by S L Farrell
He saw her frown, then smile as she turned her head to him. “You just eat, darling,” she said. “Don’t worry about Talis. He’ll be along soon enough.”
Nico nodded, gnawing on the hard crust of the nearly stale bread and trying to avoid the loose back molar that was threatening to fall out, the last of his baby teeth. He wasn’t worried about Talis, only the tooth. He didn’t want to lose it, since if he did Matarh would make him smash it with a hammer and grind it up, and that was a lot of work. When he was done, she would help him sprinkle the powder onto some milk-moistened bread, and they’d put the bread outside the window next to his bed. At night, he’d hear the rats and mice eating the offering, scurrying around outside. In the morning, the dish would be empty; Matarh said that meant that his new teeth would grow in as strong as a rat’s.
He’d seen what rats could do with their teeth. They could strip the meat from a dead cat in hours. He hoped his teeth would be that strong. He reached into his mouth with a forefinger and wiggled the tooth, feeling it rocking easily back and forth in his gums. If he pushed hard, it would come out. . . .
“Serafina?”
Nico heard Talis call out for his matarh. Matarh ran to him, and they embraced as he shut the door behind him. “I was worried,” Matarh said. “When I heard about . . .”
“Shh . . .” he said, kissing her forehead. His gaze was on Nico, watching them. “Hey, Nico. Did your matarh take you to Temple Park today?”
“Yes,” Nico said. He went over to them, sidling close to his matarh so that her arm went around him. He wrinkled his nose, staring up at the man. “You smell funny, Talis,” he said.
“Nico—” his matarh began, but Talis laughed and ruffled Nico’s hair. Nico hated when he did that.
“It’s all right, Serafina,” Talis said. “You can’t fault the boy for being honest.” Talis didn’t talk the way other people did in Oldtown; he pronounced his words strangely, as if his tongue didn’t like the taste of the syllables and so he spat them out as quickly as possible instead of letting them linger the way most people did. Talis crouched down near Nico. “I walked by a fire on the way here,” he said. “Lots of nasty smoke. The fire-téni put it out, though.”
Nico nodded, but he thought that Talis didn’t smell like smoke exactly. The odor was sharper and harsher. “Archigos Ana died, Talis,” he said instead.
“That’s what I’ve heard,” Talis answered. “The Regent will be scouring the city, looking for a scapegoat to blame it on. It’s time for foreigners to lay low if they want to stay safe.” He seemed to be talking more to Nico’s matarh than to Nico, his eyes glancing up toward her.
“Talis . . .” Matarh breathed his name, the way she sometimes called out Nico’s name when he was sick or he’d hurt himself. Talis stood up again, hugging Nico’s matarh. “It will be fine, Sera,” he heard Talis whisper to her. “I promise you.”
Listening to him, Nico pushed at the loose tooth with his tongue. He heard a tiny pop and tasted blood.
“Matarh,” Nico said, “my tooth came out . . .”
Allesandra ca’Vörl
“MATARH?”
Allesandra heard the call, followed by a tentative knock. Her son Jan was standing at the open door. At fifteen, almost sixteen, he was stick-thin and gawky. In just the past several months, his body had started to morph into that of a young man, with a fine down of hair on his chin and under his arms. He was still several fingers shorter than the girls of the same age, most of whom had reached their menarche the year before. Named for her vatarh, she could glimpse some of his features in her son, but there was a strong strain of the ca’Xielt family in him as well—Pauli’s family. Jan had the duskier skin coloring of the Magyarians, and his vatarh’s dark eyes and curly, nearly black hair. She doubted that he would ever have the heavier ca’Belgradin musculature of his uncle Fynn, which Allesandra’s great-vatarh Karin and vatarh Jan had also possessed.
She sometimes had difficulty imagining him galloping madly into battle—though he could ride as well as any, and had keen sight that an archer would envy. Still, he often seemed more comfortable with scrolls and books than swords. And despite his parentage, despite the act (purely of duty) that had produced him, despite the surliness and barely-hidden anger that seemed to consume him lately, she loved him more than she had thought it possible to love anyone.
