A Magic of Twilight nc-1

by S L Farrell

The insignia carved in it was unfamiliar, and it was certainly not a ring a beggar would wear. He stole it or found it. He’ll have sold it by evening for a drink. “Those I represent have some of the same interests as the Numetodo, Vajiki. We, too, see the world changing, and we want to ensure that we have a place in it.”

  “And who is it that you. . represent?” Karl couldn’t avoid the hesitation, nor the faint smile that accompanied it.

  “I’m not prepared to reveal that yet.”

  “That makes it difficult for me to assess whether this proposed alliance between us would be advantageous.”

  “I’m prepared to make it worthwhile to you. What I can offer you now is knowledge. Other than the ca’Ludovici line, which of the ca’

  families is most dangerous to you?”

  Karl felt the scowl that tightened the muscles of his face. “That doesn’t require any thought at all,” Karl answered. “It’s the ca’Cellibrecca family, with A’Teni Orlandi ca’Cellibrecca the worst among them. No Numetodo is going to forget what he did in Brezno; the skeletons are still gibbeted on the town walls.”

  “A’Teni Orlandi’s daughter Francesca, here in Nessantico, holds her vatarh’s beliefs just as strongly,” Mahri said.

  “If that’s the knowledge you have to offer, then I’m afraid I have to tell you that we’re well aware of that. I’ve met the woman at the court. She’s made it quite clear where she stands, as has her husband U’Teni Estraven in his admonitions from the High Lectern. Estraven comes from the ca’Seurfoi family, after all, and his vatarh is Commandant of the Garde Brezno-the blood of the Numetodo killed there are on the commandant’s hands as well as those of A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca and Hirzg Jan.”

  Mahri was nodding. “Do you know this, Envoy? From what I hear, there’s no love between Estraven and Francesca. Their relationship is simply what it was intended to be-a political marriage: A’Teni

  ca’Cellibrecca’s reward to his commandant’s family for long and loyal service. That’s all. But Francesca is in love, Envoy. She is the A’Kralj’s paramour.”

  The announcement sent a lightning bolt shock coursing through Karl. If the A’Kralj was indeed making Estraven ca’Cellibrecca a cuck-old, and if the A’Kralj shared Francesca’s beliefs as well as her bed. .

  Karl shivered. He could imagine a dozen scenarios of what might happen, and none were pleasant. For the Numetodo, they could each make Brezno seem like a summer’s dance as soon as Justi took the Sun Throne as Kraljiki.

  “Cenzi’s balls,” Mika cursed softly, and Karl knew his friend’s thoughts had traveled along the same lines as his own.

  “You can prove this?” Karl asked, though his heart knew that Mahri had spoken the truth. He could feel it in the dread that burned in his stomach. He could hear it in the groan of the gibbet’s chains.

  “If I do, will I have your ear, Envoy ci’Vliomani? Will you want to talk further with me?”

  A glance at Mika. A quick nod. “Yes.”

  “Good,” Mahri answered. His hand came from under his clothing again, this time with a scrap of grimy paper on which Karl could see a scribbled address. “Be here tonight, an hour after Third Call. I’ll meet you there. Just you. Alone.”

  With that, Mahri turned and began walking back toward the Pontica. He stopped halfway and looked back at them. “What you smell

  here is the true odor of the city,” he said. “Without the perfumes and the grand houses, the jewelry and the clothing. This is the city stripped of its pretensions. And we all, eventually, end up like your friend above us.” Mahri pointed, and Karl and Mika followed the gesture to the cage holding Dhaspi’s body.

  When they looked down again, Mahri was gone.

  Dhosti ca’Millac

  Clawed feet clicked on the tiled floor; a hissing, malevolent

  breath scented the air with the foul odor of carrion, and the heat from the creature’s body made him sweat. Dhosti’s eyes opened in the darkness.

  He could feel the demon creeping closer to him as he lay there, but he couldn’t move. The muscles in his body were locked and frozen. sweat beaded his forehead as he felt the long, taloned hands of the beast clutch at the covers. Then the bed shifted as the thing slowly crawled up the short length of his body.

