A Magic of Dawn

by S L Farrell

  As the Morelli spoke, Varina saw his companions sliding around to surround them. “Don’t do this,” Varina said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  In answer, the pock-faced man brought a cudgel from under his cloak. Raising his hand, he struck at Varina. The stick caught her on the side of the head, knocking her to the pavement before she could even bring her hands up to protect herself. She managed to get her hands up before she hit the cobblestones; the stones scraped and bloodied her palms, but still the impact knocked the breath from her. She felt something (a foot?) strike her side, and she felt more than saw the flash of a spell as Johannes shouted a release word. Talbot was casting a spell also, and so were others. She could taste the ash that her fall had kicked up. Blood was running into Varina’s eyes (had she cut her forehead also, or had the cudgel done that?) She tried to push herself up. Everything was confused, and her head was pounding so hard she could barely remember the release words for the spells that she—like most Numetodo—had prepared for defense. Something had dug hard into her side when she’d gone down: the sparkwheel she carried under her cloak. Blinking away the blood, caught in the tumult of the scuffle, she grabbed for it.

  Another spell flashed and Varina smelled the ozone of the discharge as someone—one of the Morellis?—screamed in response. There were more spells going off; at least one of the Morellis must have been téni-trained, she realized. Somewhere distantly, someone was shouting and she heard the shrill of an utilino’s whistle.

  Her own breath was the loudest thing in the world.

  She had the sparkwheel out now. She cocked the hammer and rubbed at her eyes with her free hand. She saw the pocked-cheek man to her left, his cudgel up and about to come down on Johannes.

  “No!” she shouted, and at the same time, her finger convulsed on the trigger.

  The report was shrill, the sound echoing from the remnants of the city wall and rebounding, fainter, from the buildings up the Avi; the sparkwheel’s recoil tore her hand up and back, and at the same time, the pocked-face man grunted and fell, the cudgel flying from his hand as an invisible spear seemed to rip flesh, bone, and blood from his face. “Back away!” Varina shouted from her knees to those closest to her. Blinking, she brandished the now-useless sparkwheel, which was trailing smoke and the strange, astringent odor of black sand.

  The command was unnecessary. With the weapon’s firing and the sudden, violent death of their leader, the others dropped their weapons and fled. Varina felt Talbot’s arms under her, lifting her up. There were people coming toward them, among them an utilino. “Can you stand, A’Morce? Johannes, she’s been hurt . . .”

  “I’m fine,” she told them. She wiped at the blood again. There were three people laying on the Avi. One of them was groaning and struggling; the other two were eerily still. There was no doubt as to the fate of the pock-cheeked man. Varina turned her gaze quickly away from him. She was still holding the sparkwheel. Talbot noticed it; standing close to her so that the utilino and the others coming toward them could not see, he put it back under her cloak. “Better not to let anyone know,” he whispered. “Let them think we used magic.”

  She was too confused, too hurt to argue. Her head was throbbing, and she kept wanting to look at the mangled face of the man she’d killed. “Talbot . . .” she said, but the world was lurching around her, and she could not stand.

  That was the last she remembered for a time.

  Niente

  “IT’S AS IF THE ASH HAS MUDDIED everything, Taat,” Atl said. “I haven’t been able to see well since.” Atl’s voice was weary, his face was drawn, and he sagged in the chair in Niente’s little room on the Yaoyotl as if he’d run all the way across the great island of Tlaxcala.

  Niente grunted. The ashfall had been so dense it seemed that the fleet moved through a solid fog. The sky had first turned a strange, sickening yellow before the ash had become so thick that it had turned day to night. Lightning and thunder furiously wrapped the expanding cloud, and the warm ash smelled of burning sulfur. The stuff was so fine and powdery that it had insinuated itself everywhere. Their clothing was full of it; it was in the food stores; it lingered in every pore of the wood despite the efforts of the sailors to clean it away. The sulfurous smell lingered as well, though by now they were all accustomed to it. The ash was also abrasive—one of the Tehuantin craftsmen had collected several pouches of the ash, saying that he could use it as a polishing agent.

