PROMISE

CHAPTER 4

Hain smelled the camp before he saw it–a melange of woodsmoke and roasting meat overlaid by the musk of draft horses and surrounding evergreens. The cook fires came into view soon after the smells, their flames wobbling behind the boxy vagóns encircling the camp. Then the sound of voices met his ears, faint as whispered secrets.

Hain breathed it in, feeling the tension of the day blow out with his exhaled breath despite all that he'd just learned. It wasn't home. Really, nowhere was. But it might be close.

Or had, he thought wistfully.

"Smells good, eh?" Rico said from beside him. He held a torch aloft with one hand, the light pooling about their feet.

"Kind of late to be making dinner." Hain showed a cautious smile. "Not that I'm complaining. I haven't had a hot meal in days."

"You're going to stay hungry then, because that food's not for you." A resentful edge clung to Rico's words. "They're smoking all the meat before we start riding south."

Hain's smile sank at the rebuke, but he said nothing more. Camp sounds filled the gaps between their footfalls on the scrubby earth.

The pair passed the border of circled vagóns, and for the first time since he'd met the Viajeros, Hain was greeted by near silence at his appearance. Piles of scrapped metal and other materials sat near the fires, some of it bound into corded bundles. Men and women stood beside the piles, frozen in their work to watch him. Hain could feel the heat of their anger in their stares. On this nephew to the man who'd promised so much and then snatched it away.

Muttered oaths trailed him as he passed. Hain tensed even more. This shouldn't have been happening. The camp had meant safety. Protection. A place he'd felt belonging. A place he could leave a lifetime of the haven's labels behind him and pretend his bastard blood wasn't all he was.

A fool's idea, he realized now. Because escape from his bastard's life was impossible. This proved it. Even here, amongst his mother's people, they loathed him as other.

Rico crossed the gauntlet of venomed glares without pause while Hain kept close behind him, eyes pinned to the squat, boxy vagón rising from the dim center of the camp where La Doña kept her home. Even with the fear of facing her, he ached to get inside and away from the accusation written on every face in the camp. As though the varnished clapboard of her vagón could hold back their anger. As though La Doña might have something like kindness kindling in her eyes when she saw him.

A low ramp clung to the side of the vagón, its length bent in a switchback that stopped before a door. Rico stopped at the base of the ramp and turned to Hain.

"Go on," he said, waving Hain past with his free hand. "I've got to get back to the fire. Make sure we don't get any more unwelcome visitors."

Hain watched him go, voice balanced on the crest of his lips, ready to speak. But he kept quiet. Rico didn't want to share in his sorrow, and nothing Hain could say would turn things back to how they'd been.

Hain turned back the vagón. Yellow paint clung to the sides, the color shimmering under years of layered lacquer. Symbols of El Todo shone atop the paint in steaks of black and red, like coal oil swirled in blood. Five-pointed stars and the lidless eye, its lolling tongue pierced with a dagger. The horned god. The gallows god. Even the burning driftwood heart of He Who Returned. All of them present. All of them a part of El Todo in the minds of the Viajero.

And all of them frauds, Hain knew. The Viajero might be like family–or, Hain thought, had been until recently–but Hain would never understand why they clung to their hodgepodge faith. Hain knew enough of the world to live in the certainty that any gods who allowed cruelty to exist were no gods he wanted any part of.