A Magic of Dawn nc-3

by S L Farrell

  Nico nodded. “Then let me talk to them,” he said. He stepped to the edge of the stoop, Liana and Ancel just behind him, several other Morellis emerging from the house to stand with them. The crowd called out, seeing him in the glow of the lamps on the supports of the porch. He heard his name shouted, and Cenzi’s, but he raised his hands and the crowd quieted again.

  He looked out on the landscape, dark and ominous, interrupted only by the pools of light cast by those carrying lanterns, as if the stars had abandoned the sky for the ground. “If you believe that I am pleased by what has happened, you would be mistaken,” he said-slowly and softly, so that they leaned forward to hear his words. He cleared his throat, coughing once, and felt Cenzi touch his voice, so that it strengthened and swelled. “Yes, I said Cenzi would give a sign to us, and He has done so. He has given us an unmistakable and grim sign. The end times are coming, if the Faithful will not listen! What you see around you is the death of thousands, all of them martyrs so that we of the Faith might see the error of our current path, so we might see what awaits the world if we fail to heed Cenzi. I weep for each of those who have died. I weep because it had to come to this. I weep because you would not listen. I weep because you could not follow Cenzi’s words without His needing to give us this terrible punishment. I weep that we still have so much of His work to do. I weep that even as the ash coats Nessantico, those who rule her still do not see the truth of what we say.”

  He paused. In the audience, he could hear them coughing. “I know why you have come here,” he said. “But I tell you that you already know what you must do. It’s here in your hearts.” He touched his own chest, the words a fire in his throat burning away the taste of ash. “It’s in your souls, that Cenzi already holds. All you need to do is listen, and feel, and be open to Him. As Cenzi has been fierce in His sign, so we must be fierce in our response.”

  He paused, and his next words shredded the air like black claws. “It is time!” he roared to them. “That is what I have to tell you. It is our time. Now! It will be His time, or He will bring death down upon all of us! Now-go and show them!”

  He pointed southward, toward the Isle a’Kralj, toward the Old Temple, toward the Kraljica’s Palais, toward the South Bank with the houses of the ca’-and-cu’. They roared with him. He could feel Cenzi’s touch depart, leaving him weary and his legs again weak. But the clouds parted momentarily, releasing a shaft of blue moonlight that painted the crowd and illuminated their faces. “It’s another sign!” someone cried within the crowd, and they all began shouting. The crowd surged away from the house and away.

  Nico leaned against one of the supports of the porch, not caring that the ash stained his face, as he watched them move away. “Should we go with them, Absolute?” Ancel asked. “If that is what Cenzi wants of us…”

  “No,” he told them. “We must stay hidden a while yet-but soon. Soon.” He looked up; the clouds had closed once again over the moon and the street seemed darker than before, the shouting of the crowd fading in the distance.

  “Tonight, there’s something else we must do.”

  Sergei ca’Rudka

  Commandant Talos Cu’ingres gestured harshly at his offiziers. “You, take your squad to the River Market; I need you and you to use your men to control the Avi so that the fire-teni can get in and do their work. The rest of you, get your people to push the mob back up the Avi away from the Pontica-join up with the gardai coming in from the north if you can. Once we push them away from the Avi, they’ll break up in the smaller streets where we can control them. Use whatever force is necessary. Now, go! Go!”

  The offiziers bowed and hurried away from the Garde Kralji command center hastily set up on the North Bank at the Pontica Kralji. It was a few turns before dawn, though time was nearly impossible to gauge in this gloom. Sergei-listening from inside his carriage, opened the door and went over to where cu’Ingres stood, leaning over a table with a map of the city spread out on it, his staff placing markers as messengers hurried in with the latest reports. Beyond, well up the Avi, Sergei could see fires sending black smoke coiling up to join the gray ash clouds. Everyone, cu’Ingres included, looked as if they’d been rolling in a fireplace.

  “I heard about the mob,” Sergei said. “I thought I’d see if I could be of assistance.”

