Faithful

by Michelle Hauck

  “Did she tell you much when you were alone, give you much insight?”

  “Just the Speak on the Wind Song.” And the few well-placed questions Claire managed—which she didn’t feel like talking about with Ramiro—had been instructive. It seemed recently invented Songs could work just as well as ones passed down through generations, like the Hornet Tune. The magic lay not in the words, but in the user, allowing any Song to be effective, whether improvised on the spur of the moment or practiced for years. The key lay in being ready to act and being flexible in guessing the mind of the audience, finding the Song that best fit the situation. And in practicing—the lump returned to her throat at the thought—practice kept you prepared and always ready to strike first according to her grandmother. Having the Songs drilled into your brain so they sprang forth without thought helped, too. Practice could make her a killing machine like Jorga—an idea that made Claire slightly queasy as she remembered the Song she’d created days ago.

  She started to tell Ramiro about it, and the words stuck. She latched onto something she did feel like sharing. “But Jorga told me a story. Do you want to hear it?”

  He turned enough to see her out of the corner of his eye as if she were having him on. “A story? She doesn’t seem the story type.”

  “Do you want to hear it?”

  “I’m listening.” Then more quietly, “I like the sound of your voice. It sings even when you aren’t.”

  A warm blush ran up her neck and face, and she remembered how she’d kissed him on the spur of the moment in front of her home. Did he think of it, too? Or, what if he considered it brash and forward? Fronilde never would have done such a thing. Her blush turned hot with shame. Maybe that’s why he never spoke of it—to keep from embarrassing her.

  She plunged into the story to have something else to think about. “The Great Goddess is the world. Her breath the wind, her breasts the mountains—”

  “That’s some image,” he scoffed.

  “Shhh. I’m repeating it as she told it to me. Do you want to hear or not?”

  “I’m listening. I’m listening.”

  “All right then. Her breast the mountains. Her tears the seas. She is our home and our shelter. The Great Goddess is life and womb, giving life . . . And some more things I forget, but sometimes she walks among us in human form. On one such day, she took the form of a simple farmwife in woolens with a basket on her arm and walked the world.”

  “So she walked on . . . herself? Because she’s the world.”

  “Shush. It’s a story. If I talked like this, Jorga never would have told it all to me.” Unexpectedly, his ridicule stung. She shared something that resonated with her and he mocked? When he kept quiet, she tried again, “She walked the world to see the state of her creations. Everywhere she looked, she found harmony. The fish swam and ate and minded their lives. The fox took no more food than he could eat. The rabbit gave up its life for others to live, but not before the next generation was born. Life had balance, devoid of gluttony or greed. There was death, but it held purpose. Nothing was wasted. Then the Great Goddess came to the lands of humans.

  “The first thing she saw was a man beating his wife and children because grain had spilt in the roadway. Man, woman, child, the Great Goddess had given all a role to play to ensure all lived complete lives. None were meant to be master over the other, but to man—who had the greater strength to bear physical loads, while woman had the inner strength—an imbalance had sprung. Against the will of the Great Goddess, men used their strength to dominate and as proof they were the greater sex. The Great Goddess became angry. The skies darkened and thunder rolled. But the Great Goddess did not interfere with her creations. She gave them the will and the wisdom to order their own lives.”

  “So she didn’t do anything?”

  “Not yet.” Claire took a breath and started the next part. “Then there was some more about what the Great Goddess saw until she came to two sisters. The two sisters worked the land, producing abundance from what the Goddess gave them—in harmony. What they did was well done and the Great Goddess felt that there existed a kinship between her and the sisters. Here were ones who lived in her image.

  “As she lingered, bandits came from the woods as the sisters worked alone, and well . . . forced their will upon them. The Goddess was incensed at the misuse of her greatest gift to man and woman, but did nothing as was her wont.

