by S L Farrell
“All right,” she told him. She rose to her feet. “All of you-to sleep. No more talking, no more fighting. Do you hear?”
They all mumbled assent as the girls whispered and laughed and Matarh and Tantzia Alisa exchanged indulgent sighs. The door closed. Nico waited. “You’ll pay for this, Nico Bastardo,” Tujan muttered, his voice low and quiet and sinister in the new dark. “You’ll pay…”
He slept that night in the corner of the room nearest the door, wrapped in a blanket, and he thought of Nessantico and of Talis, and he knew he could not stay here, no matter how dangerous Nessantico might be.
Allesandra ca’Vorl
“A ’Hirzg! A moment!”
Semini called out to her as she left Brezno Temple after the Cenzidi service. Her foot was already on the carriage step, but she turned to him. Jan had already left-accompanied by Elissa ca’Karina and Fynn-while Pauli had said that he would attend the service given by the palais’ o’teni in the Hirzg’s Chapel. Allesandra suspected that he’d instead spent the time between the sweating thighs of one of the ladies of the court.
“Archigos,” she said, giving him the sign of Cenzi. “A particularly strong Admonition today, I thought.” Around them, the worshipers streaming out from the temple looked toward them, but stayed carefully distant: whatever the A’Hirzg and the Archigos discussed, it was not for common ears. The carriage attendant moved away to check the harnesses of the horses and converse with the driver; the minor tenis who always followed the Archigos had remained at the doors to the temple in a huddle, talking. Semini gave her the dark, somber smile of a bear.
“Thank you,” he told her. He glanced around to see that no one was within earshot. “You’ve heard the news?”
“News?” Allesandra cocked her head quizzically, and Semini’s mouth tightened under the grizzled beard.
“It just came to me through one of the Faith’s contacts,” he told her. “I thought perhaps the news hadn’t quite reached the palais yet. The Regent ca’Rudka has been removed by the Council of Ca’ and is currently imprisoned in the Bastida.”
“Oh, by Cenzi…” Allesandra breathed, genuinely shocked by what he’d just said. What does this mean? What’s happened there? If the Archigos was offended by Allesandra’s curse, he showed nothing. He nodded into her flustered silence.
“Yes. I was rather amazed myself.” His voice dropped low and he leaned in toward her, turning his head so that his lips were very near her ear. The sound of his low growl made her shiver. “I worry that this changes… everything for us, Allesandra.”
Then he stepped back again and her neck was cold, even in the early summer warmth. “Archigos…” she began. What have I done? How can I stop the White Stone now? With the Regent gone, it’s all for nothing. Nothing. What have I done? She glanced up at the pigeons circling the golden domes of the temple. There were dozens of them, diving and rising and intertwining like the possibilities whirling in her head. “You trust the source of this news?”
“I do,” he rumbled. “Gairdi has never been wrong before. No doubt the Hirzg will hear the same from his own sources soon. News like this
…” His head swiveled side to side above the green robes, the beard moving on the cloth. “It will travel like wildfire in a drought. Has the Council gone mad? From all I’ve heard, Audric’s not capable of being Kraljiki. And with ca’Rudka in the Bastida…”
“ ‘Those swallowed by the Bastida a’Drago rarely emerge whole.’ ” Allesandra finished the thought for him-an old saying in Nessantico, usually muttered with a scowl and a gesture meant to ward off curses directed toward the dark stones and impassive towers of the Bastida. “I feel sorry for ca’Rudka. I liked the man, despite what he did to my vatarh.” She took a long breath, glancing again at the pigeons, settling in the courtyard again now that most of the worshipers had departed for their homes. Now that she’d had time to absorb the news, the shock had passed, but the question still whirled in her mind. What have I done?
“This changes nothing,” she told Semini firmly, wishing she were as certain as she made her voice sound. “The Regent has simply been replaced by the Council, some of whom undoubtedly intend to be the next Kralji. Audric is still Audric, and when he falls… well, then we will be in a position to do what we must. Don’t worry, Archigos.”
