Hain looked from the cat, to La Doña, and back to the cat.

"The door–" Hain broke off, his words mashing together on their trip from his brain to his mouth. "Did he? Did you?"

"He did." La Doña let out a humphing sound, and bumped the cat's flank with the tip of her cane. "Since he moved it there to begin with."

La Doña's cat let out an indignant meow.

La Doña rolled her eyes. "Stop being so dramatic."

The cat growled deep in his throat.

La Doña looked scandalized. "Language!"

The cat's notched ears folded back, but it stayed quiet.

Hain stared, too stunned to speak before La Doña turned, and started toward the door with a thump of her cane.

"Come on then. Lots of things to talk through and not much time to do it," La Doña said, then disappeared into the vagón.

The cat lingered. It blinked its yellow lamp-like eyes once at him–a lazy gesture that seemed to convey both condescension and complete disinterest–before it rose into a languid stretch and sauntered after La Doña.

Hain blinked too. Then trudged up the ramp after them.

At the threshold, Hain stopped and gaped. Candle flames wobbled in the darkness, spilling over a jumble of mismatched furniture that gave the place the air of a junk shop rather than a home. Each piece stood lashed to others or to thick iron rings set in the walls.

La Doña's voice came from some unseen nook amongst the furniture. "Well, shut the door and come in! Come in!"

Hain did as he was told, before turning sideways to weave through the cloistered maze. The air was dry, and hot, and it smelled of burning sage and too many cats. Rugs softened the floor underfoot while sundries crowded every surface–books and papers, pots of ink and quills, an empty bird cage, a metal case with a lock so tough it looked as though it might bite if he came too close. Amongst it all, a half-dozen squishy looking cats lay sprawled in various states of feline slumber.

Hain found La Doña crouched behind a tall wardrobe, her hands winding rope about the free leg of a table, the small black cat curled up on the ground beside her. A black wool poncho draped her tiny frame, the fabric pooling on the ground like cooling tar. Two braids sprouted from her head–brilliant white shot through with black–their lengths knotted into a tight bun atop her head. Her brown hands moved quick as poured sand as she worked, as though in defiance of the age spots spreading over them. Sigils of El Todo ran the lengths of her arms, the dark tattoos faded from black to green by time.

Hain watched her for a moment, and he would have kept on watching, were it not for the resigned mewls starting again from the sack on his shoulder.

Her hands stopped their work.

"You've brought me something?" La Doña turned her head half toward him, but didn't rise. "Or maybe many somethings?"

"Many." Hain set the bag down behind her. "Furry, angry, and probably very hungry somethings."

La Doña let out a pleased sound as she reached for the bag. She shook it open gently. Both cats hissed from within.

"Buenas tardes, gatitos." Warmth sang in her voice. She looked up at Hain. Her face was the sun. "Very thoughtful of you, Hain. Gracias."

Hain felt joy swell inside him, crowding out the lingering shame he'd felt since Rico had led him into the camp. Perhaps this visit wouldn't go as poorly as he'd first thought.

"I brought this too." He swung the Vrai pack from his other shoulder and set it down beside the cats. "It's not much, but there may be something you can trade."

Hain might have added, once you've left the haven, but he couldn't muster the courage to speak the words.

La Doña studied the pack, her brow creasing when her eyes settled on the crimson wolf stitched into the fabric.

"This came from the Vrai." Wrinkles creased the skin around her pursed lips. "How did you get this?"

Hain hesitated before answering. "I found it."

Her eyes narrowed. "Do you expect me to believe that?"

"No," Hain said, "but it's a safest answer I have."

It was true. The less anyone knew about what he'd seen at the coast, the less chance they'd have of earning a visit from the Vrai.

La Doña was silent, her expression pulled into an emotion Hain couldn't recognize.

"Death visited your haven today."

The statement swung in from Hain's blindspot and caught him off guard.

"Death in Echo?" He frowned. "Who?"

"Masons," she said. "Many in their guild. Reaped boy and soul."

Hain cringed. "Some kind of an accident?"

La Doña raised one eyebrow. "Can one be flayed by accident?"

Flayed. Hain's entire body clenched at the word.

"Vrai." His voice skirted the edge of a whisper, as though anything louder might summon them. "What happened?"

"The Vrai asked questions about the haven–how and why it was built, what might be built beneath it." Her expression darkened. "But the Masons refused to answer."

"How did you find out?" he asked. "I thought everyone from the camp was forbidden from going into the haven until you started the salvage project."

La Doña showed him a small smirk as she drew back a fold of the poncho from one arm. She raised it toward him, the candlelight shining over the sigils etched into her skin.

"El Todo wills me to know, so I know."

