by S L Farrell
Of course, it would be Pauli who would almost certainly find comfort and release between the thighs of one of them tonight. Allesandra was certain of that; her husband no longer bothered to hide his transgressions from her. She told herself that she didn’t care.
“A’Hïrzg, are you enjoying yourself?” She turned to see Archigos Semini ca’Cellibrecca standing behind her with two iced drinks in his hand—Fynn had, at great expense, brought wagonloads of glacial ice from the mountains around Lake Firenz. He proffered one to Allesandra. “Please, take it,” he said. “Francesca seems to have vanished and the ice will be gone soon in this heat.”
Allesandra took the water-beaded glass gratefully. She sipped at the cold drink, relishing the chill as the honey-sweetened juice slipped down her throat. “Thank you, Archigos. I think you may have just saved my life.”
He smiled broadly at that, his beard glistening with oil. “Would you care to walk with me, A’Hïrzg? I suspect there’s a bit of a breeze over near the windows.”
She glanced at the gaggle around Fynn, at her husband and son there with him. “Certainly,” she told him. The Archigos offered his arm, and she put her hand in the crook of his elbow as they walked. He said nothing until they were well away from the Hïrzg, then leaned close to her. “Your husband enjoys the attention he receives as A’Gyula. But he’s a fool to leave you unattended.” His free hand covered hers on his arm.
“I could say the same of your wife, Archigos.”
He chuckled. His hand patted hers. “The ideal spouse is both an ally and a friend,” he answered. “But that’s an ideal rarely achieved, isn’t it? That’s a shame. I’ve wondered, at times, what might have happened had the false Archigos not snatched you away. Perhaps, A’Hïrzg, you and I might have ended up . . . allies. Or more.”
Allesandra nodded to a passing covey of ca’-and-cu’ wives. She saw their speculative gazes rest on her hand laced with the Archigos’ arm. “The daughter of Archigos ca’Cellibrecca was a better choice for you, Archigos. Look at where you are now.”
She felt more than heard his snort of derision. “A cold, calculating choice on the part of my younger self, and it gave me a marriage with exactly those same qualities. But there are other alliances that can be forged outside of marriage, A’Hïrzg, if one is careful. And interested.” His hand was still on hers, his fingers pressing.
“I’ve always been extremely careful about my alliances, Archigos. That’s something I learned early on.”
He nodded. They were near the dance floor now, the music masking their voices. “I understand you will be giving a fealty oath to Hïrzg Fynn at the Besteigung tomorrow?”
“Ah,” she said. “You have sources close to the Hïrzg.”
Under the salt-and-pepper beard, the man smiled. “Knowing what the powerful know is a survival tactic, A’Hïrzg, as I’m sure you realize.” For several moments they walked along in silence around the edge of the floor. Couples swayed near them to a gavotte. “I also hear from Nessantico that the young Kraljiki is not well,” he said. Allesandra said nothing. “The rumors that have come to me say that the Council of Ca’ in Nessantico might consider the twins Sigourney ca’Ludovici or Donatien ca’Sibelli as successors should Audric die. They’re second cousins to Audric, I believe.” A breath. A smile. “As are you.”
Allesandra stared blandly back at the man. Dancers moved past them. “As is Fynn,” she answered finally.
“Yes, but you are the eldest. And you have the advantage of having lived there; you know Nessantico as your brother does not. And perhaps there are those in Nessantico who might recognize strength when they see it and desire a strong presence on the Sun Throne. Someone stronger than either Sigourney or Donatien.” He leaned close to her and lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “For that matter, there are those here who would prefer you to wear the crown that is currently on Fynn’s head.”
“You speak treason again, Archigos?” she asked, just as quietly.
“I speak truth, A’Hïrzg.”
“And those here that you speak of. Would you be among those, Archigos?”
His fingers tightened on hers. “I would. Perhaps . . . perhaps it is possible for both the Coalition and the Faith to even become one again—under the right leaders.”
