A Magic of Twilight

Ana ca’Seranta

Ana was more frightened than she could remember. Her hands were shaking, and she felt impossibly cold.

Kenne brought the carriage, driven by a trusted e’teni. When she told him that she wanted to leave the city along the Avi a’Firenzcia, that she wanted to come as close as she could come to where the Hirzg’s army was camped (trying desperately to keep her voice from shaking), he nodded as if she’d asked him to take her on a promenade around the Avi a’Parete. “And Envoy ci’Vliomani? Will we be picking him up also?”

“Let Karl sleep,” she’d told him. “This is something I must do on my own-but I need your help.”

Kenne had nodded and kept any thoughts he might have had to himself. That gratified Ana; she didn’t know if she would have been able to answer his questions.

She stared out from the curtains as they rattled through the city.

The Avi a’Parete was strangely dark, the teni-lamps unlit for the first time in generations. The storm front had passed on eastward, leaving moon-silver puddles on the flags of the courtyards and the Avi.

The streets were deserted except for Garde Civile (though the taverns they passed were both crowded and noisy), and it was only the cracked globe of Cenzi on their carriage that saved them from being stopped and questioned several times. The A’Sele flowed dark and forbidding under the Pontica Mordei, and the heads on either side

of the gates of the Avi a’Firenzcia were black and still, frozen as they stared outward into the night, gazing blindly to where the army of Firenzcia slept.

The carriage was hailed as they came to the barricades at the gate; Kenne leaned out from the carriage and answered the challenge. At his insistence that they were on the Archigos’ business, they were permitted through. They passed between uncounted tents of the Garde Civile along the Avi.

The world seemed calm, despite the cataclysm that had come to Nessantico, despite Ana’s own apprehensions. She cradled the glass ball nestled in her pocket, letting the Ilmodo energy captured within it tingle her fingers and praying to Cenzi to tell her that she was doing the right thing.

There was no answer. Only an aching uncertainty in her heart and the fear of what she was setting out to do.

She felt the carriage come to a halt as the driver stopped chanting.

“Archigos,” she heard the driver say. “I can’t go farther. .”

Kenne opened the carriage door and Ana peered out. Ahead, the Avi was entirely blocked: the rear defensive line of Nessantico troops.

A squad of the Garde Civile were approaching the carriage; as they saw Ana and Kenne step from the carriage, they all hurriedly gave the sign of Cenzi. “Archigos, U’Teni,” the e’offizer with them said. “I’ll send word to Commandant ca’Rudka that you’ve come.” He started to gesture to one of his men, but she stopped him.

“No, E’Offizier. Let the commandant have his rest. I’ve come to look at the lines, that’s all. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d see where we should place the war-teni.”

He nodded, with a quick, almost shy smile. “I understand. Right now, though, things are quiet.”

“Where are the Firenzcian troops?”

The man pointed up the road. “No more than a quarter mile past our lines. You can glimpse their campfires through the trees.”

“I’d like to see.”

“We’ll take you. .”

Ana walked with Kenne, the e’offizer, and his squad through the quiet lines, where most of the Garde Civile were sleeping on the ground or packed into small tents, getting what rest they could before the sun and inevitable battle came. The Avi itself was blocked by a barrier of quickly-felled trees, but there was nothing but field, trees, and the occasional abandoned farmhouse between the two forces on either side of the road. The e’offizier led them to one side of the Avi, to a small stand of apple trees. She could see a few lookouts stationed along the line, but otherwise there was no one near them. “This is as far as we should go,” the e’offizier said. “Any farther out from cover and it would be too dangerous.” Yellow flames blinked like distant fireflies in a rough line ahead of her, flickering through the swaying foliage of trees and brush.

She stared out into the dark.

“You saved us earlier, Archigos,” the e’offizier said behind her. “I want you to know that we appreciate that, all of us.”

She nodded. “Thank you, E’Offizier. Now, if you would leave us alone for a bit, please,” she said. “To pray. .”

He gave her the sign of Cenzi once more. He gestured to the squad and they strode away, leaving Ana and Kenne standing alone in the little grove. She pulled out Mahri’s gift. She cupped it in her hand. “Archigos?” Kenne said, looking at the ruddy fire in her hand.

“I need you to hide me, Kenne,” she told him. “A shielding spell so no one sees or hears me moving in the night. I need to get as close as I can.”

She thought she saw Kenne’s eyebrows lift in the moonlight, but he nodded. He began to chant, his hands swaying in the moonlight.

The air shimmered around her-she was not invisible, but unless one looked carefully they might mistake her form for a tree’s shadow or a cloud over the moon.

It was the best she could hope for.

Ana took a long breath, then stepped forward from the sheltering

trees and into the open field. She waited, half expecting to hear the hiss of arrows or a call of alarm. Yett she heard nothing but Kenne’s chanting behind her. She continued to walk: a step, another, with each step fighting the temptation to run.

She was nearly across to the line of trees and the campfire among them when the shimmering of air began to lessen: Kenne was tiring. She lifted the glass ball in her hand.

Speak my name, he’d said. “Mahri,” she whispered, and she felt the power within the glass well up. In her mind, it spread around her and she saw the shape of the spell that contained it in the pattern of the Ilmodo. She marveled at the spell’s complexity, wondering if she could have crafted something like this herself. But she had little time-she remembered how Mahri had said that the spell was difficult to hold, and she could already feel the wildness of it in her mind.

She looked about. In the sky, the fast-moving clouds had stopped.

There was no sound but the roaring of the power in her mind. A night swallow hovered high above her, captured in mid-turn, its wings locked in mid-beat.

Ana began to walk as quickly as she could toward the campfires- but now she found movement difficult and slow. She felt as if she were wading through deep water. As she reached the enemy lines, her heart pounded, seeing a man staring directly at her as he stood beside the nearest tree. She gathered herself-to run or to ready a spell-but then she realized that he was as unresponsive as a sculpture, and that the flames of the campfire against whose light he was outlined appeared painted on the air.

She hurried past the soldier, feeling a chill as he stood there, still staring outward. Kill the head and the snake dies. .

It was easy to locate the Hirzg’s tent, with his banner caught in mid-flutter above. She walked unchallenged through the encampment and past the gardai outside. She lifted the flap-the canvas as stiff and unyielding as if it were frozen-and stepped inside.

She stopped, breathing heavily with the exertion of simply walking in this gelid air. The interior of the tent was ornate: a thick rug covered the ground, a wooden field desk stood on its stand to one side, a brazier trailed an unmoving wisp of incense, and teni-lights had been lit to brighten the room. There were several people in the tent, gathered around a table set with food: ca’Cellibrecca she recognized instantly, his hand lifting a fork-ful of meat toward his gaping mouth. There was another man in black and silver with the insignia of the starkkapitan on his sleeves; a thin man who was seated at the middle of the table; a green-robed teni with the slashes of an u’teni-that could only be cu’Kohnle.

The Hirzg sat at the head of the table. . and on his lap, unexpectedly, was a young girl. The sight puzzled Ana for a moment, then she realized: it was the Hirzg’s daughter Allesandra. It had to be her; she could see the