by S L Farrell
That would also end this. He ached to do it.
But he could not. That was not a vision that Axat had granted him. That path would lead to one of the blind futures, one he couldn’t guess—a future that might be far worse for the Tehuantin than those he had glimpsed in the bowl. He realized that knowing the possible futures was a trap as much as a benefit; he wondered whether that was something Mahri, too, had discovered. In a blind future, Citlali or Mazatl might continue to follow the steps of Zolin and fare worse. They might all die here, and no one from home would know their fate. In a blind future, certainly Niente would never see his family again.
He felt the smooth, polished wood of the spell-stick, but his fingertips only grazed it. They would not close around it.
“I will obey you, Tecuhtli,” Niente said, the words slow and quiet. “And I will follow you to the future you bring us.”
Varina ci’Pallo
KARL WAS SITTING IN THE DARK on the rear stoop of Serafina’s house in Oldtown, staring across the small garden planted there toward the rear of the houses a street over. His gaze seemed to be penetrating all the way to South Bank, far away. Above him, the moon was snagged in a lacework of thin, silver clouds through which the stars peered. A cup of tea steamed forgotten at his left side.
He was rubbing a small, flat, and pale stone between his forefinger and thumb.
Varina came up and sat beside him on the right—not quite close enough to touch, not far enough away that she couldn’t feel the warmth of his body in the night chill. Neither of them said anything. He rubbed the stone. She could hear faint, muffled music from the tavern down the street.
When the silence between them had stretched for more breaths than she wanted to count, she started to rise again, feeling angry with herself for having come out here, and angry with him for not acknowledging her. But Karl reached out and touched her knee. “Stay,” he said. “Please?”
She sat again. “Why?” she asked.
“We haven’t . . . Lately . . . Well, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” she said to him. “Tell me.”
“You’re trying to make this hard for me?” He flipped the stone over in his fingers.
“No,” she told him. “I’m trying to make it easier for me. Karl, being with you or being without you—those are both situations I can deal with, one way or another. What I can’t handle is not knowing which it’s supposed to be.” She waited. He said nothing. “So which is it?” she asked.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Actually, it is.” She hugged herself as she sat, leaning slightly away from him. “I thought when I finally took you to my bed that I might have everything I’d wanted for years. But I discovered I still only had a part of you. I want all of you, Karl, or I don’t want anything. Maybe I’m asking too much of you, or maybe I’m too possessive, or maybe you think I’m pushing you into something you don’t want.” Tears were threatening, and she sniffed them away angrily. “Maybe it’s my fault that this won’t work, and if that’s the case, then fine. I just need to know.”
“It’s not you.”
She wanted to believe that. Varina bit her lower lip, forcing back the tears, her breath shaking in her throat. “Then what is it?” she asked. “You go after this Uly on your own and nearly get yourself killed, you meet with Kenne without telling me, you’re even making plans with Talis. But you’re not talking to me.”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
She wanted to scoff at that. “I worry more because I don’t know the situation. I don’t know what you’re planning, don’t know what you’re trying to do, don’t know what the real dangers might be.” She stopped. Took a breath. “I won’t be your mistress, to be there whenever you want that kind of comfort but conveniently forgotten otherwise. If that’s all you want from me, then I made a mistake. I’m also not Ana, only wanting you as a friend. Again, if that’s all you want from me, well, you can’t have that either. Not anymore. So if that’s the case, then tell me and as soon as this is over, one way or the other, I’ll go my own way. I’ve wanted you to open the door between us for a long time, Karl. Now you have, but you can’t stand there with one foot in and one outside. I need to either close that door and lock it forever, or you need to enter all the way in.”
“How do I do that?” His voice sounded plaintive in the darkness. He pressed the stone between his fingers. How can you not know? she wanted to rail at him. Can’t you see it as plainly as I do?
“Talk to me,” she said. “Share what you’re thinking. Let me accept the dangers you’re willing to accept. Let me be with you.”
