by S L Farrell
But the crowd was larger than anticipated. News of the gathering had spread through word of mouth, through cryptic postings on the walls of Nessantico that only their followers would understand, but the response was greater than any of them had expected. Nico was certain that, yes, some word of the gathering would have leaked out to the Commandant’s people, but they’d watched carefully for any signs that they would be prevented from speaking. Nico was not surprised to see none: Cenzi Himself protected Nico, who was his Absolute Tongue. After his meeting with Varina, he’d gone home with his head aching and his feelings confused. He’d spent the rest of the day praying, and that night, in his dreams, Cenzi had spoken to him: clearly and without mistake. He had told Nico what must be said.
Cenzi would speak through Nico today. And Nico would obey, as any servant must. He’d written the words that Ancel would speak; Liana had already placed the scroll on the podium. What amazed Nico was that even as his followers had begun assembling the small platform, the crowd had begun to gather. The first to arrive were the Morellis of the city, those who were already believers. But the crowd continued to swell, well beyond the numbers of those who had already openly given their allegiance to him. Dotted throughout the crowd were green robes: the teni of the city, most of them of e’ status-the new teni, those who may have heard of him since he’d come to Nessantico but hadn’t yet heard him speak. Now, as the wind-horns of the temple sounded the Second Call, when many in the crowd might be attending services, they were instead here. Three hundred at least, and perhaps more.
Here. To listen to Cenzi’s word.
You must speak. They have come to hear you, to hear My words through the gift of your voice.
The realization came to him hard, like a blow to his temple. He nearly reeled from the impact of it. Liana clutched at his arm, feeling his reaction. “Nico…?”
“I’m fine,” he told her. “Cenzi has just spoken to me.”
He heard her intake of breath. “Is there danger?”
“No,” he said, almost laughing. “Quite the opposite. He wants me to speak.”
“You can’t,” Liana protested. “Everyone has said it’s too dangerous.”
“There’s no danger to me; not while I have Cenzi’s protection.” He patted her hand, then the slope of her belly. He felt the child stir underneath his hand, and he grinned. “I’ll be fine. Please, don’t worry.” She frowned, but her hand left his arm. He smiled at her and kissed her cheek, then quickly ascended the two steps to the small stage where Ancel was already unrolling the scroll. A roar from the crowd greeted him; Ancel looked up from the scroll at the sound and stared at the sea of pointing hands, turning his head abruptly.
His voice could barely be heard above the crowd’s roar. “Absolute? I thought…”
Nico gave him the sign of Cenzi. “It’ll be fine, Ancel. But I’d appreciate if you stay here with me and watch for the gardai. Cenzi. .. Cenzi wishes me to give our people His message in my own voice.”
Ancel’s eyes widened and he bowed low to Nico with the sign. “The scroll… Here it is.” He held out the paper to Nico, but Nico smiled at his friend and shook his head.
“I won’t need it. Cenzi will give me words.”
Another bow. Nico went to the podium as the crowd redoubled their noise. He lifted his hands, his eyes closed as he looked to the sky. He could feel the sun on his face, could feel the crowd’s adulation strike him like a physical blow. “For you, Cenzi,” he whispered. “For you.”
He opened his eyes, and gestured to them to be quiet. Slowly, they obeyed. “Cenzi blesses you all today,” he said, and he heard Cenzi enter his voice, heard it sound loud and booming over the park like an a’teni using the Ilmodo to amplify his Admonition, yet Nico had created no such spell. No, this was Cenzi’s presence, warping the Second World around his words so that everyone could hear him.
