by S L Farrell
“Or he wants the wind to tangle my hair,” Ana replied, and managed to laugh despite her nervousness. “In any case, it’s not the Archigos I’ll be meeting, just one of the lesser teni.”
“But they’re going to give you your Marque, then,” Sala said. “They wouldn’t be sending for you if you hadn’t passed. You’re to be a teni yourself.”
Ana didn’t dare to hope that was true; she wasn’t going to think it.
If anything, she feared that she’d be given worse than a Note. “We’ve learned how you’ve abused your gift. We know what you’ve done with your matarh. .” If that was why she’d been summoned, she would not be returning here, not as a whole person.
She shuddered. “Are you cold?” Sala asked. “I can get a shawl. .”
“No. I’m fine.” It can’t be that. Please, Cenzi, don’t let it be that. They wouldn’t have sent a carriage to take me to the Bastida, certainly. Maybe Sala’s right. .
She forced the image away. Ana desired her Marque more than she could admit-because of the work and tears; because of the expense to her family; because of the way the wealthier acolytes had treated her, or the way the teni who staffed the school had done nothing but criticize her. Three years ago, there had been over seventy students accepted in her class; only twenty remained in the final year. Three of the twenty of her class had received their Marques on Cenzidi last week, giving them the rank of e’teni and placing them in the service of the Concenzia Faith. The gossip among the acolytes was that the rest had received their Notes of Severance, though none of them admitted such-Ana feared the way her vatarh would respond if she were given a Note. It would be worse than anything he’d done yet.
“Don’t expect more than a bare few of you to receive the Marque,” U’Teni cu’Dosteau, in charge of the acolytes, had told them when they’d started their studies. “Of the seventy here, it will be five at most, and likely fewer. The majority of you will leave early and receive neither Marque nor Note. For those of you who manage to stay, nearly all of you will fail to go any further in your instruction with the Ilmodo.”
Ana had heard nothing from the temple or U’Teni cu’Dosteau.
Still, if impossibly Sala was right, Ana could leave this house and forge her own life.
That was what she wanted most of all. To be away from here.
To be away from Vatarh. No matter how guilty it might make her feel for abandoning Matarh.
“Thank you, Sala,” Ana said, moving her head away from Sala’s brush. “If you brush it any more, you’ll pull the hair right from my head.
I should be back to take evening supper to Matarh, and I’m still planning on attending the lighting ceremony tonight with her and Vatarh, so make certain her carry-chair is ready and the help hired for the evening.”
Ana walked slowly from her rooms to the main stairs, forcing herself to keep a leisurely pace even though she wanted nothing more than to hurry. Tari was at the front doors with an acolyte in pale green robes, the broken-world crest of the Archigos on the boy’s left shoulder. He lowered his head as Ana came down the steps, lifting his eyes up to her only after she stopped before him, but there was no subservience in his eyes, only a penetrating regard. She’d seen that attitude before, many times. His unconscious bearing told her that he was probably the younger son of one of the ca’-and-cu’ families placed into the temple’s service, too new to Concenzia to be someone she would know by sight.
She wondered whether he noticed how few servants there were in their house, or how the hall needed to be repainted and that there were cobwebs in the high corners, wondered whether he knew that she had once been like him. Whatever he might be thinking, it never reached his impassive face.
“If you’d follow me, Vajica. .” he said, gesturing to the carriage waiting on the street.
She followed behind him, into the air that still held a faint kiss of winter in its embrace despite the sun. She shivered and wished, briefly, that she’d brought the shawl Sala had offered with her, though that would have spoiled the effect of the tashta. She could see a few of their neighbors standing outside in their front gardens, pointedly not staring at the carriage adorned with an ornate gold-and-enamel fractured globe, the sign of Cenzi and the Concenzia Faith. She lifted her hand to them; they nodded back, as if happening to notice her and the carriage for the first time. “Why, good morning, Vajica Ana. How is your matarh today? When does Vajiki cu’Seranta return from Prajnoli. .?”
“Matarh is still very weak from the Fever and still can’t talk or move on her own, but she is beginning to recover, thank you for asking. We expect Vatarh back later today or this evening,” she answered as the acolyte opened the door of the carriage for her and helped her inside, then closed the door and took his place standing on the step outside.
