by S L Farrell
“Thank you, Commandant,” Jan told him. “My matarh chose well when she named you Commandant, and she’s fortunate to have someone of your skill at her side. You’ve done as well as could be expected. No one could have done better.” Starkkapitan ca’Damont nodded at that appraisal.
He looked again at the deadly array before them, then over his shoulder at the land behind: the Avi a’Sele winding through woods until it vanished. He could, faintly, see the roofs of Pre a’Fleuve above the distant treetops. Only a few miles beyond that lay Nessantico. And somewhere just to the west of Nessantico, his own army should be nearly within sight of the city, weary from a long, fast march from Firenzcia.
To the immediate south, the great ribbon of the River A’Sele curled through the rolling landscape, oblivious to the drama that was unfolding so near to it. Whether the Holdings prevailed or the Tehuantin, it would continue to flow to the sea, unperturbed and uncaring.
“I agree with your assessment, Commandant,” he said. “We can’t stand here, not with the troops we have, though it’s a shame since we have the high ground. Still, I think we might yet slow them down. We need more time to prepare, for my own troops to arrive and rest, and for Sergei to get more of the war-teni here also. We’ll meet their main force outside Nessantico because it’s our only choice, but I think we’ll also give them a taste of what they’re up against-if only so we can see how they’ll react. Starkkapitan, Commandant, let’s retire to the tents and make our plans…”
Niente
For the last few days, the Easterners had harassed their forces, nipping at the outlying flanks like angry dogs, then pulling back without ever fully engaging. Niente wondered at the tactics-the Easterners still held the high ground while most of their own warriors were concentrated along the road and the fields alongside it, in the valleys of this land. Niente knew that if Citlali had been the Easterner general, he would have rained down storms of arrows on them, would have hurled spells from the heavens toward them, would have sent wave upon wave of soldiers down from the hills. He would have forced decisive battle on them while he held the advantage of the land.
But the Easterners would only sometimes use their archers as the warriors moved through the passes. They sent out only small groups of riders who would try to pick off squads who had strayed from the main body of the army. They only rarely used their spellcasters.
Perhaps Atl had been right. Perhaps the best path was that leading to a victory here. Perhaps they could achieve such a devastating blow to their empire that they could never force the horrible retaliation that Niente had glimpsed in the scrying bowl.
Perhaps.
Niente trudged with the rest of the nahualli in the train of Nahual Atl. His feet ached, his legs trembled with exhaustion whenever they stopped, and he wondered if he could keep up even this slow pace until they reached the city. As Nahual, he had ridden and rarely walked, but now… The other nahualli mostly ignored him, as if he were invisible. When he’d been Nahual, they’d been eager to seek him out, to ask his advice, to listen to what he had to say. No longer. Now he watched them fawn over his son as they once had him. He watched Atl bask in their adoration. He saw the jealousy in their hearts, and the appraisal in their eyes as they searched him for any weakness that they might exploit.
They measured themselves against Atl as they had once done against Niente, to see if they might become Nahual themselves.
“Taat!” He heard Atl call him, and he quickened his pace as they walked, moving through the nahualli to where his son rode-on the horse Niente had once ridden himself-a careful six paces behind Tecuhtli Citlali in the middle of the train.
“Nahual,” Niente said, and found that he found himself secretly pleased to see the pain in his son’s eyes at the use of the title. “What is it you need?”
“Did you use the scrying bowl last night?”
Niente shook his head. He’d not used the bowl since he’d abdicated his title. He could still feel its weight in the leather bag sung over his shoulder. Atl’s lips pursed at the answer. Niente thought that Atl already looked visibly older than before they’d left their own country: the cost of using the far-sight. In time-too little time-he would look as haggard and ancient and scarred as Niente did now. His face would be a horror, a constant reminder of the power of Axat’s grip. One day he would realize that all Niente’s warnings had been true.
Niente hoped that he wasn’t alive to see that day.
“I can see little in my own bowl,” Atl said, his voice a whisper that only the two of them could hear. “Everything is confused. There are so many images, so many contradictions. And Tecuhtli Citlali keeps asking what I think of his strategies.”