  The creature hissed and burbled and chuckled. Dhosti heard and felt it more than he saw it, but there were two flaring red points of light in the room: the beast’s eyes. The creature climbed over him until it was sitting perched on his chest, as heavy as a chest of lead ingots and growing heavier, pressing down on him until he couldn’t breathe, until his rib cage threatened to burst and the bed’s frame to collapse under the demon’s massive weight. “Cenzi sent me,”

  the creature spat as Dhosti struggled to pull air into his lungs. “He sent me to punish you. .”

  “Archigos, A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca is in the outer chamber. Archigos?”

  Dhosti started and blinked. The pressure on his chest eased as the memory of the nightmare faded. His stubby hands were clenched atop the papers on his desk. The bright colors of his invitation to the Gschnas glittered between his fists. He took a breath and unclenched them; the joints ached and protested. “Thank you, Kenne. Give me a few minutes, then send the a’teni in. Oh, and Kenne. . wait long enough to annoy the man, would you?”

  Kenne grinned at that. “With much pleasure, Archigos.”

  As Kenne closed the door, Dhosti groaned as he stretched and stood up on the stool in front of his chair. His entire body was sore, and flames seemed to shoot from his curved upper spine as he tried to straighten.

  The effort barely lifted his chin above his chest. “Once, you could have flung yourself into a double somersault from the desk and landed on your feet.” He shook his head as the thought stirred memories of his days as a performer: the crowds, the applause, the sheer joyful vigor of those moments of seeming flight. “And you didn’t talk to yourself then, either. . ” He stepped carefully down from the stool, supporting himself with a hand on the desk, and took his cane in his hand. He hobbled painfully to the ornate throne on a dais at the other end of the long room. A few hard chairs faced it from the floor. He glanced up at the fractured globe of Cenzi carved in the wooden back of the throne, at the varnished, contorted bodies of the Moitidi clustered around the globe. “Cenzi sent me. He sent me to punish you. .”

  “You didn’t have to bother,” he told the memory. “I’m punished enough in this old body. You could at least let me sleep.”

  Groaning, he pulled himself up onto the dais and then onto the padded seat. Like his desk chair, the back of the throne had been modified by a local carpenter to accommodate his bowed spine; Dhosti sighed as he sat back in its comfortable embrace. The chair itself had served as the throne for every Archigos for three hundred years now, since the time of Archigos Kalima III. Although there was little of Kalima’s throne left, pieces of the original wood were always incorporated into the throne as it was refurbished or altered for each new Archigos. He sat on long history.

  Dhosti found himself nearly dozing again when Kenne’s knock finally came at the door and A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca entered in a swirl of green robes trimmed with intricate arabesques of golden thread.

  “Orlandi, please come in and sit,” he said, waving a stunted arm at the seats in front of the throne. “I trust that Kenne has given you something to drink or eat while you were waiting? Kenne, if you’d see that we’re not disturbed. .”

  Ca’Cellibrecca grunted a monosyllabic reply as Kenne nodded and closed the door. He clasped his hands on his staff and raised it to his forehead, but his obeisance wasn’t to Dhosti but to the globe of Cenzi above him. “I’ve heard what your new pet o’teni did this morning,”

  the man said without preamble as he brought his hands down and the door closed. He sat, the joints of the chair groaning under him. Double chins wobbled as he spoke. Where Dhosti seemed to be shrinking into himself as he aged, ca’Cellibrecca was growing larger. Everything about him was ponderous, his st
entorian manner of speaking no less than his girth. “Seems she used the Ilmodo to put a rather large hole in the wall of her vatarh’s house. Given some of the other rumors I’ve heard, I wonder if you haven’t chosen to give your Marque to someone best suited to be a war-teni. Here in Nessantico, she seems to be a wild sword.”

  “No one was seriously injured, Orlandi.”

  “Not this time. But I understand her vatarh was injured, and the neighbors are understandably terrified. What of next time?”

  “There will be no next time. It’s over.”

  “Can you guarantee that, Dhosti? Let’s talk frankly here, at least.

  When O’Teni cu’Seranta’s matarh suddenly recovers from Southern Fever into full health, I have to wonder whether it was Cenzi’s Will or someone who has ignored the Divolonte.”

  “Are you making an accusation, Orlandi? I was there, after all.

  Should I call a Council of Examination together so I can give them my witness?”

