Fires of the Faithful (17 page)

Everyone around us seemed to be trying to get into the city; the press of people around me nearly pulled me away from Giula. I clasped her hand and tucked my violin under my arm to keep anyone from stealing it off my back, and we headed for the city gates.

“Name?” a city guard asked me.

“Eliana.”

“Business in Pluma?” he asked. “Just passing through,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Got coin?” I nodded. “Let’s see it.” I dug my coin purse out from its hiding place inside my tunic and held it open for his inspection. He gave it a cursory glance and waved Giula and me inside the gates.

Pluma was the largest city in Verdia. It was sort of our province’s extension of Cuore; there were government offices, an army detachment, seminaries, a training school for children with magical talent, even a conservatory. The Pluma conservatory would have been closer to my home than the rural conservatory in Bascio, but my parents didn’t want me attending a conservatory in a city. The Pluma conservatory had many more students who paid fees, instead of being sponsored by the Circle; merchants sent their children there for the prestige of having a musician in the family.

“Do you remember where you stayed when you came through Pluma before?” Giula asked. I shook my head. “Me either.”

“I had two of my brothers with me then,” I said. Giula and I pulled out of the crowd and backed into an alley, leaning against a wall. I had never tried to make my way through such a crowd; when I had been here before, the city had been less crowded, and Donato and Rufo had pushed through the crowd on my behalf. “They chose the
inn,” I said. “I don’t even remember the name, let alone where to find it.”

“At least it’s early in the day. We’ve plenty of time to find something.”

I shook my head. “We could move on, too.” We paused for a moment. Pluma was where Giula and I would part ways. Her parents lived south from here; mine, to the east. “But there’s no harm in resting a little,” I said finally.

“And seeing the city,” Giula said, her eyes lighting up. I shook my head. “We could buy you a dress,” she suggested.

“I rather like the tunic,” I said. “Maybe I should have been born a boy.”

She laughed. “You’re certainly tall enough.”

I wasn’t ready to move out of the alley yet, but then I heard a whisper from just behind my feet. “Signora. Pssst,
signora
.” I jumped and jerked away. Two eyes stared at me from a tiny gap in the crumbling brick wall, looking terrifyingly malevolent in the shadows.

“Let’s go,” I said, grabbing Giula’s arm. “Do you know what you need to buy?”

“I still think we should buy you a dress,” Giula said. “But if you really don’t want one—provisions, I suppose. We don’t have much food left.”

I didn’t know where the market was, so we followed people who looked like they were heading to haggle. Pluma was a maze of narrow streets, and there were far too many people here; the town had never been meant to hold so many. “They’ve certainly rebuilt since the war, haven’t they?” Giula said, staring around us at the tall buildings.

Pluma was the farthest north the Vesuviano army had come. They had attacked the city, then been pushed back south by the Circle. Last I’d heard, there were still soldiers stationed there. During the battle, apparently, half the east
wall had been blown away and a number of Pluma’s inhabitants killed. Rumor said that nothing in Pluma would grow, either, but the city-dwellers were better off than the farmers, since they could at least buy food.

“We aren’t even in the parts of the town that were damaged,” I said to Giula.

“Oh, I suppose not. Do you suppose they’ve rebuilt those parts?”

“Signore?” I felt a hand grasp the edge of my tunic and looked down to see a scrawny, shrill-voiced child. “Signore—signora,” he corrected himself, “—please, signora.” He held out his hands, cupped upward. “I’m hungry.” He wore the remains of a shirt, stained and badly torn.

Giula paled and looked away, horrified. I wondered if she was thinking about her family, in the famine areas, or if she was trying hard not to. I dug in my pouch for a piece of cheese. “Here,” I said, putting it in the child’s outstretched hands. He stared for an instant, amazed, then stuffed the whole piece into his mouth and ran off like a frightened rat.

The market square was watched by guardsmen who looked us over before standing aside to let us in. This square was in part of the town that had been damaged during the war, and only parts of it had been rebuilt. The houses ringing the open area had new stone in part of the walls, but the ruins of a fountain stood in the center of the square. The rising curve of what was left of the fountain edge was now used by merchants to show their wares.

