The Shores of Spain (42 page)

Marina helped Alejandro onto the gig’s bench, put the bag on the floor, and then climbed up herself. She had to pull Alejandro onto her lap, but he didn’t seem to mind. “We had thought to stay at the hotel near the train station tonight, Father,” Marina said. “Would you be willing to drop us there?”

He flicked the reins and the horse began to trot again, carrying the light gig toward the town far faster than they would have been able to walk. “May I suggest another location?”

“I am not familiar with the town, Father, so I would welcome it.”

The priest smiled. “The Sala family takes in visitors,” he said. “They have a few smallish guest rooms, serve fine meals, and need the funds more than the hotel does. These last few years have been difficult.”

Marina nodded. The Spanish economy had suffered after their wars. “That would be lovely, Father.”

“Good, then.” The gig rattled past the spot where he’d found them by the stream, and then the road turned so that they could see the edge of the town in the far distance. “The marquesa can be difficult,” he said then. “I often help her deal with requests for aid or charity. Can I assume she declined to aid you?”

Marina felt her cheeks flush. “In the end, I didn’t ask. I . . .”

The priest regarded her sympathetically.

“I meant to blackmail her into helping me, Father, but . . . I couldn’t.”

Alejandro glanced up at her face, his elbow digging into her stomach, a rebuke for confessing that, but she was
not
going to lie to a priest.

“Ah,” the priest said mildly. “And she, of course, refuses to help because of the schism in the family. The rumor is that her daughter married a Spaniard.”

“Yes, that was the case.”

Father Escarrá glanced at her again. “I am aware, however, that it was more than dislike of the Spanish. I’ve always known that the marquesa’s ancestors were
conversos
.”

Marina stared down at the top of Alejandro’s cap ruefully. “I see. I had thought to push her into helping us by threatening to tell you.”

“Why did you not go through with your plan?”

Marina sighed. “Because I am not ruthless enough to threaten an old woman, Father.”

“You think threatening her would have gotten you what you wanted?”

“I am sorry for using you to get us into her house when I had such intentions, Father.”

He shook the reins again to speed the horse. “You had the upper hand, yet you didn’t expose her, even when you had so much at stake.”

“I have been threatened before, Father. I was the lone Christian among a people who were not. Remembering that made me change my mind.”

“That is not weakness, child,” he said. “It’s compassion. The marquesa is old enough to remember the last time a Jew was tried by the Inquisition, so her fear is reasonable. You could have hurt her terribly, and I’m grateful you did not.”

Well, she hadn’t made a friend out of Joaquim’s great-grandmother, but the priest approved. Not that it would help her situation. “Thank you, Father,” she mumbled.

“The lady is,” he added, “a good Christian, despite the fact that she honors some of the old ways as well.”

That sounded familiar to Marina, much like her own grandmother’s adherence to two religions at once. “Where I am from, it is the Christians who hide their religion, rather than the other way around. My parents kept customs of both, so I understand how that can be true.”

“Ah. For the marquesa, it is mostly respect for her ancestors, and what they suffered. They were forced to make terrible decisions, whether to abandon their homes, accept a religion that was not theirs, or die. She honors their struggle by honoring some of their customs, and I do not believe it is my place to examine her orthodoxy.”

Marina gazed down at her hands, the webbing cut away to protect her
appearance
of humanness.
It’s the same, isn’t it?
She might have stayed true to her religion on Quitos, but under the ban in the Golden City she’d feared for her life, and had acted by altering who she was. The world was a hard place for anyone who was different.

The priest made a harrumphing sound. “If the Church looks back far enough in anyone’s family, they will find
something
to question.
Even mine.” After a moment, he added, “So, tell me how your husband came to be taken up.”

After all she’d said, she didn’t think it would hurt to tell the truth. “The Mossos were trying to catch Alejandro. He escaped, but they took my husband in his place.”

Father Escarrá peered at Alejandro speculatively. “And why would they be after a child? Is his mother a Catalan nationalist?”

“No,” Marina said. “It’s a more . . . complicated political matter.”

“How long has she been there?”

“Ten years.”

“Ah. That is a long time.” He glanced at the top of Alejandro’s head but didn’t ask further. Her statement made it clear that Alejandro had been born in the prison.

