by S L Farrell
“It’s a lot of money.”
“You don’t bargain with him,” the woman said. “If what you want done were an easy task, you would do it yourself. And you, A’Hïrzg, can afford the price he asks.”
“If I do this, how do I know he will keep his end of the bargain?”
No answer. The woman simply sat with her hands on the table as if ready to push her chair back.
Allesandra nodded, finally. “Find him, Elzbet,” she said. She plucked a half-solas from the pocket of her cloak and placed the coin on the table between them, next to the stone. “For your trouble,” she said.
The woman glanced down at the coin. Her lips twisted. Her chair scraped across the wooden planks of the floor. “Draiordi evening,” she told Allesandra. “Be there as I said. Remember what I said about being followed.”
With that, she turned and strode quickly from the tavern, with the stride of someone used to walking long distances. Light bloomed in the dimness as she pushed open the door with surprising strength. Through the shutters, Allesandra could see the gardai come suddenly alert as the woman left the tavern.
The coin was still on the table. Allesandra took the stone but left the coin, going to the door herself and shaking her head at the gardai, one of whom was already pulling open the door with concern; the others were watching the woman. “I’m fine,” she said to them. The woman was already halfway down the street, walking fast without looking back. The garda who had opened the door inclined his head toward the woman, raising his eyebrows quizzically. “Should I—?”
“No,” she said to him. “I won’t be hiring her; she was a poor match. Let her go. . . .”
Karl ci’Vliomani
KARL WATCHED THE MAN carefully, standing close to him in the bakery, where he could hear him.
This one seemed different than the others he’d watched. For the last few weeks, Karl had prowled Oldtown, dressed in soiled and ragged clothes, and watching the crowds surging around him. He’d haunted the public places, lurked in the shadows of the hidden squares in the maze of tiny streets, avoiding the occasional utilino who passed on his or her rounds and who might recognize him. He’d looked at the faces, searching for coppery skin tones, for the lifted cheekbones and the slightly flatter faces that he remembered from his own forays into the Westlands decades ago. He’d found a half dozen people, male and female both, that he followed for a time, on whom he’d eavesdropped, whom he’d touched with the Scáth Cumhacht to see if they might respond.
There’d been nothing. Nothing.
But now . . .
“These croissants have been here all day and are half-stale already,” the man said. Karl heard his voice plainly from where he stood at the bakery’s open door, staring out across the street as if he were waiting for someone. He heard the man’s walking stick tapping the wooden floor of the bakery. “They’re worth no more than a d’folia for the dozen.” The words were nothing, but that accent . . . Karl remembered it well: from his youth, from Mahri—an accent as foreign in Nessantico as his own and as unmistakable.
Karl glanced into the shop in time to see the baker’s scowl. “They’re still as fresh and soft as they were this morning, Vajiki. And worth a se’folia at least. Why, I can sell them to anyone for that—the flour I use was blessed by the u’téni at the Old Temple.”
The man shrugged and waved his hand. “I don’t see anyone else here. Do you? Maybe you’ll wait all day until they’re no better than cobblestones, when I’ll give you two d’folia for them right now. Two d’folias against wasted bread—it seems more than fair to me.”
Karl listened as they bartered, settling on four d’folias for the croissants. The baker wrapped them in paper, grumbling all the while about the price of flour and the time spent baking and the general higher costs for everything in the city recently, until Karl’s quarry left the shop. The man brushed past Karl—the smell of the croissants making Karl’s own stomach grumble—and strolled eastward along the narrow lane. Karl let him get several strides ahead before he followed. The man turned left down a side alley; by the time Karl reached the intersection, the man was halfway down. In the late afternoon, the houses cast purpled shadows over the lane, seeming to lean toward each other as if to converse in whispers over the cobblestones. There was no one else visible in the alleyway. The spells Karl had cast that morning burned inside him, waiting to be released. He started to call out to the man, to make him turn . . .
. . . but a child—a boy perhaps ten or eleven—emerged from an intersection a little farther down the lane. “Talis! There you are! Matarh has been wondering if you were coming for supper.”
“Croissants!” Talis told the boy, holding up the wrapped pastries. “I practically stole them from old Carvel. Only four d’folias . . .” The man—Talis—clapped his arm around the boy. “Come then, we can’t keep Serafina waiting.”
Together, they started walking down the street. Karl hesitated. You can’t do anything with the boy there alongside him. That’s not what Ana would want of you.
The spells still hissed and burbled inside his head, aching for release. He picked one, the least of them. He lifted a fisted hand and whispered a word in Paeti, the language of his home, and felt the energy release and fly away from him. The spell was designed to do nothing at all; it only spread the power of the Scáth Cumhacht over the area—enough that someone used to wielding that power would feel it and react.
The reaction was swifter than Karl expected. Talis spun around as soon as Karl released the spell. The boy turned a moment later—probably, Karl thought, because the man had stopped. There was no time for him to conceal himself. Talis, his gaze never leaving Karl, gave the boy the package of croissants and nudged him away. “Nico,” he said. “Go on home. I’ll follow you in a few minutes.”
