by S L Farrell
“It wasn’t the Ilmodo, Commandant,” Karl said. “It was what we call the Scath Cumhacht.”
“Call it whatever you like,” ca’Rudka answered. “That’s only semantics.” Ca’Rudka continued to stare, unblinking even in the bright sun.
Karl found the man’s gaze disconcerting, but he couldn’t look away. “I should tell you that ce’Coeni signed a full confession before he died.”
“And that was of his own free will, no doubt.”
“I understand your skepticism, Envoy, but it happens often enough.
Some criminals wish to ease their souls by admitting their guilt before they go to meet Cenzi’s soul-weigher. I find it difficult to believe that ce’Coe was acting entirely alone, Envoy. I suspect there were other Numetodo involved.”
“Am I to be arrested, then, Commandant? Did his confession name
me as an accomplice? If so, I appreciate that you brought me here before taking me to the Bastida so I could sign my own confession for you.”
The gardener approached, and the commandant turned away for a moment to take the small clay pot from him. “Here,” ca’Rudka said to Karl, handing him the pot. Karl accepted the plant, and ca’Rudka reached toward him to stroke the leaves with a forefinger. “A garden can accept many plants: if they prove their own beauty, if they provide the right accents for the gardener’s taste, and if they can safely coex-ist with all the other plants. So-weed or flower, Envoy? Which is it, I wonder? Take care of that plant, water it and give it sun, and you’ll learn.”
“But you already know which it is, do you not, Commandant?”
Ca’Rudka’s eyes glittered. He smiled again, with a flash of teeth. “I do indeed, Envoy. But you don’t, and that’s what you need to decide, isn’t it?”
Ana cu’Seranta
When they were ushered into the Kraljica’s presence by Renard, the Kraljica was seated on the Sun Throne. There were perhaps three or four dozen other people in the long Hall of the Throne, gathered near the doors: chevarittai, cousins, diplomats, supplicants, courtiers; all waiting for their tightly scheduled moments with the Kraljica, to be seen in her company, to ask for favors or promote their pet causes. Their various conversations-Ana overheard a circle of young women talking about what they would wear to the Gschnas, the False World Ball that would take place in the coming week-died momentarily as she followed the Archigos into the hall and they all turned to look. The Kraljica herself was separated from the ca’-and-cu’
by several strides, with a painter daubing his brush on a canvas before her, though none of the courtiers were close enough to see the painting well. There was an odd black box on a table next to the painter.
“That will be all for now, Vajiki ci’Recroix,” the Kraljica said, her voice sounding sleepy and tired as Renard closed the doors behind Ana and the Archigos. Everyone stared at the newcomers. Ana felt herself being examined, weighed and measured in their gazes. “If you would leave us. .” the Kraljica said to the room, and the courtiers bowed and murmured and left the room in a fluttering of bright finery. “Archigos Dhosti,” they said, nodding politely to the dwarf as they passed.
“Good evening, O’Teni. So pleased to meet you, O’Teni,” they said to Ana, and they also smiled to her. She could see annoyance behind some of the expressions despite the careful social masks-irritation at the schedule and routine being disrupted, at their own appointments being set back or perhaps lost entirely. But Ana smiled back, as was expected, and her smile meant as much as theirs.
The painter had spread a linen sheet over the canvas so that the work was hidden. Then he, too, turned, and his gaze went to the Archigos and then to Ana. He held Ana too long in his regard for her comfort, as if she were a scene he was considering sketching, before he began bustling about cleaning up his pigments and brushes. As he did so, the Kraljica pushed herself up from the chair and gestured to them as she walked to the balcony of the room. She moved like an ancient, Ana noticed, with her back bowed much like the Archigos’. She took small, careful, shuffling steps.
“You’re not feeling well, Kraljica?” the Archigos asked with obvious concern in his voice as they went out into the sunshine. Below them, in the courtyard, the gardens were bright with colors set in orderly squares and rows.
“My joints are all a bother today, Dhosti; I suspect it will be raining tomorrow, the way they’re aching. And I’ve been sitting too long and talking to too many sycophants.” She grimaced, taking a cushioned seat on the balcony. Inside, they could hear the painter gathering up his case and leaving, the sound of his boot soles loud on the tile. “Please, Dhosti, I know your aches and pains are easily as bad as mine. Please sit.”
