by S L Farrell
kept away most of the beasts, but. .” He waved a hand at the corpse, and again there was that odd flash of a smile and his glance at the body was almost possessive. “Not all, as you can see. The dogs and wolves are less afraid of a dead body than us, and very persistent.”
“Wild beasts know an opportunity when they see it,” Sergei answered. “If you’ll excuse me, Vajiki, I would like to examine the body. Alone.”
Ce’Nimoni bowed. “As you wish, Commandant. I’ll be at the trail with the horses.”
Sergei leaned closer to the body as the man strode away. His flesh wrinkled above the bridge of his false nose at the smell, but the stench was no worse than the lower cells of the Bastida, where sewage and corruption mingled with the odor of chained, desperate men. He could see blood crusted on the man’s blouse, though the animals had chewed away most of the stained cloth and ripped open the stomach to get to the man’s entrails-it would be difficult to determine whether ci’Recroix had been wounded there first. The cut at the neck, though. . even with the animal gnawings and the maggots wriggling deep in the wound, it was apparent that a blade had made that cut.
So the man had been murdered. Sergei had expected that to be the case as soon as news had come of the body found near Pre a’Fleuve.
Disappointing: Sergei would have liked the opportunity to find out what ci’Recroix knew: the slow, careful, and painful interrogations that the Bastida could provide. Sergei was certain that the person who had hired ci’Recroix had been afraid of exactly that.
He hadn’t yet touched the body. A chain glittered dully around the torn neck; Sergei leaned closer. His gloved fingers brushed aside the ripped cloak. A pendant hung on the man’s chest: a dark seashell, a shell carved of stone.
He wondered only for a second before the answer of where he’d seen a similar pendant came to him. He reached down and pulled the pendant away; the fine chain broke against the weight of the skull. Sergei grimaced and placed the shell in his pocket.
“How very clumsy, Vajiki ci’Recroix,” he told the corpse. “Could a man of your great talent truly be that stupid?”
As if in answer, a beetle clambered from the corpse’s open mouth.
Sergei smiled grimly.
Moving away from the body, he stooped to pick up the sketchbook, glancing at a few of the pages, and staring at the final sketch there-a bird drawn in charcoal that looked as if it were solid enough to fly away from the page-before closing it. He put the sketchbook under an arm.
Standing, he stared down at the body again for several breaths. Finally, he gave the sign of Cenzi over the remains, then went up from the bank to the narrow lane that led to the chateau. The retainer ce’Nimoni waited there with ce’Falla, as well as Sergei’s gray stallion and their own horses; the peasants were gone.
“We’re done here, O’Offizier,” he said to ce’Falla. He put the sketchbook into a pouch of his saddle. “We’ll ride now. I have work to do back in Nessantico.”
Ce’Nimoni frowned, brows lowering over meadow-bright eyes.
“Commandant, the body. .?”
“Bury it, burn it, let it rot-whatever Chevaritt ca’Nephri bids you to do with it. I don’t care. I’ve learned all I can from it.” With that, Sergei hoisted himself astride the gray, who nickered nervously and flared his nostrils as if the smell on Sergei’s clothes bothered him. Sergei pulled at the reins and leaned forward to pat the gray’s neck to calm him. “You did well,” he told ce’Nimoni. “When the Gardes a’Liste looks at the Roll of names next, I know they will consider your service here. I will convey your cooperation and your quick intervention here to Chevaritt ca’Nephri, and the Kraljiki.”
The retainer bowed and clasped hands to forehead. Again, Sergei
caught a glimpse of that self-satisfied grin on the man’s face. And I may yet see if I can find an excuse to give you a tour of the Bastida, he added silently.
Then he gestured to O’Offizier ce’Falla, and they rode east and north toward Nessantico.
Estraven ca’Cellibrecca
“cu’Belli! Where are you?”
There was no answer. Estraven stared at the trio of gray, lichen-spotted plinths leaning against each other a stone’s throw from the Avi a’Firenzcia, the road bordering the River Clario. In the mist-ing drizzle, they appeared particularly dark and foreboding, as if they’d been set down by the Moitidi’s children in the First Age. “Cenzi’s piss,”
Estraven muttered and slapped the reins of his horse, then quickly gave the sign of Cenzi and whispered a quick prayer for forgiveness at his blasphemy. His horse shook its soggy mane and nickered, the ears flicking as if it had heard something. Estraven shifted anxiously in his saddle. “Cu’Belli!” he called again.
