A Magic of Twilight

older woman’s daughter. The daughter bore a tray with a silver teapot and plates of fruit and bread; the matarh hurried over to the bed. “Stay there, O’Teni. Here, let me put this tray up over you. Now, a few pillows behind your head. .” A moment later, the tray was placed before Ana as she sat up against the headboard. A sumptuous breakfast steamed in front of her, fragrant, and she realized that she was famished.

“Where am I?” Ana asked, and the servants chuckled in unison.

They had the same laugh, also.

“The Archigos said you’d probably be confused when you woke,”

the older woman said. “You’re in your own apartments, across the plaza from the temple.” The daughter went to a chest across the room and pulled underclothing and a green robe from the drawers, placing them gently over the foot of the bed. The older woman fluffed the pillows around her, then went to the balcony doors, pulling back the curtains.

Ana could glimpse the domes of the Archigos’ Temple behind her. “Are you feeling better, O’Teni? Go on, eat the toast before it gets cold, and here, let me pour you some of this wonderful tea; it comes all the way from Quibela in the province of Namarro. The Archigos, he said that Cenzi touched you after your appointment and that’s why you were so exhausted, and we were to let him know when you woke. I’ve already sent Beida to tell him.”

Ana half-listened to the woman’s prattling as she sipped the tea (which was indeed wonderful, flavored with spices that flirted coyly with her tongue) and ate the bread and fruit before her. She learned that the woman was Sunna and the other one, who was indeed her daughter, was Watha, and that Watha was betrothed to a minor sergeant of the Garde Kralji, “but he’s on the Commandant ca’Rudka’s staff, and very visible to the commandant;” that they came from Sesemora and their family name was Hathiga, currently without any prefix of rank though the Archigos had promised them that they would become ce’Hathiga in the Rolls next year; that they’d been in the Archigos’ employ for the last six years and were now attached to Ana’s apartments.

By the time she’d learned all this, she’d eaten her breakfast, performed her morning ablutions, and allowed the servants to help her dress. Beida knocked on the door as she finished. “The Archigos is in the reception room, O’Teni,” she said with a quick pressing of hands to forehead. “He said to come in as soon as you’re ready.”

The reception room was, like the bedroom, lavish and large, with its own balcony and fireplace, set with a desk, leather sofa, and plush matching chairs. The Archigos was standing out on the balcony, so small that for a moment Ana thought he might be a child. Then he turned and she saw the ancient face, the stunted arms, the bowed legs and bent spine. “Good morning to you, O’Teni Ana,” he said. “Please, come out here. . ”

She came to stand alongside him. The morning was cool, a breeze ruffling the folds of the soft, grass-colored robes she wore and bringing them the scent of wood fire from the breakfast hearths of the city. She was looking down to the courtyard of the temple from four stories up- the top floor. Directly across, seemingly nearly at eye level, the golden domes of the temple itself reflected sunlight back to the sky. As she looked, watching the people below scurrying about their business, the wind-horns sounded First Call. Automatically, Ana went to a knee and bowed her head; she felt the Archigos do the same alongside her. She silently mouthed the morning prayers: as the wind-horns continued to call, the strident sound carrying the burden of the city’s prayers skyward to Cenzi and the other gods. As the last notes died, Ana rose again. The Archigos held out his small hand toward her. “If you would. .” She helped him rise, the dwarf groaning as his knee cracked once in protest.

“Old joints,” he said. “I wonder if you could cure them.”

With the words, the events of the evening before came back to Ana: Matarh, the spell of healing, the darkness closing around her. . “My matarh. .”

He smiled up at her, his lips caught in folds. “She is doing quite well, from what I understand. I sent Kenne to your family’s house this morning to inquire after her, knowing you’d ask. He was told that she slept easily last night, that her cough had vanished, and she is conversing with your vatarh and the house servants as if nothing had ever happened. It would appear that a minor miracle has occurred, eh?” One eyebrow raised as he glanced at Ana. “She also doesn’t remember what happened in the temple last night-which is just as well. I would suggest that you don’t remember it, either.”

