by S L Farrell
But all Atl could do was shake his head. “I have no power, Tecuhtli. None of the nahualli have. It’s been taken from us.” The spells were gone, and there was no time now to craft new ones to place in the spell-sticks.
“You promised me victory, Nahual! You promised me the city!” Citlali wailed like a child deprived of his favorite toy, but there was no answer at all to that. His face was so flushed with his anger that the red eagle seemed to blend into his flesh.
There will be no victory, Atl wanted to tell him. Or if there is to be one, it’s not one that I’ve glimpsed in the bowl. The paths in the scrying bowl had been wiped away. Everything had changed. I have never seen this path at all. I don’t know where it leads.
As his taat had warned. His hand felt for his pouch, where the carved bird his taat had given him was nestled. If one of us sees the way, then we can tell the other that the Long Path is open . . . . Could Niente have been right: could this Long Path exist, the one Atl could never see?
He wished Niente were here.
Citlali was still raving, but Atl’s attention was on the carved bird in his pouch. It seemed to rustle, as if it were alive and flapping its wings in panic. He opened the leather flap, reached in. Yes, the thing was moving. It went still in his hand as he took it out, and as he did, he heard, unmistakably, Niente’s voice.
“Tototl is returning to the ships. You must go too! The Long Path is here.”
“Taat?”
There was no answer. Atl dropped the bird from fingers that had lost their strength. He watched it tumble to the ground, to be lost among the stalks of grain that the armies had crushed into the dirt. His taat’s voice had sounded so weak, so lost, and there came to him a certainty that he would never hear it again.
“Tecuhtli,” Atl called. “We must retreat and find the ships. We have no magic. We’ll have none until we can rest again.”
“No!” Citlali spat. “I will have the city today.”
“It’s not possible now,” Atl said.
“How would you know?” Citlali scoffed. “Nothing you have told me has been true. You are no longer Nahual. I’ll find another. I’ll make Niente Nahual again.”
Citlali raised his sword against Atl as if he were about to strike, and Atl lifted his spell-stick uselessly.
Someone called toward them in the tongue of the Easterners, and a warhorse broke through the ring about Citlali and Atl, bearing a warrior covered in blood and dirt, his helm lost, a notched sword clutched in his hand. He bore down directly toward Citlali, and the Tecuhtli turned from Atl to parry the the man’s stroke. Steel rang against steel, and Atl saw a shard of Citlali’s blade fly away, spinning. As their warhorses came close, Citlali pushed hard at the Easterner, and the man fell from his saddle. Citlali laughed. “You see?” he said. “You see how easily they fall? And you tell me to retreat?”
The Easterner was struggling groggily to his feet, favoring one leg. He seemed barely able to lift his weapon. All around them, Atl could see the black-and-silver and blue-and-gold uniforms of the Easterners, though the three of them stood alone in a quiet nexus of the chaos. Warriors were falling under the press, and their spellcasters hurled their magic with the nahualli unable to respond. Citlali jumped from his horse; Atl saw his boot crush the carved red bird into the muddy, torn ground. The Tecuhtli lifted his sword again. The strike, Atl saw, would take the Easterner’s head.
Atl lifted back his empty spell stick. He brought it down hard on Citlali’s skull. The sound was strangely quiet, like a stick thumping a ripe melon, but Citlali fell senseless at the Easterner’s stunned feet. The Easterner looked at Atl, who stared back. For a breath, neither of them moved, then—as Atl watched from his horse, the Easterner lifted his sword. He brought it down through Citlali’s neck. “The Tecuhtli is lost!” Atl called out loudly so that the warriors nearest him could hear. “The Tecuhtli is lost. Retreat! Back to the ships!”
As the warriors began to respond, as they began to disengage and fall back, as the Easterners shouted in triumph, Atl stared down at the Easterner. The man leaned on his sword, still buried in Citlali’s neck. Atl nodded to him.
Then he jerked the reins of his horse and began the long flight westward.
The Dawn
THEY WERE PURSUED BY THE ARMY of blue and gold and the army of black and silver, hounding them as they retreated toward the river and the waiting ships, but not hotly. The stragglers had been picked off, but the main armies had never reengaged. It was apparent that the Easterners were content to chase them from their land, but they would not demand their extermination if the Tehuantin were willing to leave.