  “Ambassador,” cu’Ingres said wearily. “I appreciate the offer, and I’m sure I can benefit from your experience. However, I think we finally have the fires and the mob under control. There’s no longer any danger to the Isle or the South Bank.” He nodded to the glow of the conflagrations. “The fire-teni from the Old Temple are making some progress with that, though sometimes I think it would serve them right if they ended up burning Oldtown to the ground.”

  “The Morellis?”

  Cu’Ingres nodded. “I had a report of a crowd gathering at a house, supposedly where Nico Morel was hiding. I had one of my a’offiziers and his people heading to the area to investigate, but then they were set upon by a mob that was moving toward the Avi and the Isle. They were setting fires and looting as they went-shouting about signs and the end of days and the usual Morelli garbage. Morel had worked them up into a frenzy about all this, though Morel himself and the people close to him weren’t with them.” He kicked at the drifts of ash on the street. “It’s been a shit of a day, if you don’t mind my saying so. First all the problems with the ash, then this.”

  Sergei clapped the man on the back. “You’ve done well, Talos, and I’ll let the Kraljica know that. Casualties?”

  “Nothing serious, thank Cenzi. A few injuries from thrown rocks and the skirmishes with the mob: bloodied heads and broken bones, the usual. A few of the fire-teni have been overcome with smoke and exhaustion; that’s only going to get worse until these fires are under control, but A’Teni ca’Paim is sending more teni to help. There were a few of the Morellis killed in the skirmish and several injured. We have several hands of prisoners.”

  “Prisoners. Ah.” Sergei found himself stirring with the familiar old passion at that. “Where are they?”

  He thought that cu’Ingres hesitated a breath too long before replying. Then he inclined his head toward the northern end of the bridge. “Over there. I was going to have them transported to the Bastida as soon as I had enough gardai to spare.”

  “They should be able to tell us where Morel is now,” Sergei said.

  “I’m sure they can,” cu’Ingres answered blandly. “I’m sure they will.”

  “Carry on, Talos,” Sergei told him, “but have a full squad of gardai ready to leave within a mark.”

  A salute. “As you wish, Ambassador.”

  Sergei saluted the man and moved painfully toward the bridge. He found the prisoners easily, seated on the ashsmeared cobbles near the bridge and ringed by sullen gardai. The o’offizier in charge saluted as Sergei approached, stepping aside so that Sergei could look at the captured rioters. Some of them glared back at him, others simply stared with heads down at the pavement. “I need to know where Nico Morel is,” he told them. “I know at least some of you know. I need one of you to tell me.”

  There was no answer. The closest of them to him-an e’teni, his green robes of office torn and stained with ash and soot, blood smeared across his face-scowled and spat in Sergei’s direction. The man’s hands were bound-so he could not use a spell to escape or attack the gardai. “We won’t tell you, Silvernose,” he said. “None of us will. We won’t betray him.”

  Sergei smiled gently toward the man. “Oh, one of you will. Willingly. And you’re going to help me. Take him,” he said to the e’offizier. “Bring him over here.”

  Sergei stepped back, waving his cane to the driver of his carriage, who slapped the reins on the horse and came clattering over to where Sergei stood. “I need rope,” Sergei said, and one of the gardai ran to fetch a length. “Tie his feet also,” he said, pointing to the teni and knowing that all the prisoners were watching. When the gardai had finished binding the feet as they had his hands
, Sergei had them lash a short length of rope from the man’s hands to the back of the carriage. The e’teni watched, his eyes widening.

  Sergei tapped the cobbles of the Avi at his feet with the brass ferrule of his cane, and the teni glanced down. “These stones… These are the very soul of Nessantico. The Avi wraps the city in its embrace-and as you know as a teni, defines the city with its lamps. The people who made the Avi did so with care and with a love for their work. Look at these cobbles; they were carved from the granite of hills south of here and brought to the city by the wagonload, and placed carefully. It took sweat and labor and care, but they did it. They did it not only because they were paid, but because they love this city.” The teni was staring at him; both prisoners and gardai were listening to him. “But… These stones, ancient as they are, remain rough and hard. Eternal-like this city and the Holdings, I like to think. Why, these stones are so stern and unforgiving that I must have a wheelwright replace the rims of my carriage’s wheels twice a year, and they’re made of steel. Can you imagine what these stones would do to mere flesh if, let us say, someone were dragged over them like the wheels of this fine carriage? Why, it would tear and rip and flay the skin from that person, break his bones, and pull him apart, piece by piece. That would be an unpleasant and horrible death. Don’t you agree, e’teni?”

