by S L Farrell
She watched his face, though Sergei’s expression rarely betrayed his private thoughts. It did not do so now. He bowed a bit awkwardly and stiffly, but his face was bland and his eyes seemed to hold nothing but respect for her. “I will always serve Nessantico and whomever sits on the Sun Throne,” he said. “Always.”
She nearly laughed again- so carefully said. “Then tell my son that he toys with black sand and fire, as you said, with his recent border excursions, and that my patience is ebbing. Tell him that I expect them to stop immediately, or that I’ll be forced to respond in kind. Remind him that West Magyaria is his only because I failed to send the full Garde Civile to support Stor ca’Vikej-that’s a mistake I won’t repeat.”
His face showed nothing as Sergei bowed. “As the Kraljica wishes,” he answered.
“Good,” she told him. “I’ll have Talbot draw up a list of demands for your meeting, and my responses to the questions that you’re likely to receive from the Hirzg.”
The Hirzg. Not “my son.” Allesandra had a sudden memory of Jan: holding him as an infant, watching him suckle at her breast and the close, intense pleasure of feeling her milk come; his first words; his first staggering steps; the times he’d come to her crying because of some injury or perceived slight and she’d held and comforted him. Where did that change? Why did I let that happen? She sucked in her breath. Sergei was watching her, his rheum-touched eyes on her face. “We’re done,” she told him. “I’ll send Talbot with my instructions.”
“Yes, Kraljica,” he said, and she hated the sympathy he allowed to pass over his face, hated that he had noticed the emptiness inside her, that made her cry sometimes alone at night, that troubled her dreams. He bowed his way out, but she was no longer paying any attention to him. It was Jan she saw, as he was when she had last seen him. She wondered what he was like now, what her great-children might be like, whom she had never hugged or kissed or dandled on her knees. So much you’ve missed. So much you’ve lost. Her vision wavered, the tapestry-lined walls going briefly liquid, and she wondered whether Sergei might be right. Perhaps it was time.
There was a soft knock on the door, and she blinked, wiping at her eyes quickly with her sleeve. “Come,” she said, and Talbot stuck his head in the doorway.
“The Ambassador said you would want me, Kraljica.”
She sniffed. “Yes,” she told him. “Come in, but first have one of the servants bring parchment and ink. And if Vajiki ca’Vikej has arrived, tell him that I will be with him shortly.”
“I was terrified when I heard, worried that you might have been injured…”
Erik was pacing back and forth in front of the windows of the apartment. Their lunch steamed on the table untouched. Allesandra watched him from her chair at the table, staring at him: at the worry in his face, at the way the muscles lurched on his bald skull.
It’s real, the concern he has for you. It’s not faked, it’s not based on his own agenda: it’s genuine. She hoped she was right in that. She also realized that she’d made a decision, all unbidden and unasked for. It was wrapped in her own loneliness, in her estrangement from Jan, in the mistake she’d made with Erik’s vatarh, in the intense grief she felt when she was with Varina, in her anger with the Morellis. She hoped her decision was the right one.
“I’m fine, Erik,” she told him. “I was shaken but not injured. The attack wasn’t directed at me.”
He nodded fiercely. “Had you been hurt, I would have gone out myself and found this Nico Morel, and…” He stopped, turning away from the windows to look at her. His face and his voice softened. “My apologies, Kraljica. It’s just that I was so worried…”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. “And here, while we’re alone, I would prefer you call me Allesandra.”
“Allesandra,” he said, as if tasting the name. He smiled. “Thank you. But don’t underestimate these Morellis. They’re a danger to you, whether you believe it or not. They’re fanatics, and they threaten anyone who doesn’t believe as they believe.”
“Are you a fanatic, Erik?” she asked him gently. She gestured to the chair next to her right.
