by S L Farrell
Strangely, the glee in Ancel’s face soured Nico’s good mood. He looked at them, at their pleasure, and Cenzi moved in him. He frowned, his face darkening. “Why are you laughing? Why do you grin?” he asked them, and the scorn in his voice wiped the celebration from their mouths. The room went rapidly quiet. Liana released him; Ancel took a step back, his face suddenly crestfallen.
“I’m sorry, Absolute,” Ancel said, spreading his hands in apology. “Didn’t we do as Cenzi asked us to do?”
“We did,” Nico answered him. “And we succeeded only because we have His hands over us. Should we celebrate that? Yes, we’ve sent several of the heretics to Him for His judgment, but we’ve taken away childrens’ vatarhs and matarhs, we’ve shattered their families. We’ve brought hardship on those close to them, and many of them are not our enemy. Many of them are believers. Should we be pleased that we’ve hurt them, that we’ve caused them pain?”
“I didn’t think-” Ancel began, and Nico cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“No, you didn’t. None of you did. Not even me.” He took a breath, and he felt Cenzi’s words filling his mind. “These are lives we’re talking about. These are people who are little different from us. Yes, they’re heretics. Yes, they poison the Holdings and the Faith with their very presence. Yes, they’re our enemies. But they are people nonetheless, and when we cause them pain, we bring pain upon ourselves at the same time.”
He could feel hot tears welling in his eyes, and he didn’t care that they spilled over and ran down his cheeks as his disciples watched. “I don’t mourn a broken cup. I don’t grieve if the strap on my sandal breaks. But I do cry for the Numetodo. I cry because they failed to see the truth. I cry because I could not convince them to follow the truth. I cry because it was given to me to be their executioner. I cry because it pains me to see the waste of their great potential.”
Then he felt Cenzi lift him, and he dragged his sleeve over his eyes as the anger left him. “Ancel,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry with you. I’m not. You are my right hand, and you’ve done well today. All of you have, and we should be pleased that we were able to demonstrate Cenzi’s power to those who control the Holdings and the Faith. We have been good servants today. But it’s our task to always be good servants, to be ready to run when the Master calls us and to do His bidding no matter what he asks of us.”
Nico opened his arms, taking a step toward Ancel and enfolding him in his arms. He kissed the man’s cheek. “You know this. I know you do, and it wasn’t my place to scold you. Do you forgive me, my friend?”
Ancel grimaced, then let out a breath through his nose. He nodded, and Nico grabbed his head and kissed the crown of it. He clapped the man on the back. He smiled at them all. Liana embraced him again, pressing her stomach and their child to his.
“We’ve all done well today,” he said to them, his gaze sweeping over the people gathered in the room. “You are all blessed.”
Varina ca’Pallo
Her ears were ringing and she could barely hear the voices talking to her through the din. That was an improvement, at least: immediately after the blast she’d found herself entirely deafened. She’d been carried to the nearest building-one of the Holdings’ bureaucratic offices that dominated the Isle A’Kralji. Healers had been sent for; gardai had flitted in and out asking questions of her and Sergei. Even Commandant cu’Ingres had seen her, and the news he had brought her was grim. Kraljica Allesandra and A’Teni ca’Paim were both shaken but unharmed, but of the dozen Numetodo who had been accompanying Karl’s bier-all of them friends, most of them longtime members of the group-five were dead, and three more were seriously injured. Even if they lived, they would suffer from the effects of this day for the rest of their lives.
Varina cried for them more than she cried for Karl, who was beyond suffering.
Talbot had been among those escorting the bier; luckily, his injuries had been minor.
Varina frowned in concentration toward Sergei, who was leaning over her solicitously. She could see her warped reflection in his silver nose; her face was scratched, a long line of dried blood slicing across her forehead, and her right cheek was dark with a rising bruise. “The deafness should be temporary, the healers tells me,” he was saying. She had to concentrate on his lips to understand him. “That’s good news for both of us-my hearing has suffered enough in the last few years. They also tell me that none of your injuries are likely to be serious, though you’re going to be stiff and sore for several days. You don’t appear to have broken bones, though you should let them know if you feel sharp pain inside, or if your cuts start to grow red or foul.”
