Turning the Storm (17 page)

“So first, he asked me about my family's farm. My parents were typical farmers, so of course, there was always something we needed and couldn't afford, or couldn't take the time for: a flock of goats, an apple orchard, new boots, a new roof. So the mage told me how much money the parents of a mage-child were sent each month. It was a lot. Enough to pay for everything I had ever heard my parents wish for.

“Then he spoke a little about Cuore. I was always a restless one. When I was ten, what I most hoped for was the opportunity to go to the conservatory, because it would mean leaving my home village and perhaps someday traveling a lot more. I think he sensed that, so he told me about going to Cuore, about the adventures mages had. Then, and only then, did he test me. He had me make a witchlight first, and of course I did that easily. Then he had me light a piece of wood. Then he gave me a stone, and asked if I could burn that.

“You actually don't have to set the stone on fire to be accepted as a Circle initiate. Just being able to make it hot to the touch is considered good enough, and being able to make it glow is a fair accomplishment. But I
was an older child, and I had at least a little sense of my own abilities by then. So did the neighbors, for that matter; that's why they'd sent the letter to Cuore. I laid my hand on the rock and left my palm print. Rock doesn't burn, of course. It melts. I already knew that, because I'd experimented to find out what I could set on fire.”

“And so you became a member of the Circle.”

“Yes. And my mother …” Mira let out a deep breath. “Oh, she was angry. So, so angry. Initiate mages usually stay with their parents for several years, while a tutor comes to stay with them, but let's just say I was not a typical case.”

“I read your letters,” I said.

“Liemo ‘forgot’ those, damn him. I suppose I'm lucky he remembered to bring my violin.”

On the far bank of the river, I could see someone moving around, dim witchlight in his hand. The figure picked through some of the debris that had washed out of the river, then moved on, apparently not finding anything worth keeping.

“There were nights at the conservatory when I dreamed about the war,” Mira said. “I used to wish I could sit down by the wall, or in the north practice hall, and talk to you about it.” Her voice blurred a little, then steadied. “It was worst in the months after Bella was killed. I wanted so badly to tell you everything—”

“Why didn't you?” Mira didn't answer right away, and I heard the edge in my voice when I asked, “Or wouldn't I understand?”

“Oh, I think you'd understand.” Mira's eyes glinted. “I hate to admit that part of it was that I didn't entirely trust you. Not—” she raised her hand to cut me off.
“Not that you'd have told anyone who mattered. But few secrets were kept at the conservatory. You'd have told Bella. Bella would have told Flavia. Someone would have written to her parents. When I left Cuore, the Circle was trying to suppress the knowledge of what caused the wasteland by killing as many people as they had to. I was afraid that as the word began to leak out, they'd trace it back to the conservatory and kill everyone there.” She shook her head. “And telling you just part of the truth—I didn't trust
myself
. Once I started talking, the whole story would have poured out.”

I was silent.

“But those nights I dreamed of the war—of the mud, and the fire, and the fear—it was hard.”

“I had no idea.”

“I know.”

“And during the war—” Mira tossed a pebble into the river. “We thought of magery as inexhaustable. Like the ocean, not like a well that could someday run dry. Even now, there are mages who sincerely don't believe we caused it. After all, the Circle lives in Cuore; beyond the Circle, there are thousands upon thousands of people who use magery every day. Why wouldn't Cuore have become a wasteland?”

That was a good question. “Well, why not, then?”

“I think that somehow something replenishes the energy, as rainwater replenishes a well. When the well is drawn on for ordinary things—witchlight, fires, even fireworks—there's plenty to go around. It's only the great magery that drains it dry.”

“If the Circle had known, would it have made a difference?”

“Of course it would have,” Mira said. “The mages
of the High Circle aren't idiots. They're terrified of the wasteland, of what it means. They'd have found a way to end the war if they'd known.”

“They must have had some idea, though. The wasteland is all along the border. It couldn't have happened all at once—it must have gotten harder and harder to draw out the energy.”

Mira was silent.

“They didn't know because they didn't want to know,” I said.

“‘I can't help those who will themselves to blindness,’” Mira murmured. “That's a line from the Redentore holy book. The Journey.”

