“Off the road!”
Giovanni was running down the hill toward us. “Off the road!” he shouted. “Everyone, off the road now! Hurry! We need to hide!”
Confused, everyone plunged off the road to the south. The winter fields were muddy and bare, but a grove of cedar trees stood not too far away, and a tangle of brush beyond. Still, there were a hundred of us—and the musicians were not accustomed to hiding. “What's wrong?” I asked.
“There are twenty horsemen riding toward us,” Giovanni said. “Fedeli or Circle guardsmen, I'm not sure. I didn't see any mages—they all seemed to be soldiers. But I'm guessing they're heading for the conservatory to take the musicians there into custody.” He raised his voice again. “Hurry! Run, all of you! Once you're off the road, keep going!”
“Did they see you?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Giovanni said. “From a distance. I don't think I'll have aroused their suspicions, though.”
Our musical army moved with agonizing slowness, even though I could tell that everyone was trying to hurry. People were picking their way across the muddy field, trying not to slip. “Hurry!” I shouted.
We were crossing someone's farm, but if anyone could see us, they didn't come out to say hello. It was possible that if we asked, the family who lived here would hide us. It was also possible that if we asked, they'd promise us safe shelter and then trot off to find the guardsmen riding toward Bascio. There was no way to know.
“Down!” Giovanni shouted as we reached the stand of cedars. “Everyone, lie on the ground!”
I dropped without hesitation; around me, the musicians carefully set down their instruments and then huddled on the ground beside them. The horses, of course, were still standing, but I hoped the cedars would screen them well enough. We were in thick brown brush. I quietly blessed the drab gray robes, which would blend in reasonably well with the mud and bracken.
Beside me, Giovanni was crouched, watching the road from the screen of the cedars. “They're passing,” he said. “They're going by. They didn't see us.”
Around us, muddy musicians began to sit up.
“When they get to the conservatory, they'll know where we've gone,” one of the boy students said. “Where we're going.”
“We've got an hour or two,” I said. “I think the Dean will stall them. Maybe mislead them. If I were him, I'd tell them some story about the Lupi riding in with a hundred soldiers, to explain why he let us recruit.”
“If they look for us, they'll find us,” someone said.
“Keep moving,” I said. “Head south. They're not going to find us.” I wasn't sure I was telling the truth, but for now, I wanted just to keep people moving.
“Do you know of anywhere we can hide?” Giovanni asked me quietly as we walked. “You've lived here, I haven't.”
“I lived at the conservatory,” I said. “I passed through this area twice—once coming, once going. They never let us leave the conservatory grounds.” I picked a cluster of burrs out of my hair.
There was a delicate soprano-pitched cough, and Celia fell in step beside me. “I couldn't help but overhear you just now,” she said. “My family lives only an hour or two from here. We can go to their farm.”
“Are you sure they'll help us?” Giovanni asked.
Forgetting to flirt, Celia narrowed her eyes into a glare. “These are my parents. Do you think they'll turn me away?”
“Can you get us there off the road?” I asked.
Celia nodded. “There's a path. My mother comes to the conservatory to visit sometimes.”
I gestured. “Lead, then.”
Celia led us to a dirt footpath, and our army of musicians spread out into a long line, walking one or two abreast. I walked behind Celia, Flavia beside me; Giovanni brought up the rear with the horses, so that no one would have to walk in their leavings. Despite the danger, everyone still seemed to be in good spirits. Somewhere behind me, one of the boys started singing a marching song that I suspected he'd learned from a brother in the army; it was dirty enough to make a cowherd blush, but nearly everyone joined in on the refrain. I'll lie in my bed, I'll sleep like the dead, I'll call for the milkmaid to bring me my bread. My heart will be fed, my lips will be red, my purse will be empty, my sweetheart I'll wed.
Flavia didn't join in, nor did she pull her drum out to beat time. “The songs say that your family died,” she said.
