Fires of the Faithful (2 page)

Mira picked up her violin and moved it to her desk. “Is it true what I’ve heard?” she asked, her back to me. “About the seeds?”

“That the seeds die in the ground without even sprouting?” I sat down on my own bed, staring at Mira’s back. “Yes. At least in the worst areas.”

“Where are you from?” Mira asked.

“Doratura,” I said. “It’s west of here, but nowhere near the famine areas. Don’t worry, my family is fine.”

“That’s good,” Mira said, turning toward me again and sitting down on her stool.

“There are others here who aren’t as fortunate,” I said. “My friend Bella, her family’s farm isn’t in the truly devastated area, but everything they plant grows stunted, and withers in a strong sun.”

Mira was silent, rubbing the edge of one sleeve with her fingers.

“If you are from Cuore ‘most recently,’ where were you from originally?” I asked.

“Tafano,” Mira said. “It’s a very small village south and west of here. I wouldn’t expect you to have heard of it.”

I blinked. “How did you end up in Cuore? And what are you doing back in Verdia?”

“I thought I had a calling.” Mira studied her hands. “My order was pretty obscure, and I had to go to Cuore to go to seminary.”

“You’re a
priestess
?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I was only ever an initiate. I didn’t get as far as the ordination, and now, obviously, I’m never going to.” She looked up to give me a rueful smile. “I decided I wanted to pursue my first love—music. I came here because, well, I was born in Verdia. I felt like I belonged here.”

I shook my head. Starting at a conservatory so late, she couldn’t possibly have been sponsored by the Circle with a scholarship—she had to be a paying student. I was curious to know where she’d gotten the money, but it would have been too rude to ask. I wondered if she’d stolen it from her order; the Dean was unlikely to inquire too carefully regarding the source of any silver crossing his desk.

“Eliana!” There was a sharp rap at my door. “Are you in there?”

“Come in,” I called.

Giula flung the door open. “You
were
going to come meet me, weren’t you? To practice? Remember?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I hadn’t forgotten; I’d just decided that Giula could wait. “Giula, this is my new roommate, Mira. Mira, this is Giula, one of the other violinists.”

“Oh!” Giula’s indignation melted; a newcomer was certainly excuse enough to be late to a practice session. “How nice to meet you.” She smiled at Mira, showing her dimples. “Where are you from?”

“Tafano,” Mira said.

“Tafano!” Giula actually seemed to recognize the name of the village. “Where
ever
did you get lovely pale skin like that in Tafano?”

“Well, most recently I lived in Cuore,” Mira said.

Giula’s eyes bugged out.

I grabbed Giula’s arm. “Did you want to practice, or not?” I asked. Giula shot me a venomous glare, but let me drag her off. “It’s not like she’s going anywhere,” I said once the door was closed. “You can interrogate her later.”

Giula was cheerful again by the time we’d reached the practice hall. “So that’s your new roommate! Not quite so bad as you made it sound at lunch, is it?”

“I still say there are enough empty rooms that I shouldn’t have to have a roommate if I don’t want one,” I said. Giula shrugged unsympathetically. In the practice room, Giula and I set our music on the stand. We would play a duet in the autumn recital the following week; I was a better violinist than Giula, but we shared a teacher, Domenico, and he had instructed us to play together. She would take the easier part.

“Did she tell you why she came here from
Cuore
?” Giula asked, still incredulous.

“She was in Cuore preparing for ordination,” I said.

“She was going to be a
priestess
? But why would she ever come back
here
?”

“You can ask her later, can’t you?” I flipped open the music to the duet. “Are we going to practice or not?”

Giula tightened her bow and started tuning her violin, still talking. “And why would she be starting at this time of year? Auditions were in the spring. Though she couldn’t have auditioned anyway—she’s our age, or maybe even older. She
has
to be a paying student. But why would you pay to come
here
?”

I rolled my eyes and tucked my violin under my chin.

“Maybe her family lives near here,” Giula said.