The army had seen the masts of their fleet the second day, ten miles upriver from Nessantico, and they’d boarded as quickly as they could. Tototl, now calling himself Tecuhtli, had boarded the Yaoyotl, and he had turned the fleet westward as soon as the surviving warriors and nahualli were aboard. The empty boats—far too many of them—he’d scuttled in the middle of the river to discourage any of the Holdings’ navy from pursuing them.
They sailed down the A’Sele, moving quickly with its current toward the sea.
Toward home.
Atl, aboard the Yaoyotl, stared into the green mist of his scrying bowl. Tototl watched him carefully, the warrior’s skull painted now with the red eagle pattern that would soon be tattooed permanently on his flesh.
The myriad futures spread out before Atl, no longer blanketed and dim as they once had been. It was as if Axat had lifted a veil from before his face. He could see far more clearly than he’d ever seen before, all the uncertainties that had shrouded things for so long blown away like passing storm clouds. The futures were open before him, all the possibilities.
What he saw made him gasp. The Long Path . . . This was the future that Taat saw, that he always said was there. He realized then that Niente had known what that Long Path would cost: that to achieve it he must die; that Tecuhtli Citalali would be killed as well if this future was ever to rise; that a multitude of warriors would die as well. How long did you keep this secret, Taat? Did you know before we even left?
Atl suspected that he had. It explained so much. It explained why Niente had never wanted him to use the scrying bowl himself. That had been the act of a protective father, not that of a jealous Nahual. The realization made Atl regret the harsh words they’d exchanged.
“Will I return here?” Tototl asked Atl harshly, interrupting his thoughts and making the green mist waver as he exhaled so that he almost lost the vision. “Will I avenge our defeat?”
Atl could see that future as well: their ships loaded again with an army, one yet larger than Citlali’s, returning a third time to those shores. Only this time, the armies of the Holdings were one, and they descended upon them furiously and early, the bulk of them armed with terrible weapons like the ones that Tototl and Niente had witnessed during their battles. The warriors of the Tehuantin were cut down like wheat with a scythe and the earth drank their blood.
It was a terrible future, but it was one that could easily come to pass.
But the other . . . the one stretching out until the mists swallowed it. That one was also possible if Atl could direct Tototl that way. It would take skill, and it would demand sacrifice, but it was there and he could see Niente’s hand upon it.
“You will do better than that, Tecuhtli,” Atl told him. “You will one day bring us to peace with the Easterners. Your name will be honored everywhere in our land. All the Tecuhtli who come after will compare themselves to you. You will be forever the Great Tecuhtli.”
The mists were failing now, and Atl took the bowl and threw the water within it over the side of the ship. He handed the bowl to one of the lesser nahualli. “Clean this,” he told the man, “and put it back in my cabin.” He could feel the weariness of the X’in Ka hammering at him, and his left eye twitched uncomfortably. Atl squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. Tototl was watching him.
“Peace?” he said. “How does a warrior find honor
in peace? How does one become great without war and victory?”
Atl took a long breath. He looked westward, toward the smoke and fumes of Nessantico, toward the place where Niente’s body would forever lie. “I will show you,” he told Tototl. “Together, we will keep to that path.”
“Watch me,” she told Nico. “Then I want you to try it yourself. Are you watching? See, you loop one string like this, then take the other and go around the bottom of the loop once, and . . .”
There was a knock on Varina’s bedroom door as she was tying the laces of Nico’s boots. “A’Morce?”
“Come in,” Varina said, and Michelle entered, carrying Serafina in her arms. The baby was bundled in lace, and Michelle held the child protectively as she glanced warily at Nico, who sat on the bed. His guileless face turned to look at Michelle.
“Is that Serafina?” he asked Varina, his voice eager.
“Yes,” she told him.
He looked down, almost shyly. “May I . . . May I hold her?”
Michelle was shaking her head slightly, but Varina smiled at him. “Just for the tiniest bit,” she told him. “And you must be very careful with her.” Varina nodded to Michelle; still frowning, the wet nurse came forward and placed the baby in Nico’s outstretched hands. “Make sure you hold her head,” Varina told him. “Yes, like that. That’s good . . .”