I nodded. “They got caught in the middle of a fight. The Circle destroyed the whole village.”
“I've been worrying about my family. I didn't have a letter from them the last time the messenger service came.”
I remembered the name of Flavia's village, a small town just outside the wasteland. “I haven't heard about anything bad happening there,” I said. “But it's quite far south; I'm not surprised the messenger service didn't want to go there to pick up the mail.”
“Yeah. I was supposed to be afraid that the Lupi were going to sack my village and kill everyone there, but I never believed you would.”
“Good,” I said. “Because we wouldn't.”
“I'm sorry about your family,” she said.
I clasped Flavia's hand. “The Lupi are getting volunteers now from all over Verdia. Maybe there will be someone from your village who will have news for you.”
The trip to Celia's farm took two full hours, but we were not overtaken on the way. I had half expected Celia to lose confidence when she actually had to approach her family's home with a hundred hangers-on, but she marched up to her front door while we all stood in the front yard. The person who answered her knock looked like a younger sister; her mother and father came to kiss her and hear her explanation for why she'd abandoned her studies so close to possibly winning a lucrative position. I couldn't hear most of what she said, but I saw her point to me, and I caught the words Fedeli and Emperor.
She came back to join us a few minutes later, still perfectly composed. “Some of you will have to hide in the barn, some in the root cellar, and some in the house. There should be room for everyone, though.”
“We are at your parents' disposal,” I said.
The bulk of the recruits would hide in the barn, so Giovanni and I elected to stay in the barn with them. Celia insisted on keeping Flavia with her in the house; she would not hide, but would change into one of her sister's dresses and present herself simply as a daughter of the house. As Giovanni and I closed the barn door, I peered out through a crack in the wall and saw one of Celia's brothers taking off at a run; for a moment, fear flashed through me that he was going to turn us all in. But Celia's parents were unlikely to do anything that would get their own daughter into trouble, I thought, and I settled back against the wall to wait out the afternoon.
“If they find us anyway, you know, this is pretty much not defensible,” Giovanni whispered as we settled down in the dirt and scattered straw. “They could burn this place down around us.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I really needed that image to think about. Do you have any alternative suggestions?”
“Not really,” he said.
It was almost evening. Giovanni unpacked apples and cheese from the horse's saddlebags to hand around, since we could hardly expect Celia's family to cook for all of us. I kept watch through the crack in the door, though as Giovanni had pointed out, there wasn't much we could do if the guardsmen came other than to pray that Celia's parents were able to convince them there was nothing to look for.
We dozed as the sun went down. A few hours after sunset, we heard a noise that brought Giovanni and me to instant alertness—hoofbeats. I bit my lip, hoping that none of the musicians would instinctively summon witchlight when woken and give us away. The barn was very dark around me, and although I could hear some people snoring, I had no way of seeing who was awake and who was asleep.
Someone banged on the door of Celia's parents' house. The silence went tight around me; all but the most determined sleepers were awake now. I peered out the crack in the door. The moon was full
tonight, and the rider carried a globe of witchlight. One rider, alone. He knocked again.
Celia opened the door. She was wearing a yellow dress, her hair combed neatly; I hoped it didn't make him suspicious that she didn't look like he'd dragged her out of bed to answer the door. She shook her head.
The rider dismounted. He was close enough that I could see the insignia of the Circle Guard on his uniform. Celia said something over her shoulder, and a moment later her father joined her. She slipped her boots on and stepped out into the yard. Demurely and with perfect calm, she strode toward the barn, the guardsman a step behind her.
I caught my breath; Giovanni's hand closed on the hilt of his sword. Giovanni and I could almost certainly kill him, if he was alone.
When Celia was steps away from the barn door, I saw her father make a sudden move, and the glint of metal in the moonlight. The guard cried out once, very loudly, and I wondered with a sick feeling if the other guards were anywhere in earshot. In the darkness behind me, I heard someone whimper. Celia's father brought the knife down again, twice more, and the guard was still.