“The only other person I know who can quote that is Lucia.”

Mira nodded. “There used to be a copy in the Circle library. In the restricted collection, of course. That's where I read it. I don't know about Lucia.”

“Is it still there?”

“I don't know. I've been afraid to look. I'm sure someone watches to see who goes to read it, these days, if it's even still there. Maybe they gave it to the Fedeli to burn it.”

I nodded, but I was thinking about Lucia, not about the book—her hands, her smile, the light in her eyes when she talked about God. I suddenly wished more than anything that I could talk to her about Mira. Would she be able to forgive what Mira had done?

“I wish I could meet Lucia,” Mira said, as if she'd read my thoughts. “I suppose Giula did meet her, if she was in Ravenna.”

“Yes. She and Lucia didn't really hit it off. Giula hated Giovanni—well, at the time, so did I, but Giula
really hated anyone associated with him, too. And

Lucia didn't think much of Giula.”

“What is Lucia like?” Mira asked.

There was a fallen branch in the river, with water swirling around it; I stared at the swirl of white water, considering my answer. “She'd have gotten along very well with Bella,” I said. I tried to decide what else to say. Lucia was a dancer, a believer, a former initiate, a daughter of privilege who threw it away to chase her God. But when I turned my head to glance at Mira, I said, “She's not like me.”

Mira nodded, not asking what I meant.

“Are you Redentore?” I asked.

“Here in Cuore? Are you mad?”

“There are groups that meet secretly.”

“Do you think they'd welcome a mage into their midst? It's not as if I can abstain from magery.”

“I don't think most Redentori here do. Too dangerous.”

“I know you're Redentore,” Mira said. “It's in the songs.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “And after all, they're accurate in every detail; we've established that, haven't we?”

“Are you saying you're not?”

“No, I'm not saying I'm not. I'm saying that you think you know me now because you've heard the songs. But you don't, because those songs aren't about me. They're about someone who's never confused or afraid, and who never hesitates, and who's never lost. They're about someone a lot more heroic and a lot more
certain
than I've ever been.”

In the east, the sky was streaked with gray; the sun would be up soon. “I really need to get back to the enclave,” I said, standing up. I summoned witchlight to
light the path and was shocked to see a red stain on the ground where I had been sitting. “What the—” I twisted around and realized that my clothes were wet with blood. No,
soaked
with blood.
I'm wounded
, I thought. But I hadn't felt any pain. “Lady's tits,” I said, my voice shaking. “Where is this coming from?”

Then I realized: my courses. They hadn't come in months and months—not in Ravenna, not in the wasteland. I'd heard people say that they'd stop if you weren't getting enough to eat, so it wasn't surprising. Now at the enclave I was well fed, and here they were, back for a visit. I groaned. “Daniele” would hardly suffer from this problem. It would be day by the time I reached the enclave. Could I hide this? I took off my cloak and looked—no, there was no way to hide this. They'd returned with a vengeance. I'd have realized hours ago that I was bleeding except that the ground was so damp …

“Let's get a room at an inn,” Mira said. “I'll help you clean up.”

There was an area of seedy taverns and inns close by; some never closed their doors, no matter what time of day it was. Mira paid for a room and carried up a bucket of water. I could hear someone snoring in the room next to ours; there were people close by, some sleeping, others maybe not. We would need to watch what we said here.

“I'll see if I can get the stain out,” Mira said, setting the bucket on the table in the corner. “You may have to walk home wet.”

“I don't care,” I said. “If anyone asks I'll say I slipped and fell in a puddle. I'll act embarrassed and let them assume I was drunk. It's a lot easier to explain than blood.”

“Give me your cloak,” she said. “If we can get the stain out of this, it won't really matter about your tunic and hose.”

“I should have bought a black one,” I said. It was gray wool, and showed the blood like spilled black ink.

Mira dunked the stained part in the bucket and rubbed the cloth together. I started to sit down on the bed, then looked at my blood-soaked hose and sat on the floor instead.

“I'm sorry if I assumed too much, based on those songs,” Mira said softly. “For so long, they've been all I had of you.”

I felt my face flush and I mumbled something dismissive.