Nico grinned, cradling Serafina in his arms. The baby fussed for a moment, then quieted as Nico rocked her unconsciously, staring down into the baby’s face. “Her eyes are so big,” he said wonderingly. “And her hands are awful small. She’s really my daughter?”
“Yes. Yours and Liana’s.” Varina reached down and stroked Sera’s head. Her hair was fine as down, the skin smooth and warm. Her tiny hand waved, finding Varina’s finger and clutching it. She laughed.
Nico shook his head. He was watching the interplay. “I don’t remember Liana,” he said. “I don’t know how . . .”
“I’ll tell you one day,” Varina told him. “Right now, we still have to get ready to go to the Kraljica’s funeral. Here . . .” She held out her hands, and Nico carefully placed Sera there. Varina heard Michelle’s audible sigh of relief. Varina kissed Sera’s forehead, hugging her for a few breaths before handing her back to Michelle. “She’s fed?”
“Fed and dressed and ready to go,” Michelle answered. “I have a change of clothes and diapers. I came up to tell you that the carriage is here from the palais.”
“Good,” Varina told her. “Go ahead and get her in and settled. Nico and I will be down in a few moments. I just have to finish his boots.”
Michelle glanced at Nico again. “A’Morce, the young man’s dangerous. What he did . . .”
“What he did with the Tehuantin saved us,” Varina answered. “And cost him far more than most would have been willing to give.”
“He could be faking his condition, or he could recover his wits. What then?”
Nico said nothing as they discussed him. He only looked from one woman to the other as they spoke.
“Then,” Varina answered, “we will deal with that when it happens.” It was the same question she’d heard already a dozen times or more. There were those on the Council and among the ca’-and-cu’ of the city and the téni of the Faith who wanted Nico tried and executed for the deaths he’d caused and the damage to the Old Temple during the Morelli takeover. For that matter, there was a part of Varina’s own heart that was still angry with him for the destruction and deaths he’d caused, unapologetically, to her own friends during Karl’s funeral.
Nico, truly, had much to answer for, yet he had nearly single-handedly saved the city when it was about to fall. There was also no denial of that—or of the fact that his efforts had cost him greatly, and perhaps, perhaps that had been punishment enough. The Nico in front of her seemed to remember nothing of that day or much of his previous life at all. The Nico before her was an innocent—he might inhabit the same body, but he was not the Nico who had claimed to be the Absolute. Perhaps the Kraljiki would demand punishment for the past, but Varina would fight that, with all the efforts she could muster. “For now, he’s a child, and he needs to be treated as such.”
“As you say, A’Morce,” Michelle answered. Serafina cried, and Michelle rocked her gently. “I’ll get her quieted down again, and we’ll see you in the carriage.”
As Michelle left the room, Varina bent down again to the laces of Nico’s boots. He was watching her, frowning. “It’s all right, Nico,” she said. “Michelle’s not angry with you. She’s just concerned about you, as I am. Now, watch me and let’s see if you can tie the other one. Loop the lace like this, then pass the other end around it . . .”
The téni were already in attendance at the Archigos’ Temple. A’Téni Valerie ca’Beranger of Prajnoli would conduct the service—the rumors were that she would most likely be elected Archigos when the Concord A’Téni convened in a few days. Brie escorted the children up an aisle lined with e-téni in white robes—the color of death—trimmed in green. The téni watched, silent: like lines of white bone arrowing toward the Stone of Cénzi as Brie and the children ascended the dais and approached the altar, the great Stone of Cénzi, draped in a brilliant azure cloth.
“There,” Brie whispered to Elissa, Kriege, Caelor, and Eria. Her voice sounded loud under the dome and she glanced up once at the frescoes of Cénzi and the Moitidi far above them. “This is your great-matarh Allesandra. She was a great woman, and she told me that she wanted so much to get to know all of you. I wish you could have known her when she was alive.”
