A Magic of Twilight nc-1

by S L Farrell

On the morning of the following day, a note came from the Archigos: he would meet her at the Kraljica’s Palais immediately. The carriage was already waiting for her; the Archigos was not in it, but the driver was the same e’teni who had taken her to Oldtown. He glared at her accusingly as he opened the carriage door.

  At the palace, Renard was waiting to escort her to the Kraljica’s chambers. “How is she?” Ana whispered as they walked. The mood in the palais was somber; the servants Ana glimpsed hurried about their tasks, silent and frowning. Renard shook his head.

  “I pray, O’Teni, as does the Archigos, but I fear that Cenzi calls her too strongly.”

  The hall servants opened the door to the Kraljica’s chambers as they approached. “The Archigos said for you to go in directly to her bedroom. I’ll wait here,” Renard said. Ana nodded, and the old man took her hands before she could move away. “If you can help,” he said, “the healers with their potions and leeches have been able to do nothing, but you. . you were able to keep her alive. I know that it is what she would want, and Cenzi will forgive you.”

  He released her hands and turned away before she could respond, leaving Ana alone. The Archigos’ voice called to her from the bedroom. “Ana? Come here. .”

  The bedroom looked the same as she’d last seen it, all but the Kraljica. Her face was a pale skull draped with parchment above the covers, strands of white hair clinging to it stubbornly. She looked already dead, her eyes and cheeks sunken.

  “She’s nearly gone,” the Archigos said. He was seated alongside the bed, looking like a wizened child in the tall chair with his legs dangling below the robes of his office, clad in white stockings and slippers. She looked for accusation in his face and saw nothing there but grief.

  “I’m sorry, Archigos.” She came to the other side of the bed and looked down at the Kraljica. “I can’t help her. Not anymore.”

  “Try,” he said. The single word was an order. The deep sadness in his face had been erased. He looked across the bed to Ana, his eyebrows raised angrily.

  “Archigos, I have tried. You know that. And the Divolonte. .”

  He cut her off, lifting himself nearly off the seat with his hands.

  “You will try again,” he repeated. “I brought you into the Faith from obscurity; I have raised you up. I’ve protected you. I have given you and your family all that they have. I know where you went the other night and I’ve said nothing. I’ve protected you from enemies you don’t even know you have, Ana. You will try.” She started to protest, but his voice softened. “The Kraljica has been my support and my dearest friend for decades, and that she’s stricken is not Cenzi’s plan but someone else’s.

  I know what I ask of you, and I know the Divolonte. Try. One more time.”

  The Kraljica’s mouth opened slightly in a sour breath. Ana nodded.

  “I’ll try,” she told the Archigos. She closed her eyes, drawing in a long, calming breath, trying not to think of the exhaustion and pain that were going to follow.

  The words of the chant sounded false in her ears. She kept thinking of what she’d seen with the Numetodo. “Perhaps the Ilmodo also has nothing to do with faith and belief at all. .” She called to Cenzi. . but there was no answer. Not this time. The words were empty and her hands swept only through air, not into the cold, unseen stream of the Ilmodo. Frightened, she opened her eyes to see the Archigos watching her. He seemed not to notice that her spell was vacant, his face expect-ant and hopeful.

  Cenzi, what have I done? Have You abandoned me?

  She stopped chanting. She let her hands fall to her side. “Archigos,”

  she said. “I’m sorry. I can do nothing for her.”

  He nodded as if it was what he’d expected to hear, and Ana realized that he misunderstood her, that he believed she had already tried and failed. She started to tell him the truth but could not think of a way to do that without betraying her promise to Karl. I saw another side of the Ilmodo, and Cenzi has taken away my Gift because I doubted. The Archigos would take away her Marque and send her away. He would demand that Vatarh return the solas he’d been given in payment for her service. Her family would be disgraced and she would be the cause of it all.

  The Kraljica would die, and she would bear the blame.

  “Thank you for the effort, Ana,” the Archigos was saying. “I knew it was her time, but I didn’t want. .” He stopped. She saw the grief wash again over his face as he looked down at the Kraljica. “Stay here with me. Pray with me.”

