Fires of the Faithful

by Naomi Kritzer

  I’ve come to wed your father but I want to make you mine.

  If you’ll take me as your mother, you will find my faults are few.

  I’ve brought a gift of honey, bright as sun and sweet as wine.

  And as pure as all the love I hold inside my heart for you.

  The door to my practice room slammed open, and I stared into Galeria’s furious face.

  “How dare you!” she shouted.

  For some reason, the first thing that came into my head was a terrible fear that she would throw my violin to the ground, as Cassio had thrown Bella’s trumpet. “Please don’t break my violin,” I said, backing up. “Just let me put it down, please.” All I could think was, the Lady told them that Bella was an apostate, and now she’s told them that I am, too, but I was too busy defending my violin to say anything incriminating.

  “Where did you learn that song?” Galeria demanded.

  It took me a moment to remember that I hadn’t been playing an Old Way song—I’d been playing the song about the poisoned honey. “It was all over the conservatory a few months ago,” I said. “I don’t remember whom I first heard it from.” Celia, I remembered a moment later. “We thought that the ‘poisoned honey’ referred to a heresy—something that looked sweet, but would rot you from the inside. Some people thought that the Fedeli wrote the song.”

  The fury on Galeria’s face had eased, and now she gave me what was doubtless intended as a reassuring smile. “No, daughter,” she said. “Your own innocence is clear, but that song doesn’t do justice to you. It was written by apostates, to turn people against the true faith. The Redentori believe that the Lady’s gift of magic is evil—like poisoned honey. That’s what the song is about.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll never sing it again.”

  “The Lady understands that you played it without malice,” Galeria said. She stepped forward, her eyes searching mine. I forced myself to meet her gaze.

  “I can see that you’re afraid of me,” Galeria said.

  I didn’t dare deny it. “Bella was a friend of mine,” I said.

  “I see,” Galeria said. “Kneel, daughter.”

  I knelt at her feet, and she clasped my head in her hands. Then she raised my chin so that I was looking up at her face, and her eyes were full of tears. “ ‘Innocence doesn’t need to hide,’ ” she quoted. “Daughter, the Lady assures me that your heart is as pure as Bella’s was black. Be at peace, and remember that the Lady loves you.” She raised me to my feet and left, closing the practice room door behind her.

  I discovered that my hands were shaking too hard to play anymore tonight. I waited long enough to feel sure that she was gone, then packed up my violin and headed back to my room.

  When I reached it, Mira wasn’t there. She might have been practicing, as I’d been, but I was struck with the sudden fear that she had run away from the conservatory. Her cloak was gone, and her violin. I knelt to look under her bed for personal belongings—there was a box under her bed, like the one where I kept letters from my parents. She wouldn’t leave without her letters, I thought.

  Still, I couldn’t shake my fear that she’d vanished like Giorgi. Grabbing my cloak again, I went back out to the practice hall, but the halls were quiet. I tried the north practice hall next, crossing the courtyard and finding my way to the crumbling building beyond the chapel. I didn’t see the flicker of candlelight, but it occurred to me that Mira might have feared that the Fedeli would see a candle and grow suspicious. I opened the door and stared into the cold darkness. “Mira?” I said.

  There was no reply, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see a shape huddled on the floor.

  “Mira?” I said again, and knelt beside her. It was Mira; I took her hand. I had expected her hand to be cold from the wind and the damp stone floor she lay on, but it was so hot I wondered if she was running a fever. I made a witchlight to see her face, and she cried out as if I’d burned her.

  “Put it away,” she said, and I flicked away the light.

  “Mira, do you need help getting back to our room?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I need to stay here.”

  “I’ll stay with you, then,” I said. I lay down on the floor beside Mira, wrapped in my cloak. Heat radiated from Mira’s body like a fire.

  Mira was silent as I arranged myself beside her. Then—“Do you know why I left Cuore?” she asked.

  “So that you could play the forbidden music?” I said.