Their little troupe-Estraven, the trader cu’Belli, two e’teni from A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca’s staff, and four men whose job it was to handle the pack animals cu’Belli brought with him-had crossed the border
yesterday into Firenzcia, passing through the guard station set up across the Avi at the border town of Ville Colhelm. They were three days from Nessantico, and Estraven was regretting ever having agreed to his marriage-vatarh’s request. At the least, A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca could have allowed him to bring his own staff, but the A’Teni had insisted that they remain behind at the temple on the Isle A’Kralji so they could attend to the Kraljica’s funeral ceremonies.
“When you get to Brezno, my own people will be waiting for you,” ca’Cellibrecca had said. “As I told you, Cu’Belli is a crude man in many ways, but he’s also a loyal one. He’ll make certain that you’re comfortable, if only because that’s what he’ll want himself.”
Estraven had to agree with his marriage-vatarh’s assessment of “crude.” The man was certainly that. His vision of “comfortable” seemed to consist mostly of whether the inn’s kegs were full of good ale and that the barmaids were comely and seducible. He’d drunk and whored the night away in each village they’d stayed in. Estraven had stayed in his room in disgust, forcing the e-teni to do the same, spend-ing his time writing letters to Francesca and to his o’teni aides at the Old Temple back in Nessantico.
It would all be worth it one day. One day he would be A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca himself, stationed in one of the great cities of the Holdings. He would work with his marriage-vatarh, who would be Archigos Orlandi, and together they would create a Concenzia Faith stronger than it had ever been, unassailable and more powerful even than the Kralji and the rulers of the other lands of the Holdings. They would be the founders of a new order firmly rooted in the words of the Toustour and the law of the Divolonte.
A better world than this one. Which wasn’t at the moment hard for Estraven to believe at all. Nearly any world would be better than this one. Estraven’s clothes were soaked, and he was fairly certain he’d picked up a horrible infestation of lice from one of those lonely beds.
They’d spent the previous night at one of Ville Colhelm’s many inns, with cu’Belli imperiously telling the innkeeper that “A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca of Brezno will pay for your best rooms.” In the morning, one of the chambermaids had delivered a note from cu’Belli. Business to conduct. Will meet you at standing stones beyond the village midmorning. Estraven wondered just what business cu’Belli might be conducting that was so urgent and what her name might be, but the maid knew nothing beyond the fact that “the fat Vajiki and his companions had left not long after dawn, along with the two teni. Without any sleep at all, Vajiki. They were up all night, in the tavern and. .” She’d blushed then, smiling and closing her mouth on the rest of the tale. “They said to tell you to wait for them at the stones. The stableboy can tell you where they are.”
Now it seemed cu’Belli’s “business” had kept him longer than expected. The sun was hidden behind scudding clouds and the fine rain misted Estraven’s woolen cloak, but it was midmorning. Had to be. Estraven glanced in annoyance at the zenith, blinking into the drops of rain. He sneezed. “Damn the man,” he said.
Es
traven gave the sign of Cenzi, then began to whisper a quick chant, his hands moving in the wet air: a warming chant. He felt the surge of blessed heat wash over him as he finished the spell and he sighed gratefully-one of the quicker and more useful of the little chants that any teni was taught to do, and one most teni tried to work surreptitiously when trapped in long ceremonies on cold winter mornings in the temples, especially since the spell taxed its caster very little. At least he wouldn’t catch his death of illness out here in the cursed weather.
He thought he heard the snap of a branch from the trees beyond the standing stones, and he straightened in his saddle, turning his head.
“Cu’Belli?” he called. “Come, man. We’ve wasted half the day already.
We’re still a good two days’ ride from Brezno.”
This time an answer came in the sinister thwang of bowstrings.
