by S L Farrell
Cénzi, I need You . . .
He ignored his weariness. He closed his eyes, pulling in the power and encasing himself in it so that their spells reflected from him like the sun from a mirror. He could barely see the temple through the swirling haze around him. I will take them all, Cénzi. I will destroy them as You want me to . . .
The war-téni were quickly preparing smaller spells. He could see them readying to cast them at the Numetodo and gardai spilling into the Old Temple. The Numetodo were wielding devices like those Varina had carried, and they pointed them at the war-téni. There were loud reports, and puffs of smoke, and the war-téni cried out in the middle of their chants and collapsed to the ground. There was blood soaking their green robes. This was a magic he’d never seen before, a terrible magic.
Cénzi, please . . .
He saw Liana readying her own spell, saw Talbot staggering up with his head bloodied. The man pulled out a strange mechanism much like the one Varina had, and—still on his knees—pointed it toward Liana. Sparks glittered, and there was a loud bang, and smoke curled from the long end of it.
And Liana . . . Liana staggered backward, clutching at herself, and there was a growing dark stain on her tashta between her breasts.
“No!” Nico roared, but his voice was lost in the chaos swirling around him. “No!” He released the Ilmodo wildly, the energy spilling outward without control, sending gardai and Morellis and Numetodo alike tumbling. A wind rushed through the Old Temple, extinguishing the guttering fires and bringing down more of the walls. There were screams and wails, but none were as loud as that which issued from his own throat. “No!”
He was running toward Liana, who had crumpled to the ground, but there were gardai everywhere and hands clutching at him, and they were bearing him down, taking him to the ground even as he fought and kicked and scratched at them. Something hard collided with his head, and the room spun once wildly around him and he could no longer see Liana and the world descended into darkness . . .
Brie ca’Ostheim
THE CARRIAGE LURCHED AND JOUNCED and shivered. The ride from Stag Fall to Brezno Palais was nearly as uncomfortable a ride as any Brie had experienced, and the rain and two unhappy children made it no better. Elissa and Kriege were with her; Caelor and Eria were in the following carriage with the nursemaids. A carriage before them carried Paulus and her domestiques de chambre; those following held the rest of the staff. Gardai from the Garde Brezno rode on the horses flanking the train, miserable in the weather.
“Matarh, are we there yet?” Elissa grumbled. She stuck her head out from the nearest window but pulled it back in quickly, water beading her hair and face. Thunder grumbled at the intrusion. “I want to be there.”
“So do I, dear one,” Brie told her wearily. “Why don’t you rest, if you can? Look, your brother’s asleep. See if you can sleep like him; that’s what a good soldier does—you sleep whenever there’s a chance, because you never know how long you’ll need to stay awake.”
Elissa glanced over at the sleeping Kriege, and Brie knew she was tempted—as Elissa always was when she thought she was in competition with her brother. But she scowled. “I’m not sleepy. I just want to be home. When is Vatarh coming back? Why can’t I go with him the way Great-Matarh Allesandra went with Great-Great-Vatarh Jan?”
“Because your vatarh would send you back, and I was here to make certain you didn’t hide in the supply train like your great-matarh did, that’s why. Here, I brought a deck of cards; we can play Landsknecht; I’ll be dealer, and we can play for pins . . .”
They played for a time, and despite the lurching of the carriage, Brie saw Elissa’s eyelids growing heavier, until finally her cards dropped from her fingers and spilled over her lap. Brie picked them up and stored the deck in its box, setting it under the seat. She leaned her own head back against the cushions and closed her eyes.
She fell asleep faster than she thought possible, but it was a sleep haunted by dreams.
Jan stood in moonlight, arms crossed over his chest. He was in Nessantico, or at least she believed with dream-certainty that the city with its strange architecture was Nessantico. Behind Jan was the facade of a huge palais, stained glass windows cracked and broken, its walls blackened by smoke. The dream shifted, and Brie realized that there was a woman with Jan. For a moment she thought it must be Allesandra, but the hair was dark and when the figure turned slightly she saw Rhianna’s face. The two were close, yet not touching, but Brie still felt a hot surge of jealousy. Both of them stared at the palais. There was a blade in Rhianna’s hand, and she drew it back as if to strike . . .
. . . But the dream shifted again and she saw her own children, but there was another one with them. Strangely, Brie felt that all the children were siblings. The new one was a young woman perhaps four or five years older than Elissa, yet Brie couldn’t see her face at all no matter how she looked. Jan came into the room, and he went to her and embraced her, kissing first her, then Elissa. “Vatarh!” the woman said . . .
. . . and Brie was holding a baby, looking down into the face of an infant. “Dear little girl,” she whispered. “You poor thing . . .” The baby curled its tiny fingers around one of Brie’s own and she smiled, but there were shadows in the room, and black smoke and fire, and she clutched the baby to her, trying to run. She thought she could see Jan, and she started toward him, but the fire enveloped him and she heard him scream . . .
“Matarh?”
Brie woke up and realized where she was, the carriage jerking and bouncing over the road. She rubbed at her eyes, dispelling the panic of the nightmare. She realized her heart was racing; she could hear the blood pounding in her temples. Elissa was looking at her; Kriege was still sleeping. “What is it, Elissa?” Brie asked her daughter.
