Page 50 of The Familiar

“No one has seen me arrive and no one will see me go.”

“How can you be so certain? Even a breath of impropriety—”

“It is my job to be certain,” he said, shutting the door behind Concha. “And yet I have been very wrong about you. Why did you lie to me? And do not think to make a pretty story about what God has shown you. I know which letters I carried with me the day you nearly killed us both.”

“I don’t remember your life being in danger. It was my tongue that split.”

“And my fingers that broke.”

“But how quickly they healed, my honest lord.”

“Answer the question,” he bit out.

“I never told you I couldn’t read.”

“You let me believe it.”

“It’s good to let a man have his illusions,” Luzia said, unsure of what to do with herself, too conscious of her state of undress. “No one forced you to assume a servant was stupid.”

“I never thought you were stupid.”

“I see you are a capable liar too.” She folded her arms, trying to stymie the anger rushing through her, as if she could knot it up in her elbows. “Tell me you thought differently that day in the courtyard, when you saw the sad stump of a wax candle that had been brought before you, without charm or beauty, and so of course, without wit. Only a woman who looks like Catalina de Castro de Oro or Gracia de Valera can be presumed to be worth listening to.”

“You sell yourself too cheaply, Luzia,” he shot back. “That first day when you stumbled into the courtyard and made your miserable curtsy, you did an extraordinary job of humbling yourself, of pretending to be a lump of dirty wax. An actress of your ilk is rare indeed. Can you blame me for not being able to see past your performance?”

Maybe she had wanted him to. See me. See that I am more than this charade of mumbling humiliation.

“You may posture and fluff your white feathers if it pleases you,” she replied. “But you’re like every other man who wishes for a woman who is shapely and kind and pious and only wise enough not to trouble him.”

Santángel’s laugh was bitter, the sound like dry twigs snapping. “Why not tell the truth yourself now, Luzia? Admit that the act had gotten so good you yourself had started to believe it.”

“I know who I am.”

“Do you? I know what it is to lower yourself, to keep your eyes downcast, to seek invisibility. It is a danger to become nothing. You hope no one will look, and so one day when you go to find yourself, only dust remains, ground down to nothing from sheer neglect.”

He was right and she hated that he was right. When she was young she’d been fearless—until her mother died, until her father died, until she understood that the world had no place for a conversa who could read and write, who longed to talk and to argue over nothing, who wanted to see enough of the world to have opinions about it. She had learned to hide too well, even from Santángel.

“I know who I am,” she repeated, and this time her voice rang with certainty. She was the woman who had eaten the pomegranate, and tonight she had commanded a stage. She had held a room full of nobles in her thrall.

“What other secrets are you keeping, Luzia Cotado?”

She sat down in the chair placed before her dressing table. The woman in the watery glass before her was a stranger, her thick hair free of its braids, her dark eyes wild. She had never seen herself angry before.

“Are we sharing our secrets now?” she asked.

“I have none.”

“Another lie.”

“Ask me a question and I will answer it truly.”

“What are you? Why do people fear you? Did you make a bargain with the devil himself?”

He held up his fingers, enumerating his answers. “In another life, in another world, I would be called a familiar. My gifts are not my own. They exist only to serve others. People fear me because I want them to, because their fear makes my life easier.”

“And the bargain with the devil?”

“Depending on your opinion of Víctor de Paredes, there may be some truth to that particular charge. Now it is your turn to answer. What is the nature of the magic you use?”