Free Fires of the Faithful by Naomi Kritzer Page B

be a safe place to play that music.”
    I slipped my arms around Mira, cradling her like a cat, but she refused to be comforted.
    “You haven’t ever seen someone die from fire, have you?” Mira asked after a little while.
    “No,” I said.
    “I have,” Mira said. She was quiet again, then added, “It’s a terrible way to die. People scream until the smoke chokes them. Flesh doesn’t burn easily—it takes a lot of wood. There’s a square in Cuore where the Fedeli execute unrepentant heretics; it smells like cooked rotten meat. I wandered there by accident once, and I had nightmares for weeks.”
    “Don’t think about it,” I said, stroking Mira’s hair. Mira smelled a little like smoke, because of her candles, but it was a delicate smoke, not like the smell of greasy meat that came from the kitchen on festival days. “Everything will be all right.”
    Mira nodded wordlessly.
    “Mira,” I said. “Whatever happens, I want to face it together. Promise that you won’t leave me.”
    “I can’t promise that,” she said. “And neither can you.”
    We didn’t talk after that, but stared into the cold darkness.
    We rose early for the chapel service. For once, no one was tempted to skip. Apparently even Bella had an understanding with her Old Way God, because she filed in to the chapel with the rest of us, sitting beside me with an impassive face.
    Like all chapel services, it started with drumming, to drive away the Maledori. This close to Midwinter’s Eve, there shouldn’t be many Maledori around anyway, but it was always good to be on the safe side. Then Mother Emilia and Father Claro processed down the aisle, with the black-robed Fedeli behind them. I thought that Mother Emilia looked oddly pale, though it was hard to tell.
    We went through the standard morning prayers. Celia, in front of me, spoke the prayers loudly and clearly—she knew every prayer by heart from attending chapel so often. Partway through the opening prayer, I began to worry that the Fedeli would notice my mumbling. When I ducked my head to listen, though, I thought there were probably enough enthusiastic show-offs like Celia to render my own stumbles inaudible.
    Mother Emilia delivered a sermon. I tried desperately to pay attention—fearful that we’d be quizzed on it later—but it was rambling and disjointed, and my thoughts kept wandering. Would Celia keep her word? I wanted to believe that she would, but part of me wondered. And Giula—what if she lost her nerve? What if she lost her nerve somewhere
public
, like the chapel service? She was sitting somewhere behind me and I couldn’t see her; I listened for hiccupingbreaths that would tell me someone back there was on the edge of hysteria, but heard nothing.
    When Mother Emilia sat down, Galeria—the Fedele priestess—rose to deliver a second sermon.
    Galeria started by talking about the Lady’s limitless love for us. Nothing we could do, she assured us, would make the Lady love us any less. It was precisely for this reason that the Fedeli existed—to deepen understanding of the Lady’s love.
    I thought,
You mean, to punish us because you don’t trust the Lady to do it
, and wished I could whisper that to Mira.
    Then Galeria talked about the Maledori—the dark spirits that worked constantly to undo the good that the Lord and the Lady worked in the world. The Maledori would tempt us to evil; they would offer us their darkness in a pleasant guise, to deceive us. I remembered the song about the poisoned honey and wondered if the Fedeli had written it after all.
    Sometimes, Galeria told us, someone would fall under the influence of the Maledori and not even realize it.
    Beside me, Bella stared ahead, utterly impassive.
    “As Fedeli, we are taught to cast the darkness out of the Maledori’s victims, and to bring them back into the light of the Lady’s love. If the Maledori have control over someone, it’s not that person’s fault. We can
help
them. But sadly, it’s the