  Ana nodded. She brought a chair over to the side of the bed and sat across from him. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving. A faint glow emanated from his hands; he was calling the Ilmodo reflexively, unconsciously. Ana found herself mute. She watched the Archigos, but she could not bring herself to pray. Her thoughts were chaotic: a nightmare mix of fright at what would happen to her, of images from the Numetodo’s heretical use of the Ilmodo, of what she’d been taught of teni who had lost their faith and found themselves punished by Cenzi, never to be able to use the Ilmodo again.

  “Archigos,” she said softly, almost a whisper. “Let me try again, one more time. .” The dwarf’s eyes opened, the glow faded from his hands.

  He nodded to her, silently.

  Please, Cenzi. I shouldn’t have doubted You. . She began the chant again, trying to open the way to Cenzi and the Second World. There was no immediate response, no sense of the cold power of the Ilmodo, and she thought that once more she’d failed. She continued to chant the words, to move her hands, as if by sheer determination she could wrench open a path. . and she began to feel the Ilmodo close to her once more, and she took the power and shaped it, moving its frigid waves over the comatose Kraljica.

  Again she felt the emptiness there, how the frayed thread of life in her body led irrevocably back to the painting elsewhere in the palais. She wrapped the Ilmodo around that thread, began to tug at it delicately.

  Slowly, slowly, she started to pull the Kraljica back once more. Ana nearly sobbed with the relief and effort. Thank you, Cenzi. Thank you. .

  She could do this, she could bring the Kraljica back yet again even if she could not fully heal her. She could- but a strange nausea passed over Ana, a sudden disorientation.

  It was as if someone had shaken the world. For a moment she thought that it was the tremor of an earthquake. . and she realized that the thread holding the Kraljica to her body was-impossibly-broken.

  “No!” Ana screamed. The spell dissolved, the Second World vanished, the Ilmodo fled from her.

  The Kraljica’s mouth was open, but her chest was still. Her hair, only a few seconds ago brushed and arranged, was mussed, as if in her last moment she had thrashed and struggled. The Archigos stood, and Renard, from his station along the wall, called through the door for the healer, in a choked voice. The healer entered, glanced at the body and held a silvered glass to the Kraljica’s nostrils.

  He shook his head.

  The Archigos began the prayer of the dead as Renard sobbed, and the servants fled the room. Ana sobbed with him, and wondered whether she was weeping for the Kraljica or because Cenzi had snatched her away from Ana, as if in punishment.

  Before the Archigos had finished his prayer, the wind-horns in the temples began to call throughout the city.

  Orlandi ca’Cellibrecca

  Orlandi felt physically ill, as he had since he’d deciphered the message from the Hirzg. The ground trembles under the feet of soldiers, the Hirzg would have a new wife, and the Kraljica will submit. The time has come. Choose.

  Everything had gone utterly wrong since the Gschnas. Orlandi had anticipated playing the Hirzg against the A’Kralj for several months yet, time in which he could gauge which one would ultimately make the best ally. But now. . the Hirzg, ever impetuous and dangerous, was forcing his hand. He’d underestimated both men and their willingness to follow a slower, more circumspect path. The Hirzg was pushing his army forward in blatant threat, and if Francesca’s suspicion was true, then the A�
��Kralj had been the one responsible for the Kraljica’s death.

  The A’Kralj a matricide: unfortunately, such abominations were hardly unknown in the lineage of the Kralji.

  But the Kraljica was dead and the A’Kralj would be crowned Kraljiki, and Justi had already informed Orlandi that he wished Francesca as his bride. The Hirzg was as yet unaware of the Kraljica’s death, and Orlandi must be the one to tell him before the news reached him some other way, or the Hirzg would perceive that Orlandi had already made his choice. When the Hirzg received that confirmation, Orlandi was certain the Hirzg would not hesitate at all.

  He would send the army forward over the border, hoping to take the Sun Throne himself.

  That was the most frightening thought of all. Orlandi had thought of himself as the master, moving the pieces in the game, but the pieces had asserted their own wills.

  Choose. You must choose.

