Fires of the Faithful (32 page)

My sight was clearing. “Let me sit down a minute,” I said. “I think if I wait for a moment or two, I’ll be able to stand by myself.” As soon as we were past the edge of the piazza, they let me sit.

People were staring at me from their tents again, I realized. I could see them peering out. But it was a different kind of stare, now. “She didn’t cry out,” I heard someone say, “not once. Just about told Teleso to go screw the horses, too.” Beyond Lucia, I could see a stranger touch his fist to his chest, then hold it out silently as he met my eyes.

“I think I can walk, if you’ll help me,” I said to Lucia, and she gave me her hand. I winced as I stood up, but I felt oddly buoyed. Rafi smiled at me kindly, and Lucia’s eyes glowed with her own inner light. On the other side of Lucia, I caught Giovanni’s eye. Pure malevolence met me, and I smiled back at him. Teleso had just made a serious mistake.

“Beneto was wrong,” I said to Lucia, once again pitching my voice to be heard by the onlookers. “Our strength is not
just
in numbers. Our strength is in our hearts. Our will is stronger than Teleso’s. When the time comes, we will fight him. And we will
win
.”

PART FOUR
 
As Long As I Like Where You’re Leading

I
sabella was at the door of Rafi’s tent almost as soon as Lucia had gotten me settled. “She’s resting,” I heard Lucia say, but I interrupted her.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Tell her to come in.”

I was lying on my stomach, a wet cloth across my back; I propped myself up on my elbows when Isabella came in. “I’ve sent for Petro,” Isabella said. “He’s one of my closest friends, and the best healer in Ravenna.”

“Would you like some tea?” Rafi asked Isabella. “Eliana got us some of the good kind a few nights ago.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, settling against one of the rolled-up blankets. Giovanni glowered at her; she ignored him completely. Rafi brewed the tea and there were several heartbeats of strained silence.

“So what are you doing here?” Giovanni asked Isabella. “Come to tell us babes how we can’t do anything right?”

“You’d be well served to listen to me more often,” Isabella said mildly, taking the cup of tea Rafi handed to her. “As would Eliana here. That funeral was an excellent
opportunity.” She looked at me over the cup. “You have much to answer for, girl.”

“I will lead a breakout,” I said. “But I will do it on my own terms.”

“What are your terms?” Isabella asked as Giovanni sputtered.

“We are peasants, not targets for crossbow bolts or fuel for magefire,” I said. “Our strength is not just in numbers, it is in our arms and our hearts. When we break out, we’ll know how to fight, and how to work together so that we can watch each other’s backs instead of getting in each other’s way. We’ll wrest the crossbows from the hands of the soldiers who don’t throw them down. We’ll break out when Teleso is
not
fully prepared for a riot. And Lucia will
not
be the first to fall, as she was supposed to be last night.” I gave Giovanni a measured look, and he glowered back at me.

“
You
will lead a breakout!” he sputtered. “
You
. You? Her?”

“Where you lead, Generale,” Isabella said, “I will follow, and so will those who follow me.” She touched her fist to her chest and held it out in a salute.

This was too much for Giovanni. “Generale? Generale! With Beneto and Jesca gone,
I
am the Generale of the Third Army.”

“You may be the Generale of the Third Army,” I said, “but I am the Generale of the Army of Ravenna.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Giovanni said. “You’re all traitors! All of you!” He leapt to his feet and stormed out.

Rafi shrugged. “Eliana’s right,” he said to Lucia. “People will follow her now.”

“She’s still a stranger here,” Lucia said.

“ ‘There is power in strangeness,’ ” Rafi said.

Isabella snorted. “That’s just a nice way of saying that because she’s new, no one hates her yet.”

“People may hate me soon enough,” I said, “but at least they won’t hate me because I want to make them learn how to fight with swords they’ll never have.”