The driver was indeed one of the teni, and as he turned to nod to Ana, she glanced at the doubled white slashes on the shoulders of his green, cowled robes. “E’Teni,” she said, addressing him by the rank denoted by the slashes, the lowest of the teni positions. “I’m ready.”
He nodded again, turning. She heard him muttering softly-the sibilant chanting that she’d heard many times over the years, his hands gestured-and the wheels of the carriage began to turn in response to the incantation. They moved off onto the street.
The carriage proceeded at the stately pace of a person walking energetically, with the acolyte ringing a small bell occasionally to warn the pedestrians: out from the Rue Maitre-Albert onto the wide, landscaped expanse of the Avi a’Parete at the Sutegate. Two immense stone heads of past Kralji flanked the city gates there, rotating slowly so that they always faced the sun; below each of the sculptures, in an open room carved from the pillars of the ancient city wall, was an e’teni whose task it was to chant the spell that allowed the heads to turn-quickly exhausted by their task, each would be relieved on the turn of the glass with a new e’teni.
Ana had always wondered if one day she might be there, chanting as the stone groaned and grumbled overhead on its daily rotation.
Just past midday, the Avi was crowded: throngs of strolling couples and families near the central, tree-lined divider; buyers gathered around the stalls set up against the government buildings to the north side of the boulevard; crowds moving past the street entertainers on the south side; the occasional carriages, all of those horse-drawn except for hers.
Most were moving slowly in the direction of the Archigos’ temple, the sextet of domes radiant in the sunlight. Ana sat in the carriage, trying to pretend that she didn’t notice the attention she was receiving. The sun glinting from the fractured globe mounted by the door, the lack of horses, the teni chanting on the driver’s seat, the tenor clatter of the acolyte’s bell-all brought eyes around to their carriage. Some stared- mostly those of the lower classes-but the families in their finery would only wave, as if it were altogether a common occurrence that one of the Concenzia’s teni-driven carriages was sent out to convey someone. Ana could see them peering squint-eyed even as they inclined their heads politely, and she could nearly hear the whispered conversations as she passed.
“Is that one of the ca’Faromi daughters? Or one of the Kraljica’s grandnieces? Perhaps Safina ca’Millac, the Archigos’ niece; I hear she’s a favorite for the A’Kralj’s hand. What? Abini cu’Seranta’s daughter?
Truly? Oh, yes, I’ve seen her before; wasn’t she at the A’Kralj’s Winter Ball? Why, her family is just barely cu’, I hear. My cousin is on the Gardes a’Liste, and he says that the family might become just ci’Seranta next year. What is she doing being taken to the temple, I wonder?”
Ana wondered herself, and hope and fear battled inside her.
Marguerite ca’Ludovici
There was a knock, then the door slowly opened. “Kraljica?
The painter ci’Recroix is here. .”
Marguerite-Kraljica Marguerite I of Nessantico, born of the royal ca’Ludovici line which had produced the Kralji for the last century and a half-looked away f
rom her son and nodded to the hall servant whose head peered from behind the massive doors of her outer parlor. “Set the water clock,” she told the servant. “When it empties, bring Vajiki ci’Recroix to me here.” He touched clasped hands to forehead, glanced quickly at the Kraljica’s son, and vanished, the door clicking shut behind him.
Her son-the A’Kralj Justi, who might one day, upon her death, become the Kraljiki Justi III-had not moved. Usually the Kraljica’s parlor was crowded with supplicants, courtiers, and chevarittai: the ca’-and-cu’ of Nessantico. Today, they were alone. Justi was standing before a painting set on an easel near the west wall, bathed in sunlight. The A’Kralj’s appearance was regal: a gray-flecked beard carefully trimmed in the current fashion, like a thin band glued to his chin; straight hair combed and oiled and arranged to minimize the alarming thinness at the crown of his skull; a long nose, deep-set dark eyes, and a nearly geometrically squared and jutting jaw, all features he’d inherited from his long-dead father. The resemblance still made Marguerite occasionally startle when she looked at him. His body, molded by days spent hunting in the saddle, was that of an aging warrior-in his youth, the A’Kralj had ridden in the Garde Civile along with the other chevarittai of Nessantico. Despite the long decades of order under the Kraljica, despite her popular title as “Genera a’Pace,” the Creator of Peace, there were still the occasional border skirmishes and squabbles, and Justi fancied himself quite the military man.
