by S L Farrell
The embrace was meant to be comfort, he knew, but it was simply an empty weight.
Who did this? Karl had heard a dozen rumors. Predictably, some blamed the Numetodo. Some Firenzcia. Some the Brezno branch of the Faith. The wildest story said that the assassin called the White Stone had been responsible, that there’d been a pale pebble on Ana’s left eye when she was found, the White Stone’s signature.
That last rumor was certainly not true. But the others . . . Karl didn’t know. But he vowed he would find out.
Karl had envied, sometimes, the comfort of faith that Ana had. He and Ana had even spoken of that, the night that he’d learned Kaitlin was dead: the woman he’d married and who had borne him his two sons on the Isle a’Paeti. Kaitlin had steadfastly refused to come with him to Nessantico. Kaitlin had known of the deep friendship between Karl and Ana; Karl was just as certain that Kaitlin knew that—despite Karl’s reassurances and promises—for Karl, at least, there was more than friendship there.
He had never been able to lie easily to her. He told himself he loved Kaitlin, but he was never really able to lie to himself either.
The night he’d received the horrible letter from Paeti that Kaitlin had fallen ill and died, he’d been devastated. He never quite knew how Ana learned of it, but she came to him that evening. She fed him, she held him, she let him cry and wail and shout and grieve. Most tellingly, she never tried to give him the comfort of faith as she would have with any of her followers. She never mentioned Cénzi, not until he spoke, wiping away the tears with the sleeve of his bashta. . . .
“I envy you,” he said.
They were sitting by the fire she’d started in the hearth. Tea simmered in a pot. The wood was damp; it hissed and sputtered and cracked under the assault of the flames, sending fountains of orange-red ash spiraling up the chimney.
She raised a single eyebrow toward him.
“You believe that Cénzi takes the souls of those who die,” he told her. “You believe that they continue to exist within Him, and that it’s possible you may one day meet them again. I . . .” Tears threatened him again and he forced them down. “I don’t have that hope.”
“Having faith doesn’t take away the pain,” she told him. “Or very little of it. Nothing can ease the grief and loss we all feel: not faith, not the Ilmodo. Time, perhaps, might manage it, and that only blunts the sorrow.” Folding the sleeve of her robe around her hand, she took the teapot from the crane and poured the brew into their cups. She handed him the jar of honey. “I still remember my matarh. Sometimes it all comes back to me, everything I felt when she died, as if it had just happened yesterday.” Her fingers brushed his cheek; he could feel their softness drag against stubble. “That will happen for you, too, I’m afraid.”
“Then what good is your faith, Ana?”
She smiled, as if she’d been expecting his question. “Faith isn’t a commodity,” she told him. “You don’t buy it because it will do this or that for you. You have belief or you don’t, and belief gives you what it gives you. You don’t have faith, my love—Cénzi knows I’d give it to you if I could. I’ve certainly talked about it enough with you over the years. You Numetodo . . . you try to wrap the world in reason and logic, and so faith just crumples into dust whenever you touch it because you try to impose rationality on it. You’ll do that with Kaitlin, too—you’ll try to find reasons and logic in her death.” She touched him again. “There’s no reason that she died, Karl. There’s no logic to it. It just happened, and it had nothing to do with you or with your feelings for her or what happened between the two of you.”
“Not even Cénzi’s will?”
She lifted her chin. She smiled at him sadly, the firelight warm and yellow on her face. “Not even that. It’s a rare person who Cénzi cares about enough to change the Fate-Moitidi’s dice roll for them. It was your Kaitlin’s time. That’s all. It’s not your fault, Karl. It’s not.”
That had been nine years ago. He’d traveled back to Paeti to see Kaitlin’s grave and to be with his sons. He’d even brought Nilles and Colin back to Nessantico with him when he’d returned the next year. Nilles had stayed two years with him, Colin four, until they’d reached their majority at sixteen. Both had eventually left the city to return to the Isle. Nilles had already given him a great-daughter—three years old now—that he’d yet to see.
