Before I covered over the bones with dirt, I took out the wooden box of Mira’s letters. I was tired of carrying this. I set the box on top of the bones. I thought for a moment about shaking out the spare robe, but I couldn’t imagine ever wearing it again. After staring for a moment at the small heap of bone, rubble, and ash, I used the shovel to close the grave.
I still couldn’t believe that this was my village—my home—my family, until I returned to the doorstep, to gather up my violin and my bag. Nestled in the corner, between the doorstep and the foundation wall, was a tiny clay bird whistle, like the ones Donato used to make for me. I knelt to pick it up, and grief tore through me like a knife. Donato would have made this for his daughter, I knew. Now he was dead, and his wife and children with him.
My hand shook, and the whistle fell to the ground and cracked. “Oh no!” I screamed. I fell to my knees and picked up the two pieces, trying uselessly to fit them together again. “No, no, no, why did I have to drop it? Why? No. Please—” I pressed the pieces back together. “Please don’t be broken. Please, please don’t be broken.”
I don’t know how long I wept in agony over the shards of the broken whistle, but when I stopped, it was quite dark. I would have to spend the night here, with the ghosts of my family. I spread out my cloak and sat down, wishing I had wood for a fire; the spring night was turning cool, but everything burnable in Doratura had already been consumed by the magefire.
Staring into the darkness, I realized there was one more thing I needed to do for my family. I took out my bow and tightened it, then tuned my violin and tucked it under my chin, rising to stare out over the broken fields into the darkness around me.
Da dat da da dat da wham wham wham. Da dat da da dat da wham wham wham. The rhythm of the funeral music didn’t echo against the dirt and ash that I stamped my foot against, but it echoed in my head, and as I closed my eyes, I imagined that Bella and Flavia were here to play with me.
I played the music through. Herennia had mentioned dances; my feet were too sore to dance as vigorously as I had that night in Bosco, but I moved in a slow circle as the girl there had shown me. Right-pause-behind-pause. Right-pause-behind-pause. At least there was no one here to see me.
I’d had seven brothers, all married, all with children. Donato was the second oldest. He’d been delighted by the prospect of a younger sister after all those boys; in addition to making me whistles and helping me climb trees, he’d taught me to fight well enough to beat any boy my age, even the one boy who was bigger than I was. Donato was less of a ruffian than our eldest brother, Agrippo; Donato’s wife, Imelda, was gentle and sweet with a wry sense of humor, the kind of woman who was impressed by kindness, not the ability to intimidate all other prospective suitors.
Gone, the song echoed.
My father was a big, quiet man. I’d gotten my height from him; he was taller than I was, taller than any man in the village except for Agrippo, who was a hair taller. My father had always been a little bewildered at the idea of a daughter; I’d catch him blinking at me like I was some sort of lost exotic bird that had flown to Verdia by mistake. When I was little, he would take me into his lap to tell me stories about Lugo, my grandfather’s youngest brother, who was blindingly stupid but always seemed to have things work out in his favor anyway.
Gone.
My mother—I realized I was crying, my hands shaking. I could barely hold my violin. I remembered my mother’s touch, gently combing the tangles out of my hair. Each year in late summer, when we celebrated the Birth of the World, she would snip off a lock of my hair to keep in a pouch that she wore around her neck, along with a lock of hair from each of my brothers. That way she could pray for us, even if we were far away. The night before I went away to the conservatory, I asked to see the contents of the pouch—I wanted to be certain nothing had happened to the lock of my hair she had cut the previous summer.
She unlaced the soft circle of fabric and spread out the pouch on our table. There were ten locks of hair. “This one is yours,” she said, pointing to a soft fawn-brown curl. “Agrippo’s, Donato’s, Rufo’s, Erucio’s, Lorenzo’s, Berio’s, Fiorenzo’s.”
“Who do these two belong to?” I asked, pointing at two tiny locks of silvery hair.
