Marina gazed down at her hands, the webbing cut away to protect her appearance of humanness. It’s the same, isn’t it? She might have stayed true to her religion on Quitos, but under the ban in the Golden City she’d feared for her life, and had acted by altering who she was. The world was a hard place for anyone who was different.
The priest made a harrumphing sound. “If the Church looks back far enough in anyone’s family, they will find something to question. Even mine.” After a moment, he added, “So, tell me how your husband came to be taken up.”
After all she’d said, she didn’t think it would hurt to tell the truth. “The Mossos were trying to catch Alejandro. He escaped, but they took my husband in his place.”
Father Escarrá peered at Alejandro speculatively. “And why would they be after a child? Is his mother a Catalan nationalist?”
“No,” Marina said. “It’s a more . . . complicated political matter.”
“How long has she been there?”
“Ten years.”
“Ah. That is a long time.” He glanced at the top of Alejandro’s head but didn’t ask further. Her statement made it clear that Alejandro had been born in the prison.
As they were coming into the outskirts of the town, he turned his attention to the road and the other traffic. It was almost dark. He turned south off the main street onto a narrower one crowded with old houses, some in disrepair, as they headed toward the home of the Sala family. “It’s not the finest part of town,” Father Escarrá said, “but you will be close to the park and the old church of Saint Peter, if you have time to visit there in the morning. And Mr. Sala will be happy to drive you to the train station whenever you need.”
Marina nodded as he drew the gig to a halt before a house of two stories with a wrought-iron gate. Flowers bloomed on the balconies above the cobbled street, and lamps lit either side of the doorway. It was cheery and welcoming, and right now that was what she needed.
* * *
LLEIDA
Joaquim stumbled back to wakefulness when he felt someone tugging at his aching arm. For a moment he lay there, his head feeling as if it were stuffed with wool that burned. He couldn’t breathe properly. And then a sharp stab of pain brought him back to reality.
He opened his eyes. “What?”
“Be still,” Miss Prieto said softly. “I have to get this bandage off.”
Joaquim blinked, and realized his eyes weren’t opening properly because his lids were swollen. He had the taste of stale blood in his mouth. She continued to work on the bandage that the guards had crushed into his arm when they’d tied him to the chair in Leandra’s cell. She’d put his arm over a basin of warm water and was soaking it with water. “Would it help if I sat up?” he asked.
“You’d feel better,” she said. “It will give your nose a chance to drain.”
So she pulled the basin away and waited while Marcos came over and helped Joaquim into a sitting position. The young man placed a pillow behind him and then returned to sit on his own bed, watching with worried eyes. Joaquim thanked him again, and did his best to comply as Miss Prieto repositioned his arm. “This isn’t good, is it?”
“No,” she said. “I had a poultice on it, but we’ll have to see how much damage the ropes did before I can start to cut the dead skin away.”
Joaquim didn’t bother to complain. Miss Prieto had been branded herself, and Marcos as well. The young man had kept talking, long after Joaquim had drifted too far away to pay attention. He must have mentioned it at some point, though, because Joaquim recalled it was an I, for inhumano, rather than a B.
“If you’re very lucky, the poultice will have eased off most of the dead skin,” Miss Prieto added, actually mustering a gentle smile for him, “and this will just be unpleasant.”
The alternative didn’t sound good. “Wouldn’t it be better to rip it off quickly?”
“Not with a burn. We want to preserve as much skin as possible.” Now that the water had soaked into the bandage, she began carefully loosening the bandage with a pair of tweezers. Although the burned area wasn’t even two inches wide, it seemed to take forever. When she reached a patch where the rope had driven the gauze into the burned and blistered skin, that hurt. Joaquim hissed, but kept his hand still under her ministrations.
Once the last of the gauze was gone, he was confronted with a nasty-looking burn, blackened and blistered skin. It was swollen but roughly outlined the shape of a B—brujo. Blood seeped from the spot on the inner edge where the skin had torn, and the remaining poultice was a nasty orangey brown. “What’s in your poultice?”
“The primary ingredient is honey,” she said. “It protects the surface of the wound and helps debride it as well.”
“Debride?” He definitely didn’t know that Spanish word.
Her lips twisted as she worked. “All that blackened skin has to go. If the honey hasn’t eased it off, I’ll have to scrape it off.”
Joaquim shuddered. He’d never been particularly strong-stomached when it came to injuries and blood. “Very well.”
She patted his knee. “I’ve seen a lot worse.”
I’m sure she has in this place. He focused on the door across from them as she began picking at his wound. “So, why am I here?”
“You’re a finder, aren’t you?” Miss Prieto asked.
“Yes,” he admitted, revealing that he’d earned that brand on his arm.
“This prison is full of witches,” she said, “or aberraciónes, as the sirenas call us—a way to imply that we are inferior. Most of the witches here are harmless, and not a single one of them is a finder like you.”
The healer tugged at something that hurt, and Joaquim clenched his jaw, forcing down his reaction. “You need me to find someone,” he guessed.
