Other Lives by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

passionate vows. Such things, just like the rain, had passed her by.
    “Do you come from Comba?” he asked.
    “Why do you ask?”
    “Because I’m heading there. These maps are so old that I might get lost without some guidance.”
    “Not my problem.”
    “I’ve got money,” he said and showed her a pouch filled with coins.
    “Then you shouldn’t flaunt it so stupidly. I could rob you blind and let you rot here,” she said.
    “I hope you don’t.”
    She shook her head hard and put away the knife.
    He tried to talk to her while they rode across the smooth salt plain, noisily telling her answers she did not ask.
    She asked him to part ways at the outskirts of the town, and he waved goodbye to her with a wide smile on his face. Leocadia tried not to look at him, fearing someone inside the salt huts was watching.
    She dragged her tools back to her house. Her mother was stirring the goat stew, sweat beading her forehead. She could hear a baby crying nearby. Rosaura must be visiting.
    “Hello mother,” she said and kissed her mother on the cheek. “Is Rosaura here?”
    “For a short while,” her mother muttered.
    Leocadia could already picture Rosaura’s purple eye. Bastian beat her, but their mother had little sympathy for Rosaura’s plight. If Rosaura had been a rain-priestess she might have amassed a nice dowry. The priestess, however, had seen little aptitude in Rosaura and did not care for her. So she married Bastian. Leocadia had done even worse. Their mother’s hopes had been dashed by her useless children.
    “I’m going to talk to her,” Leocadia said.
    Her mother nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the large pot sitting over the fire.
    ***
    That evening they went to walk through the town square, with its squat trees and its precious beds of flowers. Rosaura did not have a purple eye. He had hit her in the back. The sisters walked together, as cheerfully as they had before Rosaura had married, back when the boys flocked to court her. Now Rosaura had a spouse and Leocadia had lost her gift for casting rain, and her reputation. There were no more admiring boys for them.
    Leocadia watched a flock of young priestesses in their white dresses stream across the square and into the temple. There was a pang of longing in her, and of loss. She looked away and found herself face to face with the cartographer.
    “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