Fires of the Faithful (7 page)

Bella stirred. “I’ve heard that it’s common knowledge outside the conservatory that the Circle and the Fedeli rule, not the Emperor.”

Domenico raised one eyebrow. “Bella, you’re going to get yourself in trouble someday if you’re not careful,” he said, and ended the class.

That evening, I bent my head over my music theory assignment while turning Bella’s comment over and over in my mind. Domenico was typically quite frank about life at court, so why would he repeat something he knew wasn’t true? Unless
he
feared getting in trouble. But then, why would Bella—or Giorgi, who undoubtedly was the person who’d told her this—be any more reliable? I pushed my stool back finally and looked at Mira, who sat cross-legged on her bed, her head bent over a book. “I suppose you’d know,” I said, setting down my pen.

“Know what?” Mira said, looking up. A lock of hair had fallen over one eye, and she twitched it back behind her ear.

“Who really rules. Like Bella said, we’re always told
that the Emperor rules, the Circle protects, and the Fedeli guide—that the High Circle and the High Priest and Priestess of the Fedeli advise the Emperor, but he makes the decisions.”

Mira gave me a steady look. “Bella is absolutely correct. It’s the Circle and the Fedeli who rule, and everyone in Cuore knows that. Even in the provinces—if you’d been older when you left your home village, the Emperor’s place in the ensemble of power, or his lack of one, would probably be known to you.”

“Oh,” I said, and lowered my eyes, disappointed. Bella could be such a know-it-all, and her relationship with Giorgi had only made this worse. It was a disappointment to find out that she really did know what she was talking about.

“When I say the
Circle
and
Fedeli
, of course, I mean the Circle Council and the High Priest and Priestess. There are about two hundred mages in the Circle, not counting initiates, and there are thousands of priests and priestesses in the Fedeli. Of course it’s not
all
of the Fedeli and the Circle who rule; that would be absurd.”

I laughed a little, though Mira wasn’t really smiling. “This should stand me in good stead if I ever
do
get to play at Court,” I said. “I won’t be quite as ignorant as they’d like to keep me.”

“Playing at court really is what you want?” Mira asked.

“Why else would I be here? It’s what almost everyone here wants. There’s no higher position for a musician.”

“Domenico gave it up,” Mira said.

“That’s true. He didn’t like court. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t.”

Mira was silent for a long moment, looking into her candle. “There’s an old saying I’ve heard: ‘The one who
pays the piper, calls the tune.’ I wouldn’t want to play the tunes the Circle calls.”

“Well, if you want to get technical about it, they’re paying for my ‘piping’ now, in a way. They pay my scholarship. And Bella’s, and Giula’s, and Flavia’s, and Celia’s. They paid Lia’s until she left. We’re all beholden to the Circle, since we’re sponsored by them. And thus so is Domenico, even if he left court years ago.”

Mira wouldn’t look up at me. “And none of you wish to speak ill of your benefactors?”

“It doesn’t stop Bella,” I said. I wanted, desperately, to lighten the mood, but I wasn’t sure how. “I’ve met only one mage in my life, anyway, and he was nice enough.”

“Really?” Now Mira looked up. “Tell me about it.”

“It was when I was six. You know how the Circle sends people down into the provinces to find children who are particularly good at magery? Well, I was good enough as a child that my father took me up to the next village to be tested.”

Mira leaned forward, putting her book down. “How good were you?”

“Honestly, it wasn’t so much that I was
good
at magery as that I was precocious. I started making witchlight when I was barely more than a baby, and when I was six I could light a fire with damp wood. That’s why my father thought I had a chance.” I smiled ruefully at the memory. “But the man from the Circle wanted me to set fire to
stone
. He gave me a little pebble and asked if I could make it burn. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t even warm it up.”

“Too bad,” Mira said.

“Yeah, well. It was worth the trip. The mage was very kind; he gave me an apple for trying so hard, and a dozen more to my father for bringing me in.” I shrugged and smiled at Mira, but her face had gone hard. She ducked
her head down to look at her book again. “What? Mira, was your trouble in Cuore with the Circle?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her voice was hard.

I looked down at my music theory work; I had dripped a great big inkblot onto the paper. I muttered a curse and blotted it up as well as I could. “I’m sorry, Mira. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, but she didn’t want to talk more that evening.