Isabella smiled slowly. “Don’t take my support for granted, Generale-girl. You may lose us yet. But for now … we’re with you.” She set down her cup. “If you’ll excuse me. Petro should be here soon.” She ducked out.

“Petro better not be one of those healers that likes to use salves that sting,” I said. Rafi laughed. Lucia was still staring after Isabella. “Lucia,” I said, and she looked up. “How many people does Isabella lead?”

“More than Beneto did, honestly,” Lucia said. “Although her influence doesn’t extend beyond Ravenna.”

“And she’s—what did you say she does, exactly?”

“Isabella is an old-time dissenter,” Lucia said. “She was making trouble for the Circle back when we were babies. Or at least complaining a lot.” She shrugged. “Isabella never committed herself to Beneto. That’s quite a coup you just made.”

“Giovanni’s going to be furious,” I said.

“He’s already furious,” Rafi said. “As you knew he would be.” He picked up Isabella’s cup and finished off the last few drops of tea. “So, Generale Eliana: where do you intend to lead us?”

“Out of Ravenna,” I said.

“And then?” Rafi wiped out the cup and put it away. “Beneto could never answer this question for me. What then? March on Cuore?”

I hesitated. “Yes,” I said. “Eventually.”

“Everyone here? Children and grannies?”

“No, we’ll have to send them somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ll think of something.”

Rafi smiled. “And food? Supply lines? You won’t have the Cuore bureaucracy shuttling food to you.”

“No,” I said. “I suppose not.”

“How will you feed your army?”

“I’ll figure something out for that, too,” I said. “Before I lead the breakout.”

Rafi suddenly smiled at me, a radiant grin that took over his entire face. “Answer those questions, signora, and I am yours to command.” His smile faded to a wry hesitation. “Assuming I like the answers, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

Lucia was smiling. “Giovanni’s going to kill me.”

“He’d better not,” I said.

“—but I’m yours to command as well, so long as you’re listening to good counsel. I am the Redentore priestess of Ravenna—I lead the Old Way followers, at least when they care to listen to me. We stand behind you, Generale.”

I regarded the two of them. “Why?” I asked. “Just because I told off Teleso and got beaten for it?”

“The truth is,” Rafi said, “we need a leader. Isabella knows it, and so do the other groups in Ravenna. Beneto had the wit and charisma to pull people together, at least some of the time. Giovanni does not.”

“So people will follow me because I’m the alternative to Giovanni?”

“You understand your position pretty well,” Rafi said.

Lucia tipped her head and narrowed her eyes as she regarded me. “You do realize that you will still need Giovanni. We may all accept you as our general, but Beneto’s old commanders won’t. As far as they’re concerned, Giovanni is the only one qualified to lead. So long as you send Giovanni to deal with them, you should be all right. But you’ll have to come to terms with him, sooner or later.”

The healer arrived shortly after that. Petro was an old man who walked with a limp. He had a tiny store of herbs, which he could not replenish here in Ravenna and guarded jealously; Isabella had evidently ordered him to use some of them up to treat me. The salve didn’t sting, although being touched hurt enough as it was. When Petro had left, Lucia said, “You can lead the uprising starting tomorrow. For the rest of today, you’re going to rest.” I’m not sure how she kept Giovanni from coming back to the tent, but I dozed peacefully for the rest of the day.

By the next morning, I had settled on my top priority: military training. Not only did we need to train people to fight as a cohesive force, we needed to train more than the handful that Giovanni could teach in his tiny training ground. The trouble was, I couldn’t imagine Teleso sitting still for mass military exercises. I raised the issue over morning gruel.

“We’re not stupid,” Giovanni said. “Of course we’d like to train more people. There’s just no way to hide more than a handful.”

“Don’t fool yourself,” I said. “Teleso knows you’re there. He probably just figures it’s a harmless diversion, like the Old Way.”

“Well, I think Teleso would see more than a handful as more than a diversion,” Rafi said.