And she worried, in the last year especially, that she was losing him, that he might be falling under Pauli’s influence. Pauli had been absent through most of Jan’s life, but maybe that was Pauli’s advantage: it was easier to dislike the parent who was always correcting you, and to admire the one who let you do whatever you wanted. There’d been that incident with the staff girl, and Allesandra had needed to send her away—that was too much like Pauli.
“Come in, darling,” she said, beckoning to him.
Jan nodded without smiling, went to the dressing table where she sat, and touched his lips to the top of her head—the barest shadow of a kiss—as the women helping her dress drifted away silently. “Onczio Fynn sent me to fetch you,” he said. “Evidently it’s time.” A pause. “And evidently I’m little better than a servant to him. Just Magyarian chattel to be sent on errands.”
“Jan!” she said sharply. She gestured with her eyes to her maidservants. They were all West Magyarians, part of the entourage that had come with Jan from Malacki.
He shrugged, uncaring. “Are you coming, Matarh, or are you going to send me back to Fynn with your own response like a good little messenger boy?”
You can’t respond here the way you want to. Not where everything we say could become court gossip tonight. “I’m nearly ready, Jan,” she said, gesturing. “We’ll go down together, since you’re here.” The servants returned, one brushing her hair, another placing a pearl necklace that had once been her matarh Greta’s around her neck, and yet another adjusting the folds of her tashta. She handed another necklace to her dressing girl: a cracked globe on a fine chain, the continents gold, the seas purest lapiz lazuli, the rent in the globe filled with rubies in its depths—Cénzi’s globe. Archigos Ana had given her the necklace when she’d reached her own menarche, in Nessantico.
“It belonged to Archigos Dhosti once,” Ana had told her. “He gave it to me; now I give it to you.” Allesandra touched the globe as the servant fastened it around her neck and remembered Ana: the sound of her voice, the smell of her.
“Everyone keeps telling me how Onczio Fynn will make a fine Hïrzg,” Jan said, interrupting the memory.
“I know,” Allesandra began. And why would you expect anything else? she wanted to add. Jan knew the etiquette of court well enough to understand that.
He evidently saw the unspoken remark in her face. “I wasn’t finished. I was going to say that you would make a better one. You should be the one wearing the golden band and the ring, Matarh.”
“Hush,” she told him again, though more gently this time. The maidservants were her own, true, but one never knew. Secrets could be bought, or coaxed out through love, or forced through pain. “We’re not at home, Jan. You must remember that. Especially here . . .”
His sullen frown melted for a moment, and he looked so apologetic that all her irritation melted, and she stroked his arm. It was that way with him too much of late: scowls one moment and warm smiles the next. However, the scowls were coming more frequently as the loving child in him retreated ever deeper into his new adolescent shell. “It’s fine, Jan,” she told him. “Just . . . well, you must be very careful while we’re here. Always.” And especially with Fynn. She tucked the thought away. She would tell him later. Privately. She stood, and the servants fell away like autumn leaves. She hugged Jan; he allowed the gesture but nothing more, his own arms barely moving. “All right, we’ll go down now. Remember that you are the son of the A’Gyula of West Magyaria, and also the son of the current A’Hïrzg of Firenzcia.”
Fynn had given her the title yesterday, after their vatarh had died: the title that should have bee
n hers all along, that would have made her Hïrzgin. She knew that even that gift was temporary, that Fynn would name someone else A’Hïrzg in time: his own child, perhaps, if he ever married and produced an heir, or some court favorite. Allesandra would be Fynn’s heir only until he found one he liked better.
“Matarh,” Jan interrupted. He gave a too-loud huff of air, and the frown returned. “I know the lecture. ‘The eyes and ears of the ca’-and-cu’ will be on you.’ I know. You don’t have to tell me. Again.”
Allesandra wished she believed that. “All right,” she breathed. “Let us go down, then, and be with the new Hïrzg as we lay your great-vatarh to his rest.”