  The Archigos had given Orlandi an office in the Temple so that he wouldn’t need to return to Ile Verte in the wake of the Kraljica’s sudden illness. Orlandi went to his knees on the carpet, groaning with the effort as his joints protested, bending over until he huddled there with his back bowed, his forehead on the woolen nap. He prayed, as if he were a simple e’teni in the service of the temple. Cenzi, I beg You to help me now.

  Show me Your will. Tell me how I can accomplish Your work. . He prayed, not knowing how long he stayed there, reciting from the praise-poems he loved so much in the Toustour. It is Your task that I do here. Not mine.

  Guide me, for I am too blind and too confused to see the way. .

  After a time, he rose slowly, sore and stiff. He wiped at his eyes. He’d heard no clear answer to his prayers, but he knew one thing: whether the A’Kralj or the Hirzg eventually sat on the throne, that person would need a proper wife who gave them a political tie they could use. And Orlandi could-he must-provide that.

  Orlandi went to the door and spoke to the e’teni stationed there.

  “Find someone to fetch the courier from Firenzcia and send him to me; I have a note for him to deliver to the Hirzg. Then go yourself to U’Teni Estraven ca’Cellibrecca at the Old Temple-inform him that

  he is to come here immediately. Do you understand?” The e’teni-a young woman who looked to be no more than sixteen and fresh from her studies as an acolyte-nodded with wide eyes. She hesitated, and he waved an impatient hand at her. “Go,” he said, and she fled, without even giving him the sign of Cenzi.

  Orlandi returned to his desk, pulling the cipher disk from a pocket in his vestments. He took a piece of vellum from the drawer and un-stoppered the inkwell. He wrote slowly and carefully, dusting the manuscript with sand and blowing it off before folding it. He took a candle and a stick of red wax and sealed the letter, pressing his ring into a cooling pool of wax the size of a bronze folia. He put the letter in an envelope, addressed it to the Hirzg, and also sealed that.

  By the time he’d finished, the rider had arrived. He handed the man the envelope. “The Hirzg must have this in his hand in two days,” he told the man. “It’s vital and I don’t care how many horses you have to kill to get it to him. Do you understand me?” The rider nodded. Estraven was outside as Orlandi opened the door to usher out the courier.

  “A’Teni,” Estraven said, bowing and giving the sign of Cenzi as the courier hurried away. “You asked for me?”

  “I did,” Orlandi told him. “Come in. Sit, Estraven. There’s wine and water on the desk; please, refresh yourself.”

  He watched while Estraven poured himself a glass of wine. “Sorry

  it took so long to get here, A’Teni; when your e’teni came to tell me, I was just finishing the Second Call passages for the celebrants, and I had to speak to the choirmaster regarding the evening services and the ceremony for the Kraljica. I came as soon as I could.”

  Orlandi waved his hand. “The needs of the Faith come first,” he said. “In a sense, that’s why I’ve sent for you. I need you-because I can trust you to keep the Faith’s business private.”

  His marriage-son’s face took on a faint blush of pride. “Indeed you can, A’Teni. What do you need of me?”

  “I want you to go to Brezno, Estraven,” he said. “Quickly. I want you to leave tomorrow morning.”

  Estraven’s smile collapsed. The wine shuddered in his glass. “To Brezno? With the Kraljica’s funeral in a week? I thought you had left U’Teni cu’Kohnle in charge of Brezno and Firenzcia. A’Teni, what

  of my charge here? — all the services, my obligations. . I couldn’t possibly. .”

  “You can. You will,” Orlandi said firmly, and that closed Estraven’s mouth. “I will make arrangements for your obligations to be covered.

  U’Teni cu’Kohnle is with the Hirzg and away from Brezno, and I need someone in that city for the next month or two. I need you there soon, especially with the loss of the Kraljica. I can’t leave Nessantico myself, not with the funeral.”

  “What. .” Estraven stopped, licking his lips. He took a sip of the wine. He seemed to be recovering himself. “This is all so sudden. I’m sorry, A’Teni, if I seemed flustered, but this comes so unexpectedly. Certainly, I’ll do whatever you ask, as I always have. What do you require me to do in Brezno?”

  “I will send you written instructions this afternoon, Estraven, for you to open once you reach the temple in Brezno. I will also send word to U’Teni cu’Kohnle about your temporary assignment. In the meantime, I want you to get yourself ready to leave at daybreak.”