He sat before he answered. “About West Magyaria, you mean?” His hand cupped his wineglass, shivering the ruby liquid in it. “No, not about that. In politics, I’m more of a pragmatist than my vatarh. I believe that West Magyaria would be better off as part of the Holdings. I believe that I would be a good Gyula, if Cenzi desires that to happen. I’m willing to work as hard as I need to make that happen, but I also know that sometimes sacrifices and compromises must be made to accomplish things, and that sometimes the best result isn’t the one you would like to see. So, no, I’m not a fanatic but a realist.” He lifted the glass and set it down again. “That’s not to say that there aren’t things that I care deeply about or that I’m not a passionate man, Kralji-” A breath. “Allesandra. When I come to love something, or someone…”
His hand left the glass and lay on the linen tablecloth. She reached out her own hand and put it on top of his. She heard him draw in his breath. His lovely pale eyes held her own gaze, unblinking, almost as if in challenge. His fingers opened, then laced with hers.
“I am passionate,” she told him softly. “Nessantico and the Holdings are my passion. And I am also dangerous because of that. So this…” She pressed his fingers lightly. “… would not be a decision to make lightly. Or, if you prefer, we can eat the dinner that’s set here for us.”
He nodded. He lifted his hand, still holding hers, to his mouth, and kissed the back of her hand. His breath was warm on her skin, the touch of his lips soft and exciting. “Are you hungry, Allesandra?” he asked.
This is what you want… This is why you asked him here today. .. “I am,” she answered. She rose from her chair, still holding his hand.
She led him away.
Niente
The waters of Munereo Bay swarmed with ships anchored together so densely that it seemed a person might walk entirely across the great bay without getting wet. Their sails were furled and lashed on their masts, and they huddled together under a low sky with the clouds racing west. Fleeting shafts of dusty sunlight pierced the clouds and slid over the bay, sparkling on the distant waves and the bound white cloth on their masts.
Niente had never in his life seen so many ships gathered in one place, had only once before seen so many warriors of the Tehuantin gathered together.
He heard a gasp from his side as his son Atl came alongside him. “By Axat’s left tit,” he breathed, the profanity loud in the chill morning air, “that is something new in the world.”
“It certainly is,” Niente told the young man. He blinked, trying unsuccessfully to clear his blurred vision-even his remaining eye’s sight was beginning to fail. They were standing on a hill outside the city walls, not far from the main road down to the harbor. The road was thick with soldiers, marching down to the boats. The few hundred nahualli, the spellcasters that would be accompanying the invasion force, were gathered in their own group a little farther down the hill, just off the road. They would be among the last to board the ships, just before Tecuhtli Citlali and his High Warriors.
Behind Niente and Atl, the thick walls of Munereo were still pockmarked and stained by the vestiges of the battle that had raged here a decade and a half ago, when the Holdings forces had been defeated by the army of Tecuhtli Zolin, Citlali’s predecessor. Niente had been here for that battle, had seen the black sand roar and the stones fly, had helped to sacrifice the defeated Easterner leaders to Axat. And he had sailed with Tecuhtli Zolin from this very harbor across the sea to the Holdings itself.
So long ago. It felt like another lifetime to Niente.
A lifetime he was now forced to revisit if he wanted to achieve the vision he’d glimpsed in the scrying bowl. How many of these warriors will die for this? How many souls will be sent to the underworld because of what I’m doing? Axat, please tell me that I can do this, that it will be worth the guilt my own soul will have to bear. Help me
.
“Taat?”
Niente shook himself from reverie. “What?”
“I thought you said something.”
“No,” he answered. At least I hope not. No one could know this vision. Not yet. “I was clearing my throat; the air this morning is hard on my lungs.” He gestured out toward the ships and the bay. “Tomorrow, we’ll be sailing toward the sun when it rises.”
“And there will be good winds,” Atl said, and the confidence in his voice made Niente turn to his son, his eyes narrowing.
“You know this?” he asked.
Atl smiled briefly, like the touch of sun through the clouds on the ships below. “Yes,” he answered.
“Atl-” Niente began, and his son lifted a hand.
“Stop, Taat. Here, I’ll finish it for you. ‘Look at me. Look at how Axat has scarred me. Leave the scrying to some other nahualli. Axat is hardest on those to whom She gives Sight.’ I’ve heard it all. Many times.”