Estraven grunted in surprise and shock as an arrow whistled past his left ear; an instant later he fell backward from his horse’s saddle as a trio of feathered shafts sprouted from his cloak: two in his chest, the other in his right shoulder, the shock of their impact sending him to the ground. Spattered with mud, blinking in the rainfall, he looked down at the arrows in surprise, confused by their impossible appearance, touching the dark feathers of their fletching even as he saw the blood beginning to spread out from the wounds. He tried to rise, managing to struggle up on his knees. Strangely, he felt little pain, only a great tightness in his chest.
This was a dream. This was a sign from Cenzi. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
“I’m here as promised, U’Teni,” Estraven heard cu’Belli’s voice call out, and the portly man stepped from behind one of the moss-flecked stones. His quartet of companions were with him, and they held bows with new arrows nocked to the strings. There was another man with him as well, dressed in the uniform of Firenzcia’s army.
“Treachery!” Estraven tried to call, but his voice was garbled and he spat blood. “Help!” He started to chant, tried to force his hands to move in a new spell, one that would smash cu’Belli and gain him time to get back on his horse and ride away, but cu’Belli gestured quickly and the bows came up and the bowstrings sang their note of death, and Estraven was slammed backward again into the rain and into the mud of Firenzcia and into whatever afterlife awaited him.
Ana cu’Seranta
She tried to refuse to see him. She’d feigned sickness that morning so she wouldn’t have to attend the opening of the Archigos’
Temple at First Call, and so she wouldn’t need to chant with the others and light the temple’s lamps. When the Archigos had come to her apartment, she’d sent Watha out to tell him that she could not see him now, but she’d returned with a pleased, grim smile. “The Archigos waits for you in the outer reception room, O’Teni,” she’d said. “He said that you will dress and meet him for breakfast. Beida is already serving him tea.”
She’d dressed, and gone to him. There had been no choice. Now, after the formal, empty greetings, after sitting there watching the Archigos drink his tea and eat his biscuits, the smell of them making her own stomach grumble in protest, the Archigos had pushed away the tray with his breakfast and leaned forward with his elbows on the table.
“I am going to suggest to our new Kraljiki that you would make an excellent wife for him.”
It was a statement that had shocked Ana to her core, and now he stared at her as the discomfort colored her face. She could not breathe for a moment; her hands pressed against her heart as she sat back in her chair across from him. Underneath her robes she could feel the stone shell Karl had given her. It gave her no comfort.
“That is not what I want, Archigos,” she said. “You have no right to use me that way, no matter what you paid my parents.” A sullen, liquid fire burned high in her throat and her temples pulsed with the beat of her heart. She could feel her hands trembling as she placed them on the table. “Even if the A’Kralj would agree to it, I will not.”
The Archigos nodded, as if her response was what he had expected.
“I understand your reluctance, Ana. I do. But you will learn, sooner than I did, perhaps, that the higher you ascend in life, the higher are the pay-ments expected of you. Certainly the Kraljica expected such of her nieces and nephews, and of the A’Kralj himself. She knew what a weapon the right marriage could be. She had already broached this possibility to me, the day after she first met you-when, you should know, my own niece Safina had been considered for the same position. So I don’t suggest this lightly; this alliance could be more important now that the Kraljica is gone. The A’Kralj will be the Kraljiki, and he is unduly influenced by A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca. Without some countering influence, Justi’s ascension to the Sun Throne could cause changes in Concenzia-changes that would undo all that I and Kraljica Marguerite tried to accomplish.”
He sighed, lifting a hand and letting it fall again. The tea shivered in his cup; the biscuits jumped on their plate. “There’s another matter also. The army of Firenzcia is gathering too near the border for anyone’s comfort. I think now is indeed the time for action, or it may be too late.
Justi is not who I would want as Kraljiki, but he is still a better option than Jan ca’Vorl. Would it be so bad, Ana, to be the Kraljiki’s wife? Do you have other and better prospects? Your Numetodo from the Gschnas, perhaps?
I know you went to see Envoy ci’Vliomani the other day, Ana-” he raised his hand against Ana’s burgeoning protest, “-and I want you to know that I don’t care-as long as your curiosity doesn’t get in the way of your faith or your duty.”
