A Magic of Nightfall nc-2

by S L Farrell

  Karl glanced again at Varina. Her hands had dropped to her side. She nodded, a bare movement of her head, and Karl let his own hands drop down as well.

  “All right,” he said. “Tell him to put that stick of his aside, and we can talk.”

  Jan ca’Vorl

  The temple at Brezno was smaller than the Archigos’ Temple in Nessantico, and not as venerable and sacred a place as the Old Temple on the Isle a’Kralji (or with as impressive a dome). But Brezno’s dome and several of its famous frescoes had been painted by the great Firenzcian artist cu’Goslar, and they were stunning. Cu’Goslar’s oddly-elongated figures loomed and twisted over the supplicants at the temple, draped in gauzy clothing or sometimes nothing at all: Cenzi, yes, was prominent, but there were also those of Firenzcia who had been important to the Faith. There was Gareth ca’Lang, the first a’teni of Brezno, his sword lashed to his handless arm as he fought his hopeless battle against the heretics of the Karinthia Sect; there was Pewitt the Hopeless, the Moitidi swarming around him, tearing and ripping the flesh from his living body, mocking the man by consuming his body as he watched in torment; there was Ursanne ca’Sankt, the great martyr who many thought would have been Archigos had she lived, desperately trying to fend off her Tennshah rapists, from which unwilling union would come the great Firenzcian Starkkapitan Adalwulf, who would later drive off the Tennshah from their settlements around Lake Firenz.

  Jan was surrounded by history and swaddled in faith-driven fury. It seemed appropriate. His reconciliation with the realization that his matarh intended to vie for the Sun Throne had been a struggle as titanic as any of those depicted here, it had seemed to him. He’d confronted her after his long talk with Sergei ca’Rudka. But in the end, he had told her that he understood, even if he didn’t approve. Jan wasn’t certain if that was the truth or that after their several turns of argument, the statement at least let him get some sleep, but she had accepted it.

  Jan had accompanied Allesandra to the temple at Archigos Semini’s request, and he stared upward at the dome as they waited for him. “I remember the first time I saw these paintings,” he said, trying to fill the awkward silence. “They scared me; I thought they were ghosts. I could imagine them moving, and coming down from the painting to chase me…” He laughed; it seemed that he had laughed far too little since the events that had ended with him as Hirzg. “Now I think they’re just overdramatic, and not all that well-painted.”

  “Don’t tell Semini that,” his matarh said to him. “He loves cu’Goslar… Ah, there he is.”

  Semini was striding quickly toward them from behind the High Lectern on the quire. Midway between Second and Third Call, the temple was mostly deserted, and the gardai who had quietly entered before Jan and Allesandra now stood silently several strides away, having emptied the main chamber of all straggling visitors. They were as alone as it seemed possible for him to be lately.

  “My Hirzg,” Semini boomed, his voice reverberating from the dome above as he gave the sign of Cenzi to Jan. “And A’Hirzg.” Jan saw him smile at her-Semini seemed almost ready to take her hand, though that would have been a terrible breach of etiquette. But he stopped a careful few steps from her, closer than perhaps he should be, but not so close as to be extraordinarily obvious. Some of the irritation returned to Jan-he could hardly blame his matarh for pursuing an affair when his vatarh had betrayed her so many times. Yet the knowledge bothered him. The vision of the two of them together, their bodies entwined as his had been with Elissa… No-he shivered, shaking away the vision.

  “Thank you both for coming,” Semini continued, still looking more at Allesandra than Jan. “As I said, a message has been delivered to me, with-I’m told-an identical message for the Hirzg. I have it here.”

  He handed Jan a sealed, rolled parchment, watching as Jan examined the stamp in the blue wax-the mailed fist that was Nessantico’s sigil since Kraljiki Justi’s time. Jan unfurled the paper and scanned the inked words there with a rising fury. He could almost hear his Onczio Fynn’s voice rising inside him-he knew how Fynn would have reacted to this. Silently, his lips pressed tightly together, he handed the parchment to Allesandra; he heard her draw in her breath almost immediately. Wordlessly, she handed the scroll back to Jan.

  “How dare he talk to us this way?” Jan spat. He opened his hands, letting the paper fall to the marble-tiled floor. The word “dare” echoed in the chamber long after he’d finished. It seemed to stir the gardai, who shifted nervously. “He talks to us as if Nessantico still ruled Firenzcia. ‘Return the former Regent to us in a month, or we will take decisive action to recover him.’ How dare he make such threats?” Another echo. “Let him try-we’ll crush him.”

  He glanced upward at the dome. Ghosts… None of them would tolerate this; I can’t either. This is a slap in the face.

  “Jan, I understand your feelings; believe me, I have the same reaction,” his matarh said.

  “ ‘But…?’ ” Jan spat angrily, turning to her. “Is that what you’re about to say, Matarh? ‘But…’ What possible ‘But’ could there be?”

  Strangely, she smiled. “My dear, you sound like Fynn, or perhaps Vatarh. I’ve heard them both roar just like that when they thought themselves insulted.”

  Her amusement served only to increase his irritation. He glanced past Semini to the mural behind the High Lectern, at the bloody strips of Pewitt’s flesh clutched in the clawed hands of the Moitidi, trying to stifle his annoyance.

  “The ‘But,’ my son, is what we’ve been considering,” she continued. “Perhaps this is just the opportunity we needed. The excuse to act.”

  “The excuse?” he began. For a moment, he felt much younger, a child again. “Oh,” he said. That word did not echo at all. It floated in the air between them, lost in the great expanse of the temple. He looked down at the paper half-unrolled over the marble tiles, the suspicion growing in him. “Strange that a message like this would lead to exactly the situation you wanted, Matarh. A bald provocation against us by Nessantico. What wonderful timing.” He raised his eyebrows toward her.

  She was shaking her head in denial. “I knew nothing of this until now,” she told him. “I had nothing to do with it. The message is genuine. Ask the Archigos.”

  Semini nodded hurriedly. “The letters came sealed and via diplomatic routes,” he said. “If the Hirzg doubts that, I can have the courier brought here.”

  Jan waved a hand, looking away from them toward the murals of the dome. “No. There’s no need. It’s just…” His gaze came back to his matarh. “It would seem that Cenzi wants what you want, Matarh.” Perhaps it was coincidence. His matarh had appeared genuinely shocked. Perhaps this was a sign. He was not delighted by the prospect.

  “Oh, indeed,” Semini responded. “The Kraljiki has played directly into our hands, or Cenzi has caused him to do so. The Kraljiki has threatened the Coalition and our Faith directly, and we have no choice but to respond to protect our borders and our interests. This is the moment, Hirzg. This is the time. Much of Nessantico’s Garde Civile has been sent westward to the Hellins; it will take time for them to muster the chevarittai and the remaining Garde Civile, to prepare the war-teni who remain available to them, and to draft the necessary foot soldiers they would need to make good this threat.” Semini smiled, nodding to Allesandra. “Your matarh knows this. It’s time for you to show your generalship, and take the Garde Civile and the chevarittai of Firenzcia to war. You will restore the Holdings to the whole it once was, Hirzg Jan, and your name will be remembered forever for that.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “I do,” Allesandra told him. Her voice was firm and proud. “You’re ready for this, Jan.”

  He hesitated. He was still bothered that she would use him for her own purposes; he was also troubled by his own uncertainty as to whether he could be the Hirzg that he wanted to be. “I also think that a good Hirzg listens to the message even when he has difficulty with the messenger.” Sergei’s words. They calmed him. Th
ey decided him.

  A breath later, he nodded. “You were right the other night. I’ll need to consult with Starkkapitan ca’Damont and the chevarittai. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it, Matarh?”

  If she heard the faint mockery in his voice, she didn’t react to it. “I’ll come with you, Jan. I know the Starkkapitan, and I know the Garde Civile. I can be your mentor in this. Go on and have Roderigo summon them. I’ll follow in a moment.”

  Jan’s eyebrows rose, annoyed at the obvious dismissal, but he gave Semini the sign of Cenzi and bowed slightly to his matarh. “Thank you for relaying this information, Archigos,” he told Semini. “We will need your strength and guidance in this. Matarh, I will talk with you later.”

  He left them, all but a few of the gardai forming around him as he departed the temple. “Your son will be a fine Hirzg,” he heard Semini growl in his low voice as he reached the doors. He assumed that it was timed so he would overhear it and think the praise genuine.

  He smiled to himself. He would be a fine Hirzg. He would surprise both of them with just how effective a leader he would be.

  He suspected they might not like the result.

  Allesandra ca’Vorl

  The walkway at the rear of the temple was dark, illuminated only sporadically by green-shuttered teni-lamps hung on porcelain hooks mortared to the wall. Fluted columns lined the walk, shielding it from the gardens of a courtyard between the northern wing of the temple complex and the temple itself. The great windows of stained glass loomed dark above her. Allesandra half-ran along the walkway, not wanting to be seen though she’d been assured that no teni would be in the area, the soft leather soles of her sandals hushing on polished granite. It had been easy enough to slip from her own rooms at the palais down the servants’ corridors, waiting until there was no one watching to open the door and hurry across the plaza and into the Brezno streets. She wore a cowl over her hair, shadowing her face, and her tashta was plain. She might have been just another woman hurrying home in the evening. Semini had told her which door would be open, and which places the teni generally avoided. The ceremonies for Third Call had ended a turn of the glass ago.

  She was nearly there. A turn to the left down the next opening, then up the stairs to the room that Semini kept in the temple complex when he didn’t wish to return to his own apartments in the northern wing.

  “Allesandra.”

  She froze at the hiss of the voice. Her hand went to the knife she had hidden in the sash of the tashta.

  “Francesca,” she said.

  A figure appeared from alongside one of the columns. In the uncertain light, she saw the woman, the lines of her face holding shadows. The verdant glow from the lamps made Francesca look sickly. She spread her open hands, as if showing Allesandra that she held no weapon. “I know,” Francesca said to her. “I’ve known all along.”

  “What is it that you know, Francesca?”

  She laughed. The sound startled black starlings settling for the night in the fruit trees of the courtyard. They rose and fluttered restlessly. Allesandra could smell alcohol on the woman’s strong breath. “We shouldn’t play games, you and I,” the woman said. “There’s been nothing between Semini and myself for years, and if you’re willing to spread your legs so that old ram can plow you, why should I care?”

  Allesandra felt her cheeks heat with the raw crudity, drawing her breath in between her teeth. “If you don’t care, why are you here talking to me?”

  The amusement vanished from the woman’s face. She sniffed, staring at Allesandra. “You’re a pretty one. Semini always liked you; I heard the fondness in his voice when you finally came back from Nessantico. The lovers he had afterward… they always reminded me of you. Reminded him too, I assume. I know whose face he was seeing when he plowed them. Ah, that bothers you, does it? I’ll bet he never told you that.” Francesca sidled closer to Allesandra and she stepped back, her hand still on the knife’s leather hilt. “I’ll bet there’s much he hasn’t told you.”

  “Francesca, you’re drunk and I’m not having this conversation. Now, let me by…”

  The woman’s hand came up, her lips twisting in a scowl. “Not yet. Look at me. Look…” Francesca waved her hands toward her own face. “I was beautiful once. Why, I was the Kraljiki Justi’s mistress; I might have been his wife had my vatarh chosen the right side in the war. But he didn’t. And now…” For a moment, Allesandra thought the woman wasn’t going to speak again. She stood there, her body swaying slightly. “You think you know my husband? You don’t know him. I saw you when the news came that Archigos Ana had died. I saw the horror and grief in that pretty face of yours. You were hurt, because you liked that cold bitch. Me, I hated her. I was happy to hear that she’d died. I laughed out loud. But you… she treated you well, didn’t she? She was a matarh to you, when your own family abandoned you. Archigos Ana… Phaw! ” Francesca pursed her lips, turned her head, and spat on the flags. “ He knows who murdered her. As do I.”

  “Who?” Allesandra asked. Her hand had gone to her throat. She was afraid she knew the answer.

  Francesca took a stumbling step forward, nearly falling and clutching at Allesandra’s tashta. “Ask him,” the woman grated out, her breath filling Allesandra’s nostrils. “Make him tell you, and then see how you feel about him.”