She thought that he wasn’t going to answer—which would have been answer enough. He sat there, still toying with the stone and staring outward. She started to rise again, and this time he took her hand. She could feel the stone as he pressed it into her palm.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me tell you what I’m thinking . . .”
And he began to talk.
Kenne ca’Fionta
AUBRI CU’ULCAI LOOKED like a whipped dog as he knelt on one knee, head lowered, before the Kraljica. His armor was scratched and battered, his face was streaked with grime and smoke, his hair was dark and matted, and he stank. In the Hall of the Sun Throne, he was like a horsefly paddling in a golden mug of clear, cold water.
Not that the hall itself didn’t still show scars. No one could miss the marks of the hasty repair where the Sun Throne had been damaged by the assassin’s magic—no, not magic if Karl ca’Vliomani was correct, Kenne remembered, but something more sinister—something any apothecary could make with the right ingredients. What had the Ambassador ca’Vliomani called it? The end of magic? Kenne wondered if the man was right.
The hanging tapestries around the hall still reeked of smoke, and Kenne wondered if there wasn’t a faint, horrifying pink tinge to the tiles around the throne dais. And there was no way to miss the appearance of Kraljica Sigourney herself: the patch over her missing eye, the scars on her face, the bandages that still wrapped her arms and single leg, the way she shifted painfully on the seat, the goblet filled with an extract of the seeds of the poisonous cuore della volpe flower—a concoction the court herbalist had created to keep Sigourney’s pain at bay.
Still, the Sun Throne gleamed underneath and around her as it had for countless Kralji; Kenne had seen to that personally. If that was a sham, no one watching would know it. Kenne sighed on his own seat to the right of the throne, weary from the effort of casting the light spell. The Council of Ca’ was arrayed to the left. Otherwise, the hall had been cleared of courtiers and even servants—none of them wanted more rumors spreading through the city than there already were.
“Commandant cu’Ulcai,” Sigourney said, her voice as cracked as her face, “the news you bring . . .” She stopped, her single eye closing. When it opened again, her voice was sharper. “You have failed us.”
“I am sorry, Kraljica,” the commandant said. “You should have my resignation letter in hand already.”
“I do,” she said. “But I won’t be accepting it.” When cu’Ulcai lifted his face with a faint hope, she scowled down at him. “That is not for any reason other than the fact that we have too few offiziers with your experience,” she told him. “You have failed with the Westlanders, and the stain on your record won’t easily be erased. I intend to have Aleron ca’Gerodi direct the defense of Nessantico should these barbarians be foolish enough to continue their advance. Had my brother been here . . .” With that, her lips trembled and a glimmer of moisture appeared in her eye. She took a sip of the cuore della volpe. “As for you—let us see how well you fare against an enemy you should know better. I am sending you east, Commandant cu’Ulcai, to direct our forces against the army of Firenzcia. Odil ca’Mazzak of the Council will be accompanying you, and you will both leave tomorrow.” She waved an arm to him in dismissal. “I assume you have preparations to make, Commandant.”
Cu’Ulcai rose, bowed deeply to the Kraljica,
and walked from the hall, loud in the silence that followed him. When he had left, Kraljica Sigourney sighed.
“I don’t trust the man,” Odil ca’Mazzak muttered. “He’s another offizier with ties to the traitor Regent.”
“Unfortunately, he’s the best we have,” Kraljica Sigourney answered. “Odil, we need to go over the negotiation points you’ll be discussing with the Firenzcians. Archigos, I need you to beat the drums against the Numetodo—for two reasons: to placate Firenzcia, and so that we know we don’t have traitors here in the city when we’re facing enemies on either side. I expect to hear aggressive Admonitions from you and all your téni starting with the Third Call services.”
Kenne knew she anticipated no objection from him; she’d already turned away from him before she finished speaking. She thought he would nod and agree and say nothing. Once, she would have been right.