She gestured to another chair, and the Archigos sat. The Kraljica made no such offer to Ana. She remained standing, trying to appear composed and calm as the Kraljica gazed openly at her, with lips pressed together into an appraising moue. Ana kept her eyes properly lowered but glanced at the Kraljica’s face through her lashes, a face she’d glimpsed only from a great distance on those occasions when the Kraljica appeared in public. She wore a gown of dark blue silk liber-ally embroidered with pearls, an emerald set at the center of the high bodice; her hands, arthritic in appearance and pale, lay unmoving in her lap. Her throat was covered by lace, but underneath the thin fabric Ana could see loose skin hanging under the chin. Her pure white hair was trapped in a comb inlaid with abalone and more pearls. Her mouth, puckered in reflection, was set in a spiderweb of wrinkles, but the eyes-a thin, watery, and delicate blue-were gentler than Ana had expected, lending mute credence to the Kraljica’s popular title as “Genera a’Pace.” For the last three decades the delicate fabric of alliances she’d spun had kept the various provinces and factions within the Holdings from erupting into open hostilities. There’d been the inevitable skirmishes and attacks, but open warfare had been avoided.
To Ana, the Kraljica seemed impossibly regal, and Ana kept her hands clasped together in front of her to stop their nervous trembling at being in her presence.
“How has your sleep been, Dhosti?”
“As it is always, Kraljica. I’m too often. . visited during the night.
That hasn’t changed. The herbs from the healer you sent me helped for a bit, but lately. .” He shrugged.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Then the Kraljica’s gaze was on Ana again.
“She’s so young, Dhosti.”
Ana saw the Archigos shrug in the corner of her vision. “We forget, Kraljica. They all look too young to us now. But when I was her age, I was also already a teni. When you were her age, you took the throne and married. She’s adept with Ilmodo, that’s what matters. A natural talent, as strong as I was at her age.”
“I understand her matarh was. .” The Kraljica hesitated, and she lifted her chin, still staring at Ana. “. . blessed by Cenzi when you anointed her.”
The Archigos smiled at that. “Your sources are very good, Kraljica.”
“They’re also concerned.”
“I know which of the a’teni to watch, Kraljica.”
A nod. “You know, of course, that the Archigos’ life was never in real danger, not from that fool Numetodo.”
Ana started, realizing belatedly that the Kraljica was addressing her, not the Archigos. She cleared her throat, bringing her hands to her forehead. “I didn’t think about it at all, Kraljica,” she said. “There wasn’t time to think.”
“The Archigos has given you a great honor, making you an o’teni. I hope you prove worthy of it.”
The Archigos shifted in his seat and Ana glanced quickly over to him. She could still feel the way he’d touched her knee this morning, as if she were a piece of art or a bottle of fine wine he’d purchased-in that sense, it had been different than when her vatarh touched her. The Archigos hadn’t touched her since, but the memory clung to her and colored the smile she gave the Kraljica. “I will try, Kraljica. Whatever Cenzi wills, will be.” The aphorism from the Toustour was all she could think to say. She f
elt as if she were drowning here, lost in innuendo and hidden meanings.
“You’ll need to do better than rely on cliches,” the Kraljica said sharply, then grimaced. “Forgive me, O’Teni; I forget how new you are to your station, and that you don’t realize what is expected of you. When in private, I prefer directness and blunt honesty from my advisers. In private, I expect you to tell me what you truly think and believe. You can save polite evasions for when other ears can hear them.”
The criticism reminded her of what U’Teni cu’Dosteau had told her, back when she’d been accepted as an acolyte. “You have no idea what you’ve put yourself into. If you did, you wouldn’t be standing in front of me with that meaningless smile pasted to your lips. I know who you are and what you are, Vajica cu’Seranta. Unless you’re more than I believe you to be, you’ll be broken and gone in a few months. You’ll go sniveling back to your family. .” But her resolve hadn’t broken and she hadn’t left; now, years later, she was here.
