Page 34 of The Familiar

CHAPTER 18

Luzia slept in her mistress’s room, a silent body around which the rest of the house continued to turn in its new orbits.

Víctor’s personal doctor arrived to set Santángel’s fingers and offered him something for the pain, which he refused. He needed his mind sharp for all that was to come, and already his body was doing the work of mending itself. The danger was always that he would heal too quickly, before the bones had been properly aligned, and then they would have to be broken again.

The coach returned with two of Víctor’s men, who went about scraping Álvaro from the floor of Luzia’s room and searching Don Marius’s study for body parts. It was as if a butcher’s cart had overturned: a leg and groin still in velvet livery beside the heavy desk, half a torso and a limp hand slung over the side of an embroidered chair, and the rest of the bodyguard’s head, the skull cleanly severed, the glossy gray mass of his brain exposed like custard in a dish.

The servants said nothing. They hacked away at the pomegranate tree that had already begun to wither without soil and water or Luzia’s magic to sustain it. They would take Álvaro’s remains to the countryside and bury them somewhere on the grounds of one of Víctor’s many estates or find some pigs to feed them to. That was not Santángel’s problem to solve.

The widow appeared to look after Luzia since Valentina was still bursting into tears every few minutes. Juana was summoned from the kitchen to scrub away the archipelago of stains Álvaro’s parts had left on the floor. As for the ceiling in Marius’s study, it was harder to reach, but its coffers obscured the bloody marks of this disaster.

At the end of the day, when all their grim work had been attended to and Juana had been sent back to the kitchen with an extra coin in her apron and the warning “servicio y silencio,” they gathered in the salon.

They picked idly at a plate of cheese and sultanas, and Santángel was surprised to discover he was hungry. He hadn’t thought about the strength it had taken to lift Luzia until he’d settled her in Valentina’s bed. His health was returning and with it his appetites. Because of her.

The widow looked tired, her face pale. Valentina snuffled gently into a handkerchief. Don Marius still hadn’t regained his color and sipped cautiously at a glass of jerez. Víctor had vanished in the hours when work needed doing but now he had returned. His expression was grim, but the arrogance that had briefly abandoned him at the sight of his bodyguard split between the floors of a house had returned as well. He paced, then sat, then paced again.

At last he said, “If something like that happens at the competition we will all be ruined.”

“She almost died,” murmured the widow.

“I saw no wound.”

“Perhaps because of all the blood?” she asked too brightly. Víctor glared at her and she dropped her gaze.

“You saw no wound because she was able to heal herself,” Santángel said. “We can resume her lessons when she’s had a few days’ rest.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” the widow asked.

Don Marius set down his glass, blinking as if woken from a dream by his own self-interest. “She must continue.”

“Yes,” agreed Valentina, dabbing at her nose.

If Luzia didn’t, there would be no more money, no gowns, no stay at La Casilla. But Santángel was just as bad. Worse. He needed Luzia at the torneo and he would get her there.

Víctor took up his pacing once more. “And what happens when she bleeds all over the grand ballroom? When she slices through a guard or a guest or Pérez himself?”

“What went wrong today?” the widow asked. “What happened in that room?”

Víctor cast Santángel a warning glance. Surely Catalina de Castro de Oro already knew the man’s nature, but if Víctor wished for discretion he would have it.

“I don’t know,” Santángel lied. “I was harsh with her. Her fear may have tainted the miracle.”

“That can happen?” Víctor demanded.

Anything could happen, but these were the first lies he’d dared or bothered to tell Víctor in an age. When was the last time? Maybe when Víctor had asked if he felt pain. His master had been younger then, but Santángel had already seen what Víctor de Paredes was becoming, his father’s greed seeping into him.

“Not as you do,” he’d told Víctor then. Which was less true than he’d wanted it to be. Santángel understood as some did not that pain was fleeting, that very little couldn’t be endured. But he remembered too well the torture he’d endured when he’d first entered his immortality. He hadn’t trusted Víctor not to test those limits, and Víctor’s behavior today was yet another sign that he had been right to show caution.

Yet Santángel was prepared to put an illiterate scullion without protection in his service. Víctor might be ruthless, the widow vain, Marius and Valentina greedy. But Santángel was the only monster in the room. She will have a better life than she had scraping by for the Ordoños, he told himself. Santángel would do what he must. If he was a beast, let him be a beast without a cage.

He lowered his voice, speaking to Víctor alone. “Her mood may impact the efficacy of her gifts. You know how women are. She was afraid and lost her focus.”

“Why could we not find a man for a champion?” Víctor growled.

“I’ve had many occasions to question fate, but fate has yet to answer.”

“You must find a way to control her. We’re about to place her in a basket of snakes. She can’t flinch every time one bites.”