Once. But there was Karl’s visit, and there was the specter of the false Archigos Semini ca’Cellibrecca looming on the horizon and all that would mean. And there was the memory of Ana and the freedom and leniency she’d fought for over the years.
“No,” he said. “I won’t do that.”
The silence that followed was lengthy. Kraljica Sigourney’s single eye blinked. “No,” she repeated, the word like the tolling of a funeral bell. “Did I hear you correctly, Archigos?”
He nodded. “You’re . . .” His throat was dry. He swallowed, trying to dredge up some moisture. “You’re wrong about the Numetodo, Kraljica,” he told her. “You’re wrong in believing that it was their magic that killed Kraljiki Audric and injured you. It wasn’t them.”
Another solo blink. The other councillors watched the two of them, silent. “It wasn’t? And how is it that you know this?”
“Because I’ve actually spoken with Ambassador ca’Vliomani. I’ve heard his explanations, and I’ve investigated on my own what he’s discovered.”
“Karl Vliomani—” the prominent lack of a prefix to his surname lay heavy in the air, “—is a fugitive whose life is currently forfeit. You tell me that he came to you, and you let him leave?”
Kenne shivered at the tone of her voice. “He came to me, yes, and he showed me this,” he told her. He brought out a small glass vial from under his green robes. In it, the black sand glistened. “Watch.” He rose from his seat, shuffling across the dais and down to the floor of the hall. He walked several strides away from the throne, then unstoppered the vial and let the black sand drizzle to the tiles. He came back to the dais; his knees cracking like dry twigs as he ascended the steps. “Everyone agrees that Enéas cu’Kinnear used a spell to create flame—but that was a téni’s spell and not a Numetodo’s. Cu’Kinnear was once an acolyte of the Faith and had some instruction in the use of Ilmodo. He very likely knew that spell; it’s one of the first taught to the new students. Look . . .”
Kenne lifted his hands, letting them dance in the quick pattern as his voice chanted the brief phrases that were required. A moment later, a yellow flame shivered in the air between his hands. “You’ve all seen this a thousand times—every night when the lamps are lit along the Avi a’Parete. This is no different . . .”
He opened his hands, beginning a new chant, and the flame drifted away from his hand, floating out from the dais until it hovered above the black sand. There, he lowered his hands slowly, and the flame responded in kind, dropping down until it nearly touched the dark pile—
The ka-WHUMP of the explosion was louder than even Kenne expected, and the flash hurt his eyes. White smoke billowed upward, spreading out in the hall, and an acrid, sharp smell followed. He heard a clang as the goblet of cuore della volpe fell from the arm of the Sun Throne to the floor. Kraljica Sigourney was breathing heavily on the throne, hand up in front of her face as if trying to shield herself—she looked to be trying to stand on her single leg, grasping for the cane at her right hand. Several of the councillors were on their feet, shouting, and the doors to the hall were flung open by gardai, entering with their swords drawn. “Kraljica?”
Her hands came down. Kenne heard her breath slow. She waved the gardai away. “That smell . . .” she muttered. “I remember that most of all.” She turned slowly to the Archigos. “This is not magic?” she said. “How can that not be the Ilmodo, Archigos?”
“Because it is only alchemy,” Kenne told her, “a combination of ingredients that reacts violently when it comes into contact with fire. There were traces of this black sand in the wood of the High Lectern after Archigos Ana was killed; the same traces were in the Sun Throne and on the body of Kraljiki Audric.”
“The Numetodo claim that faith in Cénzi isn’t required to use magic, that anyone can do it, that it’s no more complicated than being a baker. They look at rocks shaped like shells and skulls and concoct strange theories, they conduct experiments—in alchemy as in other ‘sciences’ as well as magic. That seems to me to indict the Numetodo.” That was Odil ca’Mazzack. He glared at the Archigos, and the Kraljica nodded at his words.