As they were coming into the outskirts of the town, he turned his attention to the road and the other traffic. It was almost dark. He turned south off the main street onto a narrower one crowded with old houses, some in disrepair, as they headed toward the home of the Sala family. “It’s not the finest part of town,” Father Escarrá said, “but you will be close to the park and the old church of Saint Peter, if you have time to visit there in the morning. And Mr. Sala will be happy to drive you to the train station whenever you need.”

Marina nodded as he drew the gig to a halt before a house of two stories with a wrought-iron gate. Flowers bloomed on the balconies above the cobbled street, and lamps lit either side of the doorway. It was cheery and welcoming, and right now that was what she needed.

*   *   *

L
LEIDA

J
oaquim stumbled back to wakefulness when he felt someone tugging at his aching arm. For a moment he lay there, his head feeling as if it were stuffed with wool that burned. He couldn’t breathe properly. And then a sharp stab of pain brought him back to reality.

He opened his eyes. “What?”

“Be still,” Miss Prieto said softly. “I have to get this bandage off.”

Joaquim blinked, and realized his eyes weren’t opening properly because his lids were swollen. He had the taste of stale blood in his mouth. She continued to work on the bandage that the guards had crushed into his arm when they’d tied him to the chair in Leandra’s cell. She’d put his arm over a basin of warm water and was soaking it with water. “Would it help if I sat up?” he asked.

“You’d feel better,” she said. “It will give your nose a chance to drain.”

So she pulled the basin away and waited while Marcos came over and helped Joaquim into a sitting position. The young man placed a pillow behind him and then returned to sit on his own bed, watching with worried eyes. Joaquim thanked him again, and did his best to comply as Miss Prieto repositioned his arm. “This isn’t good, is it?”

“No,” she said. “I had a poultice on it, but we’ll have to see how much damage the ropes did before I can start to cut the dead skin away.”

Joaquim didn’t bother to complain. Miss Prieto had been branded herself, and Marcos as well. The young man had kept talking, long after Joaquim had drifted too far away to pay attention. He must have mentioned it at some point, though, because Joaquim recalled it was an I, for
inhumano
, rather than a B.

“If you’re very lucky, the poultice will have eased off most of the dead skin,” Miss Prieto added, actually mustering a gentle smile for him, “and this will just be unpleasant.”

The alternative didn’t sound good. “Wouldn’t it be better to rip it off quickly?”

“Not with a burn. We want to preserve as much skin as possible.” Now that the water had soaked into the bandage, she began carefully loosening the bandage with a pair of tweezers. Although the burned area wasn’t even two inches wide, it seemed to take forever. When she reached a patch where the rope had driven the
gauze into the burned and blistered skin,
that
hurt. Joaquim hissed, but kept his hand still under her ministrations.

Once the last of the gauze was gone, he was confronted with a nasty-looking burn, blackened and blistered skin. It was swollen but roughly outlined the shape of a B—
brujo
. Blood seeped from the spot on the inner edge where the skin had torn, and the remaining poultice was a nasty orangey brown. “What’s in your poultice?”

“The primary ingredient is honey,” she said. “It protects the surface of the wound and helps debride it as well.”

“Debride?” He definitely didn’t know that Spanish word.

Her lips twisted as she worked. “All that blackened skin has to go. If the honey hasn’t eased it off, I’ll have to scrape it off.”

Joaquim shuddered. He’d never been particularly strong-stomached when it came to injuries and blood. “Very well.”

She patted his knee. “I’ve seen a lot worse.”

I’m sure she has in this place.
He focused on the door across from them as she began picking at his wound. “So, why am I here?”

“You’re a
finder
, aren’t you?” Miss Prieto asked.

“Yes,” he admitted, revealing that he’d earned that brand on his arm.

“This prison is full of witches,” she said, “or
aberraciónes
, as the sirenas call us—a way to imply that we are inferior. Most of the witches here are harmless, and not a single one of them is a finder like you.”

The healer tugged at something that hurt, and Joaquim clenched his jaw, forcing down his reaction. “You need me to find someone,” he guessed.