“It was Nico who did this?” she asked.
Sergei scowled. “Yes,” he said. “He and the Morellis. One of the gardai swears that he saw Nico in the group below the puppet.”
“Why would he do this? Karl and I never… never…” She bit at her lower lip, the tears threatening again at mention of his name.
“Hopefully you’ll get to ask the man yourself, when we find him,” Sergei told her. “And they will find him. I’ve already told Commandant cu’Ingres that I will personally oversee the search for Morel if he’s not already been captured by the time I return from Brezno.”
“You’re still going? You’re all right?”
“I’m old and tough-it will take more than a bit of black sand to stop me. I’ve already started an investigation into how they acquired the black sand; I suspect that someone within the Armory is a Morelli sympathizer. But with the recent border incursions, I have to go.. .” The smile collapsed as if under its own weight, and he placed his hand on Varina’s shoulder. “I’m so very sorry, Varina. This should never have happened. Karl deserved far better than this.”
The weeping overtook her then, and she could not speak. Sergei patted her shoulder, but his gaze was elsewhere. “Karl’s… body?” she managed to say, finally.
“Karl’s body,” he said, and she could see by the tightening of his lips that he wasn’t telling her everything, “has been recovered and is already on the pyre at the Kraljica’s Palais. The Garde Kralji have been stationed around it, and there are several Numetodo there as well, who say they won’t leave until the pyre’s been lit.”
“I need to go there, then.” Varina started up. She could feel her muscles protesting the movement, but she managed to sit. The room lurched around her, then settled.
“Varina, Kraljica Allesandra said she would light the pyre herself. The healers have said you should stay-”
“I need to go there,” she said, more firmly, and Sergei sighed. He nodded.
“I told the Kraljica that would be your answer. I’ll accompany you there…”
“Varina…” Kraljica Allesandra enveloped her as she stepped from the carriage after Sergei. “I am so sorry. I must take the blame for this atrocity. We obviously didn’t take all the precautions we should have, and that’s my responsibility.”
Varina shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said simply. Behind the courtiers and chevarittai who flanked Allesandra, she saw Mason ce’Fieur, a Numetodo and friend, and one of her students within the group. He nodded to her grimly. “Excuse me, Kraljica,” she said to Allesandra, and went to Mason. They embraced.
“A’Morce Numetodo,” he said, and the use of the title startled her. Karl had been the nominal head of the group for as long as she had been with them. She’d never considered that with his passing, the title might pass to her, but it seemed it had. “We’ve been waiting, all of us.”
She glanced toward the pyre. There were the ca’-andcu’ in their finery-the palais sycophants who wanted the Kraljica to see them-but there were also the Numetodo of the city, most of them ce’ or less: two hundred or more of them, faces she recognized, people she had worked with and taught. They stood there now, silent and patient.
The pyre was three people high, and the smell of oil was strong in the courtyard between the scaffold-latticed wings of the palais. At the t
op of the pyramidal stack of timbers, a closed wooden coffin had been set-no longer the body draped in the flag of Paeti. Varina’s lips tightened at the sight and her stomach overturned, sending acid burning in the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, once. “Let’s do this,” she said. “We’ll have more pyres to light for the rest of our fallen soon enough.”
With Sergei on her left, the Kraljica on her right, and the Numetodo closing ranks behind her, she advanced to the base of the pyre. She looked up at the coffin and for a moment had to pause, overwhelmed by memories of Karl. Her stomach churned anew, and she closed her eyes briefly.