Hain beat back the urge to roll his eyes. For the Viajero, belief in El Todo was more than simple faith. For them, El Todo was alive, granting visions of past, present, and future, sometimes all at once. A force that could bend the world around the will of its followers.

And at the point where El Todo met the world, where the divine intersected with the mundane, was La Doña. The Bruja. The Witch.

"I know that you don't believe," La Doña said. "And that's fine. El Todo works with your belief or without it."

"Well that's reassuring. I don't think I could live with the responsibility of being the person who broke god."

Hain thought he saw something disapproving shift behind her eyes, but she moved on without mentioning it.

"You've got something weighing on your mind." She reached out a bony hand and picked at the air around him, as though tugging at loose threads. "I can see it, all bound up in your aura."

"Rico told me that you're moving the camp from Echo."

La Doña made a face as though she'd tasted something bad. "Now this," she gestured to the air around him, "makes sense."

Hain felt a pang in his chest when she didn't deny it. "Why are you leaving?"

La Doña let out a weary sounding sigh and let her picking hand fall to her side. "Echo is no longer safe for us."

"So obviously you'd go back to the Geigerlands." Hain poured every ounce of sarcasm he had into his voice. "Because fighting off flesh eating gangs in the southern wastes is the key to a long and happy life."

La Doña made an indignant sound in her throat. "The Geigerlands are nothing compared to the dangers in this place."

The small black cat meowed up at La Doña.

"One thing at a time, Diablo," La Doña said to the cat. "First he needs to believe that the Vrai are a threat to us."

"Vrai?" Surprise shouldered its way into Hain's voice. "Since when have they had anything to do with the tribe?"

"Since the Bishop became their cat's paw," she said. "It was the Vrai who convinced the Bishop to send his men here to try and steal from me today."

"Wait, they tried to steal from you?" Hain said, then added, "For the Vrai?"

"The Bishop has sworn fealty to them," she said. "El Todo has shown me."

"Then El Todo is wrong." Hain's expression was pure disbelief. "I can tell you for certain that the Bishop is not working for the Vrai."

"You only say that because the Bishop doesn't like the Vrai."

Hain let out a laugh so deep that it started somewhere near his feet.

"Saying the Bishop just doesn't like the Vrai is like saying you're only slightly fond of cats. The man would rather be flayed than help them."

"He doesn't like us either," she said. "And yet he agreed to the deal your tío made with us."

"Only because my uncle didn't leave him any choice."

"Yes." La Doña leaned into the word. "And the Bishop hates him for that choice, but he can do nothing about it because your uncle holds the power over him." She stepped closer to Hain. "Tell me, Hain, who in Echo is more powerful even than the Regent? Who could make your uncle bend to the Bishop's will?"

Hain sucked air through his teeth as her meaning settled on him.

"I'm not saying I believe you," Hain told her, "but let's say you're right, and the Bishop is allied with the Vrai."

La Doña smirked. "Yes, let's say that."

"Why would the Vrai even need the Bishop's help?" he asked. "I mean, why wouldn't they just send their own troops rather than acting through him?"

La Doña's eyes twinkled in the candle light. "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you."

"That's the first thing I've heard that's made sense since I walked in here." Hain let out an uneasy sigh. "What did they try to take?"

La Doña pursed her lips at him. Then, without saying another word, she shuffled past him, cane thudding dully against the rug underfoot before stopping at the locked box he'd first noticed when he'd come in. Hain heard the scrape-clunk of the lock coming unfastened. When she turned back to him, he saw that she'd slid gloves onto both hands. Hain might have thought it odd, were he less distracted by the thick, silver ring settled on her palm.

"What is it?"

"This," she said, pushing her hand toward him, "we call a ring."

"Oh, a ring. And here I've been calling them roundy metal finger loops."

La Doña raised the cane with her free hand threateningly.

Hain held up his hands. "Kidding!"

She lowered the cane, but only slightly. "See if it fits."

Hain frowned. "Why?"

"Because it belongs to you," she said. "It's been yours since your mamá passed."

"My mother?" He breathed the words, willing the air in the sound to linger. As though that might make some sense of this. "But she died fifteen years ago. You couldn't know that ring belonged to her unless–" He broke off as cold realization raked his heart. "You knew her?" The words came out as an accusation. "You knew her, and never told me?"

La Doña's hand closed around the ring before dropping to her side. "There is no simple answer to that question, Hain."

"Then make it simple." Heat tinged his cheeks and bled into his voice. "Did my mother give you that ring before she died, or not?"

La Doña watched his eyes for half a beat before she answered. "I learned of the ring through El Todo."

"Don't say that," he snapped, louder than he'd meant to. "Don't say it was El Todo. Not about her."

"Don't speak the truth?" she said. "I told you before, Hain. El Todo works with or without your belief."

Anger curdled in his stomach. "That's not even in the same world as the truth."