“You shouldn’t apologize, Kraljica,” Ana said. “You’re right to criticize me. I realize that I know far too little. But I also know that I can learn what I need to understand, and I can learn it quickly. This is what I wanted-this is more than I’d dared to want-for me and for my family. I intend to do all I must to prove myself worthy of the great honor that’s been given me.”
The Kraljica gave a quick laugh that ended in a cough. “Nicely said, at least.” She patted her mouth with a linen kerchief. “You trust her, Dhosti?” the Kraljica asked the Archigos.
“She knows where her loyalty needs to be,” the Archigos answered.
“Don’t you, O’Teni cu’Seranta?”
Ana forced herself to smile. The Kraljica might indicate that she
wanted directness, but Ana wasn’t yet prepared to leave herself that vulnerable. The events of yesterday had swept her up into a whirlwind, and until she found solid ground again, she was going to continue to act as society had always told her she should. She knew from her vatarh, from her matarh, from her great-vatarh and — matarh, from her peers: the cu’ lived always on the precipice of society, looking for a path upward to the ca’ but always aware that it was easier to slide downward than to climb. She also understood the fist concealed in the velvet glove of the Archigos’ words. “I do, Archigos,” she answered. “I serve Cenzi, and I serve Nessantico.”
That, at least, seemed to mollify the Kraljica. “So what type of teni are you?” she asked. “Did the Archigos save you from having to light the Avi a’Parete every night for the rest of your life, or from stopping the city from burning down, or from driving one of his carriages, or- Cenzi forbid-from purifying the sewage or some other teni task? Are you fire, water, air, earth?”
“She could do any of them,” the Archigos said. “She could easily be a war-teni or more.”
The Kraljica sniffed. “Impress me, then,” she said. She waved an indulgent hand toward Ana.
Ana resisted the impulse to scowl angrily at the Archigos for putting her in this position. She thought madly, trying to decide what to do or what the Kraljica might consider “impressive.” You’ll need to help me, Cenzi. . She closed her eyes with the prayer, and the words evoked the Ilmodo. She felt it swirling around her, the path to the Second World yawning open, snarled energy caught in strands of violent orange and soothing blues, waiting for her to shape them, to use them. .
She didn’t know what birthed the decision. Perhaps it was the draped canvas she could glimpse through the balcony doors. There had been other paintings all along the corridors down which she and the Archigos had just walked: the Kraljica as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother, as a mature woman. Ana had been most
struck by a painting of the Kraljica on her coronation. The expression on the new Kraljica’s face had struck Ana as perfect: she could see both resolve and uncertainty fighting there, as Ana imagined she might have felt herself on being handed such awesome responsibilities at a young age.
She heard the chant change, felt her hands moving, as if Cenzi Himself had taken them. She sculpted the Ilmodo. .
The Kraljica gasped audibly, and Ana opened her eyes.
Standing at the edge of the balcony, leaning against the polished stone railing a few strides from Ana as if she were gazing out into the gardens, was the Kraljica-young, wearing her coronation robes, the signet ring of the Kralji heavy on the index finger of her right hand. She turned to the three of them and smiled. “Fifty years,” she said, and it was the Kraljica’s voice, soft with youth. “I would never have imagined it.” She smiled again. .
. . and the strands fell apart in Ana’s mind, too difficult to hold in their complexity. The weariness of the Ilmodo came over her then, and she put her hand on the railing to keep her balance.
The Kraljica was still staring at where the image of her earlier self had stood. “I’d forgotten: how I looked, how I sounded. .” Her voice trembled, then she pressed her lips together momentarily. “I’ve never seen a teni do this. Dhosti? Could you?”
The Archigos was also staring, but at Ana. She could feel his appraisal. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t. At least not easily. The girl makes up spells rather than using ones taught to her.”
“No wonder A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca is muttering about the Divolonte and the Numetodo with her,” the Kraljica said.
Ana shook her head. “It’s Cenzi’s Gift,” she insisted. “It’s not against what He wants. It can’t be.”