  Ca’Cellibrecca gave the slightest shake of his head; his eyes, already masked under the weight of their eyelids, narrowed to slits. “Not at the moment.”

  “Then why are you telling me this?”

  Dhosti thought he saw the flicker of a smile on ca’Cellibrecca’s lips.

  The man’s hands spread wide before coming back to rest in his green-clothed lap. “You know me, Dhosti. I follow the Divolonte. Always.

  Strictly. I expect those to whom I attend to do the same.”

  “I know,” Dhosti answered quietly. “Your devotion has been quite. . visible.”

  Again, the smile came and his eyes widened slightly. “I do what is necessary. As the Archigos should as well.”

  “Then perhaps it’s fortunate that the Concord A’Teni named me Archigos and not you.”

  The smile vanished. The eyes slitted again. In his lap, the a’teni’s fingers tightened into his palms. “ ‘Tell your enemy that he offends you before you strike, for he may not understand what it is he does,’ ” he quoted.

  “I know the quote,” Dhosti said, nodding. He pretended nonchalance, but the tea he’d had this morning burned again in his throat. His spine ached even against the padded throne back, but he knew if he moved, he would groan at the pain it would cause, and he didn’t want ca’Cellibrecca to hear that. He forced himself to remain still. Dhosti knew that he could not afford to make the mistake of underestimating ca’Cellibrecca’s influence among the other a’teni. If the man was going to quote that verse of the Divolonte to him, then Dhosti needed to make certain that he still had the support he believed he had. “Let me finish it for you. ‘. . but if he does not change afterward, then make your blow quick and strong, and don’t hold back your fury.’ It’s come to that? Do I offend you so greatly, Orlandi?”

  “It’s not me you offend but the entire Faith, Dhosti. I’ve made no secret of my feelings on that, and I tell it to your face now. Cenzi blessed you and brought you to your position. I’ve seen how well you used to craft the Ilmodo and I know that, at least at one time, Cenzi smiled on you. I’ve even admitted how much I admire your intellect and your skill. But in this time especially, when Concenzia needs to remain with the Toustour and the Divolonte, I see you falling away from those tenets or ignoring them. You’ve become soft, Dhosti.”

  “We believe the same things. We simply interpret the Divolonte differently, Orlandi. That’s all. The Toustour is the word of Cenzi and we agree on that; the Divolonte, however, is only a set of laws fallible people have created to interpret the path the Toustour shows us.”

  Ca’Cellibrecca’s head was shaking before Dhosti had finished. “No,”

  he answered before Dhosti’s voice had even faded. “There are no interpretations of the Divolonte any more than there are of the Toustour. There is only the truth, right there in the words Cenzi has given us. You convinced the Kraljica that she could coddle the Numetodo and even listen to their entreaties when they, in fact, threaten everything we believe in-that was bad enough. And now you allow this protegee of yours to flaunt the Divolonte as well. I tell you, Archigos, that your arrogance is visible and I’m not the only one who sees it. While you have been sitting there doing nothing, there are those within Concenzia who are less patient and more faithful, and we have more power than you think.”

  Dhosti again feigned nonchalance. He suspected it fooled neither of them. “What is it that you want me to do?”

  “What you should have done all along. The Kraljica listens to you.

  Advise her that this tolerance of the Numetodo must stop. Tell her to use the laws that are already in place that she ignores. Stop giving audiences and diplomatic privileges to the delegates the Numetodo sent to Nessantico from Paeti or Graubundi. Send this grotesque ‘Envoy’

  ci’Vliomani away, or better yet, toss him in the Bastida. The Numetodo threaten our society and all that we believe, and their presence will tear the Holdings and the Concenzia Faith apart. The Numetodo are a pes-tilence. One doesn’t rid oneself of a swarm of rats by inviting them into your house. You capture them and you eliminate them.”

  The man’s words sent a shudder through Dhosti’s contorted body.

  “You sound so certain of yourself, Orlandi.”

  “I am. As you should be. I pray to Cenzi every day for His guidance. And I’m not alone, Archigos. Talk to A’Teni ca’Xana of Malacki, A’Teni ca’Miccord of Kishkoros, A’Teni ca’Seiffel of Karnmor. Do you want me to keep going, Dhosti? You know I can.”