With the death of Hïrzg Jan, the required month of mourning had been proclaimed, and a dozen necessary ceremonies scheduled. The new Hïrzg Fynn would preside over several rituals in the next few weeks: some only for the ca’-and-cu’, some for the edification of the public. The formal Besteigung, the final ritual, would take place at the end of the month in Brezno Temple with Archigos Semini presiding—timed so that the leaders of the other countries of the Firenzcian Coalition could make their way to Brezno and pay homage to the new Hïrzg. Allesandra had already been told that A’Gyula Pauli would be arriving for the Besteigung, at least—she was already dreading her husband’s arrival.
And tonight . . . tonight was the Internment.
The Kralji burned their dead; the Hïrzgai entombed theirs. Hïrzg Jan’s body was to be buried in the vault of the ca’Belgradins where several generations of their ancestors lay, a hand or more of them having shared with Jan the golden band that now circled Fynn’s forehead. Fynn was waiting for them in his own chambers; from there they would go down to the vaults below the ground floor of Brezno Palais. The Chevarittai of the Red Lancers and others of the nobility of Firenzcia were already waiting for them there.
The halls of the palais were hushed, the servants they saw stopping in their tasks and bowing silently with lowered eyes as they passed. Two gardai stood outside Fynn’s chambers; they opened the doors for them as they approached. Allesandra could hear voices from inside as they entered.
“. . . just received the news from Gairdi. This will complicate things. We don’t know exactly how much yet—” Archigos Semini ca’Cellibrecca stopped in mid-phrase as Allesandra and Jan entered the room. The man had always put Allesandra in mind of a bear, all the way back to when she’d been a child and he a rising young war-téni: even as a young man, Semini had been massive and furred and dangerous. His black beard was now salted with white, and the mass of curly hair was receding from his forehead like a slow tide, but he was still burly and muscled. He gave them the sign of Cénzi, clasping his hands to his forehead as his wife Francesca did the same behind him. Allesandra had been told that Francesca had once been a beauty—in fact, there were rumors that she’d once been the lover of Justi the One-Legged—but Allesandra hadn’t known her at that time. Now, she was a humpbacked matron with several of her teeth missing, her body ravaged by the rigors of a dozen pregnancies over the years. Her personality was as sour as her face.
Fynn rose from his chair.
“Sister,” he said, taking her hands as he stood in front of her. He was smiling—he seemed almost gleeful. “Semini has just brought some interesting news from Nessantico. Archigos Ana has been assassinated.”
Allesandra gasped, unable to hide her reaction. Her hands went to the cracked globe pendant around her neck, then she forced herself to lower them. She felt as if she couldn’t catch her breath. “Assassinated? By whom . . . ?” She stopped, glancing at Semini—who was also smiling; almost smugly, Allesandra thought—then at her brother. “Did we do this?” she asked. Her voice was as edged as a dagger. She felt Jan put his hand on her shoulder from behind, sensing her distress.
Fynn snorted. “Would it matter?” he asked.
“Yes,” Allesandra told him. “Only a fool would think otherwise.” The words came out before she could stop them. And after I just cautioned Jan . . .
Fynn glowered at the implied insult. Jan’s hand tightened on Allesandra’s shoulder. Semini cleared his throat loudly before Fynn could speak.
“This wasn’t the Hïrzg’s doing, Allesandra,” Semini answered quickly, shaking his head and waving his hand in dismissal. “Firenzcia may be at odds with the Faith in Nessantico, but the Hïrzg doesn’t engage in assassination. Nor does the Faith.”
She looked from Semini to Francesca. The woman looked away quickly but made no attempt to hide the satisfaction in her face. Her pleasure at the news was obvious. The woman had all the warmth of a Boail winter. Allesandra wondered whether Semini had ever felt any affection for her, or whether their marriage was as loveless and calculated as her own despite their several children. Allesandra couldn’t imagine submitting to Pauli’s pleasure so often. “We’re certain this report is true?” she asked Semini.
