Page 124 of The Familiar

Each moment felt too quick, as if he’d already lost his hold on the world. So many years, so much life lived, and he would leave no one to mourn him.

In the crowd he saw Víctor, and beside him Fortún Donadei. Doña Beatriz was nowhere to be found. Perhaps she’d gone back to her husband. Would Víctor grieve when Santángel was gone? Not yet. Not until his businesses faltered or he stepped on a nail. Not until he felt the lack of what he had so long taken for granted.

Valentina Ordoño was there but not her husband. She stood with that playwright in her crimson velvet jacket. In the light of the flames, she seemed to be weeping.

The executioner passed his torch before their faces one by one.

“In what law do you die?” he asked, giving them a chance to repent and be rewarded with a quick death by strangulation. But Luzia had told him she wouldn’t take this route and that he must not either. So he would die as she did.

The executioner set his torch to each of the four corners of the stage. There was no great ceremony. The time for sermons was over. All that remained was the fire.

He could hear the crackle of the flames, feel the smoke already burning his eyes. He turned his head and saw Luzia naked on the pyre, her chin held high. She met his eyes and he had the strange sensation that he was lifting up off the pyre. As the smoke filled his lungs, he could swear he smelled orange blossoms.

Luzia knew Santángel was afraid. She was too. But soon it would be over and either way she would be dead. There would be no grave or any sign she had ever walked this earth, only a sanbenito hanging in San Ginés and one more name in the Inquisition’s records.

She searched the crowd and felt a twist in her chest when she saw Valentina. She clutched the dry sprig of rosemary in her hand. She’d kept it with her through this long, awful day.

She could damp the fire rising around her. She could heal herself and even Santángel. She could make the trees that bordered this cursed place shake, or crush the crowd gathered to watch them die.

There was Víctor de Paredes, who had killed Hualit, who had kept Santángel like a tame animal, who had meant to do the same to her.

And there, just as he’d promised, was Fortún Donadei, his golden cross shining on his chest like a holy beacon.

Luzia had known he wouldn’t be able to resist appearing here, to share his triumph and her defeat. She had counted on him for the violence of this moment, and she would give him a gift as she passed from one world into the next. He was not the worst of the men here, though he might well suffer the most. But life couldn’t offer fairness and neither could she.

Nothing might happen. Or blood might be spilled. Or maybe there would be a miracle for no one to witness.

The flames sounded like they were whispering. The smoke smelled sweet like a cooking fire.

Breathe deeply, Teoda had said. If you take enough smoke into your lungs you may die before the flames reach you. She hoped Teoda was safe. She hoped she found happiness and that her angel spoke only glad tidings. She hoped she might see her friend again.

Luzia turned to look at Santángel through the rising smoke. He was watching her with his peculiar eyes. The heat was nearly unbearable. She could feel beads of sweat sliding over her thighs and between her breasts. She should wait, but her panic was growing and she needed to be strong enough to manage this feat.

She sought the words that had begun this journey: Aboltar kazal, aboltar mazal. First the bread made new, then the gown, then the glass. Destroyed and then restored.

She could feel her terror pulling at the song inside her, trying to change its shape. The power wanted to follow. This time she let it. If it wished to be dangerous, to be unwieldy, to grow bigger and more awful than it should, who was she to stand in the way of its ambition?

Luzia trained her eyes on Donadei, on his smug face, and on the fat green emerald at the center of his golden cross, the cross he put his hand to whenever he sought great magic. The only gem that hadn’t been altered by her refrán in the third trial, that hadn’t become a scarab or a spider or any other crawling thing. When he’d appeared in the audience chamber to denounce her, when she’d seen that emerald just as large and perfect as it had been on the lake, she’d heard Santángel’s voice in her head. A kind of stone, a talisman. They were rare and used for concentrating a sage’s abilities. These spells were of such great power they would crack the stone with a single attempt.

She had heard her mother’s voice too, naming the constellations. Nothing is ever just one thing.

The scent of orange blossoms filled her nostrils. She could feel Santángel’s strength, the power that had met hers that day on her aunt’s street, and his influence, the luck that might protect Víctor de Paredes in this moment, that might help to save them too.

Víctor’s brow was furrowed, his mouth set in a petulant line. She had no doubt he was the reason for the gag she wore. Or maybe Donadei had suggested it. But they should have known she didn’t need her voice, only the words Hualit had given her, Spanish reshaped with the hammer of exile. She’d sung around her own bleeding tongue to heal herself, and she sang again now, finding the letters, just as Santángel had taught her, golden in the dark.

Aboltar kazal, aboltar mazal.

The song spilled through her one last time, splitting, changing, tearing open the world.

A change of scene. A change of fortune.

CHAPTER 55

That night, in the shadow of the Puerta de Bisagra, not far from the rush of the Tagus river, the traitors Guillén Santángel and Luzia Cotado died by order of the Inquisition, alongside a Flemish pirate known only as Pleunis. They were consumed by earthly flames and passed onward to eternal damnation to burn again and again in the fires of hell.

At least those were the words spoken by Fray Diego, the royal confessor, to his king. If there were whispers that no remains were found in the ashes, then it was deemed further proof they had been creatures of the devil, not mortal at all, but illusions in corrupted bodies.

Those whispers never reached the king, who lay dying behind the walls of El Escorial, his gout burning through him. He was unable to find a comfortable position in which to rest.