Faithful Read online

  Chapter 2

  Claire concentrated on rolling the strip of cloth into the tightest bandage possible. Hard to do when the air in the large tent was stifling. Even with the flaps folded up to catch the nonexistent breeze and the sun setting, the heat pressed down inside like being trapped in a fiery forge instead of a pavilion of ladies working and chatting. Claire closed her eyes and held them for a count of three, but it did no good. Worse than the heat was the incredible dryness, mixed with the persistent smoke that even infiltrated their food and robbed it of taste. Her eyes ached, so tired from the lack of moisture in the air. And the inside of her nose . . . well, she was afraid to touch it for fear it would start bleeding. Fronilde said she’d grow accustom to it. That time couldn’t come soon enough.

  The tent, like so much else, was an unintended present of the Northern army. When that army had burned Colina Hermosa, no one had wanted to rescue tents over people. Very few even brought food with them out of the city. Thankfully, the Northern army had made a run for it and abandoned all their supplies, including many tents of all sizes. Even the cloth Claire rolled had once been a yellow uniform shirt of some Northern soldier.

  Claire let her mind skirt away from why the army had thrown down their weapons and run like children with the boogeyman after them. Somehow it was entirely her doing, and she hadn’t a clue how it came about. Two days ago, Ramiro suggested she Sing about the Northern god, Dal, just to save their own skins, and the result had reached beyond her wildest dreams, sending the entire army running instead of just the mob of thirty or so surrounding them. Now the people of Ramiro’s city didn’t know whether to treat her as savior or monster.

  She wasn’t sure herself.

  With the cloth rolled as tight as she could manage, Claire attempted to tuck the end inside in the mysterious manner demonstrated by the other women. The roll should be solid as a brick if done correctly. She gave the final product a shake to be sure, and it unspooled in her hands. Anger flared over minutes wasted. She wadded the material up and shook it. Ungrateful thing. She’d done it exactly right. What would everyone think of her at being unable to roll a simple bandage?

  “You’re supposed to behave. Save lives,” she whispered at it, hoping the low conversation around her would cover the sound. Everyone in her section of the tent wore black—or as much black clothing as they could scrounge—all having lost a loved one in the recent fighting. Ramiro’s mother, First Wife Beatriz, had discovered Claire’s own loss and bundled her up in a black dress donated from someone. Claire hated the color, but it was cooler than the old dress and trousers she’d worn to hike across the swamp a week ago—and cleaner. Yet, for its benefits, the black material would have done better made into bandages as it couldn’t magically wipe away grief.

  Fronilde took the failed bandage out of her hand. She wore a black band around her upper arm over a gray dress. “Watch.” The older girl rolled the material and fastened it in half the time it had taken Claire, while the matrons around them nodded in approval. Fronilde did everything well. Claire could see her as the perfect wife for Ramiro’s perfect brother. Now Fronilde made the perfect almost-widow. Almost, because the second set of banns had never been read by a priest, or so Beatriz explained it.

  Claire sighed as a loud laugh and a chorus of giggles sounded from another section of the crowded tent. Everyone inside was female, except for the one guard set to watch First Wife Beatriz by her husband, Alcalde Julian, for fear she’d martyr herself again. Before the invading army panicked, Beatriz had gone in her husband’s place to the Northerners with the rejection of their terms. But something about the bodyguard made Claire uneasy—his eyes watched her more than Beatriz.

  In their corner, where the widows and orphans flocked, no one laughed. They talked only quietly, of somber things. Sadly, as an orphan herself, she fit right in. But she couldn’t understand this muted mood. She remembered her mother with pride, and laughing at memories helped her heal. Like the black garments, these women embraced sorrow. It was almost as strange as their belief that bodies needed to be committed to the ground instead of burned properly to set the spirit free.

  “You’ll learn the trick of it,” the miller’s widow said, her fingers busy over her own work. Most of the females sitting around them were related to him, daughters and granddaughters. Pedro, the miller, had been an important man on the city council, and had an equally important family. Beatriz said getting their approval could establish Claire as someone to “know.”

