Fires of the Faithful

by Naomi Kritzer

I shook my head. “No horse for Paulo, then. Maybe I’ll arrange to outfit all his men with swords and crossbows.”

  “Think you can get Giovanni to train them?” Lucia asked. “If you give them the swords without training, they’ll only trip over them in battle.”

  “I could try making Felice do it,” I said.

  “Think he’ll be any better than Michel? Or Giovanni?”

  “Could he be any worse?” I said. “Don’t answer that. I suppose I should go spring him from the stockade. What else do I still need to take care of?”

  Lucia considered. “Five more people who want you to mediate disputes.”

  “Oh, for—Can’t you do it?”

  She shook her head. “They specifically requested you. Look, at least they aren’t fighting.”

  “Right, I know. Fine. Later, before the scouts get back. Was that it?”

  “That’s all,” Lucia said.

  “In that case …” I stretched. “I’m going to visit Felice.”

  The stockade was really just a fenced area with two guards standing over it. The fence was a flimsy, makeshift affair; any determined prisoner could escape by uprooting a fence stake and running. Most of the time, when I tossed someone in the stockade it was more for the symbolic humiliation than actual confinement.

  I expected Felice to greet me with a glare, but he merely looked sad and hurt. “I had no idea you’d take it like this,” he said when I arrived.

  “Then you were poorly briefed.”

  “Is this really necessary?” He gestured at the fence and the guards. “I promise not to try to take away your army.”

  “I don’t think you’d be able to,” I said. “I had you locked up because you’re a stranger and you might be here to cause trouble. Why should I trust you? I was never one of the Official reformers of Cuore; I don’t know the pass-phrases and countersigns that so thoroughly impressed Giovanni.” I stepped close to the fence, noticing that Felice was sweating. “Why should I trust you?”

  Felice placed his hands flat against the fence posts. “Signora Generale,” he said, “I may be soft and I may be weak compared to you and your men. The orders I was sent with may betray a terrible arrogance on the part of my leaders. But the fire that burns in my heart springs from the same flame as the fire in yours. My brothers were among those murdered by the Circle to keep secret the devastation caused by magefire. And I will do whatever it takes to bring them down.” He met my eyes with urgent sincerity. “Let me fight with you, Generale. You won’t regret it.”

  “Well,” I said. I uprooted a fence post and gestured that he could step out of the prison. “Welcome to my army.” I fitted the post back into the ground and started to walk away.

  “Wait,” Felice said. I turned back. “What do I do now?”

  “That’s for you to figure out, isn’t it? His look was so pitiful, I relented. “Fine. Report to—oh, you can be in Paulo’s unit.” I flagged down Vitale. “Escort Felice here to Paulo. Do you know how to use a sword for anything other than jewelry, Felice?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Tell Paulo that Felice will be helping him with arms training.” With any luck, Felice would be better at it than Michel. Vitale saluted and marched Felice off.

  • • •

  “Martido won’t return my bracelet.”

  I stared at Fiora, baffled. “Why does he have it?”

  “I gave it to him when we were—you know. And now we’re not. But he won’t give it back to me.”

  I glanced at Lucia, who sat beside me. She gave me her faintest wicked grin, and my spirits lifted slightly. I didn’t understand why I was the one who had to mediate these stupid arguments. Lucia would have been better at it.

  “Where did you get the bracelet?”

  “From Teleso’s keep.” Fiora glared at me stubbornly now. “It’s mine. I want it back.”

  “You only had it because I said you could have it, you stupid cow,” Martido said, speaking up for the first time since they’d come in. He sat as far away from Fiora as he could and still be in the tent. “I saw it first.”

  “Why do you want it?”

  They answered in unison: “Because it’s mine.”

  How did I get involved in this sort of thing? And this was only the first dispute of the five Lucia had mentioned. “Give it here,” I said to Martido, and he reluctantly handed it over. I studied the bracelet. Teleso must have kept it to adorn his mistresses, or else it had belonged to his sister. It was a woman’s jeweled bracelet, ornate and fairly delicate. It would look silly on Martido’s wrist.

  “Generale!” The voice came from outside the tent, and then Vitale poked his head in through the door. “Generale, the scouts have returned.”