  And yes, the ash had tainted the purity of the water and the herbs that Niente used for the scrying bowl. Since the ashfall, Niente’s own attempts to glimpse the future had been nearly as clouded and useless as Atl’s.

  He hoped they were still on the same path, the same route through the possibilities of the future that could lead to the Long Path he’d glimpsed. The Tehuantin fleet had entered the mouth of the A’Sele without any resistance from the Holdings navy, though he was certain that by now word must have come to Nessantico of what had happened and of the appearance of the Tehuantin ships. If Axat’s vision still held, then they would have linked the eruption of Mt. Karnmor with their arrival.

  For now, the wind that touched his nearly bald skull and his ravaged face was cool and smelled of sweet, fresh water rather than salt. They moved through a jarringly monochrome landscape, the distant hills on either side gray when he knew they should have been green and lush. Streams of the finest ash floated by in the currents, heading out to sea and back toward its source. They moved through a landscape touched by death: Niente saw the carcasses floating past: birds, waterfowl, the occasional sheep or cow or dog, even—once or twice—a human body. This close to Karnmor, the devastation had been terrible. There were only a few gulls winging hopefully alongside them, far fewer than Niente remembered from his last visit here.

  Atl tossed the water from the scrying bowl over the side of the Yaoyotl. That brought Niente back from reverie. “What did you see?” he asked his son. “Tell me.”

  “The images came so fast and they were so dim . . .” Atl sighed. “I could hardly make them out. But—once I thought I saw you, Taat. You, and a throne that gleamed like sunlight.”

  Niente felt himself shiver at that, as if the wind had suddenly turned as cold as the snowy summits of the Knife Edge Mountains. He had seen that moment also, and more. “You saw me?”

  “Yes, but only for a breath, then it was gone again.” Atl’s eyebrows rose. “Is this what you’ve seen also, Taat?”

  He stood in the hall, surrounded on all sides by the dead of the Tehuantin and the dead of the Easterners. The place stank of death and blood. He saw the Shadowed One—the one who ruled here—but the throne glowed so brightly that he couldn’t see the face of the person who sat on the throne, didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman. Niente had his spell-staff in his hand, and it burned with the power of the X’in Ka, so vital that he knew he could have blasted the Shadowed One, could have broken the glowing throne. Yet he held back and didn’t speak the words though he could hear the Tecuhtli screaming at him to do so, to end this.

  Behind the Shadowed One an even greater presence rose, one whose powers were so fierce that Niente could feel them pulling at him: the Sun Presence. That being held a great sword, and raised it as Niente waited. But the sword did not come down. Instead, the Sun Presence touched the sword and broke it in half as if it were no stronger than a slice of dry bread, giving one part to Niente and keeping the other.

  Niente walked away from the throne, the Tecuhtli and the warriors screaming curses at him, calling him a traitor to his own people . . .

  “No,” Niente told Atl. “I’ve not seen that. I think your vision was confused and wrong. It was only the ash speaking, not Axat.”

  Atl looked disappointed. “Give me the bowl,” Niente told him, holding out his hand. Atl handed it to him, the brass heavy. “I’ll clean it and purify it myself. We’ll try again, perhaps in a few days. You should rest.”

  “Rest?” Atl scoffed. “A few days?” He waved at the fleet
around them, at the gray land. “We need Axat’s vision now more than ever, Taat. Tecuhtli Citlali asks you constantly if you’ve seen anything—”

  “The ash obscures our vision,” Niente said harshly, cutting him off. “Even for me, but especially for you, who are still learning how to read the bowl. I tell you that we must wait a few days, Atl. If you can’t learn patience, you’ll never learn to read the bowl.”

  Atl glared at Niente. “Is this more of your ‘look at me, don’t do what I did’ lecture, Taat? If so, I’ve heard it too many times already.”

  “I told you I would teach you to use the bowl, and I will,” Niente answered, but he cradled the bowl possessively to his belly. “You must show me that you’re ready to accept the lessons.”

  “There are other nahualli who can teach me.”

