Page 81 of The Familiar

“About what?”

“About you. About Pérez. About his business here.”

“You promised you knew how to play this game.”

“Well, savor this moment, because I was wrong. Víctor thinks we can still make a success of this, that Pérez can win back the king, but he’s being careful. If he’s wrong, too close an association with Pérez could be dangerous for us all.”

“Not for Víctor de Paredes.”

Hualit studied her. “How well do you understand the familiar’s power?”

“I might ask the same.”

“Very little,” she conceded. “The servants talk, even if Víctor won’t. Are you fucking him?”

Luzia rose and paced to the apple trees so her aunt wouldn’t see her flush. “Does it matter?”

“Only if you let it. Only if you start imagining you can save him.”

“What if I could?”

“Think to your own future, Luzia.”

“I am,” Luzia said, her anger rising, that flame always ready to catch. “That’s all I’ve been doing. I’m trying to learn to swim while the rest of you wave to me from shore.”

“You jumped into the water—”

Luzia held up a hand. “I chose to keep performing my milagritos, the same way I chose to show your patron my power when you ambushed me at your home. So let’s say that I jumped and you pushed. Do you know what I intended that day? I had my basketful of food and I thought the Inquisition was at my heels. I was going to run.”

“Maybe you should have.”

“I’m not sorry I stayed. Or that I demanded something more from this life than scrubbing floors and groveling for Valentina Ordoño. I’m not sorry for any of it.” She should leave it at that, but she needed to know. “You had a thousand chances to lift me up, to offer me a little hope, a little comfort, but you never did. Why not? What would it have cost you?”

“I had my own secrets to keep.”

“You thought I would inform on you?” Had she really believed Luzia would denounce her as a Judaizer or a fornicator?

“Not intentionally. You were young. Your power … You had no control, and I had no idea how to teach you.”

“So you left me to sleep on a larder floor?”

“And I was right to do it,” Hualit snapped. “You did reveal yourself. You fell into Valentina Ordoño’s clumsy trap the moment it was set. I couldn’t take the risk.”

Luzia thought back to the day when her aunt had first read the words from her letter, when she’d felt the language twist and take on a new shape, heard the melody those words made. She thought of the iris blooming with its hungry yellow mouth. If she had failed that day, if she’d had no gift for miracles, if the words had meant nothing on her lips, would Hualit have taken her in?

Maybe. But then what? She would have been a servant still. She might have had a bed to sleep in, but she would have been as dependent upon her aunt as she had been upon the Ordoños.

“You chose yourself,” Luzia said. “I can hardly blame you.” And yet she did. It was a petty sentiment, but she’d been so alone. Her mother dead, her father mad. She’d been a child. In some ways she still was one. A woman who had barely had a chance to live.

Hualit held her hand out, beckoning Luzia back to the bench, eager for peace. “Sit, please. Hear me out. It hasn’t all been in vain. I’m not quite the selfish wretch you think I am. And I didn’t come here to quarrel.”

Luzia made herself cross the soft ground and sit beside her aunt.

Hualit grasped her hands. “The life I’ve dreamed of, the future I’ve been building, it isn’t just for me. Víctor has suggested I travel to Venice until the king and Pérez finish their dance.”

A dance that would end with the king’s trust restored or Pérez in a cell. “Venice?”

“I’ll go. Just as he has instructed. But my journey won’t end there. I’ll meet another ship to take me on to Salonika. And you’ll go with me.”