“No, something. A little over eighty years ago,” she said, “a prisoner was deposited in the bottom of the prison, in a cell beneath the courtyard. He was deemed dangerous and secured with magical locks that require a special key. The sirenas, fearing someone would free him, hid the key. Unfortunately, even they have forgotten where it is.”
“What did he do?”
“No more than you. He exists, and was careless enough to get caught,” she said. “But he’s the master of stone. It answers his call.”
Joaquim puzzled over what that meant, but logic failed to supply an answer. “And you want to set him free? Is he dangerous?”
“The Vilaró? Not to us. If we free him, he’s agreed to free us.”
All of them? How? “You’re taking his word for that?”
“He’s bound by his word,” she said. “His kind cannot go back on their promises.”
“The key has been lost for eighty years? Are you saying this man, the Vilaró, has been here that long?” He must be very old by now. Strange that the sirenas still feared him so much.
“Yes,” Miss Prieto said. “I’ve been here almost thirty years, and he was here long before me. He’s not human, though. I’ve tried to heal him, but I can’t. Unlike a sirena or a selkie, he’s simply too inhuman.”
“What is he?” Joaquim asked.
“A fairy is what Leandra says,” Marcos supplied.
After a dull moment where his brain couldn’t seem to work out all she’d said, Joaquim asked, “That’s why you call him the Vilaró, isn’t it? Because he doesn’t tell anyone his real name, because he has fairy blood.”
Miss Prieto paused, scissors suspended above Joaquim’s arm. “How do you know that?”
“I know someone with enough fairy blood that she doesn’t use a name,” Joaquim admitted. “We call her the Lady. From what I hear, her husband is the only man alive who knows her name.”
“And Leandra is likely the only one who knows the Vilaró’s true name,” Miss Prieto said.
That implied a relationship between the supposed fairy and Leandra he hadn�
�t suspected before. He contemplated that for a moment, but decided he had bigger concerns. “I don’t know if I can find a thing,” he admitted. “I find people.”
Miss Prieto’s lips turned up at one corner, almost a smile. “You can. Alejandro says you can.”
She cut a last bit of burned skin away. What was left was a blistered mess, blood seeping from the torn spot. “How am I supposed to do that?” Joaquim asked.
She sat back and gave him a strange look. “Did no one teach you?”
“I didn’t even know I was a witch until last fall.”
Miss Prieto shook her head and reached into her satchel to pull out a tin. “I’m going to put another poultice on this, and bandage it loosely. Try not to be a restless sleeper.”
It wasn’t likely he was going to roll over onto his swollen face. While she worked on his arm, he pondered finding a thing. He’d never tried it, but his ability to find people stemmed from familiarity with them. Still, he’d had no familiarity with Alejandro, yet had tracked the boy by using something he’d touched. “Is there anything the key would have touched?”
She’d begun wrapping his arm with gauze. “The locks, I suppose.”
“Is there any way I can touch the lock on his cell?”
“The locks are on him,” Miss Prieto said. “In the morning after Mass, I’ll come back to check on you again. I’ll take you down to see him then.”
“Can you just do that?” How much freedom did Miss Prieto have within the prison?
“I hope not to be caught,” she said briskly. “God is with us this time.”
“Whose plan is this?”
“Mostly the Vilaró’s,” Miss Prieto admitted. “Leandra and I helped flesh it out, but all the details came from Alejandro. The Vilaró questioned him for months, trying to get Alejandro’s gift to give us the steps to follow.”
“So Leandra stole the journal . . .”
“Because Alejandro said she would.”
Seers often struggled with the temptation to act merely because they knew they would act. His cousin Rafael often compared it to passing a house on the street, knowing that he would buy it, and therefore doing so . . . without bothering to tour the house first to see if it was sound. It was a dangerous way to approach life, leading to wild and unpredictable decisions. “That’s insane.”
“It worked, did it not? To get everyone out, we need the Vilaró. To get him free, we needed a finder—you. The possibility of stealing that book only arose a couple of months ago, finally explaining why Leandra and Alejandro would be outside the prison at all. The most difficult part was convincing La Reyna that sending them to steal the book was her own idea. Piedad is far easier to manipulate, so we used her to plant the idea.”
He suspected that Piedad was more predictable. “It’s fortunate the Spanish embassy on the islands went along with that plan.”
Miss Prieto shot a glance at Marcos.
“The ambassador is my father,” the young man reminded him. “He never had any choice.”
Joaquim shook his head. Poor Marcos. If there was any way to help get these people out of here, he was going to do it. “Aren’t you concerned that the sirenas are listening to you?”
“Not at all,” Miss Prieto said, tying off his bandage. “They see no need to. It’s God’s will, after all, that we live out our lives as their servants.”
History was filled with those who thought they knew God’s will, only to learn they were wrong. Joaquim hoped this was one of those times.
CHAPTER 39
FRIDAY, 1 MAY 1903; LLEIDA
Joaquim had spent most of the early-morning hours unable to sleep. His face actually felt worse than it had the previous day, his arm throbbed, and he was worried about the idiocy of a plan that relied on him to do something he’d never done before. About whether the man in chains could deliver on his promise to free these people. About Marina and Alejandro. They felt closer than Barcelona. What were they doing?
