Page 29 of The Familiar

“I’m questioning where this all ends.”

“In victory, of course.”

“You’re a very poor liar.” Across the street, the curtains of the music room were closed, the window shut. Luzia wondered if she would ever hear that harp played. “You and I both know I can’t win.”

“If I believed that I wouldn’t bother.”

“You’d do what Don Víctor tells you to do.”

He folded his arms. “Tell me more about what I would do.”

Luzia was wise enough to hesitate, but she found it hard not to be reckless during these lessons, with no one watching or listening but Santángel. “It’s whispered you’re an assassin.”

“You yourself said I do as I’m bid.”

“And does your master bid you do murder?”

Santángel’s nod was disinterested. “He has cultivated my skills and they are bloody ones. We do as we’re instructed. Is there another way for servants?”

“Not that I’ve been able to discover,” she admitted. Did he care so little about the lives he’d taken? Should she be more afraid that he didn’t?

“Why do you think you can’t win?” he asked.

“I can see it in your gaze, hear it in your voice. I haven’t the manners or the poise. I have a scrap of power and your master has delusions.”

“You have more than a scrap of power,” he said grudgingly.

Luzia knew that but the sight of orange-haired Juana in the kitchen had tilted her mood. “Enough to win?” she pushed. “Enough to survive life as the king’s champion?”

Santángel was unsure how to answer. He had been both thrilled and disturbed by the scullion’s progress. Whatever power flowed through Luzia Cotado wanted free rein. That power would belong to Víctor. And Santángel would be free. It was as simple as that. And wouldn’t she be happier? More contented than she had been sleeping in the dirt? Víctor’s palace might feel like a curse for him, but for a girl with no learning and no prospects, it would be a glorious change in circumstance.

If she could win. Luzia could fill a room with beans. She could make roses bloom in profusion.

“But no talent for prediction?” Víctor had asked only last night. He’d been fussy, irritable, demanding constant updates on the scullion’s progress. The closer they drew to the torneo, the worse he became.

“The king has astrologers to make predictions.”

“The Holy Child has visions, accurate ones.”

“You brought me a girl with a singular talent,” said Santángel. “I cannot remake it in the image you would prefer.”

“What good are roses and beans to a king?”

Santángel had to marvel at Víctor’s lack of imagination. He longed for a girl with visions, but how shortsighted he was.

“What if the beans were ships?” Santángel asked. “What if she could simply make him a new armada? Or a thousand muskets from one?”

“Can she?”

With his help she could. With his luck. But without him? “I don’t yet know.”

She couldn’t multiply gold or precious stones without consequence. He’d learned that to his own detriment when he’d insisted she attempt to turn one piece of silver into many. They’d become tiny hornets and he was still covered in welts. But books she’d made in profusion, multiplying his treasured Petrarch into a stack of perfect copies, each word in its proper place, even if she couldn’t read them.

There was advice he should give Víctor. It was dangerous to tie your fate to someone of uncertain talent. A title was one thing, but it was foolish to put yourself in such close proximity to a king’s caprice. Had Santángel been a true friend or a true advisor he might have said all these things. But he was a captive, and a captive’s only thought could be of freedom.

“She will impress,” he promised. “If I have to wring the magic from her myself, she will impress.”

Now he watched Luzia go to the desk and sit. She rested her hands in her lap and closed her eyes.