“You should look at me,” Niente persisted. He touched his blind, white eye, stroked the sagging muscles of the left side of his face, the ridges of scarred, dead skin: a mask of horror. “Is this what you want to look like?”
Atl’s gaze swept over Niente’s face and departed once more. “That took many years, Taat,” he said. “And the oath of the nahualli binds us to do what Axat asks of us. And your scrying got you that also.” He pointed to the golden band around Niente’s right arm.
“You musn’t do this,” Niente persisted. “Atl, I mean it. When I’m gone, do as you wish, but while I live, while I’m your Taat and the Nahual…” He put his hand on Atl’s shoulder. The contrast of their skin startled him: his own was loose, painfully dry, and plowed with uncountable tiny furrows; Atl’s was smooth and bronzed. “Don’t call on Her,” he finished. “That’s my task. My burden.”
“It doesn’t have to be yours alone.”
“Yes, it does,” Niente said, and the words came out more sharply than he’d intended, snapping Atl’s head back as if he’d been slapped. The young man’s eyes were slitted, and he shot a glance of raw fury at Niente for a moment before turning his head slightly to stare deliberately out toward the bay. “Take care of him,” Xaria had told him before they left. “He loves you, he respects you, and he admires you. He wants so much to make you proud of him-and I worry that he’ll do something foolish in the effort…”
Xaria didn’t understand. Neither did Atl, and he could tell neither of them. He couldn’t allow Atl to use the scrying spells, not because of the cost of them-though that was signficant-but because he knew that Atl had the Gift as he did, and he could not let Atl see what he saw in the bowl. He could not. If Atl saw what he saw, Niente could lose the Long Path. Axat’s glimpses of the future were fickle, and easily changed. “I’m sorry,” he said to Atl. “But it’s important.”
“I’m certain it is,” Atl said, “because the Nahual is always right, isn’t he?” With that, Atl gave a mocking obeisance to Niente and stalked away toward the other nahualli even as Niente stretched out his arm toward him. Niente blinked; through his remaining eye, he saw Atl stride into the group.
He could feel them all, staring back up the hill toward him and wondering: wondering if Atl would soon challenge his Taat as Nahual, wondering if perhaps they should do it first.
Their gazes were appraising and challenging and without any mercy or sympathy at all.
Sergei ca’Rudka
From the street, Sergei watched Commandant cu’Ingres’ squad crowd around the door of the shabby, rundown building in Oldtown in the gray dawn. The stench of the butcheries up the street filled their nostrils. There were four men at the front, another three around the rear door, and two each in the space between the house and its neighbors. There was also a quartet of war-teni lent to them by A’Teni ca’Paim-they huddled around the front door, already beginning chants of warding.
The morning was chilly, and Sergei wrapped his cloak tighter around his shoulders. The street was empty-there was an utilino stationed at the nearest crossroads to stop people from entering, and crowds had gathered behind them to watch. Those neighbors who had noticed the Garde Kralji moving in stayed judiciously in their houses. Sergei could see the occasional flicker of a face at the curtains, though there’d been no movement at the house they were about to enter.
That twisted his lips into a frown. The tip had come from a good informant, and had been “verified” by the interrogation of two suspected Morelli sympathizers in the Bastida. Sergei was hopeful that this sweep would catch Nico Morel. Yet…
“Now!” cu’Ingres shouted, waving his hand. One of the war-teni gestured, and the door of the house exploded into slivers of wood, accompanied by a loud boom and dark smoke. The Garde Kralji rushed inside, brandishing swords and shouting for anyone inside to surrender.
Sergei heard their calls go unanswered. He scowled and started across the street, his cane tapping on the cobblestones-Commandant cu’Ingres following at Sergei’s measured, careful pace-even as the o’offizier in charge of the squad came to the door, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Ambassador, Commandant,” he said, standing aside as Sergei entered the house, his knees cracking as he stepped up onto the raised threshold. He could hear gardai searching the rooms upstairs, their boots loud on the floorboards above. “There doesn’t appear to be anyone here.”