“I have prayed, my people,” he said, “and I have listened, and I have heard Cenzi’s Voice.” His last phrase was a roar that lashed the audience and seemed to sway the very trees of the park, and the people roared back at him wordlessly. “The time is coming, He has told me, when we must make a choice, when we must decide if we follow His path or that of weak humans. The time is coming-and it is coming soon, my friends, very soon-when we must show Him that we have heard His words and that we will obey them. The words are there for us. We hear them in the Toustour and the Divolonte. We have heard them read in the Admonitions in the temples. We have heard them in prophets and through the teni, but…” He paused momentarily, closing his eyes and lifting his face again. “The end times approach us. They come slowly, unstoppable. The teni of the Faith no longer hear Cenzi’s words. Oh, they say them, but they don’t hear them, they don’t feel t hem. The words of the Toustour and the Divolonte should strike you like the very fist of Cenzi. They tear at your soul and rebuild it anew, if you let them. I tell you: this is what we need now. We need to open ourselves to Cenzi and let Him make us into his spear!”
The words were fire in his mouth. The heat of them blasted the people before him, and they again shouted their affirmation. “Tell us, Absolute One!” someone shouted, and they all took up the chant. “Tell us! Tell us!”
Nico listened to them for several breaths, his chest heaving from the effort of speaking. He lifted his hands finally and they went silent again. In the hush, in the quiet, he began to speak, and though his voice was but a whisper, they could all hear him. He could hear his voice rebounding from the temple walls on the far side of the park.
“Cenzi has told me that we can no longer tolerate the heretics among us. We can no longer even tolerate those who wear the green robes but who fail to hear Him when He speaks. The Archigos and his a’teni speak with false tongues. We can no longer tolerate those whom this world has blessed with power and money but who do not see that those blessings derive from Cenzi, not themselves. He has told me this: He will give us a sign. He will bring fire and destruction. He will bring death and darkness. He will demonstrate to us our folly so that we may all see it, and when He does…”
Another pause. He enunciated each of the next words clearly. Slowly. Each in its own breath. “We. Must. Respond.”
They shouted, they applauded, they raised their hands. But Nico, looking over them, could see at the rear of the crowd Garde Kralji in their uniforms, squadrons of them pouring into Temple Park. “The sign is coming!” he shouted. “We will know it soon! I promise you this because He has promised it to me. But, look-” he pointed then to the Garde Kralji, “-there are those who want to prevent you from hearing my words. They would stop me from speaking Truth, because Truth is their enemy. Look!”
The crowd turned. They saw the Garde Kralji and they shouted. As the gardai pressed forward, trying to reach the stage, the crowd pushed back. The gardai, armed with batons, responded. Some of the crowd went down under the assault. One of the e’teni in the crowd unleashed a spell: a blast of fire that went howling into the ranks of the gardai.
Suddenly, it was chaos-many in the crowd pushing through the new gap in the gardai’s ranks. Batons rose and fell, and there was now open fighting in the park. Utilino whistles shrilled, and the Ilmodo was now being wielded against the crowd. A controlled blast of wind hit near the front of the stage, sending the closest onlookers sprawling onto the dirt and grass of the park, as well as blowing Nico backward into Ancel. “Absolute!” Ancel shouted above the din of the fray. “We must leave! Now!”
Nico stared outward. There was nothing he could do here, and Cenzi was silent in his head. “They don’t listen to me,” he said. “This is unnecessary. The Faithful should not be fighting each other.”
More gardai were coming into the park, some of these in the uniform of the Garde Civile, and armed with swords and spears rather than batons. He saw bloodied heads. Nico started toward the front of the stage, but Ancel took his arm. Liana had clambered on stage now, along with several others of his inner circle, and they were all around him. “You will see!”
Nico shouted toward the crowd, but his voice was only his voice now, and if they heard, they paid him little attention. He was exhausted, as tired as if he’d been using the Ilmodo. He sagged in the hands of his people and they hurried him to the rear of the stage and down the steps. “We’re done here,” Ancel told them. “Now we must protect the Absolute One and get him away. Quickly.”
Nico took Liana’s hand as his followers closed ranks around him, and they fled into the depths of Temple Park toward the maze of the Oldtown streets.