To distract himself, he’d talked with Marcos instead. Joaquim couldn’t blame the young man for his bitterness. Of a more idealistic bent than Joaquim himself, Marcos had spent his youth among other wealthy boys with few cares to trouble them. Despite being only half human, he’d felt his father’s status as a diplomat would protect him from imprisonment. And he was violently in love with this woman, Safira, yet feared that should they both ever be free, she might reject him for what he perceived as his faithlessness, even though he’d only done as ordered to protect her.
Considering that he’d spent the better part of three years in this place with nothing to do—there were no books, no paper, not even a deck of playing cards—Joaquim was impressed the young man was still sane.
When the morning’s first light crept through his high window, Marcos gestured for Joaquim to come over to look outside. Following the young man’s lead, he stepped onto Marcos’ bed and stood on his toes to peer out the window, being careful not to touch his swollen nose to the glass. His second-floor window looked out onto a small courtyard surrounded by walls on two sides and fences on the other.
“We’re in the back of the prison,” Marcos said. “You can see the outer fence from here. This courtyard is only for the ladies and the children. Not prisoners. There’s one on the opposite side for them.”
Joaquim could see the stone outer fence, which looked twice as tall as any man. Plus, there were guard posts at the corners, although he couldn’t see a guard at the moment. “That’s not much space.”
“No, they don’t let the prisoners out often. Once a day. The part we’re in is newer, a cross arm like the transept of a church, and the chapel is in the lower floor straight across . . . um, the apse, I suppose. That’s where you go to get down to the bottom.”
Joaquim peered in the direction he was pointing. “Bottom?”
“Where the Vilaró is. There’s some way to get down there from the chapel. I’ve never been inside the chapel.”
“Are you not allowed to go to Mass?”
Marcos laughed bitterly. “No. I refuse to give my word not to attempt escape.”
He hadn’t been able to tell how far they’d come from the first prison, the Morra, but it couldn’t have been far. “Where are we in relation to the town?”
“Near the middle of it, actually. The prison is old and the town grew around it.”
Joaquim eyed the fence again. Beyond that the land looked unused, not even for farming. It was an open field, where prisoners fleeing would be easy to see. “I don’t see the town.”
“We’re looking in the one direction in which the town doesn’t lie. Believe me, there’s a plaza right in front of the prison, and streets on either side.”
He supposed that was possible. After all, the prison in the Golden City was in the middle of the city as well, not far from his own flat. “If the Vilaró can break this prison, and you escape, what then?”
Marcos’ lips pressed together. “What do you mean?”
“What’s to stop the guards from simply catching everyone and bringing them back?”
Marcos frowned. “He has a plan.”
Joaquim climbed down off the bed. Either the Vilaró hadn’t told them his plan, or no one had told Marcos, for fear he would talk. Or none of them had a plan. “How many are planning to escape?”
“Only a few know,” Marcos said. “Most will have to decide when the time comes.”
That meant some of the sereia might choose to stay here instead of going home, a strange thought. But people held in captivity for a long time often feared leaving it. After Moses had led them out of Egypt, hadn’t many of the Israelites wanted to return to slavery rather than face an unknown wilderness? “And there are children?”
The young man nodded. “That’s my job, mine and Miss Prieto’s.”
“How many?”
“Nine.”
An escape wi
th nine children in tow? Joaquim felt his stomach sink.
“Eight,” Marcos corrected. “I included Alejandro.”
Eight wasn’t any better. “And you believe you’ll be able to get them all out safely?”
Marcos took a deep breath. “Alejandro said so. I have to believe the Vilaró can create enough chaos to aid us.”
Joaquim hoped the young man’s faith wasn’t misplaced. But so far, Alejandro’s insights had been correct, hadn’t they? By volunteering to take Alejandro all the way to the islands to steal a book of unknown value, his mother had managed to bring a finder here to the prison. That told Joaquim that Alejandro’s gift had to be stronger than his own, and likely stronger than Duilio’s. He didn’t think Duilio could have predicted the turns his path would take to end up here.
They talked on, discussing the numbers of sereia from the islands in the prison. Marcos lumped them in three groups: those who capitulated and served the navy; those who’d resisted and were still in the prison, forced to serve as wardens like Leandra and his Safira; and those who resisted too much and simply disappeared. Far more sereia had been dragged here than Joaquim had realized before.
“What do—”
The ground rumbled and, right before his eyes, the stones tiles of the floor buckled upward, only an inch or so, the movement flowing across the cell like a wave. A second later there was silence.
Joaquim swallowed. An earthquake? “What just happened?”
“The Vilaró,” Marcos said. “He likes to remind La Reyna that while she controls the guards, it’s him in whom the prisoners believe.”
“He made the stone floor move?” Joaquim asked, disbelieving.
“Yes. Even in chains in the bottom of the prison, he has that much power. That is why they fear him so. And because the prisoners believe in him, he grows stronger.”
The Shores of Spain Page 33