Marguerite, who had seen the reports from the Garde Civile, had an entirely different opinion of her son’s prowess.
Justi’s head canted slowly as he regarded the painting.
“This is truly marvelous, Matarh,” he said. His voice belied his appearance; it was reedy and unfortunately high. That was another trait he’d inherited from his long-dead father. “He’s a handsome thing to look at,” Marguerite’s own matarh had said long decades ago when she’d informed her daughter that a marriage had been arranged for her. “Just keep him from talking too much, or he’ll completely destroy the illusion. .”
She wondered if other matarhs elsewhere said the same of Justi to their daughters.
“I’d heard that this ci’Recroix was the master among masters,” Justi continued, “but this. .” He reached out with a thin index finger that stopped just short of the surface of the canvas. “I feel that if I touched the figures I would feel warm flesh and not cold brush strokes. It’s easy to see how some say that he uses sorcery to create his paintings.” He paced in front of the canvas. “Look, their eyes seem to follow me. I almost expect their heads to move.”
She had to agree with him that the painting was superbly crafted, so lifelike as to be startling. Three strides long, half that high, caught in an exquisite, filigreed gold frame as wide as two hands, the painting depicted a peasant family: a couple with their two daughters and a son.
The wife and husband, dressed in stained linen with plain overcoats, sat behind a rough-hewn table laden with a simple dinner, a cloth dusted with bread crumbs covering the planks. An infant daughter sat on the matarh’s lap, a son on the vatarh’s, while a female toddler played with a puppy underneath the table. Marguerite had seen paintings that appeared realistic from a distance, but the ci’Recroix. . No matter how closely she approached it, no matter how she leaned in and peered at the surface, nowhere could she see the mark of a brush. The only texture was that of the canvas on which the pigments rested: it was as if the painting were indeed a window into another world. More details within the scene revealed themselves as you came closer and closer, until the varnished surface of the painting itself stopped you. Marguerite knew (because she had looked) that if you examined the wimple on the matarh’s head, that you could not only see the texture of the blue cloth and how it had been wrapped and folded, but you could also note where a rent had been repaired and sewn shut with thread of a slightly different hue. You could see how she was just beginning to glance down at her daughter in her lap, her attention beginning to move away from the viewer as her daughter’s hand clutched at the hem of her blouse.
The way the blouse bunched around the infant’s pudgy, fragile fingers, the acne scars dimpling the young matarh’s cheeks. .
This was a true moment frozen and captured. It was difficult to be in the same room as this painting and not have it dominate your attention, not demand that you stare at it in hopeless fascination and examine its endless wealth of detail, to be drawn into its spell.
“Yes, Justi,” Marguerite said impatiently. “I can see why you would have recommended ci’Recroix to me. He certainly has talent, even if the rumors about him are disturbing.” Neither the painting nor the painter were why she’d asked Justi to come to her. She wanted to tell him what she’d just learned: Hirzg Jan ca’Vorl of Firenzcia, alone of all the leaders of the countries that made up the Holdings, had declined Marguerite’s invitation to her Jubilee Celebration: a decided breach of etiquette, certainly, and knowing ca’Vorl, a deliberate affront. More worrisome, he had placed the Firenzcian army on maneuvers at the same time-not near the eastern borders by Tennshah, but close to the River Clario and Nessantico. She’d already sent a sharply-worded communique to Greta ca’Vorl, her niece and the Hirzgin of Firenzcia. She knew Greta would pass along her displeasure to her husband. After the incident with the Numetodo in Brezno, two months ago now, this was a disturbing development.
And there was the other, pressing matter that seemed to be an eternal subject between the two of them. But Justi, as was his wont, seemed uninterested in state affairs and politics. He was already talking before she’d finished.