Again, Niente felt a guilty stab of satisfaction. “Do you still see victory for us?”
A nod. “I do. Yet…”
“Yet?”
An uncomfortable shrug. He looked forward, not at Niente. “I was so sure, Taat. Right after Karnmor, I could nearly touch it, everything was so clear. Yet since then, a mist has begun to overlay everything, there are shadows moving in the future and forces I can’t quite see. It’s become worse since, well, since you stepped down.”
“I know,” Niente told him. “I felt the forces and the changes, too.”
Atl looked back at Niente, and lifted his right arm slightly, so that the golden bracelet of the Nahual shone briefly. “This isn’t what I wanted, Taat. I would rather you were still wearing this, and that is the truth. It was only… I know what I had seen in the bowl, and it wasn’t what you said was there.”
“I know that also.”
“Could you have killed me, had we fought as the Tecuhtli wanted?”
Niente nodded. “Yes.” His answer was certain and quick. Yes, he was still stronger than his son with the X’in Ka. Even now. He was sure of that. “But… I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t kill my own son so I could continue to call myself Nahual. I couldn’t.”
Atl didn’t answer, seeming to ponder that. “I need your help, Taat. You were Nahual for so long. I need your advice, your counsel, your skill.”
“You have it,” he told Atl, and for the first time in days, he smiled. Slowly, Atl returned the gesture.
“Good,” Atl said. “Then tonight when we stop, we will both use our scrying bowls, and we will talk with each other about what we see, and that way I will give Tecuhtli Citlali the best advice I can. Will you do that with me, Taat?”
Niente patted his son’s leg. “I will.”
“Good. Then it’s settled. You!” Atl called out to one of the nahualli. “Go and find a horse for the Uchben Nahual. I need to speak to him and borrow from his wisdom, and he should not be walking. Hurry!” Uchben Nahual- the Old Nahual.
He could be that. He could serve that way.
If that was the role Axat had given him, he would perform it.
Varina ca’Pallo
She might have understood instinctively if she had borne children of her own with Karl, but that had never happened. But Karl had his children, back in Paeti.
“It’s different with your own children,” Karl had told her once. “It doesn’t matter what they do-there’s very little they could do, even some horrible things, that would change the way you feel about them. You might hate their actions, but you can never hate them.”
She thought she might realize that, finally.
She’d accosted Sergei after the meeting with Hirzg Jan, pulling at the old Silvernose’s bashta as they left the palais. “If you hurt him, Sergei, I will never forgive you,” she said. “Never. I don’t care how long we’ve been friends. If you torture him, I will never call you friend again.”
His face was pained, the wrinkles deep around his false nose and eyes. “Varina, the war-teni-”
“I don’t care, ” she told him. “Remember that Karl and I risked our lives to save you from the same fate. Pay us back now.”
Sergei had only shaken his head. “I can promise nothing,” he’d answered. “I’m sorry, Varina. Nessantico nee
ds the war-teni.”
Strange how Nico had become the son she’d never had. The son she’d lost for years after the first invasion of Nessantico. The son who hated everything she and Karl believed and for which they’d struggled over the decades. The son who seemed perfectly comfortable with the thought of killing her for his own beliefs.
You might hate their actions, but you can never hate them.
She could not hate him. It made no sense, but the feelings were there.
The page had come to her at the Numetodo House from the palais, bearing a letter from the Kraljica. “The Kraljica requires your presence at the Old Temple in a turn of the glass,” he said, bowing to her. And he’d left. The letter had said little more, only that Allesandra herself would be there, and that she requested her presence both as a friend and as a member of the Council of Ca’, and that the Archigos would also be present. She knew that it must be something to do with Nico. The thought terrified her.
She wasn’t certain what she’d do if he’d been abused, how she might react. She didn’t know what she could do, since Talbot had already started manufacturing the sparkwheels for the Garde Kralji and Garde Civile. Her single bargaining chip was gone.