  This is my fault. Dhosti sighed. I was sleeping here too long, and I’ve let this poison fester until it may be too late to stop it. Cenzi, forgive me. I was a poor servant to You. “Then you must do what you must do, Orlandi.

  Summon a Council of Examination against me if you can get the votes of enough of the a’teni. That’s also in the Divolonte.”

  Orlandi rose from his chair. Again he clasped hands over his staff and lifted it toward the throne. “I’ve done what I needed to do, Archigos. I’ve given you my warning, and I hope you can reflect on it, pray to Cenzi for guidance, and change. I see you leading the Faith to the very precipice, and it’s not only my inclination but my solemn duty to do all and everything I can to change that course.”

  “I consider myself adequately warned, A’Teni.”

  “Good.” Ca’Cellibrecca began to turn to leave, then hesitated.

  “We’ve never been friends, Archigos. Neither one of us would pretend that. But I want you to understand that I only want what is best for Concenzia. That’s my sole concern.”

  “As it’s mine,” Dhosti answered.

  A nod. Heavily, ca’Cellibrecca made his way to the door and tapped on it with the head of his staff. Kenne opened the doors, glancing sympathetically toward Dhosti as the a’teni passed him. “Can I get you anything, Archigos?”

  Dhosti shook his head and Kenne closed the doors again.

  “Cenzi sent me. He sent me to punish you. .” He could feel the crush-ing weight of the demon on his chest and he could not take a breath.

  “I don’t care. Take me,” he said aloud to Cenzi, to the demon, but the weight was already lifting and he could breathe again.

  “Tell me that I’m right,” he said to the air. “Is that too much to ask?”

  But there was no answer.

  Ana cu’Seranta

  “Matarh! I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  Abini-her eyes wide as she looked all around her-entered the reception room of Ana’s apartment behind Watha, who nodded to Ana and shut the door again. Ana took her matarh’s hand, led her to the soft brocade of the couch before the fire, and sat beside her. “You’re looking so well, the way I remember you. I’ve missed you so much, Matarh. Do you remember? — while you were sick, I used to come to see you every morning before I had to go to the Old Temple for classes. We prayed together, and I’d talk to you. Do you remember that at all?”

  Abini was shaking her head, either in answer to Ana or because of what she saw around her. “Ana, this is all yours
. .?”

  “Yes,” Ana told her. “The Archigos gave this apartment to me. And it’s yours as well, Matarh, if you ever want to stay here with me.”

  That brought Abini’s gaze back to Ana with a quick, sharp movement of her head. “Why?” she asked. “Why would I want to stay here, Ana? Is that why-” She closed her mouth abruptly.

  Ana sighed, taking her matarh’s hands again. “What happened yesterday with Vatarh was a mistake, Matarh. I let myself get too angry, and I shouldn’t have.”

  “How could you possibly become so angry with your vatarh that you

  would use the Ilmodo against him?”

  Ana shook her head. She had spent the night restlessly, unable to sleep, wondering what she should say to her matarh. In the end, after much reflection and prayer, she had decided to say nothing. Perhaps Vatarh will change now that Matarh’s well again. Maybe he will be the person I used to love. Perhaps he was right and we should both forget what happened.

  The decision still didn’t feel right; it left a burning in her stomach, but to confess. .

  Ana took a long breath. “We argued, Matarh. Why doesn’t matter.

  Let’s not talk about it. Let’s enjoy our time together, now that we can once again.” Ana rose quickly from the couch, not wanting her matarh to see what was in her face. “I’ll ask Sunna to brew some tea, and she makes wonderful sweet biscuits.”

  “Not talk about it? You nearly destroyed our-my-house, Ana, and the gossip from the neighbors-” She stopped again, putting her hands to her lips, and Ana sank down beside her again.

  “Matarh, you’ve been sick so long. I was terribly afraid that I was going to lose you.” So much so that I made certain I wouldn’t, even against the rules of the Faith. But that was something she couldn’t say, either.

  “Please. You’re better now, and that’s what’s important. We have so much to talk about. Have you started going out yet? I’m certain that I could get you an invitation to the Gschnas: at the Grande Palais, Matarh. Would you like that? The Gschnas at the Palais itself, instead of some old hall filled with ci’ and ce’.”