Varina ca’Pallo
Pierre’s workshop was in the rear garden of the Numetodo House grounds on South Bank. It stank of iron, oil, wood, and varnish, as well as Pierre’s unfinished sausage, which sat half-eaten on a side table in the cluttered room. Every work surface was filled; no wood showed on any of the tabletops. Instruments and strange devices sat around in various stages of assembly. Varina could only guess at what half of them might be. The room was lit by sun streaming in from several ivy-fringed skylights; the sheets of light illuminated air that was full of wood dust: Pierre was sanding a board set in a vise on one of the tables.
“A’Morce,” he said, suddenly noticing her standing at the door. He dropped the sanding block in a flurry of bright motes. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
As she entered, Pierre plucked up a half-dozen wood chisels from the seat of a chair, and shooed away the cat that had been curled in their midst. He gestured for Varina to sit, as the cat hissed in irritation and went under the nearest table to lick her paws and sulk.
“I understand the Morellis caused a full-scale riot in Temple Park yesterday,” Pierre said. “At least a dozen dead, from what I heard, but that bastard Morel escaped.”
Varina nodded silently. The complex guilt gnawed at her her again: for having let Nico live when she could have killed him; for allowing herself to think she could be his judge and executioner; for having failed Karl; for still having maternal feelings for Nico after all these years; for thinking that there was something about the young man that was redeemable; for the strange sympathy she found she had for him.
For what she was about to do now.
Karl, is this what I should do? Is this what you’d have done as A’Morce? The grief washed over her again at the thoughts and she had to turn away from Pierre for a moment. Everyone had warned her it would be this way: that the mourning would ebb away only slowly, that for a long time she’d suddenly remember Karl and the sorrow would take her again.
Pierre must have thought she’d caught a speck of dust in her eye. “Morel said there’d be a sign from Cenzi.” he continued. “Something about fire and destruction and death, from what I hear.” He sniffed. “If that’s all prophecy is, well, then any of us could make a living as a prophet. There’s enough fire and death and destruction in any given year for a double handful of vague prophecies like that. You’d think that if Cenzi were really as powerful as Morel seems to think, then he’d make such signs unmistakable and his prophecies more specific-why, if he told me the sun would rise in the west tomorrow and it did, that might just convince me to turn to the Faith.” He grinned at his own joke.
Varina smiled politely. She wiped at her eyes quickly.
Pierre seemed to take the smile as encouragement. “What bothers me,” he said, “is that there were evidently quite a lot of people listening to them, and some of them were teni, too, if you can believe it. I tell you, the troubles for the Numetodo may be ready to start again.”
“Nico can be quite charming and convincing,” Varina said. “He has quite a presence.” And if I’d had any doubt of those reports, then meeting him again confirmed them.
Pierre shrugged. “From what I heard, the crowd actually resisted the Garde Kralji when they showed up and allowed the bastardo to escape. There’s going to be blood between the Morellis and us Numetodos, A’Morce. Mark my words on that-and call me a prophet, too.” He grinned again, then shrugged. “But forgive me, A’Morce, for rattling on. I take it you had a chance to try the device I made for you. Did it work? Did it survive the experiment?”
“It did,” she told him; he nodded, and she saw a fierce satisfaction slip over his face. “I was very pleased with it,” she continued. “That’s why I’m here. I want more of them. Several hands of them, in fact.”
Now his eyebrows climbed his thin face. He absently brushed sawdust from the front of his bashta. His gaze skittered about the workroom. “Several hands of them,” he muttered, almost inaudibly. “A’Morce, all the work I have here to do… The requests from the other Numetodo for instruments and devices for their studies… I don’t know how I could possibly…” He lifted his hands; she could see the scars and calluses on them.
“Hire yourself some competent apprentices,” she told him. “I will pay their wages myself, whatever you feel is fair. Buy the material you need and bill it to me. The devices needn’t be as…” She stopped and smiled at him. “… beautifully crafted as the one you made for me. Good solid workmanship would suffice. Have them work under your supervision; you can even have them help you with your other work at need. I don’t care. But I want the devices soon-within a month, and as many as you can make.” She took a breath that shuddered. “Pierre, this is necessary for the protection of all Numetodo.”
