and ask him to tell her a story, anything, just so she could lay her head against his broad chest and listen to the rumble of his deep voice.
Once. .
She felt his hand on her shoulder, stroking the soft fabric of her tashta where it gathered. The hand followed the curve of her spine from neck to the middle of her back. His hand slid along the curve of her hip. She closed her eyes, hearing him half-kneel alongside her. “I miss her, too,” he whispered. “I don’t know what I’d do if I were to lose you, too, my little bird.” She wouldn’t look at him, but she felt him as a warmth along her side, and now his hand slid along the tashta’s folds to where the cloth swelled over her breasts. His fingers cupped her.
She stood abruptly, and his hand dropped away. He was looking
down at the floor, not at her nor at Abini. “I have to leave for class, Vatarh,” Ana said. “U’Teni cu’Dosteau said we must be there early today. .”
Karl ci’Vliomani
“Can you imagine this in summer?” Mika ce’Gilan whispered, leaning close to Karl. His long, aquiline nose wrinkled dramatically. “I smell more sweat than perfume.”
Karl could only nod in agreement. The Kraljica’s Throne Room was crowded with supplicants. It was the second Cenzidi of the month, the day that the Kraljica accepted all supplicants-at least all those who managed to reach her in the few turns of the glass she sat on the Sun Throne. The long hall was stuffed as tightly as sweetfruit in a crate with people dressed in their best finery. The room sweltered; Karl could feel beads of perspiration gathered at his brow and running freely down his spine to soak the cloth of the bashta he wore.
He suspected that it was last year’s fashion at best, and that those staring appraisingly at him were snickering behind their fluttering, ornate fans. He also noted that he and Mika stood in their own little open space, as if those with ca’ or cu’ in front of their name would be contaminated if they came too close. He touched the pendant around his neck nervously-a seashell that looked as if it had been carved of stone, the plain gray rock polished from usage.
At the front of the room, the Sun Throne gleamed beneath the Kraljica Marguerite ca’Ludovici: the ruler of Nessantico and the Holdings, the great Genera a’Pace, the Wielder of the Iron Staff, the Matarh a’Dominion, who would in a few months be celebrating the Jubilee of the fiftieth year of her reign: the longest reign yet of any Kralji. Most of the people now living in the Holdings had known no other ruler. The seat of the Kralji was carved from a single massive crystal, enchanted by the first Archigos Siwel ca’Elad over three centuries ago in a way that no teni had since been able to duplicate. When someone wearing the Ring of the Kralji sat in its hard, glittering embrace, the Sun Throne gleamed a pale yellow. Karl knew there were persistent whispers that the radiance had actually vanished long ago; now, skeptics insisted, the interior light was created at need by special teni sent by the Archigos whenever the Kraljica appeared publicly on the Sun Throne. It was
certainly true, given accounts written during Archigos Siwel’s lifetime of how the throne had “shone like a true sun, blinding all with its radiance,” that the Sun Throne must have paled considerably in the intervening centuries. In full daylight, its glow could barely be seen. The swaying chandeliers overhead were decidedly necessary: even though it was nearly Second Call, the tall windows of the Throne Room were too narrow to allow much of the light to enter.
It was also true that Karl would have been able to duplicate that glow himself, had he dared to do such a thing here.
“Vajiki Tomas cu’Seranta!” Renard, the Kraljica’s ancient and wizened aide, called out the name in a wavering voice, reading from a scroll in his hand. The murmur of voices in the room went momentarily quiet. Karl saw someone moving toward the Sun Throne in response, a middle-aged man who bowed low as he approached, and Karl scowled
and sighed at the same time.
“I told you that you should have slipped Renard a siqil or two,” Mika stage-whispered. “He’s not going to call us forward.”
“I’m the Envoy a’Paeti a’Numetodo,” Karl answered. “How can he ignore us?”
“For the same reasons that the Kraljica ignored the Marque of Paeti that you sent her when you requested a private audience. She’s tied too tightly to the Concenzia Faith; she doesn’t want to contaminate herself by acknowledging heretics.”
“You’re a pessimist, Mika.”
“I’m a realist,” Mika retorted. “’I would remind you that I have been here in Nessantico for far longer than you, my friend, and I know these people all too well. I think we’re lucky to have even been allowed in the hall-it’s only your pretty title that got us past Renard. Look over there to the side. You see that man staring our way? The one in black? You can’t miss him-he has a silver nose.”
Karl lifted up on his toes, scanning the room in the direction in
which Mika had nodded. The man stood against the wall, too casually posed. When he noticed Karl’s gaze, the mustachioed lips under the metallic nose twisted in what might have been an amused smirk. He nodded faintly in Karl’s direction. “That’s Commandant ca’Rudka of the Garde Kralji,” Mika continued. “If either of us appear to be even halfway threatening, we’ll be in the Bastida faster than a fly to a dead horse. So don’t make any sudden gestures.”
“I think you’re being paranoid.”
Mika sniffed. “Things are different in the west away from Nessantico,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll wager you dinner tonight that we don’t meet the Kraljica today.”
“Done,” Karl said.
Three turns of the glass later, the Kraljica rose and everyone bowed as she left the room. Karl had yet to be called forward for his audience.
“I’m terrifically hungry,” Mika commented as those in attendance filed from the Throne Room. “How about you?”
Marguerite ca’Ludovici
The reception-as it did every month-left Marguerite exhausted and irritated. Renard, her aide, waved away the clus-
ter of servants who had accompanied them from the Throne Room.
When the door closed behind them, his stiff, proper stance finally relaxed. “Here, Margu,” Renard said as he handed her a glass of cool water freshened with slices of yellow fruit. His use of her familiar name pleased her-in this place, where no one else could hear. “I know your throat is parched.”
“And my rear is sore, as well,” Marguerite answered. She handed him her cane. “The cushion did nothing against that damned crystal.”
“We can’t have that, can we?” He chuckled. “I’ll see that it’s replaced with a more appropriate covering.” He proffered the water again, and this time she took it. She let herself sink gratefully into one of the well-padded chairs in the private reception room. The windows were opened slightly though the air still held much of winter’s nip, and the fire roaring in its hearth was welcome. Marguerite sighed. “I’m sorry, Renard. It’s my duty and I shouldn’t complain.”
“You are the Kraljica,” he told her. “You can do whatever you’d like.”
She smiled at that. Renard cu’Bellona had been with her for the bulk of her five decades as Kraljica. Marguerite might be Kraljica, but it was Renard who scheduled her life and made certain that the days ran smoothly. Brought into her service as a page at age five, he had been simply Renard Bellona, with not even a lowly ce’ before his family name, but he had shown his loyalty and intelligence and progressed over the years to his current position.