It has already become an obstacle to my faith. It killed the Kraljica. .
But she would not say that. The Archigos seemed to take her silence as consent, and continued to speak. “Cenzi has given you an extraor-dinary Gift, Ana. Cenzi would expect you to use that Gift as well, Ana, and all that Gift has given you. Surely you see that.”
He said it without the question mark, as if it were an obvious conclusion, and at the same moment, a realization came to Ana. “You intended all along to connect me to the A’Kralj,” she said. The accusation made the Archigos smile.
“Yes,” he said simply. “Very nearly.”
“The Kraljica. .?”
“She agreed, once she’d met you and once I’d told her about you.
We had hoped to introduce the two of you formally at the Gschnas, but. .” The Archigos’ mouth twisted. “It is still what she would want,” he continued. “Even more so now. With the Kraljica gone, we must tie together the new Kraljiki and the Concenzia Faith-not with ca’Cellibrecca and his movement, but with our own faction.”
Our own faction. . The Archigos said it casually, and Ana shook her head mutely. Not ours. Not now. .
After the Kraljica’s death, she had been unable find the Ilmodo again. Cenzi had abandoned her for her lack of faith, for her betrayal of Him with the Numetodo. She had tried. She had attempted the simplest spells, the ones she had been able to do since she’d been a child, and they crumbled in her hands. She wouldn’t be able to keep her failures secret for long: how she avoided using the Ilmodo, how weak her spells were, how she could barely manage to conjure up light or heat from the energy with which Cenzi filled the air. She couldn’t hide the decay of her skills for long; no teni could, not when the rituals and ceremonies of the Faith required their daily use. Someone would mention their suspicions to the Archigos, and he would come to her and demand that she show him whether the rumors were true.
“That’s all I was for you from the beginning, Archigos?” she demanded, trying to disguise her fear with bluster. “A way to bring the A’Kralj closer to you? You’re no different than Vatarh; you’d use me in the same way, only with another man.”
The Archigos managed to look hurt. “My intention, and the Kralji-
ca’s, was to keep the Faith strong in a changing world. We need to look forward, Ana. Ca’Cellibrecca would return us to the dark. The world changes, Ana, whether we li
ke it or not, and the Faith must learn to change with it-that’s not something ca’Cellibrecca is willing to do.
Our ships go ever farther out into the world. One day, perhaps even in your lifetime, they will have touched the shores of every land. As the Holdings reaches out into new territory and finds new peoples, we also find the rich beauty of Vucta and Cenzi’s creation, a richness we never suspected before.”
“The Numetodo, Archigos? Are they part of this richness?”
He cocked his head to one side as he stared at her. “They could be, if they would only acknowledge that their Scath Cumhacht is actually the Ilmodo and that it derives from Cenzi. There are other ways of bringing people to the truth than through violence, torture, and imprisonment-certainly that’s what the Kraljica believed, and why she was able to rule so well for so long. The more Nessantico draws from the knowledge of those she rules, the stronger she becomes. I don’t look to exclude the Numetodo or to ignore what they might have to teach us, as long as they can be brought to understand the truth of the Toustour.
I thought, Ana, that we might share that outlook in the same way that we share a deep faith in Cenzi.”
“I do share that,” Ana answered. Then why did you doubt Him? She shook her head. Her fears and confusion roiled in her head, boiling, and she could not snatch at them long enough to examine them. “It’s just. . Archigos, I can’t. .”
“You can. You will. If it’s what Cenzi decrees.” He waved a diminutive hand at her. When it dropped again to the table, china and silver clattered once more. “It may be, Ana, that the new Kraljiki is already too well snared by ca’Cellibrecca-I may have made a horrible mistake, allowing them to become close. I saw all this over the last several years and I did nothing. The rumors I’ve heard of ca’Cellibrecca’s daughter. .” He shrugged. “If that is the case, then we will have to find a new tactic. But if Justi is willing to listen, if he will look to how his matarh governed the Holdings so well, then he’ll realize how well served he would be aligning himself with us. Marriage can tie together even two enemies, who then discover they must work together. And we are not the Kraljiki’s enemy, Ana; ultimately, we are on the same side.