The right Archigos being yourself, of course . . . Allesandra watched the dancers on the floor, moving through their intricate and preordained steps. What does he really know? What does he really want? She didn’t know how to answer him. She didn’t know if he knew about the message she’d been sent from Nessantico, or if he’d perhaps received something similar. She didn’t know whether Semini was a potential ally or her enemy—and the Archigos could be a terrible enemy, as the skeletons of Numetodo heretics hanging in the gibbets near the Brezno Temple could attest.
The ice was gone to water in her drink. She gave the glass to a passing servant and smiled at the Archigos. “My vatarh believed that there would be one Holdings again—when he sat on the Sun Throne as Kraljiki,” she told him. “That’s what I believe also, Archigos: that a Hïrzgai could also be the Kralji. And I . . .” She lifted the hand that had held the glass. She could see cool, glistening drops of water clinging to her fingers. “When last I checked, I was not Hïrzgin.”
“No, you are not,” Semini answered. “But—”
She cut him off even as he opened his mouth again. “No, I am not,” she said. “That seems to be Cénzi’s Will. You wouldn’t intend to thwart Him, would you, Archigos?” She gave him no chance to respond. She removed her hand from his arm and gave him the sign of Cénzi. “Thank you for the drink and for the conversation, Archigos,” she said. “You’ve given me much to think about. If . . . if something would happen to, well, change things, I know that you and I might make excellent allies. Certainly you are a far more competent Archigos than the one the Nessantican Faith has named. Kenne never impressed me.”
She saw the pleasure in his face as she said that, and he nodded slightly. “I’m flattered, A’Hïrzg.”
“No,” she told him, “it’s I who should be flattered. Now . . . you should find Francesca, and I must go be my husband’s wife and the A’Hirzg, and pretend not to notice when the A’Gyula slips away for the night.”
Karl ca’Vliomani
VARINA HANDED KARL the glass ball as Mika watched. Varina’s touch lingered on Karl’s hand for a moment before she released him, and she gave him a smile that was tinged with sadness. Her face seemed more heavily lined than he remembered, as if she’d aged suddenly in the last month.
They were in the meeting hall of the Numetodo House, where once a week the various Numetodo would give reports on their research. There were empty chairs set neatly in rows in front of the small dais on which they stood.
Karl hadn’t mentioned to Mika his visit to the Firenzcian Ambassador the other day; evidently Varina hadn’t either, since Mika hadn’t commented on it.
“It’s just a ball, right?” Mika asked as Karl hefted the globe in his palm. “Though a fairly well-crafted one.” It was heavy and well-cast—Karl could see no air bubbles or defects in the glass: the lens of the sphere gave him a distorted, warped view of the hall. “Do you find it unusual or notable in any other way?”
Karl shrugged. “No. It’s a true glasswright’s work, or an apprentice’s proof-work, but otherwise . . .”
Mike grinned. “Indeed. What I want you to do, Karl, is speak the word ‘open’ in Paeti and then toss the ball to me.”
Karl hefted the glass again. “Oscail,” he said, and underhanded the small globe in Mika’s direction. What happened next astonished him.
When the glass ball touched Mika’s hand, a coruscation of blue-white flared, sending black shadows dancing around the Numetodo hall, painting momentary crazed black shadows on the back wall and causing Karl to shade his eyes belatedly. He heard Varina’s quick laugh and a handclap of delight. Karl blinked, trying to see through the globules of fading afterimages that haunted his vision. “By all the Moi
tidi . . . You two have been working, I see.”
“Not me,” Mika answered. “It’s been Varina alone.” He handed the globe back to Karl—it was simply glass again. “If the Westlanders were able to enchant objects with the Scáth Cumhacht, the way you and Ana said Mahri did, then we knew it was possible. And not only that—Mahri gave Ana an enchanted object that she could control by speaking the right word. Anyone could use the magic as long as they know the release word.”
Varina was still smiling. She was rubbing at a long, scabbed wound on her forearm. “We knew it was possible; the rest was simply a matter of figuring out the formula to do it.”