  “Thank you,” Claire said meekly. “I’m sure I will.” She liked these ladies, especially Beatriz and Fronilde, but it was hard to be herself around them. They weren’t the friends she used to dream of giggling and telling secrets with, though with time Fronilde might get there. They wouldn’t argue or banter with her. They didn’t tease and embarrass her. Gossip about fresh losses flowed somberly from their tongues, but as Claire didn’t recognize any of the names, it made no sense to her. She could be more herself with Ramiro than these women.

  She glanced outside to the darkening sky. “Shouldn’t Ramiro be back by now?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Beatriz started and put a handkerchief to eyes filled with sudden worry. Fronilde and the others stared, their eyes shimmering with unshed tears.

  “I mean,” she stammered, “I’m sure he’s well . . . I just . . . um . . . I miss him.”

  She’d put her foot in it now. Beatriz’s eyes narrowed. The woman didn’t like any mention of an association between her remaining son and a witch.

  “We all miss him,” Fronilde said too quickly. “And all the menfolk. The voting will have started.”

  Claire blessed Fronilde for changing the subject and leaped on her distraction. “Aren’t you going to vote?” It was all they talked about yesterday: which candidate to support for councilman. Beatriz had been the most vocal of all, spreading her assertions far and wide.

  Again the stares took aim at her, this time puzzled. “We don’t vote,” Fronilde said. “The men do that.”

  “But I thought you could,” Claire pressed. To her understanding, several of the members of the city council, including Pedro, had been killed, and the people gathered to elect new ones. Any man who’d earned his beard or woman who wore her hair up could vote. With her blond braid coiled atop her head by Fronilde this morning, Claire wondered if that applied to her also.

  “Certainly we can,” Beatriz said. “It is our law. But we don’t need to. We tell our men folk what we think and they take care of it.”

  “But the decisions affect you, too. None of you are going to vote?”

  “If our menfolk feel they need our vote, they’ll cast it themselves.”

  Claire’s mouth hung open. “They cast your vote for you?”

  The ladies around her smiled. “If we cast our own votes, then they’d start telling us how to run the households or raise the children,” said one girl who couldn’t possibly be old enough to marry.

  “Men have their areas and we have ours,” Pedro’s widow added.

  “And if you know what you’re doing, you run both,” Beatriz said as others nodded their agreement.

  “Oh,” Claire said blankly. The idea of men doing anything for her was foreign. Her mother impressed upon her that men tried to control women and here was proof. These women could vote and had been tricked or scared out of it. It was just like her mother always said: Men couldn’t be trusted. No Woman of the Song had anything to do with men. With the possible exception of Ramiro, Claire added to herself. Though if he tried to vote for her, she’d show him what she thought of that. “But isn’t this sort of an emergency?” She gestured at the tent. “Is rolling bandages the most important thing to be doing? I mean things are different. I thought you’d be out in front . . . you know, helping . . . taking a larger part.”

  “Exactly,” Beatriz said. “We are helping, by remembering how things work. When normalcy is stripped away, we carry on like it is not. So many are hanging on by their fingertips, e
specially the children. We remain calm and show them things have not changed so much.”

  Claire opened her mouth, but she couldn’t argue. The children did need reassurance—likely the men folk did, too—and keeping things stable made sense. The calm these woman provided had comforted her, after all.

  Yet still, the growing inactivity was starting to drive her crazy.

  A little girl with curly brown hair appeared between Claire and Fronilde. She touched Claire’s blond braid with a dirty finger. “Does it look like straw because of the magic?”

  One of the matrons yanked the girl back before Claire could answer. Another girl, who had twined bandages around her wrists instead of rolling them, looked up. “Can you kill men with it?”

  “No,” Claire said, shocked into a hysterical giggle. She flushed as the women around her shushed the child. Why would anyone think that? She had killed no one.

  “Silly,” the curly-haired one said. “She makes men go mad with her voice. My pap said so. Can you show us? Try it on him.” She pointed at the guard standing behind them, and the man flinched.