“I’m telling you that this is not from the Numetodo,” Kenne persisted.
“Even when Vliomani just happens to be the one who has shown you this,” Odil retorted scornfully. “Seems a strange leap of logic.”
“The black sand is a Westlander concoction,” Kenne told them. “Here’s the logic, Councillor. Enéas cu’Kinnear had just returned from the service in the Hellins. You’ll also remember that Commandant cu’Ulcai has just told us how the Westlanders were able to tear down the walls of Villembouchure with explosions similar to those that killed Archigos Ana and Kraljiki Audric.”
“And he said the explosions were the magic of the Westlander war-téni, these ‘nahualli.’ ” Odil shook his graying head. The extra skin around his throat wobbled with the motion. “I think the Archigos is mis—”
“No!” This time Kenne nearly shouted the word, stamping a foot on the ground at the same time. “I am not mistaken. I know you all think of me as a doddering old fool who’s a poor pale shadow of what an Archigos should be. There you might be right, but you are wrong in this. Worse than wrong—I have evidence that makes me believe that the false Archigos Semini was involved in the assassination of Archigos Ana. And if that is the case . . .” He stopped, out of breath. They were staring at him, all of them, as if they might at a child who was throwing a tantrum. “We need the Numetodo, Kraljica, Councillors,” he continued, lowering his voice. “We need their skills, their magic, and we need their knowledge. Nessantico is about to be under siege from both west and east, and we can’t afford to lose those who can help us.”
There was a long, painful silence. Odil licked his lips and sat. The other Council members lowered their heads, glancing at each other. Kraljica Sigourney stared outward to the dark stain on the tiles. “We will consider what you have said, Archigos,” she said finally, and he knew what that meant.
He grunted, lifting himself from his seat again. He took the staff of the Archigos in his right hand—the cracked globe wrapped in the naked, writhing bodies of the Moitidi—and gave the Kraljica the sign of Cénzi with the left. Again, he shuffled his way from the dais. As he passed the spot where the black sand had exploded, he stopped. The tiles there had broken. He picked up one of the larger pieces: the soft blue glaze razor sharp along one edge, the smooth surface stained with what looked to be soot. The smell of the black sand was strong. Kenne hefted the chunk of tile and let it fall, and the sound was that of a dish breaking. He watched bits of the tile bounce and scatter.
“All of Nessantico could look like this,” he told them. “All of it.”
There was no answer. He tapped the end of the Archigos’ staff on the tile and shuffled on.
Sergei ca’Rudka
THE PARLEY TENT WAS ARRAYED in the field between the two forces: just off the Avi a’Firenzcia and about halfway between Passe a’Fiume and Nessantico. As they approached, Sergei could already see the shadowed forms of Odil ca’Mazzack and Aubri cu’Ulcai under the white fabric, along with U’
Téni Petros cu’Magnaoi, there as the Archigos’ representative. The Firenzcian delegation was Sergei, A’Hirzg Allesandra, and Starkkapitän ca’Damont, accompanied by the required array of chevarittai and attendants. Since neither the Kraljica nor Archigos Kenne were present, the Hïrzg and Archigos Semini, at Sergei’s suggestion, remained behind. Neither one of them had been pleased with the arrangement.
“Matarh, I should be there,” Jan had insisted. “I am the Hïrzg and whatever happens there should be, must be my decision.” He had glared at Sergei, at his matarh.
“So it will be, Hïrzg,” Sergei told the young man. “I promise you that. But for you to be there . . .” He shook his head. “You are the Hïrzg, as you said. There is no peer in that tent for you; there is no peer in the tent for the Archigos either. You, Hïrzg Jan, can’t be expected to parley on equal terms with Odil ca’Mazzak, who is just a member of the Council of Ca’—you would be lowering yourself to do so. I can tell you that it’s exactly what they want you to do. It would be an admission that the Hïrzg of the Coalition is someone who is lesser than the Kraljica of the Holdings.”