He’d stayed here because his work was in the Holdings, he told anyone who asked. But truthfully, it was because this was where Ana was. There were those who knew that, but they weren’t many and most pretended not to see.
Varina’s hand tightened again on his shoulder and dropped away.
Karl stared at Ana’s wrapped-and-shrouded body on the stone altar and the phalanx of six fire-téni gathered in a circle around it. The corpse was layered in green silk wound with golden metallic thread. The threads glinted in the multicolored light from the stained glass in the temple’s windows; censers fumed around the altar, wreathing sunbeams in fragrant smoke. He could not believe it was Ana bundled and displayed there. He would not believe it. It was someone else. The memory he had of the light, of the concussive roar, of her body torn apart, the blood, the dark dust . . . It was false. It had to be false. Even the thought was too painful to endure.
Kaitlin’s death, that of his parents, all the others that had passed over the decades: none of them hurt like this. None.
Someone had killed the one person he loved most in the world, had struck down a woman who had struggled more than anyone since Kraljica Marguerite to keep peace within the Holdings, who believed in reconciliation before confrontation, who might have potentially reunited the broken halves of both the Holdings and the Concénzia Faith. There would be no comfort for Karl until he knew who had done this, and until that person was dead. If there was an afterlife as Ana had believed, then Karl would let the murderer’s soul be condemned to care for Ana for eternity. If there were gods, if Cénzi truly existed, if there were justice after death, then that’s what must happen.
He would have faith in that: a grim, dark, and uncompromising faith.
Archigos Kenne patted his hand and whispered more words he couldn’t hear. The Regent Sergei’s shoulder pressed against his to the left. Kraljiki Audric wheezed on the other side of the Regent, his labored breath louder than the chanting of the téni. He heard Varina weeping softly in the pew behind him.
The fire-téni stirred around the green-wrapped body. Their hands moved in the dance of the Ilmodo, their voices lifted in a unison chant that fought against the choir’s ethereal voices. They spread their hands wide as if in benediction, and the fierce blaze of Ilmodo-fire erupted around Ana’s body. The heat of the magical flames washed over them, savage and relentless. There were no sparks, no pyre feeding them: while the Kralji and the ca’-and-cu’ burned in flames fed by wood and oil, the téni burned their own with the Ilmodo—quickly and furiously. The Ilmodo-fire consumed the body in the space of a few breaths, the metallic-green fabric turning black instantly, the heat shimmer so intense that Ana’s body seemed to shake within it. As Karl watched, as his body instinctively leaned back against the fierce assault of the heat, Ana was taken.
The flames died abruptly as the choir ended their song. Cold air rushed back around them, a wind that tousled hair and fluttered cloth. On the altar now, there was nothing but gray ash and a few fragments of bone.
The mortal cage of Ana was gone.
“She is back in Cénzi’s hands now,” Archigos Kenne said to Karl. “He will give her solace.”
And I will give her better than solace. He nodded silently to the Archigos. I will give her revenge.
Allesandra ca’Vörl
“IT WAS NOT a sign.”
Fynn slammed his fisted hand hard on the arm of his chair. The servants standing ready along the wall to serve dinner shivered at the sound. The long scar down the right side of his face burned white against his flushed face. “I don’t care what they’re saying. What happened was a terrible accident. Nothi
ng more. It was not a sign.”
“Of course you’re right, Brother,” Allesandra told him soothingly. She paused—a single breath—and gestured to the Magyarian servants: they were taking supper in Allesandra’s rooms within the palais. The servants moved forward, ladling soup into the bowls and pouring wine. Fynn sat at the table’s head; Allesandra at the foot. Archigos Semini and his wife were to Fynn’s right; her son Jan to the left.