He nodded and bowed to her. Carefully, looking around once more, he put his hands around hers, pressing them between his own for a moment. “I will pray that you’re right, A’Hirzg,” he said quietly. “Perhaps… perhaps we could talk more of this-privately-later this morning.” His eyebrows arched above piercing, unblinking eyes.
“All right,” she told him, wondering if this was what she really wanted. She would have to think further, to be certain. “In two turns of the glass, perhaps. In my chambers at the palais?”
“I will make sure my schedule is cleared,” he told her. He smiled. He took a step back from her and gave her the sign of Cenzi, bowing as he did so. “I look forward to it,” he said. “Greatly.”
“A’Hirzg…” As soon as the hall servant had closed the door behind him, as soon as he realized that they were alone, Semini had come to her and taken her hand. She let him hold it for a few breaths, then stepped back from him. She gestured at the table set in the middle of the room.
“I had my staff prepare us a luncheon.”
He looked at it, and she saw the disappointment in his face.
She had been considering what she wanted to do ever since she’d left him. She needed Semini, yes, but in all likelihood she could have that help without being his lover. Yet… she had to admit that he was attractive, that she found herself leaning toward him. She remembered the few times she’d allowed herself to have lovers, remembering the heat and long, lingering kisses, the gasping sliding of intertwined bodies, the moments when all rational thought was lost in swirling, blind ecstasy.
She would have enjoyed having a husband who was also a lover and a partner, with whom she could have true intimacy. She could feel the void in her soul: she had no true friends, no family she loved and who loved her in return. Archigos Ana might have been her captor, but she’d also been more of a matarh to her than her own, and Vatarh had taken that from her when he’d finally ransomed her. And when she’d finally returned to the vatarh whom she’d once loved so deeply, it was to find that his affection no longer shone down on her like the very sun, but now was concentrated entirely on Fynn. Vatarh had instead married her off-a political prize to seal the agreement bringing West Magyaria into the Coalition. She loved the son that came from her spousal duty and he had loved her also as a child, but his age and Fynn were pulling him away from her.
Early on, she had imagined coming back to Nessantico-perhaps as the Hirzgin, perhaps as a claimant to the Sun Throne itself. She had imagined her friendship with Ana restored, of the two of them working together to create an empire that would be the wonder of the ages. But now Ana was gone forever, stolen from her.
She had herself. She had no one else.
You like Semini well enough, and it’s obvious he’s already in love with you. But he was also nearly two decades older, and they were both married. There was no future with him-unless, perhaps, he could become the Archigos of a unified Faith.
You’re thinking like your vatarh. You’re thinking like old Marguerite.
Semini stared at the meal on the table: the cold, sliced meats, the bread, the cheese, the wine. “If the A’Hirzg is hungry, then.. .”
You could end up as lonely as Ana was, as Marguerite was. Why shouldn’t you let yourself be close to someone, to enjoy them? You need someone who is your ally, your lover…
She touched his back, let her hand trail down his spine. “The meal,” she said, “was for appearances. And for later.”
“Allesandra-” He had turned toward her, and the hopeful look on his face nearly made her laugh.
She lifted up on her toes, her hand on his shoulders, and kissed him. His beard, she found, was surprisingly soft,
and the lips underneath yielded to her. She brought her heels back down to the floor and took his hands, looking up at him with her head cocked to one side. His mouth was slightly open. “We would have to be careful, Semini,” she told him. “So very careful.”
His fingers tightened on hers. He leaned down toward her and she felt his lips brush her hair, moving as he spoke. “Cenzi has my soul,” he whispered. “But you, Allesandra, you have my heart. You always had my heart.” The words were so unexpected, so clumsy and cloying that she nearly laughed again, though she knew it would destroy him. She started to speak, to say something in return, but he leaned down again and kissed her brow, softly. She turned her face toward his, her arms going around him. The kiss was longer and urgent, his breath sweet, and the depth of her own hungry response startled her. She broke away reluctantly, hugging him tightly, her breath trembling.
