by S L Farrell
“Why were you arguing with your vatarh?” Abini persisted. “I heard you, all the way in the garden.”
“Matarh. .” I don’t want to say it. I don’t know how to even begin.
“Tell me.”
Ana looked at her matarh’s face, saw the suspicion in it. She could feel her lower lip trembling, could feel the tears burning in her eyes. Her matarh’s features swam before her, and she wiped angrily at the betrayal of her eyes. “Please, Matarh. .”
“Tell me,” she repeated.
And so she did. Slowly. Haltingly. Feeling the shame and the guilt and the pain all over again. Her matarh sat there, listening, her head shaking more with each word until Abini finally spread her hands wide apart angrily and rose from the couch. “No!” her matarh shouted, the word echoing in the room. “You’re making this up. You’re lying. Your vatarh wouldn’t do that, Ana. Not Tomas. I don’t believe it and I won’t hear it. I won’t. It’s. . it’s evil. Tomas is a good man and he’s done all he could to provide for us, even with everything that Cenzi gave us to bear. How can you be so cruel to make those accusations-do you know the sacrifices Tomas made to get you accepted as an acolyte, to pay for all your instruction so you could wear those green robes and live in this luxury? Where is your gratitude, child? Oh, why did Cenzi bring me back to this. .?”
She began to sob, uncontrollably, and Ana, crying in sympathy and her own pain, went to her, trying to take her matarh in her arms and accomplish with an embrace what she could not do with words. But Abini recoiled, pushing her away with an inarticulate cry and a wild, angry gaze. She ran from the room as Sunna opened the door. The servant watched Abini rush past her and down the hall toward the outer doors.
“O’Teni?”
Ana forced herself to speak through the tears that choked her throat. “Go with her,” she said to Sunna. “Make certain she gets home safely.”
Jan ca’Vorl
“Will he die quickly, Vatarh?” Allesandra asked.
“I don’t know, Allesandra. Probably.”
Alongside Jan, the Hirzgin stirred. “This is not something our daughter needs to see, my Hirzg,” Greta said. One hand rubbed the welling arc of her belly. The Hirzg and Hirzgin, accompanied by several members of the court, stood on a viewing platform erected just outside the tent-palace. Starkkapitan Ahren Ca’Staunton, commander of the Firenzcian army, and U’Teni Semini cu’Kohnle, head of the war-teni, were at Jan’s left hand. Mara stood discreetly to his right on the other side of Greta, just slightly behind the Hirzgin so that she could make eye contact with Jan without Greta noticing, though Jan was certain that their occasional exchanges of smiles didn’t escape the rest of the court.
Below them, in the meadow lined by the army’s tent-city, a soldier, stripped to the waist with his back and chest displaying the bloodied stripes of a flogging, was bound with his arms behind him to a large post. A line of six archers had been placed facing him, an o’offizier to their side; the remainder of the troops stood in silent ranks around the meadow. Markell stood near the post, overseeing the proceedings.
Allesandra’s maidservant Naniaj started forward to take the girl away, but Jan shook his head and raised a finger. The woman stopped in mid-step.
“She’s only eleven. She’s too young,” the Hirzgin insisted again, making Jan scowl. Everything Greta said made him frown. Just the sound of her thin voice or the sight of her plain, long face with its forward-canted ca’Ludovici jaw or the prominent reminder of her fecundity was enough to make him grind his teeth. She knew her duty as wife, and performed it as if it were exactly that-and no more often than she must. The lack of regular intimacy between them hardly bothered Jan, nor did it prevent him from seeking that intimacy elsewhere, as a few bastard children scattered around Firenzcia testified. Perhaps Mara might end up producing another, if the midwife’s potions failed to work. “Please, my Hirzg, let Naniaj take her inside. .”
“Vatarh, if I’m to lead the army one day as Hirzgin, then I need to understand this,” Allesandra pleaded. Jan laughed, a roar of delight and amusement that spread out from him to Mara, to the Starkkapitan and U’Teni cu’Kohnle, then to the other courtiers like the ripples from a stone dropped in a pond. He stroked her hair, pressing her to his side possessively. Only the Hirzgin was frowning. Mara’s gaze twinkled at him over Greta’s shoulder as the Hirzgin glared at him.