Mira was still being distant with me the next morning at breakfast, and I felt terrible about it, but didn’t know what to say to mend the rift. Thinking back to our class with Domenico, I thought that maybe I could offer her a flower, as if I were a young man approaching a young lady at court; that would make her laugh, and everything would probably be all right after that. Finding a flower would be difficult, though. It was late November, and the roses and most of the other flowers around the conservatory had gone dormant for the winter. That had to be true at court, as well, though; Domenico would know an appropriate offering for late November. I could ask him at my lesson, later that morning.

But that lesson, at it turned out, was canceled. As all of us (except for Mira) lingered over our tea, the Dean came in and knocked the floor with his staff to quiet us. He was trailed by three of the teachers; none were smiling. “There is solemn news,” the Dean said. “The Emperor is dead. His son, Travan, has ascended to the Imperial throne. May the Lady shelter the soul of Emperor Iago; may the Lady guide and defend Emperor Travan.”

“So may it be,” we chorused, stunned to near-whispers.

“Classes and lessons are all canceled for the rest of the day,” the Dean said. “Father Claro and Mother Emilia are convening a prayer service in one hour to mourn the old
Emperor and pray for the new; I expect to see you all there.” He nodded to all of us and stomped out, presumably going to tell the same thing to the boys. A few minutes later, we heard the chapel bell tolling.

I went looking for Mira, hoping that she’d have gotten over her anger enough to sit next to me, but I couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in her favorite practice room, not in the north practice hall, not by the wall that bordered the conservatory grounds. I even tried the bell tower, which was where I’d normally have looked for Bella—of course, neither Mira nor Bella was there that day. In the end, I sat with Flavia, since Giula had managed to score a seat next to the aisle. When we rose for the priest and priestess to come down the center aisle, I saw that Mira and Bella were both sitting in the very back row.

It was a strange service. In form, it closely resembled the service of prayer and mourning that we had observed a month earlier, after so many students had received bad news through the mail—but there had been a bitter edge a month ago that was missing today. The death of an Emperor was a solemn occasion, but it was an impersonal sort of mourning. None of us, except possibly for Domenico, had ever met the Emperor. I stole a look at Domenico, standing with the teachers near the front; his face was grim and inscrutable, and I couldn’t tell if he was grieving over the Emperor’s death, worried about the new Emperor, or thinking about something else entirely.

But because the ascension of a new Emperor to the Imperial throne was an occasion for celebration, even as the death of the old Emperor was a cause for mourning, we were supposed to have a festival meal after the prayer service, with meat, wine, and fruit pies. With the famine around us, though, the conservatory’s larder couldn’t permit much of a celebration. Our cook planned very carefully in
order to have meat in the stew on festival days, and an unplanned festival was not part of his calculations. Our midday meal was the same bean soup as always. We did each receive a small serving of stewed apples. Mira still didn’t seem to want to look at me, so we let Giula babble on about the Emperor’s death and the Dean’s announcement and the prayer service and which boy students had managed to snare aisle seats on short notice.

“How old was Emperor Iago, anyway?” Celia asked as we ate our fruit.

“Not that old,” I said. “My father’s age.” I remembered my father noting this once. “Too young to die of old age. I wonder how he died?”

“A sudden illness?” Flavia said. “Or maybe an accident. Even if he wasn’t old, things happen.”

“They certainly do,” Bella said, and raised one eyebrow.

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

“I’d better not say anything,” Bella said. “Like Domenico said, I could get myself in trouble one of these days.”

Mira scraped up the last of her fruit and excused herself, still avoiding my gaze. “Lessons or not, I’m going to go practice,” she said.

There was a pause as she left, and then four pairs of eyes turned toward me. I didn’t really want to try to explain to Giula, Flavia, Celia, and Bella why Mira was angry at me, so I shoved my plate away as well and left the hall.

I picked up my violin and went to practice for a while, but my mind kept returning to Bella’s comment. Finally I sighed and put my violin back in its case, and went to find Bella; if I asked her what she meant, she probably
would
tell me, despite her claim about wanting to avoid trouble. She just wanted to be asked, and I was curious enough
about what she knew (or thought she knew) that I was willing to give her that satisfaction.

I found Bella in the library, her head bent over a musical score, brown from age. “Hey,” I said, and pulled up a chair across from her. “Is that for one of our classes?”

