by S L Farrell
She was trying to placate him, knowing how strongly he believed in the tenets of Concenzia, but she saw that Justi was either no longer listening or disinterested. He was studying ci’Recroix’s painting as if answers might be hidden there. “You may make the decision, Justi, if that’s what you want,” she continued. “Find someone who appeals to you or not, as you prefer. Find someone who will understand that they need to look away from your. . indiscretions with half the grandes horizontales of Nessantico. All I require is that the person you choose also provide us some political advantage and you an heir or two, and that you make your decision by the end of my Jubilee. Otherwise, I will make the announcement for you. Do we understand each other?”
Justi sniffed, his nose almost touching the painting. “Yes, Matarh,” he answered. “Perfectly. As always.” As he spoke, there was a quiet knock on the doors. Justi straightened, taking a long breath, as Marguerite scowled at him. “And perfectly timed as well. Matarh, I’ll leave you.”
“There is more I need to discuss with you, Justi.”
“I’ve no doubt of that. But it will have to wait. Your painter awaits.”
Justi started toward the door. “Justi,” Marguerite called out and he stopped. “I am your Matarh and you are my son, my only child. I am also the Kraljica, and you are the A’Kralj. You will always be my son. As to the other. . some of your cousins would love nothing better than to see me change my decision as to my heir. And I can.”
Justi didn’t reply, but went to the door and opened it. Marguerite caught a glimpse of a tall man standing just outside: black robe, black hair, black beard, black pupils-a fragment of night walking in the daylight. Justi nodded to the man, who clasped hands to forehead as he bowed. “Vajiki ci’Recroix,” Justi said. “I must say I admire your talent very much. The Kraljica is waiting just inside. I hope you can capture all the complexities she hides so well. . ”
Ana cu’Seranta
As they approached the temple, the crowds became more dense and the acolyte’s bell ringing was a constant din too near Ana’s ear for comfort. For the month of the Kraljica’s Jubilee, the population of Nessantico swelled with tourists and visitors hoping to meet the Kraljica and mingle with the ca’-and-cu’. Every day, the Archigos emerged from the temple to bless the crowds promptly at Second Call, then proceeded along the Avi a’Parete and over the River A’Sele via the Pontica a’Brezi Nippoli. There, at the Old Temple on the Isle A’Kralji, he offered up prayers of thanksgiving for the Kraljica’s continued health.
Near the temple plaza, a line of Garde Kralji, the city guards, held back the crowds from the doors through which the Archigos would appear. The gardai’s brass-tipped staffs jutted above the heads of the onlookers like the posts of a fence, and Ana could glimpse the midnight blue of their uniforms through the less somber colors of those waiting for the Archigos to appear. The acolyte standing at the door to Ana’s carriage produced a whistle from under his robes and blew a piercing note. The gardai responded, opening a gap in the crowd for the carriage to pass through. They rode into the plaza, the wheels of the carriage chattering against the marble flags set there, the teni-driver’s chant ending as the carriage came to a halt to the east of the main doors. The acolyte hopped down from his perch and opened the door, assisting Ana to the ground.
“Who am I supposed to see?” she asked the acolyte, glancing around.
She saw no one obviously waiting for them. “U’Teni cu’Dosteau?”
“Wait here,” the acolyte answered. “That’s all I was told. After the Archigos’ blessing. .”