“Archigos, what I did. .” She wasn’t certain what she wanted to say.

“Is something that will remain between the two of us, because it must,” he answered for her. “Let’s go inside; the air is holding a bit of the old winter this morning.”

He held aside the balcony’s sheer curtains for her. Inside the apartment, Watha had started a small fire in the hearth. She smiled at them, then left the room, closing the doors behind her. “Your servants are all three excellent people,” the Archigos said. “Discreet. Prudent. Close-mouthed about what they see and hear. They will do whatever you ask of them.” His mouth twisted and his gaze wandered to the flames in the hearth. “As long as what you ask doesn’t conflict with my instructions to them, of course,” he added. She could sense the layers of meaning underneath his words. She felt her stomach twist.

“Archigos, what happened to me last night?”

His gaze returned to her and he smiled again. He took a seat on one of the sofas and motioned to her to sit across from him. “What happened was what I expected to happen. You can’t touch Cenzi that closely and not have consequences. You know that.”

“I’ve felt weariness before; all of us did while U’Teni cu’Dosteau was teaching us the chants. But not like that. Never anything so …exhausting.”

“You’d never gone that deep before,” the Archigos answered. “ ‘The greater the Gift, the greater the cost.’ I’ve already said that once to you.

It’s an old cliche, but there is often truth buried in platitudes. The warteni know that weariness; their spells have that same kind of power. You could easily be a war-teni, if that’s what you wanted.”

“My spell. .” She bit her lip for a moment, wondering what to say. “My spell was wrong. It violated the Divolonte. I thwarted Cenzi’s Will.”

“Did you? Do you believe Cenzi is so weak that you could bend His will to your whim? Do you think He couldn’t stop you if He wished?

There’s nothing wrong with what you did. You have a rare skill; it would be thwarting Cenzi’s will for you not to use it.”

Ana’s eyes widened: what the Archigos said was heretical; it went against all the railing of the teni in their Admonitions. “Archigos, the precepts of the Toustour and the Divolonte teach us that the Gift is never to be used that way.” It was what U’Teni cu’Dosteau had taught her, it was what she had always been told.

“Sometimes what the Faith teaches is wrong.”

The statement snapped Ana’s mouth shut. The Archigos smiled, as if the expression he saw on her face amused him. “Oh, I’d deny it if you ever said that I spoke those words, Ana,” he told her. “And I’d never say them in public. Not even the Archigos can spout heresy without consequences; some of the a’teni are waiting for just that opportunity.

A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca especially would love an excuse to wrest the title away from me. Nor can you perform such feats without consequences; that’s why you must be very careful henceforth with what you do.”

The smile vanished, and there was something in his face that made Ana sit back hard against the seat of her chair. “After all,” he continued, “if I told ca’Cellibrecca what you did last night, why, he’d have no choice but to send you to the Bastida. An acolyte made an o’teni by the Archigos. . why, they’d wonder if you hadn’t used your skills to place a charm on me, and if you hadn’t arranged the attempted assassination for your own purposes. And believe me, in the Bastida you would tell them whatever they wanted to hear.” The smile returned then, but utterly failed to comfort her. “You see, O’Teni Ana, we must trust each other not to reveal the secrets we know.”

The Archigos pushed himself forward on the sofa, then let his short legs slip to the ground and stood. He walked over to Ana and put his hand on her knee as she sat, stunned. She could feel the heat of his skin through the cloth of her robe.

It felt the way her vatarh’s hand felt. She shuddered. She clasped her legs tightly together under her robes.

“We are coming on dangerous times,” he said. “The general populace, they don’t realize it yet. The people only see the prosperity and the celebrations for the Kraljica’s fiftieth. They fail to notice the storm clouds gathering on the horizon or hear the grumbling underneath the cheers. Dangerous times. I didn’t realize, until almost too late.”