  “And none of them are Nahual,” Niente answered, more sharply. “None of them have my gift. None of them can show you as well as I can.” Then, afraid of the expression on Atl’s face, as if his son’s face had been carved of stone, he softened his voice. “You will be Nahual one day, Atl. I know this. I’ve seen this. But for that to be, you must listen to me, and obey—not because you’re my son, but because there are still more things you must learn.” He pressed the bowl to him with one hand and reached out toward Atl with the other. “Please,” he said. “I want you to know everything I know and more. But you must trust me.”

  There was a hesitation that tore at Niente’s heart. Atl’s mouth was twisted, and even through the boy’s weariness, Niente could see his desire to use the bowl again.

  He remembered that desire—he’d had it himself once, when he was his son’s age, when he’d realized that Axat had touched and marked him, when he’d realized that he might be a successor to Mahri, that he might even rise to Nahual.

  He knew what Atl was feeling, and that frightened him more than anything else.

  But Atl finally shrugged as Niente continued to hold the bowl, and took Niente’s hand, pressing his fingers once in Niente’s palm. “I’ll do as you ask,” he said. “But, Taat, I won’t wait forever. If I need to, I’ll find another way.”

  He released Niente’s hand. He stalked away, and Niente could see him forcing his body not to show the exhaustion he must be feeling.

  It was what Niente himself would have done, in his place.

  Rochelle Botelli

  THE DAYS WERE SPENT CLEANING, because the ash that caused such beautiful sunsets also dusted everything in Brezno Palais. Rance ci’Lawli drove his staff relentlessly to keep surfaces clean. From rumors that Rochelle heard, Brezno’s experience was insignificant. Here, the ashfall was a fine coating like a week’s worth of dust on the furniture. But she heard whispers that people coming from the west talked of drifts as thick as a winter’s snowfall, so heavy that roofs collapsed and animals choked to death. She didn’t know how many of the rumors were simply exaggerated tales meant to entertain and how much truth they contained, but it was apparent that something catastrophic had happened in the far west of the Holdings. “Mt. Karnmor has awakened again after centuries of sleep,” was the most persistent rumor. “Thousands have died there.” Here, the person speaking would most often shake his head. “They should have known better than to build the city on the slopes of a volcano. It was a disaster waiting to happen . . .”

  So she cleaned, and she made certain that the drapes remained closed over the windows when they were open. And she waited. She waited because the ashfall disrupted the routines of the palais; they disturbed the patterns that ci’Lawli made through his day and until they settled again, she could not safely kill the man and fulfill her contract. She found she didn’t care; she toyed, in fact, with the thought of handing Josef cu’Kella’s money back to him—the solas were hidden in her tiny sleeping room here.

  “The White Stone can’t fail a contract, and can’t refuse a contract,” her matarh had said, in one of her lucid moments when the voices didn’t torment her. “If the people feel the White Stone works for one cause or another, then the Stone isn’t a ghost to be feared, but just another garda in the uniform of the rulers. The people love and fear the Stone because she strikes anywhere, anytime. We are Death, coming for someone without remorse and without thought.”

  “Why doesn’t Matarh like you?”

  Rochelle was cleaning Elissa’s bedroom, wiping down the girl’s furniture with a damp cloth. She stopped, straightening and glancing at the child, who was sitting on her bed playing with a doll. Rochelle had noticed that the girl was snared in that awkward space between childhood and adolescence, when she was as likely to want to do “adult” things as to play with the toys that had once fascinated. The doll—which showed by the wear on its cloth arms and legs and porcelain face that it had long been a favorite—was now mostly abandoned except in moments like this.

  “What do you mean, Vajica?” Rochelle asked Elissa, genuinely puzzled. Hïrzgin Brie had never seemed to show any dislike for Rochelle—in fact, after their talk the other day, she had even begun to think that the Hïrzgin might like her more than she did many of the dozens of servants who were in her presence each day. “She doesn’t think I do my work well?”

