Page 113 of The Familiar

Víctor shrugged and Santángel thought, I will see you suffer. If it takes a thousand years, I will carve that sneer from your mouth.

“That is the business of the tribunal,” Víctor said. “But she attempted an escape last night, with the heretic Teoda Halcón. The child’s father died in the attempt, but Teoda is free.”

“And Luzia?”

“Back in her cell. She has confessed to everything and she will face sentencing on the Feast of All Saints.”

Barely a week away. That left him little time to act.

“The tribunal claims she had help from the guards,” Víctor continued. “But my sources say she slipped through the locks of her cell and left the streets outside the Inquisition district in ruins. She is more powerful than I understood and more reckless.”

“You still hope to secure her gifts as your own.” Of course he did. Víctor saw and wanted, wanted and claimed. He didn’t know what it was to be denied.

“She’s willful, but she can be broken, as anyone can be in time. She will have her final audience with the tribunal in three days’ time. She will be told of her sentence.”

“So she is to die?” Only those slated for death were given their sentences before an auto de fe.

Víctor nodded. “But it is not too late.”

“No?” How easy he sounded, how bemused.

“I can use my influence and yours to save her from the pyre.”

“There are limits to both. Or you never would have begun this farce to acquire a title.”

“But I have been gifted my title. You are speaking to a duke, Santángel.”

“I’ll make sure to sit a little straighter.” Santángel studied him. “You offered your services to the king.”

“I didn’t have to. The king came to me. The day after the puppet show.”

When Santángel’s loyalties had altered, when he had given in to his need for Luzia. When he had let himself begin to love her and turn his mind to freeing them both. But while he was free to give his loyalty and even his useless heart to Luzia, his luck belonged to Víctor. The stars had aligned to grant Víctor opportunity even as Santángel had sought to steal it from him. He had felt the world shift but he hadn’t understood its direction.

“I have cultivated connections to Philip and the Supreme Council,” said the new duke. “I can convince them our scullion was a mere pawn in Pérez’s intrigues. That he and the Ordoños contrived to use her for their own ends. She has already confessed that her milagritos were mere illusions.”

Santángel saw clearly enough the picture Víctor would paint for the tribunal: a dim-witted girl deluded into believing she had great power, dressed up and made to perform for her betters, manipulated by striving hidalgos desperate for money and social success. She had already confessed. She would repent, face public punishment at the auto de fe, and be placed in Víctor de Paredes’s hands. There would be no need for mysterious bargains to bind her. Those who had been tried and reconciled for heresy by the Inquisition received no second chances. If she fled or if Víctor chose to claim she had slid back into irreligious practices, she would be imprisoned and put to death without trial.

“But I don’t know what reckless thing she may do next,” Víctor continued. “If she’s not careful she’ll end up in trouble not even I can get her out of.”

“You would leash us both to you?”

“Why not? What might I accomplish with a milagrera and a familiar in my home? And won’t that be a kind of happiness? An eternity together?”

“She will never agree to it. She has seen what you are.”

Víctor laughed. “Guillén, do you think she values her own life any less than you do? Her choices are the pyre or …” He gestured to the comfortable room, the coals blazing, the full cups of wine, the heavy stone walls and furs. A life of plenty.

“What is it you want from me, Víctor?”

“Do you love her? I didn’t think you had the capacity for it.”

“What do you want?” he repeated.

“You will come with me to Toledo. We will attend her sentencing before the tribunal, and should she be seized by visions of martyrdom or heroic ideas of dying a free woman, you will be there to convince her that a life beneath this roof, a life with you is preferable.”

Santángel doubted such an argument would sway Luzia. “Sentencings are not open to the public. Prisoners of the Inquisition are not allowed visitors.”

Víctor waved away this protest. “I am not the public. Besides, Lucrecia de León has attended parties with the warden. Ovidio Halcón was allowed correspondence with his business partners to arrange for seizure of his estate. All is permissible where there is money and will.”