  Estraven set the wine down, rising. “I’ll begin, then,” he said. He tapped his clean-shaven chin with a finger. “I should send word to Francesca that we’ll be leaving-or have you done that already, A’Teni?

  She’ll need to get the household together.”

  “Francesca will be staying here,” Orlandi told him, and he enjoyed the blink that Estraven gave in response. “You’ll be traveling with Vajiki Carlo cu’Belli and those in his employ. He’s a trader who travels frequently through the Holdings, and he has served me as well for the last several years. I will send along two of the teni from my own staff to act as your aides and coordinate things for you once you reach Brezno; your personal staff should remain here since they know the routines for the Old Temple. Vajiki cu’Belli has been an associate of mine for some time, and I have every confidence in him, despite what you’ll find are his somewhat coarse ways. His loyalty is unquestioned.”

  “Of course, A’Teni. Is there more I should know?”

  “Not now,” Orlandi told him. He came over to him, taking the man’s hands in his own and patting them. “Estraven, I’m giving you this task because I know how committed you are to the Faith, and how well you’ve always served me. I rewarded you with Francesca’s hand because of your faith. Now I ask you to trust me once again.”

  “Of course, A’Teni.” The bravado was back in Estraven’s voice, his ego adequately stroked. “I won’t fail you.”

  “I know you won’t,” Orlandi answered. He released Estraven’s hands and went to one of the windows, pulling aside the curtain to look down at the temple square. “Now, you should go. You don’t have much time.”

  Orlandi didn’t bother to watch Estraven’s bow. He’d send word immediately to cu’Belli and let the man know what needed to be done.

  And he would have a late dinner with Francesca, alone, so they could talk.

  Choose. He would choose. He must. But he would delay the choice until he could be certain which of the two major pieces on the board were the stronger: the A’Kralj or the Hirzg.

  He wondered how Francesca would react to the news.

  Sergei ca’Rudka

  “Commandant, the body is over here.”

  Sergei walked over to where a man gestured. His companion, O’Offizier ce’Falla, offered a silken handkerchief soaked in perfume, but Sergei waved it away. He walked through the high meadow grass to the bank of the A’Sele. He could see the body, like a black hummock in the grass, a few strides from the sullen gree
n currents of the river. The scent of corruption already hung around the corpse, and black flies lifted in shrill irritation as he approached. A quartet of peasants stood close by, looking uneasy and half-frightened. Sergei smiled at them, though he could see them staring at his face. At the gleam of his nose.

  “You did as you should, and I am here to give you the Kraljica’s thanks,” he told them. They ducked their heads at that and gave the sign of Cenzi. “You will each also be given a half-siqil reward. The o’offizier will take care of that. .” He nodded to ce’Falla, who quickly ushered the now-smiling peasants aside as Sergei crouched down next to the body.

  The corpse lay faceup on the ground. The scavengers had been at it, but even though the face was nearly gone, Sergei knew from the black clothing and the lanky body that it was ci’Recroix, even if the dew-ruined sketchbook a few feet away weren’t already a mute witness.

  “Did the peasants steal anything, Vajiki?” Sergei asked the man who had remained behind: Remy ce’Nimoni, a retainer employed by Chevaritt Bella ca’Nephri, who owned the chateau and the land on which it resided, and who was, as Sergei knew, also one of the A’Kralj’s good companions.

  Sergei had found that he instinctively didn’t care for ce’Nimoni.

  There was an air of smugness about him, and he’d caught the man smiling strangely as they conversed on the way from the chateau to where the body had been found. Nor did the retainer’s startlingly green eyes want to rest on Sergei’s face. His answers to Sergei’s questions had been too quick and too pat, as if he’d given every possibility too much thought, or someone had coached him well.

  That suspicion was not a path Sergei cared to tread. Chevaritt ca’Nephri was far too close to the A’Kralj for that to be comfortable.

  “Steal anything? I don’t think so, Commandant,” ce’Nimoni answered now. “They saw the body and the blood, and with the dark clothing they were afraid it was a sorcerer or worse, and they came running back to the chateau. I searched all of them afterward and found nothing. Then I placed guards here until you could be summoned-they