by S L Farrell
Nico shivered. He left, wondering if he would ever see these rooms again.
Enéas cu’Kinnear
ENÉAS STOOD AT THE STERN of the Stormcloud, staring at the storm clouds that appeared to be rushing toward them from behind. The horizon was a foreboding black under the rising thunderheads, a rushing night pricked with intermittent flares of lightning. He could see the blurred sheets of rain lashing the ocean underneath the clouds and hear the grumbling of distant low thunder. The Strettosei had turned a dull gray green that was flecked with whitecaps from the rising wind; the canvas sheets of the two-masted ship booming and cracking as they filled with the gales and thrust the ship through the deepening waves. The bow lifted and sliced uneasily through the moving hills of water; the wild spray speckled the hair of the sailors and soaked the military bashta Enéas wore. He could taste brine in his mouth. The air around him seemed to have chilled drastically in the last few minutes as the first outrunners of the storm stretched toward them. The dipping and rolling of the deck underneath his feet was alarming enough that Enéas found himself clutching at the rail.
He could feel the storm. The energy of it seemed to resonate inside him, and his fingertips tingled with every lightning strike, as if they touched him from a distance.
Chasing us from the west—like the hordes of the Westlanders, crackling with the power of the nahualli. Pursuing us even as we flee, coming to us in our very homes. . . . Enéas shuddered, watching the storm’s approach and imagining he could see the shapes of the Westlander warriors in the clouds, or that the thunderheads were the smoke of sacrificial fires. He wondered what had happened in the Hellins since they’d left. He wondered, and he worried at the omen of the storm.
“You’d best get below to your cabin, O’Offizier. I’ll do what I can, but Cénzi knows there’ll be no calming the sea with this.” The wind-téni assigned to the ship had come up alongside him, unheard against the protest of the sails, the shrill keening of the wind through the rigging, and the urgent calls of the ship’s offiziers to the sailors on deck. She was staring at the storm in the same manner that Enéas would gaze at an enemy force arrayed against him, gauging it and pondering what strategies might work best against it. The task of the wind-téni was to fill the sails of the ship when the natural winds of the Strettosei would not cooperate. They would also strive to calm the storms that raked the deep waters between the Holdings and the Hellins, but that was the harder task, Enéas knew: the Moitidi of the sky were powerful and contemptuous of the Ilmodo and the attempts of the wind-téni to calm their fury.
“A bad one?” Enéas asked her.
The deck lifted as they rose on the next wave, then dropped abruptly as Stormcloud raced down the slope beyond. Enéas wrapped an arm around the rail as water sluiced over the deck; the wind-téni only shifted her weight easily and naturally. “I’ve seen worse,” she answered, but to Enéas’ ears it sounded more like bravado than confidence. “But you never really know what’s behind the thunderheads until it gets here. Let me test it.” Her hands lifted and moved in a spell-pattern, and she chanted in the language of the Ilmodo, her eyes closed as she faced the storm.
Her hands dropped. Her eyes opened and she glanced at him. “O’Offizier, are you also a téni?”
Enéas shook his head, puzzled. “No. I’ve had some little training, but . . .”
“Ahh . . .” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “Perhaps that’s it.”
“What?” he asked.
“Just now, when I opened myself to the storm, I thought I felt . . .” She shook her head, and droplets flew from her spray-darkened hair. The first spatters of cold rain hit the deck like tossed stones. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Right now, I have to see what I can do with this. Please, you should go below, O’Offizier . . .”
The ship lurched again, and with it, Enéas’ stomach. Lightning crackled nearer, and he thought he could feel the strike in his very flesh, raising the hairs on his arms. He gave the wind-téni the sign of Cénzi. “May Cénzi be with you to still the storm,” he told her, and she returned the gesture.
“I’ll need Him,” she said. She faced the storm again, her hands now moving in a new spell-pattern and her chant longer and more complex. Enéas thought he could feel the power gathering around her; he retreated down the slick, sloping deck, holding onto whatever he could grab until he half-fell into the narrow stairwell leading to the cramped passenger compartments. There, he lay on his swinging hammock and listened to the storm as it broke around them, as the wind-téni struggled to keep the worst of the furious winds away from the fragile vessel that was their ship. Enéas prayed also, his knotted hands clasped to his forehead, asking Cénzi for the safety of the ship and for their safe return to Nessantico.
You will be safe . . . He thought he heard the words, but against the storm and against the vastness of the Strettosei, they were small and insignificant. His words might have been the the whisperings of a gnat.
The storm has been sent to speed you to your home . . . The thought came to him suddenly, in that low voice he’d thought he’d heard a few times since his escape from the Tehuantin. Cénzi’s Voice. Enéas laughed at that, and suddenly he didn’t fear the storm though the ship pitched and rolled and the wind screamed shrilly. His fear was gone and he felt a certainty that they would be safe.
He thanked Cénzi for giving him that peace.
Allesandra ca’Vörl
DO I REALLY WANT to do this? Allesandra shivered at the thought. It was, almost, too late to change her mind.