  I slipped the bracelet onto my own wrist. “We’ll finish this later,” I said to Martido and Fiora. “I’ll hold the bracelet for now.” Martido started to protest, then thought the better of it and followed Fiora out of the tent.

  Vitale held the tent flap open for the scouts as they came in—six haggard and exhausted men and women. “Vitale,” I said, “get Giovanni, then fetch food and wine for the scouts. Then tell all unit commanders I want them here in an hour.” He saluted and slipped back out. “Report, Camilla,” I said to the scout leader.

  Camilla was a farm girl who had entertained herself as a child by testing how close she could get to wild birds before they saw her and flew away. Now she used her noiseless step and her ability to disappear into the dusty ground of the wasteland to scout out the slave camps before we attacked. She was slightly built, with tiny hands and feet and a dark cap of short-cropped hair.

  She pulled up a cushion and sat down, tucking her feet neatly under her. “Chira is about the same size as Ravenna,” she said, “but more heavily guarded. They’ve received reinforcements, and Demetrio—their commander—has taken the trouble to train them.” She sketched the camp’s layout in the dust. “Like the other camps, Chira is set into a valley. They’ve done a better job with the perimeter, though; they built the camp up against a section of the wall they’re building, and used that for some of the defenses.”

  “The wall could work to our advantage,” I said. “If we could get some of our people onto it, to fire down—the valley location makes it easier to keep your prisoners contained, but it’s hard to defend.”

  Camilla looked up. “In addition to the keep, they have five other buildings, also solidly built. And they must know that we start with a cavalry charge, but they haven’t set up lances to impale the horses; I think they want to draw us in, then use those subsidiary watchtowers to shoot us down.”

  “Sounds plausible,” Lucia said as Giovanni joined us. I briefly repeated what Camilla had told me, then gestured for Camilla to continue.

  “The thing that worries me the most,” Camilla said, “is that Demetrio runs drills. I saw them practicing, and it looked like they were rehearsing exactly what to do if there was an uprising, or if we attacked.”

  “You saw the drill?” Then we knew his strategy. One of them, at least.

  “Yes.” Camilla described the procedures the soldiers ran through. “He even had a soldier whose job was to go torch the grain. They’re onto us.”

  “That’s what they think anyway,” I said. “Which building holds the grain?” Camilla pointed to one of the scuffs she’d drawn in the dust. “Then we know what to protect. What are the people like?”

  “Scared. Beaten down. Demetrio keeps a tight grip; we saw two executions during the time we were watching. Both were escape attempts who got caught.”

  “The soldiers?”

  “Brutal. And loyal to Demetrio.”

  Vitale arrived then with food and wine for the scouts, and they paused to have something to eat and drink. We finished the briefing before the rest of the commanders arrived, but I already had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do. Camilla’s seeing those drills had been a stroke of luck.

  It was very late when we finished; I sent the scouts off to
sleep and slipped out of my tent. Michel trailed me as I headed past the edge of the camp and into the wasteland, keeping a respectful distance.

  The hills of the wasteland were silvery in the moonlight. Even on the darkest nights you could tell that the land here was dead. I sat down at the crest of one hill and opened my violin case. Learning to fight with a sword had callused my right hand, despite the gloves I always wore. It felt a little strange now to take my bow in hand and tuck my violin under my chin, but I could still make my violin sing. I tuned up and played for an hour, just for myself. I played the songs I’d learned with Mira and the violin part of some of the ensemble pieces from the conservatory. Finally I played the Mass. I glanced at Michel, standing watch a short distance away. I always wondered if he wanted to dance when I played the Mass, but tonight he probably just wished I’d stop playing and go to bed so that he could get some sleep as well. I had to admit that I was tired. I put my violin away and headed back for the camp. As I reached my tent, I turned to Michel. He was still trailing me sleepily.

  “Martido and Fiora,” I said. “Whose unit are they in, anyway?”

  “Severo’s,” he said.

  I nodded. “Good.” I took the bracelet off my wrist and handed it to Michel. “Take this to Severo and tell him that he can deal with it. I have an army to lead.” Michel blinked at me, puzzled, as I went inside to bed.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Naomi Kritzer grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, a small lunar colony populated mostly by Ph.D.s. She moved to Minnesota to attend college; after graduating with a BA in religion, she became a technical writer. She now lives in Minneapolis with her family. FIRES OF THE FAITHFUL is her first novel.