  The man’s mouth had opened as he realized what Sergei was saying. Sergei could feel the man’s fear; he could taste it, and he savored the sweet spice of it. “Ambassador,” the man stuttered. He held out his bound hands in supplication. “You wouldn’t do this.”

  Sergei laughed; a few of the gardai chuckled as well. “I would do whatever I need to do to serve the Holdings and Nessantico,” he told the man. “Right now, to serve her, I require Nico Morel’s location from you. So… Will you tell me?”

  The man licked his lips again. “Ambassador…”

  Sergei lifted his cane. The driver shifted in his seat, and the teni lifted his bound hands again in supplication. “No!” he nearly shouted. “Please! The Absolute… He… He is in a house on Lamb Street, on the south side two down from where Herringbone crosses. I. .. I swear it. Please, Ambassador…”

  “You see,” Sergei told the teni. “I knew you would tell me.”

  He gestured again with his cane, hard this time, and the driver slapped his reins at the horse. “Hey, up!” the driver called, and the teni shouted as the rope suddenly tightened and the carriage lurched away, gaining speed. The man screamed as he was pulled from his feet, as his body bounced along behind the carriage and the stones began to tear at him. Even in the darkness, they could all see the dark, wet trail that his body left on the cobbles. The teni’s voice was a long, wordless wail as the carriage made the turn and headed across the bridge: shrill and terrified, then eerily and horribly silent. The carriage continued on its way across the A’Sele.

  “My driver will return shortly,” Sergei told the other prisoners, his voice calm and almost gentle. “Now, it’s possible that our e’teni was lying about the location. I’m certain that-to avoid his fate-you all will tell me whether that’s the case or not, won’t you?”

  He smiled as they shouted affirmation back to him, their voices a loud, terrified jumble.

  Faintly, the wind-horns of the temples were sounding First Call, though there was little sign of the sun in the eternal ash-dusk.

  Sergei knew before they ever entered the house that he was too late. Again.

  “I’m not going in,” he told cu’Ingres. “They’ve already left.”

  The Commandant gave Sergei a long stare. “You killed a man for this. A teni.”

  “I did,” Sergei told the man easily. “And I would do it again, without a regret. And I chose the teni deliberately, for the effect it would have on the others-if I would kill a teni, I would kill them just as easily.” He shrugged and tapped his cane on the street as the gardai, moving swiftly, encircled the house. Yes, this was the correct address: he could see the new footprints in the ash; the mob had gathered here, first. “They were here, but they’re not here now, Talos. I’m sure someone is watching to bring a report to Nico. I can feel it. But… Go on. Do what we must.”

  Cu’Ingres sniffed. Almost angrily, he tore his gaze away from Sergei and gestured harshly toward his offiziers, who gave quick orders. Several gardai rushed the front door of the house and broke it down. Swords drawn, they entered. A few minutes later, one of them emerged again; he shook his head.

  Sergei drew a long breath that tasted of the dead ash in the streets. “Tell Nico Morel that I will find him,” he said loudly, turning as he did so to face the other dwellings along the street. “I will find him,” he repeated, “and he will face justice for what he’s done. Tell him.”

  There was no answer to his call. Sergei turned back to cu’Ingres. “Have your people tear the house apart. They may have left something behind that will tell us where they’ve gone. Have a report on both my desk and the Kraljica’s by Second Call,” he said. The Commandant saluted without a word, though his eyes were still full of quiet accusation.

  Sergei started toward his waiting carriage.

  They would find nothing in the house that Nico didn’t want them to find. He was certain that Nico was too careful for that. But he would keep his promise to the young man. He vowed that much.