“Why didn’t you go with Vatarh?” the girl said.
“Because he asked me to take care of you and your brothers and sister.”
Elissa frowned. “I would have gone with him,” she said. “I would have helped protect him. I wouldn’t have cared what he said.”
“Having you there, dear, would only have made your vatarh worry more.”
“Did you want to go with him?”
She remembered the argument they’d had. The echo of the nightmare haunted her. “I did,” she answered truthfully. “At least part of me still wishes I had, yes.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I would have gone with him . . . I wouldn’t have cared what he said . . .” Brie had the nagging sense that Elissa was right. She had made a terrible mistake; she should have insisted. He would need her with Allesandra, if nothing else—the two of them were too much alike, and Brie could nearly see how they would spark against each other. She should be there.
It might be essential that she was there. The premonition seared her, as strongly as if she held her hand in a fire.
Elissa was staring at her.
“Driver, stop!” Brie pounded on the roof of the carriage, waking Kriege, who looked around groggily. The driver pulled up the reins; Brie heard quizzical, worried calls outside, and Paulus came running to the carriage. “Hïrzgin, is there a problem?”
“No, and yes,” Brie told him. “I need to have Elissa and Kriege put in one of the other carriages. Take their trunks with them; leave mine on this carriage. I’ll be rejoining the Hïrzg and the army. The children and the rest of the staff are to go on to Brezno.”
Paulus was shaking his head by the time she was halfway through, and the children were protesting. “Enough!” Brie said to all of them. She gave Elissa and Krieg hugs and a kiss, and pushed them in the direction of Paulus. “Go now!” she told them. “I’ll come back when I can. But go now!”
Elissa was smiling.
“Hïrzgin, are you certain . . . ?” Paulus began, but Brie gave him no chance to voice his protest.
“I’ve already given you my orders,” she told him. “Now, take my children and go, or I’ll appoint a new aide here and now.”
&nb
sp; Paulus gulped and bowed his head. “Yes, Hïrzgin,” he said. He took Elissa and Kriege’s hands, and began shouting orders. Brie laid her head back on her seat and thought of what she would say to Jan when she arrived.
Varina ca’Pallo
SHE STARED AT HIM and there were no words she could summon up.
“I’m so sorry, Nico,” she said. “So sorry . . .”
He only stared back at her. His hands were bound in chains, his head encased in the metal cage of a silencer. His hair was caked with blood, his face and arms a patchwork of cuts and scratches. In the chill of the cell of the Bastida, he curled against the wall like a broken doll.
I warned you, Nico. I tried to tell you it would end this way . . . She wanted to say the words, but she couldn’t. They would only have been further wounds to this already terribly injured man. She sank down to her knees in front of him, on the wet, dirty straw of the Bastida, not caring that she soiled her tashta or that her joints ached with the effort. She reached out to touch his face, as she’d done years ago when he’d been just a child. He turned his head and closed his eyes, and she stopped the gesture just short of him.
“I have nothing to say that can comfort you,” she said. “I don’t believe in your afterlife or the mercy of your Cénzi, but I’ve lost people I’ve loved myself. I’ve lost Karl, and so I can at least understand a portion of the pain you’re feeling.” His eyes opened again, though he wasn’t looking at her but at the filthy floor of his cell. The place reeked of ancient urine and feces, the foulness contained in the very stones of the cell. She spoke to break the horrible silence as much as anything, because if she didn’t speak, she didn’t think she could bear to be here. Her breath was a white cloud before her in the dungeon’s chill.
“The baby . . .” Liana gasped the words as she died in Varina’s arms, as the blood poured from the terrible wound in her chest. “Take the baby, now. She should be named . . . ” Liana paused, her eyes closing, and Varina thought she was gone, but she took another gurgling breath and opened her eyes again. “. . . Serafina.” Liana’s bloody hands clutched at Varina’s sleeves. “Take her. You must . . .”
And she did. It was the most horrific thing she’d ever done in her life, carving open the woman even as she died, but from the body she lifted a child who squalled and squirmed with life.
“You have a daughter, Nico. Liana . . . There was nothing we could do for her, but we took the child from her as she died. Your child, Nico. Liana told me that she wanted her to be called Serafina. I have her in my house, and she’s safe and healthy and beautiful.”
Tears were running down Nico’s cheeks, leaving clear trails on his filthy skin, and he made a terrible strangled sound as he sobbed.
“I have lost a lover, but that was a long time coming and I had the memory of a long time with Karl. I had time to prepare, to expect the end,” she told him. “Still, I really can’t imagine what you must be feeling.”
He stared at her, choking off the tears and sorrow, his eyes hardening. “And children . . . I’ve never had one, though I sometimes thought of you as my child. I would have taken you as my own, Nico, after those awful days when the Tehuantin came and killed your matarh, but you’d vanished, and when I finally heard your name again, you were already a grown man. I don’t know what you went through or what you endured . . . I can only imagine what happened to you to turn you into what you’ve become.”
He tried to speak, but all the words were distorted and unintelligible around the silencer. The sound tore at her.