“No. They knew we were coming,” Sergei said. The room in which he stood was sparsely furnished: a table whose scarred surface a square of stained linen did little to conceal; a few rickety chairs with wicker seats in need of recaning. It seemed that if the Morellis had lived here, they hardly lived in luxury. He went to the hearth in the outer room and crouched down, groaning as his legs protested. He held his hand out over the ash: he could feel heat still radiating up from the coals underneath. He stood again. “They were here only last night. Someone warned them.”
He scratched at the skin near his false right nostril. On the mantel above the hearth, there was only a neatlyfolded piece of parchment; lettering looped over the front and Sergei leaned in closer to read it: his own name, written in an elegant, careful script. He snorted laughter through his metal nose.
“Ambassador?” Cu’Ingres was peering over Sergei’s shoulder. “Ah,” he said. “Then our informant was right.”
“Right about the location. Wrong with the timing,” Sergei said. He plucked the paper from the mantel and opened the stiff parchment.
Sergei-I’m sorry to have missed you. Cenzi tells me that someday you and I must talk. But not today. Not until I’ve accomplished the tasks He has given to me. I would like to think that perhaps now you’ll see that I am only doing His work, but I suspect your eyes, like those of the Kraljica and the A’Teni, are blinded. I’m sorry for that, and I will pray for Cenzi to give you sight. It was signed simply “Nico.”
“We won’t find anything here,” Sergei told cu’Ingres. “Have your men search the place thoroughly in case they’ve missed something important, but they won’t have. The Morellis have an informant of their own, either in the Garde Kralji or-more likely-within the Faith. We’ve missed them.”
He poked at the ash in the fireplace with the tip of his cane until he saw glowing red. He let the note drift from his hand onto the coals. The edges of the paper darkened, lines of red crawling over it before it burst into flame. “I won’t let this happen a second time,” he said: to cu’Ingres, to the paper, to the ghost of Nico.
The paper went to dry ash, fragments of it lifting and rising up the flue. Sergei shrugged his cloak around his shoulders. He slammed his cane hard once on the floor of the house, and left.
“We’ll be successful next time,” Sergei said. “I promise you that.”
He watched Varina shrug in the light streaming in between the lace curtains of the window. The patterns of the lace speckled her face and shoulders with dappled light and put her eyes in deep shadow. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear,” she said, “but part of me is glad Nico escaped you, Sergei
. I think Karl would have felt the same.”
The teapot on the table between them clattered as Sergei adjusted himself in the chair. “Your compassion is admirable, and is what makes everyone-including Karl-love you.”
“But?” Varina put down her teacup. Lace-shadow crawled across the back of her hands.
Now it was Sergei who lifted his shoulders. “Compassion isn’t always good for the State.”
“Would you have said that back when the Numetodo were called heretics and condemned to death?” Varina retorted softly. She looked out to the curtained window and back again. “Would you have said that when Kraljiki Audric and the Council of Ca’ named you a traitor?”
Sergei put his hands up in front of him as if to stop an onslaught. He remembered the time he’d spent in the Bastida after Audric’s condemnation of him all too well: how frightened he’d been that what he’d done to many others would now be done to him, and how it had been Karl and Varina who had saved him from that fate, at the risk of their own lives and freedom. “I yield,” he said. “The lady has taken the field.”
Varina almost smiled at that. The expression was momentary, but Sergei grinned in response-it was the first time he’d seen her show a trace of amusement since Karl’s final illness. He reached out and patted her hand; the skin sagging around his bones made her hands look youthful by comparison. “The boy’s had a hard life,” she said. “Snatched away from his poor matarh by that horrid madwoman, the White Stone. What kind of life could the boy have had? We have no idea what horrors he might have experienced with her.”
“I agree, we can’t know that. However, he’s no longer a boy but a man who must be responsible for his actions,” Sergei said, then lifted his hands again as he saw Varina start to answer. “I know, I know. ‘The child shapes the man.’ I know the saying, and yes, there’s truth to it, but still…” He shook his head. “Nico Morel isn’t the boy we knew, Varina, no matter how much you’d like that to be true. His last action killed five of your friends and injured many others.”