“No, some
thing
. A little over eighty years ago,” she said, “a prisoner was deposited in the bottom of the prison, in a cell beneath the courtyard. He was deemed dangerous and secured with magical locks that require a special key. The sirenas, fearing someone would free him, hid the key. Unfortunately, even they have forgotten where it is.”

“What did he do?”

“No more than you. He exists, and was careless enough to get caught,” she said. “But he’s the master of stone. It answers his call.”

Joaquim puzzled over what that meant, but logic failed to supply an answer. “And you want to set him free? Is he dangerous?”

“The Vilaró? Not to us. If we free him, he’s agreed to free us.”

All of them? How
? “You’re taking his word for that?”

“He’s bound by his word,” she said. “His kind cannot go back on their promises.”

“The key has been lost for eighty years? Are you saying this man, the Vilaró, has been here that long?” He must be very old by now. Strange that the sirenas still feared him so much.

“Yes,” Miss Prieto said. “I’ve been here almost thirty years, and he was here long before me. He’s not human, though. I’ve tried to heal him, but I can’t. Unlike a sirena or a selkie, he’s simply too inhuman.”

“What is he?” Joaquim asked.

“A fairy is what Leandra says,” Marcos supplied.

After a dull moment where his brain couldn’t seem to work out all she’d said, Joaquim asked, “That’s why you call him the Vilaró, isn’t it? Because he doesn’t tell anyone his real name, because he has fairy blood.”

Miss Prieto paused, scissors suspended above Joaquim’s arm. “How do you know that?”

“I know someone with enough fairy blood that she doesn’t use a name,” Joaquim admitted. “We call her the Lady. From what I hear, her husband is the only man alive who knows her name.”

“And Leandra is likely the only one who knows the Vilaró’s true name,” Miss Prieto said.

That implied a relationship between the supposed fairy and Leandra he hadn’t suspected before. He contemplated that for a moment, but decided he had bigger concerns. “I don’t know if I can find a thing,” he admitted. “I find people.”

Miss Prieto’s lips turned up at one corner, almost a smile. “You
can
. Alejandro says you can.”

She cut a last bit of burned skin away. What was left was a blistered mess, blood seeping from the torn spot. “How am I supposed to do that?” Joaquim asked.

She sat back and gave him a strange look. “Did no one teach you?”

“I didn’t even know I was a witch until last fall.”

Miss Prieto shook her head and reached into her satchel to pull out a tin. “I’m going to put another poultice on this, and bandage it loosely. Try not to be a restless sleeper.”

It wasn’t likely he was going to roll over onto his swollen face. While she worked on his arm, he pondered finding a
thing
. He’d never tried it, but his ability to find people stemmed from familiarity with them. Still, he’d had no familiarity with Alejandro, yet had tracked the boy by using something he’d touched. “Is there anything the key would have touched?”

She’d begun wrapping his arm with gauze. “The locks, I suppose.”

“Is there any way I can touch the lock on his cell?”

“The locks are on him,” Miss Prieto said. “In the morning after Mass, I’ll come back to check on you again. I’ll take you down to see him then.”

“Can you just do that?” How much freedom did Miss Prieto have within the prison?

“I hope not to be caught,” she said briskly. “God is with us this time.”

“Whose plan is this?”

“Mostly the Vilaró’s,” Miss Prieto admitted. “Leandra and I helped flesh it out, but all the details came from Alejandro. The Vilaró questioned him for months, trying to get Alejandro’s gift to give us the steps to follow.”

“So Leandra stole the journal . . .”

“Because Alejandro
said
she would.”

Seers often struggled with the temptation to act merely because
they knew they would act. His cousin Rafael often compared it to passing a house on the street,
knowing
that he would buy it, and therefore doing so . . . without bothering to tour the house first to see if it was sound. It was a dangerous way to approach life, leading to wild and unpredictable decisions. “That’s insane.”

“It worked, did it not? To get everyone out, we need the Vilaró. To get him free, we needed a finder—you. The possibility of stealing that book only arose a couple of months ago, finally explaining why Leandra and Alejandro would be outside the prison at all. The most difficult part was convincing La Reyna that sending
them
to steal the book was her own idea. Piedad is far easier to manipulate, so we used her to plant the idea.”