  Allesandra ca’Vorl

  Allesandra stood on the balcony of her rooms and stared out over the grounds. The ashfall had stopped two nights before, and the sunset tonight was stunning. Yellow-and-white clouds billowed near the horizon: wind-streaked, brushed in scarlet and orange-gold, and caught in a deep azure sky while the sun threw shafts of brilliant golden light through the gaps between them. The land underneath was caught in gold-green light and purple shadow. Fragments of saturated color seemed to lurk wherever she looked, as if a divine painter had smeared his palette across the sky.

  Below her, workers were still sweeping the walkways of the stubborn gray and brushing the clinging ash from the bushes and plants of the formal garden her apartments overlooked. It had mercifully rained earlier in the day- already, the palais grounds were beginning to look as they once had, but Allesandra could smell the ash: astringent and irritating in her nostrils. The entire city, the entire land stank of it.

  The ash, the Morelli insurrection two nights ago, Jan’s curt insistence that he be named her heir: it all weighed on her despite the beauty of the sunset.

  “A’Teni ca’Paim wants you thrown into the Bastida,” Allesandra said.

  Sergei, who was ignoring the sunset and staring instead at the painting of Kraljica Marguerite on the wall, snorted audibly through his metal nose. “No doubt she does. What did you tell her?”

  “I told her that the teni you killed had been a Morelli, had broken the laws of the Holdings, and was deliberately withholding information from you. I said that there wasn’t time to consult her; you took the action you felt was necessary to try to capture Morel.”

  Sergei seemed to bow more to Marguerite than to Allesandra. “Thank you, Kraljica.”

  “I also read Commandant cu’Ingres’ report. He doesn’t seem to feel that killing the teni was required.”

  Sergei shrugged at that. “Two offiziers don’t always agree on tactics. Had Talos done as I did a turn or two earlier, we might actually have caught Morel. Did he mention that in his report?”

  “I know you, Sergei. You didn’t kill the man as a tactic. You did it for the pleasure it gave you.”

  “We all have our faults, Kraljica,” he answered. “But I did do it to capture Morel. At least partially.”

  “Gyula ca’Vikej doesn’t feel you can be trusted anymore. He thinks your predilections and your ambitions have put you in opposition to me.”

  If Sergei was worried by that, he didn’t show it. “You know my weaknesses, and I freely admit them to you, Kraljica. All of us have them, and yes, sometimes they can interfere with our best judgment for what is right for the Holdings. And as Ambassador to Brezno and the Coa
lition, I would prefer that no one else hears the Kraljica refer to ca’Vikej as Gyula. But then I haven’t taken the Gyula-inexile of an enemy state into my bed.”

  The surge of anger through her was hot and as bright as lightning. She scowled, her fists tightening so that her fingernails carved crescent moons into her palm. “You dare… ” she began, but Sergei put his hands out in supplication before she could say more.

  “I’m simply pointing out-clumsily, I admit-that the choices we make aren’t going to be universally beloved; that we make them for reasons that make sense to us but not necessarily to everyone. Forgive me, Kraljica. We have a long history together, but I shouldn’t presume upon it. You know that my loyalty is to the Holdings and to her ruler. Always and forever.”

  I know that your loyalty is to the Holdings. But as to the other. .. Allesandra bit her lip, thinking the words but not saying them. She owed Sergei: she knew it; she knew he knew it. He’d saved her life and that of her son. The sting of his remark still cut at her, but the anger was cooling. She still needed Sergei. She still valued his advice.

  But when the time came, she would not hesitate to throw him into the Bastida that he loved too much.

  “I would be careful what you say and who you say it to,” she told him, “if you want to escape the fate you’d give to others. You’re lucky that-”

  There was a discreet knock on the door of the chamber; a breath later, the door opened and the side of Talbot’s head appeared, carefully not looking in their direction. “Kraljica,” he said. “A messenger has come. I think you should hear what he has to say.”

  “What message?” Allesandra asked, the irritation still warm in her voice. “Tell me.”