Allesandra had heard some of the rumors herself. Hïrzg Jan is upset that Fynn has taken the crown, not his daughter . . . The Hïrzg’s soul cannot rest . . . I heard from one of the servants in the palais that his ghost still walks the halls at night, moaning and crying out as if angry. . . . There were dozens of the tales surging through Brezno, twisted depending on the agenda of those who spoke them, and growing larger and more outrageous each time they were told. Cénzi sends a warning to the Hïrzg that the Holdings and the Faith must become one again . . . The souls of all those the Hïrzg killed—the Numetodo, the Nessanticans, the Tennshah—pursue him and will not allow him to rest . . . They say that when the sealing stone fell, those in the chamber heard the old Hïrzg’s voice call out with a curse on Firenzcia. . . .
The soup had been served and the silence had stretched too long. Allesandra could hear the breathing of the servants and the distant, muffled clatter of the cook and the kitchen help a floor below them. “I understand that the other lancer has died also,” Allesandra commented when it was apparent that no one else was willing to start a conversation.
Fynn glared at her down the length of the table “That was Cénzi’s Blessing,” he said. “The man would never have walked again. The healer said his spine was broken; if I were him, I’d rather die than live the rest of my life as a useless cripple.”
“I’m sure he felt the same as you, Brother.” She kept her voice carefully neutral. “And I’m sure that the Archigos did what he could to ease his passing.” Another pause. “As far as the Divolonté would allow, of course,” she added.
Francesca let her spoon clatter back to the table at that. “You may have been soiled by the beliefs of the false Archigos during your years with her, A’Hïrzg,” she declaimed coldly, “but I assure you that my husband has not. He would never—”
“Francesca!” Semini’s rebuke caused Francesca to snap her mouth closed, like a carp gulping on a riverbank. He glared at her, then clasped hands to forehead as he turned to Allesandra. His gaze held hers. Allesandra had always thought that the Archigos had exquisite eyes: powerful and engaging. She had also noticed that when she was in the room, Semini often paid close attention to her. That had never bothered her; she enjoyed his attentions. She’d thought, back when her vatarh had finally ransomed her, that he might have married her to Semini, had he not already been tied to Francesca. That would have been a powerful marriage, allying both the political and religious powers within the state, and Semini might have been someone she could have come to love, as well. Even now . . . She closed off that thought, quickly. She had taken lovers during her marriage, yes—as she had known Pauli had also done—but always carefully. Always discreetly. An affair with the Archigos . . . that would be difficult to conceal.
“I apologize, A’Hïrzg,” Semini said. “Sometimes my wife’s, ahh, devotion to the Faith causes her to speak too harshly. I did give the poor lancer what comfort I could, at the Hïrzg’s request.” He addressed Fynn then. “My Hïrzg, you shouldn’t be concerned with the gossip of the rabble. In fact, I will make it clear in my next Admonition that those who believe that there are portents in this horrible incident are mistaken, and that these wild rumors are simply lies. I’ve already had people begin to make inquiries as to who is spreading all the vile gossip—I would say that if the Garde Hïrzg takes a few of them into custody, especially a few of those of lower rank, and, ahh, convinces them to recant publicly before they’re executed for treason, that would certainly act as a lesson to the others. I think we’d find that all the talk about what happened at your vatarh’s burial would vanish as quickly as snow in Daritria.”
Francesca was nodding at her husband’s words. “We should treat these people no better than we would the Numetodo,” she agreed. “Just as the Numetodo are traitors to the Faith, these rumormongers are traitors to our Hïrzg. A few bodies swaying in gibbets will adequately shut the mouth of the populace.” She glanced at Allesandra. “Wouldn’t you agree, A’Hïrzg?” she asked, her voice far too gentle and far too eager. The woman actually leaned forward at the table, emphasizing her humped back.
“I think it’s dangerous to equate rumormongering with heresy, Vajica ca’Cellibrecca,” she began carefully, but Jan interrupted her.
