by S L Farrell
Jan glanced back over his shoulder to where ca’Rudka rode alongside the Archigos. The Regent’s metal nose gleamed in the sun. Like the Garde Hirzg, ca’Rudka seemed edgy and nervous, his lips pressed tightly together and his eyes scanning the crowd to either side. “I like the man, but I don’t know that I entirely trust him, Matarh,” Jan said, returning his attention to her.
She smiled at that. “You shouldn’t,” she told him. “His allegiance is to Nessantico, first and foremost. And he is a strange man with strange tastes, if one believes the rumors. That hasn’t changed. He’ll work with us as long as he feels that our interests converge. As soon as they don’t…” She shrugged. “Then he will just as happily be our enemy. Your instincts are right, Jan.”
“He seems to admire you.”
“I knew him when I was Archigos Ana’s hostage. He was kind enough to me then. But right now, he’s more interested in the fact that I’m Kraljica Marguerite’s second cousin and the fact that this relationship gives me as much a claim to the Sun Throne as Sigourney ca’Ludivici. And, for now, we need Sergei and the alliances he may be able to bring us.”
Jan nodded. He pressed his lips together as if considering all this as they rode on into the central square of the city. She wondered what he was thinking.
Here, the Temple a’Passe dominated the architectural landscape. Like many of the structures in the city, it had been heavily damaged in the siege two and a half decades before. Afterward, the town council had made the decision to redesign the main square and the temple complex. Much of the original structure had been demolished. The thin, skeletal lines of scaffolding caged the as-yet unfinished main tower and dome of the revamped temple.
The crowds of townspeople were most dense here as the slow line of the army marched through their city. By now, Allesandra knew, the vanguard would already have passed through the western gate and beyond the city walls. By now, she also knew, messengers would be urging their horses to a gallop ahead of the force bringing news to the Kraljica, to the Archigos, and to Nessantico that the Firenzcians were on the march-for all she knew, that word may have already come to Nessantico, as the army first crossed the borders. Soon, now, their advance would be challenged; Kraljica Sigourney couldn’t afford to look westward for long.
An army-especially the Firenzcian army; polished, efficient, and renowned-was a large bargaining chip on any table of negotiation, and Sigourney and the Council of Ca’ would be all too well aware of that. Allesandra smiled at that thought.
The crowd pressed close to them, and the foot soldiers to either side of Allesandra and Jan pushed them back with the shafts of pikes and spears. She could see grim, unhappy faces behind the fence of weapons, and from the depths of the crowd came occasional shouted curses and threats, but when they looked that way, there was no one they could pick out of the masses. The populace remembered the Firenzcian siege, too: many of them had lost family members in the siege, and the sight of the silver-and-black banners was a mockery waving in their faces.
They passed into the shadow of the temple now, the line of the army using the bulwark of the main tower to shield them from the crowds. The wind-horns on the temple began to sound Second Call as Allesandra and Jan came abreast of the tower. Allesandra’s head craned upward toward the noise, squinting into the glare of the sun. Something-a figure, a form-seemed to move above, amongst the corset of scaffolding. She couldn’t see it clearly.
Allesandra was suddenly struck from behind, as her ears alerted her to the sound of hooves against cobbles. A heavy weight bore her down hard to the pavement, though the arms that had gone about her turned her so that the body underneath took the brunt of the impact. She heard a loud kr-unk almost in concert with the impact. A horse screamed-a horrible, awful sound-and people shouted. “The Hirzg!” “Move! Move!” “Back! Get back!” “Above! There he is!” She could hear offiziers shouting orders and more screams. There seemed to be a mob huddled around her. She fought against the arms around her, against the folds of her assaulter’s cloak and her own riding tashta and cloak. There were hands pulling at her, helping her up.
There was another scream, a human one this time, and another impact somewhere close by.
She blinked, trying to make sense of the scene.
