“Now!” Jorga shouted.
Now Claire added bloodlust and the desire for revenge to their Song. The rain tried to hinder the power, but they were too close now. Screams of rage came from the soldiers. One seized a white-robed priest, punching and sending her crashing to the ground, then ripping away the priest’s Diviner. As Claire had rightly guessed, it was the priests the Northerners truly hated. The desire for revenge pushed them to attack their own kind. Others turned on more of the Northern priests, overpowering them and snatching Diviners. They engulfed and rushed past the dissolving line of priests. Fleeing toward the desert and away from the city.
The Elders split left and right before the oncoming army.
“Hurry, Valentía!” Claire screamed, changing her Song with lightning speed to Speak on the Wind. “Ramiro,” she Sang to the low-hanging clouds. Throwing a new emotion: joy. Letting him know that she was here, had come to find him, pushing that outward as well. She resumed the illusion Song almost instantly. The stallion put on a fresh burst of speed, finding the reserve from somewhere to get them out of the way. He pounded for the relative safety and clear space around the gates of Aveston.
The Northerners continued outward, refusing to heed the orders of the few remaining priests. Right toward the army of oldsters and women Beatriz and Julian had brought.
Chapter 36
“Father Telo,” Teresa said. “I have to get to him with this.” She hefted the red Diviner in her arms. Two more had been hastily stuck into her sling. “The friars will have him at the Water Gate you told me about.” She hoped they hadn’t been caught within the gate when the rain started. That would have been incredibly dangerous, as the gate was a dry gully, only filled during the wet season. The desert floor was rock-hard after the dry season. Water would turn into a roaring flood until the ground softened.
Ramiro turned from facing into the wind to find her. “And I have to get to the front gates. Did you hear it? Claire is here.”
She blinked at him. “Claire? Here? How do you know?”
“I heard her. Felt her calling for me. From the direction of the front gates.”
Normally she would have felt concern for his certainty. She had heard nothing. Felt nothing. How could he possibly know Claire was here? But after what she’d witnessed inside Her Beauty, it didn’t feel like her place to question anything Ramiro said ever again. Or at least for this day, she amended. She’d allow nobody to squelch her healthy skepticism—it made her what she was—but too much of the miraculous had already happened. Why shouldn’t he hear Claire?
Rasdid and what remained of his soldiers stood staring. “I must get to the gates, too,” Rasdid said. “My men there will need me if an army has come.”
Teresa took a deep breath against the fear tingling in her spine. Ramiro was safety for her—emotionally and physically. Their belief in each other helped balance her. Not only was he able to turn aside the Northern weapons, his sword could keep her safe from other dangers, like the townspeople turning into a mob compelled by their own fear. Hell, the sheer sight of him standing tall and straight in shining armor, head held high, would send most people with violent intentions the other way. Though nearly the same height as Rasdid, somehow the armor made Ramiro seem a head taller. Saint or not, he looked like a god-blessed hero from myth.
She had much less faith in her own abilities to stay safe or handle situations without him. But they each had a role to play, and now all she could do was swallow and say what had to be said. “Then we part here, cousin. I’ll find Father Telo. You find Claire. We’ll meet at the front gates. Then we’ll find a way to stop this Dal.” Holding the red Diviners, it should be harmless to say that name, though the soldiers with them still flinched, checking the sky.
Concern shone from Ramiro’s eye. “I don’t—”
“I do. This is the time to part. I feel it.”
He nodded. “Meet at the gates. Got it. If you see Sancha, send her to me.” He crushed her to him in a hug that smashed her face against his breastplate, showing her a reflection of her squished features. She squeezed back, though unsure if he could feel it through all the metal.
When he released her, she held out a Diviner. “You should take this.”
He shook his head, drawing his hand back. “I don’t want to touch it. I’m not sure what would happen.”
Probably it would splinter like all the others he touched, she knew.
“I would take one,” Rasdid said, “if you are willing to share. But one hand on it at a time, eh.”
“Gladly.” She set the staff onto the cobblestones under their feet and let him pick it up.
“Cousin. Saints be with you,” Ramiro said. Then he was gone, Rasdid and the other soldiers bustling along in his wake, like the weaker vessels they were. People parted around the soldiers to give them space, then they were swallowed by the crowds.
“Saints be with you,” she whispered to his back. “And God be with anyone who gets in his way.” The man had fallen hard for the little witch girl and no doubt about it. Not much would be allowed to slow him down on his quest to find Claire. Teresa wished them well with all her heart.
Then her heart gave a great shudder at being completely alone. Standing still among the rushing of the townsfolk. One rock in a flood. The thought reminded her of the Water Gate. She only knew it was at the back of the city. How hard could it be to find? She pulled another red Diviner from her sling, then trotted off, weaving through people rushing God knew where.
Everyone and their mother seemed to be out of their houses and roaming the streets looking for trouble or salvation. People began to loot from stores, especially focused on taking any food they found. They threw stones and other items at any Northerners they encountered. The red Diviner in her hand drew too many looks and Teresa hid it inside her sling with the other. Twice young men in ragged clothes tried to rob her, but she ran the other direction and they moved on to richer prey, apparently deciding she had nothing worth pursuing.