“Varina’s finally managed to puzzle out the sequence,” Mika added. “She swore me to secrecy; said she wanted to surprise you. The spell’s complicated, and takes more time and more energy than you might think. Compared to our own spells, something like this is expensive and far more of a drain on the body than anyone expected, but . . .” He nodded happily. “It’s reproducible. Finally. Varina says she could teach us, and either of us could do the same.”
Karl glanced at Varina, who nodded without saying anything. She held his gaze almost defiantly. He tossed the ball up in the air. “That’s impressive, Varina. It truly is. But a flash of light is hardly a weapon.”
“Theoretically, any spell within the arcana could be stored in any object: offensive, defensive, whatever,” Varina answered. There was heat in her words. “Theoretically. Practically, well, not yet. I used the light spell because it’s the first and simplest thing we teach an initiate, so it seemed best.” She shook her head. There were white strands in her brown hair that Karl didn’t remember from even a week ago—had they been there all along? “Look, it’s a matter of binding the spell to the object and creating a trigger to activate it—covering the object in the energy of the Scáth Cumhacht the way you’d wrap a mistfruit in paper. After that, it’s as if the object is an extension of the spellcaster, though the object itself has to be of good quality or it can’t survive the strain. It took me a while to understand that. But . . .” She sighed, spreading her hands wide. “Just putting that simple spell in an object was incredibly exhausting, Karl. You won’t be able to imagine just how exhausting until you try it yourself. The process took me three full turns of the glass, and afterward I had to rest for another day to recover. Even now, I still feel the drain on my energy, and I wonder what else it might have cost.” She bit her lower lip, brushed stray wisps of whitened hair behind her ears. “You said that Archigos Ana claimed that old Mad Mahri gave her an enchantment that could literally stop time?”
Karl nodded. “That’s what she told me—it was how she snatched Allesandra from her vatarh. And Mahri was able to switch his body for mine, when I was in the Bastida. His magic . . .”
“. . . was utterly beyond ours, then,” she finished for him. “I know. The reports from the war in the Hellins hint at the same. The nahualli of the Westlanders can do more than we can, but . . . I’ve just proved that their X’in Ka is no more god-driven than the Ilmodo, no matter what they claim or believe.” She pointed to the glass ball. “If I can do this, then my bet is that we can also learn to do the same with more potent spells. It’s just a matter of learning the right formulae to bind the Scáth Cumhacht to the physical object. It can be done. We can do it.”
Karl remembered Mahri, who had befriended him and Ana when they thought they were lost, and who had turned out to be not ally, but enemy. Mahri’s ravaged, one-eyed, and furrowed face swam before him as he gazed at Varina. He lifted the glass ball again. “So anyone could have done this spell. . . .” His voice trailed off. The explosion . . . the great flash of terrible light . . . Ana’s torn body . . . Magic without hearing or seeing anyone casting the spell . . . Maybe you’ve been wrong; maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong direction . . . “Could what happened to Ana have been . . . ?” Karl couldn’t finish the question. It remained lodged in his throat, heavy and solid.
But both Varina and Mika nodded in answer.
“Yes,” Mika told him. “That’s the rest of what we wanted to talk about. Varina and I have already had the same thought. Westlander involvement can’t be ruled out in Ana’s death, and frankly, what happened there makes it seem likely to me. But why, Karl? Why not assassinate the Kraljiki or the Regent, who are directly responsible for the war? Why kill Ana, of all people?”
Because it would be revenge for Mahri. Revenge. That, he could understand. “Right now, I don’t know,” Karl hedged. “But someone here in Nessantico does, I’m certain, and I’m going to find that person.” He took a long breath. They were both staring at him, and he hated the pity he saw in Mika’s eyes, and the deep empathy in Varina’s. “But that’s for later,” he told them. “For now, I want you to teach me this nahualli trick. Let me see how it works.”
Varina seemed to start to say something, then closed her mouth. Mika glanced at her, at Karl. “I think I’ll leave that to the two of you,” he said. “Alia wanted me to bring some lamb home for dinner, and the butcher will be closing his shop soon.” He made his farewells quickly and left them.
For too long after the door shut, neither of them spoke. When they did speak, it was together.
“I’m really sorry about the other day . . .”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said . . .”