“Maybe.” Students who left the conservatory, even for a day, lost their scholarships and could not return. We assumed it was to discourage all but the most dedicated from pursuing a life as a musician. But our families could come and visit us, which was a possibility if they lived close by. Lia’s family had visited once. “We need to work on this duet,” I said. At least Giula needed to work on it, because if she didn’t sound at least decent at the recital, nobody would notice my playing at all.

Giula reluctantly tucked her violin under her chin. “Why do you suppose she’s so pale?”

“Presumably she spent most of her time indoors at her seminary,” I said. Giula started to lower her violin again, and I tapped the music pointedly. “Let’s take it from the top.”

I counted out a beat and started to play. Giula picked up her part in the third measure, and stumbled almost immediately.

“Again,” I said. “Start here.”

“Wait,” Giula said.

For a moment, I thought Giula was going to start gossiping again, but her head was tilted to the side, and after
a beat I realized that she was listening to the musician in the next practice room. The musician was Celia, one of the sopranos; I recognized her voice. But she wasn’t practicing anything I’d heard before, and since Celia was at least nominally a friend of mine, I was familiar with most of her repertoire.

Celia paused, and Giula looked up at me, her eyes wide. “Everyone’s talking about this song. I hadn’t heard it sung yet.”

Celia began to sing the verses. Six children tasted the honey and embraced their stepmother. Then the seventh son rejected the honey, and was murdered by his own father for his insolence. Then one by one the other six children died, poisoned by the lethal gift. In the end, the father wept over the graves of his children, but was at the mercy of his new wife and his two stepchildren. In the final verse, the bones of the dead children cried out for vengeance; apparently this was left up to the listener.

There was a knock on the door of our practice room. I opened the door; it was Bella, her trumpet in her hand. “Did you hear Celia?” she asked.

I sighed. “I gather we aren’t the only students here who aren’t rehearsing.”

Bella waved her hand—not the one with the trumpet—
dismissively. “I think I saw the person who brought the song.”

“Really?” Giula set her violin down altogether. I resigned myself to the inevitable and put mine down as well.

Bella sat down on one of the practice stools, and Giula and I did as well. “I was watching down the hill for the messenger wagon, and I saw someone ride into town. I don’t know horses that well, but it looked like a fast riding horse—not the sort of horse you’d hitch to a plow. The rider was wearing a cloak pulled over his face—” Bella gestured with the floppy sleeve of her robe.

“It’s been a chilly autumn,” I said. “Of course he wanted to protect his face.”

Bella rolled her eyes. “I saw him dismount by the cottage where your teacher lives—Domenico. He was inside for less than an hour, and then he rode away.”

“Did you see his face?” Giula asked.

“It would have been too far even if his face hadn’t been covered,” Bella said. “You should try asking Domenico about it.” She shot a glance directly at me. Domenico would never gossip to Giula—not when she was so busy flirting with him—but he might talk to me. I nodded a little. It was worth a try.

“What do you think the song’s about?” Giula asked.

“It’s probably some stupid noble’s feud,” Bella said. “Some branch of the family got killed by treachery and now they want the whole world to help them get revenge.”

“Wouldn’t it help if the offending family were named?” I asked.

“People might not spread the song if they knew it was some petty feud,” Bella said.

“They would if it was a good enough tune.”

“So what’s your theory?” Bella asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think the poisoned honey refers
to literal honey, though. I think it’s some sort of disguised danger, but it’s disguised awfully well. I don’t have any idea what it’s talking about.”

Giula didn’t even venture a guess. “I wish it had been the messenger service, instead of a man with a mysterious song,” she said.

“Honestly, so do I.” For a moment, Bella’s face looked worn. “The news from my family last time wasn’t good.” The news next time was unlikely to be better, but anything was preferable to uncertainty. And perhaps the harvest would be better than expected, if only by a little.

The supper bell rang, and we quickly packed up our instruments to walk over to the girls’ meal hall. I had expected Mira to join us for supper, but she wasn’t there. Celia was, though, repeating the words of the honey song to those who hadn’t heard them yet. Giorgi, the cook’s assistant, brought out heavy tureens of stew made from the vegetables we grew in the conservatory garden, and jugs of tea and wine.