  She shook her head. “That’s why I came here, not why I left Cuore.”

  “Why, then?” I asked.

  “My grandmother died,” she said. “She was the person who’d taught me to play the violin. My parents sent her violin to me in Cuore, along with a letter. And that was when I knew I had to leave.”

  “Was she executed by the Fedeli?” I asked.

  “No,” Mira said. “She lived in Verdia, like my parents. She died from the famine.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “It was my fault.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that—how could the famine be her fault? So I touched her hot arm with my hand and said, “I was afraid you had run away.”

  “You thought I’d lose my nerve now?” she asked. “After all this? If I were going to leave, I should have gone when we first saw that they’d come.”

  “Galeria heard me playing the poisoned honey song,” I said. “She was furious. She told me that heretics wrote it to slander the Lady.”

  “But she let you go?”

  “I told her that we’d thought the poisoned honey referred to a heresy. She believed me.” I laughed bitterly. “She made me kneel, and then she told me that the Lady had told her that I was pure, just as the Lady told her that Bella was an apostate.”

  “They’re liars,” Mira said. “The Lady doesn’t talk to Her followers.” She rolled away from me and coughed. The heat from her body was fading.

  “Mira—”

  “You should leave me alone,” Mira said. “I don’t deserve your loyalty.” She pulled herself to her knees and retched.

  When she had finished, I drew her away from the pool of vomit, and covered her with her cloak. “Mira, you’re my friend. I’ll stay with you.”

  Mira was silent for a while; then she retched again. Her body began to shake. The warmth she had radiated before was gone. “I can’t do this again,” she whispered.

  I wrapped my arms around her, as I had in bed, and said nothing. I could hear her weeping; then her body stiffened against my arms, and I realized that she was having a convulsion, as she had when she first arrived. I tried to hold her, but the convulsion wrenched her out of my grasp. When the convulsion ended, she slipped into unconsciousness, and I pulled her into my arms again.

  “My fault,” she muttered suddenly a while later.

  “No,” I said, and stroked her hair. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I could have stopped them,” she said. “The Fedeli. I could have stopped them.”

  “You would have been one against all of them—Galeria, Cassio, all their guards,” I said. “There wasn’t anything any of us could have done.”

  “No,” Mira said. “When he drew the knife. I should have—” She broke off. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “You shouldn’t know.”

  I clasped her tightly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I can’t do this again,” she said. “I won’t be able to let another friend die.”

  “The Fedeli leave at dawn,” I said. “They won’t come back.”

  Mira fell silent, then began to weep again. I pressed my hand against her wet cheek, wiping her tears away. “Mira,” I said.

  “Don’t say it,” she said. “Whatever it was you were going to say, just don’t say it.”

  So I waited until she was asleep again. The moon was up, and shining through the cracks in the walls enough that I could just see Mira’s face when I sat up. The warm flush had d
rained out of her face, leaving her as pale as polished bones. I touched her cold forehead with my lips; she didn’t wake.

  “I know you don’t want me to bind myself to you, Mira,” I whispered. “But even if you don’t hear me, I want to tell you that I’m not going to leave you.” I crossed my forefingers. “Whatever you fear, I will face it with you. Whether we face Maledori or Fedeli, I’ll stand beside you. If it’s in my power, I’ll protect you.” I kissed my fingers, sealing the oath. Mira’s eyes never flickered.

  “I love you, Mira,” I whispered.

  I slept, toward the end of the night, my body tucked around Mira’s. I dreamed all night of the soldier I’d seen in the old practice hall before, and of Mira’s eyes, watching me across a vast chasm filled with fire.

  At dawn, I peered out through a crack in the wall to see the Fedeli leaving. Once I was certain that they were gone, I went to stand in the courtyard, where Bella had died. It was the earliest dawn, and the courtyard was empty. As I started back toward the old practice hall, to see if Mira would wake for breakfast, something caught my eye.

