A Magic of Twilight

will fight all the way back if we press them, on ground they know better than we do. Who knows what these Numetodo can still do? Our war-teni need to rest, and we could use the time to prepare our siege engines.”

Jan was shaking his head at the argument. “Hirzg,” cu’Kohnle broke in, “the starkkapitan is right. My war-teni are exhausted; we have nothing left. Give us the night, though, and we’ll be ready for a final assault in the morning.”

“Are you not listening to me?” Jan spat at them. “I want this city.

I will have it. If you won’t help me take it, then I will find offiziers and teni who will.” He glared at them, and was gratified when both ca’Linnett and cu’Kohnle bowed their heads. Ca’Cellibrecca, in his ornate robes under the umbrella, was looking away, as if fascinated by the Avi behind them.

“Vatarh.” Allesandra tugged at his cloak. He glanced down at her serious face, blinking against the raindrops pelting them. “The starkkapitan and the u’teni are right. They’ll do as you tell them to do because they respect you, but they’re right. I know you want the city, and I know you’ll give it to me as you promised. But not tonight, Vatarh.

Tomorrow.” She smiled at him, and the fury inside him cooled somewhat. “Or even the next day,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. The Firenzcian army is strong, and you are their leader. You will take the city, but it doesn’t need to be this day.”

“I promised you, Allesandra,” Jan said. With his forefinger, he brushed dampened curls back from her cheeks.

“I can wait, Vatarh,” she answered. “I can wear the lights of the city for the rest of my life. Another day won’t matter. I can wait.”

He took a breath. Thunder grumbled overhead, but the rain was lessening, and the lightning was flickering east of them, toward Firenzcia.

“We’ll make camp here,” he said. “U’Teni cu’Kohnle, make certain

that the war-teni sleep and are ready for tomorrow. Starkkapitan, you’ll prepare your offiziers and troops for the final assault, and I will meet with both of you later this evening. We’ll move at first light tomorrow.”

He hugged Allesandra to him. “And you shall have your jeweled city tomorrow,” he told her.

Mahri

Ana was dozing in her chair, but she must have sensed his presence. Her eyes fluttered open. If she was surprised to see

him standing in her apartments near the Archigos’ Temple, she didn’t show it.

“You don’t agree to my advice?” he asked her, chiding her gently.

“You won’t use the gift I gave you?”

He saw Ana touch her robe at her right side. He could see how the cloth rounded there over the enchanted glass he’d given her. She said nothing. “I heard the gossip in the city, Archigos. They say that you saved the Kraljiki’s life with a spell,” he continued.

“It wasn’t me,” she said. “I don’t know. .” Then her eyes widened a bit.

“Yes,” he told her. “I shouldn’t have interfered, but if I hadn’t, my gift to you would have been wasted.”

She stirred, sitting up in the chair in which she’d fallen asleep. Her hand brought out the ball. He could see the glowing colors within it; he could feel the power he’d placed within the glass for her. “Here, then,” she said. “I give it back to you. Use it yourself if you’re so certain.”

“I can’t.” He kept his hands at his sides, refusing to take it. After a moment, she placed it on the stand next to the chair, on her untouched dinner tray.

“Why not?”

In answer, he brought a shallow brass bowl from the bag he wore under his cloak, the rim decorated with ornate filigrees of colored enamel.

He went to the desk and set the bowl there, pouring water into it from a pitcher the servants had left there. From a leather pouch, he sprinkled a dark powder into the water and stirred it, chanting words in the West-speech. He could see her watching him, her head cocked to one side as she listened, and he knew that she heard the similarity between West-speech and the language of the Ilmodo: the same cadences and rhythms, the same sibilance and breathy vowels. A mist rose above the bowl.

“Look into it,” he said.

She gave him a long, appraising look. Then, finally, she rose from her chair (he could see her weariness in the grimaces and the way she stretched her limbs) and-on the far side of the desk from him-stood over the bowl. She looked down.

He knew what she saw, knew because he’d glimpsed it himself a dozen or more times over the last few months.

In the mists, Ana’s face, and the figure of Jan ca’Vorl. She holds a knife, and the blade is bloodied. The mists roil, and there is ca’Cellibrecca, sprawled on the ground alongside the Hirzg, blood spread across his chest, his chest unmoving. Ana’s face is a mask as she stares, her eyes cold and hard. The knife drops from her hand, and the mists swirl again, and there is Nessantico, untouched, and on the Sun Throne is Justi. .

He knew what she saw. He stretched his scarred hand between Ana’s rapt face and the bowl, sweeping away the mist.

He would not let her see what came afterward. That was only for him.

Ana looked up at him, her hands fisted on the desktop. “This is the future?” she asked.

He nodded. “It is a glimpse of one path the future can take,” he said. “A path that’s uncertain and hard to decipher sometimes. But when I see the Hirzg’s death, when I see Nessantico saved and Justi on the throne, it is always you who do this deed, Ana. Not me. That’s why I gave you the spelled glass- because I know that if I kill them, Nessantico still falls. Inevitably.”

He wondered if she could hear the half-lie.

“I can’t,” she said. “To murder people while they’re helpless. .”

He smiled, and saw her recoil from his expression. “How better to do it?” he said. “My people have a saying: ‘In time of war, all laws are silent.’ How many have died today-unnecessarily-because you didn’t do what I suggested?”

Her gaze hardened then, and he realized he’d pushed her too far.

“You blame me?”

Mahri hurried to answer, shaking his head. He could not give her time to think, or it would be too late. “No, Ana. I don’t blame you-if anything, the blame is mine for not making it clear enough. You can play by the rules of ‘civilized’ war if you wish, Ana, but you will lose if you do so-ask Commandant ca’Rudka if he truly thinks you will

prevail against Hirzg Jan; ask your war-teni if they believe they are stronger than those on the other side. You’ve already bent the rules of your Faith and your Divolonte. Bend them further. You have tonight to do this. Tonight only. Tomorrow, it will be too late, because the Hirzg will be dining in the Palais and ca’Cellibrecca will be standing where you’re standing right now. Both you and Justi will be dead, or worse.”

“Why?” she asked him. “Why do you care who is Kraljiki or Archigos?”

“I don’t,” he told her. “I care for what is best for my people, as you do. And so I want Justi as Kraljiki and you as the Archigos.”

“You saw that here?” she asked, pointing at the bowl.

For a moment he wondered if she had guessed, or if she’d seen more in the bowl than he’d intended for her to see. “Yes,” he told her tentatively. “Glimpses, as you saw. And I hope that they’re right.”

He was relieved when she nodded. He plucked the glass ball from the dinner tray. “Tonight,” he repeated, holding the ball. “It’s your only chance.”

She stared at him. He was afraid she was going to refuse, afraid that what he’d seen in the bowl would be forever shattered and lost. But finally her hands came up from her sides, palms up.

He placed the ball in her hands and closed her fingers around the glow.