The great wind-horns, one in each of the six domes of the temple, sounded at that moment: low, sonorous notes that throbbed and moaned like giants in distress, the wail clawing at the stones of the buildings bordering the plaza and driving clouds of pigeons up from the rooftops. The crowd went silent under the assault, pressing clasped hands to foreheads as the huge temple doors-carved into intertwined trees-swung open. Ana made the same gesture of obeisance alongside the carriage. A phalanx of acolyte celebrants in simple white robes emerged first, each with an incense brazier clanking and swaying on the end of brass chains, the fragrant smoke curling and drifting in the slight breeze. As they entered the sunlight they began to sing, their melodi-ous, youthful voices dancing with the intricate harmonies of Darkmavis’ well-known hymn Cenzi Eternal. A dozen green-robed a’teni of the Archigos’ Council followed them-the highest of the teni, elderly men and women blinking at the assault of daylight after the dimness within the temple’s basilica. Then, finally, came the Archigos’ open carriage, wrought in the shape of Cenzi’s fractured globe, the blue of the seas a pure lapis lazuli, the green and gold of the continents a matrix of emeralds and gold, the crack that rent the world bright with tiny blood-red rubies. A teni chanted alongside each of the four wheels of the carriage and the wheels turned in response, while the green-robed Archigos himself stood atop the globe, pressing his own clasped hands to forehead as if he were no more than any of the people in the crowd. Four acolytes in white robes carried long poles, over which was draped an awning of gold-and-green silk, sheltering the Archigos from the elements.
Archigos Dhosti ca’Millac, despite his standing as head of the Con-cenzia Faith, hardly cut a magnificent figure. The dwarf was old-nearly as old as the Kraljica herself. His liver-spotted scalp was bordered by a short hedge of white hair just above the ears and low around the back of his skull. His already-shrunken stature was further diminished by the bowing of his spine, which forced his chin down onto his chest, and the arms which emerged from the short, wide sleeves of his stately robes were thin, wobbling with loose, wrinkled skin. Yet the eyes were alert and bright, and the mouth smiled.
Ana smiled in return, just seeing him; she had never been this close to the Archigos before, not even in the Temple during ceremonies. It was probably just coincidence, but he seemed to notice her as well, nodding once in her direction before turning back to the crowds. He lifted his hands, his voice-no doubt strengthened by his mastery of the Ilmodo-beginning to call the traditional blessing of Cenzi on the throngs.
Ana heard the disturbance before she saw it: another voice striving against that of the Archigos. Turning her head from the Archigos toward the crowd, she caught a glimpse of someone standing in the midst of the kneeling throngs. The gardai saw the man at the same moment and began to move toward him, but they were already too late. The stranger-she saw a ruddy complexion and hair the color of summer straw-moved his hands in a pushing motion and the gardai between him and the Archigos went down as if struck by an invisible fist, as well as those in a circle around him.
The acolyte next to Ana sucked in his breath; the teni in the driv-er’s seat of her carriage grunted in alarm. The crowd was shouting now:
“A Numetodo. .! The Archigos. .!” Ana couldn’t hear the magic-chanting of the man, but his mouth still moved and a blue-white, sputtering glow had swallowed his right hand. Ana had seen similar effects, had performed them imperfectly herself, for that matter. She knew the set of words that could conjure up the heat of the air, could concentrate it into a ball-but the Numetodo performed the spell faster than any teni, with just a few words. .
The gardai the man had struck down were starting to stagger up, but she knew none of them could reach him quickly enough to prevent the attack. Ana knew that the Archigos had seen the disturbance as well, but when she glanced at him he was still smiling, his hands still raised in blessing even though he’d stopped speaking. Otherwise, he had not reacted.
The Numetodo-he had to be one of that shadowy group; who else would dare to do something like this? — swung his arm in a throwing motion and the spitting glare in his hand arced toward the Archigos.
Ana, almost without realizing, had begun whispering a chant herself, and as the glow hissed in the air toward the Archigos-who still smiled-she cupped her hands before her and brought them together.
The ball of blue fire fizzled, sputtered, and vanished long before it reached the Archi
gos. The Numetodo, standing stupefied in the plaza as his attack failed, went down under a rush of the Garde Kralji. She saw his capture as she staggered with the release of her spell and the inevitable weariness surged over her. For a moment, there was darkness at the edges of her vision and she thought she might faint entirely away, but the shadow passed, leaving her with only an immense fatigue.
The disturbance was over almost as quickly as it had begun, the Garde Kralji re-forming their line as the attacker was hustled away from the plaza into one of the nearest buildings with his hands bound and his mouth gagged, as the Archigos-who seemed entirely unshaken and unperturbed by the incident-raised his voice over the noise of the crowd to finish the blessing. He gestured to the Garde Kralji, making obvious his intention to continue the procession, and the gardai formed an opening in the crowd for the Archigos to pass through in his carriage.