Her tone was all calm and confidence. "And yet, here we are."

La Doña's relaxed demeanor did nothing to tamp down the fire smoldering in him. It didn't stop him from wanting to be angry, from thinking of all the things he felt right to be angry about.

As Hain thought through all of this, a new realization popped into his head. One which made him prickle with anger from his soles to his scalp.

"Does the rest of the tribe know this is your reason for moving the camp?"

La Doña shook her head. "The less they know, the safer we are."

Hain felt a new flush of anger as the pieces of the earlier night fell together. Rico and the rest of the Viajeros had seen the Bishop's men come and go from La Doña's vagón, just before she'd announced her decision to leave Echo. Of course they'd assumed it was because the men had threatened them. Of course they'd pinned their anger on Hain. After all the hate they'd gotten from those in the haven, he'd have felt the same thing were the roles reversed.

All that might have mattered if it made their leaving hurt any less.

"You can't leave." Hain fought to keep his voice steady. "Not because of this. Not because of something so stupid."

"El Todo is not stupid, Hain." La Doña's eyes flashed hotly. "El Todo is all that we have."

Hain felt something in his chest collapse at the snap in her voice.

"I didn't mean–" He stopped, trying to keep his thoughts from racing so far ahead of his words. "I only meant that this might not be the right thing to do."

"It is the right thing," she said. "It couldn't be more the right thing."

"Fine," Hain said around the tension in his jaw. "If you're going to leave, then at least let me come with you."

La Doña's eyes softened. "Oh, Hain."

"Let me finish," he blurted, throwing up his hands as though he could snatch her argument from the air and pin it down. "You say that El Todo wants you to leave. And that you're supposed to give me the ring. But he, or it, or whatever, didn't say anything about me staying here, right? I mean, you could give me the ring, and I could keep it. But I could keep it here. With you. That would be safer, anyways. Then I'd be out of reach of the Vrai."

La Doña shut her eyes and she shook her head. One quick shake, as though the motion pained her.

"I wish you could," she said, and she sounded painfully honest. "But there are people here who need you. You spoke to me once of one here who you love, yes? The fair-haired boy."

Hain's skin answered with a flush. "Aedan."

"Aedan." La Doña's voice warmed around the name. "Would you leave this boy to the Vrai?"

"He's not in any danger from the Vrai. Heaven and Hell, he's not even in Echo," Hain said. "And besides, his family doesn't know about us."

"Alright then," La Doña suddenly looked serious. "Then if not for him, then for the boy from the woods."

Hain's heart lurched in his chest. "What did you say?"

"The boy." Her eyes didn't flinch from his. "The one you left behind."

Color bled from his cheeks. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do." La Doña gave him a knowing look. "His memory still clings to you. His pain as well."

Hain felt as though something had dropped within him from an eternal height. The memory welled up, gushing shame in its wake. And he felt it. All of it. As though he'd never buried the thing to begin with.

"I couldn't–" he started, voice barely more than a rasp before he choked on it. "There was nothing I could have done."

A lie, Hain knew, but he clung to it all the same.

"El Todo has shown me only a little of the night he perished," La Doña said. "But I can see that the memory of your meeting still lives strong within you."

Hain's throat tightened, and the world narrowed to nothing but that night. He wanted to speak out. To beg her to stop. But the words lodged in his throat.

"Hain, you must believe me when I say that I mourn for you. For the loss of your mamá. For the pain of living as an outsider in this place. But there is work here for you. Work that El Todo wills."

La Doña leaned her cane on the dresser she'd been tying down when he'd come in.

"The world needs you to protect this ring from the Vrai." She swept her arms wide. "All these lands must be rid of the Vrai. Those here in Echo, and in the east as well. The white-eyed, and blue-eyed. The bare, and the marked. Before they destroy us all." Her eyes opened, and they met his. "El Todo wills it."

She took his hand, drawing his fingers from their clenched fist. Her fingers were thin and cold, and he thought he could feel the bones within pressing against the skin.

With her other hand she took the ring and placed it against his palm, then closed his fingers around it. The cold metal seemed to tingle as it touched his skin.

"Take it, and go about the work in El Todo's plan. Because El Todo does have a plan, Hain. For you, and everyone."

Hain felt his organs grinding as he listened, wondering how this could hurt so much. How anything could hurt this much.

"I don't understand," he said, and he'd never meant it more. "What does any of that mean? What plan? What Vrai in the east?"

"I don't know," she said softly. "El Todo did not show me the details. Only that it must be done, and by your hand."

"That doesn't make sense," he said. "How can there be a plan when I don't even believe in El Todo?"

La Doña's face lit up the way it had when she'd first laid eyes on the kittens.

"I already told you," she said softly. "El Todo works with your faith or without it."