  Between two paving-stones, stained with blood, was a small wooden cross on a broken cord. Bella’s cross. I looked around quickly to see if anyone was watching, but the Fedeli had gone and the courtyard, in the cold dawn, was empty. I snatched it up and slipped it into the sleeve of my robe. Bella would have wanted me to have it, I thought, then went to wake Mira.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Book out of your window and wonder at the world—God’s creation! Do not forsake it, or you forsake the glory of God.

  —The Journey of Gèsu, chapter 5, verse 8.

  The rest of the winter passed too quietly. No one spoke of the Fedeli, and no one openly said Bella’s name. As the first heavy rainstorm turned the roads to impassable mud, Mira fidgeted and paced until I set aside my music and pulled her down to sit beside me. “The Fedeli can’t come back,” I said. “No one can travel in this.”

  “But I can’t leave, either,” Mira said.

  “Do you want to leave so badly?” I asked. My hand, clasping Mira’s, trembled slightly.

  “I came here to play the forbidden music,” she said, dropping her voice even though we were alone. “To teach it. But after what happened …” She turned her face away from me.

  “Where would you go, if you left?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Farther south, maybe. Back to my home village.”

  “I thought you wanted to become a minstrel. That’s what you said, once.”

  Mira glanced up at me with a faint smile. “Want to try to work out a minstrel style on the violin with me? Sing and play at the same time?”

  “I can’t sing,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s really not as hard as Celia makes it out to be.”

  “I know what a voice should sound like,” I said. “My voice doesn’t sound like that.”

  “Stand up,” Mira said, hopping off the bed. I stood, and she touched my back lightly. “Stand up straight.” I straightened. “Now, pretend I haven’t heard ‘The Wicked Stepmother’—and you’re the only person who can sing me the words.” She sat back down on the bed and looked at me expectantly.

  I started to say that I really didn’t have a good singing voice—but Mira just waited, still smiling, so I took a deep breath and started the song.

  I’ve come to wed your father but I want to make you mine.

  If you’ll take me as your mother, you will find my faults are few.

  I’ve brought a gift of honey, bright as sun and sweet as wine.

  And as pure as all the love I hold inside my heart for you.

  When I was done, my face was hot, and I stared down at the floor. “I don’t know why you say you can’t sing,” Mira said. I looked up, surprised, and she met my gaze with a smile that struck me like an arrow. “You have a lovely voice. All you need is to be able to accompany yourself with the violin.”

  The violin worked reasonably well for a minstrel performance, as it turned out. We couldn’t tuck our chins down while singing, of course, and it took some practice, but we were able to work out a way to play and sing at the same time. The violin was louder than a lute, and two violins sounded really good together. Mira and I started digging up old folk songs to play together—it wasn’t Old Way music, so we couldn’t get in trouble for it, but at least it was something different and a little strange. And the project seemed to dispel Mira’s restlessness, just a bit.

  During the worst of the rains, we celebrated the birthday of Aelius, brother of Gaius. Gaius was the prophet who brought the Lady’s Gift of magery to the rest of us; Aelius was not a prophet, but he was honored by musicians because he had started to teach musicians to play in ensembles, and had created the Central Conservatory in Cuore. The legend said that he also created the first violin, though in the library I’d seen drawings of similar instruments that had predated Aelius. His birthday was not a sacred day, so we didn’t have to go to the chapel; instead, we had the day off from lessons and classes and threw a party in the meal hall.

  Bella had always loved celebrating Aelius’s birthday. At the party, we played games—trying to name ensemble pieces from a line of harmony, or racing to play a tune named by the musical archivist. Bella had a superb memory and always won every game until the teachers disqualified her to give someone else a chance. This year, nobody felt much like playing anything.

  When the rains stopped and the roads hardened again, the mail came. People scrutinized their letters in silence and compared notes privately later. Several villages had had visits from the Fedeli, and others, like Flavia’s family, had seen soldiers—hundreds of soldiers, marching south. None had seen Circle detachments. Everyone wondered the same thing—if we’re going to war with Vesuvia again, where are the mages? How can the army fight without magefire?