Alone, in the darkness of a narrow lane in Brezno on Draiordi evening, she waited where she’d been told. A man approached her, hobnailed boots clacking loudly on the cobbles, and Allesandra stiffened, suddenly alert. All her senses were straining, and she pressed a hand close to the knife hidden under the sleeve of her tashta, though she knew that if the White Stone were what he was rumored to be, no weapon would protect her if he decided to kill her. The man came close to her, his eyes on the shadows under the cowl of her tashta, assessing her.
“Ah,” the man said. “I guess you’re comely enough. Care to do some business with me, girlie?” he asked as he approached her, with the smell of beer trailing after him.
He thinks you’re a whore. This isn’t him. But, just to be certain, she opened her hand and showed him the gray-white, smooth pebble in her palm. He didn’t react. “I have a se’siqil that’s yours if you’re good to me,” the man said, and Allesandra closed her fingers around the stone.
“Be off with you,” she told him, “or I’ll call the utilino.”
The man scowled, hiccuped, then brushed past her. He spat on the ground near her feet.
“Did you think it would be that easy?” At the sound of the voice, Allesandra started to turn, but a gloved hand gripped her shoulder and stopped her. “No,” the voice said. “Just keep standing there, looking across the street. I am the White Stone.” Husky, that voice, though pitched higher than she’d imagined. In her mind, she’d heard a deep, ominous voice, not this nondescript one.
“How do I know it’s you?” she asked
“You don’t. Not now. You won’t know until you see the stone on the left eye of the man you want dead. It is a man, isn’t it?” There was a quiet chuckle. “For a woman, it’s always a man . . . or because of one.”
“I want to see you,” Allesandra said. “I want to know who I’m talking to, who I’m hiring.”
“The only ones who see the White Stone are those I kill. Turn, and you’ll be one of those—I know you, and that’s enough. Do I make myself clear, A’Hïrzg ca’Vörl?” Involuntarily, Allesandra shivered at the threat and the voice chuckled again. “Good. I dislike unnecessary and unpaid work. Now . . . You brought my fee, as Elzbet told you?”
She nodded.
“Good. You’ll place the pouch down at your feet, and place the stone you brought on top of it—it’s a light stone, as near white as you can find? You’d recognize it again?”
Again All
esandra nodded. Resisting the temptation to look back, she unlaced the pouch heavy with gold solas from the belt of her tashta and, crouching, put it on the cobbles of the street next to her feet. She placed the pebble on top of the soft leather and stood up.
“How soon?” Allesandra asked. “How soon will you do it?”
“In my own time and in the place of my own choosing,” the White Stone answered. “But within a moon. No longer than that. Who do you want me to kill?” the assassin asked. “What is his name?”
“You may not take the money when I tell you.”
The White Stone gave a mocking laugh. “You wouldn’t need me if the one you wanted dead weren’t well-placed and well-protected. Perhaps, given your history, it’s someone in Nessantico?”
“No.”
“No?” There was, Allesandra thought, disappointment in the voice. “Then who, A’Hïrzg? Who do you want dead badly enough that you would find me?”
She hesitated, not wanting to say it aloud. She let out the breath she was holding. “My brother,” she said. “Hïrzg Fynn.”
There was no answer. She heard a clatter out in the street to her right, and her head moved involuntarily in that direction. There was nothing there; in the moonlight, the street was empty except for a utilino just turning the corner a block away, whistling and swinging his lantern. He waved at her; she waved back. “Did you hear me?” she whispered to the White Stone.
There was no answer. She glanced down: pouch and stone were gone. She turned. There was a closed door directly behind her, leading into one of the buildings.
Allesandra decided it would not be in her best interest to open that door.
The White Stone
“MY BROTHER. Hïrzg Fynn.”
She had thought herself beyond surprise at this point, but this . . .
She’d been in Firenzcia now for some three years, longer than she’d stayed anywhere in some time, but the work had been good here. She knew some of the history between Allesandra and Fynn ca’Vörl; she’d heard the rumors, but none of them spoke of a resentment this deep in Allesandra. And she herself had witnessed Allesandra saving her brother from an attack.
She found herself puzzled. She didn’t care for uncertainty.
But . . . that wasn’t her concern. The gold solas in the pouch were real enough, and she had heard Allesandra clearly, and the woman’s white stone sat in her pouch next to the stone of the right eye, the stone that held the souls of all those the White Stone had killed.
Her fingers scissored around the white stone now through the thin, soft leather of the pouch. The touch gave her comfort, and she thought she could hear the faint voices of her victims calling.
“I nearly killed you first . . . You were so clumsy then . . .”
“How many more? We grow stronger, each time you add another . . .”
“Soon you’ll hear us always . . .”
She took her hand from the stone and the voices stopped. They didn’t always. Sometimes, especially recently, she’d been hearing them even when she didn’t touch the stone.
To kill a Hïrzg . . . This would be a challenge. This would be a test. She would have to plan carefully; she would have to watch him and know him. She would have to become him.