  “This time, however, the Great Goddess did not walk away. When the men had gone, she revealed herself and touched each sister, transporting them to the Great Goddess’s favorite spot among her creations where variety thrived: She brought them to the swamp to heal. Here, where quicksand could shield, poisonous snake could protect, even double-bite spider could keep the world of men out, she put the sisters in a safe area and the Great Goddess shared her Song with them to mute their pain before she went her way.

  “But her touch and music lived on. For though the sisters separated to each nurse their injury and grieve alone, both bore daughters, and remained connected as only sisters can be. And each daughter brought forth the Great Goddess’s Song and shaped it in their own way. Thus did the Women of the Song have the gift to protect themselves evermore. And that’s the story she told me.”

  “Hmmm,” Ramiro said tactfully. “That’s some story. And this is what your people believe?”

  “Jorga said it was as good an explanation as any for where the magic came from.”

  “And this Great Goddess did nothing to change her creations out in the world? Didn’t smite the profane or send anyone to show them a better approach?”

  “It’s not her way.” Claire shifted her seat. “It’s not the way of Women of the Song. Mother always insisted we mind our own lives.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Ramiro said. “That they can’t be brought to help, and they won’t even train you quickly enough to be of use—it feels like Jorga is dragging her feet on that. This whole thing could be a wild goose chase. Jorga would still rather walk away from helping my people. A waste of time when I could have been doing something else. Supporting my father among them.” As if sensing he’d said words that might wound, he added, “It was worth a try and you needed to return, if only briefly.” He rushed onward, “I feel like we’re a pelotón of two. We work well together. A team. Don’t you think? It would be wrong to break it up.”

  Startled, astonishment kept Claire silent. He worried about losing her, about her staying here. Somehow, he could sit here calm and composed when Northerners hunted them and babble at the thought of splitting up from her. Warmth and hope grew in her heart, then dimmed. Was it as simple as losing the companionship of his military company and his brother had made him latch onto the nearest person? Or did it go deeper?

  “I . . . I agree,” she said, suddenly too shy to say more. “We feel like a team. But don’t give up on the Women of the Song—or—me yet. I have a feeling this isn’t over.”

  “Aye. I trust your judgment. We’ll give it a little more time.”

  In response, she leaned forward and rested against his back again, putting her arms around his waist. A smile bloomed across her face when his hand encircled hers.

  Chapter 23

  Ramiro stood in the gray world. All around him fog clung, thick and impenetrable, but not touching him. This time, in this dream, there was no city rising from the murk. No sign of Colina Hermosa. The ground didn’t slide in the way of sand. It splashed when he stepped, water cold against his feet. The swamp, then.

  He circled in place, searching for Salvador, and the fog let him see through it to reveal his brother at the crest of a small hill, looking upward, with his back turned. Ghostly shadows of trees lurked deeper within the white, rising like distant, dead things.

  Salvador wore no armor this time. A priest-like robe covered his brother, but white instead of brown or black, and no triple-rope belt cinched his middle. The robe fell unhindered to the ground. For a second, Ramiro, too, wore the same outfit, then it
flickered and he stood in his undertunic and trousers, barefoot and unarmed. The clothing he’d worn when he’d fallen asleep.

  Ramiro stepped toward the hill and once again time slowed, pulling against him like quicksand, leaving him unable to make progress. In the way of dreams, he knew time and strength held no meaning here. No matter the effort expended, he’d never get close—to touch, to take his brother’s hand, to feel his life whole again.

  “Salvador!” he shouted, his voice raw with longing.

  As before, his brother turned slowly. Almost Ramiro expected to find him beardless as a priest, but the same face met his gaze, the brown eyes seeing him for an instant of recognition and turning in dismissal.

  Salvador pointed to the sky. The fog obediently became translucent again.

  The sun was a black disc.

  Ramiro jumped, his whole body going cold. Unlike with an eclipse, there was no foreign body between the orb and him. The sun itself had gone dark as ink, though still giving light. A light that felt foul and tainted.