With little idea of the layout of the city, Teresa was soon lost in the narrow streets. Nobody she tried to stop to ask for directions would pay her any heed, pushing past her as if she wasn’t there.
The only landmark she could locate were the towers of Her Beauty, which she used to orient her to the rear of the city, but the Water Gate remained a mystery to her.
“Along the wall. It’s a gate, dummy. It’s got to be by a wall.” But finding the wall around the city eluded her, too. As she walked, the rain intensified, slicking her clothing to her body and cooling her off, but adding to her irritation. The rains had to come now? She needed her poncho back. Unfortunately, her covering, which had been through so much with her, lay over bodies in Her Beauty.
Teresa frowned. The street she’d wandering into proved strangely empty. It gave her an eerie feeling. She turned another corner and walked smack-dab into a Northern priestess. That explained where all the people went. The woman had her weapon in her hand and Teresa just missed running straight into it and killing herself.
They both backed up a step out of pure instinct and the priestess’s eye dropped to her sling, where the red Diviners peeked out of the end. Her eyes widened.
“Give those me!” the priestess snarled in a broken attempt at their language. Young, she would have been attractive except for the snarl on her face. Her white robe emphasized breast and hip in a way that should have been distracting in any other situation, the cloth made almost sheer by the rain. It was as alluring as the fact that she advanced with her white Diviner held before her was horrifying, and Teresa retreated until her back hit a stack of crates packed against the porch of a tavern.
“Give them me or die!”
An embarrassing squeak emerged from Teresa’s throat as she clutched the red Diviners that could save Father Telo to her chest. Randomly, she appreciated that a Northerner would, of course, know the word for die. Anything with violence. It pained her, but there was no choice, even though not only would she lose the
power to heal her friend, she’d have no protection from Dal. But handing them over was better than being dead.
She reached into her sling to remove the staffs, when a man in a leather vest with arms like a blacksmith crept up behind the priestess, his finger to his lips. Before Teresa could gasp, he seized the priestess by the skull and gave a great twist with his meaty arms. Teresa closed her eyes and heard a sharp pop.
When she opened them, the man was dropping the body to the ground and holding aloft her white Diviner. His arms strained again, the muscles growing more and more taut, then there was another sharp pop and the white Diviner broke in two. Teresa’s mouth dropped open. She thought she heard a cheer and looked behind the man, but there was no one to have made such a noise.
“Are you hale and whole, little sister?” he asked Teresa. The rain had slicked his short hair to his head and drops gleamed in his beard and on his black skin. Attached to the back of his vest was a short cloak that fell to his waist. Hoodless, it offered scant protection from the rain and looked rather ridiculous.
“Uh. I think so.” Something urged her not to ask questions. Teresa patted her sling to make sure the Diviners were safe, keeping her eyes from the body at her feet. Ramiro promised they would find help when they needed it. How right he’d been.
“Why are you burdened with those?” He pointed to her Diviners.
A chill went down her arms. The man was huge. He’d crushed the priestess like a toy. “I need them. I can’t give them to you.” She clutched the Diviners close again, starting to babble. “They’re for a friar. Someone who knows about the Northerners and can help us. I need to find the Water Gate. He’ll be there. Can you help me?”
The blacksmith man’s face split into a grin. “You were not born in this city then?”
“No,” she admitted. “I’ve visited Aveston, but I guess I don’t know enough about it.” As part of her studies, she had been several times, but only to see the main features of the city and its churches.
“Then I will take you,” he said in a booming voice. “This city houses all my descendants. I know its every part. Follow me.”
Teresa eyed his retreating back for several seconds in bemused puzzlement—don’t ask questions—and then scrambled after him.
Chapter 37
Ramiro hastened through Cathedral Square, trying to keep half an eye on the enemy at his back who might have become a friend. He wanted to trust Rasdid and his men, but to do so blindly was foolish. He might have clicked with them as fellow soldiers, but they’d turned their allegiance once. Who was to say they couldn’t again?
He directed one eye at his back and one on his surroundings.
The friars had done their work of alerting the population of Aveston. Half the ciudad-estado might have already been evacuated, but now the occupants of the second half ran through the city looking for a way out.
And that’s exactly what he was looking for—not just for himself, but also before the mostly peaceful riot turned bloody and attracted Dal. Was it ironic that he’d stopped the Northerners from starting a massacre, only to perhaps cause it himself with his warning? He couldn’t stop from scanning the sky for signs of the angry god or sniffing the air for the first putrid smell. He had to prevent that from happening, and opening the gates seemed the likeliest way to redirect everyone.
“No trouble. I can order gates open—if I’m still leader,” Rasdid added ominously. “We must hurry, in case priests find another man to take my place.”
“The priests won’t start anything now, will they? With their Diviners destroyed, they have no reason to.”
“The priests.” Rasdid brought his fists together at the knuckles, pushing them against one another, the red Diviner held awkwardly. “They’re like this. They don’t like being . . .”—he sought for the word—“said. No. Told. Told how to be. They have a plan, a strategy, and they stubborn. They keep that strategy no matter what changes.”
“What strategy?”