“I had two other children,” she said. “One between Agrippo and Donato, one just before you. They died when they were just babies.” She sighed and looked away. “I shouldn’t keep these—those children are with the Lady. But I can’t bear to give them up.”
Gone.
I couldn’t play anymore. I paused, lowering the bow, trying to keep back my sobs.
Somewhere beyond me in the darkness, I saw the faint outline of a figure. For a moment, I thought it was Donato’s ghost, but the shadow was far too tangible, and I realized that it was the madman from the road. His eyes were calm and he didn’t look at me. Half closing his eyes, he raised his hands as if to grasp invisible hands on either side of him, then began dancing, moving in a slow circle around the clearing. Step-pause-step step step turn, step. Step-pausestep step step turn, step.
Instead of feeling frightened, this time I felt oddly comforted. I lifted the bow again and began playing. Da dat da da dat da wham wham wham. Step-pause-step step step turn, step. The madman danced silently, except for the soft crunch of leaves underfoot. My hands were shaking again, but I was able to hold the violin steady enough to play the music through twice more. When I finished, I almost dropped the violin as I bowed my head, my body shaking with sobs. When I looked up, the madman was gone. Still shaking, I put the violin away, and curled up in my cloak. I had no one to watch over me, but the madman didn’t frighten me anymore.
This is all a dream, I told myself, as I stared up at the stars. If only I go to sleep, I will wake up, and find myself back in that empty house, or with Herennia and Metello. Or at the conservatory, with Mira beside me. But I was too cold to sleep. And too alone.
At dawn, I rose and walked to the next village, Gervala, which was a few miles away. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d found another burned-out dead village, but Gervala was untouched. I went to the door of the first house I came to and knocked.
A woman opened the door a crack and peered out. “Who are you?”
“My name is Eliana—I’m from Doratura—”
She slammed the door closed. “Go away,” she said, her voice muffled behind the door.
“What happened?” I cried. “What happened? Everything’s gone.” There was no response, and I pounded on the door. “Open the door!” I screamed. “Tell me what happened to my village!”
The door opened again, and I half fell into the doorway. “Come in, then,” the woman hissed, and I limped inside.
She did not invite me past the threshold. “There were refugees from the wasteland,” she said. “They came up, trying to go north. Doratura took them in.” Her voice was scornful. “This was just a place to rest, they weren’t going to stay here. But soldiers came to meet them on the road, to turn them back. The refugees wouldn’t go home. The soldiers pushed them back to Doratura, the refugees fighting them the whole way. So then two weeks ago, the mages came.” She shuddered involuntarily. “Just five of them. They stood on the hill that overlooks the village and … they burned everything. They killed everyone.”
“Everyone?” I whispered.
“There were a few survivors. They took them south, to Ravenna—it’s an encampment for refugees, deep in the wasteland. And a prison, I guess, for the ones who make trouble.” Her eyes hardened. “Now leave. I’ve told you everything I know.”
“My family,” I said. “Regillo and Marisa. Do you know if—”
“Go away!” she said, and struck me, shoving me out the door. She slammed it in my face.
I was alone in the damp morning. I tried knocking on another door, but this time no one answered. Eventually, the Gervalesi would have to come out to do their morning chores, but so long as I was there, apparently, they would sit inside with their doors barr
ed.
Very well then, I thought. I needed more food; most of the provisions I had purchased in Pluma were gone. I could steal from the Gervalesi without feeling particularly guilty about it. I pried open one family’s storehouse and stole grain and dried fruit, and refilled my wineskin from their wine barrels. Their early spring stores were low, but not too low. I was quite certain they were watching me, but no one came. They were afraid of me, I knew—an angry orphan with nothing to lose, but worse, a symbol of their own shame. When I had taken all I could carry, I left the village.
Back on the road, I realized I had no idea where to go now. But the woman had said that they took the survivors south. I had not been able to identify the bodies as I buried them. Maybe someone in my family had survived. Limping from the pain of the blisters on my feet, I turned away and headed south.