Celia flicked back a curl that had fallen into her face and took a sip of her tea. Celia didn’t like tying her hair back, probably because the curls framed her heart-shaped face so charmingly. Not that any of us were supposed to be trying to attract the attention of the boys, but Celia liked any attention she could get. “It’s a lovely song,” she said, “but I think it’s just about some feud. Some noble family sent a bride to another family with poisoned honey. Their children ate it and died. Maybe there was a son who refused to eat it, but—”

This wasn’t far off from Bella’s theory, but her eyes narrowed. “Oh, come on, Celia,” she said. “You don’t really think the song is about literal
honey
, do you?”

Celia arched one perfect eyebrow. “Why don’t you share
your
theory with us, Bella?” she said.

“Eliana thinks the poisoned honey is a symbol for some disguised danger,” Bella said. “I think she’s right, but I don’t know what the danger is.”

Flavia, a percussionist, looked up from her stew. “I think you’re right about the symbolism,” she said. “It’s a ballad rhythm, or I’d say that the Fedeli wrote the song.”

“The Fedeli.” I put down my tea. “Why the Fedeli?”

“Don’t you think the ‘poisoned honey’ could refer to a heresy of some kind?” Flavia said. “I could easily see the song reaching us well before we actually heard what heresy it was supposed to be about.”

We considered that idea for a moment.

“But, like I said, the rhythm’s not right. I would expect the Fedeli to write something that sounded like a hymn—not like something that sounds like a folk ballad.” Flavia took a sip of wine.

“Eliana got a new roommate today,” Giula said. “From Cuore.”

That diverted the conversation entirely, and after checking to make sure that she wasn’t standing behind me, I described Mira to the others and told what little I knew about her: born in Tafano, trained at a seminary in Cuore, and ignorant in the use of candles.

“Do you suppose …” Bella said.

“Why would you come
all
the way to the conservatory from Cuore if you were going to try to get pregnant?” I asked. Any pregnant girl student—and any boy student who was named as the father—was expelled from the conservatory. Clearly, if the Lady blessed your union, she wanted you to get married and settle down, not go off to join an ensemble.

“Maybe she’s in love with one of the boy students,” Giula said.

“How would she have
met
him?” I asked. We were kept
well separated from the boys at the conservatory. The only place we were even allowed in the same room with them was the chapel. This encouraged a high degree of religious observance among girls like Celia.

“That can’t be it,” Bella said. “Maybe she had a lover in Cuore, and she hopes she’s pregnant by him.”

“Why would she have left, then?” Giula asked.

“That’s obvious,” Bella said. “She was an initiate, wasn’t she? Maybe the boy wasn’t.”

“Still,” I said. “Why would she leave Cuore?”

“Maybe …” Bella closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “This is getting too complicated. Even if the relationship ended badly, if she has any reason to think she’s pregnant, then coming back to Verdia would just be stupid.”

Celia tossed her hair back. “Clearly,
you’ve
never been in love.”

Bella’s eyes narrowed and she smiled slowly at Celia, letting Celia’s words hang in the air as a pink flush crept slowly upward from the gray wool collar of Celia’s robe. “If I risk being expelled from the conservatory,” Bella said, “I want it to be for a man—not a boy. But to each her own.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Celia said.

Bella had started to turn back to her tea, but when Celia got defensive, she took that as an invitation to twist the knife a little more. “Why would it mean anything?” she asked. “I think your devotion to the Lady is very touching, Celia.”

Celia went white. Naturally, she attended chapel daily to flirt with the boys there, but Bella meant something else, and Celia knew it. Magery was the Lady’s gift to humanity, but it decreased fertility. To counteract this tendency, the Lady encouraged Her children to try to make children of their own as frequently as possible. Of course, the Lady
didn’t want conservatory students having babies—our celibacy, like the sterility of the Circle, increased the fertility of everyone else. But, still. “Honoring the Lady” was a popular euphemism for the sort of thing that happened secretly on summer nights in the shadows of the practice halls—and that occasionally resulted in expulsions.