Her fingers were back around the stone again. “You’ve killed the unranked, you’ve killed ce’-and-ci’, and they are easy enough. You’ve killed cu’-and-ca’, and you know they’re far more difficult because with money comes isolation, and with power comes protection. But never this. Never a ruler.”
“You’re afraid . . .”
“. . . You doubt yourself . . .”
“No!” she told them all, angrily. “I can do this. I will do this. You’ll see. You’ll see when the Hïrzg is in there with you. You’ll see.”
They’ll know you. The A’Hïrzg will know you . . .
“No, she won’t. People like her don’t even see the unranked, as I was to her. My voice will be different, and my hair, and—most importantly—my attitude. She won’t know me. She won’t.”
With that, she plucked the pouch of golden coins from the bed and placed it in the chest with the other fees. From the chest, she pulled out the battered bronze mirror and looked at her reflection in the polished surface. She touched her hair, looked at the haunted, almost colorless eyes. It was time for her to become someone else. Someone richer, someone more influential.
Someone who could get close enough to the Hïrzg . . .
THRONES
Allesandra ca’Vörl
Audric ca’Dakwi
Sergei ca’Rudka
Varina ci’Pallo
Enéas cu’Kinnear
Jan ca’Vörl
Nico Morel
Allesandra ca’Vörl
Karl ca’Vliomani
Nico Morel
Allesandra ca’Vörl
The White Stone
Allesandra ca’Vörl
WITHIN A MOON . . .
That’s the promise the White Stone had made. Allesandra wondered if she could keep up the pretense that long. It was more difficult than she’d thought. Doubts plagued her—she had dreamed for the last three nights that she had gone to the White Stone to try to end the contract. “Just keep the money,” she’d told him. “Keep the money, but don’t kill Fynn.” Each time he’d laughed at her and refused.
“That’s not what you want,” the White Stone replied. In the dream, his voice was deeper. “Not really. I will do what you desire, not what you say. He’ll be dead within a moon. . . .”
She hoped Cénzi was not rebuking her. Fynn probably contemplated killing me as Vatarh was dying, thinking I would challenge him for the crown. He would still do so if he suspected me of plotting against him—he’s as much as said that. This is no less than he deserves for what Vatarh and he did to me. This is what he deserves for his continued arrogance toward me. This is what I must do for me; this is what I must do for Jan. This is what I must do for Vatarh’s dream. This is the only way. . . .
The words were burning coals in her stomach, and they touched all aspects of her life. She had suspected it would one day come to this, but she had also hoped that day might never arrive.
Since the attempted assassination, Fynn had enjoyed the adulation of the Firenzcian populace and Jan—as the Hïrzg’s protector—had been taken up with it as well. Everyone seemed to have forgotten entirely that Allesandra had anything to do with the foiling of the assassination. Even Jan seemed to have forgotten that—he certainly never mentioned, in all his recounting of the story, that it had been her who pointed out the assassin to him.
Crowds gathered to cheer whenever the Hïrzg left his palais in Brezno, and there were parties nearly every night, with the ca’-and-cu’ of the Coalition. There were new people there every night, especially women wanting to be close to the Hïrzg (still unmarried despite his age) and to the new young protégé Jan.
Her husband, Pauli, also enjoyed the influx of fresh young women into the palais life. Allesandra was far less pleased with it, and even less pleased with Pauli’s attitude toward Jan. “He’s your son,” she told him. Her stomach roiled with the argument she knew was coming, and she placed a hand on her abdomen to calm it, swallowing the fiery bile that threatened to rise in her throat and hating the shrill sound of her voice. “You need to caution him about these things. If one of these eager ca’-and-cu’ swarming around him end up with child . . .”
Pauli gave her an expression that was near-smirk, making the bile slide higher inside her. “Then we buy the girl and her family a vacation in Kishkoros unless she’s a good match for him. If that’s the case, let him marry her.” His casual shrug was infuriating. Allesandra wondered how many Kishkoros vacations Pauli had bought during their years of marriage.
They were standing on the balcony above the palais’ main ballroom floor. Another party was in progress below; Allesandra could see Fynn and the usual cluster of bright tashtas, and that made her hands tremble. Archigos Semini was close by as well,
though Allesandra didn’t see Francesca in the crowd. Jan was in the same group, talking to a young woman with hair the color of new wheat. Allesandra didn’t recognize her.
“Who is that?” she asked. “I don’t know her.”
“Elissa ca’Karina, of the Jablunkov ca’Karina line. She was sent to represent her family for the Besteigung, but was delayed near Lake Firenz and just arrived a few days ago.”
“You know her well, then.”
“I’ve . . . talked to her a few times since her arrival.”
The hesitation and choice of words told Allesandra more than she wanted to know. She closed her eyes for a breath, rubbing at her stomach. She wondered if it had just been flirtations or more. “I’m sure Jan would appreciate your familial interest, just as Fynn appreciates his First Taster.”