Sergei ca’Rudka was standing near her, his cloak torn, grimacing as he kneaded his arm. The silver of his nose was scuffed and the nose itself was partially pulled back from his face, giving her a glimpse of an uncomfortable hole underneath. Jan was being helped to his feet, a stride in back of Sergei. Allesandra’s horse was on its side before her, a massive statue of a Moitidi demon in pieces on the ground around it. The animal was thrashing its legs, its eyes wide, and the sounds it was making… Sergei moved to the horse quickly, kneeling in the wreckage of the stone carving and stroking the horse’s neck as he made soothing noises. She saw him take his knife from its scabbard. “No!” she began, but he’d already made the cut, deep and swift. The horse bucked once, again, and went still.
Allesandra shook her head, trying to clear it. Half the crowd in the plaza seemed to have fled in terror; the Firenzcian soldiers had formed a thick bulwark around them. Sergei moved away from the horse, striding toward a body sprawled in a pool of blood not far from the base of the tower. Soldiers moved to intercept him; he shrugged them away angrily. Allesandra started to move and realized that her body was sore and bruised, and she was bleeding from a cut on the head. She felt Jan come up behind her.
“Matarh?” He was staring at the horse Sergei had killed. She hugged her son, desperately, then held him an arm’s length away, examining him-his clothes were torn, as well, and there was a scrape along one cheek that was oozing blood, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. “What happened?” she asked him. “Did you see?”
“The Regent saved us,” he said. “He took both of us from our horses just in time.” He glanced up at the scaffolding, then back to the body on the ground. Sergei was enclosed in a clot of soldiers, crouched alongside the corpse. “The man… he was up there-he would have killed you. Maybe both of us. But Sergei…”
Archigos Semini came rushing up then, his green robes swirling. “Allesan-” he began, then shook his head, making the sign of Cenzi hurriedly. “A’Hirzg! Hirzg Jan! Thank Cenzi you’re both safe! I thought-”
But Allesandra was no longer listening to him. She pushed through the crowd to where Sergei was examining the body. “Regent?” she said, and Sergei glanced up at her. He was scowling.
“A’Hirzg. I apologize, but there was no time to give you warning. Are you badly hurt?”
She shook her head. He nodded and stood up, groaning as he did so as if the movement pained him. “I’m too damned old for this,” he muttered. He kicked the corpse in front of him, the boot making a soft, ugly sound as the broken torso jiggled in response. Allesandra saw a fair face underneath the blood, a young face, perhaps Jan’s age; what she saw of his clothing was suspiciously fine. The body was adorned with the broken shafts of several arrows. “Don’t know who he is,” Sergei said, “but we’ll find out. Ca’-and-cu’, though, from the way he’s dressed and the way he looks. I saw him up on the scaffolding just before he tossed down the carving. That’s when I moved; looks like your archers took care of the rest.” He seemed to notice his dangling nose then, and pushed it gingerly back in place, holding it with two fingers. “My pardon, A’Hirzg-the glue…”
“No matter,” she told him, waving her hand. “Regent, I owe you my life.”
She thought he would respond as most would have, with a lowering of his head and deprecation, a protest of duty and loyalty and obligation. He did not. Instead, he smiled, still holding his silver nose in place.
“Indeed you do, A’Hirzg,” he said.
Niente
The town burned and the flames reflected in the scrying bowl. They vanished as Zolin slapped the scrying bowl aside, splashing the water over Niente. The bowl clattered away, bronze ringing against the tiles like a wild bell until it clanged up agai
nst the far wall, where a tile mosaic of some ancient battle glittered. Outlined in glass, horses reared as soldiers with pikes marched across a field with a snow-topped mountain looming in the background.
“No!” the Tecuhtli roared. “I won’t have you tell me this!”
“It is what I saw,” Niente answered with a calmness he didn’t feel. The dead warrior, the nahualli sprawled next to him, only this time he saw one of their faces. Zolin’s face… And he was too afraid to ask Axat to let him see the nahualli’s features… “Tecuhtli, we have accomplished so much here. We have shown these Easterners the pain that they inflicted on us and our cousins. We have taken land and cities from them as they were taken from us. We have given them the lesson you wanted to give them. To go on…” Niente lifted his hands. The great city in flames and the tehuantin fleeing, their ships with broken masts canted on their sides on the river… “The visions show me only death.”