Celia opened the door. “It's all right,” she said. “Don't be afraid, we've taken care of him.”
I stepped out into the moonlight, looking down at the guard's motionless body. “What about the others? There were twenty—what if the other nineteen come looking?”
“Well, we'd have had to kill him regardless,” Celia said. “He was planning to search. My brother ran out to tell the neighboring villages about the guardsmen, right after you arrived. My father thinks you should wait here a day or two, to let the other villages take care of the rest.” She looked disdainfully down at the body. “They shouldn't have split up. Father says the Fedeli would have known better.”
I looked at Celia's father. He had the same chest nut hair, though it framed a tanned, hardened face. He knelt, as I watched, to wipe the knife clean on the man's clothing.
“Did the Fedeli come through here last winter?” I asked.
Celia's father looked up, and his eyes were cold. “There was a burning,” he said. “A foolish boy who opened his mouth at the wrong time. The Lady, and the Circle, had friends here once. No more.” He sheathed his knife. “We are glad to help you, Generale.”
“Would you like us to take care of the body for you?” Giovanni asked, stepping noiselessly out of the barn.
Celia's father nodded shortly. “You can bury him in our west field. We were planning to let it lie fallow this year, anyway.”
Giovanni wrapped up the body in its cloak, and we carried it together to the field Celia's father had sent us to. We took turns digging; the ground was cold and difficult to shovel.
The blood had soaked into the dirt of the barnyard when Giovanni and I returned. No more guardsmen came, and after another day of waiting, Celia's father came to tell us that messengers had returned from the neighboring villages. Twenty guardsmen lay buried in shallow graves in the fields of Verdia.
“Let's move,” I said. Celia's father moved the horse into the stable as we vacated it, and I thanked Celia's parents for their hospitality. Celia fell into step beside me, still wearing her sister's dress. For whatever reason, she didn't try to flirt with Giovanni again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Is this the victory you seek?
—The Journey of Gèsu, chapter 7, verse 12.
From my tent, a few months later, I could hear the drums even when I couldn't hear the singing, like a distant heartbeat. When the wind shifted, I could hear the voices of the dancers, the flutes, the other violins. With Giovanni, I hiked to the crest of the hill and sat down to watch. Flavia stood in the center of the circle, and Lucia led the dance to the drumbeat. Flavia had cut her hair short; she still wore her conservatory robes, but had belted the robe with a red sash. “She's ready,” Giovanni said.
It was hard to argue with that. I crumpled Demetrio's letter in my hand. “I don't like Demetrio thinking he can set our timetables for us.”
“Granted, but he's right. We can't wait forever. The Lupi are getting restless.”
Our army was camped on the shores of the Anira River. Thanks to the Imperial supply lines, we had real tents now and were generously supplied with food, but we were growing so quickly that space and food kept running short anyway. Demetrio's letter had urged me to send out musicians immediately to test their skills against magefire, to ensure that the ability wasn't limited to me.
“I had an uncle who thought the best way to teach children to swim was to throw them in the deepest part of a pond and let them figure out how to keep from drowning,” I said.
“That is the best way to teach children to swim,” Giovanni said.
I had sealed each of the musician recruits as Redentori, starting with Flavia, Celia, Quirino, and Valentino, but I knew that many still believed in the Lady. “We don't even know if you have to believe in order for it to work,” I said.
“Magery was supposed to be a gift from the Lady, right?” Giovanni said. “But Redentori can still summon witchlight. Even if it's a sin,” he added as an afterthought.
“You know, on our trip back from the conservatory, I used magery to light the fire one night,” I said. “The tinder was damp; I decided the sin was on the soul of whoever gathered the tinder, which I think was you, Giovanni.”