This was not how she’d intended for the children to meet their great-matarh. She’d hoped to introduce them to the woman, not the dead container that had once held her. She wondered whether it might not have been better to let the children remain in Brezno for the funeral, but for the fact that they would then have missed their vatarh’s coronation.
“It’s ugly here,” Elissa had proclaimed on disembarking from the carriage at the palais. She looked around at the buildings, broken and scarred by fire and war. “It smells horrible, too. Brezno is much prettier, Matarh. Why can’t we just stay there?”
“Nessantico is our new home now,” she’d told them. “And we’ll make it prettier and more impressive than Brezno—as it was once before. We’ll help your vatarh make it that way, all of us.”
She hoped that had not been a lie.
Now, in the Archigos’ Temple, they stared at yet another broken ruin, that of the Kraljica.
The toddler Eria hung back, a thumb firmly planted in her mouth. She refused to approach the bier at all, content to look at the body while hanging onto Brie’s tashta. Caelor approached only hesitantly, and then moved quickly away close to Brie. Kriege stalked forward with a firm grimace on his face, stared down at the white-painted face there, then took a step back, sniffing as if he could smell the corruption through the scent-shield that the téni had placed around the body. Elissa, who had walked forward with Kriege, remained there, staring down at the body as if she were trying to memorize every detail: the lines of her great-matarh’s face; the golden funeral mask that the téni would place on her face in just a turn of the glass, when the doors of the Archigos’ Temple were opened so that the funeral could begin; the iron rod of Kraljiki Henri VI cradled in her left hand; the signet ring of the Kralji displayed on her upturned right palm, which Jan would take when the funeral rite was finished. The blue cloth over the altar was covered in wreaths of yellow trumpet-flowers. Seven candelabra were set around the stone; they were alight not with flame but with brilliant téni-light, bathing the body in a yellow-white light so intense it seemed that the dome of the temple had been lifted so the sun could shine down on the Kraljica.
Elissa touched Allesandra’s arm with a tentative finger, then looked at the fingertip as if it were a foreign object. “She’s cold,” Elissa reported. “And kind of hard.”
“That’s what happens when you die.”
“Oh.” Elissa seemed to consi
der that. “Her face looks pretty, though.”
Brie could hear Jan’s voice, talking with Sergei ca’Rudka, Starkkapitän ca’Damont, and Commandant ca’Talin to one side of the quire. Talbot, Allesandra’s aide who had agreed to stay on as Jan’s aide, cleared his throat near the pews. “Hïrzgin, they’re ready to let the ca’-and-cu’ enter the temple. I’m going to go get the Hïrzg and the others—you have a bit yet, but . . .”
She nodded to him, and he stepped away. “Don’t touch that,” she told Elissa, who was reaching out with a tentative hand toward the ring. Elissa snatched back her hand as if she’d burned it.
“I wasn’t going to touch it,” she told Brie. “Is that going to be Vatarh’s ring?”
“Yes, very soon,” Brie told her.
“And will it be mine one day?”
Kriege glared at Elissa. “That’s not fair, Matarh,” he howled, his voice shrill under the dome. Brie saw the white lines of the téni ripple and someone laughed, a quick sound that was choked off. “She gets everything.”
She could hear Talbot chuckling as he strode across the nave toward Jan. She laughed, too. “No one’s going to get the ring—at least not for a long, long time, when you’re all grown up. We’ll see then. It may be that neither of you will want it.”
“Then I’ll take it,” Caelor interjected. “It’s a pretty ring.”
Brie laughed. “Come on,” she told her children. “We need to take our seats . . .”
The wind-horns called mournfully, their low wail sending the pigeons erupting from the ground on the plaza outside. Inside, Rochelle could feel the temple wall throbbing against her back. She’d slipped into the temple via a back door much earlier, picking the lock well before dawn, sliding up to the choir loft and along the side to a shadowed corner behind the arch of one of the buttresses, where she could look down at the quire, the bier and the closest pews.
She thought she could smell smoke here: not just the spiced aroma from the censers on the altar, but a fume that was a remnant of the black sand bombardment of the Tehuantin, lingering here below the painted arches of the dome. She had sat there hidden for several turns, waiting. She’d watched the white-robed téni file in; the choir settling into their seats not far from her.