We made our way toward the cheese merchant. Standing in the line by his stall, I saw the flash of silver from the corner of my eye and turned my head to see that I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a Fedele priest. I instinctively ducked my head, but it wasn’t Aviro, and he ignored me as
he haggled for his cheese. I listened attentively while I waited; either the cheese merchant was badly cheating the Fedele, or prices in Pluma were shockingly high.

“May I help you, signore?” the cheese merchant said. It took me a moment to realize that he was addressing me. I decided not to bother telling him I wasn’t a boy. I ended up paying the same price for my cheese that the Fedele priest had paid for his; when I tried for a lower price, the merchant just laughed.

I turned to the next woman in line. “Is cheese particularly expensive here?” I asked her.

She snorted. “The cheese is cheap, girl,” she said. “You won’t see a better price than he’s giving you.”

I sighed and dug out my coin pouch, weighing the cheese with my hand after the merchant gave it to me. Giula and I each bought several pounds, then stocked up on hardbread and wine. There seemed to be no shortage of food here, but the woman at the cheese stand had told the truth—all the prices were high. Everyone around me looked hungry; I was no longer certain I wanted to spend the night here.

“The wine merchant told me where we could find a good inn,” Giula said. “He said sleeping on the road near here wasn’t a good idea—we could be robbed.” She led me through a long maze of streets and alleys with complacent certainty until we came to a dead-end against the edge of the city wall. “Huh,” she said. “This
should
have had a left turn onto the street that was going to lead to the inn.”

“Maybe it did before they rebuilt,” I said. The wall here was lower, and half crumbled, leaving footholds. On impulse I climbed up to peer over. “Lady’s tits,” I whispered, looking out over a field of tents, as far as the eye could see. “Giula, climb up here, you need to see this.”

Grumbling, she did her best, catching her foot on her skirt at one point and nearly falling. Finally she pulled herself up to lean over the crumbling edge, and her eyes grew wide as she looked. “Who are they?”

“Refugees. They must be. Who else would live like that?”

“Why do they stay here?”

A breeze gusted across our faces, and I smelled rotting meat and cooking fires. “There’s food here,” I said. “At least a little.” Staring out, I realized that there were tents in the areas closer to the wall, but that past those, there were people in the open, wrapped in blankets or just sitting. I had never seen so many people gathered in one place in my life, nor had I ever seen such poverty. In my village, no one was rich, but no one starved. Even when the town drunk died suddenly, his wife and children were taken care of—sometimes grudgingly, but always taken care of—until the children were old enough to run the farm. They were pitied, occasionally scorned, often resented, but they were never left to starve, never shut out of shelter, never—

“Get off of there!”

Giula and I jumped down off the wall and turned to face two soldiers. “Sorry,” Giula gasped, cringing.

“What were you doing up there?”

“We’re lost,” Giula said. “It’s my fault. I thought I could find us an inn. The wine merchant gave us directions. I’ve never been in the city before without my brothers …” I let her babble on; she was doing a better job of it than I would.

“Do you have coin?” one of them asked. We nodded. “Let’s see it.”

I took out my pouch slowly, wondering if they were
going to steal it, or demand a bribe. I stood up as straight as I could, glaring at them as they stared at me coolly. Digging my hand into my purse, I closed my fist over every coin I had, holding my purse half closed so that the soldiers couldn’t tell it was now empty. They stared at the scant coins in my palm skeptically, then shrugged and gestured for me to put it away again.

“Go back to the last street and turn left,” the taller soldier said. “Stay on that street. After a few minutes of walking, you’ll find an inn called Agostino’s. It’s comfortable and cheap, or as cheap as you’ll find in Pluma without going into areas we don’t recommend for ladies.”

They escorted us back to the previous corner. “What are you doing in Pluma?” the shorter soldier asked Giula.

“We’re going home,” she said. “We’ve been at a conservatory. Her village is east of here, and mine is south.”

The soldiers glanced at each other, then back at us. “Signora, we don’t recommend heading south from here,” the tall one said. “Not at all, not for anyone.”

“Why?” Giula said.

“It’s hungry and dangerous down there.”

“East is all right, though?” I asked.

The shorter soldier looked at me with something like pity. “East is better,” he said finally.

“We can’t stay
here
,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Once you ran out of coin, we’d have to escort you from the city.”

“Thank you for your time,” I said. “And for directing us to an inn. Good day.”