The Archigos looked at Ana and gestured to her.
For a breath, she thought she’d been mistaken, until the teni-driver spoke in a harsh, awed whisper. “Go on, Vajica. The Archigos asks for you.” She forced herself to ignore the desire to do nothing more than lay down and close her eyes as the inevitable weariness of spell-casting washed over her. Hesitantly, her legs aching, she walked toward the carriage, glancing somewhat nervously at the a’teni who stared at her as she approached.
She went to one knee alongside the globe and bowed her head, giving the Archigos the sign of Cenzi.
“Get up, Vajica. Please,” she heard the Archigos say, his voice amused. “And come up here with me. I’d like to speak with my new protector.” She heard a few of the a’teni behind her snicker at that, and her face reddened. But the Archigos was extending a stubby arm toward her and one of the carriage-teni had opened a door in Cenzi’s globe for her, revealing a set of short stairs that led to the platform on which the Archigos stood under his canopy of silk. She climbed up to him, going to a knee again as she reached the platform. Kneeling, she was as tall as the Archigos. She took the hand he extended to her and touched her lips to his palm. She felt him lifting her up and she rose.
“Can you stand?” he whispered to her.
“For a bit,” she answered.
“Then you should sit.” He pulled down a seat built into the compartment of the carriage. “It’s just as well, after all. Otherwise, you’d have to stand there,” he told her, and she noticed that the platform to the Archigos’ left was several inches lower. “Appearances,” he told her with a gentle smile, and she gratefully sank down onto the hard wooden seat, her head no longer higher than his. “I see that you’ve learned how to reverse an incantation as well as to create one, Vajica cu’Seranta.
Strange, I didn’t think that was something that was generally taught to acolytes. Nor, I think, does U’Teni cu’Dosteau know of counter-spells that can be cast quite so quickly.”
Ana felt her cheeks flush again, but the fatigue made her response slow. “Archigos, I-”
He waved off her protest with a gentle laugh. “I was never in any real danger. The Numetodo haven’t the faith to truly use the Ilmodo.
His attack would never have reached me, even if you’d done nothing, not with the a’teni here. And I have my own defenses if they’d failed.”
His grin tempered what might have been a rebuke.
“I’m sorry for my presumption,” she told him. “I should have realized. .”
“There’s no need to apologize, Vajica. You’ve only shown me that what I was told about you was correct. Now, ride with me so we can talk-no matter what happens, it’s important that the schedule isn’t interrupted, after all. It’s all about appearances.”
What does he mean, ‘what I was told about you. .’? Again, the Archigos’ quick, genuine smile made Ana relax and cooled the flush in her cheeks. The teni alongside the carriage were chanting, the silk awning above them flapping in the breeze as the acolytes holding it began to move and the carriage rolled smoothly and slowly forward. The a’teni filed behind the carriage and behind them the u’ and o’teni, and finally the acolyte choir, while the gardai with their long staffs moved into formation on either side of the street and the procession turned out from the plaza onto the Avi a’Parete. The Archigos waved to the crowds lining the boulevard even as he continued to speak to Ana. “Surely you wondered why I would ask to meet with you.”
“Yo u asked, Archigos?” she managed to blurt out. “I thought. .”
“I know what you thought,” Archigos ca’Millac answered. “You were wrong.”
Mahri
He lurked at the fringes of the crowd, as he always did.
Watching, as he always did.
Even in the warmth of the sun, Mahri wrapped himself in several layers, his clothing rent with great tears and the hems all tattered, the patterns on the cloth smeared with filth and blackened where they
dragged the ground. His hood was up, so that his scarred and ravaged face could only be glimpsed: the empty socket of his left eye, the smashed nose laying on the right cheek, the gaping darkness between his remaining teeth, the shiny white tracks of burns over the left side of his face, pulling and twisting at the flesh. Those who glanced at his face always quickly looked away-except sometimes the children who would point and stare.