  Before he could react further, the fog reformed, covering everything and leaving him alone. As if from a far distance, one word drifted in Salvador’s voice.

  “Hide.”

  Ramiro woke with a gasp, his heart racing. “Hide.” Panic turned his insides to water.

  A dream. A dream and nothing more.

  Sancha slept. She would have alerted him if anything threatened. She made a better guard than any human. He was safe among his bedding, weapons lying close. Bromisto lay curled in a ball in his blankets, snoring lightly near the ashes of their small fire, muttering in his sleep now and then. Next to Ramiro, Claire sprawled, one hand holding his blanket as if with a need to reassure he was there—or maybe in some delusion of protecting him. Moonlight glinted pale off the skin of her face, arm, and hand lying inches from his own, the white of her contrasting more sharply so close to his honeyed-brown coloring.

  Warmth at having her so near pushed aside the terror. Slowly, he brought heart and breathing under control. It was just a dream, no matter how real. This was reality.

  Reality left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  In his dreams, he was not the Ramiro who had turned his back on his father. Not the Ramiro who had left his pelotón and his duty. He used to have joy, despite the fear, as when he’d gone on his first ride, or the day he’d earned his beard. He’d forgotten how to laugh—how to smile. In his dreams, he had a brother.

  Now, he tasted only bitter ashes.

  Deserter.

  Claire had become the shining beacon who got him through Salvador’s death. For that, his heart of hearts knew he’d followed her. Yet, in the darkest hours, it couldn’t make up for what he left behind. He let the guilt swallow him whole, giving it time to fester, then asserted an effort to block the feelings and not think about them. With just such denial, he got through each day.

  He sniffed the air. From years of sentry duty and early morning practice, he judged it to be some hours until dawn. A smile touched his face as he studied Claire’s sleeping form, still so innocent and naïve despite the death she’d seen. He wrestled with the desire to lean just a few inches and taste her with a kiss. No gentleman would act so. If this war were over and he were home, he would seek out her family for permission to court her, then he might indulge such wishes. But he wasn’t home and she had no family.

  Jorga.

  The bitter taste grew stronger, but he levered himself up by an elbow. Jorga sat on the other side of the fire from them. Her shoulders actually slumped instead of being held straight as a spear. Ramiro sucked in a breath, his eyes rolled from just a glimpse of her.

  Claire’s family. Duty dictated his behavior. Her answer would be no, but that didn’t excuse him from asking.

  He got to his feet, gathered his weapons, and in an echo from his dream, his legs refused to respond, but this time because of actual reluctance. He cursed and walked over to her, sitting down none too gently, putting dagger in his lap and sword against his knee. The old woman’s eyes flew open with a start, and he realized she’d been asleep sitting up. The moonlight reflected off the paleness of her skin also but without kindness, revealing the knobby and twisted joints of one with severe rheumatism. A fact she kept hidden during the day. She shook her sleeves down over her hands almost before he could blink.

  “It pains you to sleep lying down,” he said in a moment of insight.

  She stared at him coldly with eyes made black instead of blue in the darkness. “What do you want?”

  “Permission to court your granddaughter.”

  She laughed without mirth, a dry rasp, lips pulling back to show large, square teeth. “Why bother to ask? I see how she looks at you.”

  “That’s why I ask. You are wrong about me. Wrong about most men.”

  “Am I? You would take her to your cities. And what would she be there? Hated. Feared. Made a second-class citizen, not her own person. A reflection of you, having no life of her own.”

  “Not in my—our household. My mother raised me differently.”

  Again came the dry laugh. “Think you see her as equal? Then why ask my permission? Do I own her? Is she incapable of directing her own life and making her own decisions? Would any man ask permission in how they run their life? Did you run to your parents before coming here?”

  Ramiro sat stumped and speechless.

  “I see you. You would protect her, wrap her up like a piece of priceless glass. Give her no choice of her own. She sees the danger around her and chooses it with her eyes open, but you would take the choice from her to ease your own fears of breaking her. She is as capable as the rest of us of fighting her own battles, city man. All women are. It should be up to them to choose.”

