Page 44 of The Familiar

Luzia’s eyes flew open. She was surprised to see a scowl on his face. “Of the joys of heated bathwater?”

Santángel looked away. “It isn’t seemly.”

“Well, I am a peasant. Little better than a beast of the field.” She was goading him but she didn’t want to stop. She couldn’t claim that they were friends, but whatever transformation the eating of the pomegranate had worked on her, it had changed something between them as well. “Without morals or manners. And if you want to know what I think of this … I think it’s a very grim little party. Everyone in black. Sad music, no dancing. The wealthy can afford anything but a good time, it seems.”

“What would you do with a fortune in gold?”

Luzia considered. She couldn’t say any of the things that entered her head. I would have my mother’s name etched in marble. I would find my father’s grave. I would buy a great deal of books, and buy myself a house to read them in, and erect a high wall outside of the house, so no one would bother me. I would hire an army to stand atop the walls and guard me from kings and inquisitors and men who tell other men to break fingers. And yet she couldn’t quite summon the correct servant’s answers she knew she should deploy: I would wish for a comfortable home, alms for the poor, masses to be said for me after my death. When she was with Santángel her mind leapt forward, eager to play, slipped free of the leash of humility she knew might keep her safe.

So she spoke nonsense. “I would build a very large palace.”

“Bigger than this?”

“Oh yes. Twice as wide but only half as tall. And in it I would place a very large bed.” Again his brows rose and she hurried on before he could tell her not to speak of beds. “I would never leave it except to be rolled into steaming-hot baths.”

“And to take your meals?”

“No, I would make my cook lay cakes on my pillow.”

“You would grow very fat.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Santángel laughed then, an odd croaking sound that he silenced quickly, afraid to draw attention. “You are quite mad,” he said.

“One has to get through the day somehow.”

“Now that you’ve forgotten to look frightened, let’s get closer to the stage. I want you to see the competition.”

Had he been distracting her? She had certainly entered the room overwhelmed by splendor and the terror of her first performance, but Santángel had set her mind to the dance of conversation. How annoying that it had worked. How embarrassing that he hadn’t been her partner in the dance but her teacher once again.

“What is the meaning of the creature in the labyrinth?” she asked.

“That is Pérez’s personal device. The same impresa his father used when he was himself secretary to the king.”

Luzia wanted to ask why a centaur would stand at the center of the labyrinth and not a minotaur, but that was too heady a question for a scullion.

Santángel dropped his voice. “It is said Pérez commissioned a new impresa when he fell out of favor with the king. The centaur freed, standing before the ruins of a broken labyrinth. There …” he said, his attention shifting. “The Holy Child, Teoda Halcón.”

“The girl who speaks to angels.”

“One in particular, I’ve been told.”

“Those are her parents?”

“That is her father and one of her nursemaids. They are a wealthy family, so the Holy Child has no need of a patron.”

“And her mother?”

“They say her mother’s death was her first prediction.”

Luzia couldn’t banter over such a thought. Would she have felt the loss less keenly, if she had known her mother would die? Or would it have been worse? A death drawn out over weeks or months, the knowledge taking on its own life as if feeding on hers? Would she have wondered if she had brought about her mother’s death by dreaming it like Lucrecia with Philip’s armada?

“I would think a gift for foresight would give her an advantage in all of this,” Luzia said.

“If the gift is real. She is very much the favorite, a direct rebuttal to Lucrecia’s dreams of Spain in tatters and Philip being devoured by birds of prey. Now, look to your left. Slowly, please, let’s not make a spectacle of ourselves. They are watching you as you are watching them. The young man with all the hair is Fortún Donadei, the Prince of Olives. He comes from a family of farm laborers in Jaén.”

The prince. So Luzia would not be competing with anyone of royal blood. The title was meant to mock him. He had a wiry frame and a crown of thick, dark curls.