Page 94 of The Familiar

“You don’t yet know what I may do,” Luzia said, and strode toward shore.

CHAPTER 41

Vázquez’s speech had none of the pomp of Pérez’s introduction the first night at La Casilla or the grim threats of Fray Diego at the second trial. He looked out at the crowd as if unsure what they were all doing there.

“The king has been promised wonders,” he said, and sighed heavily. “So let us see how you may best serve your ruler and his empire.”

Was that all the guidance they were to be given? Her anger flared anew. Her conversation with Santángel was unfinished, her rage against him and Víctor and the unfairness of it unspent.

Lose, he’d said. Lose spectacularly. She had been transformed into La Hermanita, the milagrera in her stern black dress. She could be remade into the bumbling scullion once more, become so wretched that Víctor de Paredes would turn his back on her. She could save her coins, sell off her silk and velvet and the rosary at her waist, find her way to Hualit in Salonika.

Or maybe Víctor would be so angry he’d have her murdered in the night. He was a petty, cruel man, and he had made it clear that she would pay for failing him. He could denounce her to the Inquisition, send one of the king’s heretic hunters after Hualit. Why had she not gone to the stables last night? And why did every path before her lead to servitude?

Maybe Santángel loved her more than the promise of freedom. Maybe he didn’t intend to bargain her away. But the grim truth was that love or the lack of it made no difference. A servant did the washing and stoked the fire and scrubbed the floors and carried the water up the stairs. What she felt when she was doing it mattered to no one. There was only the task before her, and the only way forward was what it had always been: win.

But how? Vázquez didn’t want to be impressed, and that meant she needed some sort of spectacle to wake him from his contempt. She could make the water boil like a great kitchen pot, but that might too strongly evoke hell. She might make the lilies bloom to fill the lake, or topple the trees on the shore.

“I don’t understand,” whispered Donadei as she took her place next to him. “Where is the king? Why would he insult us this way? We’ve done everything asked of us.”

His voice was desperate. He was watching his chance at liberty from Doña Beatriz slip away. What was worse, Luzia wondered, to be loved so hungrily that only a king could free you? Or to know the man who wanted you most had contemplated dooming you for an eternity?

“Donadei,” she asked, “does your offer of an alliance stand?”

He stood up straighter. “Do you mean it?”

“I am considering it.”

He seized her hand. “Stand with me. We both know what it is to be used. Together we might be greater than any noble name or title.”

More powerful than Víctor de Paredes or Doña Beatriz. Protected and valued by the king. Maybe it would mean nothing. Maybe it would be enough to defeat all of Don Víctor’s machinations and wiles.

“Please, Luzia,” he begged. “Surely there is enough room in this glorious future for both of us.”

“Then let us show them something beautiful,” Luzia said to him. “Something so miraculous neither the king nor Vázquez can deny us.”

“Tell me how.”

“He’s a priest,” Luzia said. “So we will build him a cross like no other. A cross to make him believe.”

Donadei’s smile was triumphant. “Together?”

“Together,” she agreed. “Let us make our bows.”

She curtsied to Vázquez but did not do the same for Pérez. The game had changed and she would play the rules set before her.

“For God and the glory of our king!” she declared, surprised by the strength in her voice as it rang out over the crowd, as if her anger had built a scaffolding beneath it.

Luzia turned to the water and hummed softly, finding the old healing spell easily. The boards of the pier were rotting, so first they had to be fixed, made new as easily as a goblet could be refashioned or a split tongue made whole. Then she let the song shift. She shaped new words in her mind, the refrán she’d used to fill her basket with more eggs and onions on the way back from the market: wherever you go, may you find friends.

If only it were that easy. She let her voice lift, a plea for her aunt on her way to a new future, a prayer for herself. She needed friends now, and if the planks of the pier would be her sturdy allies, she welcomed them.

She began to clap, and to her relief, the crowd joined in. She met Donadei’s gaze as she stepped out onto the pier, encouraging him to follow, and he did, vihuela in hand, out onto the lake. He struck a chord, playing the vihuela as if it were a guitar. Fish leapt from the water, in time with the music, arcing along beside them.

Luzia continued to multiply the boards, creating a path that unfurled like a carpet, one plank after the next, until she and Donadei stood at the center of the lake.

But how to assemble the cross? The words leapt into her head, as if they were fish themselves. El Dio es tadrozo ma no es olvidoza. God acts slowly, but He doesn’t forget.

She saw the shape of the words in her mind. They were a temple, a crescent atop a dome, a hand raised against the evil eye, a cross. The boards spread and increased around her, filling the lake, then stacking one upon the other in a rhythm that matched her clapping hands.