  A chill passed over Claire. She’d not used her magic since that day. “Frogs don’t hop for fun,” she said with a frown. “The magic isn’t a game.” By the Song, now she used the very argument her mother always employed to counter Claire’s demand to practice her powers. But the words felt right.

  “Where are your manners?” Pedro’s widow said with a frown. “You’ve upset our guest.” Women rose and quickly dragged off the inquisitive girls, taking them right out of the tent with scolds and whispered warnings about politeness. Claire’s face grew hotter. Were they really worried about etiquette . . . or about letting their children close to a witch?

  A fresh wave of laughter came from the other side of the tent, and this time Claire picked out the actual word “witch.” More laughter and unsympathetic looks followed. The women sitting around Claire suddenly found other places for their eyes, avoiding her gaze, and hastily returning to their work.

  Claire’s shoulders dropped. Words shouldn’t bother her, but moisture rushed to her eyes and now she blinked to hold back tears. Did they think her brainless? She knew they only tolerated her because her magic saved them or because Ramiro insisted. Still, it seemed that if there was a time to get over such pettiness, the tragedies they’d all faced would be it.

  These may be Ramiro’s people, but they seem nothing like him.

  Strangely, that thought led to another: that she missed Teresa, though she barely knew the woman. The woman who dressed like a man and taught at the university would have stood up for her. But Teresa had been left behind in the swamp. Who knew if she even lived?

  Not for the first time, Claire reconsidered her decision to stay when Ramiro had asked her. She’d lingered out of curiosity—and truthfully because it felt good to be needed—but they didn’t need her now with the Northern army defeated. She could return to the swamp and away from so many people. Despite her hopes of friends and community, she felt awkward here. Reason said she’d get used to their ways, but being around so many folk made her want to hide. Everything pressed down. The walls of the tent shrunk, pinning her in, and smothering her. It became hard to breathe.

  She reached for a fresh strip of cloth, only to have her hand shake. She snatched the material and began to roll it, trying to shut out everything else, including her own doubts.

  Before she could find a semblance of peace, though, someone shouted. Ladies screamed. Claire looked over her shoulder at the noise. A brown-bearded man in a poncho and a floppy hat ran in her direction. “My family is dead, because of the evacuations. Because of you.”

  Claire gasped. He seemed to be talking to Beatriz, then his gaze found Claire.

  “Witch!” His outstretched hand suddenly held a long butcher knife. “Witch! Stay away from us! Murderer! Abomination! Die!”

  Fronilde dropped to the ground, but Claire couldn’t move. Surprise robbed her brain of a Song to stop him. Even the words of the Hornet Tune, which she knew as well as her name, deserted her. The man closed as everyone scrambled out of his way. Then Beatriz sprang from her chair to stand over Claire, holding up her hand. The tall black-lace mantilla atop her head waved like a flag. “Stop.”

  Something about the authority in the First Wife’s voice—or maybe her simple resistance instead of cringing or scrambling away—brought the man up short, making him pause for a moment. Just the moment the bodyguard needed to crush the lunatic to the floor and overpower him, wrestling free the knife. More guards came running from outside.

  Breath rushed back in Claire’s lungs. Beatriz sniffed and touched a spot on her chest over her heart and then her forehead and stomach areas. “Imbecile. He didn’t know who he was dealing with.”

  Laughter exploded from Claire. It simply took over, pushing past her common sense at the ridiculous sight of the motherly figure as her savior. She threw her arms around Beatriz and, despite the woman’s flinch, sobbed into her shoulder, all the frustration and fear working loose. The loss of her mother hit home again.

  “There. There.” Beatriz patted her back awkwardly. “He was just some poor soul who can’t handle his loss. I told my son I’d see you safe. I’ll not have him come back to find you dead. That would never do. He’d never forgive me.”

  Claire pulled back to see if the woman was joking, but Beatriz was wiping a tear. Claire scrubbed the tears from her own cheeks before the women getting to their feet around them could notice. The guards hustled the man and his knife outside.