She opened them again, finding in her mind the spell she’d prepared last night. It sat in her head like an egg on the edge of bursting, and she caressed it with her thoughts. This was the way of the Numetodo: like the teni, they used a pattern of words and hand movements to shape the spell-a formula that must be followed. Like the teni, the effort of spell-casting cost them in exhaustion and weakness. Unlike the teni, they did not call on Cenzi or attribute the power to any deity at all; unlike the teni, they did not have to cast their spell immediately upon finishing the incantation. The Numetodo knew how to hold the spell in their minds, to be released with a word and a single gesture much later. The Numetodo could thus “pay in advance” the weakness that came with spell-casting and not be affected later. They could cast a prepared spell in the moment it took to speak and gesture.
She did that now. Standing before the pyre, she opened the spell. “Tine,” she said in the language of Paeti, Karl’s homeland. Fire. She made a motion as if casting a stone at the base of the pyre. A sun erupted within the center of the pyramid, yellow-white and so hot that the wavering shimmer of it struck the onlookers like a hurricane wind. The oiled timbers caught with an audible k-WHOOMP, and flames leaped toward the sky, twirling tornadoes of sparks ahead of them. A fume of smoke followed, drifting toward the distant rooftops of the palais where a wind tore at the column and smeared it westward toward the Old Temple and the River A’Sele.
Already, the furious blaze was licking at the coffin that held Karl’s remains. As Varina watched, the flames slid upward along the sides until the wooden box was obscured by flame and veiled in smoke. “Good-bye, my love,” Varina whispered. “I will always miss you.”
The tears were streaming unashamedly down her face, the fierce heat of the pyre drying them quickly. Someone was hugging her, and she didn’t know if it was Sergei or the Kraljica or Mason.
It didn’t matter. She watched Karl’s remains spiraling upward into eternity.
She stood there until the pyre collapsed, several minutes later, into a heap of ash and coal as dead and as charred as her own self.
Allesandra ca’Vorl
Allesandra watched Sergei pace in front of the portrait of Kraljica Marguerite. The portrait’s stern eyes seemed, to Allesandra, to track the Ambassador’s limping progress from side to side. Commandant cu’Ingres didn’t watch at all; his gaze was fixed determinedly on the small fire in the hearth, intended to take the evening chill from the room. A’Teni ca’Paim sat near the table of pastries, with a full plate on her ample lap.
Allesandra had no appetite herself. The carnage she’d seen during the funerary parade had stolen that. Her hands still trembled, remembering. So cowardly, the use of the black sand. Such an awful death… There was still a faint ringing in her ears from the blast.
“We can’t permit another incident like this, Kraljica,” Sergei declared as he passed beneath the portrait yet again. “The message this sends to the populace; the message this sends to the Faithful.. . We can’t allow it.”
“There was no teni-magic involved in this,” A’Teni ca’Paim declared sternly. “Morel understands the consequences if he would use the Ilmodo. That’s why he used black sand-though one of his followers probably set off the black sand with a spell as the bier passed over it.”
“That’s exactly the point,” Sergei answered. “He was able to disrupt a solemn ritual of the Holdings without the Ilmodo. Without magic. The use of black sand was a message: that the Faith is useless and weak, that the Holdings can be held hostage by anyone who can create black sand, that the Numetodo are more dangerous than any teni. That’s worse than if he had used the Ilmodo.”
Ca’Paim’s face wrinkled in a moue of disgust. “The Faith is not weak,” she responded primly. “The Faith is stronger than it has been in decades. Archigos Karrol has seen to that.”
Allesandra noticed that ca’Paim pretended not to hear Sergei’s audible sniff of disdain at that statement. “You think that Morel isn’t intelligent enough to understand the symbolism of his actions?” Allesandra asked her. “It seemed clear enough to me. That blasphemous puppet of Cenzi was staring directly at the bier when the black sand exploded. I think Morel would have used the Ilmodo to the same effect-except that he was obeying the laws of Faith. Apologies to you, A’Teni ca’Paim, but the man believes he follows the tenets of the Toustour and the Divolonte far more closely than any of the a’teni and Archigos Karrol.”
