Other Lives(16)

“I’m glad to see you again,” he said, giving her another one of his big smiles. “I couldn’t even thank you earlier. You ran off too quickly.”

“I got work to do,” she muttered.

“Well thank you.”

“He was lost today,” Leocadia explained because she could feel her sister’s eyes on her. “He asked me for directions.”

She tried to pull Rosaura away when she noticed Rolan, her former lover, approaching her, but Abelardo smiled and motioned to him.

“This is the lady I told you about,” Abelardo said. “She wouldn’t even give me her name.”

Rolan looked down at her, white teeth flashing a sharp grin, and oh, how she had loved that smile when she was younger. “I’m not surprised by the lack of manners. Leocadia, this is Abelardo Anma. The imperial envoy in our little province.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Leocadia said coldly.

“Come with me now,” Rolan said. “There’s more interesting people to be met.”

Rolan clasped his shoulder. Abelardo looked back at Leocadia in confusion. Leocadia pulled her black shawl over her head. Night was falling and it was very cold after the sun set.

“You talked to a stranger,” Rosaura said, rubbing her hands nervously.

“He talked to me.”

“What will they say?”

Leocadia watched Abelardo and Rolan as they disappeared from sight. Four years before, when she had been a great deal more naive, she had taken Rolan as her lover. She knew the loss of her virginity would also mean the loss of her rain spells. Purity was the tinder to a priestess’s magic, and the sisters of her order valued innocence in gold, paying a stipend to the families of the girls who studied in their temple.

Leocadia had been loved and cherished by the sisters, by the town and the important families that lived in it. Rolan’s father, the mayor, placed a garland of flowers upon her head the summer she turned fourteen, when she was able to conjure a light rain which lasted a full fifteen minutes. It had been the season of her glory.

Her mother whispered excitedly about the money from the temple, which she was diligently saving for her dowry. A former priestess could make such a good match.

But fifteen years was a long time to serve for Leocadia, especially after Rolan had smiled at her on her way from the temple, when she went to visit her mother and her sister. He romanced Leocadia, dropping sweet notes in her path and promising he would wed her.

The sisters discovered her transgression and Leocadia was tossed from the temple. The townspeople sneered at her. When Leocadia went to work in the salt plains, the men spoke lewd words. One of them tried to touch her breasts. At first Leocadia took a knife with her, then she simply picked salt alone, far from the others.

“You must not talk to him again,” Rosaura said. “It would be very bad.”

Leocadia looked down, thinking of the droplets of rain against her hair, the pretty water spells she used to cast.

“You hear me? You understand?”

“I do,” Leocadia said, looking ahead. Her mouth felt dry, it tasted of salt and desert winds.

***

She saw Abelardo in the middle of the street two days later. He was standing behind a bronze apparatus, which was set on a three-footed stand. Abelardo squinted and bent down near the apparatus, then opened a large case with tiny drawers. A multitude of dirty children, and a stray dog, observed him. Leocadia, too, stopped to watch, even though the sun was slowly rising and moving across the sky. Abelardo sketched and wrote and mumbled to himself for a good half hour.

Then he closed his case and folded away the apparatus until it was snugly roped against a piece of canvas.

The children wandered away. Leocadia and the dog, now sleeping next to her feet, remained. Leocadia leaned against the salt walls of a house and crossed her arms.

“What’s that thing you got?” she asked.

“That’s a dioptra.”

“What does it to do?”

“It measures angles.”

“That’s the big deal? You’re measuring stuff?”

“Well, you can’t just draw a good map out of thin air.”

“I don’t see why anyone would need to find Comba on a map,” she said.

“It might be useful.”

Leocadia doubted the Empress was going to ride across the desert to buy some salt from them, and that was the only thing Comba had to offer. There were crude signs that said “salt for sale” hanging from the doors, salt piled in backyards and inside homes, and salt caked against boots and clothes when an anaemic rain chanced to slide down the sky.

“Would you mind doing me a favour?”

“What?”

“Can you take me back to that temple where I found you?”

“What for?”

“I’d like to draw it.”

One of the houses across the street had many salt cakes sitting near its door, waiting to be taken to the market. An old man in a rickety cart and two strong, younger fellows arrived to pick the cargo. They stared at Leocadia, and she wiped her hands against her clothes, the salt glistening and clinging to the dark fabric.

“I got to go,” she said.

“I’d really appreciate it,” he insisted.

“What do you want to draw it for?”