“A’Morce, I haven’t heard-”
“That’s because I’ve said nothing to anyone else. And you shouldn’t either. I can count on your discretion, I trust?”
The eyebrows climbed higher. “Of course, A’Morce. Of course. Only
…”
“Yes?”
Pierre shook his head. “Nothing, A’Morce.” He brushed at his thighs, raising a cloud of dust that billowed into the nearest light shaft. “I will do as you ask, and I hope you’ll be pleased with the results.”
“Good,” she said. “Thank you, Pierre. I’ll stop by next Draiordi and see what progress you’ve made.” She rose from her seat, shrugging her overcloak over her tashta. “I hope that I’m wrong and that none of this is necessary,” she told him. “That’s actually what would please me the most. But I doubt that I will have that pleasure.”
Allesandra ca’Vorl
Commandant Telo Cu’Ingres of the Garde Kralji and Commandant Eleric ca’Talin of the Garde Civile both stood at uneasy attention before the Sun Throne. The courtiers and the public had been sent from the room, and the usual monthly Council meeting had been cut short. The Council of Ca’ sat to the throne’s right, but other than the servants against the walls waiting to jump to any request, there was no one else there to witness Allesandra’s displeasure at their reports.
No one aside from Erik ca’Vikej, who was seated behind the Council. Allesandra saw them struggling to ignore the man’s presence; their discomfiture was almost pleasant. Of the councillors, only Varina seemed to take little notice of him. Varina seemed to Allesandra to be lost in her own thoughts; she’d said nothing at all during the meeting.
“Nico Morel is able to make a public speech-one that attacked both the Faith and the Sun Throne-and yet we were unable to capture him.” Allesandra sniffed. The bright yellow glow of the Sun Throne enveloped her; she could see it radiating around her fingers as she clenched the crystalline arms of the throne. She could see the cracks in the carved, translucent stone where the throne, damaged in the assassination of Kraljiki Audric, fifteen years ago, had been repaired. The cracks did not glow but remained stubbornly opaque despite the best efforts of the light-teni. “This is not what I wished to hear.” She heard Erik snort in cold amusement at her remark.
“Nor is it what we wished to report, Kraljica,” Commandant cu’Ingres said. “I was in charge of the operation, not Commandant ca’Talin, who had agreed to support the Garde Kralji, and thus he should be blameless in this. I have no adequate excuse, and will make none.”
“Then it’s good that I had other reports from the scene, Commandant,” Allesandra told him. “I know that your gardai were attacked by the crowd, and that they used admirable restraint in not
responding in kind against citizens of the Holdings.” Cu’Ingres inclined his head toward her in acknowledgment. “But I think that the time for restraint against the Morellis may have passed,” she continued. “In the future, both of you have my permission to use whatever force you feel is necessary.” Allesandra looked at Varina with that statement. She made no sign, staring at the hands folded in her lap. Allesandra wondered if she’d even heard what had been said.
“Nico Morel is to be found and brought to justice for the murder of citizens of Nessantico, and for the damage he has done here,” she said to the Commandants, to the councillors. The Commandants bowed their heads, receiving their orders as any good soldier should, but the five members of the Council of Ca’ were less in agreement. Varina was lost in her own thoughts. Allesandra’s cousin Henri ca’Sibelli was nodding, the wattles of his neck swaying with the motion. But the other three… Simon ca’Dakwi’s hand prowled his white beard, his mouth twisted as if he’d tasted something sour; Anais ca’Gerodi leaned over to Edouard ca’Matin and whispered something in his hair-tufted ear, to which the man scowled vigorously, his head shaking with the palsy that afflicted him.
Have I misjudged Nico Morel’s support here? Allesandra found herself wishing that Sergei were still in the city; she needed his unvarnished honesty. But she looked instead to Erik.
He was scowling as well, but his irritation was directed at the Council: she saw that he’d noticed their reaction. “Are we in agreement?” she asked the councillors.
“We are, Kraljica,” ca’Sibelli answered, but his was the only voice. The others said nothing; if they felt otherwise, they weren’t going to say it here, then, in front of her.