“No, actually.” Bella slid the score gently across the table toward me. “I’m doing some independent research.”

I raised my eyebrows. “On what?”

“Honey.” She grinned at my puzzlement. “You remember that song that showed up last fall? The wicked stepmother with the poisoned honey? Well, I’ve been trying to figure out what the song is talking about.”

“And you think that’s in the library?”

“Sure, why not? I’m looking up old folk songs that mention honey, to see whether any of those songs have double meanings. Also stepmothers, and treacherous gifts.”

“I can’t believe that the person who wrote that song would have been referring to an old, forgotten folk song, anyway,” I said.

“True, but I could still get ideas,” Bella said.

“So have you?”

“I’ve found lots of great stories, but none that answer my question,” Bella said. “No songs about poisoned honey. I did find a song about someone who slew their lover for rejecting their gift. And I found another song where someone got a poisoned garment that killed her.”

“Any underlying meanings?”

Bella sighed. “No. Not really. Well, unless you count the moral, ‘Don’t accept gifts from people who hate you, even if they seem perfectly innocent.’ ”

“Seems like a good rule to live by,” I said. I glanced down at the score Bella had been studying. “So what does Giorgi say about the song?”

A look of annoyance crossed Bella’s face—annoyance at
Giorgi, not at me. “Just that it’s a waste of time to worry about it.”

“You don’t agree?”

“Obviously not.”

I couldn’t keep myself from smiling a little, and Bella noticed. “Oh yes,” she said, and gave me a wry smile back. “I still keep my own conscience, even if Giorgi is my teacher.”

“I rather thought he was more than your teacher,” I said. “You always said that if you were going to risk being thrown out of the conservatory, it would be for a
man
, not a boy. Giorgi’s a man.”

“True enough, but I’m not saying,” Bella said, and gave me a smile that told me everything I wanted to know.

“So what has Giorgi told you about the Emperor’s death?” I asked. “If you aren’t worried that by telling me, you’ll get yourself into trouble.”

Bella laughed. “Oh, I just said that to annoy Celia. She’s going to tie herself in knots for a week before she breaks down and asks me what I meant. Giorgi said that there have been rumors for a while that the Circle, or maybe the Fedeli, were angry at the Emperor. The story is that he was poisoned; whoever did it thinks Travan will be easier to manipulate.”

“Things happen, huh?” I said.

“They certainly do. Especially at court.”

I found myself wondering if
Bella
still wanted to play at court, given all the stories she was hearing from Giorgi, but I didn’t quite dare ask. I changed the subject, instead. “Any idea where I could get a flower?”

“Any particular kind?”

I shrugged. It probably didn’t really matter. “Something pretty, that smells nice.”

“Some of the herbs in the garden flower this time of year. Ask Giorgi. He should be able to help you.”

I went from the library to the back door of the kitchen. The door was standing open, to let in the cool air; I poked my head in but didn’t see Giorgi. The kitchen was damp and yeasty and very warm, despite the open door.

“May I help you?” It was one of the other assistants.

“I’m looking for Giorgi.”

The assistant nodded; a few moments later, Giorgi emerged, wiping his hands on his apron. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbows and his face was flushed from the heat. “Is anyone sick?” he asked.

“No, nothing like that,” I said. “But Bella said you might be able to help me.”

Giorgi stepped outside the kitchen. “Is this about—”

“It’s nothing about the music,” I said. “I want a flower, just one flower. Bella said you might have a flowering herb you could give me a cutting from.”

Giorgi looked a little surprised. “Sure,” he said. “I could do that.” He stepped back into the kitchen to hang up his apron and grab a small knife; rolling his sleeves down, he slipped a cloak over his shoulders and we walked down to the kitchen garden.

The conservatory did try to grow at least some of its food, and the kitchen gardens spread out along the slope of the hill that led down from the back door. This time of year, nearly everything was dormant. Withered bean plants hung slack from their trellises, and bits of rock marked out beds where parsnips, cabbages, and onions would be planted in the spring. The herb garden was in a sheltered spot next to a stand of apple trees. The rosemary and parsley twined as green and fragrant as ever, but Giorgi reached past them to a plant with a profusion of yellow blossoms. “Winter jasmine,” he said. “How much do you need?”