“If you punish people for gossiping, you’ll convince them instead that the rumors are true,” her son said, the first words he’d spoken since they’d sat at the table, then shrugged as the others looked at him. “Well, that’s the truth,” he insisted. “If you give them the sermon you suggest, Archigos, you’ll just be drawing more attention to what happened, which will make people believe the rumors even more. It’s better to say and do nothing at all; all this talk will fade away on its own when nothing else happens. Every time one of us repeats the gossip, even to deny or refute it, we make it seem more real and more important than it is.”
She followed Jan’s gaze from Semini to the others at the table. Semini was glowering, his eyebrows lowered like thunderclouds over those captivating eyes; Francesca’s mouth gaped open as if she were too stunned for words at the boy’s impertinence; she gave a cough of derision and waved a hand like a claw in Jan’s direction, as if warding off a beggar’s curse. Fynn was staring down at the tablecloth in front of him. “It’s better to say and do nothing,” Jan repeated into the silence, his voice thinner and more uncertain now, “or what happened will become a sign. You’ll all have turned it into one.”
Allesandra touched his arm: it was what she would have said, if less diplomatically spoken. “Well said,” she whispered to him. He might have smiled momentarily; it was difficult to tell.
“So if you were the Hïrzg, you’d do nothing?” Francesca said. “Then let’s thank Cénzi that you’re not, child.”
That brought Jan’s head up again. “If I were Hïrzg,” Jan answered her, “I’d be thinking that these rumors aren’t worth my time. There are more important events that I’d be considering, like the death of Archigos Ana, or the war in the Hellins that’s sapping Nessantico’s resources and their attention, and what all that means for Firenzcia and the Coalition.”
Francesca snorted again. She returned her attention to her soup, as if Jan’s comment was beneath consideration. Semini was shaking his head and glaring at Allesandra as if she were directly responsible for Jan’s impertinence.
She thought Fynn was angry beneath the scowl he wore, but her brother surprised her. “I believe the young man’s right,” Fynn said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. He gave Jan a smile twisted by the scar on his face. “I hate the thought of having to hear the whispers for even another breath, but . . . you’re right, Nephew. If we do nothing, the gossip will fade in a week, maybe even a few days. Perhaps I should make you my new councillor, eh?”
Jan beamed at Fynn’s praise as Francesca sat back abruptly with a frown. Semini tried to look unconcerned. “You’ve raised an intelligent young man, Sister,” Fynn told Allesandra. “He’s as bold as I’d want my own son to be. I should talk more with you, Jan, and I regret that I don’t know you as well as an onczio should. We’ll start to rectify that tomorrow—we’ll go hunting after my afternoon conferences, you and I. Would you like that?”
“Oh, yes!” Jan burst out, suddenly the child again, presented with an unexpected gift. Then he seemed to realize how young he sounded, and he nodded solemnly. “I’d enjoy that very much, Onczio Fynn,” he said, his voice pitched low. “Matarh?”
“The Hïrzg is very kind,” Allesandra told him, smiling even as suspicion hammered at her. First Vatarh, now Fynn. What does the bastard think he
can gain with this? Is he just trying to get to me by stealing Jan’s affection? I’m losing my son, and the tighter I try to hold him, the faster he’ll slip away. . . . “It sounds like a wonderful idea,” she told Jan.
The White Stone
THERE WERE EASY KILLINGS, and there were hard ones. This was one of the easy ones.
The target was Honori cu’Belgradi, a merchant dealing in goods from the Magyarias, and a philanderer who had made the mistake of sleeping with the wrong person’s wife: the wife of the White Stone’s client.
“I watched him tup her,” the man had told the White Stone, his voice shaking with remembered rage. “I watched him take my wife like an animal, and I heard her call out his name in her passion. And now . . . now she’s pregnant, and I don’t know if the child is mine or . . .” He’d stopped, his head bowed. “But I’ll make certain that he’ll do this to no other husband, and I’ll make certain that the child will never be able to call him vatarh. . . .”
Relationships and lust were responsible for fully half of the White Stone’s work. Greed and power accounted for the rest. There was never a dearth of people seeking the White Stone; if you needed to find the Stone, you found the way.