“When I first realized—” Mira rested the edge of the cloak on the bucket for a moment, thinking back. “I heard just a snatch of one song. Of course, they're forbidden, and no one will knowingly sing them for a mage, so I put on a dress and went to the university district to hear them. It took me weeks of visits to hear them all. My first thought was that my prayers had been answered. I had wanted so badly to hear news—” Mira paused, glanced at the door, and lowered her voice. “I'd wanted so badly to hear news of Eliana, and here it was. But then I was horrified when I heard everything she had gone through. For those around me, Eliana was a folk hero—an abstraction, not someone they knew and cared deeply about.”

I swallowed hard and lowered my eyes.

“I suppose it's silly,” Mira said, “but until I heard the songs, I had imagined her still at the conservatory, with Giula, Celia, and Flavia.”

“You really thought she'd stay?”

“The Eliana I knew was always—” Mira paused “— very practical.”

There wasn't much I could say to that. So I asked her the question that had been burning inside me since the day she rode away with Liemo. “Why did you leave?”

Mira wrung out my cloak and examined it in a flare of witchlight, then dumped it back in the bucket and came over to sit beside me. She took my hand; her hand was very cold, like the water she'd been washing out my cloak in. “Make a witchlight,” she said.

“Why?”

“You'll see in a moment why.”

I cupped my free hand, willing a tiny glow into the palm.

Light exploded in my eyes as I felt a surge of raw power shoot through every limb of my body; my fatigue vanished in a blur of exhilaration. The witchlight flared up like a torch, then went out as I gasped for breath. “What—” My vision was starting to clear, but I still felt as if I had a thousand pinpricks of light across my body. “What was that?”

“That was magery,” Mira said. “That's what it feels like to be a mage, to channel real power.”

My head was throbbing:
more, I want more, tell her to do it again
.

“To make matters worse,” Mira said, her voice matter-of-fact, “if one of us
stops
doing magery, we get sick. You saw that happen to me twice. Once when I first arrived at the conservatory, and once after the Fedeli forced me to summon witchlight to prove I wasn't a Redentore.”

I thought of Mira vomiting and convulsing on the floor of the practice hall. “I remember,” I said.

“That's why Liemo forced me to use magery. He knew that once I did, my need for it would drag me back to Cuore.” She squeezed my hand, then released it. “Now do you understand why I left?”

I did, but I didn't. After a moment, I shrugged, and she rose to go back to scrubbing at the cloak.

“So what happened after that?” I asked. “After you left?”

“I followed Liemo back to Cuore like a whipped dog,” Mira said, not looking up from her work. “It was a quiet trip. He didn't gloat; he was afraid that if he did, I'd kill him. My rooms here in the enclave were exactly as I'd left them, and when I stepped out my door the next morning, Silvia greeted me without surprise—it was as if I'd never left. I was expecting that my absence would at least have been a bit of a scandal. Perhaps it was, but the gossip when I returned was all about a mage who'd adopted a baby.” Mira laughed a little.

“Why is that so scandalous?”

“Well, you know we're all barren. All mages. The priests say it's because our sterility increases the fertility of everyone else—this is goatshit, of course. We burn out our own seed just like we burn out the land. Anyway, this one mage wanted a baby really badly, and I guess she found one. She was the talk of the Circle, when I came back.”

“Is she still?”

“Oh, no.” Mira wrung out the cloak, and turned to look at me. “No, for quite some time now, the Circle has had more pressing concerns.”

“The Lupi.”

“Or as most of the mages like to call them, the Cani. Dogs.”

“Of course.”

Mira laid the wet cloak on the bed and held up a light. “Come look and tell me what you think.”

I stood up to look. The stain was faded but still visible. “Maybe we should ask for soap,” I said.

Mira sighed. “I'll go look for some. Wait here a moment.” She returned a short time later with a cake of yellow soap. “You know, I think we might have more luck getting the stain out of your hose.”

I felt oddly self-conscious as I shed my clothes. It was ridiculous; I had shared a room with Mira for six months. The bed had a blanket, and I wrapped myself up in it for warmth. It smelled like old spilled beer. Mira dunked the hose in the water.