Father Telo awake. The man looked up at him, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“What is it, my son?”
“I have an idea. We’re going to the cathedral now.”
“Now?”
“Yes. It’s time to get Santabe.”
Chapter 15
Ramiro balanced covered dishes on the kitchen tray, feeling like a fool. Teresa kept throwing him accusatory glances as she lugged along her mop and full bucket. Water sloshed over the edge as they hastened to follow the priest.
“I understand why we’re going to the cathedral at night—because of the Northern curfew on daytime travel—but why this?” Teresa asked.
“How better to get inside then as the cleaning staff? They may be overlords of evil, but I assume they still prefer to live in a tidy house.” In a move that made actual sense, the Northerners had installed a curfew during the day, no doubt to try and ward off Dal. The toothless grandfather who ran the house where they’d left their possessions and Sancha said the soldiers were lax about enforcement. And despite the action yesterday, Ramiro had the bad feeling that the soldiers they’d encountered would have walked right past without trouble if he hadn’t been holding a
sword. Someone might be in control of the army again, but a soldier who expected to die screaming and begging for his life soon wasn’t going to care much about anything. Still, Ramiro needed to be more careful.
Which was why he had no weapon with him for their reconnaissance of the cathedral other than his knives.
Teresa struggled along. “Then how about I carry the tray and you take the bucket?”
Ramiro looked away. He could blame his wound for having her take the heavy bucket, but that would be a lie. A small adjustment to his stride meant the puncture barely pulled or caused him pain. How could he explain the tray had been the first thing he saw after his dream and he felt he was meant to carry the blasted thing? He’d sound crazy and at the least be teased relentlessly. “Go ahead and dump out the water. We can get more when we get there.”
Teresa gaped at him for a moment, then rolled her eyes, but upended the bucket to send the water splashing across the cobblestones. Father Telo looked back, put his finger to his mouth to shush them, turned around, then simply stood in the middle of the street.
Ramiro sidled forward to shake the priest. “Father?” The man looked a thousand miles away.
“Sorry. Got distracted. So many associations with this city. It’s why I moved to Colina Hermosa. I wasn’t exactly a . . . good man here. This way.”
Ramiro shook his head, unable to believe Father Telo was anything but virtuous—ever. He shook his head again. Everybody was too distracted. Too little sleep and the smell of desperation oozed from all three of them. It was his plan, and yet he had a bad feeling about it. About the city itself. We need to grab Santabe and get the hell out of here—the sooner the better. His own need to get to Suseph and turn himself in to justice for desertion pulled at him.
Just in case things went truly bad, he had forced promises out of several small boys back at the house to see Sancha set free outside the city if he didn’t come back within a day. He didn’t trust the toothless grandfather not to salt and pickle the mare. That kind was practical to the core and food was already growing scarce. But, again, he had to have a little faith—if worse came to worst, Sancha could take care of herself. The Northerners had already found out her hooves and teeth were deadly. She’d sense danger and could kick her way out of the flimsy barn if necessary.
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