“No!” Zolin spat. “I’ve sent word back that we’ll stay here, that they are to send more warriors. We will keep what we have taken. We will strike at their heart-this great city of theirs that is so close.” He turned, his heavy and muscular arms swinging close to Niente’s face. Zolin’s thick fingers stabbed toward Niente’s eyes. “Are you blind, Nahual? Didn’t you see how easily we took this city of theirs? Didn’t you watch them run from us like a pack of whipped dogs?”
“We have little of the materials left to make more black sand,” Niente told the Tecuhtli. “I have lost a third of my nahualli in the fighting; you have lost as many of the warriors. We have come a long way without the resources to hold the land behind us. We are in a foreign country surrounded by enemies, with the only supplies those we can forage and plunder. If we take to our ships and leave now, we will leave behind a legend that will strike fear in the Easterners for decades. The name of Tecuhtli Zolin will be a whisper in the night to scare generations of Easterner children.”
“Bah!” Zolin spat again, the expectoration close to Niente’s feet, marring the polished floor of the estate house he’d taken in Villembouchure. Looking down, Niente saw that the tiles all bore the glazed image of the same mountain as the mosaic on the wall. Zolin’s spittle formed a lake on the mountain’s flank. “You’re a frightened child yourself, Nahual. I’m not afraid of what you see in your bowl. I’m not afraid of these futures you say Axat sends you. They’re not the future, only possibilities.” His finger prodded Niente’s chest. “I tell you now, Nahual, you must make your choice.” Each of the last three words was another prod. The Tecuhtli’s dark eyes, wrapped in the swirl of the great eagle’s wings, glared at him like those of the great cats that prowled the forests of home. “No more words from you. No more prophecy, no more warnings. I want only your obedience and your magic. If you can’t give me that, then I am done with you. I will go on, whether you are Nahual or not. Decide now, Niente. As we stand here.”
Niente’s hand trembled near the haft of his spell-stick, dangling from his belt. He could pluck it up, touch Zolin with it before the warrior could fully draw his sword. The released spell would char the Tecuhtli’s body, send him flying across the room until he crumpled against the wall under the mosaic in a smoking heap. Niente could see that result, as clearly as a vision in the scrying bowl.
That would also end this. He ached to do it.
But he could not. That was not a vision that Axat had granted him. That path would lead to one of the blind futures, one he couldn’t guess-a future that might be far worse for the Tehuantin than those he had glimpsed in the bowl. He realized that knowing the possible futures was a trap as much as a benefit; he wondered whether that was something Mahri, too, had discovered. In a blind future, Citlali or Mazatl might continue to follow the steps of Zolin and fare worse. They might all die here, and no one from home would know their fate. In a blind future, certainly Niente would never see his family again.
He felt the smooth, polished wood of the spell-stick, but his fingertips only grazed it. They would not close around it.
“I will obey you, Tecuhtli,” Niente said, the words slow and quiet. “And I will follow you to the future you bring us.”
Varina ci’Pallo
Karl was sitting in the dark on the rear stoop of Serafina’s house in Oldtown, staring across the small garden planted there toward the rear of the houses a street over. His gaze seemed to be penetrating all the way to South Bank, far away. Above him, the moon was snagged in a lacework of thin, silver clouds through which the stars peered. A cup of tea steamed forgotten at his left side.
He was rubbing a small, flat, and pale stone between his forefinger and thumb.
Varina came up and sat beside him on the right-not quite close enough to touch, not far enough away that she couldn’t feel the warmth of his body in the night chill. Neither of them said anything. He rubbed the stone. She could hear faint, muffled music from the tavern down the street.
When the silence between them had stretched for more breaths than she wanted to count, she started to rise again, feeling angry with herself for having come out here, and angry with him for not acknowledging her. But Karl reached out and touched her knee. “Stay,” he said. “Please?”
She sat again. “Why?” she asked.
“We haven’t… Lately… Well, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” she said to him. “Tell me.”