“You see, wife,” he said. “The child knows what she must learn. She stays.”
“Hirzg. .” Greta began, but Jan glanced at her sharply.
“I said she will stay,” he repeated, the words sharp and cutting this time. “If you don’t care to witness this yourself in your condition, Hirzgin, it would frankly please us very much if you removed yourself.”
Greta’s mouth closed at that, her teeth clacking together as she turned away from him and waddled away from the platform. Mara gave the barest of nods to Jan, and then moved to follow the Hirzgin with the rest of her whispering, reluctant entourage. He heard Allesandra chuckle once, softly.
Below, the man was firmly lashed to the post, and Markell and the o’offizier with him stepped well back. Markell gestured; the archers placed arrows to bowstrings and drew them back with a creaking of
leather and wood. The bound man moaned. “What did he do, Vatarh?”
Allesandra asked.
“He’s a Numetodo,” Jan told her. “And he was stupidly vocal about his beliefs. Belief in Cenzi and the rewards that await the brave when they die are what sustains our troops, my darling. Without their faith, they will have no hope, and this fool tried to take that away from them with his words. I want them all to see what happens to those without faith.” At Jan’s left side, U’Teni cu’Kohnle nodded sternly in agreement with his words.
“Why are there six archers there, Vatarh? Wouldn’t just one be able to kill him?”
“All six will let loose their arrows at the starkkapitan’s command,”
Jan told her patiently. “That way, each of the archers can believe that it wasn’t their arrow that took the life of a fellow soldier. It helps them-
it’s difficult for a soldier to kill one of their own, even when that person has betrayed them and his oaths.”
Allesandra nodded solemnly at that. “I understand, Vatarh.”
“Hirzg, we’re ready,” Markell called up to Jan.
“Excellent,” Jan said. He stepped forward with Allesandra. He raised his voice, speaking loudly so that the bound man could hear him.
“Would you pray now?” he asked the man, whose head was turned up toward them. His pupils were large, frightened and bloodshot. Blood drooled from his mouth and nostrils. “Would you plead for Cenzi to save you? Would you ask that His hand move through mine?”
The man’s thick tongue slid over bruised lips. Sudden hope filled those desperate eyes. “Yes,” he managed to say, the voice barely audible.
“I do pray, Hirzg. I’m. . so sorry. I was wrong. . I renounce it all. .”
“What do you think, Allesandra?” Jan asked his daughter, who was
pressed to the railing of the platform, standing on tiptoes so that she could look down over the top. She looked up at him.
“I think a person in his position would say whatever they need to say to save themselves, Vatarh,” she answered.
Jan laughed again. “Indeed. They most certainly would.” He called
out to the court, to the soldiers watching. “Did you hear that?” he proclaimed. “Wisdom comes from the young.” He waved to the starkkapitan. “You may proceed, Starkkapitan ca’Staunton,” he said.
The Numetodo moaned and shrieked. He cursed and thrashed uselessly against the ropes holding him. Starkkapitan ca’Staunton gave the sign of Cenzi to Jan, then to U’Teni cu’Kohnle, and stepped forward.
He lifted his arm and the sextet of archers pulled their bows back to full draw, the leather-wrapped wood creaking ominously. His hand dropped as the Numetodo screamed and the bows sang. The Numetodo’s scream was cut off abruptl
y with the solid, dull stutter of arrowheads impacting flesh.
Jan saw Allesandra stare as the man slumped against the post, six arrows piercing his body, blood running down from the new wounds
to join that of the crusted old ones from his flogging. She stared at the patterns of the blood, at the rounded ball of the man’s head. The man’s mouth yawned open.
The offiziers barked orders to the troops and they began to file away.
Several men hurried forward to cut the executed man down and take away the body. Markell spoke briefly to the group of archers, clapping each of them on the back.
U’Teni cu’Kohnle nodded silently, as if the death of the Numetodo had particularly pleased him.