“I made certain that Liana’s body was taken care of with respect. The Kraljica . . .” Varina paused. Her legs ached and she stood again, afraid that if she didn’t she might have to call the garda to help her up. “The Kraljica was having many of the bodies gibbeted and displayed.” She saw him recoil visibly at that. “I know, but it’s what is always done and I can’t entirely blame her; the public anger against the Morellis is strong. But I want you to know that I didn’t let that happen to Liana. I had her cleaned and dressed, and paid for the o’téni at the Archigos’ Temple to give her the proper service, though they didn’t want to do it. I was there when they cremated her in the Ilmodo-fire. I might not believe, but I know it’s what she would have wanted. I will do the same for you when the time comes, if I can. But I don’t know . . .”
She stopped again. She could hear the garda outside the cell door: the creak of his leather armor, the jingle of the keys at his belt, the sound of his breathing. She knew he was listening, and she wondered whether he was amused by her sympathy for Nico. “As for you . . . I don’t know that I’ll be allowed to have your body. You’re too famous, Nico. They need to make an example of you, so someone else doesn’t do what you did. But if there’s anything I can do, I will do it. I tell you this, Nico: I’ll make certain that Serafina is safe, too. As long as I’m alive, she will have a home, and I’ll make provisions for her on my death. I promise you that much. She’ll be safe, and she’ll be loved.”
She stared down at him, huddled at her feet, his head still averted.
“I hate what you’ve preached and what you’ve done in the name of your beliefs,” she told him. “I hate the death and injury that have been suffered in your name. I despise what you stand for. But I don’t hate you, Nico. I will never hate you. I can’t. I wanted you to understand that, to know that before . . . before . . .”
She stopped. His head had turned, and he looked her once in the eyes before his gaze slid away again. She wasn’t certain what she saw there, his expression too distorted by the silencer around his head and the dimness of the cell. This wasn’t the Nico she’d met before, not the self-assured Absolute confident in the favor of his god. No, this was a shattered soul, wounded inside as well as outside.
She wondered whether that internal wound might not be as mortal as the one that would eventually kill him. There would be no trial for Nico—he was already judged and condemned. The Faith would insist on having his tongue and hands first, to pay for his disobedience of the Archigos; the state would demand the end of what was left for the death and destruction he’d caused. It would almost certainly all be done publicly, so the citizens could watch and cheer his torment and death. His body would swing in a cage from the Pontica Kralji until there was nothing left but his disconnected bones.
Nico was already dead, even though there was still misery he must endure.
She was crying. The sob pulsed once in her throat, a sound that the stone walls of the Bastida seemed to absorb greedily, as if it were the prison’s cold nourishment. She wiped at her face almost angrily. “I wanted to tell you about Liana and Serafina,” she said to him. “I hoped it would give you at least some small peace.” She wanted him to lift his head again, to look at her and perhaps nod, to give her at least that tiny recognition that he heard her and that he understood.
He did not. The iron chains around his hands rattled dully as he clutched them to his chest.
She called out through the tiny, barred window of the cell door to the garda. “Get me out of here,” she said.
Niente
THE FLAP OF NIENTE’S TENT WAS THRUST back, and Atl came stalking through. He was holding a brass scrying bowl—a new one, the metal still bright—and it dripped water onto the trampled grass at his feet.
“You lied, Taat,” he said. There was as much dismay in his voice as anger. “Axat has let me look at the path you’ve set us on. I looked at it again and again, and there is no victory for us down that road. None.”
“Then you’ve seen wrongly,” Niente told him, even though fear shivered through him. “That is not what Axat has shown me.”
“Then take out your bowl now,” Atl insisted. “Take it out and let us look together. Prove to me that you’re leading the Tecuhtli to where he wishes to go. Prove it, and I’ll be silent.” Niente could hear desperation in his son’s voice, and he rose from the blankets, using his spell-staff to steady him. He went to Atl, who was standing at the tent’s entrance like a
bronzed statue. Outside, he could hear the army stirring in the early morning, striking the tents to prepare for the day’s march. The rain from the day before had ended; the air smelled fresh and clean.
Atl stared down at Niente as he approached. He clasped his son’s arm with his free hand, bringing him close. He could feel the young man resisting, then yielding to the embrace. “Atl,” he said quietly, finally releasing him and taking a step back. “I ask you to trust me: as your Taat, as your Nahual. Trust that I would not lead the Tehuantin to death. Trust that I want what you want: I want our people to prosper and to be safe. I love you; I love your brothers and sister, your mother. I love Tlaxcala and the lands of our home. I would not see those I love hurt or the land I know so well destroyed. Why would I want that? Why would I do that to you and to the Tehuantin?”
Atl was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Taat. It makes no sense to me either.” He lifted the bowl in his hand, and his voice was full of anguish and confusion. “But I know what I’ve seen. It was as clear as if I saw it happening before me. I had to tell the Tecuhtli what I saw. I had to, because you wouldn’t listen to me, and Axat was showing me what you insisted wasn’t true.”
“I know,” Niente told him, nodding. “You only did as I would have done in your place. I’m not angry with you.”