So she watched the carriage with the Garde Kralji’s insignia on it as it clattered into the open space of the plaza. A dais had been erected near the blackened, shattered front facade of the Old Temple, with a viewing stand no more than five strides from it. The dais was only large enough for a few people to stand on; in the center was a wooden pillar with chains attached. Allesandra was already seated on the viewing stand with a cadre of Garde Kralji gardai around her; there was a sea of teni also present, though if Archigos Karrol was indeed watching, he did so from somewhere else-Varina wondered if Allesandra had insisted on that. Behind the teni there was a dense crowd of onlookers, as if this were a holiday and they were there for the celebration. They were strangely silent, the citizens of Nessantico; Varina had no sense of what they were thinking or where their sympathies might lie.
Varina wanted to go toward the carriage, knowing that Nico would be inside, but Allesandra gestured to her from the stand and Talbot had already come up to her. “Follow me, A’Morce,” he said. Varina looked back at the carriage, then followed Talbot to the stand, the gardai sliding aside as they climbed the short set of stairs. Varina curtsied to Allesandra, then to the other members of the Council of Ca’, who were seated immediately behind the Kraljica.
“Sit here, my dear,” Allesandra told her, gesturing to a seat at her right side. The seat to the left was vacant; Varina wondered if Archigos Karrol was supposed to be sitting there-which also made her wonder at the significance of placing the Archigos to the left, lower position, but then Talbot seated himself there.
The carriage-its windows shuttered so that no one could see inside, and pulled by a single black horse-had come alongside the smaller dais. Gardai hurried forward, surrounding it as two of them opened the doors. From the side facing the Kraljica, Sergei was helped down. Leaning on his cane, he bowed to the stand with its dignitaries, then went around to the far side of the carriage. Varina glimpsed Nico’s head over the top of the carriage, then more of him as he ascended the stairs alongside Sergei. Was he limping, or was that only due to the chains that bound his ankles and hands? There were bruises on his face, but they seemed old, not fresh, and there were no obvious disfigurements. His head was free of the terrible cage of the silencer. He seemed to incline himself toward Sergei as they reached the top of the dais, saying something to the man. He appeared to nearly smile as he looked out at the crowd-would that be the reaction of a man who’d been tortured?
Now Nico, too, faced the Kraljica, and he bent low at the waist toward her, giving her the sign of Cenzi as best he could with manacled hands. “Kraljica,” he said. “Councillors.” He seemed to be scanning the crowd. Varina wondered if he were looking for the Archigos. “And especially, teni. I’ve come to plead for your forgiveness, and your understanding.”
His voice was a husk, containing but a memory of the power Varina remembered. He sounded weak and exhausted. But he lifted his head, and he looked out at each of them, his eyes finding all of them in turn. Varina felt the shock of connection when his gaze came to her. He smiled again then, nodding ever so slightly to her, and she could not stop herself from giving him a smile in return. Then his gaze drifted on, and Varina thought that he stared for a long time past the teni into the citizenry, and she halfturned to see who had caught his eye. But he finally cleared his throat and began to speak again.
“I acted in the belief that I was doing what Cenzi required of me,” he said, more loudly. “Nothing more. I say that not to excuse my actions, but so you understand that there was no malice in them, only faith. A terribly mistaken faith.” His voice ignited with the last few words. They shivered, they pulsed, they rang from the ramparts of the buildings around the plaza with impossible clarity. Varina found herself looking around to see if some teni were chanting, adding the power of the Ilmodo to his words, but she could see no movement among the green-robed ranks, and she realized that it must be from Nico himself. She wondered if Sergei realized that Nico was able to use the Ilmodo even with his hands chained, as no teni should be able to do. Even Allesandra’s head moved back as if trying to escape the sound, and now Sergei glanced over at Nico, his head cocked as if he were puzzled.
“I thought I was Cenzi’s Voice,” Nico continued. “I thought I was the Absolute. But I was not. It was actually my own voice I heard, my own hatred and prejudices. I apologize to all of those who listened to me then, and I tell you this: I was, all unwittingly, a false prophet and you would have been better not to have listened to me. I might still have the love of the most important person in my life had I not been so foolish.” Varina heard his voice choke at that, and she thought of Serafina-she’d left the baby asleep at the Numetodo House, with the wet nurse Belle watching over her.