“But, Talis . . .”
“Go on,” Talis answered, more harshly this time. “Go on, or your rear end will be regretting it as soon as I get there. Go!”
With that, the boy gulped and ran. He turned the corner and vanished. The man peered into the dimness, then his head drew back and he nodded. “I should thank you, Ambassador, for sparing the boy,” Talis said. One hand was plunged into the side pockets of his bashta, the other was still on his walking stick—if he were about to cast a spell, he showed no signs of it. Still, Karl tensed, his hand upraised and the remaining spells he’d prepared quivering inside him. He hoped he’d guessed right in their making.
“You know me?” he asked.
A nod. “Yours is a well-known face in this city, Ambassador. A bit of poor clothing and dirt on your face doesn’t disguise you well. I really hope you weren’t thinking you could pass unnoticed in Oldtown.”
“You felt my spell. That means you’re one of the Westlander téni, like Mahri.”
“Perhaps I only turned because I heard you speak a word, Ambassador. Spell? I’ve seen the fire-téni light the lamps of the city; I’ve seen them turn the wheels of their chariots or cleanse the foulness from the water. I’ve seen some of the people of this city with their trivial little light spells that the Numetodo have taught them—which I’m sure the Faith finds disturbing. But I saw no spell just now.”
“You have the accent.”
“Then you’ve a good ear, Ambassador; most people think I’m from Namarro,” the man answered. “I’m a Westlander, yes. But like Mahri, no. There have been very few like him.” He seemed relaxed and confident, and that along with his easy admission worried Karl. He began to wonder if he’d made a critical mistake. The man’s too confident, too sure of himself. He’s not afraid of you at all. You should have just watched, should have just followed him. “So why is the Ambassador of the Numetodo walking about Oldtown casting invisible spells to find Westlanders, if I may ask?” Talis asked.
“We’re at war with the Westlanders.”
“ ‘We?’ Are the Numetodo so accepted by the Holdings, then? I can hear accents, too, and I would tell you that there are those of the Isle of Paeti whose sym
pathies might be more with the Westlanders than those of the Holdings. After all, Paeti was conquered by the Holdings just as the Hellins were, and your people fought against that invasion just as ours are doing now. Perhaps we should be allies, Ambassador, not adversaries.”
Karl’s teeth pressed together as he grimaced. “That depends, Westlander, on what you are doing here, and what you’ve done.”
“I didn’t kill her, if that’s your accusation,” the man said.
Almost, he loosed the spell at that. I didn’t kill her . . . So the man knew exactly what it was that Karl was after, and his answer was a lie. It must be a lie. The man would say anything to save his life. A Westlander, and a téni . . . Karl’s lifted hand trembled; the Paetian release word was already on his lips. He could taste it, as sweet as revenge. “I spoke of no murder.”
“Nor did I,” Talis said. “But then I don’t think it murder to kill your enemy in wartime.”
With that, the rage flared inside Karl and he could no longer contain the anger. His fist pumped, he spoke the word: “Saighneán!”—and with the word and the motion, blue-white lightning crackled and arced from Karl toward the mocking Westlander.
But the man had moved at the same time, his hand lifting his walking stick. A glow erupted impossibly from the stick, the glare blinding Karl as tendrils of aching brilliance crawled through the air as if they were fingers clawing at a huge, invisible globe. The ethereal fingers snared his lightning and squeezed, a small sun seeming to hang in the air between them as thunder boomed. He heard laughter. Frightened now, he spoke another word: a shielding spell against the attack he was certain would follow.
But the shield fell away unused, and through the shifting curtains of afterimages, he saw that the tiny lane was empty. Talis was gone. Karl shouted his frustration (as heads began to peer cautiously from shuttered windows, as calls and shouts of alarm came from the houses nearest him, as tendrils of smoke curled from charred facades on either side of the street) and Karl ran to the intersection down which the boy had gone.
Neither boy nor Westlander were visible. Karl pounded his fist on the nearest wall and cursed.
Nico Morel
NICO ONLY TOOK TWO STEPS down the turn before he stopped. He could heard Talis arguing with the strange man, and he crept back toward them, putting his back to the wall of the house at the corner and listening.
“I didn’t kill her, if that’s your accusation,” Talis told the man, and Nico wondered who he was talking about.
Evidently the man was just as puzzled, for he answered “I spoke of no murder.”
“Nor did I,” Talis said. “ But then I don’t think it murder to kill your enemy in wartime.”
War? Nico had time to wonder before the world exploded. He was never quite certain what happened in the next several breaths, or how he could ever describe it to someone. Though it was daylight, there was a stroke of light that seemed as bright in the shadows of the lane as a thunderstorm throbbing in the blackness of night. He was certain that Talis was dead, except that he heard Talis laugh even as Nico pushed away from the house to run to help his vatarh, the croissants still clutched heedlessly in his hand.
Then Talis was grabbing him by the shoulder—“By all the Moitidi, Nico . . .”—and pulled him running down the lane with him, ducking into a narrow alleyway between two of the houses, and then along a back lane between the backs of buildings, twisting and turning until Nico was out of breath and confused, and finally stopping, panting.