“I think, Vatarh,” Allesandra said very quietly, as the courtiers chattered excitedly around and behind Jan, “that all the soldiers and the court will remember this very well. I know I will.” He looked down at her, and the expression on her face was what he’d hoped to see. There was a pleased contemplation there, her head nodding faintly as if in satisfaction at a well-accomplished task. “I don’t think they will listen to the Numetodo anymore, Vatarh. They’ll only listen to you. . and to A’Teni Orlandi, too.”
He snorted at that, and U’Teni cu’Kohnle glanced over to them before he went to join Starkkapitan ca’Staunton. Jan had not let his daughter witness A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca’s reprisals against the Numetodo in Brezno, but she’d known about them, peppering him and the others with insistent questions. And, like the rest of them, she had seen the bodies gibbeted on the walls afterward; there had been no way to prevent that. “Yes. I think it will have that effect.”
“When A’Teni Orlandi is Archigos, will you divorce Matarh?”
“You wouldn’t want me to take your matarh away from you, would you?”
Allesandra seemed to ignore the question. Her gaze left him, looking down once again at the soldiers disposing of the mess on the grounds. The courtiers had moved politely away from the conversation, pretending that they weren’t trying to listen as they engaged in their own conversations. “I like Mara, Vatarh. She’s very nice to me, better than Matarh is, but you won’t marry her, will you, Vatarh? I think you should marry someone more important, who will help you get what you want.”
“And what would you know of Mara?” he asked her.
She gave him a look of exaggerated scorn, her mouth pursed, her
head shaking so that the soft curls around her cheeks swayed. “I’m eleven and I’m not stupid, Vatarh. And I don’t have to pretend I don’t see things, like Matarh does.”
Jan hugged her to him, and her arms clasped around his waist. He bent down and kissed the top of her head. “I love you, my dear. You’ll be a fine Hirzgin when the time comes.”
She turned her face up to smile at him. “I know,” she said. “You will teach me, Vatarh, and I’ll learn everything from you. You’ll see.”
He kissed her again.
“I’m looking forward to going to Nessantico for the Kraljica’s Jubilee, Vatarh,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see Nessantico.”
Jan smiled at that. “Oh, we’ll be going there, Allesandra,” he answered. “Soon enough.”
Ana cu’Seranta
“Your problem, Ana, is that your abilities make you too visible.”
“I’m sorry, Archigos.”
The dwarf chuckled. “I didn’t say that to reprimand you. Simply being with me makes you visible, also, and doing what I ask you to do also makes you visible. Most often, it’s not possible for a person to hide their power. You shouldn’t hide it. I’m telling you this so that you know: those people who are against me or against the Kraljica will perceive you in the same light they cast on me. You need to be aware of that fact, and prepare for it.”
“I. . I think I understand, Archigos.”
In truth, she wasn’t entirely certain what he was warning her against.
They were in a teni-driven closed coach, traveling toward the Pontica a’Brezi Veste and the Grande Palais on the Isle A’Kralji, the coach’s springs complaining metallically as they bounced over the cobbles on the bridge’s approach. The Archigos sat on velvet cushions across from her; she huddled against the side of the coach. The last few days had not gone well: the incident with her vatarh, then the visit with her matarh, which had left her emotionally drained. Her servants Beida, Sunna, and Watha had all been solicitous and comforting, but she also suspected that everything that was said or done in her apartments was being reported back to the Archigos. As if he’d overheard her thoughts, the Archigos took a long breath through his nose and smiled at her.
“Your matarh. . She understood what you told her?”
“No,” Ana answered. “She doesn’t want to believe me.”
“Give her time,” the Archigos said. “She heard what you said, even if she doesn’t want to admit it. She’ll be thinking it over and she’ll be asking questions of those around her; she may already realize it’s true.
She’ll listen. She’ll believe. In time.”
The Archigos’ figure swam in Ana’s suddenly-starting tears, and she turned her head away from him, pretending to look out the window of the carriage. She heard the rustle of cloth, then felt the dwarf’s hand touch hers. She drew her hand back with a hiss, and his withdrew. Neither of them said anything else for the duration of the trip.
Renard escorted them to the Kraljica’s inner apartments rather than to the Hall of the Sun Throne, passing through the knotted clusters of courtiers and supplicants. Ana could feel their appraising glances on her even as they bowed and brought clenched hands to their foreheads, but they were quickly past them as Renard conducted them down a long hall to where a duo of servants waited to open the doors for them.