Giovanni laughed. “If you want to know the truth, when I'm not in the wasteland, I use witchlight whenever I have to get up to relieve myself in the middle of the night. I'll cheerfully endure whatever punishment God inflicts on sinners if it means I can avoid tripping and falling on my ass. So in other words, this is just the latest in a long line of petty sins, and not likely to significantly increase my divine punishment.”
“I'll have to remember that,” I said. “There are all sorts of sins I could probably pin on your soul.”
“Consider it available,” Giovanni said. “Within reason, of course. If, for instance, you are ever provoked to murder Clara and Placido, that sin goes on your own head.”
In the valley below, the dance finished, and Lucia climbed breathlessly up to join us at the crest of the hill. “Flavia's ready,” Lucia said. “As ready as she'll ever be.”
“Take Demetrio's advice,” Giovanni said. “Send them out.”
We arrived back at the main encampment to find a new shipment of supplies. A half dozen Imperial soldiers waited, along with a clerk; I signed for the supplies and some of the Lupi went to work unloading and storing them. Another twenty-five new recruits had also arrived and were being sorted out by Severo.
A message from Michel had arrived with the letter from Demetrio. The makeshift Imperial city had been dubbed Corte, Court; Michel's latest estimate was that there were three hundred residents, including nobles, servants, and guards. Several musicians had arrived, but they'd been sent over to join the Lupi. The original army barracks had been added onto six times; the new buildings wound their way across the walled hilltop like a huge misshapen caterpillar. “Everyone but the Emperor and Placido are doubled up,” Michel's letter informed me. “Placido doesn't have to share with anyone because he farts all night, according to rumor. There's talk of another building. They'd send the servants to sleep in tents, but the nobles are too worried that the servants will get fed up and leave, and they'll be left with no one to cook or clean the stables.”
“We'd better finish this war fast,” I said gravely to Giovanni when I had finished the letter. “Or the highest of our nobility might actually be forced to take up useful work.”
∗ ∗ ∗
There were several small groups of mages just across the border from the wasteland; they'd attacked some of the incoming recruits. We sent out scout teams of dancers, soldiers, and musicians, anticipating little trouble in finding confrontations. The Circle wanted to know the limits of our defensive abilities as much as we did.
“I hate doing this,” I said as I watched the scouts leave.
“But look at them,” Lucia said, pointing at Flavia. “They're ea
ger to do it. They know it's a test and that they're the ones who will determine if it works, but they know they can do it.”
“Besides,” Giovanni said. “It's the only way to find out.”
We sent the musicians we were surest of, like Flavia, but we couldn't be certain. If it didn't work, the scout teams would be killed. And we'd have to scramble for another strategy—fast.
“It will work,” Lucia said.
The day after our scout teams left, two Redentori priests showed up. I didn't know them, but they carried a letter from Clara. “Generale Eliana,” the letter said. “You mentioned concerns about spies. I have formed a group to combat the Fedeli and to identify their supporters; we call ourselves the Servi d'Arkah, the Servants of God. I have sent these two men to aid you in identifying Fedeli spies; they have been instructed to follow your orders. I urge you to take advantage of their services. You of anyone would realize how devastating even a single spy can be.”
I looked up from the paper. One of the Servi was old, and had hunched shoulders that made him look like a vulture; the other had beady eyes and a shrill voice like a screech owl. “What is it you want from me?” I said.
“Just a few minutes of your time,” the vulture said soothingly. “I beg you, think of us as advisors, not intruders. Sit with us a few minutes.”
I sent Viola, one of my aides, for tea, and waved the Servi into my tent, clearing some of my papers off the table so that we could sit comfortably. “Are those papers of a sensitive nature?” the screech owl asked.
I looked down at the papers in my hands. Sensitive enough. “Why do you ask?” I said.
“Do you always leave them in the open like that?”
“This isn't the open,” I said. “It's my tent.”
“Still, many people must have access,” the screech owl said. “Would anyone notice if someone came in, just for a few minutes, while you weren't here?”
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