“Indeed, Matarh. I can’t wait to see what he does. It will be a fine official portrait for your Jubilee-”
“Justi,” Marguerite interrupted sharply, and her son’s chiseled, handsome jaw shut with an abrupt snap of strong white teeth-good teeth were another, and luckier, family trait. “There will be another announcement before the end of the Jubilee.”
“What, Matarh?” he asked, but she knew that he had guessed, knew from the way his lips twisted below the crisp black line of his mustache.
Her son might be pampered, indolent, and perhaps somewhat dissolute, but he was not stupid.
“It’s been seven years now since Hannah died,” she said. “It’s time.
Time for you to marry again.” His features scrunched as if he’d bitten into a sour marshberry, but she ignored the look. She’d seen it too many times. “Marriage is a stronger and more permanent weapon than a sword,” she told him.
A barely-stifled sigh escaped him. “I know, Matarh. You’ve said that often enough. I thought of having the aphorism engraved on my saber.”
He sniffed, looking away from her and back to the painting.
“Then show me you understand,” she answered tartly, pressing her own lips together in annoyance at his tone.
“Do I have a choice?” he asked, but didn’t give her a chance to answer. “I take it you have candidates in mind? Someone appropriately connected, no doubt. Someone whose children might actually live.”
Marguerite sucked in her breath. “It wasn’t your wife’s fault that your children died. Why, little Henri was five and thriving when the Red Pox took him, and poor Margu. .” Her eyes filled with tears, as they often did when she thought of the granddaughter who’d been her namesake. Hannah might have been of the fertile ca’Mazzak line, whose descendants governed Sesemora, but she’d not had the luck of her matarh, who had nine children survive into adulthood. No, Marguerite was fairly certain that the fault lay in the ca’Ludovici seed. In Justi. Stout and plain herself, Hannah had nonetheless performed her spousal obligations, giving birth to eight children over the decade of her marriage to Justi, but only two of those had survived past the second year: Henri, the eighth and last, whose long and difficult birth Hannah had survived by less than a month; and Marguerite, secondborn, who had been eleven and the Kraljica’s favorite when the horse drawing her carriage had bolted unexpectedly and the careening vehicle had struck a t
ree. Marguerite herself had nursed the terribly injured girl and the Archigos had sent over-surreptitiously, since such a thing was heresy and specifically forbidden by the Divolonte-a teni skilled with healing chants, but still little Margu had not survived the night.
Marguerite had gone to the stables afterward and killed the horse herself.
“I know, Matarh,” Justi said. “It was Cenzi’s will that they died. And what is the Kraljica’s will, which is second only to Cenzi’s? Who am I to marry, some cowled waif from Magyaria? Someone of those half-wild families from Hellin? Which of the provinces are causing problems?
Have them send their daughters for your inspection so they may be subdued by marriage. Once more, rather than out-warring your adversaries, you will out-marry them. Tell me-who have you picked?”
“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm, Justi.”
“I’m certain you don’t. And I’m certain that I care about your appreciation as much as you care about my feelings concerning this.
When are you marrying, Matarh? How long has Vatarh been dead now?
Twenty-three years? Twenty-four? What has kept you from marrying all these years?”
For a moment, Marguerite feared that Justi knew about Renard, but the slackness in his face told her that it was simple irritation in his voice. “You know why I don’t marry.”
“Yes, I know. ‘The sword in the scabbard still threatens. .’ I’ve heard that one often enough, too.” Justi gave a sigh. His hands lifted and dropped back to his sides. “So who is it to be, Matarh? When will you make the grand announcement of my engagement, and when do I get to at least see a painting of this person?”
“I’ve selected no one as yet,” Marguerite told him. “I thought that perhaps you would like some input in this as the A’Kralj.” She saw the new grimace and could nearly hear the thought that no doubt accompanied it: You became Kraljica at eighteen, Matarh; I’m forty-seven and still the A’Kralj, still waiting patiently for you to die. . “But I do have a few prospects you should consider. The ca’Mulliae family, for instance, might be a good choice given their connections with the northern provinces, especially with the Numetodo heresy spreading there. Or even someone with a strong connection to the Faith, such as the Archigos’ niece Safina, who you’ve already met a few times.”