His lips brushed her hair, his breath on her ear made her shiver. “This is what I want, Allesandra, more than anything.”
She didn’t answer him with words, but with her mouth and her hands.
Karl ca’Vliomani
“ I can’t believe I’m seeing this. Has the Council of Ca’ gone entirely insane?”
Sergei, sitting with his arms wrapped around his legs in a corner of the cell, inclined his head significantly toward the garda leaning against the wall outside the bars of the cell. “No,” he said, his voice so low that Karl had to lean forward to hear it. “Not insane. Just eager to pick Audric’s bones clean when he falls. And me?” He laughed bitterly. “I was the easiest jackal for the pack to shove aside. I’m to be the scapegoat for everything, including Ana’s death.”
Karl could taste bile on the back of his tongue. The air of the Bastida was thick and heavy and lay like a massive, sodden shawl around his shoulders, slumping them as he sat in the single chair. Memories flooded him: he had once inhabited this very cell, when Sergei commanded the Garde Kralji. Then, Mad Mahri had snatched Karl from his imprisonment with his strange Westlander magic…
… and the memories of that time, so tied to Ana and his relationship with her, brought back fully the grief and the rage at her death. He lifted his head, his jaw and fists clenched, his eyes threatening to overflow. “It was Westlander magic that killed her,” he said to Sergei. “I nearly had the man.”
“Perhaps,” Sergei told him. “I assure you it wasn’t me.”
“And I know that,” Karl told him. “I will tell the Council the same thing. I’ll go to Councillor ca’Ludovici after I leave here-”
“No,” Sergei told him. “You won’t. Don’t get yourself caught in this, my friend. It’s bad enough that you’ve come to see me-the councillors will know that in a turn of the glass or less. You really don’t want whispers of the Numetodo being involved in any of Audric’s conspiracies-not if you don’t want the Holdings looking like the Coalition.” He paused. “You know what I mean by that, Karl. And be careful what you do with these Westlanders. There are already eyes watching you, and they have little sympathy toward anyone they perceive as being against them.”
“I don’t care,” Karl told him as the lava churned in his stomach again. The resolution that had settled there hardened. I’ll find this Talis again, and this time I will force the truth from him. “What about you?”
“So far I’ve been treated well enough.”
“So far.” Karl shuddered. He thought that Sergei was looking all of his years and more, that perhaps there was more gray in his hair than there’d been even a few days ago. “If they want a statement from you, if they want to punish you here in the Bastida…”
“You don’t need to tell me,” Sergei answered, and Karl thought he saw a visible shudder in Sergei’s normally unflappable posture. “I know better than anyone. That guilt is on my hands, too.” His voice dropped lower again. “Commandant cu’Falla is my friend also, and he has left me an option for that, if it comes to it. I won’t be tortured, Karl. I won’t permit it.”
Karl’s eyes widened slightly. “You mean…?”
A bare nod. His voice lifted again as the garda in the corridor stirred. “Come with me-there’s something I’d show you.” He slowly uncoiled himself from the bed and moved to the balcony as the garda watched them carefully-Sergei’s walk was more a shuffle. The wind lifted Karl’s white hair as they approached the rail of a small ledge that jutted out from the tower. Below, the courtyard of the Bastida appeared small and distant far below, and before them the city spread out. To their left, the A’Sele was sun-sparkled as it flowed beneath the Pontica a’Brezi Veste. There were cages hung from the columns of the bridge, with skeletons huddled inside. Karl shuddered at the sight. “Look here,” Sergei told him. He’d turned so that he faced not the city but the stone wall of the tower, and his finger pressed against one of the stones there. In the massive block of granite, a crack furrowed one corner; above Sergei’s finger, a small single white flower bloomed from the gray stone. “It’s a meadow star,” Sergei said. “Far from its usual home.”
“You always knew your plants.”
Sergei smiled, crinkling the skin around his metal nose. Karl could see the glue lifting and cracking. “You remember that, eh?”
“You made it so I was rather unlikely to forget.”