The Kraljica was in the outer chamber, holding up a cloth draped over a canvas set on an easel. She let the cloth drop as they entered and Renard announced them. “How well has ci’Recroix captured you,
Kraljica?” the Archigos asked. “May we see?”
“No.” The refusal came perhaps too loudly and quickly, and the Kraljica frowned. “I’m sorry, Dhosti. That sounded harsh. It’s just that ci’Recroix doesn’t want anyone looking at the painting yet. It’s not done.
But I figure that since it’s me he’s portraying, I have some privileges.”
“Of course you do, Marguerite,” the Archigos answered. Ana saw that his glance went to the jars of paints, oils, and pigments on the table near the canvas, the jar of brushes and the smell in the room, and then to a large painting of a peasant family hung over the massive fireplace in the room. Ana found herself startled, looking at the painting: it was as if she were staring through a window into a cottage room. The figures seemed nearly alive, so vivid that she expected them to breathe and talk. “I thought ci’Recroix was painting you in the Hall.”
“I haven’t been feeling well lately, I’m afraid, and so he’s been working in here.” The Kraljica walked across the room toward the fire crackling in the hearth, and Ana saw the slow caution in her steps, the way her body stooped visibly, and the heaviness with which she leaned on the filigreed, silver-chased ebony cane she carried-not the way she’d appeared even a few days ago. She had shriveled, she was collapsing in on herself. She coughed, and the cough was full of liquid. Her face was pale, the skin of her arms so translucent that Ana could see the tracery of veins underneath. She seemed to have aged suddenly, the years she had held back so well for so long crashing down on her. Her voice trembled. The Kraljica stared up at the painting over the hearth, standing before the fire as if she were absorbing its heat. “I’ll be fine by the Gschnas. You’re coming, of course?” she said to the Archigos, turning with evident reluctance away from her examination of the painting.
“And you, Ana? Have you been to the Gschnas Ball before?”
“Never to the one here in the palace, Kraljica,” Ana told her.
“We’ve always gone to one of the other halls when we’ve gone at all.
Once, though,
four years ago, the A’Kralj made an appearance where my family was celebrating. I remember that.”
“I should introduce the two of you,” the Kraljica said. She cocked her head in Ana’s direction. “In fact, I’ll make certain of it.”
“Don’t go making plans for her, Kraljica,” the Archigos said. “Ana’s still getting used to being one of the teni. I chose her for the Faith and I don’t want you planning to steal her from me for your own purposes.”
The Kraljica sniffed at that as Ana felt her cheeks redden. “I’ll do what’s best for the Holdings, no matter what you might say.” Again, she glanced at Ana. “Dhosti, let’s talk. Ana will wait here; Renard, you’ll get her whatever she’d like. This business with Hirzg ca’Vorl is troubling me. I wish I were more certain of his intentions. . ”
With a final glance at the painting on the wall, Marguerite shuffled away from the fire toward a set of doors on the far wall. Ana caught a glimpse of another room beyond, with velveted red wallpaper, heavy sconces, and heavier furniture. The Archigos lifted a shoulder to Ana and followed.
“O’Teni?” Ana turned at Renard’s voice. He seemed nearly as old as the Kraljica, and the years seemed to have sucked him as dry as a length of smoked meat. He picked up a chair sitting next to the painter’s jar-littered desk and placed it between the hearth and the doors through which the Archigos and the Kraljica had vanished. “You’ll be most comfortable if you sit exactly there,” he said, with an odd emphasis in his voice. The chair he’d taken looked neither particularly comfortable nor well-placed; it certainly was less appealing than the cushioned, padded leather chair set before the fire. “Please sit here, O’Teni cu’Seranta,” he said again. “I’ll bring you tea and something to eat.” With that, he gave her the sign of Cenzi accompanied by a slight bow and left the room.
Ana hesitated. She glanced from the painting on the wall, where the family seemed to stare back at her, to the draped canvas. The painting, she knew, must be one of ci’Recroix’s, and that made her all the more tempted to lift the cover from the portrait of the Kraljica, to see what was there.