The Kraljica seemed to chuckle, nearly silently. “What you think might not matter, O’Teni, if ca’Cellibrecca gains any more power in the Concord A’Teni. But it’s obvious that you’d be utterly wasted as a light-teni.” She exhaled deeply, looking again at the spot where the illusion had stood. “Let’s talk,” she said, “because I find that I’m growing concerned at what I hear from both outside and inside our borders. . ”
Jan ca’Vorl
Jan glanced down the ranks of soldiers as his carriage passed
by, their right hands fisted and raised in salute, their faces grim and serious. Most of them were young, but there were grizzled sergeants here and there whose scarred faces remembered the eastern campaigns on the plains of Tennshah and the glorious victory at Lake Cresci, where the Firenzcian army had nearly been destroyed before turning the tide.
The near-disaster at Lake Cresci had been the fault of the a’teni of Brezno at the time, who had sent but a quarter of the war-teni that Hirzg Karin, Jan’s vatarh, had requested to support the ground troops with their magic. The campaign had nearly been lost in that final battle before Jan and the Chevarittai of the Red Lancers had broken through to storm the Escarpment of the Falls and send the T’Sha’s turbaned troops fleeing back to the Great Eastern River.
Jan had sustained his own first battle wounds there, protecting the lamented Starkkapitan ca’Gradki of the Lancers. With that battle, he’d demonstrated to his vatarh the Hirzg that his second child-the one who was hardly the favorite, the one that he invariably denigrated and mocked and derided-was a far braver and more decisive leader than his first son Ludwig, who the Hirzg had named as heir. Jan had taken more territory from Tennshah than his vatarh could have hoped-before Kraljica Marguerite insisted that the borders be restored to what they’d been before the war, and given another one of her seemingly endless grandnieces to the T’Sha to seal the vile treaty that wasted what had been gained through the lives of hundreds of Firenzcian troops.
That memory of that treachery galled, still, two full decades later, bringing stinging bile to Jan’s throat. The Kraljica had stolen Jan’s victory, his victory over both Tennshah and over his brother Ludwig. She had squandered the proof that Jan was more fit to be the next Hirzg than the simpering, vain fool Vatarh obviously preferred. Had both Ludwig and Hirzg Karin not succumbed to the Southern Fever within a few months of each other-five years ago now-Jan would never have taken the throne of Brezno.
Yes, the memory still galled. But Jan ignored it and saluted the troops from his sea
t open to the air, nodding now and then to those with the star of Tennshah pinned to their uniforms.
Several large tents had been set at one end of the field, and the carriage pulled up there. Servants rushed forward: to take the reins of the horses, to open the door of the carriage, to set a stool on the ground, to take his hand as he dismounted, to relieve him of his sword and his military overcoat, to hand him his walking stick, and to offer refreshments and drinks which he waved aside.
Markell, his aide, was there directing the staff. “Your Hirzgin and daughter are within, my Hirzg.”
Jan followed Markell between the twin rows of bowing servants and court followers and into the welcome shade of the tents. The tents had been arranged so as to mimic the Palais a’Brezno, the “rooms” curtained off, carpets laid over the grass and furniture set along the “walls” as if they had sat there for years. He allowed himself to be escorted down canvas-lined corridors to where another servant held aside a flap painted to resemble a wooden door. Inside the room-a separate tent-he could see his eleven-year-old daughter Allesandra playing with a set of toy soldiers on a table, while the Hirzgin Greta, grandniece of the Kraljica, rose with her ladies-in-waiting from the circle of seats where they’d been chatting. Greta was heavily pregnant with their third child-Jan had performed his duties as husband every month or so, grudgingly, but Greta had remained stubbornly barren since Allesandra’s birth until this unexpected, late pregnancy. Greta was helped to her feet by Mara cu’Paile, one of her attendants; as Jan nodded to their courtesies, he caught Mara’s eye and her smile in return.
“Please, sit and take up your conversation, Hirzgin, Vajica,” he said. Greta had lowered her own gaze, as if afraid to look to see where the Hirzg had put his true attention. The relationship between Vajica cu’Paile and the Hirzg was something that any close observer of the court could see but that no one-not Greta, not Mara’s own husband, nor any of the inner circle of the court-would dare to mention aloud.