  And why had the Fedeli come? They were driving out the Maledori that had caused the famine, some letters said. There was nothing to fear. Other letters were fearful or angry. There had been a burning, in one village, or so I heard.

  The Fedeli had not come to Doratura, my home village, nor had my family heard these rumors. Instead, my mother wrote about a new ritual they did each week to honor the Lady and ensure the fertility of the land. Singing, with drums and dancing. This is an older way to honor the Lady, she wrote. Sometimes it’s the older ways that are the best. I shuddered, and added to my letter back: Be careful, all of you. The Fedeli came to the conservatory, and we found that they take a dim view of certain “older ways.”

  At Equinox, we would celebrate Ritorno, the Lord’s return from His battle with the Maledori. Chastened by the visit from the Fedeli, the conservatory was planning an extensive and elaborate observance. I helped halfheartedly with the preparations, thinking of home—they would be planting the early crops, onions and wheat and beans. They’d celebrate Ritorno with a bonfire in the piazza, and rites to ask the Lady to bless the fields and the planting. On our first beautiful day, the week before the Equinox, I slung my violin over my shoulder—so that I could pretend to myself that I was going to practice—and made my way to the conservatory wall to watch the festival preparations in Bascio. I sat down on the wall and swung my legs to dangle into forbidden territory.

  Two—no, three summers earlier, Bella and I slipped out of the conservatory one night on a dare. Bring us a pebble from the Bascio piazza. It had been Celia’s idea. Bella and I had jumped over the wall and crept down the hill; the moon had been full, and we’d jumped at every noise, convinced that someone from the conservatory had seen us. We each grabbed a smooth pebble, white in the moonlight, and ran back to the conservatory, smothering our giggles.

  Pushing down the grief that rose up into my throat, I stared down at a stray goat that was winding its way around the cottages of Bascio, filching stray vegetables. Someone spotted it and started beating it with a stick, shouting words I could almost catch. I wondered how Doratura would look from this perspective. Probably much th
e same.

  I tried to remember when I had last been down to Bascio. Seven months ago, I decided, shortly before Mira arrived—for my new boots.

  I opened my violin case, but couldn’t bring myself to play. Tucked in with the extra gut and the rosin, though, was a tiny clay bird whistle, which my brother Donato had made for me while we were walking to the conservatory. He’d tried to make it so that I could use it to tune my violin, and it hadn’t really worked, but it had a pure sweet sound, and I blew through it gently to pick out the tune to the song about the poisoned honey.

  I heard a twig snap and turned around; Mira had crept up behind me. She also had her violin slung over her shoulder. I started to swing my legs back to the legal side of the wall, and she laughed. “Don’t get up on my account,” she said, and sat down beside me. She gestured to the whistle. “You’ve been hiding one of your talents.”

  “Not really,” I said. “A bird whistle isn’t exactly a flute. My brother Donato made this for me.”

  “Can I see?” Mira asked. I handed it to her, and she blew on it, a little too hard; the sound was harsh. She laughed and handed it back. “Well, it takes some sort of talent, anyway.”

  “Just a little practice,” I said, and put it away. I would make a whistle for Mira, I decided; not clay, that would be too hard to get on the conservatory grounds. I’d carve a wooden whistle for her. We looked down at Bascio for a few minutes. The troublesome goat had been corralled and tethered to a post, where it had started to chew on its rope again.

  “Are you homesick today?” Mira asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Letters make a lot of people homesick,” she said.

  “I’m feeling restless,” I admitted. “I wish I were graduating this spring, instead of next spring—I’m ready to get out of here.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Today? Anywhere that isn’t the Verdiano Rural Conservatory.”

  Mira flashed me a smile. “We should go on a trip,” she said. “Right now.”