A Magic of Twilight

see to that also.”

“Good.” They reached the top of the stairs. Sergei turned, and the capitaine brought his hands to his forehead in salute. “It’s been a pro-ductive day, then. You have your tasks to attend to, Capitaine. I can find my own way out.”

Ana cu’Seranta

The teni-lights of Nessantico were famous through-out the Holdings. It was the Night Circle that people often spoke of when they reminisced about their visit to the capital city. As the sun faded behind the bend of the A’Sele, as the western sky deepened to purple and the first stars appeared, a procession of dozens of e’teni clothed in yellow-hemmed robes filed from each of the several temples of the city. Ana watched with her family, Sala (tending to her matarh) and the other onlookers as one group of light-teni left the Archigos’ Temple, proceeding east and west along both sides of the Avi a’Parete as they passed the gates. The e’teni each went to one of the tall, black iron poles erected several strides apart along the boulevard. There they paused, chanting and performing intricate motions of hands and fingers as the wind-horns blew a mournful dissonance from the towers.

Finally the e’teni lifted their hands high, fingers spread wide open, and the yellow-glass globes high atop the poles flared and illuminated as if a tiny sun had been born inside them. The e-teni clapped their hands once and moved to the next light poles, repeating the spell. Around the entire long loop of the Avi a’Parete and the Four Bridges, the daily ceremony was repeated until all the lamps were lighted and the boulevard that encircled the inner city was ablaze with pools of false day.

“When I was at Montbataille, I swear I could look to the south and west from the high slopes and see Nessantico at night, miles and miles and miles away, like a necklace of stars fallen to the ground and glittering there.” Ana’s vatarh Tomas smiled at her, his arm slipping around her shoulders and pulling her tight to his side. Ana forced herself to return the smile and to remain in his embrace though she ached to pull away. No more. Not after tonight. . “Seeing the lights always made me think of you and your matarh, safe there. And I wondered if one day it might not be you in the procession every night, lighting the lamps. You always played at being a teni, even when you were just a child-do you remember that? And now. .” His smile transformed into a grin tainted with greed. She knew his thoughts: an o’teni could command a dowry of her own for the family. . “They won’t waste an o’teni to just light the Avi, will they?”

Ana shook her head, starting to pull away, but Tomas hugged her tightly again as the e’teni moved on to the next lamps and the crowd that had gathered to watch the procession began to thin. She felt his fingers cup the side of her breast, but before she could react, his arm slipped from her. Tomas crouched down in front of Ana’s matarh, seated in her carry-chair. Her matarh’s eyes were open, but they saw nothing and tracked no one. He put his hands on hers, folded on her lap. “We’re proud of our Ana, aren’t we, Abi?”

The woman didn’t reply. She rarely spoke anymore, and when she did, no one could understand her. Her eyes seemed to search for something past his shoulder. Another of the coughing spasms struck her and she hunched over, the cough rumbling and liquid in her lungs. Tomas took a kerchief from the pocket of his bashta and dabbed at the mucus around her mouth.

I will need to help her again tomorrow. “Vatarh? We should be going to the temple,” Ana said.

Tomas stood slowly and nodded to the quartet of hired servants with them; they took up the poles of the carry-chair once more. They proceeded across the street into the plaza where, just this morning, everything in Ana’s life had changed. A female acolyte was waiting there, approaching them as they crossed the Avi. Ana recognized her: Savi cu’Varisi, one of the current third-years who-unlike Ana when she’d been there-had been plucked by the teni from the common rabble of the acolytes and given special tasks at the temple. Even though Ana was the senior student, in their few encounters Savi had treated Ana as she might have some merchant’s apprentice. Tonight, Savi seemed subservient and overawed by her task. She kept her head down, refusing to meet Ana’s gaze.

“This way, O’Teni cu’Seranta,” Savi said. She stumbled over the title, and her face reddened. “The Archigos is awaiting you and your family.”