“You’re trying to make this hard for me?” He flipped the stone over in his fingers.
“No,” she told him. “I’m trying to make it easier for me. Karl, being with you or being without you-those are both situations I can deal with, one way or another. What I can’t handle is not knowing which it’s supposed to be.” She waited. He said nothing. “So which is it?” she asked.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Actually, it is.” She hugged herself as she sat, leaning slightly away from him. “I thought when I finally took you to my bed that I might have everything I’d wanted for years. But I discovered I still only had a part of you. I want all of you, Karl, or I don’t want anything. Maybe I’m asking too much of you, or maybe I’m too possessive, or maybe you think I’m pushing you into something you don’t want.” Tears were threatening, and she sniffed them away angrily. “Maybe it’s my fault that this won’t work, and if that’s the case, then fine. I just need to know.”
“It’s not you.”
She wanted to believe that. Varina bit her lower lip, forcing back the tears, her breath shaking in her throat. “Then what is it?” she asked. “You go after this Uly on your own and nearly get yourself killed, you meet with Kenne without telling me, you’re even making plans with Talis. But you’re not talking to me.”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
She wanted to scoff at that. “I worry more because I don’t know the situation. I don’t know what you’re planning, don’t know what you’re trying to do, don’t know what the real dangers might be.” She stopped. Took a breath. “I won’t be your mistress, to be there whenever you want that kind of comfort but conveniently forgotten otherwise. If that’s all you want from me, then I made a mistake. I’m also not Ana, only wanting you as a friend. Again, if that’s all you want from me, well, you can’t have that either. Not anymore. So if that’s the case, then tell me and as soon as this is over, one way or the other, I’ll go my own way. I’ve wanted you to open the door between us for a long time, Karl. Now you have, but you can’t stand there with one foot in and one outside. I need to either close that door and lock it forever, or you need to enter all the way in.”
“How do I do that?” His voice sounded plaintive in the darkness. He pressed the stone between his fingers. How can you not know? she wanted to rail at him. Can’t you see it as plainly as I do?
“ Talk to me,” she said. “Share what you’re thinking. Let me accept the dangers you’re willing to accept. Let me be with you.”
She thought that he wasn’t going to answer-which would have been answer enough. He sat there, still toying with the
stone and staring outward. She started to rise again, and this time he took her hand. She could feel the stone as he pressed it into her palm.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me tell you what I’m thinking…”
And he began to talk.
Kenne ca’Fionta
Aubri cu’Ulcai looked like a whipped dog as he knelt on one knee, head lowered, before the Kraljica. His armor was scratched and battered, his face was streaked with grime and smoke, his hair was dark and matted, and he stank. In the Hall of the Sun Throne, he was like a horsefly paddling in a golden mug of clear, cold water.
Not that the hall itself didn’t still show scars. No one could miss the marks of the hasty repair where the Sun Throne had been damaged by the assassin’s magic-no, not magic if Karl ca’Vliomani was correct, Kenne remembered, but something more sinister-something any apothecary could make with the right ingredients. What had the Ambassador ca’Vliomani called it? The end of magic? Kenne wondered if the man was right.
The hanging tapestries around the hall still reeked of smoke, and Kenne wondered if there wasn’t a faint, horrifying pink tinge to the tiles around the throne dais. And there was no way to miss the appearance of Kraljica Sigourney herself: the patch over her missing eye, the scars on her face, the bandages that still wrapped her arms and single leg, the way she shifted painfully on the seat, the goblet filled with an extract of the seeds of the poisonous cuore della volpe flower-a concoction the court herbalist had created to keep Sigourney’s pain at bay.
Still, the Sun Throne gleamed underneath and around her as it had for countless Kralji; Kenne had seen to that personally. If that was a sham, no one watching would know it. Kenne sighed on his own seat to the right of the throne, weary from the effort of casting the light spell. The Council of Ca’ was arrayed to the left. Otherwise, the hall had been cleared of courtiers and even servants-none of them wanted more rumors spreading through the city than there already were.