  Elissa shook her head vigorously, the doll’s limb swaying with the effort. “It’s not that,” she answered. “I heard her tell Vatarh that she didn’t like the way he acted around you. He said he didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘You know what happened before,’ is all Matarh told him, and Vatarh just grunted. He told Matarh that she worries too much, and walked away, but Matarh still had on her mad face, like she did with Maria and Greta. Are you going away like them?”

  “Maria and Greta?”

  A nod, as energetic as the head shake. “They were servants that Rance hired, like you. Greta was here when I was nine and Maria last year. They were nice, and Vatarh liked them but Matarh didn’t.”

  Rochelle found her hands trembling suddenly. She remembered the conversation with her vatarh the other day, the way he’d touched her face, the words he’d said, the interest he’d taken in her. You fool. . . It might have been her matarh’s voice whispering in her head. You stupid girl . . . “Oh,” she said, the exclamation flat and dead. It seemed to lay on the carpet between them, like a bird with its neck broken.

  She’d been with men before. She’d been in love, been in lust, had twice now felt a man’s weight on and inside her. She’d heard the glittering, bejeweled lies that they would say to convince her to share her bed, and had experienced the emptiness afterward when she realized how vacant and false those words had been. She had learned to hear the lies and to ignore them, and how to turn them aside so that they seemed a harmless flirtation—unless she wanted more.

  She’d learned to expect the emptiness that followed the temporary moments of closeness and passion, and to accept it.

  You fool . . . She should have realized . . . She’d heard the words Jan had spoken, but she hadn’t thought of him that way, hadn’t seen him as one of them, the ones who wanted the warm, hidden treasures under her tashta. She knew now why it had been so easy for Rance to place her on the private family staff. She recalled the Hïrzgin’s conversation, and she understood.

  She also heard Jan’s words again in her memory, and they were changed and altered. Those words were gilded lead. They were empty boxes. They were blank parchment.

  He was no better than some man looking for a night’s anonymous companionship in a tavern.

  Fool . . . No wonder the Hïrzgin had warned her.

  “I should have been Hïrzgin,” her matarh had raged when Jan had married Brie. Rochelle had been younger than Elissa then, but she still remembered the rage and madness that consumed Matarh at the news. “He loved me, not her! She’s just some piece of ca’-and-cu’ trash, another title to add to his list. He loved me . . .”

  Rochelle wondered how much longer she could even stay here. “I’m not Maria or Greta,” she told Elissa. “Elissa. That was my name, the name he knew me by. He named his daughter for
me . . .” “I would never do anything to hurt your matarh. I hope she knows that.”

  “I’ll tell Matarh,” Elissa said, hugging the doll. She seemed to realize what she was doing and released the doll, letting it fall carelessly onto her lap.

  “Tell her what?” Another voice interrupted them, the sound startling Rochelle. She hadn’t heard Jan enter the room. That was troubling all on its own; how many times had her matarh cautioned her that the White Stone must always be alert, no matter what the situation. Yet Rochelle had been so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn’t heard Jan enter, though now she recalled having heard the shuffle of his footsteps on the carpeting.

  “That she should keep Rhianna,” Elissa said. “I like her.”

  “I do, too,” Jan said. His gaze was on her, and Rochelle forced herself to smile, as he undoubtedly expected. “Elissa, I think your matarh wanted to see you.” He kissed the top of her head, but his gaze was still fixed on Rochelle. “But I’ll tell you what, darling, let’s not say anything about Rhianna to her just yet. Go on, now.” He tousled Elissa’s hair, and she jumped down from the bed, the doll falling to the floor. Elissa left it there. She padded away without a word.

  Rochelle put the cloth into the bucket. She wiped her hands on the apron of her servant’s uniform and picked up the bucket. “You’re leaving, too?” Jan said.

  She curtsied, keeping her gaze on the floor. “I’m finished here, Hïrzg,” she said, “and I have other rooms that need attention.”

  “Ah.” He paused and she waited, thinking he was going to say more. He stood there and she could feel him staring at her. She started to move toward the servants’ door and the rear stairs. “You really do remind me of, well, someone I knew once. Someone who meant a great deal to me. It’s very strange.”