Next to me, Giula was near tears; I was angry at them, for upsetting her, and for telling us that what we were doing was stupid without being able to offer a better alternative.

“Let’s go,” I said, and urged her down the street.

“Hungry and dangerous,” she said. “How dare they talk like that about my home!”

“That’s right,” I whispered soothingly.

“There are good people in my village. The war
never
came there.”

“Here’s the inn,” I said. “Agostino’s.”

Agostino was surly, but he had plenty of rooms, and the inn did seem to be clean. If the price he charged us was cheap, I didn’t want to know what a pricey inn would cost. We were left with one coin each. “Dinner’s in an hour,” he said. “You can sit in the common room until then if you like.”

The common room was crowded and noisy; we were almost the only women there. We found an empty corner and slipped our violins under the table. I could see a few people sneaking glances at us, but fortunately Giula was too distraught to flirt.

“Your family is fine, Giula,” I said, squeezing her hand. “You’d have heard if they weren’t, wouldn’t you?” She nodded. “Didn’t they tell you the harvest was all right? Didn’t they say there was enough food?” She nodded again, still not answering. “How many brothers and sisters do you have, Giula? I forget.”

“Twelve living,” she whispered, finally answering. “Four brothers and eight sisters.”

“Your mother must be one tired lady.”

Giula sniffled and then laughed a little. “My mother can’t make witchlight. She’s almost a little simple—she never would have gotten married if she hadn’t been so pretty when she was young. But she can’t make a witchlight, and has to use a flint and steel to start a fire.”

“So she couldn’t keep from having babies that way,” I said, nodding.

“She used to call my father in from the fields to start fires for her. ‘Elmo, could you start this for me?’ ‘Lina, didn’t I
just
start a fire for you?’ ‘Yes, but you know me, I’m so clumsy, I spilled the dishwater on the hearth, and put it out.’ Over and over again, to try to make it so that my
father
wouldn’t be fathering any babies.” She chuckled, then sighed. “He did finally catch on, and he went along with it. She still had three more babies, though.”

“Which one were you?”

“The first of those last three.” She smiled. “So I suppose I can’t complain too much about all those children.”

“You must have a lot of nieces and nephews.”

“Hordes,” she said. “I’ve lost count. There were twenty-five when I left home. I forget how many since then.”

“Are any of them any good with a violin?”

“There’s a nephew who’s supposed to be good at drums. He’s almost twelve now.”

Someone was glaring at me from across the room. I turned to look, half expecting to see the crazy old man, but it was a boy, not a lot older than I was, with a shock of dark hair and violet-blue eyes. I gave him a long, direct stare, and he went back to staring at his drink. “Check out handsome,” I muttered to Giula.

“Oh!” she said. “I don’t think I like him. He doesn’t look very nice.”

He glanced up to give us another malevolent glare, and I rolled my eyes. “Maybe we’re sitting in his spot.”

Giula giggled. “Maybe he’s actually from your village, and you’ve forgotten him. You slighted him when you were nine and he’s hated you ever since.”

Now I started giggling. Lots of people were staring at us now, along with the boy, but I was so glad to have something to laugh at that I didn’t care. “You never know,” I said.

Dinner was skimpy soup with bread and half-sour wine, but no one else seemed to view this as unusual fare, so we dug in and made the best of it. The soup was tasty, despite being thin, and the bread was fresh, so I concluded that we’d done fairly well by our money. It just wasn’t what we were used to. “I’m still hungry,” Giula said when we went up to our room, so we broke out our provisions and had a little hardbread with cheese.

There was a single wide bed. I hoped Giula wouldn’t steal the blankets. Since I’d had no sisters, I’d only rarely shared a bed even before going to the conservatory. The door had a heavy bar, which we swung into place before lying down.

The room had a barred and shuttered window. Giula was asleep within minutes, but I lay for a while with my eyes open, listening. In the street below I could hear voices, feet splashing through puddles, occasionally the steady tromp of a horse. Downstairs, there were voices in the common room, and I heard the occasional thump of an emphatic cup being banged to the table. I could hear snatches of music, probably coming from next door or down the street. Maybe someday I could find a job playing for a tavern, as a minstrel. Maybe. I closed my eyes, and fell asleep.