“ ‘O’Teni cu’Seranta.’ ” Tomas chuckled as the acolyte led them toward a side door of the temple. “That has a wonderful sound, doesn’t it, Ana?”

“Yes, Vatarh,” Ana admitted, watching Sala as she turned and started to walk toward the temple, wishing he sounded more pleased for her and less for himself. “But I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it.”

“Oh, you will. And more. I’m certain of it. One day soon it will be U’Teni ca’Seranta. This is Cenzi’s will; this is our reward for the trials He sent us. I always knew it would come.”

Ana nodded at her vatarh’s confidence, though she knew that Tomas’ certainty was new and fragile. True, Cenzi had sent trials enough to their family: the deaths of her two younger siblings to Red Pox six years before, followed closely by the loss of Ana’s older brother Louis the next year, serving with the Garde Civile in one of the border skirmishes with Tennshah. Then Vatarh, a mid-level bureaucrat within the Department of Provincial Commerce, had been assigned to the town of Montbataille only to have his position eliminated within six months.

Since then, he had held a variety of positions within the Nessantico government, each of them of less status and lower compensation as Abi and Tomas were forced to squander their savings and rely on the largesse of the cu’Seranta relatives to avoid the shame of becoming ci’Seranta or worse.

Ana thought the nadir had come four years ago when Abi had been stricken. That had seemed the final blow. Her apprenticeship to the Concenzia Faith had been her vatarh’s desperate attempt to sal-vage something from the unrelenting downward spiral of the family’s fortunes.

The healers had all said that her matarh would die, and Ana had watched her fail. When Ana was little, she had often put her hands on her matarh’s temples when she complained of headaches, and there were always words in her mind that she could say, words that would take away the pain. You always played at being a teni. . She had, and Ana knew now that it was the early manifestation of her Gift, an instinctive use of the Ilmodo.

It was also wrong. The Divolonte, the laws and regulations of Concenzia, explicitly said so. ‘To heal with the Ilmodo is to thwart the will of Cenzi,’ the teni thundered in their Admonitions from the High Lectern in the temple. Ana, always devout, had stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing.

But. .

She couldn’t watch her matarh die. After the last healer Vatarh had hired left in defeat, Ana finally put her hands on her matarh again and spoke the words that came-carefully, tentatively, letting the Ilmodo ease the pain, letting Ana bring her back from the death spiral she was in, but not all the way back: because that would be too visible and too dangerous. Ana parceled out the relief, feeling guilty both for her misuse of the Ilmodo and because she didn’t use it as fully as she might.

Then came the true shame. The worst of it all. Her vatarh. . First it was just words and hugs, then he came to her for the more intimate comforts that Abi had once given him. Too young and too immature and too trusting, Ana had endured his long, careful seduction, knowing that if she told anyone, the shame would destroy the family utterly, that it would be her matarh who would suffer most of all. .

“O’Teni? Through here. .” Savi had led them to a set of gilded wooden doors. The panels were carved with a representation of Cenzi’s ascension to the Second World-the elongated figure of the god being lifted up toward the clouds while below an immense fissure yawned in the globe below, where Cenzi had fallen in his struggle with the Moitidi, His children. Ana stroked the polished wood as Savi pulled open the doors. Beyond was a small, simple chapel which might have held fifty people at the most, lit by candles set in silver candelabra swaying on chains from the high ceiling. Ana could smell incense burning in a brazier, then motion caught her eye near the altar covered with fine damask at the far end of the chapel. The Archigos stepped up onto the altar dais, supported by a young male o’teni who towered over him. The Archigos gestured to them as Savi closed the chapel door, remaining behind in the corridor. Ana glanced around; there was no one else in the chapel.

“Are you disappointed, O’Teni?” the Archigos asked, his voice reverberating from the stone surfaces around them. “I know that the official ceremony was better attended with all the families and all the a’teni. . ”

“No, Archigos,” Ana answered. She remembered A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca’s stern, unforgiving face staring at her, and the way the others had looked at her as if she were a puzzle they had to solve. She was pleased none of them