“Kill this city anyway.”
Ramiro jerked to a stop, his limbs weak with horror. “Kill the city anyway? For no gain? Out of stubbornness? My god. They would do that?”
“Ah. Yes. They are priests. That is how they are. Ordoño, he had much trouble with them.”
“How did he handle them?”
“He killed priests who don’t listen. Why do you think the Children of Dal liked a stranger from another land so much? Go!” Rasdid waved in the direction of the gate and they started running again. “We don’t like priests. Nobody likes priests. So when a priest said no to Ordoño, they died suddenly. Poison. Knife in their sleep. Santabe. You know her? She’s Ordoño’s knife.”
“I know her,” Ramiro huffed as he ran, struggling to keep up with the unarmored Northerners and grateful his new armor was light. He still made an ungodly amount of noise, but that was probably an advantage right now, as people scattered from their path. The Northern woman was in the city somewhere, doing who knew what. It wouldn’t be anything good.
He gestured at the red staff Rasdid carried. “She said those can rebuff Dal. Is that true? I’ve seen they can heal.”
“Yes. Heal. And they can bring some back from death, too—if used quick. Rebuff? What does that mean?”
“Keep off. Keep away.”
Rasdid slowed. “She said this to you? That does not sound like Santabe. She’s too much . . .” The scowls of all the soldiers told Ramiro exactly how they felt about her.
Ramiro put his fists together as Rasdid had and pushed them against one another. “We convinced her.”
“Ah.” Rasdid spat. “Good. Yes. What she said is true: Everyone around a living Diviner for eight cubits is safe from Dal.”
“Cubit?” Ramiro stopped again and Rasdid and the others followed suit.
A crowd of people blocked the road ahead, standing shoulder to shoulder with their backs turned in Ramiro’s direction, struggling to push forward. The mob trying to reach the closed gates.
“Eight cubits,” Rasdid said, pointing at the crowd. “From us to them.”
Ramiro judged the distance to be about twelve to fifteen feet, which meant the red Diviners didn’t provide a very big sphere of protection. At least that much of what Santabe had said was true.
One of the soldiers with them spoke in his language and half drew his sword. Rasdid replied, grabbing the soldier’s hand and ramming the blade back home, then turning to Ramiro.
“These are your people. You can get us through, yes? Without blood.”
“No blood,” Ramiro echoed. If the Northerner priests wanted a place to start a massacre, they’d stumbled upon it.
One step at a time.
He walked up to the edge of the crowd. The people were chanting “open the gate” and trying to push forward with nowhere to go, jammed in thickly, like a large family in a short pew. Ramiro tapped on the last few. “Let me through. We will open the gate.” A calm came over him and the words emerged without shout or bluster, but with complete conviction. It was the conviction that finally reached them. He had to say the phrase three times before recognition dawned on their faces and they stopped turning away. First one than others squeezed to the side enough to let him slide through. Rasdid and his men followed.
Over and over, he spoke the words in a voice of calm. “Let me through. We will open the gates.” Men and women eyed his face or his shining armor and managed to draw aside enough to expose a space. The farther their progress, the faster people moved. Whispers radiated ahead of them and to all sides.
“They will open the gate.”
Anticipation sparked thought the mob. Hands reached out to touch his armor, unsettling Ramiro with the hope and near worship on their faces. People stepped aside before Ramiro even reached them, leaving a clear pathway. The chanting died as he neared the front line. Men with belligerent stances stood down, stepping back from whatever they confronted.
“They will open the gate.”
Ramiro got his first glance at what the
y faced. Rasdid said something in his language that sounded very like swearing. A line of Northern priests two or three deep stood before the gate, and behind them was over a score of enemy soldiers with their weapons drawn.
The priests were all young, white Diviners clenched in outstretched hands and held toward the mob. Their faces had gone dead pale like fish bellies. A sure sign of people about to lose control and do something totally stupid. They carried no red Diviners. Their ears held no jewelry to mark any rank. The youngest and the most inexperienced of their kind—the ones picked to die—they would also be the most easy to spook.
Desperation shone on the faces of the men at the front of the mob. They’d heard the friars’ warning of what would happen inside the city. They had seen the ripped-open bodies of the armies murdered by Dal just days ago as proof. The people had nothing to lose.
They’d walked right into the middle of a shit storm.
“We will die here today, yes?” Rasdid whispered.
Not if I can help it. Not with a chance to see Claire so close at hand.
He had to defuse the situation. Ramiro raised his voice, at the same time keeping it calm and even. “Stand down. Do nothing rash. Wait. We will get the gate open. You will get out of this.” His words were repeated back to those who couldn’t hear, and to his amazement, the crowd rippled, but waited as he had asked.
To Rasdid, he said, “Tell the priests they are being used. Set up to die. Treated as trash. Explain it to them.”
Rasdid wore a fixed smile that must have involved grinding his teeth. “I think they already understand that. They are, how do you say, fanatics. That was the word Ordoño called them. My men will listen. These . . . I know not.”
“But are they fanatics who are ready to die?”
“We shall see.”
Rasdid began speaking to them and the world held its breath on whether a city would live or die.
Steadfast Page 32