PART THREE
The Weapon You Know How to Use
CHAPTER EIGHT
The children of the Light must stand together, for all others will stand against them.
—The Journey of Gèsu, chapter 11, verse 26.
By morning, I had moved on, but I could barely walk. By midmorning I had reached an abandoned farm. I broke into the barn—I felt like it would be less likely to be haunted—and decided I’d spend a day or two there to let my feet heal. Now that I was alone, really alone, my thoughts were deafeningly loud. I tried to find tasks to occupy myself—getting water to wash my feet, mending a ripped seam in the edge of my bag, tuning my violin—but nothing seemed to drown them out.
Except for the day that my father took me to see the mage who’d given me apples even though I couldn’t burn stone, I had rarely thought much about the Circle before the war. To play for the Circle was the highest position a musician could hold, and back at the conservatory I had sometimes imagined myself playing in Cuore, closing my eyes as I practiced and imagining the glitter of a banquet hall in place of the gray stone walls around me. In the shadowed barn, I lay back and stared at the rafters, then closed my eyes, imagining myself back at the conservatory.
The Emperor rules, the Circle protects, the Fedeli guide. I could hear Domenico’s even voice, and Bella’s challenge, and I wondered if Domenico really believed what he’d told us. And whether he still believed it now.
During the war, I’d felt a new respect for the Circle, and for the protection they offered us. We had gone to war with Vesuvia after their cross-border raids had led to atrocities, with families burned with their crops. The war had raged for two full years, with neither army advancing more than a few miles except on rare occasions. In the end, the border was left more or less where it had been before. Army detachments were left to keep an eye on things and the Circle retreated to Cuore. The Circle protects. Opening my eyes again, I stared up into the dark rafters. Some birds had gotten in and built nests; I could hear the squawk of squabbling fledglings, and see the flutter of wings. Who had been there to protect my family? What the Vesuviani had done was nothing compared to what the Circle had done. My mouth turned bitter and I almost retched. I closed my eyes again.
I briefly considered returning to the conservatory. The Dean wasn’t supposed to take me back, but he’d bent the rules before. And under the circumstances … but no. If I became a student at the conservatory again, it would be under the sponsorship of the Circle. I’d rather starve, I thought. Besides, I couldn’t imagine being sequestered again. I was part of the world now, for better or worse.
I sat up after a while, and eased my boots off to take a look at my feet. I had worn away big strips of skin, and those parts were raw and bloody. I wet the edge of my cloak and wrapped my feet in it; the cold water might bring some of the swelling down. I hoped the cloak would dry by evening.
I stayed at the abandoned farm for almost a week, eating the provisions I’d stolen from Gervala. I stayed in the barn during the day, limping out at night to fetch more water as necessary. I was afraid that someone from Gervala might see me and bring a group of people down to punish me for stealing food. At least the former residents of the farm refrained from haunting me. Perhaps they were satisfied that I was staying in the barn, or perhaps they felt sorry for me.
I thought about the Circle a great deal, and Mira, and Bella and Giula. I managed not to think about the ashes of the house, the wreckage, the bones of my family.
As soon as I had skin on my feet again, I padded my feet carefully, gathered my belongings, and moved on. I passed through villages that day, but no one would meet my eyes. My first thought was that they could tell I was a thief, but I realized quickly that my ragged clothes and hopeless wariness marked me as a refugee. Refugees brought danger; they knew what had happened to that village just to the north. A young child asked her mother why I was walking south—“Nobody goes south, do they?”—but she was quickly hushed, and her mother made a sign to ward off the evil eye as I passed.
The land died around me as I walked. That first day, I had been in territory that had never seen war. The second day, I saw farms that had been burned in the war, but had since been rebuilt; the landscape was scarred, with dead trees, but the spring flowers were in bloom and the fields were green. The third day, I saw shrunken weeds and withered flowers; when I knocked on the door of a farmhouse, no one answered.
On the fourth day, I came to the wasteland.