  “He tried to kill me,” Claire said. The world reeled around her. How could this happen? They didn’t like her and called her witch, but to try to kill her? “Why? I saved them.”

  Beatriz sniffed. “My husband would say grief makes people do crazy things. They need someone to blame. You are an easy target. Julian may be partly right, but I think there’s more. I say they forgot their God and their good sense. It could just as easily have been Julian they went after, though he came here for me. I’ve seen it often enough—thankfully usually with words. Call it the price of standing out from everyone else.”

  “But I don’t want—”

  Beatriz gave a nod. “Did you think to escape notice? Sorry—the world doesn’t work like that. Now then, it’s over. It doesn’t help to dwell on it. Let’s talk about other things. I told Ramiro to keep an eye out for my dogs, you know, when he is out patrolling. They should be with my maid. If he finds them, you shall have one. Wonderful how dogs can make a body feel less grief. When you can’t have your husband with you . . . they can make a death . . . like . . . a son’s . . . easier.”

  A sob burst from Beatriz. “Salvador. My baby . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment and her throat worked before she recovered. “But enough of that. Tea. Tea is what we need now. Tea and a visit to Father Telo. Fronilde, you, too.” The First Wife strode for the nearest opening. “Come along, girls. Don’t dawdle.”

  Tea? How would tea help? As if it wasn’t hot enough? But it did sound good to depart this tent. Claire lifted her skirt to step over a basket of spilled bandages, trying to push aside the uneasiness that made her want to flee home to the swamp. Her knees wobbled, almost betraying her, the shock still fresh.

  Despite Beatriz’s instruction, she couldn’t stop thinking about the man’s attempt on her life. Maybe he was extreme and had never met her, but did the others feel much different? Were they being polite when they shushed the children or did they fear her magic? She felt small and lonely, caught in a world she didn’t understand.

  As she followed Beatriz from the tent, she couldn’t help but review her hasty decision to stay here. Besides her curiosity about the city people, she’d also stayed to have someone she could rely on as she practiced the Song. But she barely saw Ramiro, and he was really the only person left she trusted. But no—he was always off with the other soldiers, honoring his duty. And so she’d not let the Song touch her lips since she’d sung to scare the Northerners. A shadow descend
ed over her at the notion of using the magic again.

  She shivered, feeling sick to her stomach. The longing to run built.

  Her mind skittered away from that line of thought, unwilling to define it, grasping at weak excuses. Her magic could not put out fires or rebuild walls. She was of no use here. All she did was miss her home and cause awkwardness when these people had enough to deal with.

  She nodded; the decision made. She’d talk to Ramiro. They owed each other that much. When he came back from patrol, she’d tell him her doubts—her wish to return home. Feeling better at having made a decision, she took Fronilde’s offered hand and hurried after the First Wife.

  Chapter 3

  At long last camp neared and Ramiro wasn’t sure whether he and Arias were more relieved or the civilians they escorted. Ramiro found it hard to keep his eyes from drifting to the grave of Colina Hermosa, as though somehow, if one watched long enough, the image would change, become whole again. Even with the setting sun outlining the city in brilliance and blinding the eye, the changes leapt out. What structures remained standing above the protective walls—such as they were—were blackened and dull, the usual mass of pristine white buildings gone. Smoke rose in spots, unquenched after two days, and a cough persisted throughout the camp. A perpetual haze hung over the once grand city, barely parting when the wind lifted, making it impossible to see the gaping hole where once the citadel stood at the crest of the center hill. The great bronze gates hung yet, the heat unable to melt them, but they were now buckled and warped, never to close again. Forcing himself to look at it brought no closure.

  Only more anger.

  And he knew who deserved that anger—and it wasn’t just the Northerners. If only the other ciudades-estado had just banded together, his city would still exist. His people would have homes.

  Instead, Colina Hermosa had become a scar on the desert soil. Soon enough it would return to the sand and leave nothing but a legend to mark its last resting spot.