  “My request was meant as a courtesy,” he said, stung. “To show her respect.” He drew his knees up to his chest, his weapons moving with him as he sat back on the damp ground, thoughts flashed in his head, there and gone lightning fast. “I thank you. I spoke in haste. You are right. I spoke and acted dishonorably toward her.” It smarted to admit as much, but justice required it. Jorga had responded to him with the most civility she’d shown so far.

  Her gnarled hand grasped his knee, squeezed, and vanished. “I trust my granddaughter. If she looks at you with such eyes, there’s a reason. That’s why I let you live. But she is my last kin.”

  “You have a son.”

  “A son cannot carry on the line—he has no magic. My line goes back three thousand years and more. Can you say as much? My kin walked this swamp with chin held high when your kind were still nomads of the desert. We watched you settle in your cities, thinking you owned everything. She can no more turn her back on her heritage than you can learn respect. It is in her blood. I won’t let her dismiss us.”

  It would certainly be easier for them if Claire did just that, once this whole thing were over—if they survived. If she set aside her magic they would be accepted more quickly; their lives could be normal . . . once more he realized he was falling into the role Jorga expected of him. His jaw firmed.

  “I would never ask that of her. As you said, it is her decision. Not mine. Not yours. But we’ll see which life she prefers.”

  “All the better,” Jorga said before countering with shattering words. “Are you worthy of her, city man? Has your life been as blameless and clean as hers? Or will your love muddy her and cast a shadow on her?”

  Deserter.

  How could he ask to court Claire when he could end in prison or hanged? Cast out by his own people? Could he visit that shame on her?

  Against his will, his head dropped, a cloud over his heart. Never. He could speak nothing to Claire until he had settled his own life.

  Ramiro made his muscles relax, settling his legs back to the ground and shaking out his hands. “Ready yourself and wake Claire. We move now. Before it’s light.” He eyed the sky, remembering the black sun and Salvador’s advice to hide. “We need to move at night.”

  To his surprise, s
he didn’t argue, glancing at the sky as if she, too, felt something. She gave a nod and held out a bony hand. “Help me up, city man. We’ll be there by morning.”

  Chapter 24

  The day dawned hot, windless, and dry with few clouds and the promise of great heat to come. The only shade came from the taller cacti and was as skimpy as their rations. As the priest requested, Teresa stayed well back of the prisoner as they walked down the main road to Zapata. Santabe had the height of a man. The wiry muscles on her arms were more than enough to convince Teresa she could be dangerous without needing the description of her crimes from Father Telo. Santabe had the sort of athletic figure Teresa often admired, though the harshness of her personality would keep it from going beyond appreciation. Teresa preferred gentleness in a woman in order to inspire love—or lust.

  Yet, Santabe showed nothing but a docile nature at the moment, acting in no way like one compelled, looking awkwardly out of place in a bright yellow peasant blouse with bell sleeves and pink skirt next to the somber browns Teresa wore and the priest’s robe. A smug, self-satisfied smile proved her habitual expression. Teresa suspected the woman could have overpowered the one-handed priest at any time and chose not to.

  Teresa shook off that worrisome thought as well as her doubts for accompanying the strange pair. She’d come along to find out more about the Northern culture, not find a lover.

  Yet, she couldn’t ignore the woman either. Once again in her life curiosity outweighed self-preservation. Finding one of the Northerners who could speak their language had to be fate. Teresa couldn’t let this opportunity slip away—she just hoped she had the chance to report what she learned so it could be recorded. If . . . if she could learn anything. This Santabe didn’t seem like the chatty type.

  Well, she’d interviewed plenty of difficult subjects. She straightened her poncho and hurried her pace to draw closer, road dust puffing around her scuffed boots at every step. Most people wanted to talk about themselves, no matter how much they resisted at first. She’d start with something smaller and try to build to her larger questions.