“I apologize to you,” Nico continued, “and I am profoundly sorry for what I’ve done. Your sins are on my head, and when Cenzi calls me I will need to answer for them. I release you. I tell you now: follow your Archigos. Follow your Kraljica and your Hirzg.”
“There,” Allesandra whispered to Varina. “That is what we’ve come for. We have you to thank for this, Varina…” She seemed almost ready to rise and respond, but Nico had taken a breath, and now his voice was ice and fire at once.
“I believed,” Nico said. “I still believe. I have prayed now for days for His direction. What I’ve come to realize is that the gift Cenzi has given me is not constrained by laws and restrictions that the Faith placed on me. Cenzi’s revelation to me in the wake of my folly was both enlightening and freeing.” He raised his bound hands as if offering them to the sky. “I had allowed the Archigos and those within the Faith to chain and bind my gift in their human fetters, when, in fact, Cenzi places no such limitation on them. That’s what the Numetodo have known all along, to their credit-” and there Nico’s gaze found Varina again, and he smiled broadly toward her. “That’s what I finally realized myself, and what I demonstrate to you now.”
Varina stood. “Nico, no…” she began, her voice a pale shadow of his own, but it was already too late.
Nico’s hands were still raised, and now he gestured once with both of them together, and he shouted a single word-a word in the language of the Ilmodo, of the Scath Cumhacht, of the X’in Ka. A darkness, a fragment of a starless and moonless night, seemed to wrap around him, hiding him. Sergei gave a shout and reached toward Nico, only to draw his hand back with a cry when he touched the darkness. The gardai did the same, but when they reached the darkness, the false night in which Nico had wrapped himself suddenly vanished.
And where Nico had been, they found only the chains in which he’d been fettered, lying on the wooden planks of the dais. Nico himself had vanished.
Varina blinked. “Well,” she said, “it seems he listened to me more than I thought.”
Rochelle Botelli
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Rochelle watched Nico, weighed down in chains as he was helped up to the dais, with Old Silvernose standing right alongside him. She felt helpless, the emotion even more acute now than when she’d glimpsed him in the tower of the Bastida from the Avi a’Parete. Then, she’d had no hope that she could help him. Now, he was so close: without the horrid black stones of the Bastida holding him; without the unknown corridors between them; with only the teni and some gardai separating them.
Yet she still couldn’t help him. They would catch her and drag her down before she reached him even though several of them would be dead as a result. But she would fail. Must fail. That was another thing Matarh had taught her, even in her madness. “Make certain the odds are well in your favor before you move. Sometimes, you must just accept that you can’t win and not even try.”
To be so achingly close to him, to see her brother again and not be able to help him…
It hurt. It wounded her as surely as a sword’s edge. Yet there was something she might accomplish today, if she had the chance. The Kraljica was here, her great-matarh, and though Allesandra was as well guarded as her brother, perhaps there might be a moment, a chance. Rochelle’s hand went to the dagger under her clothing, the dagger she’d stolen from her vatarh. The vow she’d made to her matarh burned in her mind.
If she couldn’t save a life, perhaps she could take one just as important.
On the dais, Nico bowed to the ca’-and-cu’ on their own raised platform. “Kraljica, Councillors. And especially, teni. I’ve come to plead for your forgiveness, and your understanding.” His voice sounded tired, and he was looking around. His gaze flitted over each of them, and Rochelle stood on her toes, trying to see better over the people around her. Then it happened. Nico’s eyes found hers. She could feel the connection and acknowledgment. Nico was staring right at her, and his lips curled in the faintest of smiles, as if he knew her. He nodded toward her, as if telling her that he knew why she was there and to be patient. She wanted to wave toward him, to shout out his name, but then his gaze moved back to the dignitaries on their stand, and his voice had gained volume and power. She half-listened to him as she tried to push through the crowd closer to the stand. Nico’s voice continued to swell and pulse; it was like the beating of summer sunlight on her. She caught words here and there: