by S L Farrell
“But if things have gone wrong-”
“If things have gone wrong, you can’t change it now. We can’t change it. All that would happen is that you’d be lost, too.” Her arm tightened on his. “Please, Karl. Let’s go. If there is a problem, we can help Kenne more by staying alive than by being thrown in the Bastida with him. We got Sergei out; we could do the same again if we had to. Karl…” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “If you’re going back,” she told him, “then I’m going with you. But that’s the wrong decision. I know it.”
He stared at the buildings, wishing he could see Kenne’s balcony from here. Everything was quiet; people still walked in the plaza as if nothing were happening. But he knew. He knew.
And he also knew that Varina was right. He could change nothing. He looked over his shoulder. Talis had waved down a carriage; he was looking back at them curiously. A woman-dressed strangely poorly for this part of the city-scuttled past them from the direction of the plaza. As she passed, she seemed to stumble and brush against Karl. “Sorry, Vajiki,” the woman muttered. Her voice… it seemed vaguely familiar, but the woman kept the cowl of her tashta up and her head down. He caught a glimpse of dirty brown hair. “It’s going to be a bad night. A bad night. You really should hurry home…”
She scurried quickly past them.
Karl stared after the woman, who vanished around the other side of the waiting carriage. Talis was waving at them. It was then that Karl remembered where he’d heard that voice.
Karl didn’t believe in either coincidence or omens.
“All right,” he told Varina. “We’re leaving.”
The Battle Begun: Kenne ca’Fionta
“ I’m afraid that your poor Petros is dead. It’s a shame.”
Kenne heard the words, and his old eyes blurred with tears, though he’d already known that Petros was gone. He’d felt it in his heart, ever since the Garde Kralji had come and snatched him away to the Bastida. He could only hope that Karl and his people had escaped the sweep; they’d left only a few marks of the glass beforehand. The leather-clad metal tongue gag tasted vile; the irons binding his hands were heavy enough that he could barely lift them from his lap.
Kraljica Sigourney’s scarred, torn face stared down at him. Kenne held her single-eyed regard for only a few breaths sucked in past the horrible device over his head, then dropped his gaze, broken and defeated. Between his legs, his manacled hands plucked restlessly at the straw of the rude bed as he sat in his cell high in the Bastida’s main tower. Her voice was sympathetic, almost sorrowful. “You’re a good man, Kenne. You always were. But you were too weak to be Archigos. You should have refused the title and told the Concord A’Teni to elect someone else.”
He could only nod in agreement. There had been so many nights lately when he’d wished exactly the same thing.
“You should have known this would happen, Kenne,” she told him. “You chose to consort with the enemies of the Holdings. You should have known. And now…”
She hobbled to the cell’s single window, leaning on a gilded, padded crutch, her right leg dangling to the emptiness beyond the knee. The window looked west, Kenne knew-he’d seen the sun’s fading light on the wall opposite that window the past few nights, turning yellow, then red, then purple as it crawled up the damp stones. “Come here,” Sigourney told him. “Come here and look.”
He lifted himself off the bed with difficulty: a broken old man now in truth. He shuffled over to the window as she stood aside. Outside, under a cheerful blue sky, he could see the A’Sele gleaming in the sun as it wound its way past the city toward the sea. Near where the river turned south, he could see dozens of gathered sails. Across the river, what had once been farmland and the estates of the ca’-and-cu’, the land crawled with a dark infestation that had not been there yesterday. “You see them?” Sigourney asked. “You see the Westlander army approaching? Those are the ones for whom you betrayed the Holdings, Archigos. Those are the ones who frightened you so much that you tried to make a pact with the Firenzcian dogs against me.” Her voice was growing angry now, the single eye raking him. “Those are the foul creatures who killed my brother. Those are the villains who razed our towns and villages. Whether you believe it or not, I’m certain they’re also the ones who killed Audric and made me into a horror. Do I hate them? Oh, you can’t imagine how much. Watch, and you’ll see good Holdings chevarittai send them running, and then we’ll deal with your Firenzcian friends as well. Very soon, it will begin. And you’re going to help us, Kenne.”
He turned his silenced head toward her, quizzical. She laughed. “Oh, you are. We must have the war-teni, after all, and we want to make certain that they understand that their Archigos now regrets his horrible treason, and that he wishes all teni of the Faith to help Nessantico in this terrible time in whatever way they can. You do wish that, don’t you, Archigos?”
Kenne could only stare at her, mute.
“You think not?” she told him. “Well, the proclamation is already written; it only requires your signature. And whether you wish to do so or not, I will have that signature. You were a friend of Sergei Rudka, after all-you should know that the Bastida always gains the confessions it wants.”
Even with the horrible device strapped to his face, he could not keep the horror from his face, and he saw her smile at his reaction. “Good,” she said. “I shall reflect on your suffering when the capitaine hands me your confession.”
She gestured to the gardai outside the cell. “He’s ready,” she told them. “Make sure he receives your full hospitality.”
The Battle Begun: Niente
The city lifted stone flanks on the low hills; its towers and spires and domes crowding the large island in the river’s center so that it looked like a barnacled rock. The metropolis had leaped far outside the confining girdle of its walls, magnificent and proud and unafraid, and the fields surrounding it were laden with grain and crops to feed its teeming inhabitants. This city… It was the rival of Tlaxcala, somewhat smaller but more crowded and compressed, the architecture strange. The cities of his home were dominated by the pyramids of the temples of Axat, Sakal, and the Four; here in Nessantico, what was most visible were the spires and towers of their great buildings and the gilded domes of their temples.
So foreign. So strange. Niente wanted nothing more than to see the familiar places again, and he feared he never would.
Niente looked at Nessantico and shivered, but this was not the reaction he saw in Tecuhtli Zolin. The Tecuhtli, instead, stood on the hill overlooking the river and the city, and he crossed his arms over his chest, a close-lipped smile playing on his lips. “This is ours,” he said. “Look at it. This is ours.”
Niente wondered if the man even noticed the thick lines of Easterner troops arrayed along the road, if he counted the boats that crowded the river, if he glimpsed the preparations for war all along the western periphery of the city.
“What do you say, Niente?” Zolin asked. “Will we rest tomorrow night in this place?”
“If it is Axat’s will,” he answered, and Zolin barked his laugh.
“It’s my will that matters, Nahual,” he said. “Don’t you understand that yet?” He didn’t give Niente time to answer-not that there was any answer Niente could have made. “Go. Make sure that the nahualli are ready, that the rest of the black sand has been prepared for the initial attacks. And send Citlali and Mazatl to me. We will begin this tonight. We will keep them awake and exhausted; then, when Sakal lifts the sun into the sky, we’ll come on them in a storm.” Zolin stared for a moment more at the city, then turned to Niente. Almost with affection, he placed his hand on Niente’s shoulder. “You will see your family again, Nahual. I promise it. But first, we must give the lesson of their folly to these Easterners. Go look in your scrying bowl, Niente. You’ll see that I’m right. You’ll see.”
“I’m certain I will, Techutli.”
But he already knew what he would see. He had glimpsed it this mornin
g, even as they approached this place.
He had called upon Axat and he had looked into the bowl, and he would not dare look again.
The Battle Begun: Sergei ca’Rudka
For most of the morning, Sergei had ridden alone in the midst of the Firenzcian troops, lost in ruminations that were keeping at bay-at least for a bit-the growing ache in his back from the long ride. His thoughts had not been kind or gentle ones. And his body was no longer used to long days in the saddle, nor to evenings spent under a tent.
You’re getting old. You won’t be here much longer, and you have much to do yet.
“Regent, I would talk with you.”
At the hail, Sergei glanced over, seeing the stallion draped in the colors of Firenzcia that had come alongside him unnoticed. Old. Once, you would never have missed his approach. “Hirzg Jan,” he said. “Certainly.”
The boy brought his war stallion alongside Sergei’s bay mount, the mare’s ears flicking nervously and rolling her eyes at the much larger destrier. Jan said nothing at first, and Sergei waited as they rode along the Avi, dust rising in a cloud around them. The army was approaching Carrefour, with Nessantico another good day’s march farther. The Nessantican forces had vanished, dissolved; gone the afternoon of the parley. “Matarh says that you have lost two good friends,” Jan said finally.
“I have,” Sergei told him. “Aubri cu’Ulcai was on my staff for many years in both the Garde Kralji and the Garde Civile, before I was named Regent. He was a good man and an excellent soldier. I don’t look forward to speaking to his wife or his children and telling them what happened. I especially don’t relish telling them that his loyalty to me was responsible for his death.” Sergei rubbed at his metal nose, the glue pulling at his skin as he frowned. “As for Petros… well, there wasn’t a gentler person in the world, and I know how important his friendship was to the Archigos. I don’t know what the news will do to Archigos Kenne. Killing them was cruel and unnecessary, and if Cenzi grants me a long enough life, I will make certain Councillor ca’Mazzak regrets the pain he’s given to me and those I care about.”
The young man nodded. “I understand that,” he said. “I truly do. Someday, I will find out who hired the White Stone to kill my Onczio Fynn, and I will kill that person myself and the White Stone with him. I liked Fynn. He was a good friend to me as well as a relative, and he taught me a lot in the short time I knew him. I wish he’d been alive long enough to teach me more about…” He stopped, shaking his head.
“There’s no book learning one can do to be a leader, Hirzg,” Sergei told Jan. “You learn by doing, and you hope you don’t make too many mistakes in the process. As to revenge: well, as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that the pleasure one gets from actually achieving the act never matches that of the anticipation. I’ve also learned that sometimes one must forgo revenge entirely for the sake of a larger goal. Kraljica Marguerite knew that better than anyone; that’s why she was such a good ruler.” He smiled. “Even if your great-vatarh would disagree strongly.”
“You knew them both.”
Sergei couldn’t quite tell if that were statement or question, but he nodded. “I did, and I had great respect for both of them, the old Hirzg Jan included.”
“Matarh hated him, I think.”
“She had good reason, if she did,” Sergei answered. “But he was her vatarh, and I think she loved him also.”
“Is that possible?”
“We’re strange beasts, Hirzg. We’re capable of holding two conflicting feelings in our heads at the same time. Water and fire, both together.”
“Matarh says you used to torture people.”
He waited a long time to answer that. Jan said nothing, continuing to ride alongside him. “It was my duty at one time, when I was in command of the Bastida.”
“She says the rumors were that you enjoyed it. Is that part of what you were talking about-the ability to hold two conflicting feelings in your head?”
Sergei pursed his lips. He rubbed again at his nose. He looked ahead of them, not at the young man. “Yes,” he answered finally, the single word bringing back all the memories of the Bastida: the darkness, the pain, the blood. The pleasure.
“Matarh is, or was, anyway, Archigos Semini’s lover. Did you know that, Regent?”
“I suspected it, yes.”
“Even though she loves him, she was willing to sacrifice him and hand him over for judgment as U’Teni Petros asked. She’d made that decision; she told me so herself when she came back from the parley. ‘Let his sins be paid back in lives saved,’ she told me. There wasn’t a tear in her eye or a trace of regret in her voice. The Archigos.. . he doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know how close he was to being a prisoner. For all I know, the two of them may even still…” He stopped. Shrugged.
“Water and fire, Hirzg,” Sergei said.
Jan nodded. “Matarh said that you love Nessantico above us all. Yet you ride with us, you saved Matarh and me in Passe a’Fiume, and you would put Matarh on the Sun Throne.”
“I would, because I’m convinced that would be best for Nessantico. I want to see the Holdings restored, with Firenzcia once again its strong right arm.” Sergei paused. They could see the first outliers of Carrefour before them in the road, the tops of the buildings rising beyond the trees. “Is that also what you want, Hirzg?”
Sergei watched the young man. He was looking away, over the long line of the army stretched along the road. “I love my matarh,” he answered.
“That’s not what I asked, Hirzg.”
Jan nodded, still gazing at the armored snake of his army. “No, it’s not, is it?” he answered.
The Battle Begun: Karl Vliomani
“ You can still leave via some of the streets to the east of the Nortegate,” Karl told Serafina. “You’ll have to be careful and you’ll have to go quickly, but if you have Varina with you, you and Nico would have protection.”
Karl saw Serafina and Varina already shaking their heads before he finished. “I’m not leaving without Talis,” Serafina said. Nico was sitting on her lap as they sat around the table in the main room of Serafina’s apartment. They had finished a dinner of bread, cheese, and water, though the bread had been stale, the cheese moldy, and the water clouded. They’d eaten it all, though, not knowing when there might be more food.
With the army of the Tehuantin at the western edges of the city and their ships holding the A’Sele, with the army of Firenzcia threatening from the east, Nessantico was panicked. Wild, fantastic rumors about the sack of Karnor and Villembouchure ran through the city, growing darker, grimmer, and more violent with each retelling. The Westlanders, if the stories could be believed, were nothing less than demons spawned by the Moitidi themselves, devoted to rape, torture, and mutilation. The shelves of the stores were nearly bare; the mills had no flour for the bakeries, and there were no carts coming into the markets from the fields outside the city. Even the Avi a’Parete was dark tonight-the light-teni hadn’t made their usual rounds; worse, a fog had crawled over the city from the west, thick and cold. The city trembled in darkness, waiting for the inevitable strike to come. “I thought I’d lost both Talis and Nico once; I’m not doing that again,” Serafina continued.
“He can’t leave,” Karl persisted. “He’s male and young enough to be pressed into service with the Garde Civile. They’d snatch him before you got halfway to the Avi. And with the Archigos in the Bastida… well, the Garde Kralji almost certainly have our descriptions and are already out looking for us. Two women with a young boy-you’d be safe enough, I think. But with Talis and me…”
“I’m not leaving without him,” Serafina persisted. Her voice shook and the hand around Nico’s waist trembled, but her lips pressed firmly together.
“Half the city’s already left-those who can. The rumors about Karnor and Villembouchure… all that could happen here.”
A shrug.
Varina was smiling grimly. Her hand touched his knee under the table. “You’v
e lost this argument, Karl,” she said. “With both of us. We’re here. We’re staying, whatever that means.”
Karl looked at Talis, who had been sitting silently on his side of the table. He’d been strangely quiet for the last day and more, since the news had come of the Archigos’ imprisonment, and he spent much time with the scrying bowl. Karl wondered what the man was thinking behind that solemn face. Talis shrugged. “I agree with Karl,” he said to Serafina. “I would rather have you and Nico safe.”
Varina took Karl’s hand, standing. “Come with me,” she told him. “Let Sera and Talis talk this out on their own. We will, too.”
Karl followed Varina into the other room. She closed the door behind them, so that they could only hear the low murmur of voices in conversation. “She loves him,” Varina said. She was still leaning against the door, looking at Karl.
“Yes,” he protested, “and that’s exactly the reason he wants her to leave: because he doesn’t want to lose the people he loves.”
“And that’s exactly the reason she won’t go, because she couldn’t bear not knowing what happened to him.” She crossed her arms under her breasts. “It’s exactly the reason I won’t go either.”
“Varina…”
“Karl, shut up,” she told him. She pushed away from the wall, going to him. Her arms went around him, her lips sought his. There was a desperation in her embrace, in the violence of her kiss. He could hear the sob in her throat, and his hand went to her face to find her cheeks wet. He tried to pull away from her, to ask what was wrong, but she wouldn’t let him. She brought his head back down to hers. Her weight bore him down to the straw-filled mattress on the floor. Then, for a time, he forgot everything.
Afterward, he kissed her, holding her tightly, relishing her warmth. “I love you, Karl,” she whispered into his ear. “I’ve given up pretending anything else.”