  Her laugh erupted in another fluttering of starling wings, and she pushed away from Allesandra. She stumbled toward the archway leading to the north wing without looking back. “Ask him,” Allesandra heard the woman say again, the words echoing around the courtyard.

  She watched Francesca wrench open the doors, heard them shut again behind her. She stood there for several moments, as the starlings settled in the fruit trees once again and the moon lifted over the domes of the temple.

  In the end, Allesandra turned and walked away from the temple, back toward her rooms and her own thoughts.

  Nico Morel

  In the distance, Nico could hear the wailing cornets and zinkes as Kraljiki Audric’s funeral procession proceeded along the Avi a’Parete a few blocks away. He wondered what the procesthe Avi a’Parete a few blocks away. He wondered what the procession might look like-all the ca’-and-cu’ parading behind the funeral coach, the teni using their magic to turn the wheels, the new Kraljica Signourney following behind in her own special coach. It would be splendid, that procession. A wonder. Audric hadn’t been much older than he was, and Nico wondered what it would be like to be so young and also Kraljiki. He wondered how someone could have hated Audric so much that he would kill him. Nico couldn’t imagine hating anyone that much.

  No one else in the room seemed to notice the sounds of the funeral-or perhaps they chose to ignore it.

  “I didn’t kill Archigos Ana.”

  Nico sat in his matarh’s lap. She hardly let him go since she’d seen him. Not that he minded; he was quite content to sit encircled by her arms, protected. The feeling made him realize just how much he had missed her, just how scared he had been for so long. He and his matarh were sitting on the hearth, the fire warming his side. Talis was sitting at the table in the center of the room; Karl and Varina were on the other side. Nico could almost see the tension arcing between them, a fire nearly as hot as the one at his back. His matarh felt it, too; he could feel the shivering in her muscles and how tightly she held him, and he knew she was afraid that something was going to happen.

  “I didn’t kill her,” Talis said again. “It’s the truth.”

  “Right,” Karl answered. “And we’re just supposed to simply believe that. Because you say it’s so.”

  Talis shrugged, leaning back in his chair. “You don’t want to believe me, fine. It’s still the truth. But…” Talis licked his lips. “I know how she was killed, and I know who must have been at least partially responsible.”

  “Go on,” Karl said.

  “It was this…” Talis reached into the pouch on his belt. Nico saw both Varina and Karl stiffen at that, and his matarh sucked in her breath
. Karl’s hands were suddenly up, as if ready to cast a spell. Talis froze. “No magic,” he said. “I wouldn’t, not with Sera and Nico here. I wouldn’t.”

  After a moment, Karl let his hands rest on the tabletop again, and Talis opened the pouch. He brought out a small cloth bag and untied the string holding it together. He spilled out a small mound of dark powder on the table. Karl stared at it. “There was black dust all around the High Lectern and on Ana’s clothes,” he said. “That… that’s the same thing?”

  Talis nodded. “Yes.” He scooped up all but a pinch of the powder and put it back in the bag. “We call it bosh luum in our language. Black sand, in yours. Here…” From the pouch, he took a low, wide brass bowl, marked with strange figures around the rim. He brushed the remnants of the powder into the bowl and set it in the center of the table. “I’ll leave this to you-put a small fire spell in the bowl, just the tiniest spark.” He smiled, a brief flicker. “And don’t put your face too near it if you want to keep that beard.”

  Karl glanced at Varina, obviously uncertain. Varina looked at Nico’s matarh. “Sera?” she asked. “We can trust him?”

  Nico felt rather than saw his matarh nod, but her hands tightened even more around him at the same time. Varina made a quick motion with her hand, and spoke a word in another language. The word sounded like “tihn-eh” to him, and as soon as Varina spoke it, a spark appeared between her fingers and she flicked her hand in the direction of the bowl, the spark flying away.

  As soon as the spark entered the bowl, there was a simultaneous flash and boom, as if a thunderstorm had broken inside the bowl. The bowl itself jumped and rang, and white smoke erupted. Someone shouted; Nico couldn’t tell who. His matarh had turned with the noise, her body shielding Nico. She turned slowly back, and Nico could see again. Karl was reaching across the table to the bowl, which still had smoke rising from it. There was a strange smell in the air, like Nico imagined that the underworld of the Moitidi might smell like.