“It’s come to me from three different sources, one I trust implicitly—the trader Gairdi—and they all agree on the basic details,” Semini told her. “Archigos Ana was performing the Day of Return service when there was an explosion. ‘Like a war-téni’s spell,’ they all said—which means it was someone using the Ilmodo. That much is certain.”
“Which also means they may look eastward to us,” Fynn said. He seemed eager at the thought, as if anxious to call the army of Firenzcia into battle. That would be like him; Allesandra would be terrifically surprised if Fynn’s reign were to be a peaceful one.
“Or they will look to the west,” Allesandra argued, and Fynn glanced at her as he might an annoying, persistent insect. “Nessantico has enemies there as well, and they can use the Ilmodo also, even if—like the Numetodo—they have their own name for it.”
“The Westlanders? Like the Numetodo, they’re heretics deserving of death,” Semini spat. “They abuse Cénzi’s gift, which is intended only for the téni, and we will one day make them pay for their insult, if Nessantico fails to do so.”
Fynn grunted his agreement with the sentiment, and Allesandra saw her son Jan nodding as well—that was also his damned vatarh’s influence, or at least that of the Magyarian téni Pauli had insisted educate their son despite Allesandra’s misgivings. She pressed her lips together.
Ana is dead. She placed her fingers on the necklace of the cracked globe, feeling its smooth, jeweled surface. The touch brought up again the memory of Ana’s face, of the lopsided smile that would touch the woman’s lips when something amused her, of the grim lines that set themselves around her eyes when she was angry. Allesandra had spent a decade with the woman; captor, friend, and surrogate matarh all at once for her during the long years that she’d spent as a hostage of Nessantico. Allesandra’s feelings toward Ana were as complex and contradictory as their relationship had been. They were nearly as conflicted as her feelings toward her vatarh, who had left her languishing in Nessantico while Fynn became the A’Hïrzg and favorite.
She wanted to cry at the news, in sadness for someone who had treated her well and fairly when there had been no compulsion for her to do so. But she could not. Not here. Not in front of people who hated the woman. Here, she had to pretend.
Later. Later I can mourn her properly. . . .
“I expected somewhat more reaction from you, Sister,” Fynn said. “After all, that abomination of a woman and the one-legged pretender kept you captive. Vatarh cursed whenever anyone spoke her name; said she was no better than a witch.”
Fynn was watching her, and they both knew what he was leaving out of his comment: that Hïrzg Jan could have ransomed her at any time during those years, that had he done so it was likely that the golden band would be on her head, not Fynn’s. “You won’t be here half a year,” Ana had told Allesandra in those first months. “Kraljiki Justi has set a fair ransom, and your vatarh will pay it. Soon . . .”
But, for whatever reasons, Hïrzg Jan had not.
Allesandra made her face a mask. You won’t cry. You won’t let them see the grief. It wasn’t difficult; it was what sh
e did often enough, and it served her well most of the time. She knew what the ca’-and-cu’ called her behind her back: the Stone Bitch. “Ana ca’Seranta’s death is important. I appreciate Archigos Semini bringing us the news, and we should—we must—decide what it means for Firenzcia,” she said, “but we won’t know the full implications for weeks yet. And right now Vatarh is waiting for us. I suggest we see to him first.”
The Tombs of the Hïrzgai were catacombs below Brezno Palais, not the lower levels of the newer private estate outside the city known as Stag Fall, built in Hïrzg Karin’s time. A long, wide stairway led down to the Tombs, a crust of niter coating the sweating walls and growing like white pustules on the faces in the murals painted there two centuries before and restored a dozen times since: the damp always won over pigments. A chill, nearly fetid air rose from below, as if warning them that the realm of the dead was approaching. The torches alight in their sconces held back the darkness but rendered the shadows of the occasional side passage blacker and more mysterious in contrast. A dozen generations of the Hïrzgai awaited them below, with their various spouses and many of their direct offspring. Allesandra’s older brother Toma had been interred here when Allesandra was but a baby, and her matarh Greta had lain alongside him for nineteen years now. In time, Allesandra herself might join her family, though an eternity spent next to Matarh Greta was not a pleasant thought.