“His message may be read differently by different people, Kraljica,” Sergei persisted, “and that’s even more of an issue. Yes, to the Faith he is saying ‘Look, I obeyed your rules even though I find them supremely foolish.’ To the Numetodo, he says ‘I find your beliefs vile and heretical.’ But I think the general populace-who is neither teni nor Numetodo-takes away an entirely different statement. I think some of them might look at what happened and think ‘I can do that. Why, anyone could do that.’ That’s dangerous. That’s not what we want the people to believe, especially those who might have reason to oppose us.”
Ca’Paim bit savagely into a pastry, chewing furiously. Cu’Ingres watched the dance of the flames. “So what would you have me do, Sergei?” Allesandra asked.
“We must find Morel. We must execute him savagely and publicly,” Sergei answered. “Then your answer to his message is: ‘If you try this, you die.’”
“Is that what Varina would tell me to do?” Allesandra asked.
“No,” Sergei admitted. “It’s not. But I’m your adviser, not the A’Morce Numetodo. My loyalty is to you, Kraljica: to Nessantico, and to the Holdings-as it always has been. I tell you what will best serve those loyalties. We need to deal harshly with Nico Morel and his followers.”
“I agree with the Ambassdor entirely,” ca’Paim said. She rose, still holding the plate of pastries. “My people will aid you in that in any way we can. I can begin by questioning those suspected of having Morelli sympathies…” She gave the sign of Cenzi, one-handed, to Allesandra and the others. “Do you think Talbot could have someone wrap these up for me, Kraljica?” she asked, holding up the plate. “I hate to see them go to waste…”
A’Teni ca’Paim made her exit with a parcel of sweets, and Commandant cu’Ingres accompanied her from the room. Talbot-who had insisted on returning to work despite the cuts and scratches he’d sustained-sent in a trio of servants to clear the tables and take the trays back to the kitchens.
Sergei had made no motion to leave. Allesandra watched him, his attention seemingly on the servants as they went about their tasks, one hand behind his back, the other leaning on a silver-knobbed cane that nearly matched his nose. A stripe of the candle later, the last servant bowed and left the room, closing the door behind her. “What, Sergei?” Allesandra asked then. “I have Erik ca’Vikej arriving for lunch in a half-turn. He wants to discuss how the exiled West Magyarian government might respond to the Morelli issue.”
Sergei turned to her. She saw his eyes close briefly and his lips press together, as if the movement pained him-or as if the mention of ca’Vikej bothered him. “You’re toying with black sand and fire there, Kraljica,” he said. “As Ambassador to the Coalition, I have to caution you against appearing to openly support the man.”
He seemed to swallow something else that he might have said, and she wondered if he realized the other feelings she had for Erik. “As Ambassador to the Coalition, I expect you t
o support me, however I tell you to do so,” she answered sharply, and he inclined his head; mostly, she suspected, so she could not see his eyes.
“Forgive me, Kraljica-that is, of course, my duty. I will be seeing your son in a few days. But I would like to offer him an olive branch rather than a naked sword.”
Allesandra was already shaking her head before he finished. “You’re becoming predictable, Sergei,” she told him. “And you’re getting soft in your dotage.”
“Then you’ve decided against my proposal to reconcile with him?”
“I appreciate the thought that went into it, Sergei. And your intent.”
“But?”
“I don’t intend to capitulate so my son can take the Sun Throne.”
Tap, tap… Sergei took a few shuffling steps toward her. His quilted face was earnest, and she could see the reflection of the hearth’s fire flickering in his polished nose. “You wouldn’t be capitulating, Kraljica, only naming your son as your heir upon your death.”
The laugh she gave was more of a cough. “I fail to see the difference, Sergei. If I name Jan as heir, I lose my power as Kraljica. Everyone will start to look east to Brezno and the Hirzg with any proclamation I might make, to see if he agrees. The Council of Ca’ here will be more concerned with how their rulings are perceived by Jan than by me. I intend to live a long life yet, Sergei. What did you tell me the other day-that I have decades yet to match Kraljica Marguerite?” She rose from her seat- let him see that our conversation is done. She spoke now distantly and sternly, as if giving an order to Talbot. “Well, I intend to do exactly that. You will support me, or someone else will be my Ambassador.”