The wasteland was just on our side of the border with Vesuvia. The war had raged there for more than a year, with each army pushing forward just a few miles, then falling back again. The people who lived in that part of Verdia fled the fighting during the war, trying to get out of the way of the armies. Some of them never came back. They made the right choice.
Not even weeds grew in the wasteland. The fields were black, or baked sand-brown by the sun. I felt as exposed as a rabbit on the treeless plain, and quickly grew hot in the sun. Streams still ran through the wasteland, but the water tasted strangely bitter, and I found myself wanting to rinse my mouth with the last of my wine, just to get rid of the taste.
As I rested in the shade of a ruined barn, a column of refugees passed by. Guarded by soldiers, they were being marched south.
“Hey there!” one of the soldiers called when he spotted me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Ravenna,” I said.
The soldiers laughed. “You don’t go to Ravenna,” one said. “You get taken there.”
“So, do you have any other recommendations?” I asked.
“You’re pretty much out of options, at this point,” he said with a shrug. “Our orders are to bring in anyone we find, no matter where they say they’re going.”
“What if someone wants to stay with their farm?” I asked. That was really hilarious; the soldiers laughed again.
“Where are you from, girl?” one of the refugees asked as I joined the column of marchers. “Not from around here, that’s obvious.”
“I was at a conservatory until recently,” I said. “I came home to find my village burned. I heard that the survivors were taken to Ravenna. I’m looking for my family.”
He sobered. “Which village?”
“Doratura. Have there been so many?”
“Enough. I don’t know anyone from Doratura. It may be that only refugees survived. That happens sometimes.” He patted my shoulder apologetically. “Good luck to you, though.”
We reached Ravenna in late afternoon. Ravenna itself was a valley of blackened earth and ragged makeshift tents made of blankets and stitched-together cloaks. Three buildings stood in the center of Ravenna: a keep, a barracks, and a stable.
A fence ran along the hills surrounding the valley, golden in the setting sun. Sticks had been planted in crossed X’s, set close together; it was the sort of arrangement used to block a cavalry charge, but in this case it had been designed simply to keep the Ravenessi from leaving. The fence could not possibly be all that sturdy—it would be easy enough to work one of the sticks loose—but I could see patrols of soldiers along the edge as well.
“They sh
oot on sight if you try to leave,” the refugee whispered to me. “So if you make a run for it, do it after dark, on a moonless night, and hope the soldiers don’t see you.”
Just beyond the valley, draped with shadows, I could see a wall, winding past the camp like a gray river until it was hidden from view by the rise of another hill.
“What is that?” I asked.
“That’s the wall,” the refugee said. “That’s what Ravenna is for. The Circle wants a wall built along the border, to protect us from the Vesuviani.” Below us, the workers had finished for the day; I saw no signs of life by the wall, but a long line had formed below us in Ravenna, and I could see a large pot over the flicker of a single fire.
The soldiers led us down into the sea of tents. The camp looked worse close up; many of the “tents” were simply cloaks staked up, barely waist-high. Except for the single road that passed through to the keep, the tents were crammed together so tightly I’d have to turn sideways to pass between them. People came out of their tents to stare as we passed. Their eyes and cheeks were hollow. I could feel their eyes burning into me, and I tried to stand up straighter, to show that I was not afraid.
“Hey,” one of the soldiers said. “Here.” He handed me a string, with fifteen chips of wood strung along it. A small star had been burned into each, and a hole cut in the center for the string. “Ration chits.” I stared at the wood chips stupidly, and he sighed. “One chit gets you breakfast, one dinner. This is a week’s worth. Once you start working you’ll be able to earn more, but—I thought I’d let you get settled in.”
I slipped the string over my head and tucked the chits inside my shirt, next to Bella’s cross.
“Stay out of trouble,” he continued. “Anyone tries to steal from you, or tries to make trouble with you—well, you can come find me. My name’s Mario. Don’t get into fights—Teleso doesn’t give a rat’s ass who started it, if you’re found fighting.”
Fires of the Faithful Page 16