Sergei nodded. He touched the flower gently. “Look at this beauty, Karl. The barest crack in a stone, and life has found it. A bit of dirt blown in, the stone eroding in the rain to make the thinnest layer of soil, a bird chancing to leave a seed, or perhaps the wind blowing it from a field leagues away so that it falls in just the right place…”
“You should have been a Numetodo, Sergei. Or perhaps an artist. You have the mind for it.”
Another smile. “If this beauty can happen here in this most doleful of places, Karl, then there is always hope. Always.”
“I’m glad you believe that.”
His finger dropped away from the stone. The wind-horns began to blow Second Call, and he glanced out toward the Isle a’Kralji where the Grande Palais gleamed white. Karl wondered whether Audric looked out from one of his windows toward the Bastida, and perhaps glimpsed them there. “I worry about you, Karl. Forgive me, but you’re looking tired and old since she died. You need to take care of yourself.”
Karl smiled at the thought that Sergei’s opinion of Karl’s appearance was much the same as his impression of Sergei. “I am, my friend.” In my own way… His days and nights were spent making inquiries and trying to find the Westlander Talis again. He was tired, but he could not stop. He would not.
“I know you don’t believe in Cenzi or the afterlife,” Sergei was saying to him, “but I do. I know that Ana is watching from the arms of Cenzi, and I also believe she would tell you to still your grief. She’s gone from here, her soul has been weighed, and she dwells now where she wished one day to go. She would want you to believe that much, and start to heal the wound in your heart that her death left.”
“Sergei…” There were no words in him, no way to explain how deep the wound was and how it bled constantly. There was only the pain, and he could think of only one way to still the agony inside him. But that could wait until he found the Westlander again. “If I actually believed any of that, then I’d be tempted to jump from this ledge, right now, so I might be with her again.” He glanced down again, at the flagstones so far below.
“Varina would be upset by that.”
Karl glanced at Sergei quizzically. “What do you mean?”
Sergei seemed to be studying the meadow star’s blossom. “She has qualities that any person would admire, and yet for all these years she’s chosen to put all relationships aside and spend her time studying your Scath Cumhacht.”
“For which I’m very grateful-she has pushed our understanding of it well past where it once was.”
“I’m sure she appreciates your gratitude, Karl.”
“What are you saying? That Varina…?” Karl laughed. “You evidently don’t know her well at all. Varina has no problem speaking her
mind. She’s made it clear how she feels about me lately.”
Sergei touched the flower. It shivered at the touch, its fragile hold on the stone threatening to fail. He took his hand away, and turned back to Karl. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. He favored Karl with a smile touched with melancholy. Here in the daylight, Karl could see the deepening lines life had chiseled into the man’s face. Karl looked out over the city. “This was my life’s love,” he said. “This city, and all that she means. I gave her everything…”
Karl leaned close to Sergei, glancing at the garda who was ostentatiously not watching them. “I may be able to get you out of here. My own way.”
He was still staring outward, his hands on the ledge, and he replied to the air. “To make us both fugitives?” Sergei shook his head. “Be patient, Karl. A flower doesn’t bloom in a day.”
“Patience may not be possible. Or wise.”
For an instant, Sergei’s face relaxed as he turned to Karl. “You could do that? Truly?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“You’d endanger the Numetodo with the act. You understand that? Archigos Kenne might be sympathetic to you, but he’s the next person Audric or the Council of Ca’ will go after because he’s simply not strong enough. All the other a’teni are less sympathetic toward the Numetodo; I see the Conclave electing a strong Archigos who will be more in the mold of Semini ca’Cellibrecca in Brezno, or-worse-I see them reconciling with Brezno entirely.”
“The Numetodo have always been in danger. It was only Ana who sheltered us, and then only here in Nessantico itself.” Karl saw Sergei glance at the gardai and the bars of his cell, and he saw resolution touch the man’s face. “When?” Karl asked Sergei.
“If the Council actually gives Audric what he wants…” Sergei stroked the blossom in the wall with a gentle forefinger. The flower shivered under his touch. “Then.”