Chapter 7 Six
The house was full when we got back from the cemetery.
My grandmother's courtyard had filled with tables I didn't remember her owning and enough food to feed half of Sevilla.
Cocido and arroz con pollo hung thick in the air, cut through with cigarette smoke and something sweet that couldn't compete with too many bodies pressed into too small a space.
My cousin Marcos already had a guitar out.
Give it another hour and someone would start with the palmas and then we'd be here until dawn, whether anyone wanted to be or not.
He was playing something low and slow, a rumba compás underneath the conversation.
From the kitchen, my tía Rosario's voice rose over it, arguing with someone about the pisto.
I stepped into the courtyard and the tiles warmed through my boots.
The fountain in the center hadn't run in five years, but my grandmother refused to admit it was broken, which meant it sat there looking decorative and doing absolutely nothing, which was very on brand for half the men in this family.
Emilio's youngest came tearing around the corner and grabbed Eight by the wrist, hauling her toward the back where kids were yelling about a lizard they’d found. She looked confused, but went with them, and I smiled to myself. It was good to see her getting to be a kid for once.
Jasper had wedged himself in the doorway between the kitchen and the back hall. Someone's tía had clearly shoved a plate of croquetas into his hands and he held it like he wasn't sure what it was for. “Is it always like this?” he asked.
He'd pushed his sleeves up past his forearms. I tried not to stare and failed spectacularly. “No. Usually, there are more people. Not everyone’s made it. More of my cousins are coming up the mountain before the end of the night, though.” I looked over at him. “How is everyone treating you?”
Jasper shrugged. “Mostly, they’re ignoring me. Which is fine with me.”
I frowned but didn’t say anything about it. Jasper was an outsider, a gadjo and worse, a Russian. It was courtesy alone that kept them from kicking him out. If they found out who he really was, that he’d once been part of the Pantheon, things might get ugly. Quick.
“I’m going to ask them for sanctuary,” I said quietly. “For you, Eight, and Lorenzo.”
“Will they give it?”
Once I’d been sure. But I’d been away for so long that I barely knew these people anymore, which stung. They were my blood, my family. “I don’t know,” I said and pushed off the wall.
I walked back out into the main room, and the condolence line had formed in front of Valentina's chair.
She sat straight-backed with her daughters on either side and Amparo posted at her right hand like a guard who'd shoot you for looking at the queen wrong.
The chair was the good one from the front room, with the carved arms that Emilio had spent three months restoring.
Someone had draped it with Lucenio blue fabric, and it looked like a throne.
Danior was already on his knees in front of her.
He had both her hands in his and his head bowed, and he held the position, making sure everyone in the room registered the dutiful nephew. Then he stood and kissed her forehead and said something I couldn't hear over the guitar. Valentina's face didn't move.
He moved to Amparo next with the same performance and got the same result. Then he rejoined his brothers against the far wall and leaned back with his arms crossed.
The line moved forward, and it was my turn.
I stood in front of Valentina and put my hands behind my back. She looked up at me and locked down the tremor before it could spread past her jaw.
"Diego," she said. "Thank you for coming."
"Valentina." I bent down and kissed both her cheeks and held her hands. "I'm so sorry."
She squeezed once. I squeezed back.
I let go of her hands and went to my knees on the tile. The room went quiet. It spread out from Valentina's chair like a ripple. The guitar stopped. Even Rosario in the kitchen went silent, and that never happened.
I straightened my spine and locked my jaw. The Romani came out differently from my normal voice, more formal, older, a register my grandmother had drilled into me that I almost never used because it belonged to men who took things seriously and I'd spent most of my life avoiding that job.
"I come to you, the son of Carmen Lucenio, grandson of Amparo Lucenio, and call upon the blood of my blood, asking for sanctuary and protection for me and mine.”
I could feel Jasper in the doorway behind me without turning around. He'd be still, plate in hand, watching me kneel in front of my family with my hands open and my throat bare. The back of my neck burned under his gaze, and my body didn't care that this wasn't for him.
Valentina's knuckles went white on the arms of the chair. She looked at me for a long time and then past me, down the hall to where Jasper stood in the doorway. She studied him the way Amparo had studied his hands at the cemetery, taking him apart with her eyes, reading the story.
"Who are they?" she asked.
"His name is Jasper. Once, he built powerful weapons for the Pantheon. But now he’s wanted.
They’re hunting him and the other man, my friend, Lorenzo.
He’s a Ferryman, but he’s lost contact with his people and needs a place to heal until he can return to them.
And finally, the girl, Eight. She’s…” I closed my eyes and reached for the right word, but couldn’t find it.
“She’s mine,” I said eventually. “Not by birth, but by blood. I’ve bled for her.
I’d die for her. For Jasper. For any of them.
They may not share our blood, but they’re my family, just the same. ”
Valentina tightened her grip on the chair. Her eyes went to the courtyard where Eight had rescued the lizard from the other children and had it perched on her shoulder.
"The girl. How old?"
"Nine."
She closed her eyes and opened them. The stone was still there, but something underneath it had cracked. She looked at Amparo.
Amparo gave her a nod.
"Sanctuary is yours," Valentina said. "Your people stay under this roof.
Under Lucenio protection. For as long as I sit in my husband's chair.
" She leaned forward and dropped her voice.
"But Diego. Sanctuary is a roof and a promise.
This is not a declaration of support. We do not involve ourselves in gadje politics.
Not without a formal vote from the Kris. Is that understood?"
"Yes, ma’am."
One of Danior's brothers shifted against the far wall and put his hand on his wife's shoulder.
She pulled their kid closer. The room had just done the math.
Every Lucenio in this house had watched Valentina put her family's name between a former Pantheon director and the people hunting him.
The Kalderash ran smuggling routes, worked funerals, and kept their heads down.
The Pantheon toppled governments. That kind of protection meant something when you could back it up.
When you couldn't, it just meant you'd given the enemy a second address.
"Get off my floor before you ruin your knees and make your mother blame me."
I stood up on wobbly legs and backed away.
Danior pushed off the wall and crossed to me. He got close enough that his shoulder caught mine on his way past, and spoke right into my ear. "Bold move, primo. Enjoy the roof while it lasts."
Then he straightened his cuffs and walked out. The courtyard door swung shut behind him, and I stood there in the middle of my uncle's house with half the family watching and Danior's threat still hanging in the air like smoke.
The guitar started up again. Marcos had switched to something faster, and someone clapped palmas over it, the rhythm sharp and clean under the melody.
In another hour this would turn into a party whether we wanted it or not, because that's what happened after Romani funerals.
You buried the dead and then you reminded yourself you were still alive, and you did it loud.
I grabbed someone's abandoned coffee cup from the counter and drained it.
Sanctuary was only the first part of what I’d come to ask of the Kalderash. The second ask would be significantly more difficult.