They laughed, a little uneasily, at the collision of apologies. “You first,” Karl told her, but she shook her head. “All right,” he said. “I’ll start then. You said that my . . . affection for Ana had blinded me. I’ve been thinking about that, and—”
“Stop, Karl” she said. “Don’t say anything. I was angry and I said things that I had no right to say. I’d . . . I’d like you to forget them.”
“Even if they were true?”
Her cheeks reddened. “You loved Ana. I know that. Whatever relationship the two of you had . . .” She shrugged. “It’s not my concern.” She stepped forward, in front of him, close enough that he could see the flecks of color in her pupils and the fine lines at their corners. She reached down and closed his fingers around the glass ball he was still holding, both her hands cupping his. “I can show you how to enchant this. You just have to be patient because—”
“Varina.” She stopped and looked up at him. “You shouldn’t be putting so much of yourself into this.”
Her lips tightened as if she wanted to say something. Then her hands pressed against his again and she looked down. “. . . because it’s difficult, and you have to think differently about the whole process. But once you make the shift, it all makes sense,” she said. “You have to imagine the ball as an extension of yourself. . . .”
Enéas cu’Kinnear
IT HAD BEEN THREE DAYS since his capture. In that time, the Westlander army had continued marching northeast, and Enéas had walked with them. He remained close to Niente—which he’d learned was indeed the name of the nahualli who had healed him. “No one will restrain you,” Niente said to Enéas at the start of their trek. “But if you are found wandering without me, the warriors will kill you immediately. It’s your choice.”
They were moving in the direction of Munereo. The days were filled with nothing but walking. Enéas stayed close to the nahualli, but he also watched carefully for an opportunity to escape—that was his duty as a soldier. Whatever Niente had done to his leg had healed his injuries completely; his ankle felt stronger than it had ever been. If there was a chance to slip away, well, it wouldn’t be an injury that impeded him.
It wouldn’t be easy. All those of the nahualli caste walked together in the middle of the army, surrounded on all sides by the tattooed and scarred soldiers of the Westlanders, well-protected. That spoke of the value that the Tehuantin placed on the sorcerers. Each of the nahualli carried a walking stick or staff: carved with animal figures and highly polished, most of them showing long use. Once, when they had paused for the midday meal, Enéas reached out to touch Niente’s staff, curious as to what it might feel like. Niente
snatched the stick away.
“This is nothing for you, Easterner,” he said—quietly, but with a sharp edge in his voice. “Let me give you a warning: you touch a nahualli’s staff at your peril. Don’t do it again.”
Niente conversed with the other nahualli, but always in the Tehuantin language; if any of them, like Niente, also spoke Enéas’ language, they never displayed the skill. For the most part, the other nahualli ignored his presence at the side of Niente, their gazes sliding past him as if he were no more than a horse or a tent-pack. Twice a day, a low-caste warrior would hand Enéas a bowl of the mashed root-paste that seemed to be the staple food for the army; he ate it quickly and hungrily—it was never quite enough to satisfy the hunger fed by the long marches. Niente had also given him a waterskin, which he filled in the abundant small lakes and streams around the hilly region.
The army moved through the meandering valleys like a solid river, the verdant steep walls of the landscape containing them. And at night, when the army camped . . .
It was the lowest-caste warriors who always erected the nahualli’s tents—the nahualli themselves seemed to do little physical labor. Niente supervised the placement of several dozen casks in his personal tent each night, marked with symbols burned into the wood. There were four symbols that Enéas could discern. Niente didn’t seem overly concerned with most of them, but the ones marked with what looked like a winged dragon he watched carefully as they were placed, grimacing whenever one of the warriors set the cask down too hard, and scolding them when they did so. That first night, Niente opened several of the casks—he didn’t object when Enéas sidled closer to look over the nahualli’s shoulder. One cask was filled with chunks of what looked and smelled like burnt wood, another with a white powder, yet another with bright yellow crystals. Enéas peered most closely into the dragon-marked casks, to see that it was filled with a gray-black thick sand, glistening a bit in the moonlight.