“That’s just Mahri,” the parents would tell them, pulling the children away with a brief glance at Mahri himself, talking as if Mahri weren’t there, as if he couldn’t see or hear them. Sometimes, they might toss a bronze d’folia in his direction in compensation for their son’s or daughter’s rudeness. He’d stare at the tiny coin on the pavement, not deigning to pick it up. Perhaps for that reason, or perhaps for others, he was sometimes called “Mad Mahri.”
He generally didn’t attend the Archigos’ blessing, but he’d heard the rumors flowing through the nether regions of Nessantico; he’d seen the whispers of possibilities in his vision-bowl, and so he’d come. The Numetodo had been stupid, so stupid that Mahri decided that the clumsy assassination attempt must have been carried out entirely through the man’s own foolish impulse. Certainly Envoy ci’Vliomani wouldn’t have condoned this. No, this person had to be a rogue within the Numetodo, and one that the Envoy would quickly renounce if only to save his own flesh. Mahri watched the Garde Kralji hustle the man roughly away, shoving him through the door of a neighboring government building.
He shook his head; whoever the Numetodo was-and he was not one of those Mahri recognized, probably someone new to the city-he was destined for a slow, painful end.
But what interested Mahri more than the doomed would-be assassin was the young woman the Archigos brought into his carriage afterward. Mahri had seen her teni-driven carriage near Sutegate and he’d wondered who the Archigos had sent for, so he’d followed her to the temple. He’d seen that it was her defense that had foiled the attack.
He knew enough about the techniques of Ilmodo use by the teni that the speed and power with which the woman reacted had widened his remaining eye and made him scratch at the ruined skin of his chin.
Now he knew why an image of a young woman had haunted the vision-bowl.
This one. . this one would bear watching. Obviously the Archigos felt the same, for the woman stayed with him as the teni around the dwarf’s carriage began their chants and the carriage made its turn onto the Avi in its slow procession toward the Old Temple amid the renewed clamor of the wind-horns atop the temple domes and the cheers of the crowds-doubly pleased that their beloved religious leader had escaped unharmed.
As the crowds closed in around the Archigos, Mahri watched them go, unsurprised that the Archigos would keep to his routine despite the attack. After all, ritual was important in Nessantico. The city was bound and fettered and choked with ritual, as ancient and unyielding as the walls that had once enclosed it. The carriage passed within a few dozen strides of where Mahri lurked at the corner of an apartment building. He stared not only at the Archigos, but at the woman who sat alongside him, looking uncomfortable at the attention, her face wea
ry.
Mahri would watch this young woman. He would know who she was.
Mahri slunk back deeper into the shadows between the buildings.
Silent, a shadow himself, he slid away from the Avi and the noise, finding his own hidden path through the city.
Ana cu’Seranta
“You’re beginning to recover?” the Archigos asked, and Ana nodded. The Archigos had said nothing to her for several minutes, allowing her to gather herself. The fatigue was receding and she no longer felt as if she needed to sleep, though a deep ache still lingered in her muscles.
“I’m feeling much better now,” she told him. “Thank you.”
“So tell me, Vajica cu’Seranta, do you know why I wanted to speak with you?”
Ana shook her head vigorously at the Archigos’ question. “Certainly not, Archigos. In fact, I thought. .” She shook her head again.
The sound of the wind-horns faded as they moved away from the temple, but the crowds still hailed the Archigos as they passed, their clasped hands tight against their foreheads. The acolytes were still singing, another of Darkmavis’ compositions. The Archigos nodded to the people lining the Avi as they approached the Pontica a’Brezi Nippoli.
He raised his hand in greeting even as he spoke with Ana, not looking at her though she had the impression that he knew the expressions that twisted her lips and lowered her eyebrows. “Go on,” he said quietly.
“I thought that, if anything, I would hear only from U’Teni cu’Dosteau,” Ana continued. “As often as he corrected me or told me that I wasn’t trying hard enough or wasn’t paying close enough attention in his classes, I thought that he would give me a Note of Severance.