“We need a way to disguise military training
as
a diversion,” I said.

“There’s no way,” Giovanni said. “You’re being ridiculous. This is what happens when someone who doesn’t know the
first
thing about the subject—”

“What exactly is it you want to train people to do?” Lucia asked, pressing her hands to her head as if to shut out Giovanni.

“Fight as a group. Watch each other’s backs. Move
when the others move. Work together without getting in each other’s way.”

“An army is
not
an orchestra,” Giovanni said, and stalked out.

I watched him go, then turned back to my breakfast, scraping the sides of the bowl with my fingers to get the last of the gruel. When Lucia had also finished eating, I eased on my tunic and we went down to Giovanni’s practice ground.

Giovanni was bullying Michel again. He called a break as soon as we came in and snarled, “You’re going against Beneto’s
explicit
orders.”

“You took orders from Beneto,” I said. “I didn’t. And Beneto’s dead.”

“You’re not the one in charge here,” he said. “I am!”

I glanced past Giovanni at the seven boys clustered against the wall. Michel’s face had lit up when I walked in, and something caught my eye. He had discarded his worn belt and replaced it with a red sash similar to mine. So had the others.

I lowered my voice and spoke just to Giovanni. “Giovanni, look around you. Who do you think they’re going to follow? You’ll be less embarrassed if you back down now.”

Giovanni’s face went red, then white, and his lips tightened. He turned with mute appeal toward Lucia, but she stared him down.

“We’ll see,” he said, backing out of the training ground. “We’ll
see
.” He turned and ran out. I didn’t watch him go.

Michel and the others edged away from the wall. On a signal from Michel, they formed a ragged line and saluted me in unison. “What are your orders, Generale?” Michel asked.

“You know how to fight,” I said. “With a weapon or
your fists. That’s not what you need to learn. What you need to learn is how to fight
together
.” I looked them over. “Round up a few more. Then practice fighting as a group—three against three, four against four, five against five. And pull your punches. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Generale,” Michel said; the others nodded.

I sat down to watch them train; Lucia sat down beside me. They quickly divided into a group of three and a group of four, and started to circle the training ground. Michel was tall and broad-shouldered like my brothers, but with a surprisingly light, quick step; he was by far the best fighter in the group. He didn’t seem like the sort who’d be graceful; he seemed like he should be slow and awkward like my brothers, but he wasn’t. “Are we just supposed to beat on each other?” Michel asked after a little while.

“No. You need a goal, I guess. Hmm. Pretend—uh, pretend those sticks are crossbows. Three of you can be soldiers—you have the crossbows. The other four are Ravenessi—you try to take the crossbows away.”

After a few more false starts, we worked out the basic rules of the game. They switched to six on one, with the one playing the soldier. As long as the soldier had the “crossbow,” he could “shoot” a Ravenesse every few seconds by stopping, pointing the stick, and calling out the person’s name.

“It takes more time than that to cock a crossbow,” Michel said.

“Stick with these rules for now,” I said.

Watching them, I was suddenly reminded of games I’d played with my brothers, back when I was a child. Watching my army now was like watching a group of deadly serious grown-ups playing tag.

“That’s it,” I said aloud.

“What?” Lucia asked.

“This is how we’re going to train the whole camp. Everyone who wants to fight. We’ll make it a game.” I turned to Lucia, and she shook her head, trying to understand my excitement. “Everyone can learn—everyone can play. Don’t you see? Teleso doesn’t care how we amuse ourselves. As long as it’s a game, we can play it openly. We can train the whole camp that way.”

Michel and the others had paused to watch my excitement. “Are there others in Ravenna who would learn to fight if there was a way?” I asked.

“Yes,” Michel said. “Many. There isn’t space.”

“Listen,” I said. “We don’t need space. We’re going to call this game
pastore e lupi
, shepherd-and-wolves, instead of soldiers-and-prisoners, but the rules—and the purpose—stay the same.”