Talis put his hands on his knees, his breath fast as he glared at Nico. “Damn it, Nico, I told you to leave,” he said. “When we get home . . .”
Nico fought not to cry at Talis’ harsh tone. “I wanted to hear,” he said. “I thought . . . I thought there would be magic.”
Talis cocked his head slightly, though his too-dark eyes still glittered angrily. “Why would you think that?”
“Because I could feel it, all around, like when I get cold all of a sudden and I get ghost bumps.” Nico rubbed at his forearm, showing Talis.
“You felt it?” Talis asked, and now his voice didn’t seem quite so upset. Nico nodded furiously. Talis stood up. He glanced all around them, as if trying to see if the man had followed them.
“Was he really Ambassador ca’Vliomani, the Numetodo?” Nico asked Talis. “Matarh says she saw him once, near the Archigos’ Temple on South Bank. She said that the Numetodo shouldn’t be allowed here. She said that the Archigos should be stronger against them.”
Talis scowled. “Maybe your matarh’s more right than she knows,” Talis answered. He sighed, and suddenly hugged Nico to him. “Come on,” he said. “We need to hurry home now. While there’s still time.”
Nico ate supper alone in the bedroom, while Talis and his matarh talked in the main room. Nico nibbled on the croissants and sipped at the ground-apple stew his matarh had made while he listened to their muffled voices. Most of the time he couldn’t make out the words, but when they got loud, he could understand them. “. . . told you I expected this. The signs . . . just not so soon . . .”
“. . . want us to leave now? Tonight? Are you insane, Talis?”
“. . . you stay you’ll be in danger . . . go to your sister . . .”
“. . . so it was you? You lied to me . . .”
Nico lifted his head at that. He wondered whether his matarh was talking about the woman the Ambassador had accused Talis of killing.
There was more mumbling, then an exasperated huff from his matarh as she flung the door open, glared once at Nico without seeming to see him, then started gathering pots and utensils and stuffing them loudly into the cloth bags she used when she went to the market, muttering to herself. Talis, in the doorway between the rooms, watched her for a moment and gestured to Nico. He followed Talis into the room, watching as the man shut the door behind them.
“Matarh’s really angry,” Nico said as he sat on the bed
Talis nodded ruefully. “She is that,” he said. “And for good reason. Nico, the two of you need to leave the city. Tonight. You’ll be staying with your tantzia in Ville Paisli, which isn’t far from Nessantico.”
“Are you going with us?”
Talis shook his head. “No. Nico, after what happened, the Garde Kralji is going to be looking for me—the Ambassador is a friend of the Regent, and he’ll have them looking for me. He probably knows my first name and maybe yours, he knows what we look like, and he knows about where we live. We have a few turns of the glass before he can alert anyone, but I’m certain that Oldtown won’t be safe for the two of you soon. So you’re going to have to help your matarh gather up what you can and leave.”
“But the Garde Kralji . . .” Nico sputtered. “Did you do something wrong, Talis?”
“Wrong? No,” Talis told him. “I’ll explain it all to you when I can, Nico. For now you’re going to have to trust me. Do you trust me, Son?”
Nico nodded uncertainly. He wasn’t certain of anything at the moment. “Good,” Talis said. “I’m going to leave now and arrange for a cart to take you two out of the city—you remember the man I talked to at the Market? Uly? He can help me make those arrangements. When I get back, you and your matarh will need to be ready to leave, so make sure you have everything of yours you want, and help your matarh gather up her things.”
Nico’s mouth tasted sour, and the food he’d eaten burned in his stomach. From the kitchen, he could hear his matarh still packing things. “But if you stay, won’t they find you?”
“I have ways to hide myself if I’m alone, Nico, and I have things I need to do that I can only do here. Also . . .” Talis paused and tousled Nico’s head. Nico grimaced and ran his fingers through his hair to straighten it again. “What happened earlier has to be a secret, too, Nico—like the rest. If you tell people what you saw, well, you’d be putting your matarh in danger, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“It was magic, wasn’t it?”
Talis nodded. “Yes, it was. And Nico, I thin
k that you . . .” He stopped, shaking his head.
“What, Talis?”
“Nothing, Nico. Nothing.” Talis was reaching under the bed as he talked, pulling out the leather bag that held the strange metal bowl and putting his clothing and other things into it. “Now, why don’t you start gathering your things? Put them all in one place, and you and your matarh can decide what you’ll take and what you’ll leave here. Go on, now.”
Talis was already looking away, opening the chest at the foot of the bed and pulling out a linen nightshirt. Nico watched him. “Are you a téni?” he asked Talis.
Talis straightened, the linen half in the bag. “No,” he said, and the way Talis said it, not quite looking at him and drawing out the syllable, told Nico that it was a lie, or the kind of evasion of the truth that Nico sometimes used when his matarh asked him if he’d done something he shouldn’t have. “Now go on, boy. Hurry!”
